District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (35 page)

Looking toward the hallway with the moving shadows, he said,
“That tunnel isn’t on the map. Nor is this half of the DCC. If my bearings are
correct, it should run underneath the road and end up below the original DCC.”

Cross said, “The building with the round domes on top.”

“Exactly,” Cade answered. “And our data thieves might still
be in the building.”

Shaking his head, Axe muttered, “Elvis has left the
building.”

“Stay close,” Cade said to Cross and Griff. “Axe, you got
our six.”

“Great,” Axe said jokingly. “Make me the red shirt of the
team.”

Smiling at the Star Trek reference, Cade shouldered his M4
and crabbed toward the yawning doorway and an eventual meeting with whatever
was responsible for the wavering, spectral shadows.

Crouched down low in the bed, Wilson lashed out with his
right, scrambling yet another Z’s brain with a well-placed knife thrust to the
eye. As he watched the unlucky first turn go limp and slide from his
blood-slickened blade, the V-10 engine growl lessened and the truck ground to a
sudden halt.

“Why are we stopping?” Taryn called over her shoulder.

“Why cut it
all
off?” was all Wilson could summon as
he caught sight of the pale nape of her neck. The question had been on his lips
since he’d made that first pass across the thick, braided ponytail with her
knife. And he figured that if he was going to die here, at least he’d do so
knowing what she had been thinking.

But Taryn made no reply. Instead she continued fending off
the creatures’ groping hands with her off arm while the other holding the knife
worked piston-like, the blade flashing in and out with lethal efficiency.
Taking a step back from the concave bed wall, Taryn drew in a lungful of air
tainted by the stench of death and caught a quick glimpse of the tops of her
hands and forearms. Up to where her rolled-up sleeves fell, spatters of blood and
other fluids rendered the black tattoos there nearly indistinguishable.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Daymon barked. “Keep
fighting.”

As Wilson paused for a tick to let the next wave of dead
negotiate the mounting pile of corpses and
step right up
for a proper
skewering, the truck began to vibrate and a male voice he vaguely recognized
could be heard clear as day through the open sliding window. As he wondered
what the hell Jamie was thinking throwing what amounted to a mini concert out
here in Indian country, he glanced in Taryn’s direction and saw her arch
forward, exhale sharply, and grab a fistful of an elderly rotter’s wispy gray
hair. Then, forearms and biceps bulging noticeably, she clean-jerked Grandpa,
or Grandma, whatever the case may be, off the ground and drew it toward the
outside sheet metal where its knees impacted with a resounding
clang
. In
the next beat the thrashing monster was grasping for Taryn’s hair only to have
the just-shorn jet-black locks slip through its claw-like fingers. As Wilson
turned back to reengage the Zs whose kneading fingers were now coming
dangerously close to finding purchase on his unzipped parka, Taryn slamming the
waifish monster down chin first on the side of the box bed and her knife
entering its right temple registered vividly in his side vision.

Having seen enough to know Taryn’s recent and all too
numerous close encounters with grabby zombies wasn’t affecting her adversely,
he went back to work with his blade, adding yet another pair of walkers to the
growing pile on the roadway.

“Almost there, boys and girls,” Duncan said into the radio.
And
no sniper fire whatsoever.
He put the transmission into Park and set the
brake. Let his gaze roam the mirrors and focused on Foley, who appeared as just
a small figure hinged over the Chevy’s roof.

“Foley … what do you see?”

Foley’s head jerked and he rose, exposing his body from the
waist up above the roofline. “Not a thing moving,” he answered. “Just the
birds.”

“Good news,” said Duncan, seeing the light of the darkening
sky reflecting off the binocular lenses. “If I was the hombre manning an ambush
up there, I would’ve sprung it when Daymon and the gang had their hands full
with the
locals
.”

“I’m no tactician,” Foley conceded. “But I’d have to agree
with you.”

Duncan turned to Tran. The man was slumped in the seat,
hands covering his eyes.

“We’re good, Tran, my man. The last of the rotters are about
to meet Kindness.”
And some slug, shot, slug treatment
. He grabbed hold
of his new shotgun and, with radio in hand, exited the truck.

The stench of death was thick outside the Dodge. Save for
one lone shambler on the passenger side and the trio of hissing creatures still
standing on the last clear patch of blacktop by the driver’s door, twice-dead
corpses in all kinds of grotesque death poses were lying knee-high where they’d
fallen on both sides of the F-650.

After seeing Daymon cut down the last zombie on the right,
Duncan realized the remaining three were still standing because they were just
out of Taryn’s reach. So he thumbed the Talk button. “Leave those three for me.
I want to test out my new toy.”

Taryn, Daymon, and Lev acknowledged the request; however,
Jamie made no response. As Duncan advanced on the remaining rotters, he cut a
wide berth to his left, staying clear of the fallen Zs and stepping over the
rivulets of fluids leaking from them. As he closed to within ten feet of the
driver’s door he heard the faint rasps of the dead and felt the low timbre
rumble of bass coming from inside the Ford.

Eight feet away and still the zombies were ignoring him.

Buncha one track mind mofos
, he thought.

Then the window pulsed down and the music—if you could call
it that—coming from within became more pronounced. A male was rapping about
things that held no relevance to Duncan before or after the outbreak. He
hollered to get the rotters’ attention. No result. Nothing. They were locked
onto Jamie and the tunes seemed to have them in some kind of a trance.
Hell
,
he thought,
a couple verses of that stuff turns my perfectly good brain to
mush. No tellin’ what effect it has on a walker’s already short-circuited
thinker.

Suddenly there was a whirring sound and the Zs jostled with
each other for first dibs on whatever was about to emerge.

Knowing what was about to take place, Duncan slung his
weapon and back-pedaled slowly away from the truck.

As hi-hats and cymbals crashed over the heavy beat, the
rotter that had won out on the shoving contest had its skull split front to
back by Jamie’s black tomahawk. Zombies number two and three stepped to the
open window and in quick succession suffered identical fates.

Seeing the last of the threats that had been blocking
passage on 16 fall to the wayside, the four in the truck bed started gyrating
to the music, doing their own versions of a happy dance that lasted until the
song ended and Jamie popped her door and leaped over her kills.

Seeing no need to clear the road entirely of the corpses,
the group made quick work of opening a path wide enough for the other vehicles
to follow the F-650 through, then mounted their own rides.

***

Three minutes after leaving the killing fields behind, the
four-truck caravan was stopped single file on 16 within spitting distance of
the burned-out wagon which bore writing in the soot marring its rippled flanks.

Duncan was on the road first, shotgun in hand, his head
moving on a swivel. As he neared the left side of the hulk and cleared its
front where the grill had melted away, he could see the angular engine block
under the hood, but little else. Inside the vehicle only the seat frames and
oval metal steering wheel ring looked familiar.

After going down on his haunches, Duncan pushed his glasses
up on his nose and read the passage written on the driver’s side door. It had
his attention at ADRIAN and held it through the entire rambling bit of prose
that was equal parts warning and declaration.

After taking the time to read similar messages scrawled on
the roof and opposite side of the car, Duncan scanned the hillock, fields and
scrub flanking the road, then finally the road itself lengthwise, up and down,
for as far as the binoculars could reach. Satisfied they were still alone, he
radioed for the others to stay put and, with a cold lump forming in his gut,
set out across the field to see what was attracting the carrion feeders.

“Want some company?” Daymon called.

Duncan trudged ahead a few more steps, the mud sucking at
his boots. He felt a raindrop hit his cheek. One wet his nose. Then the back of
his neck was being pelted.

Shielding his glasses from the fine mist beginning to fall
in wispy sheets from the darkening sky, he turned and caught Daymon’s eye. He
shook his head and waved casually. “No reason for all of us to get soaked. Why
don’t you see to getting the trucks pulled around this heap.”

Since his pants were still plenty damp, there was no
argument on Daymon’s part. Instead, he remained tight-lipped and threw Duncan a
mock salute.

As Duncan continued on to the spot in the field where the
birds were congregating, the sounds of doors opening and closing and engines
starting up reached his ears. He heard four distinct motors idle down as
transmissions were thrown into gear. Finally, coinciding with the carrion
feeders’ raucous retreat—which amounted to an initial explosion of feathers
followed closely by throaty cries of displeasure as the birds took to flight—he
was afforded his first glimpse of what had attracted them there.

Cade smelled the pair of first turns well before he set eyes
on them. As he passed along the wall with the shadows still rippling across its
smooth white surface, he picked up a muffled sound that reminded him of an
autumn wind caressing brittle corn stalks.

When he reached the nearby T and raised one hand, silently
ordering the rest of the team to halt, not only did he get an eyeful of the
sorry sights responsible for the gesticulating shadows and stench hanging heavy
in the wide, sparsely illuminated corridor, but he also got an up-close earful
of the subtle hissing escaping the edges of the silver tape wrapped around
their craning heads.

Why someone would duct tape a man and a woman to rolling
office chairs like some kind of a frat house prank and leave them in a deserted
hallway instead of just putting them out of their misery was beyond him. Maybe
out of sight, out of mind worked for some folks. For Cade, it did not.

The tape job holding the writhing zombies at bay began at
their thighs and continued wending around both torso and chair until stopping
abruptly just south of their sternums. For some reason whoever did this to them
left their arms outside of the silver cocoon. They both had suffered defensive
bite wounds to the arms, that much was clear as they reached and strained for
Cade. Time and decomposition had taken their toll, leaving the wounds
resembling purple-rimmed craters oozing viscous black blood. Whether alive or
dead when they were taped to the chairs and left here to turn, it was no kind
of humane way to go.

“Out of sight, out of mind,” said Cross, giving voice to
Cade’s thoughts. “Whoever left them here to turn had probably been too close to
them to do the right thing.”

“Cunts is what they are … or were,” Axe interjected. He
unsheathed his knife, then looked a question at Cade.

Cade nodded, then watched the SAS man send the Zs to a
merciful second death, starting with the waifish woman and finishing with the
balding, middle-aged man.

After completing each grisly task Axe bowed his head and
mouthed some kind of prayer. Cade had watched him do this in the DCC after
putting down the Zs there and couldn’t help but admire the man for the respect
he obviously held for the former human beings.

“They’re at peace now,” Griff said, casting a pensive glance
at his watch. “We have to get moving.”

After consulting his Suunto and noting the time remaining
until the charges rendered the computers in both sub levels useless, Cade
picked up the trail of muddy boot prints and proceeded right at the T.

Halfway down the corridor, Cade said, “We’re underneath the
road right now.” He slowed his gait for a second and looked up at the ceiling.
“And I hope these tracks lead us to a stairwell.”

The hollow clomp of boots on tile mixed with the rustling of
fabric chased the team as they double-timed it down the long tunnel. They
slowed at another T where Cade bellowed, “Engaging,” and began squeezing off
shots, the muzzle flash escaping his suppressor lighting the inside of the
gloomy stairwell he was shooting into.

The action lasted a second, two at most, and then he was
pushing past a previously jimmied steel door.

After pausing for a beat to inspect the dents and scratches
on the backside of the door where someone had used a tool to breach it, he was
scrabbling over the Z corpses sprawled out and leaking blood in the stairwell
going up. He scaled the steps one at a time, his rubber boot soles muffling the
sound of each footfall. At the right-hand bend before the landing, M4 tucked in
tight, muzzle tracking with his gaze, he cut the corner, slowly, by degrees
measured in inches and on the lookout for any movement or telltale glint of
light off of glass or metal.

Finding the next upward run of stairs clear and seeing
nothing but muddy footprints on the treads, he forged ahead, confident that the
PLA soldiers had come this way.

“Watch for booby traps,” Axe reminded, his voice bouncing
off the cement walls. “We’re hunting breathers now, not deaders.”

No sooner had the word
deaders
spilled from his mouth
than a Z lurched through yet another open door on the next landing, saw the
team, and came spilling down the stairs, teeth snapping and its pale, twisted
fingers kneading the air in front of its face.

Stepping aside just in time to avoid the thing’s gnashing
teeth, Cade shouted a warning that reached Cross and Griff’s ears in time for
them to sidestep the cartwheeling bag of bones. Axe, however, was not so
fortunate. The Z hit him while in the heels-over-head aspect of its rotation
and delivered one knee to the Brit’s bump helmet and, on the follow-through,
from behind and underneath no less, another solid, though wholly unintentional,
flailing right uppercut to his testicles.

All at once a guttural
oomph
passed over Axe’s lips
and he doubled over, one gloved hand going to inventory the family jewels.

The finale to the surreal chain of events saw the Z ride the
half-dozen remaining stairs face first and juddering like a malfunctioning
Slinky. Shards of broken teeth
tinked
against the wall like so many
miniature Craps dice as the twitching body tried to right itself.

“Bollocks,” Axe exclaimed. “I don’t have the energy to trek
back down and give him a stick to the eye.” True to his words, he shouldered
the M4, sighted through the holographic optic, and put a single round into the
back of the monster’s already misshapen head.

“Way to break a tackle,” quipped Griff.

“Nice shooting,” Cross added sincerely.

Practicing a little shallow breathing to soothe the
boys
,
Axe shook his head at the ribbing and took the remaining stairs two at a time.

Poking his head around the jamb, Cade looked to his right,
where he saw five putrefying bodies laid out neatly before a head-high stack of
cardboard boxes brimming with papers and blocking a pair of double doors. As if
they had been placed there some time ago, everything wore a light coating of
dust.

Looking left, Cade followed the boot prints with his eyes
all the way to the end of the long, windowless hall. And like the passageway
running under the street, the wall-mounted emergency lights spaced every few
feet here cast orange-yellow cones of light on the walls and floor.

Without pause, Cade continued following the trail to the end
of the hall where he brought the team to a complete halt a few feet from yet
another T-junction.

“Axe, six,” Cade said, again fishing the map from his
pocket.

“Comms?” Griff asked.

“Negative,” Cade answered. “This building is shielded, too.”
He went to a knee and smoothed the map out on a patch of tiled floor less muddy
than the rest. After a second spent reorientating himself to due north with
help from the Suunto, he rose and tucked the map away.

“This way.” M4 shouldered, Cade padded to the T, one-eyed it
around the corner, then peeled off to the left. Again with the clenched fist
raised, he signaled the team to stop a dozen feet down the hall where they
found themselves flanked by a pair of metal rollup doors big enough to accept a
full-sized semi-truck. Beside the interior rollup to the team’s left was a
smaller, pass-card-controlled door. All three doors were windowless and bore
the words AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, the letters blaze red and scaled
proportionately to fit the larger roller doors.

“These two lead into the DCC,” said Griff, adjusting his
pack which still contained a brick of C4 and the means to detonate it.
“Shouldn’t we go in and blow the CRAYs here, too?”

“Negative,” Cade answered. “There’s nothing we need on
them.”

“If my hunch is correct,” Cross said, hooking a thumb at the
rollup door behind them. “There should be a secure, fenced-in loading area
beyond that door. It would make for a great exfil location.”

Shaking his head, Cade said through clenched teeth, “These
tracks are eventually going to end with the men who beat us here. I aim to kill
them, take back what’s rightfully ours, and complete this mission without
losing anybody. If the map was correct, the door at the end of the hall should
spit us out in another main level foyer near the building’s northeast side.”

“In view of the soccer pitch?” Cross said.

“Close,” Cade replied. “When we infilled I saw a patch of
open ground near an entrance. It
was
teeming with dead. If the Zs went
to hunt the Screamers, I think we can exfil there.”

“Copy that,” Griff said. “Two minutes until the DCC annex
ceases to exist.”

***

Thirty seconds after conferring in the hall before the
rollup doors, Cade and the team were standing before yet another windowless
door. Like the others they’d encountered since leaving Sub Floor 3, the door
had been breached and stood wide open to the east entry where the NSA director
and other high-level ninth-floor workers came and went. The setup here was much
the same as the main entry, only on a smaller scale. There were two elevators
left of the access door, not four. Instead of six security turnstiles flanked
by bulletproof glass and various sniffers and metal detectors, there were
three, each with its own pass-card reader. Next to the narrow turnstiles was a
swinging, polished metal gate wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs and
wheeled mobility carts. And lying lengthwise on the floor, its pustule-ridden
arms wedging the swinging gate in its open position, was a headshot and
trampled zombie corpse. Which had befallen it first, Cade couldn’t tell.

The walls were paneled in rich, dark wood polished to a high
shine, and the tile floors were pale, tumbled travertine home to too many dead
bodies to count. Veins of semi-dried blood snaked out from under some of the
corpses. A mosaic of muddy footprints painted the floor around the fallen.

With barely ninety seconds to go until the inevitable
subterranean explosion, Cade wove a serpentine path toward the entry. With the
footfalls of the team close on his six banging off the floor and walls and
ceiling, he crabbed over the flattened Z and through the brushed-metal
pass-through. On the run and picking up his pace, he altered course from the
glass revolving door to his fore and charged toward the set of double doors
that looked to have recently had the glass machine gunned out of their chromed
frames.

Shards of green-hued glass crunched and popped underfoot as
he passed from inside to outside. Finding himself standing underneath what
looked to be a poured cement portico, the pavement underfoot muddy and rife
with freshly culled Z corpses, he hailed Jedi One-One on the comms intent on
asking for an immediate extraction.

Nothing.

He tried raising the TOC at Schriever.

Still no response. All he heard was the dark vacuum of dead
air. And to his left, way off in the distance, the muted wail of the Screamers,
hopefully still doing their job.

Moving from under the portico, he tried Ari again and let
his gaze wander off to his left, where he saw a trampled expanse of what was
once lawn. It was now mud-blanketed with dozens of twice-dead Zs. Then, just as
Ari responded to his second call, he saw reflected in the mirrored glass at
ground-level something that may just redeem his failed mission.

“Cross,” Cade said, motioning the taller operator forward.
“Watch our six.”

As Cross turned and trained his MP7 on the executive
personnel entrance, Cade sent Griff off to an equally muddy area of ground
beside the extended part of the building in order to cover their flanks to the
east and south.

Saving the best for last, he caught Axe’s eye. Motioning to
the northwest corner of the glass cube rising above them, he said, “I want you
to go see how the undead
football
match is going. Maybe get us a score
if you can.”

Cracking a little half-smile, Axe nodded and was off and
running, his M4 trained on the distant, blind corner.

Feeling, more so than hearing, the beat of the Ghost Hawk’s
noise-defeating rotors punishing the air ahead of its approach, Cade sprinted
toward the camouflage-clad corpse and overturned dirt bike that had drawn his
attention to the lee side of the muddy knoll abutting the main NSA building.