Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (21 page)

“He that bad?”

“Yeah ... I couldn’t decide between duct taping his mouth
closed or dropping his motor mouth ass off in the middle of 39 and leaving him
there until I finished the recon.”

Logan put his hands in his pockets. Shrugged his shoulders
and cocked his head off to the side as if saying,
Finished yet, old man?

Wondering if he should recount the story in its entirety,
which would have to include indicting himself by divulging his new-found
Achilles heel, Duncan worked his silver goatee, smoothed it out and then
ruffled his knuckles cross grain against the whiskers. “You know, bro,” he
finally said, “I was proud of myself today. Wanted to shove old Phil into a wood
chipper on the way back. Head first so he’d remain silent. So anything he said
couldn’t be held against him ... ever.”

“And?”

“And I turned the other cheek. Took the high road. Asked him
to channel his inner mime ... and ... how do you younger folks say it in a text
message? S-T-F-U.”

“Before smartphones became useless paper weights and texting
a thing of the not-too-distant past, it was an acronym meaning
shut the fuck
up
,” Logan said, wholeheartedly wishing Duncan would get tired of talking
and do so as well. “That was mighty big of you, brother. ‘Cause once you’re
past Phil’s annoying quirks he’s a pretty good guy.”

“Agreed. Young man saved my bacon on the road down there by
Huntsville. And again ... if it wasn’t for his help on the bend up there ... no
way I could have handled all the rotters that had gathered since we left,”
Duncan admitted. “Gotta come clean with you, Logan. When the dead started
walking, missing my exam at the VA was wayyy down on my worry list. Like not
even registering, down on the list. But today, my diminished peripheral vision
nearly got me killed.”

“And you think you’re OK to take the Black Hawk up?” Logan
said, his brow hitching up an inch. “You know damn well the Army would clip
your wings in a New York second.”

“This is different, Logan. You, baby bro, are not the Army.
Besides, I didn’t have any problem flying that thing here from Colorado Springs.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. After all that
time away from the controls, how’d you manage that? Did it all come back to you
like riding a bike, or did you have to consult a manual or something?”

“I saw a hundred hungry rotters heading our way and I
started flicking the obvious switches. Then I prayed a little and hit the APU
and the bird fired right up. Figure my success came about from a combination of
things. One, I was rated in the Huey and I’ve had some stick time in a Cobra.
Two, dumb luck. And three, a combination of the prayer and a couple more
helpings of one and two thrown in for good measure. But in all seriousness, except
for the electronic doo dads, the Black Hawk’s controls were pretty much the
same as the old slicks and gunships. Plus ... having the Grayson fella in the
left seat was a Godsend.”

“How so?”

“He worked the navigation and communication gear. Knew what
he was doing. Even gave me some pointers ... apparently he’s logged a lot of hours
riding around in helos. And the unit he’s in does a lot of cross-training ...
they’re kinda like the jack of all trades in the Army—only they’re very deadly
and they pretty much master everything.”

“So just say it. The Grayson guy is Delta Force.”

Before Duncan could confirm or deny the assertion there was
an out-of-place noise in the adjoining room. A metallic sound complete with a
drawn-out, hollow resonance as if a gong had been struck somewhere in the
gloom. Then a few choice curse words and the echo of approaching footsteps.

South Dakota

Cade’s view of the little Zs, with their faces and bodies
smashed against the green-tinted safety glass, reminded him how the late Hosford
Preston had gotten him and Daymon trapped in the attic of the old farmhouse in
Hanna, Utah. And just as the centuries-old glass between them and the dead had failed
then—he presumed the glass inches from his face would do the same at any
moment.

He tried the key.
Nothing.
Then he turned the
ignition all the way off and cycled forward, engaging the starter. It produced
a strong-sounding effort as he pumped the gas, but didn’t live up to its name.

“Use caution,” mumbled Jasper. “Floods easily.”

“That’s the least of our problems,” Cade replied.
Nonplussed, he repeated the process with the same result. Released the key, silencing
the starter, then sat in brooding silence, breathing in gasoline fumes from the
now-flooded carburetor.

Jasper made no reply.

“Let it rest for a minute,” Ari said. He glanced up at the
rearview and noticed Lopez engaging the dead, face-to-face, smashmouth combat, bashing
in their skulls with the fully-collapsed butt stock of his M4. Hicks and Cross
were standing shoulder-to-shoulder firing round after round from their pistols.
After seeing the destruction the operators were wreaking on the dead, Ari
flicked his gaze back to Cade. “I think we’re going to survive this.”

Looking over his shoulder, Cade said, “Do you know something
I don’t? Can’t exactly call in
danger close
if we have no kind of air
support.” He looked at his watch.
Two minutes.

“Roger that, but we’ve still got the Hercules.”

“No use to us here, Ari,” said Cade. Sitting there with a
dead numb ankle in a dead truck surrounded with walking dead led to his
thoughts wandering off to a dark place. A place where he kept all of his mortal
worries. A place his pre-mission mental rituals were supposed to have sealed
off. But the mental trap had failed. The proverbial dike had sprung a leak,
leaving him with no defense against reflecting on his family’s future without
him. He took comfort in knowing that this deep into the outbreak, Brook had
proven herself adept at taking care of Raven. His girls had run a hundred and
thirty mile gauntlet through the dead-plagued countryside from South Carolina
to Bragg, and then from that seemingly impregnable stronghold, Brook had
delivered them to Schriever without a scratch.
Hell
, he thought, as the dead
crowded, rocking the truck on its springs,
Brook had even ventured outside
the wire on her own—twice—returning unscathed on both occasions
. In his
mind, two words described her:
Mission capable
. Raven, on the other hand,
was a raw piece of clay that still needed a good deal of shaping. Sure, she had
already been taught how to listen to her intuition when it came to right and
wrong and good or bad. But this wasn’t the fourth grade, and when it came to the
living dead she was still dangerously naive. She knew the basics but not the
specifics. Thanks to Mike Desantos she was crystal clear on the one-bite rule.
She was also very familiar with,
when it’s night, douse the light
, a newly
made-up mantra of Brook’s—corny but effective. Bottom line, was she to be taken
outside the wire to see firsthand the drive the dead exhibited once they locked
on to fresh meat? To know more than anything that every encounter with infected
humans had the likelihood of becoming a true kill-or-be-killed fight to the
death?

Slowly he was resigning himself to accept the fact that
someone else was going to have to see them through in his stead. A hot tear
rolled down his cheek as he realized how terribly he was going to miss them. He
hefted the Glock. Pulled the slide back.
One in the pipe.
That, plus the
glint of brass in the well, assured him he wasn’t going out alone. Sadly, he
couldn’t remember how many shells were sandwiched between the one he could see and
the spring-loaded follower.
You’re slipping, Wyatt
. So while Ari recited
a prayer, Jasper rocked silently in his seat, and the dead scratched against
the hood, he dropped the mag from the well, catching it in the palm of his
hand. He turned it around, counting the available rounds showing in the see-through
holes designed into the back of the magazine.
Three, plus the one already
chambered.
That’ll have to do. Two for Jasper and two for me
. He
figured Ari would save one in the Beretta to fulfill his own exit plan when the
time came.

The distinctive
crunch-crunch
of a twelve gauge round
being chambered nudged Cade from his dark thoughts. He turned his eyes up to consult
the rearview. At the same instant Ari and Jasper turned their heads in response
to the unmistakable, universal sound that said
look alive or else
.

“We’re dangerously low on ammo,” Lopez said breathlessly
into the comms as his rifle cut a blurry arc through the air, each delivered blow
resulting in small eruptions of brain and fluids. “How much longer, Captain?”

“It’s flooded. Thirty seconds or so and I’ll give it another
try.”

“When it starts, put the pedal to the metal and leave the rest
up to us,” Cross said.

“Roger that,” was all Cade could muster. Wondering what the President’s
man had in mind, Cade rolled his head to the left and locked eyes with one of
the undead campers and then, for the second time in less than an hour, wished
he knew more than he did about the properties of fuel—unleaded gasoline to be more
specific.

Eden Compound

The sound in the corridor was not foreign. In fact, every person
who had ever set foot in the compound had heard the same thing at least once—either
up close and personal or as an innocent bystander as demonstrated by Duncan and
Logan. And most likely every person in either position had uttered or had to
listen to a similar string of salty language.

So as the footfalls drew nearer and the epithets grew louder
and more colorful, Duncan stuck a finger in the air as if saying
hold that
thought
and pressed tight against the wall to allow whomever approached
clear passage.

Three feet away, however, Logan was shaking his head and
mouthing, “You’ll regret it.”

For once Duncan listened to reason, or Logan—whatever the
case might be—and stood down.

A beat later, Daymon entered through the narrow doorway, stooped
over, one hand slowly massaging his forehead.

Noticing he was not alone, he straightened up and regarded
each man; first Duncan with a nod and a raised brow, and then Logan with a half-hearted
glare. “While I’m not a fan of tight confines, I usually find a way to adapt
and overcome. But this place of yours, Logan, it effin takes things to a new
level of cramped.”

Raising a brow, Logan said, “What’s the problem?”

“Well, since you
asked
. I feel like
freakin’
Gandalf
having to hunch over like an old man through every doorway. You design this
place?”

Logan nodded. “You crack your head for the first time?”

“No ... that was the third. And the worst.” Wishing ice was
as easily obtained as before the apocalypse, he rubbed the growing knot and
said, “Who’d you consult with on this underground tomb, anyway ... a bunch of
hobbits?
”

Duncan shot Logan a look that said,
I got this
. Then a
conspiratorial smile crossed his face as he answered the question. “No, son.
Their Shire was under siege so Oops here went low-budget and consulted the
Keebler Elves.”

“Smart ass,” Logan snapped back. “Why don’t you tell your claustrophobic
friend here how
you
blew
your
half of the inheritance.”

Duncan made a face, pushed off the cold steel wall, and
paced ten feet to the far end of the container where a metal door sat propped
open.

Sensing the rising tension, Daymon changed the subject and
said, “Were you two having some kind of a secret meeting or something when I
walked in here? Cause y’all went real quiet, real quick.”

“Move along, sir. Nothing to see here, sir,” Duncan said with
a chuckle that echoed off the walls and ceiling. “There is no conspiracy taking
place here because Logan prefers to run this compound by committee. With full
transparency,
of course.”

Ignoring the disparaging comment, Logan said to Daymon, “We’re
getting the group together for a meeting at dusk. I’d like you and Heidi to be
there.”

“Where is there?”

“Far side of the clearing.”

“Sounds great to this garden-variety-claustrophobe. But why
outside after all that’s happened around here today? Aren’t you worried about
drawing more attention to yourselves?”

“Gotta hold it outside,” said Logan. “There’s no way to fit
all of us in any one room down here. And I’m pretty sure with the message
Duncan sent our friends in Huntsville we’re not going to have any visitors with
bad intentions in the near future. Probably won’t get any Christmas cards from ‘em
either.”

“So should I invite Jenkins?”

“Already beat you to it,” answered Duncan. “Logan says since
Charlie is former law enforcement he’s in automatically.”

“And Tran?”

Clicking his tongue, Duncan said, “Hell, he looked like he
was on death’s door. Won’t blame him if he doesn’t feel up to attending.”

“He’s not as bad off as he looked when we got here,” said
Daymon. “He lost a lot of blood. Had a pretty bad head wound, but your Indian
friend who patched him up said he thinks the little guy has a couple of broken
ribs and a hell of a sprained ankle, but other than that there wasn’t anything
life threatening about his injuries.”

“Though he holds a different opinion than me,” Logan intoned.
“It’s true what my brother said, this compound is run like a democracy. Everyone
is welcome and eventually gets a say in matters as long as they pitch in and can
prove they play well with others.”

“Rules me out then,” said Daymon, cracking a smile. “I’d
better pack up and leave.”