Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (14 page)

“Heck yeah,” blurted Raven, eagerly accepting the device
that was nearly identical to the one she had hoped to receive for her twelfth
birthday but had not. Like an old pro, she plugged the buds into her ears and began
thumbing her way through the digitally-rendered album covers.

After Raven and Taryn had moved out of sight, Brook commandeered
the chair that Wilson had relinquished. She made herself comfortable, looked up
at him, and said slowly and succinctly, “I need you and Taryn to watch Raven
for me. It might even end up turning into an all-nighter.”

TMI—too much information
— thought Wilson as he
struggled to believe that Brook would even consider leaving her daughter alone
for a few minutes, let alone overnight, considering the dead gathered outside
of the wire and the other dangers—real or imagined—still lurking inside the
base. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, he took a deep breath, hid his
fomenting disgust, and instead began to calculate the odds of him surviving a
night of Monopoly against three members of the opposite sex.

But in the time it took him to exhale the breath, he read
the worry on her face and realized that she merely wanted to protect Raven from
seeing or hearing something she wasn’t prepared to deal with, not unload her in
order to have a night alone with
Captain America
. “What’s going on?” he
asked, concern showing in his voice.

She made no reply.

Then he noticed something about her body language that set
an alarm off in his head. It seemed like she was carrying an invisible baby grand
piano on her back. Her shoulders sagged and the way she was sinking in the
office chair was totally unlike her. He’d seen her in action, and in his book
the lady was no slouch—literally and figuratively. Thinking the worst, he
finally asked, “Is Cade OK?”

Brook hitched her brow and tilted her head towards Sasha in
the same manner that she had with Raven a moment ago.

Wilson said, “Sasha ... can you give me and Brook a second
alone?” And though it was worded as a question with an option, it had been
delivered more like a parental order, leaving no room for discussion.

“Do I have to?” she asked. Then, after shifting her gaze
from Wilson to Brook and receiving only a cold stare from the visitor, she
pushed her chair from the table and stormed away in a huff, mumbling something
about her and Wilson being equals now that their mom wasn’t here and how she
better not be asked to babysit someone else’s kid.

Brook watched Sasha leave and then said, “The only thing I
can tell you is that Cade went out on a mission and hasn’t returned yet.”

“I gathered as much since we didn’t leave for Utah today.”
He paused, waiting for an answer. When none came, he asked, “So why do you need
us to watch Raven?”

One hand knuckling out a slow cadence on the tabletop and
the other clutching Cade’s death letter in her pocket, Brook replied, “They sent
a man to get me. He said I was needed in the communications room ... wouldn’t
elaborate.”

“Who is
they
?”

“Major Nash. She’s the lady we gave the thumb drive to.”

Not good
, thought Wilson. The fact that Cade had so
abruptly changed his plans meant that the mission had something to do with the information
contained on the thumb drive. That Brook couldn’t divulge what kind of mission and
was now being summoned in for a face-to-face with the crotchety major told him
more than he needed or wanted to know. So he said nothing. Just looked at her
face, hoping she’d crack a smile and say everything was going to be alright,
and that they were still leaving the dismal base in the morning. But she didn’t,
and judging by her deepening worry lines, he surmised she’d already arrived at
the same conclusion he had. He said, “We’ll entertain her then. And try our
best to keep her occupied and her mind off the fact that you’re both gone.”

“She’s gotten used to her dad being gone. But once the
allure of the iPhone wears off and it sinks in that she’s
really
alone, she’ll
probably get fidgety. If I don’t return she might not fall asleep right away.
She’ll talk your ears off instead of closing her eyes if you let her. But she’s
a resilient kid ... she’ll be OK.”

No shit
, thought Wilson. Resilient doesn’t even begin
to cover it. Hardened. Calloused maybe. He could probably go on and list a half-dozen
other adjectives usually associated with steely-eyed-shooters in the old Westerns—because
when it came to blasting the dead, the stoic four-footer made him look like a
pussy and Sasha seem like an emotional infant. “Take as long as you need,” he
said. “And I hope Nash has nothing but good news for you.”
You dumbass,
Wilson
, he thought to himself, knowing full well from what he’d seen in the
movies and on television that nothing good was ever attributed to a somber-looking
man in uniform coming to an Army wife’s door. “What I meant ...”

“Save it,” said Brook. “You’ll only succeed in digging the
hole deeper. If I don’t come back tonight, there are some MREs and a change of
clothes in her bag.”

“MREs? We’ll take Raven to the mess hall in an hour or so.”

“I don’t want her going outside. Period.”

“I’ll bring something back then.”

Fixing her gaze on Wilson, Brook said, “After I leave I don’t
want you to open the door for anything or anyone. I don’t care if it’s Shrill,
Nash, or President Clay herself.” There was a moment of silence. “The door
remains locked. Is that clear?”

Staring into the woman’s determined eyes reminded him of the
time not long ago when he had found himself peering into the gaping muzzle of
an automatic rifle in the hot confines of a U-Haul’s cab. This time the stare
was just as icy, but thankfully the M4 didn’t factor into the equation. “She’ll
be in good hands,” Wilson said. “I promise.”

“Mom!” yelled Raven as she fumbled to remove the ear buds
that were still pumping some kind of bass heavy track which Brook could hear
from roughly thirty feet away. “Can I hang out with Taryn and Sasha for a while?”

“It’s OK with us,” said Taryn. “Right Sasha?”

“Should be fun,” countered Sasha meekly.

“Sounds like a plan. Sweetie,” Brook called back. “Come give
Mom a hug and a kiss before she leaves.” She turned her head and palmed a
couple of tears away, and then received her not-so-little-girl with open arms. Embracing
Raven tightly, Brook rested her chin on the top of her head and slowly drew her
girl’s silky pigtails through her fingers. “We need to get this hair trimmed,”
she said absentmindedly as tears welled up fat in the corners of her eyes. She
stood up and turned away before the wet trails on her tanned cheekbones gave
her away.

From his seat at the game table, Wilson got misty-eyed
watching the two share words which were drowned out by the conditioned air
buffeting his back. And speaking from experience, having grown up without a
father, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t more than a little worried for the
both of them. In fact things would probably never be the same once they were
reunited. Because his gut was telling him that the news Brook was about to hear
was going to affect Raven—resilience not withstanding—much harder than anyone could
imagine.

Draper, South Dakota

SR 13-I 90 Juncture

“What the heck was that?” said Jasper.

Eyes tracking the glorious sight across the sky, and hearing
Lopez in his ear bud thanking God for their apparent about-face in fortune,
Cade answered, “That, my friend, is our ride home.”

Craning his neck in order to follow the source of the shadow
that had just moments ago blotted out the sun, Jasper asked another question
that Cade was already contemplating. “Where is a plane that
big
going to
land around here?”

“You would be surprised,” came Ari’s unsolicited reply as
the airplane’s retreating engine noise was supplanted by the snarls and hisses
of the dead and an out-of-place whine coming from poorly-meshing synchros in
the transmission just inches below his ass.

Saying nothing, Cade pinned the accelerator to the floor and
put the two wheels on Jasper’s side parallel to the rumble strips on the right shoulder.
There was no guardrail on the onramp, only a gently sloping once-manicured
expanse of long-dormant grass running the entire length of the incline that fed
into the two westbound lanes. In his side vision he saw the parchment-colored
swath of grass and the ragtag groups of dead flash by. He flicked his gaze to the
airplane, which had climbed to a point where it was seemingly suspended, like
one of the many plastic scale models that had once been thumbtacked to the
ceiling of his childhood room back in Portland. Only this was no model, and the
props were spinning, clawing the air, trailing zephyrs of pewter gray exhaust, a
testament to how hard the four engines were working. Then it nosed up as the
pilot made a subtle course correction to the south, further showing off the top
of its fuselage, a gray blue ‘T’ silhouetted against the sun.

For a split second Cade worried that the dust- and grime-coated
Chevy had gotten lost in the ground clutter, and perhaps they hadn’t been
spotted. He thought he might have screwed the pooch. Loitering in the lip of
shadow thrown by the overpass had been foolish and, however improbable the case
may be, might have occurred at the exact moment that the minuscule patch of ground
had received its split second’s worth of scrutiny from the search and rescue
plane. However, that notion quickly passed, giving way to a more plausible
explanation—perhaps the pilot, co-pilot, and the other half of the four-man crew
had been fixated on the burning helo northeast of them and the KC-130 that was
supposed to be their salvation was now returning to Schriever.

Pushing all of those negative thoughts from his mind, Cade
kept his attention locked on the gray ribbon of oil-stained cement four or five
car lengths ahead and plotted a course that would deliver them onto the 90
without getting their ride high-centered on a mound of squirming corpses. And
while his concentration was focused on steering clear of the groping claw-like
hands of the dead, Mister Murphy was working the bellows, heating and folding
the metal, fashioning a very big monkey wrench to throw into the Delta
operator’s plans. “Shoot me a path through these things,” he bellowed, even as
the report of silenced machine guns and the tinkling of brass skittering across
the roadway reached his ears.

One hand working the wheel, he punched the window down and
went for the Glock suspended under his arm. The polymer pistol slipped from the
holster fast and easy, and once comfortably in his left hand, he stuck the
muzzle past the side mirror, drew a bead, and tracked a pair of recently turned
Zs—one male and one female. Barking twice, the semi-auto pistol delivered a lethal
one-two punch, cratering the male’s face. As the creature pirouetted into the
truck’s path, Cade shifted aim by a degree and eased back on the accelerator. The
Glock bucked twice more, sending a lead double-tap careening towards the female
Z’s face. Snapping the pallid Z’s head back like a Mike Tyson uppercut, the
first round struck the strip of skin just below its upturned nose and spread a rose-tinted
haze containing splintered teeth and pulped flesh into the air. A fraction of a
second later the rotten corpse’s clouded eyes disappeared, punched through the
back of its head as the second 9 mm Parabellum entered on an upward trajectory
directly between them. At last, the combined kinetic energy from both slugs threw
the lifeless corpse into a backward half gainer. In all, less than two seconds
had elapsed, and as dumb luck would have it, both Zs smacked the concrete less than
a yard apart, succumbed to the combined effects of gravity and the engineered
cant of the onramp, and rolled into the path of the Chevy’s left front wheel.
Pulling his arm back into the truck, Cade set the smoking Glock on his lap and grimaced
as a pair of muffled pops reverberated through the floor pan as both of the Zs’
skulls lost the battle with the steel-belted radials.

Close to retching, Jasper motored his window down and
brought his pistol to bear on the pale creatures scrabbling through the expanse
of knee length grass to his right.

“Make ‘em count,” Ari called out, trying to cover his ears.
But thanks to the ongoing numbness because of the cinched-down harness, lifting
his arms up even an inch was a monumental task. So, myth or not, in an effort
to protect his hearing against the dueling reports to his left and right, more necessary
at this point than combating the stench of death enveloping them all, he opened
his mouth to equalize the pressure in his ears.
Bullshit
, he thought, as
a stabbing pain settled behind his eyes and a shrill buzz akin to overhead high
voltage wires on steroids blared inside of his skull. Whoever had fed him that
line of crap—probably some artillery officer bragging over beers—deserved to be
punched in the mouth. So he sat there, hands in his lap, and split his
attention between watching the big undertaker to his right deal out second
death and keeping a watchful eye out for additional rescue aircraft he hoped
had been dispatched. And as he hoped and prayed for Jedi One-Two to materialize
on the horizon, he tried hard to remember how much landing strip a fuel-laden Hercules
needed to land. He knew from running joint operations with the Air Force Army and
Marines that the durable aircraft could land most anywhere, on roads, unimproved
grass, or dirt airstrips. He also knew its four engines were designed with counter-rotating
props which provided a considerable amount of reverse thrust. Enough to begin
slowing it down immediately after its wheels hit the ground.

“You think she’s going to be able to land on the interstate?”
Cade asked, casting a quick glance at Ari.