District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (38 page)

Lev had been alone for but a handful of seconds and was
roaming the kitchen when Daymon called for him.

“Coming,” he said, crossing the room. Pausing before the threshold
to the garage, he wasn’t at all surprised to see that it was half-full of boxes
with the names of all the usual rooms in a house labeled on their sides in neat
block letters. He descended the single stair and crabbed between the boxes
until he came upon Daymon surrounded by shipping peanuts and elbows deep in a
steamer-trunk-sized box marked
Pacific City Beach House.

“What’d you find, someone’s collection of priceless glass
floats?”

“Better than that,” Daymon replied, pulling a white
cylindrical object from the box and inadvertently adding more of the green
Styrofoam squiggly things to the growing pile on the floor.

“What is it?”

“It’s a spotting scope. I’d guess its previous owners used
it for eyeballing ships off whatever coast Pacific City is on.”

“Or ogling bathing beauties from afar,” Lev proffered,
flashing a sly grin.

“Or,” Daymon said, excited at the prospect of not having to
venture out into the passing squall, “covertly ogling the first two or three
miles of shoreline in either direction.”

“I doubt if it has the reach in this weather.”

Tran showed up in the doorway. “There’s a perfect spot for
it in the master suite upstairs. Let’s set it up.”

“With unobstructed views to the west, north, and east?”
asked Lev.

Tran nodded.

Relieving Daymon of one end of the three-foot-long scope,
Lev said, “Good job, Tran. As a prize you get to grab the tripod and show us
the way.”

***

With the spotting scope set up behind a sliding glass door
in the master bedroom that featured a stunning two-hundred-seventy-degree view
of the lake, Daymon started his visual recon beginning with Rendezvous Beach.
Obviously once home to hundreds—if not thousands—of people fleeing urban
population centers during the first days of the outbreak, the sandy beach and
treed campgrounds now held only the weather-beaten remnants of the greatest
human diaspora known to modern man. Colorful tents and tarps, all flattened by
the recent freak snowstorm, dotted nearly every square inch of the trio of
strung-together campgrounds.

Rising up from the sea of wind-whipped technicolor fabric
were dozens of latrines, one for each group of tent sites, if he remembered
correctly. And even more plentiful than the small, boxy johns were the trees
planted among the sites to provide a modicum of privacy as well as much-needed
shade during the hot summer months.

Erected near the southeast end of Rendezvous Beach and
hammering away seemingly non-stop were the machines responsible for the noise
Lev had initially attributed to a woodpecker. They were blaze-red,
industrial-sized, and powered by gasoline. Two emaciated men were feeding each
machine thigh-sized rounds of freshly cut wood. And covering the ground around
each machine where they had fallen after being split by the powerful ram-driven
blade were dozens of pieces of wood sized perfectly to fit into a fireplace or
woodstove.

Daymon scrutinized the vehicles parked near the wood
splitters. Two were ordinary pickups, both box beds containing enough split
wood to have them sitting low on their springs. The third vehicle was a Ford
Econoline van stretched out in back so that it could accommodate extra
passengers. It was painted an industrial gray and bars covered the windows on
the inside. He tried reading the writing on the van’s flank, but either his
eyesight needed correcting or the viewing angle was too sharp—probably a
combination of both, he decided.

“What do you got?” Lev asked.

“Two men and five women … no woodpeckers,” Daymon said,
taking his eye off the rubber cup. “The men are working the splitters while the
women stand around picking their asses. Take a look and tell me what your gut
says.”

Lev bent over the scope and peered into the protruding
L-shaped eyepiece. After a long ten-count, during which he panned the scope
from the people to the vehicles and then back, he hinged up straight. “You
forgot the part about the women being armed. I think the dudes are their
prisoners.”

“Bingo,” Daymon said. “Figured I’d leave the shotguns and
pistols for you to pick up on.”

Tran took a quick peek. “They’re escaped convicts,” he said
at once. “The writing on the van says Idaho Department of Corrections. And
there are two demons coming their way from the lakeside road.”

“Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a winner,” Daymon said. “Let’s
see how they deal with the rotters.” He displaced Tran and watched the melee
unfold. It took a few seconds for the taller of the female guards to get wind
of the shamblers. Whether she really smelled them on the wind or heard their
calls, over the distance it was impossible to tell.

“Chalk one up for the guards,” Daymon said as he watched two
of the women pick long-handled axes off the ground and begin to close with the
approaching dead.

The whole engagement consisted of a little backpedaling to
get to a clear patch of ground, followed at once by precisely aimed and timed
swings to the zombies’ heads. In fact, to Daymon, these women looked like
hardened killers. They were obviously survivors to still be alive this far into
the apocalypse, but their posture and demeanor told him they also gave zero
fucks.

As soon as the guards dropped their axes to the ground
beside their latest kills, Daymon walked the scope up the lake’s southwestern
shore and focused on a subdivision a mile or two south of Garden City. Even at
this distance and with the gathering weather, the scope was powerful enough
that he could see a half-dozen multi-pitched red-tiled roofs peeking through
the surrounding treetops. And though the gauze-like curtain of rain just moving
in hampered visibility, he could see that a number of concrete freeway noise
barriers had been erected around the clutch of lakeside homes.

As Daymon slowly surveyed the area, he learned that the wall
was still under construction. Running for several hundred feet left to right on
the subdivision’s east flank was a garden-variety fence constructed of a
mishmash of pressure-treated cedar and chain link. Barbed wire had been strung
haphazardly along the top. And clearly slated for future use, a number of
cement panels lay stacked north of the unfinished compound. As he glassed the
area left of the finished section of wall, he spotted a motor pool of sorts,
the silhouettes of a dozen vehicles visible behind the chain-link fence.

To the right of the fenced-in vehicles and facing away from
the lake was what appeared to be the front entrance. The freshly paved road
leading up to the compound was blocked by a wheeled gate nearly equal in height
to the cement panels flanking it.

“Copying Bear River, I see,” Daymon said, as his two-way
radio emitted its familiar electronic warble.

He fished the Motorola from a pocket. “Daymon,” he said,
keeping his eye glued to the rubber eyepiece.

“Were you going to check in
today
?” Duncan asked.

“Yes, Old Man. I was just about to before I was so rudely
interrupted.”

“Bad news or good?” Duncan drawled.

“We have eyes on target,” Daymon said, going on to detail
the nearby log-splitting operation and how efficiently the
locals
had
dealt with the pair of rotters. Then he went on to describe the distant
lakeside compound. Finally, eye still glued to the spotting scope, he took a
breath and added, “And I think I just picked up some movement inside their
perimeter.”

“Do you see Oliver?” Duncan asked, sounding tired.

“Nope. Visibility sucks right now. But once this storm
passes, I think, as you like to say, more will be revealed.”

“Maybe I should be singing that old John Nash song,” Duncan
said.

“What song is that?” asked Daymon, shooting the radio an
irritated look.

“Never mind,” Duncan answered. “Before your time. Good work,
by the way. I’m going to send this on to the Thagons and have them tell Dregan
and Eden what we’re up against.”

“Copy that,” said Daymon, a smile creasing his face as a
thin, horizontal band of golden sunlight made a brief appearance below the
scudding clouds.

From somewhere around the corner, Tran was singing a song
whose lyrics had to do with seeing clearly once the rain had gone.

Shaking his head, Daymon tilted the scope down and trained
it on the woodcutting operation. And just in time, too, because one of the
guards was picking her way through the tents and dead bodies on her way to the
van. Once there, she craned around its sloped front end and peered cautiously
in the general direction of the main road.

Thumbing the Motorola, Daymon said, “Old Man, the bad girls
are closing up shop.”

The guard spent a few more seconds crouched by the van
looking and listening. Just when the rain from the passing storm band began to
let up, she rose and walked back to the others while talking into a large
walkie-talkie-looking-thing sporting a long, black whip antenna.

Drawing in a deep breath, Daymon radioed back. “I think they
might be onto us. One of the guards just eyeballed the road in your direction
and called someone on a big ass walkie-talkie.”

“Good eye,” Duncan replied. “Stay put and keep tabs on them.
I’ll hail you when the cavalry arrives.”

“Copy that,” Daymon answered, tossing the radio onto the
carpeted floor.

Ten minutes after leaving the airspace over Fort George G.
Meade, Maryland, roughly twenty miles by crow to the southwest near Suitland,
Maryland, Cade spotted the smoke plume rising vertically into the sky. Several
hundred feet over the ambush site, the prevailing winds had dispersed the
roiling column into a flat gray smudge stretching east to west for a mile or
more.

The closer they got to the killing field, the more Cade got
a feeling that the PLA force dispatched to the middle of Maryland was either a
diversion of some sort, or had been sent on some kind of sacrificial suicide
mission. He watched the pair of Stealth Chinooks suddenly gain speed and bank
toward the deck some eight hundred feet below the speeding Ghost Hawk.

“Three minutes out,” Ari said over the comms. “Anybody bring
marshmallows?”

Having been asleep and snoring for the last fifteen minutes,
Griff mumbled something unintelligible and shifted in his seat.

Next to Griff, Cross rolled his eyes and shook his head.

Chuckling, Skipper said, “I don’t think our customers are
going to be able to get close enough to conduct a proper BDA, let alone make s’mores.”

That got Cade’s blood boiling again. Damn if Skipper wasn’t
right about this being a glorified battle damage assessment mission. Based on
the footage they had watched, nothing could have survived the multiple strafing
runs the Hogs had wrought on the enemy element. Even if the PLA Special Forces
team had somehow survived riding a trio of motorcycles this far through Indian
country, it was highly unlikely that they had escaped the hurt doled out by the
Army National Guard aviators. And for that matter, they were just as unlikely
to have survived the conflagration as were whatever data collection devices
they had spirited from the NSA facility back at Fort Meade.

Channeling the late Mike Desantos, Cade said, “Any way you
stack it, this is a goat rope of the first order.”

Opening one eye and acquiring Cade with it, Griff said,
“Agreed. Those boys on the bikes are long gone by now.”

Cross leaned forward against his safety harness and joined
the conversation. “You all need to give President Clay, Colonel Shrill, and
Major Nash a little more credit. They’re running the show. Therefore, only
they’re privy to the big picture.”

“Why should I capitulate on this one?” Cade asked, placing a
hand over his boom mic. “We’re about to waste another Screamer and at least
twenty minutes carving Maryland airspace while we wait for the Zs to clear out.
Then we’re going to burn twenty more minutes picking through that road to Basra
reenactment down there. And after adding that forty-plus minutes to the
twenty-some-odd it took us to get here from Meade, we’re going to be
hard-pressed to catch the PLA infiltrators and fulfill this mission.”

“I heard
all
of that,” Ari said. “You know … the road
to Basra was a hundred times worse of a weeny roast than this one. I’ve heard
first-hand accounts from some of the Hog drivers who were there. And it only
cost me a few beers and a couple of shots. By the way, Wyatt, in case you
didn’t notice, I got us here in one piece.”

“Just get us to the road so we can move on,” Cade shot back.

“That’s not like you, Anvil Actual. Problems on the
homefront?”

Cade said nothing to that. No way Ari could know how close
to home the quip really hit.

“Looks like we have two fellas aboard worthy of wearing the
Doctor Silence mantle,” Ari pressed. Then, all business, he added, “One mike
out. Deploy the port minigun, Skip. Then get the Screamers prepped. While
Skipper’s busy with that task, I need the rest of your eyeballs on the deck
looking for movement or signs of missile launch. We may still have some survivors
armed with MANPADS down there.”

Cade cast his gaze out the starboard-side window. The
four-lane highway ran east to west, with the eastbound lanes clogged here and
there with stalled-out vehicles and multi-car pileups. The westbound lanes
ahead of the crippled and burning armor was crawling with zombies, but had far
fewer static vehicles and pileups. However, behind the column was evidence that
a Pied-Piper-like scenario had been playing itself out as the column had
advanced: bodies lay in the road for as far as the eye could see. Closer in,
the Zs that had been in tow had caught up with the unmoving vehicles and
completely enveloped them.

Without warning the doors concealing Skipper’s minigun
parted horizontally. All at once the stench of carrion and smoke laden with the
acrid smell of the smoldering vehicles invaded the cabin.

After unlocking the mount for the minigun, Skipper hefted it
up and snugged it into place atop the bottom half of the opening. With its
six-barreled snout pointing groundward, he powered it on and tested the
electric motor. “The thirty-four is hot,” he said, after seeing the barrel
spinning without a hitch.

Still sitting in the bitch seat, all Axe could do was hold
on tight to his M4 and peer straight ahead between the pilots at the rapidly
tilting horizon.

“Going to the deck,” Ari called. “Countermeasures hot.”

“Copy that,” answered Haynes. “Measures hot. I have eyes on
the deck. We are clear to port.”

Ari said nothing, busy maneuvering the helo behind the
parade of zombies amassing around the east end of the column. “Screamers
ready?” he asked, eyeing the much noisier Chinooks already hovering over
Suitland Parkway a thousand yards west of the column’s inert, Humvee-looking
lead vehicle.

“Almost there,” called Skipper.

“Jedi One-Two and One-Three report Screamers deployed.”

“I’m working on ours,” Skipper said, handing the first
activated Screamer over to Cade. “One to go.”

Cade unbuckled from his safety harness and then clicked the
crew retention lanyard affixed to the helo’s bulkhead onto his MOLLE gear. As
the helo powered through a tight turn, he fought against the G-forces to rise
from his seat as the door beside him motored open.

As if Jedi One-One’s avionics were hard-wired to Ari’s
brain, in one fluid set of movements he snapped her back to level, increased
RPMs to the rotors, and settled the black helo into an unwavering hover
directly above a knot of stalled-out civilian vehicles clogging one of the
parkway’s eastbound lanes.

“There,” Ari barked. “In the middle of the snarl-up.”

As Cade depressed the arming button, he sized up the kill
zone. Obviously this stretch of highway was chosen for the ambush because of
the low rock formation on the north side and dense copse of trees on the other.
It was a textbook-perfect chokepoint in that the terrain didn’t allow for
maneuver after the trap had been sprung. Respect growing for whoever decided to
hit the PLA forces here, he underhanded the active Screamer out the door then
craned and watched it plummet forty feet, carom off of an old sedan’s raggedy
black vinyl top and disappear from view, belting out the high-decibel scream
that proved loud enough to be heard above the helicopter’s whining turbines and
baffled rotor chop.

“Is the caravan of death and tree line south still clear?”
Ari asked.

Eyes still glued to the FLIR display, Haynes answered,
“Still no body heat signatures. I’m only picking up hot spots from the
smoldering fires and hot metal down there.”

“Copy that,” Ari said, as he finessed the bird’s nose around
to the left.

Once the helicopter finished its rotation and began
side-slipping to the east, Skipper handed Cade the second Screamer. Same
routine as before; Ari hovered and called out a target. This time it was the
arcing copse of trees south of and paralleling the divided four-lane.

“Tree line, three o’clock,” Ari called over the comms. “Then
seal her up and we’re going to the well for a drink.”

Hanging partway out the open door, Cade activated the second
diversionary device and let it roll from his fingers, watching it all the way
to the ground where it bounced on the sloped roadside, rolled through the grass
a short distance downhill, and became lodged at the base of a pair of juvenile
dogwoods.

“Six, ten split,” Cross called from his port-side seat.

“Spot on to
cow corner
,” Axe exclaimed, garnering
curious looks from Skipper and the Delta shooters.

As soon as Cade heard the Screamer come alive, he returned
to his seat, leaving the lanyard clicked to the bulkhead next to the door.
Looking groundward, he saw the undead horde immediately lower their expectant
gazes and lurch for the nearby guardrail, the ones already there spilling over
and rolling down the hill even before the Ghost Hawk began to slip west over
the column.

“Cow corner?” Cross mouthed as the helo gathered forward
momentum, pressing everyone into their seats.

“Some strange English soccer term?” Griff pressed.

“Cricket,” Axe said. “It’s a bloody cricket term and I’m not
going to bother expounding on it. You gents wouldn’t appreciate the nuance
anyway.”

“Greek to me,” Griff said, cracking a smile.

In his headset Cade heard the pilots of One-Two and
One-Three report success in deploying their two remaining Screamers. Having
completed their aerial refuel during the leg from Meade to the current GPS
coordinates Nash had provided, there was no need for the Chinooks to form up
with Jedi Lead so they thundered off to the east to let the Screamers do what
they had been designed to do.

After watching the Chinooks depart low over the trees, Ari
made the subtle course corrections necessary for Jedi One-One to meet up with
the tanker at the agreed-upon waypoint.