District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (31 page)

Minutes after heaving the bent and broken bike into the
ditch where they had found it, the four-truck convoy was speeding north by west
on 16 with ochre-scrub-dotted flatlands blipping by on the left, and the
snow-capped peaks of the Bear River Mountain Range scrolling by a few miles off
their right.

While Randolph had just been a smaller version of what they
had encountered in Woodruff, with doors marked with tiny chalk Xs which the group
took to mean the place was already stripped of anything of value, the two-lane
road beyond the blink-and-you’d-miss-it town was a different story.

Speaking to progress made days ago over the cold-affected
dead by the same people likely holding Oliver hostage, every mile or so the
convoy came upon head-high mounds of twice-dead zombie corpses.

Nine miles north of Randolph, Duncan was forced to slow yet
again to negotiate a school-bus-sized pile of moldering bodies. Stretching from
one side of 16 to the other, the drift of death all but blocked the north side
of the two-lane from view.

Fuck it
, Duncan thought, steering the Dodge around
the twelve-foot-tall mound. With rigor-stiffened appendages scratching out a
mournful dirge on the driver’s side sheet metal, he wheeled his rig past the
blockage, partway into the ditch, then four-wheeled up the other side.

After bringing the Dodge to a complete stop to wait for the
others, Duncan turned to Tran. “Think the 650 is gonna make it?”

“We’ll see in a moment,” Tran said, as Daymon squeezed his
Chevy by the roadblock, its driver’s side wheels fighting to keep purchase on
the road while the opposing pair churned the muddy snow in the bottom of the
roadside ditch.

Shifting his gaze from Tran to the mirror, Duncan watched
the Chevy’s grill emerge from the ditch and saw the determined look parked on
Daymon’s. And sitting next to Daymon, Foley had the handle near his head
clutched in a two-handed death grip and his mouth forming a silent O as the
black 4x4—following the same muddy furrows churned up by Duncan’s
passage—clawed its way back onto 16.

Wearing a wide-eyed
I thought we were going to roll over
look on his face, Daymon rolled the muddy truck around the static Dodge and
flashed Duncan a double thumbs-up.

Perfect place to spring an ambush
, crossed Duncan’s
mind as he returned the gesture. Then, acting on the epiphany, he nodded to the
binoculars clutched in Tran’s hands. “While the others come on through I need
you to be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.” He pointed to the
small hillock a half mile ahead on the right where the road cut through twin
walls of ochre dirt before veering off sharply to the left. “Start there and
work your way back here.”

Meanwhile, inside the Raptor, Taryn wore a grim look as the
rig entered the ditch, lurching hard to the right as both wheels on that side
became one with the steep, rock-and-gravel-studded wall. Glancing sidelong at
Wilson and talking loudly to be heard over the macabre sound of bone and nail
raking the truck’s thin steel skin near her left thigh, she said, “We are
not
going to make this.”

Subtly shaking his head and pressing the flaps of his boonie
hat hard over his ears to drown out the awful keening, Wilson said, “You’ve
already committed, Taryn. If you don’t gun it now and stop that awful sound …
you’re going to have to have
me
committed.”

“Those
places
are all gone, Wilson. Suck it up,” she
said, sounding way too much like Sasha for her own liking.

Wilson met her gaze. Not wanting this to escalate, he wisely
said nothing.

“Just hold on,” she said, her narrowed eyes focused on the
narrow gap.

Gritting his teeth, Wilson took ahold of the grab bar near
his head and braced himself by placing his other hand, fingers splayed out
wide, on the dusty dashboard.

Inching forward in her seat, simultaneously Taryn tightened
her grip on the wheel and stabbed the pedal to coax all the available
horsepower from the growling 6.2-liter powerplant.

Two things happened as a result. First, quad rooster-tails
of dirty snow and rocks exploded from under the beefy tires spinning furiously
beneath the lurching Ford. Then the off-road-tuned Raptor launched up the left
side of the ditch, went airborne momentarily—albeit by only a few inches—then
crashed back to earth on State Route 16 a half truck-length from Foley who was
staring wide-eyed from inside the Dodge.

Finally, three minutes after edging his truck past the
multitudes of leering dead and their pallid tangle of stick-thin arms and legs,
Duncan was about to learn if the F-650 could shoot the gap.

“Twenty bucks says we end up winching them out of there.”

Tran shook his head at that. “No way. If they make it
through, you have to gut and dress the next deer for me.”

“What are you going to do if I win?”

“I’ll do yours and Glenda’s wash.”

Shaking Tran’s hand, Duncan cackled then said, “You, my
friend, have a deal.”

Tran turned in his seat as the big black grill inched into
view around the blockage..

“I want my pants ironed with a hot rock,” Duncan said as he
watched the Ford edged out over the ditch and began to slowly list to the
right. Then he grimaced as Lev gunned it and somehow got the right side tires
tracking on the narrow strip of dirt sandwiched between the yawning ditch and
barbed wire fence.

“I want thin, nicely trimmed venison steaks,” Tran countered
as the 650’s massive driver-side tires gripped the remaining ribbon of
blacktop.

“Freakin’ Flying Wallendas,” Duncan said to Tran as the Ford
squeaked through, its rear bumper starting a corpse avalanche in its wake.

Throwing a fist pump in Duncan’s direction, Tran said, “I
love cooking. Hate butchering.”

Already imagining the stink of spilt blood, Duncan said, “No
wonder Cade and Brook love that beast.”

A tick after mentioning the Graysons, Duncan suddenly
reflected on how many Eden survivors he had allowed to tag along. On second
thought,
allowed
was a strong word. How many he had been reluctant to
discourage from tagging along was more like it.

In that instant, his stomach did a somersault and he felt a
primeval live wire tingling in his scrotum. In his haste to do Glenda’s bidding
and find Oliver no matter the cost, he’d been blinded to the fact that Cade was
away and with Phillip dead and gone, the only people at the compound at this
very moment were women and children and Seth, who was far from a survivor, and
even less adept as a fighter. In fact, the mercurial loner was barely one notch
above Oliver in that department.

What would Cade say if he knew Brook had been left behind
considering the fluidity of her current situation? Duncan expected no kind of
attaboy, that was for damn sure.

He looked over at Tran and caught the man, binoculars
partially lowered, staring back with a confused look on his face.

“Watch the
road
,” Duncan said, cheeks flushing red.
“You’re not going to catch anyone sneaking up on us staring at my ugly mug.”

Tran’s face blanched as he raised the field glasses and
aimed them at the scrub-covered plain northwest of them.

Embarrassed by his lapse in judgement, Duncan averted his
eyes and studied Jamie in the side mirror as the black behemoth pulled even
with his smaller Dodge. A tick later the window pulsed down and she stuck her
head out. After a few seconds of pained silence, voice cracking with emotion,
she said, “My gut tells me Oliver is dead. But my heart says we have to keep
looking for him.”

That was all Duncan needed to hear. And it was reassuring to
know that someone else cared as much as he did about the troubled youngest son
of the love of his life. Staring up at Jamie and feeling as if a weight had
been lifted from his shoulders, he used the two-way radio to call everyone over
to his truck for a meeting of the minds, so to speak.

***

It took a couple of minutes for everyone to shut down their
vehicles and make their way to the Dodge.

“Why the face to face?” asked Daymon, standing with his back
against the F-650.

Ignoring the attitude, Duncan walked his gaze over the
assembled survivors. “Does anyone have any idea why whoever is claiming the
north would want to block the road here?”

Wilson said, “Because it’s right before a junction?”

“I’m not quizzing you, kid,” said Duncan, suppressing the
urge to take him aside and tell him to toughen up and start thinking
critically. But he didn’t. Instead, he took the high road. “I’ll take that as a
statement and say that I have to agree with you.”

“It’s just another roadblock,” stated Foley. “Only this one
is physical and comes with a warning that cannot be misconstrued. The others …
the tainted trap. The crucified skeleton and Oliver’s bike and gear …” He paused
and looked to the east where dark clouds were building against the Bear River
Range. “All of those were psychological roadblocks. I’m willing to bet the next
thing that gets in our way is going to kill one of us.”

“That’s deep stuff,” said Daymon, sweeping a stray dread
under his black cap. “But I ain’t scared. I’m pissed. I want to make someone
pay for what they’ve done. Let’s go.
Now!
”

“I’ve been thinking,” Duncan said, one finger held in the
air outside his window as if he was testing for wind direction. “This
incremental security, if you will, reminds me of something I saw on television
before all of this. But I can’t for the life of me dredge it up.”

“I’ll be waiting with my hand on the radio and bated breath
for you to enlighten me,” said Daymon, the last few words uttered over his
shoulder as he strode off to his Chevy.

Duncan was about to say something he might regret, something
that had to do with halitosis and general dental hygiene, when Tran tugged on
his shirt sleeve.

“What?” said Duncan, irritably.

“There,” Tran said, pointing past the bend in the road while
thrusting the binoculars into his hands. “Those are buzzards.”

“And I bet they’re feeding on something dead,” Duncan said
slowly, accepting the Bushnells from his passenger.

Tran drew in a deep breath and exhaled. “Or
someone
,”
he countered in a low voice.

Ari called out, “Wheels down in five,” over the comms a
split second before drawing Jedi One-One from its steep dive and leveling the
ship out directly over a gently sloping hill bristling with what looked to
Cade, from his port-side perch, like the last patch of living grass on the
sprawling grounds. The clouds above were just starting to part, allowing the
sun to paint the National Security Agency’s buildings and muddy grounds of the
Fort Meade complex with a muted, gauze-like light. Just off Cade’s left
shoulder, almost close enough to reach out and touch, barren cherry trees
planted along the building’s north side were bending from the rotor wash.

Outside the starboard-side window, Cade could see six
Humvees parked nearly bumper-to-bumper in a bulging half-circle with their
turret-mounted weapons trained on the road passing by the front of the target
building. Small arms were strewn about the ground among the putrefying bodies
of the dead soldiers who had once wielded them. Clearly a stand had been made
here. A stand that had folded to an insatiable and ever-growing army of zombies
gnashing and tearing their way outward from the nation’s former capital
twenty-five miles southwest of here.

Ari called out, “Three,” in his short countdown.

On cue, Skipper hauled open the port-side door, letting the
rotor wash infiltrate the cabin and rustle sleeves and beards and nylon rifle
slings. The stowed landing gear was just locking into full extension when Ari
called out “One” and punctuated the countdown by saying, “For God and country,
gentlemen.”

A tick after hearing the SOAR pilot utter those final
uplifting words, Cade leaped from the helicopter bellowing, “Weapons free! Go,
go, go!” at the top of his voice. To his fore were two dozen Zs that for some
reason or another hadn’t gone in search of the fresh meat promised by the
feminine wails emanating from the deployed Screamers. At once he had his M4
tucked in tight to his shoulder and he was prioritizing targets in his cone of
fire. Assessing the threat of each Z based on its proximity to where the Delta
team would enter the looming building, he sighted on a recent turn angling in
from his right and dropped it to the cement walk with a perfect head shot.
After stepping over the prostrate corpse and inadvertently sending a half-dozen
spent shell casings skittering ahead of his boots, he stole a split-second
glance over his shoulder and located Axe, a few steps behind and left of him,
rifle leveled and on the move. The Brit’s gaze was focused laser-tight as he
stared through the holographic sight atop the carbine. In the same snapshot in
time, Cade saw that Cross and Griff, having exited the helo nearly
shoulder-to-shoulder and tight on the SAS shooter’s heels, were now fanning out
and training their weapons on their assigned sectors, Griff’s HK sweeping left,
and Cross’s MP7 covering the far right where monsters were spilling from the
building’s shot-out lower windows. And on the tail end of that lone, furtive
glance, Cade also noted that Ari had let them all egress the Ghost Hawk without
even settling its deployed landing gear on the body-strewn ground.

Cade’s new-to-him Danners, however, weren’t so lucky. The
tightly cinched boots had attracted the thick sludge like a couple of leather
mud magnets and were growing heavier with each successive step he took away
from the quietly hovering helicopter.

“Contact left,” Axe called out, his suppressed M4 belching
lead.

As Cade registered the call in his ear, simultaneously the
soft clatter of the carbine’s bolt, throaty rasps of the nearby dead, and
increasing rotor
thwop
assaulted his ears. In a state of near sensory
overload, he zippered between a row of concrete Jersey barriers fronting the
static Humvees and then paused for a half-second to gaze upon the NSA building
to his fore where he saw the shimmery reflection of Jedi One-One rocketing away
from the makeshift LZ, the helo’s new flight path taking her directly over the
jostling Zs and upthrust light standards due north of the building’s mirrored
facade.

The rest of the team was firing into the approaching knot of
dead and converging with Cade at the front entry when he dropped his gaze to
the ground-level windows, nearly all of which had been imploded under the
crushing weight of God knew how many dead things.

With the sound of glass kernels popping and crunching under
his boot soles, Cade slipped through the yawning doors ahead of the team and
found himself inside the expansive main lobby to NSA Building 9.

Every wall here was home to at least one of the ubiquitous
black-dome-enshrouded security cameras. Every few yards on the ceiling larger
versions of the smoked half-orbs reflected the flat light from outside. And
though the windows at ground level were mostly blown-out, the air inside the
lobby was damp and stagnant and stunk of cordite from past engagements that had
left piles of spent brass shells and bullet-riddled bodies scattered about the
wide-open floor.

As Cade took everything in, two things registered at once.
First off, Nash’s intel about the emergency lighting being operational was
faulty—at least where the ground-level sconces were concerned. Secondly, after
fixing his gaze on the pitch-black bowels of the building beyond the sunlight-dappled
staircase rising up behind a thick, bulletproof glass partition making up the
initial security checkpoint, he came to the realization that the newest
generation four-tube NVGs affixed to his helmet were going to come in handy.

Telling the rest of the team to power on their NVGs, he drew
in a deep lungful of the last semi-fresh air he figured he’d be privy to for a
long while, powered his on and flipped them down in front of his eyes.

Peering into the deeper recesses of the main floor, past the
multi-lane security station featuring metal detectors and X-ray body scanners,
Cade was able to grasp the sheer scale of the grandiose foyer. Even rendered in
a dozen hues of green, the wood and stone comprising the interior design lent
it the air of an upscale hotel—not the government-run security behemoth that it
was. Throw in the zombies shuffling from the inky shadows beneath the staircase
and the scene would be truly baffling to comprehend had he not already
memorized the layout somewhat and possessed a folded and laminated map to fall
back on should he need it.

Neck hairs standing on end due to the eerie moans and
scratchy, dry rasps coming from the advancing dead, Cade shouldered his
suppressed M4 and began culling those beyond the wall of metal detectors,
magnetometers, and whatever else was contained within the phalanx of
cream-colored screening apparatus bracketing the row of turnstiles in front of
him.

To the left, the distinct rapid-clatter of Cross’s weapon
could be heard. Flicking his eyes left and seeing the immediate vicinity beyond
the turnstiles clear of dead, Cade waved the rest of the team forward.

Looking like a futuristic robot with strange ambient green
lights for eyes, Cade stood shoulder to shoulder with Cross and Griff and
stared into the darkness at the multitudes of closed doors and narrow halls
leading off into the NSA’s inner sanctum. After orienting the floorplan he’d
committed to memory by matching it with the distant bank of
stainless-steel-skinned elevators, he quickly radioed back to Jedi One-One and
Schriever to inform them that the team was going in. After hearing both Nash
and Ari acknowledge the call, the transmission rendered garbled and barely
decipherable because of the exotic anti-eavesdropping film applied to the building’s
windows, he called Axe over from the center of the lobby where he’d been
keeping watch on their six.

“Nash was right,” he said, looking each man in the eye.
“Comms are being disrupted by the building’s latent security features. Means
we’re going to be on our own as soon as we get past the first checkpoint.”
Raising his M4 vertically over his head, he climbed over the turnstile and
struck out for a distant hall with the trio of silent, deadly men glued to his
six.

50th Satellite Space Wing TOC - Colorado Springs, Colorado

Wearing her full uniform, cover and all, Major Freda Nash
was sharing the short stage at the front of the TOC with Colonel Cornelius
Shrill and President Valerie Clay. Standing stage right of the largest
wall-mounted monitor in the low-ceilinged room, under the watchful gaze of two
dozen airmen of the 50th Satellite Space Wing, the three had been watching the
insertion at the NSA in real-time via a feed beamed down from one of the
remaining Keyhole satellites temporarily parked in a geostationary orbit over
Fort Meade, Maryland.

While both the colonel and President had shown little
obvious concern when Jedi One-One committed to a final approach of the NSA
building, Nash had drawn in a deep breath and trapped it in her lungs as the
Ghost Hawk—rendered tiny and jittery due to the satellite’s distance from Earth
and its current optic setting—swooped in right-to-left and settled on a wide,
Jersey-barrier-ringed tract of what appeared to have once been grass gracing
the front of the massive state-of-the-art facility.

After exhaling sharply, Nash had ordered an airman to zoom
in tight on the hovering helicopter as the ant-sized Delta team exited the
craft from the port-side and began their long sprint across the vehicle- and
debris-strewn no-man’s land still occupied by a large number of Zs. After the
feed sharpened and closed in she was able to see the sparkle of brass and licks
of orange coming from the team’s weapons. She smiled inwardly as the tiny
figures vectoring toward the helicopter toppled one after the other as the team
engaged them on the way to the entry.

Now just seconds removed from that entry, Nash was glued to
the zoomed-in feed as Jedi One-One overflew the sea of gently undulating
zombies that had become packed into a tight knot on the northernmost parking
lot.

Happy that Mr. Murphy hadn’t seen fit to intervene and screw
up the insertion, Nash saw her mood tempered when approached by an airman with
a grim look hanging on his face.

“Be advised, Major,” he said, handing her a set of
headphones. “Anvil Team is off comms. We are currently trying to reacquire.”

As expected
, Nash thought to herself as she shifted
her gaze to President Clay, who was shifting her weight nervously from
foot-to-foot.

Wasting no time, Nash donned the headphones and adjusted her
boom microphone. At first she heard deafening silence that went on for a few
short seconds, but seemed to have lasted much longer. Finally, communication
was reestablished and she heard Cade—using the call sign
Anvil Actual
—state
that the unit was
inside the target and on the move
.

Exhaling sharply for the second time in as many minutes,
Nash noticed an analyst looking at her over the top of her large computer
screen.

“What is it?” Nash asked.

“Two things,” the airman said, an unusual measure of concern
in her voice. “Because of the way the NSA building was designed, communication
with the team is going to remain spotty, at best.”

Nash nodded.

“Then there’s this.” The youthful airman’s jaw took a hard
set as she tapped out a command on her keyboard. “It looks like an armored
column is heading for D.C.”

Before “D.C.” had crossed the analyst’s lips, a new image
captured earlier by the satellite high above Fort Meade had materialized on the
large wall-mounted monitor adjacent to the President.

Clay stopped fidgeting. She glanced at the image then
quickly turned to face Colonel Shrill. “Do we have assets operating in the
area?”

“Negative,” Shrill said. “We have a few armored vehicles
scattered about a handful of nearby air bases. But not in the numbers to form a
column that size.”

“Throw it on Monitor One,” Nash said, her eyes already glued
there.

Two seconds later the image was splashed on the larger
screen in full color.

“When was this taken?”

“Fifteen minutes ago,” answered the airman.

“Enhance and zoom,” Nash said.

While the airman was tapping at her keyboard, Nash heard
Cade report that the power was out at ground level, but using NVGs they had
already cleared the lobby, breached the security station, and were now pushing
deeper into the building. “Damn it all,” Nash said under her breath. The
analyst was right. Cade’s transmission had been scratchy, his words hard to
understand before dropping off in volume at the tail end. Knowing that the team
would soon be underneath the massive structure and unable to communicate with
either their exfil bird or their eyes in the sky here at the TOC, she said a
prayer for them all and turned her undivided attention to the long column of
vehicles inching slowly along a Maryland state route.

“Those aren’t ours,” Shrill said warily. “And they certainly
didn’t arrive on our soil via airlift. Even with our limited ground based
stations, we would have picked up the transports before they reached any viable
airstrips in the area.”

“I concur,” said Nash. “Except for the Jedi flight and
refueling package, the skies east of here have been clear.”

“Those pieces are Chinese,” Shrill observed. “But they’re
heading
away
from the target building.”

“Could our intel have been wrong?” the President asked.

“Negative, Madam President,” Shrill said. “The prisoner
could have been lying to the interrogation team.” He removed his cover and
rubbed his bald head. “That’s unlikely, though. The documents Cade took off the
dead PLA captain corroborate the prisoner’s statements.”

“Maybe with the prisoner something was lost in translation?”
the President proffered.

Shaking his head vehemently, Shrill added, “Those PLA
Special Forces boys know their English. It’s drilled into them from day one.”