District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (40 page)

Bear Lake

Though he heard the low growl of approaching engines, Daymon
kept his eye pressed to the rubber cup affixed to the eyepiece. Still alone in
the master bedroom and hunched over the spotting scope, he raised the Motorola
to his lips and thumbed the Talk button. “How far out are you?”

“A few blocks,” Duncan answered, his familiar drawl
strangely comforting to Daymon.

“Well, Old Man … you better think about gearing down or
coasting in from there, because if I can hear you, chances are they can too.”

“How many are we talking about?”

Daymon made a quick sweep of the distant compound then
returned to the attractive female guard the scope was originally trained on. It
appeared that she was standing on some kind of scaffolding behind the cement
noise barriers. And from the fifteen minutes he’d already spent watching her,
Daymon knew her pattern of movement and every detail of her anatomy from the
waist up.

Narrow in the face and wearing a ball cap that cast her
focused blue eyes in shadow—much like the majority of the women survivors he
had gotten to know since the event—this one looked as if she knew how to take
care of herself. To add to his assumption, she paid
zero
attention to
the dozen or so rotters trying unsuccessfully to scale the wall a few feet
below her.

As the engine growl neared, Daymon continued to watch the
forty-something woman he’d labeled
Ingrid
on account of her dirty blonde
hair and chiseled Nordic features. On cue, Ingrid walked to one end of the
contraption out of sight behind the wall and paused there to scrutinize the
road and residential area beyond the compound’s southwest flank. He counted
upward to ten and, sure enough, she was on the move in the other direction. If
Ingrid had picked up the engines and their throaty exhaust burble nearly two
miles east of her perch, she wasn’t acting like it. And if she was playing coy
about it just in case someone was watching her, the performance she was putting
on had him fooled.

Finally, after leaving Duncan hanging for twenty seconds or
so, Daymon spoke into the two-way radio. “I count six women patrolling inside
the perimeter. There’s also a female guard on the wall at my twelve o’clock
who’s watching the road coming in from the southeast. There’s also another one
who will now and again climb a ladder leaning against the far wall and take a
look north toward Garden City.”

“Which way is the wind blowing?” Duncan asked.

“I’m watching from
inside
the house,” Daymon
answered.

“We’re a block out. Any change in her demeanor?”

“She’s still pacing in my direction. And she hasn’t gone to
the binoculars yet. If she has one, I haven’t seen her talk into a radio,
either.”

“She doesn’t hear us,” Duncan said assuredly. “No way. No
how.”

Still watching through the eyepiece, Daymon said, “And you
know this,
how
?”

“Check the wind.”

Leaning away from the scope to see out the window, Daymon
cast his gaze at the juvenile pines beside the house. A couple seconds passed
before a gust bent the treetops in his general direction. “The wind’s coming at
me,” he radioed back.

“Perfect,” said Duncan. “House is two-tone brown, correct?”

“Affirmative. Lev and Tran are waiting for you out front.”

“No,” Duncan said. “Tran is putting down a zombie all by
himself. Lev is the one standing around.”

Daymon said nothing. He bent over and looked through the
scope, hoping that Tran wasn’t going to get himself bit trying to prove he was
something it was obvious he was not.

Ingrid had continued her routine and was again pacing away
from him. Beyond the stocks where Oliver was still hanging limply, Daymon saw
the other guard return and move the ladder away from the far wall and lay it
flat in an unkempt yard in front of the middle house.

He also noticed a thin gray haze painting the air above the
middle house. His first thought was that it was the result of a freshly lit
cooking fire.

The engine sounds cut out. A few seconds later there was a
muted rattle from the front storm door being hauled open. A beat after that the
interior door creaked and loud voices and the clomping of boot soles on bare
floor echoed up from downstairs.

Still, Ingrid kept up appearances.

On her way to the middle house, Ladder Guard stopped next to
Oliver and checked him for a pulse. Five seconds elapsed, her face remaining
placid throughout. There were no tells in her body language, either. When she
finally moved on there was no change in her gait. And once she was gone from
sight, Daymon still had no idea if Oliver was alive or dead.

Daymon heard booted feet scaling the stairs. There were also
voices rising up, some familiar, others accented and hard to place. So he rose
and fixed his gaze at the top of the stairs a dozen feet down the hall.

Duncan emerged from downstairs first, moving toward the
master bedroom with purpose the second he set eyes on Daymon.

Dregan’s crew spilled from the stairway next. Alexander
filled up the hall first. Barely visible behind him were sons Gregory and
Peter. A few seconds passed then the fella named Cleo who Daymon had met the
day before—short, fifty-something and missing a few teeth—summited the stairs
ahead of the rest of the Eden crew.

“Gang’s all here,” Duncan said.

With twelve people crowded into the open room, the master
suite felt anything but.

“We’ve got a dirty dozen,” said Daymon after a quick head
count.

“I’m lucky thirteen,” gasped Ray, his knuckles white from
throttling the dual handrails all the way to the second floor.

“What’s one more,” Daymon said, leading Duncan to the
spotting scope.

“Looks like we’re between storm systems,” said Duncan.
“While it’s not pissin’ rain, let’s set Hubble Junior here up on the deck so we
don’t keep catchin’ this glare off the window.”

Seeing no reason to argue the point, Daymon shrugged and
stepped aside.

Duncan hefted the spotting scope and waddled with it cradled
in his arms to the deck, where he set it up underneath the jutting eave casting
a sliver of shadow on the west-facing windows. Steady drips of water rolled off
the front of the gutter above him, making soft patters on the wood decking
underfoot. Some of the drips spattered his glasses and more found their way
into his collar.

He spread the tripod legs a generous width apart and locked
them into place. After spinning a hand crank to raise the scope so that he
wouldn’t have to bend over too far to access the eyepiece, he cast a glance at
the others behind the glass and gestured for them to join him on the deck.

Starting left, near the mouth of the cul-de-sac which was
absolutely packed full of minivans, pickups, and two gray prison vans, he
worked the scope slowly to his right, examining the redoubt’s layout while
taking inventory of the handful of vehicles, U-Haul moving trucks and women
milling about inside the perimeter.

Duncan felt a tap on his shoulder, followed by the stink of
cigarettes as he sensed someone looming over him.

Taking his eye from the scope, Duncan looked sidelong to his
right and saw only the lapels of Dregan’s parted duster and the man’s barrel
chest from the sternum up.

“Hold yer horses, Paul Bunyan.”

“Please, let me look,” Dregan said, his accent not as thick
as Duncan remembered it being immediately after Gregory had been attacked.

“Fine,” Duncan said. “Knock yerself out.”

Without adjusting the tripod, Dregan bent way over and planted
his face to the scope. After a minute spent panning the big lens over the
grounds surrounding the cul-de-sac and beach fronting the half-dozen houses, he
turned and stared at Duncan. Eyebrows furrowed, Dregan said, incredulous, “But
they are all women. So we go
now
and save your friend.”

“Not so fast,” said Duncan.
Brook’s all woman, and look
what she did to you and your posse
, was what he was thinking.

“Yes, fast.” Dregan stood up straight and backed away from
the spotting scope, sharing the look of incredulity with the others.

Standing to the right of Dregan, Taryn and Jamie folded
their arms and stared daggers his way.

“Helen would kick your ass with one arm tied behind her
back. Brook too, for that matter,” Ray said, separating himself from the statement
and the man who had spouted it.

Directing the question at Duncan, Dregan asked, “Who is the
big woman with attitude?”

Having no idea whom Dregan was talking about, Duncan peered
through the spotting scope, walking it over the compound in tiny increments.
After suddenly going rigid, he rose up and regarded Dregan. “She is a
big
girl. And she’s definitely oozing attitude.”

Dregan fixed Duncan with an
I told you so
stare, then
did the same to everyone else standing on the deck.

Duncan tracked the woman with the scope as she plodded over
to the stocks. She was nearly as wide as she was tall. This anatomical fact led
Duncan to label her “Little Lotta” after the rotund comic book character of the
same name. And like the fictional Lotta, this woman’s legs also resembled twin
tree trunks.

Lotta stopped directly in front of Oliver, leaned over and
looked him in the face. The big woman began speaking to Glenda’s youngest, but
she was facing away so making out any of the words by reading her lips was
impossible. However, a pair of plain-Jane-looking women emerged from the
direction of the cul-de-sac, zippered through the parked vehicles, and
approached Lotta.

“Lots of X chromosomes down there,” Duncan muttered, seeing
the pair stop opposite Lotta and turn so they just so happened to be facing him
full on.

Now we’re cooking with gas
, he thought to himself as
the taller of the two women spoke. Duncan watched her lips like a cat would a
canary. She was obviously relaying something pertaining to the night’s dinner,
but the only words he understood by reading her lips were “fire” and “dog.”
Maybe
they’re roasting weenies
, he thought. If anything was still palatable this
far into the apocalypse, surely a lips-and-asshole-filled health missile with
all of its preservatives would be.

However, the breakthrough came when one of the other women
spoke. The first word out of her mouth was “Adrian.” Three syllables. A. Dree.
Ann. And just like that, there was no denying that these people he was watching
from afar were responsible for all of the atrocities they’d encountered on the
way here: the vivisected man in the pasture. The reanimated skeleton left so
grotesquely on display in the church. Both the booby-trapped rectory and fix-it
shop. And, to add insult to injury, they were just officially confirmed as
Oliver’s captors.

Then, just when Duncan thought the predicament Oliver had
gotten himself into could get no worse, the big woman called Adrian turned
toward Oliver with a machete similar to Daymon’s clutched in her meaty right
hand.

There was no more talk. Adrian reared back with the blade,
paused for a spell at the top of the swing, then bought it down at an angle a
few inches north of Oliver’s protruding femur bone.

The damage was instantaneous, flesh and sinew and bone shards
no match for the blade.

As Duncan watched in disbelief, three things happened
simultaneously. First, Oliver’s leg from mid-thigh on down tilted away from his
body as if it were a felled tree. Then he came to and let loose a scream that
Duncan could see, but not hear. And finally, as the wind left Duncan’s lungs in
a sorrow-filled moan, Daymon and Dregan were grabbing his elbows and helping to
keep him from falling in the same manner as Oliver’s leg had.

His breath coming in gasps, Duncan used the deck rail for
support and stood on his own while the others looked on with questioning
stares.

“What’s that all about?” Daymon asked.

The first words from Duncan’s mouth when he fully caught his
wind were, “The big woman just amputated Oliver’s leg.”

Instantly Taryn drew in a sharp breath.

Shaking his head and on the verge of tears, Daymon stalked
the length of the deck and disappeared through the slider.

Duncan looked to Dregan. “We have to go now. Is the Mk19 and
Ma Deuce loaded and ready to go?”

Dregan nodded. “What we are lacking in manpower, we make up
for in firepower.”

Ray stepped forward. “Me and Helen have more weaponry than
we could ever use at the house. I brought something else that might help
balance the scales of justice. Come with me.”

Without another word, all thirteen people that had been
packed on the master deck followed Ray single-file down the stairs and out the
front door, where they were greeted with a much-needed dose of late afternoon
sunshine.

As soon as the gunfire erupted near the front of the convoy,
Cade knew it wasn’t coming from Griff or Cross’s suppressed weapons. And he
quickly decided that the trio of sharp reports likely hadn’t come from either
of the operator’s pistols. More than likely, the weapon was firing an oddball
caliber similar in size to the ammunition Cross fed his MP7 submachinegun.

“No return fire?” Axe said to Cade at the very same moment
Cross’s voice sounded over the comms with news that the hostile fire was coming
from inside the cab of the third vehicle from the front of the column.

“I have eyes on in the side mirror,” Cross added. “One body.
Driver’s seat of the troop transport. His angle on us is bad.”

Cade craned left and picked out the third vehicle. Its front
end, including the driver’s side mirrors, had been chewed up by slugs from the
A-10’s cannons. Fire had consumed most of the cab and licks of smoke continued
curling skyward from underneath the buckled hood. Most importantly, there were
no whip antennas sprouting from the vehicle, making it more likely the shooter
couldn’t report the presence of the Jedi flight.

“Where are the Rangers in relation to the Tango?” he asked,
raising his voice because he was hearing one of the distant Screamers being
amplified loud and clear over Cross’s boom microphone.

“They’re all on the other side of the parkway. Northwest of
the divider on a diagonal from the shooter,” Cross answered. “Griff has already
motioned for them to take cover and stand down.”

“Copy that. Hold your fire, too,” Cade said, lowering his voice
to a whisper. “I have an idea. If it works, we may just be able to take the
shooter alive.” He detailed his simple plan then released his M4 from its
center-point sling and laid it flat on the road. Out came the suppressed Glock
17 and he was off, moving slowly in a tactical crouch and keeping close to the
vehicles where the misshapen shadows cast by the trees to the south provided
him a false sense of cover.

Axe watched Cade forge ahead, picking his way through body
parts and debris, black pistol held in a two-handed grip and trained on the
target vehicle the entire way. Once the Delta captain was parallel with the
truck’s driver-side door and had flashed him a thumbs-up, Axe whispered into
the comms, “Anvil Actual is in position.”

Crouched out of sight behind the transport’s deflated rear
passenger-side tires, Cross whispered, “Anvil Actual, Anvil Two. Copy,” and
started moving forward, keeping his MP7 aimed at the window from which the PLA
soldier had just engaged them. Gaze trained on the large vertical side mirror,
he put one hand on the door to keep it from flying open into him and trained
his weapon on the window where the soldier’s head had appeared before.

“Anvil Two in place,” Cross whispered, beginning a silent
countdown in his head.

Upon hearing Cross’s report, Cade also started counting down
from five. Once he reached “
One
” in his head, three things happened in
quick succession. First, a pair of distinctive muffled reports from Cross’s MP7
sounded opposite the transport. A half-beat later a pained grunt and rustle of
fabric filtered down from the open window barely a yard from Cade’s head. Then,
as anticipated, the soldier returned fire from the cab, three closely spaced
shots that Cade prayed hadn’t found friendly flesh.

Barely a second had slipped into the past before Cade was up
on the rig’s running board and peering into the window, the Glock’s cylindrical
suppressor sweeping the cab for the enemy soldier. Time seemed to slow to a
crawl as his gaze settled on the black pistol clutched in the PLA soldier’s
gloved hand. Finger drawing up trigger pull, Cade angled the business end of
the Glock down a few degrees and squeezed off a single shot. Another pained
grunt followed at once by a shrill scream filled the air even before the
muffled report had a chance to dissipate.

Seeing the young soldier double forward, both gloved hands
going for the bloody entry wound in the soft flesh on the inside of his right
thigh, Cade reached his arm through the window and pressed the still warm
suppressor to the soldier’s neck.

Still balancing on the running board, free hand gripping the
B-pillar, Cade screamed at the PLA soldier, telling him in English to raise his
hands and keep them up.

The soldier didn’t react. Face screwed up in pain, he kept
both hands pressed to his wounded leg and began rocking back and forth.

A sliver of light illuminated the headliner above the
wounded man’s head as Griffin climbed inside and snatched the soldier’s pistol
off the floorboards. “Clear,” he called, seeing no other weapons.

Seeing Griff take possession of the soldier’s weapon, Cade
hauled open the door and yanked the screaming man out of the cab. After laying
the Chinese soldier flat on the road, he quickly frisked him for weapons.
Finding nothing, Cade radioed an all clear to the Ranger lieutenant. Next, he
ordered Griff to join him for the interrogation and told Cross to continue
searching the vehicles for the data storage devices.

After seeing Cross disappear behind a shot-up troop carrier,
Cade motioned Axe over. “We can’t let him bleed out.”

With his Glock trained on the writhing soldier, Cade watched
on as Axe fixed a tourniquet on the profusely bleeding appendage.

“I’m afraid you nicked the bloke’s femoral artery,” Axe said
matter-of-factly. “He’s got two minutes left on earth … at the most.”

Cade cursed, then looked over his shoulder at the open door.
“Griff,” he bellowed. “Hustle!”

From the head of the convoy a staccato burst of gunfire rang
out.

“Rangers engaging the dead,” Axe said matter-of-factly.

Seconds after shimmying across the troop carrier’s bloodied
bench seat Griff arrived. Without saying a word, he set his rifle aside, took a
knee next to the dying man, and began talking softly to him in what to Cade
sounded like Chinese, Mandarin most likely. When Griff paused to take a breath,
the soldier’s eyes narrowed and he began thrashing about and yelling at the top
of his voice. None of what the PLA soldier had said was understandable to Cade,
and judging by the tone and delivery, it was likely nothing useful.

Confirming Cade’s suspicion, Griff shook his head, then
looked to the sky. “He told me he knows nothing about the NSA. Then he said he
wants us all to go fuck our mothers.”

“The dying always have a way with words,” Axe said. “Tell
him thanks for the offer, but my
mum
is dead and gone.”

Griff didn’t respond to that.

During the uncomfortable few seconds of silence that ensued,
the lieutenant leading the Ranger chalk from Jedi One-Two came on over the
comms. “One of the Screamers west of us failed,” he said, stress evident in his
voice. “And the Zs are starting to move our way. You’ve got two, maybe three
minutes tops before One-Two is either going to have to engage the Zs or launch
and orbit until we call for exfil.”

“Jedi One-Two and One-Three, Anvil Actual,” said Cade. “You
are cleared to exfil Chalks Alpha and Bravo. Lieutenant, Dixon … round up your
men. We’re done here.”

“Copy that,” replied the Ranger lieutenant.

Wavering on what to do next, Cade saw the PLA soldier’s eyes
flutter.

“Griff, hold him down.”

Griff kneeled by the soldier’s head and anchored the man’s
upper arms to the road with both hands.

Cade said, “Axe, keep him from kicking me.”

The soldier’s eyes went wide and a half-smile creased his
sweaty face.

Axe placed one knee on the man’s shins and clamped the toes
of his blood-soaked combat boots together with one hand.

Cade ripped the soldier’s fatigue pants, exposing the
puckered flesh wound. Hand gripping the man’s thigh above where the bullet
entered, Cade regarded Griff with a pained look. “Repeat the question.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Griff spoke to the man
rapid-fire in Chinese.

The soldier said nothing, his half-smile widening.

Without warning, Cade plunged his thumb into the gaping
wound. As the man wailed and bucked under the much larger Americans, he rooted
around in the wound and found what he was looking for.

With a nerve definitely struck—literally more so than
figuratively—the soldier began to chatter louder and faster than before.

Releasing the pressure, Cade looked a question at Griff.

“He says we’re supposed to fuck our fathers, now,” Griff
replied, bowing his head.

Sweating profusely, the beads cascading down his face and
wetting the gray asphalt around his head, the soldier looked to Griff and
uttered a phrase, which he began repeating softly, over and over.

Griff lifted his head and met Cade’s gaze. “He wants me to
kill him.”

Cade heard the turbine whine and rotor chop increase
exponentially to the left and right of his position. Then, in his peripheral
vision, both left and right, he saw black blurs as the dual rotor choppers
lifted off near simultaneously, leaving nothing but broken vehicles, twisted
bodies, and a few thousand yards of open ground between his Delta team and the
hundreds of Zs bookending them to the west and east.

“Try him one more time,” Cade said, increasing the pressure
on the nerves running close to the soldier’s shattered femur.

Still holding the soldier’s legs to the road, Axe looked
away, muttering something under his breath.

Nearby, Cross was pacing the road, keeping tabs on the
slow-moving Zs.

Again, Griff asked about motorcycles, external drives, and
where the PLA Special Forces soldiers who’d paid the NSA a visit had gone.

Again the PLA soldier begged to be killed.

And Cade obliged him. Thinking of Brook, who was currently
embroiled in a life and death struggle directly resulting from the virus this
man’s people had released on the United States population, he set the pistol on
the road and slid his black Gerber from the scabbard.

“You reap what you sow,” Cade said, drawing the dagger’s
razor-sharp blade hard across the man’s pasty, upthrust neck.

Instantly the blood spritzed and sluiced onto the road where
it mingled with the pooled sweat. Then the coppery reek hit Cade’s nose and he
felt the man going limp, finally beginning to succumb to the massive blood loss
from the two fatal wounds.

And as the light faded from the PLA soldier’s brown,
almond-shaped eyes, Cade felt a burning hatred for everything he represented.

Axe rolled off the dead man’s feet, rose, and stared off to
the west at the approaching horde.

There was a loud tearing sound as Jedi One-One materialized
over the horizon, its port minigun belching a reddish-orange rope of tracer
fire groundward into the Zs.

After releasing his grip on the dead man’s shoulders, Griff
rose and looked off to the east. “We’ve got Zs pressing in from this side,
now.”

Cade said nothing. He wiped the blood from his knife on the
soldier’s uniform blouse and snicked it home in its scabbard. Still mute, he
retrieved the Glock from the road and holstered it.

“Here,” Cross said, handing the brooding captain the M4 he’d
spotted and scooped up off the road a few yards back.

Taking the carbine from Cross, Cade nodded and clicked it
onto the center-point sling.

Finally, as a shiver resulting from the ebbing adrenaline
wracked his body, Cade called up Schriever to report his second failure of the
day. After receiving what amounted to little more than a brush off from Nash
who had picked up his call, he hailed Jedi One-One and requested an immediate
exfil.

“One minute out,” Ari called over the open net. “Make sure
you keep the LZ clear for me.”

Cade watched the departing Chinooks clear the trees on both
ends of the convoy. A tick later One-Three banked sharply to the southwest and
powered through a big turn that put her on a course to link up with One-Two,
already surging northwest and beginning to blend in with the darkening horizon.

Not used to missions going sideways as completely as this
one had, Cade decided to take his frustrations out on the approaching Zs. With
the pair of Chinooks nearly out of earshot, and the harmonic thrum hitting his
chest making it clear without looking skyward that Jedi One-One was inbound, he
called “Weapons free” to the team and aimed his M4 in the direction of the
lumbering horde.

“Anvil Actual, Jedi One-One. Check your fire. I repeat,
check your fire,” Ari called over the comms. “You’re going to need those
rounds. Nash just indicated they have the PLA team under surveillance.”

Cade lowered his carbine. “Jedi One-One, Anvil Actual. Come
again?”

Ari repeated himself verbatim then said, “Fifteen seconds
out.”

“Copy that,” Cade said. “You have a clear LZ.”

Schriever TOC

“Bring the image out five stops,” Nash called to the airman
controlling the sensor suite on the Keyhole satellite four hundred miles over
Alexandria, Virginia. “Right southwest corner, grid A1, bracket and zoom five.”

Working silently, the airman’s fingers flew over the
keyboard.

After a half-second delay—if that—the image of a freeway
overpass on the large flat-panel screen situated front and center of the TOC
shrank drastically. There was a brief lull, during which the airman working the
computer nearby hammered away at the keyboard and manipulated a white
trackball. Suddenly the overpass was replaced by an area of interest somewhere
southeast of D.C., where the Chesapeake encroached on Maryland from the south.
Dead center on the image were a number of objects that were impossible to
mistake for anything but what they were.

Colonel Shrill removed his cover and absentmindedly
scratched his bald dome.

In response to the new image being beamed down from her
KH-12, Nash whistled and said, “How in the hell did they sneak all the way up
there without us knowing?”