District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (37 page)

Tran nodded.

“And they hurt you, too?”

Again with the subtle nod.

“Well I’ll be dipped in shit,” Duncan said gleefully, his
trademark cackle punctuating his statement. “Never had you pegged as a
cold-blooded killer.”

“They earned it.”

“And you delivered, Tran, my man. You delivered them to
where they needed deliverin’ … in spades.”

Tran said nothing.

Duncan asked, “Do you have a two-way radio?”

“I’m quiet,” answered Tran, “not stupid.”

Duncan reached over and punched the glove box open. “In
there … nine-millimeter Beretta. Keeping your finger away from the trigger, I
want you to pull it out. And the two mags.”

Tran plucked the three items out and laid them on the seat.
There was a great deal of respect conveyed by the way the slight Asian handled
the weapon. He had instinctively practiced proper muzzle discipline, keeping
the semi-automatic pistol pointed away from him and Duncan as he set it down
gingerly.

Very good
, thought Duncan as he began detailing the
weapon’s particulars: Its rate of fire. Magazine capacity. How the double-action
operated. Finished, he stilled the Dodge’s engine. “There will be a test in a
minute,” he informed Tran.

“This is the place?” Lev asked, his voice coming out of the
speaker a little garbled.

Duncan plucked the Motorola off the seat and said into it, “This
is where Dregan insisted we meet him.”

“What now?” asked Wilson, his pale, freckle-addled face a
yard away and staring through the Raptor’s open passenger window as Taryn
brought the bigger rig to a slow, smooth stop underneath the drive-in’s canted
roof.

“You and Pixie there arm yourselves and take up positions on
either end of this little oasis while I take a look inside,” Duncan answered.

Still staring down at the Beretta, Tran said, “May I come?”

“Your job is to watch the Kids’ six. If you see anything
they don’t, radio them at once.” He reached into the center console and came
out with a black nylon holster. “It’s not made for that weapon, but it’ll do in
a pinch.” He handed it to Tran, then turned to open his door.

Fingers wrapping around the pistol’s knurled grip, Tran
nodded and sat up straight.

The big Ford and smaller Chevy slid onto the lot one right
after the other and parked in the two spaces left of the Raptor. In no time
Duncan was entering the drive-in alone, while Lev, Jamie, Daymon, and Foley
were fanning out around the building perimeter on the lookout for any rotters
drawn around by the noisy engines.

***

Five minutes after pulling into the deserted parking lot,
the four trucks were parked side-by-side under cover and Taryn and Jamie were
sitting inside on vinyl stools before a long white counter. As if Duncan had
not done a thorough enough job initially, Foley was traipsing through the
restaurant and checking every nook and cranny for anything of use.

After having cleared the thoroughly looted building and put
down the pair of Zs someone had locked inside the rank-smelling walk-in cooler,
Duncan was back in his Dodge and dividing his attention between the state route
south of them, and the trio not twenty feet to his fore sitting inside the
drive-in’s gloomy, but dry confines.

As the rain began pelting the windshield with soft little
patters, Wilson returned from his latest recon around the diamond-shaped block
Merlin’s drive-in sat upon. “The perimeter is rotter-free. What do we do now?”
he asked, pulling his parka hood over his boonie hat.

“Now. We. Wait,” answered Duncan, kicking the wipers on and
delivering the dirty windshield a five-second spritz of cleaner which allowed
him to see Daymon, Lev, and Tran, who were by now distant specks on the state
route heading north to Bear Lake.

Though he didn’t let it show as he loped from the PLA
soldier’s body toward the settling helo, Cade was seething inside. Rumbling the
ground under his boots, the charges had gone off in the DCC as planned, but the
real damage had already been done. The PLA Special Forces team that had beat
them to the DCC had downloaded the cell tower ping data that could effectively
lead them to the doorsteps of every surviving essential member of the United States
government from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Supreme Court Justices on down
to low-level cabinet officials, many of whom were thought to still be holed up
in underground bunkers scattered about the country.

Ignoring Skipper’s offered hand, Cade waited until Griff and
Cross boarded and moved out of his way, then tossed his ruck in behind them and
climbed aboard. After taking a spot on the starboard side opposite Griff and
Cross, he uncoupled the jack from his personal comms set, plugged into the shipwide
net, and was taken aback when he heard none of the usual quips or cracks being
spouted by Ari or Haynes. Instead there was a heavy silence. No static. No
chatter from the other members of the Jedi flight. He was alone with his own
thoughts for a few long seconds.

Having been sprinting across the churned-up sod from the
opposite direction as Cade, Axe tossed his ruck through the open door, turned
nonchalantly toward the NSA building’s far corner from whence he came, and
flipped a pair of upthrust middle fingers at the two dozen Zs staggering in his
direction.

“There’s more of the cunts where those came from,” he said,
scooting clear of the closing door.

“Might be a good idea to get this bird in the air,” said
Skipper, panning the minigun’s lethal end toward the Zs.

In his headset Cade heard a burst of static. A tick later a
female airman at Schriever was relaying a set of waypoints to Ari and instantly
Cade was grateful it wasn’t Nash herself delivering them. As it stood, the
petite major was high on his shit list for shutting down his request that they
follow what he felt was still a warm trail. After all, the PLA soldier’s liver
still retained some warmth. A quick slice with the Gerber and two bare fingers
thrust deeply into the incision had told him so. That she was letting the rest
of the enemy team abscond with terabytes of sensitive information was
unconscionable.

Feeling the Ghost Hawk going light on its landing gear, he
craned and stole a final look at the PLA soldier, spread-eagled on the muddy ground
next to his dirt bike, the damage done by the single coup de grace gunshot to
the forehead impossible to miss. As were the hundreds of spent brass shell
casings and the hundred or so twice-dead zombies the PLA team fought their way
through to get to their rides after their successful foray inside.

Good thing his Delta team had the Screamers to deploy, Cade
thought, seeing the PLA soldier’s body start to spin, an optical illusion
created as the helicopter rose off the ground and corkscrewed a quick one-eighty,
the rotation stopping only when Jedi One-One was facing opposite the direction
it had arrived.

In the next instant Cade felt the Ghost Hawk nose down and
pick up speed.

Off the starboard-side, her stars and bars whipped into a
wild frenzy by the helo’s down blast, Old Glory stood silent witness to Fort
Meade’s losing battle against time, the elements, and the infected masses.

After feeling the slight bump of the landing gear snugging
home underfoot, Cade swept his gaze around Jedi One-One’s cabin.

Strapped into the seat near the still-deployed starboard
minigun, Skipper was his usual silent, stoic self, unsmiling under the flight
helmet and tinted visor.

Directly across the helo from Cade, his helmeted head and
back pressed firmly against the inner bulkhead, Griff was shooting a wide-eyed
what
the fuck
look his way.

Knowing the emotion was a direct result of the possibility
of the mission’s redemption suddenly being yanked from underneath them, Cade
mouthed, “Orders,” and shook his head sympathetically.

Cross, on the other hand, was already snugged into the seat
next to Griff and smiling as he plugged his comms set into the shipwide net.
Not
a care in the world
, thought Cade as he regarded Axe, who was holding his
carbine between his knees and looking groundward while the helicopter buzzed
overtop the hundreds of light standards bristling from Fort Meade’s acres of
parking lots.

“Who’s winning the match?” Cade asked, his eyes picking up
the movement of hundreds of Zs clustered near the east end of the nearest lot.

“Fucking Manchester, looks like,” Axe replied.

His mood lightening up just a bit, Cade asked Ari what was
so pressing that they couldn’t search for the freshly churned tire tracks he
was sure would lead them to the departed PLA motorcycles.

“Wait one,” Ari said. “Bringing footage up on the
flat-panel.”

While Cade waited for the screen to light up, he shifted his
gaze outside and watched the inbound pair of Stealth Chinooks bob subtly as
they bled speed and formed up off of Jedi One-One’s starboard-side.

“Ten mikes out,” Ari said over the shipwide comms. “Feast
your eyes on the boob tube, gentlemen. The
brrrt
show is about to
begin.”

Cade asked, “Is the footage real time?”

“Taken within the hour,” Ari replied.

As the static, color image splashed onscreen, Cade settled
in for the show. And what a show it was. With the other operators offering up
their personal accounts of the venerable A-10 Thunderbolt II and its propensity
to make life hell for even the most determined of enemy combatants, all eyes in
the cabin were witness to the utter destruction wrought upon an armored column
by just three of the stout, heavily armored aircraft. With its twin
tail-mounted turbofans, near straight knife-edged wings, and six barreled
cannon protruding from under its rounded snout, the Warthog—as it was so
affectionately named because of its hard to love lines—more than lived up to
its mammalian namesake both in ferocity and hardiness.

The column was taken completely by surprise, Cade decided as
soon as the image started to move. A classic aerial ambush, the type of which
the Hog was designed to spring on Soviet armor storming Germany’s Fulda Gap.
Nearly two-thirds of the vehicles were on fire in seconds, the ammunition in
their magazines cooking off and sending tell-tale puffs of gray smoke into the
air.

“They didn’t have much of a lead over the horde following
them,” Cross noted as soldiers poured from one of the troop transports and took
up defensive positions flanking it. “No way they could have held off the monsters
and
engaged the Hogs effectively.” He looked to Cade. “I’m sure it’s an
effin feeding frenzy down there by now.”

“It wasn’t pretty,” Ari commented. “Nash indicated as much.”

Cade was still watching the monsters converging on the
stalled convoy when the A-10s made another gun run from the opposite direction.
There was no return fire. No spiraling white contrail indicating MANPADS had
been deployed by the PLA troops. No winking flashes from muzzles throwing lead
skyward. All of the small arms were being discharged at the approaching Zs.

It was a turkey shoot, and thankfully the image froze with
the surviving vehicles frantically jockeying about on the road in a vain
attempt to escape the carnage.

“Did any vehicles escape?” Cade asked.

“Negative,” Ari answered.

“Personnel?”

“Doubtful,” Ari said. “We will have eyes on in five mikes.”

With a cold ball forming in his gut, Cade cinched his
harness tighter. Expecting to again see the tell-tale puff of smoke and evasive
maneuvers to follow, he cast his gaze out his window and waited.

Pray for the best, prepare for the worst,
crossed his
mind as the helo banked sharply and dove for the deck.

As a former high school long distance runner, Daymon’s first
inclination was to run the entire mile-plus to the lake’s edge. However, Lev
had quickly shot down that idea. As a former soldier in the United States Army,
Lev pointed out that the easiest way to draw attention to one’s self—save for
shooting indiscriminately into the air—was to go running headlong into enemy
territory.

So with the rain letting up the three kept to the road and
walked at a brisk pace, stopping every now and again to listen for approaching
vehicles and sniff the air for the unmistakable stench that always preceded an
appearance by the living dead.

Roughly a quarter of a mile from the lake, the peaked roofs
of a number of houses built on shoreline property came into view. Fronted by a
picket of bare trees, the colorful two- and three-story homes stood out in
stark contrast to the unusually bright blue waters stretching for as far as the
eye could see beyond them.

Stopping to take a pull from a bottle of water, Daymon said,
“If I remember correctly, the lake is almost twenty miles long south to north
and seven or eight wide at the center.”

“It straddles the Idaho and Utah border, doesn’t it?” Lev
asked.

Daymon passed the water to Tran, then gestured to their
left. “The lake is bisected almost equally. The towns of Fish Haven and Saint
Charles are north of the border in Idaho. Garden City is a few miles west of us
just south of the border.”

Lev asked, “What’s on the lake’s east side?”

“Mostly campgrounds and places to boat and fish,” Daymon
said, as he took the water back from Tran and resumed walking the road.
“Rendezvous Beach is real close. Took a couple of girls camping there senior
year summer. Got lucky with both of them.” He passed the half-empty bottle and
cap to Lev.

Tran slowed his gait and, without saying a word, veered off
across the two-lane toward the far shoulder.

Lev regarded Tran briefly, then shifted his attention to
Daymon. “
Rendezvous Beach
, huh? You got lucky with
two
girls on
the same trip as a
senior
in high school?”

Daymon’s dreads bobbed as he shook his head. “I’ve never
been
that
lucky,” he conceded, a smile breaking out. “It was two
different
camping trips.”

“Still…” Lev tipped the bottle and drank it dry. He twisted
the cap on and stowed the empty in a cargo pocket.

“Daymon. Lev,” Tran called, motioning urgently for them to
cross the road.

The two men hustled to where he was crouched by the tall
grass on the other side of the ditch.

Flanking Tran on the left, Daymon followed the shorter man’s
gaze across the scrub toward the hills rising up on Bear Lake’s west flank.
“What?” he whispered.

“Do you hear that?”

Lev cocked his head and listened hard.

Daymon tucked a stray dread behind his ear and stood
motionless, his face screwed up in concentration. After a couple of beats he
said, “You’re hearing things, Tran.”

A tick later there was a low rumble of thunder and the
westerly breeze dropped off.

Hearing a steady thunking sound, like something drumming on
wood far off in the distance, Lev said, “Yeah, I hear it now. Sounds like a
woodpecker
.”

Still staring across the scrub-covered plain, Tran said,
“That’s no woodpecker. It’s a machine.”

“He’s right,” Daymon said. “Someone’s working a log
splitter. I could be wrong, but I think the sound is coming from the southwest
shore. Maybe even the campground at Rendezvous Beach. With fuel getting harder
to come by, I’d bet my left nut whoever is working that splitter is staying
nearby. Doesn’t make sense to burn fuel to go out and get fuel. Lugging it back
in a truck over a long distance just doesn’t add up.”

Lev walked to the centerline and looked the road up and
down. Returning his gaze north, he said, “I concur. Let’s get to one of those
houses by the lake. One, it’ll get us out of the coming rain. Two, we may be
able to see what’s making that racket.”

“What then?” Tran asked, all of this new to him.

Lev started walking north at a brisk pace. “If we’re able to
see Rendezvous Beach and a couple of miles or so of each shore south to north
from one of those houses, perfect. We check in with Duncan and squat there for
awhile.”

“If the dirtbags that took Oliver are anywhere near here,”
added Daymon. “We should know as soon as we set eyes on some of the doors.”

Lev looked at Daymon. “The chalk marks?”

Daymon nodded. “Stands to reason these would be the first
houses they stripped of food and supplies.”

Tran started off jogging, then passed Lev and Daymon at a
near sprint. “We run,” he stated forcefully in passing. “They can’t hear
anything over that machine.”

Daymon looked to Lev. “Man has a point.”

Without another word, Lev and Daymon broke into a slow,
steady jog and eventually formed up abreast of Tran.

***

A handful of minutes after Tran had enacted his executive
decision, the trio were within spitting distance of the row of lakeside houses
and crouched low in the tall grass crowding the base of a roadside sign. ADRIAN
VILLE - TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT was scrawled in black spray-paint
over the names of the nearby towns and driving distances to get to them.

Motioning toward the sign, Daymon said, “Doesn’t get any
clearer than that.”

“Crystal,” said Lev. He parted the grass with his carbine’s
barrel and regarded the homes across the two-lane. The nearest on their left
was a two-story Tudor-style affair painted in two different shades of gray.
Like the other three homes to its right, the driveway was empty. And on all of
the houses, shadows crowded the few upstairs windows whose curtains had been
left open. Clearly Adrian hadn’t gotten his
Ville’s
power grid back up
and running.

Of the three houses right of the Tudor, two were nearly
identical Craftsman-style, both painted in muted hues of brown. Fire had
partially consumed house number four on the far right, reducing it to little
more than charred timbers crisscrossing a blackened cement pad.

“They
all
look deserted to me,” Daymon stated.

“I concur,” answered Lev.

There was a ripple of soft pops as Daymon cracked all of the
vertebra in his back. “What do you think, Tran?” he asked, finishing off his
DIY chiropractic treatment by wrenching his neck around, first left, then
right.

Tran looked to Daymon, then regarded the three intact
dwellings for a tick.

“
Well
… which one floats your boat?” Daymon pressed.

After subjecting the houses to a mental game of
eeny,
meeny, miny, moe
, Tran said, “The middle one.”

Daymon slipped his pistol from its holster. Checked the
chamber for the gleam of brass. Satisfied, he returned his gaze to Tran. “Why
the middle one?”

“Gut feeling,” Tran said, smiling inwardly.

Lev shrugged. “Good enough for me.”

One at a time, with Daymon in the lead and Lev bringing up
the rear, the three men crossed the two-lane running in a low-crouch. Once on
the other side, Lev paused on the shoulder and scanned the length of the road
in both directions. Seeing nothing to indicate that they had been spotted by
anything or anybody—dead or alive—he told Tran and Daymon to start out ahead of
him. After giving the pair a two-second lead, he kept his gaze locked in the
direction of Rendezvous Beach. Casting glances over both shoulders, he rose and
crossed the expanse of grass providing a buffer between the homes and stretch
of blacktop looping behind them.

Catching the others near a low hedge bordering the driveway
of the light-tan two-story Craftsman, Lev took a knee and regarded Daymon.

“We get across without being spotted?”

Lev nodded. “The hammering never stopped.”

“You sure?” Daymon pressed. “If something’s picked up our
scent—”

“You better stuff that claustrophobia talk,” Lev
interrupted. “We are
not
going to get trapped in the attic in this
fucking house.”

Daymon said nothing.

“Follow me,” Lev said. Rising into a low crouch, he made his
way up the driveway to the tan Craftsman’s garage and banged a fist on the
multi-panel door. It was a double-wide roll-up number painted in a brown
two-tone scheme and it rattled like hell in its tracks each time he struck it.

They all cocked an ear and listened hard for a long
ten-count.

“Nothing moving in there,” Lev said.

“This isn’t Hannah,” Daymon said aloud to himself. Then,
without consulting either Lev or Tran, he rose and crept around the left side
of the house.

During the entire exchange between Daymon and Lev, Tran had
been panning his head back and forth. Now he had Duncan’s spare Beretta held in
a two-handed grip and his eyes fixed on Lev. “Should we follow?” he asked
politely.

Grimacing, Lev pushed the muzzle aside and said, “Holster
that thing.”

Tran did as he was asked without complaining.

After taking a minute to contemplate Daymon’s behavior, Lev
finally spoke up. “We’ll wait here,” he said. “Daymon needs time to himself …
to work through some
things
.”

Just then Daymon returned from his clockwise recon of the
property. “
Things
are worked through,” he said, eyeing Lev. “There’s a
ground-level slider around back but it’s locked and has a bar in the track
shoring it up. The front entry”—he hooked a thumb behind him—“has a metal storm
door that’s locked up tight. I banged and waited and didn’t hear any movement
inside. Which makes sense, because there’s another one of those white Xs drawn
on the jamb beside the storm door.”

“That’s good news,” said Lev, just as the sky opened up and
big fat drops began slapping the ground all around them. “Means the place has
been cleared of rotters already.”

“Or booby trapped like the others,” Tran said quietly. “I
can fit through this.” He pointed out the doggy door inset into one of the
garage’s lower panels. Making the door easy to overlook unless you were right
on top of it, the plastic frame and flap were nearly the same light brown as
the rectangular panel in which it was installed. Tran lifted the vinyl flap to
reveal a plywood sheet blocking the entry from the inside.

“You’re not going in that way,” Daymon said. “Unless, that
is, whoever put the board there decided to half-ass it.” He gently swept Tran
and Lev aside with his long right arm and backed away from the garage door a
half-dozen feet. Imitating a place kicker lining up a game-winning field goal,
he squared up with the doggy door, took one and a half steps to his left, and
then stuck his index finger toward the sky as if testing the wind direction.

“Hut, hut … hike,” said Lev, playing along.

Tran watched with a confused look on his face as Daymon
performed a theatrical forward stutter step a tick before driving a powerful
wide-arcing kick toward the door.

There was an explosive bang as his boot struck the plywood
shoring the dog door. Immediately following the loud report, there was a
clatter of something skittering across the cement floor inside the garage.

“Yep, they half-assed it,” Lev said. “Nice form, Daymon.”

Daymon smiled and made a show of knocking the imaginary dust
from his hands. Then he lifted the flap and nodded to Tran. “All yours, Fido.”

***

By the time Daymon and Lev made their way around to the
front door, Tran had been on the inside for less than thirty seconds. When the
interior door sucked inward, which in turn caused the outer storm door to
rattle in its frame, the newly minted cat burglar had been gone for two
minutes, tops.

After working the lock, Tran pushed the storm door out ahead
of him and stepped aside to let Daymon and Lev pass.

Squinting against the flat light spilling in through the
north-facing floor-to-ceiling windows, Daymon padded a few paces beyond the
foyer and looked around the empty great room.

“Nothing dead in here?” he asked, his chest tight and mind
threatening to take him back to Hannah.

Tran shook his head. “There are no demons inside,” he stated
confidently.

Daymon said, “Well, well, maybe our luck is changing.”

There was a lull in the wind and for few beats Lev’s
woodpecker
was back, the banging now crisp and clear and coming over the lake from
somewhere west of the house.

M4 held at low ready, Lev padded around Daymon and Tran and
moved deeper into the unfurnished house. Upon hearing Daymon’s optimistic talk,
he called over his shoulder, “My money is on Mr. Murphy making an appearance
before nightfall.”

“You and Cade and your damn Army superstitions,” Daymon
said, his voice echoing off the bare walls and floors. “I prefer to call it
bad
luck
. And if it wasn’t for that, I’d have no luck at all.”

“We find Oliver alive,” replied Lev, “I’ll change my mind.
Until then, color me pessimistic.”

Daymon looked across the wide-open floor, past Lev and out
the ground-level slider. The sky to the north was darker than ever and the
lake’s surface was wind-churned and resembled the Pacific more so than the
placid, brilliant blue lake he remembered. Down by the shore a lone,
waterlogged-looking zombie was doddering toward the noisy machine.

Lev nudged a box full of dishes with his boot. “Looks like
the owners were either moving in or moving out before the
event
.”

Head tilted slightly, Tran shot Lev a questioning glance.

“The
event
,” Lev said. “The dead rising. People
eating other people. Martial Law.”

Tran nodded an acknowledgement and headed for the stairs
leading up to the second level.

As Tran disappeared from view, Daymon retraced his steps
across the living room and slipped into the garage through the door off the
foyer.