Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (38 page)

“Roger that. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open. And Daymon—”

“
Yes
.”

“The rotters will move on as long you don’t let them get
eyes on you.”

“Where are they coming from?”

“Nowhere really. They seem to just walk the road back and
forth between Huntsville and Woodruff. Any of them that happen to be in the
area when we come and go are drawn in by our engine noise. Engine noise travels
a long way out here. Especially when it’s the only man-made sound for miles.
The dead have great hearing ... they triangulate in on sounds real well.
Especially anything they associate with food ... which is just about
everything.”

I’m no dummy. But thanks anyway for the zombie primer
,
is what Daymon thought. “I’ll be quiet,” is what he said. He silenced the radio
and melted back into the forest.

Quarry

Leaving the engine idle, Logan slid from behind the wheel
and met the others in front of the SUV’s warm hood. “I’ve got a gut feeling
this is the place we’re looking for,” he said. “Gus—you and Jamie check out the
three buildings over there. I’m going to walk around the garage and see if I
can find a window and take a peek inside. Keep your radios turned down low and
call only if you need to.”

“I don’t have a radio. I thought you were grabbing them,”
said Jamie with a tilt of her head.

Feeling a little sheepish, Logan cast his gaze to Gus.

Shrugging his shoulders, Gus added, “I got asked to help
move the helicopter. Figured since you were in the security container last ...”

“Forget the radios,” said Logan. “We’ll fan out and take a
quick look.”

Gus nodded.

“Lock and load,” said Logan, shoving the now worthless lone
radio into his pocket.

“What about me?” asked Jordan, subconsciously kneading the
seatback.

“You’ve got the most important job,” Logan said quietly. “I
want you to get behind the wheel and lock your door. Then watch our backs while
we check things out. While we’re inside, if you see
anyone
or
anything
—living
or dead—I want you to sound the siren. Can you handle that?”

She regarded him for a second. Her eyes narrowed, like she
was deciding if this was a request or if she had just been issued an order.
Finally, after a couple more seconds’ contemplation, she shrugged her shoulders
and said, “No problem.”

To Logan it was fairly obvious the young lady was still
trying to find her role within the group. And he took the hesitation for what
it was, a manifestation of her deep-seated distrust of the male species. Given
all she’d gone through as a captive of the hillbilly rapists, he couldn’t blame
her in the least. He killed the engine, slid from the truck, carbine in hand,
and watched her loop around the hood with a newfound pep in her step. Obviously
happy to finally contribute, Jordan flashed the group a smile and placed her
rifle in the passenger seat before climbing behind the wheel.

Logan tapped the hood and mouthed, “Lock the doors.”

She smiled. Cast her eyes downward and dogged her head
side-to-side. A tick later the siren blared—hitting a shrill note that
simultaneously forced Logan, Gus, and Jamie to clamp their hands over their
ears. The noise continued, rising and falling unabated, until Logan banged on
the hood and drew an index finger across his throat, a frantic slashing motion.

Heeding the pantomimed request, Jordan relocated the switch
and silenced the siren.

“Shit,” Gus said, shaking his head. He stuck a finger in
each ear and jiggled them rapidly. “If there
is
someone here and they
didn’t know they had company, we sure as hell just lost the element of
surprise.”

Ears ringing from the sonic bombardment, Logan said, “She’s
a work in progress.” Then he heard the satisfying
clunk
as Jordan
actuated the door locks. He watched her get comfortable, adjusting the seat and
mirrors, presumably so she could watch the gate without having to hang her head
out the window.
Way to take the initiative
, he thought. After apparently
getting everything dialed in to her liking she flashed the trio another smile
punctuated with an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Seeing this, Logan said to Gus and Jamie, “Quickly, let’s go
... same plan.”

Chambering a round into his AR-15, Gus flicked off the
safety, nodded at Logan, and with Jamie close on his heels, padded off towards
the shed farthest left.

Cursing himself for assuming one of the others had brought
along a second two-way radio, Logan struck off in the opposite direction; as he
zig-zagged between steaming puddles, Duncan’s voice sounded in his head,
chiding him for the oversight, asking what the hell he’d been thinking.
Dot
your I’s and cross your T’s
—one of Duncan’s favorite sayings—resounded
loudly, clamoring for attention, albeit a little too late. Then for the third
time this morning Logan imagined a fusillade of hot lead lancing the air, every
bullet with his name on it. M4 locked and loaded, its business end aimed in the
general direction of the looming building, he straightened up and covered the
distance in a full sprint.

Upon reaching the green door, he cut left and ducked under
the window, slid down with his back against the wall near the corner of the
building, and watched Jamie and Gus approach the outbuilding farthest left.
Upon arriving, Gus searched the rear of the tiny structure, then reappeared and
stood with Jamie by the narrow wooden door. They conferred and then Gus tried
the handle. He looked over, met Logan’s gaze and shook his head. He took a step
and a half back, and behind a flash of black leather kicked the sweet spot next
to the handle, destroying the lock and half the door.

Instantly, Jamie was through, Gus close behind.
Just like
in the movies
, thought Logan. That no rotters or gunfire or screams came
out of the shed was a very good sign.

Shifting his focus to the oversized garage, Logan craned his
head and peered through the sun-yellowed horizontal blinds. Against the far
wall was a low, wide desk, its dark wood lightened by a coating of dust. The
rest was basic office equipment. There was a pencil sharpener fastened to one
wall, and a bulky PC, probably brand new in the last half of the nineties,
arranged on another desk alongside a printer. A water cooler, long dried out,
stood close by. And occupying the left wall was a sagging, flame-orange sofa
with three threadbare cushions and spindly walnut legs. Pinned above it, still
displaying the month of September, last accurate in 2001, was a calendar hawking
some kind of mining equipment.

All put together, everything Logan saw in the cramped office
worked to negate his theory that the pristine garage doors were newly
installed. Like a pendulum, his opinion began to sway away from prepper redoubt
and back to this just being a long-idled mining operation.

He turned to check on the progress Jamie and Gus were making
and saw that all three shed doors were hanging open on bent hinges, splintered
wood where their single locks had been, and the two of them were heading his
way.

When they’d closed to within earshot, Logan said, “What did
you find?”

“Spiders,” said Jamie, checking her hair and clothing for
eight-legged passengers. “Lots and lots of spiders.”

Shaking his head, Gus answered, “Decades-old equipment. Nothing
that points to anyone planning on riding out the apocalypse here.”

“I didn’t see anything inside the office that makes me think
any different. But these doors are brand new,” added Logan. He looked at them.
Long and hard. “But the rest of this. It’s the type of picture I’d try to paint
if my place was out in the open like this.”

“Good point,” said Gus. “But I’m thinking we should leave
now and check the other site. This just doesn’t pass the smell test.”

Logan cast his gaze towards the Tahoe and saw Jordan, alert,
head panning side-to-side every couple of seconds.

“Stay here,” Logan said. “I’m going around back.” He turned
the corner at a slow trot, passed the rusting north-facing wall and crabbed
sideways through the narrow space between the building’s northeast corner and
the chain-link fence to his left. He stopped and gazed down the narrow chute
and saw more of the same: razor-wire-topped chain-link on the left, the
building’s rusting rear flank to his right. Boots sucking in the mud, he
sprinted thirty yards or so, rounded the next corner and spotted something that
tugged the pendulum back in the direction of thinking a prepper was at work
here.

The six windows on the south side appeared brand new. They
were double-paned, with sturdy metal cages on the outside and stark white
vertical blinds on the inside. He moved along the wall until he found a window
with a finger’s width of clearance between the blind and the sill.

He knelt down and was pressing his face against the warm
metal, peering inside, when something slammed violently against the window,
vibrating the blinds and visibly bowing the glass outward.

Reacting instantly, Logan leapt backwards as if he’d just
come upon a pissed-off rattlesnake. His bowler hat flew from his head and
landed in the mud as expletives began to flow from his mouth.

While the trapped rotter continued slam-dancing with the
windows, Logan retrieved his hat, brushed it off as best he could, and then
rejoined Jamie and Gus around the corner.

First to notice him round the corner, Jamie said, “Whoa,
Logan. Looks you’ve seen a ghost.”

“That bad, huh?”

Gus said, “You should see yourself in a mirror. You’ve got
the albino look down.”

“What’d you find back there?” asked Jamie.

“Brand new windows. Someone was calling this place home.”

“Was?”

“Yeah, Jamie. Was,” said Logan.

“What’s in there?” she asked with a tilt to her head.

“Something we’re going to have to deal with. I’m going to
grab the bolt cutters.”

Quarry

As Logan worked the cutter’s maw into position to snip the
lock, he could hear their
friend
on the inside banging into the roller
door.

“What makes you so sure that thing or those
things
won’t come storming through the door?”

Stopping what he was doing, Logan rested the cutters on the
cement stair and looked at Jamie. “First off, rotters never
storm
anything. I’d be willing to bet that’s the old guy banging the door. He
probably got bit somewhere outside and then came back to his castle and turned
inside there all alone.”

“What makes you think that’s only one rotter in there?” said
Jamie. “Sounds like five.”

“I was having lunch in Huntsville a while back and I heard a
couple of blue hairs talking about him. Supposedly he’s got no family around
here except for a daughter and granddaughter in Logan.”

“And a little lunch counter gossip makes you certain that’s
him and he died in there all alone?” said Gus, who suddenly went quiet and
cocked his head to the west.

Logan made no reply. He also looked to the west.

Crinkling her brow, Jamie asked, “What’s up guys?”

Gus asked, “Anyone else hear that?”

“From this direction,” said Jordan, pointing across the
standing water that had lost all of its On Golden Pond allure and was now as
black as midnight. “Maybe a car or truck— but I only caught it for a second.”

Logan listened hard. Shook his head.
Nothing.
“Stay
in the truck ... same routine. Hit the siren
only
if you see something,”
he said to Jordan. He waited a second for her to respond, then, after seeing
her nod, turned and addressed Jamie and Gus.

They discussed the best way to go about getting inside
without any of them getting bit.

Worst case scenario, Gus argued, was that there were two,
maybe three rotters in the garage. Why they were in there, and what they may
have been protecting, was a matter of opinion. Even after Logan had pointed out
the recent improvements to the building, Gus was not convinced it was worth
taking the risk to find out. The girls, on the other hand, were both in Logan’s
camp, so sticking with the whole democratic process thing they moved to formulate
a plan. After exploring every avenue, they came to the conclusion that the
armored windows were a no-go. And since the roller doors weren’t going to budge
without utilizing the Jaws of Life, they would have to breach the outer door.
With the plan hashed out, the only thing left to decide was which one of them
was going to open the inner door and let the dead—however many there might
be—come to them. Then, taking everyone by surprise, Gus asked for a volunteer.

Solely to beat Jamie to the punch, Logan agreed to the task.
Last thing he wanted was to lose her based on one of his stupid suppositions.

***

Standing on the first step, with everyone watching, Logan
swept aside the broken padlock with his toe. Then, mimicking Gus’s technique,
he reared back, took a stabbing half-step forward and lashed out, planting the
sole of his right boot on the green door dead-center between the two catches.

But the follow through and splintering wood didn’t happen.
Instead, the steel door and Schlage bolts held fast. The energy behind the
kick—which had to dissipate somewhere—surged back through the waffle-patterned
sole, vibrated up his fibula and tibia, and then shot through his femur, an
electric current juddering every bone north from there.

A half beat later he pitched backwards off the steps,
landing square on his tailbone; the bowler flew off again, adding insult to the
pain making his eyes water.

Sitting in a puddle—with the lady he fancied looking on, and
the intact door looming over him—was the most humiliating moment of his life.