Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (47 page)

“How many?”

“Half a dozen,” said Duncan, turning a full circle, eyes
scanning the airspace all around. “There’s a lot more room to land here. I
figure the shit went down so fast at the quarry that they didn’t need to land
more than the two anyway. Puts the odds at like eight to four. Not winnable,
especially if you get jumped like they did.”

“And the other helicopters. What did they do?”

“Probably just orbited the place while my bro was dying.”

“So you think these dudes in the helicopters are separate
from the folks who’ve been attacking the compound?”

“Correct. We’re up against more than just the Huntsville
yokels. Using your terminology ... some real bad
dudes
.”

Daymon bent down to inspect the lawn. Pulled a couple of
blades, threw them up like a pro golfer might. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because those are the yokels over there. And they’re dead
as door nails. Ain’t coming back. And ain’t gonna bother us no more.”

“I think I much rather prefer dealing with the yokels in
their shiny SUVs over a group of bandits ripping around in helicopters.”

“You and me both. C’mon,” said Duncan as he set off around
the pool, dodging the white wooden pool furniture someone had lined up as
meticulously as those on the deck of a cruise ship.

Following a couple steps behind, Daymon kept his head
moving—
on a swivel
, as he’d heard Cade say. And once they’d reached the
garage which was standing open and filled with several new Toyota SUVs, all
still tagged with paper dealer plates, it became obvious to him that Duncan’s
hunch had been correct. He cast his gaze over the prostrate bodies, all of
which sported puckered little entry wounds on their torsos—
center mass
,
Daymon thought to himself. Scattered about near the bodies were a number of
playing cards that for some reason looked familiar.

“Like I said. It’s obvious that these guys weren’t
soldiers,” said Duncan as he rolled the rigid corpse of a twenty-something male
over using the toe of his boot. He grimaced at the sight of cratered flesh and
muscle and dermis all hanging in tatters. And contrasting sharply on the pale
skin was spattered blood, congealed and dried to a very dark crimson.

Duncan went silent for a long moment while Daymon bent low
to inspect the bodies.

Finally Duncan added, “These folks weren’t fighters.”

“And all the dead are dudes. There’s not one woman among
them,” observed Daymon.

“And what do you make of these?” asked Duncan, holding up one
of the red and black playing cards.

“Let me see.” Daymon took the card. Looked at both sides and
said, “I’ve seen these before. Had a run in with a young guy in the Silver
Dollar in Jackson Hole. After I dropped him with a Reacher special—”

Looking bewildered, Duncan interrupted and asked, “Reacher
special?”

“Broke his nose with my forehead. I’ll loan you the books
when we get back. He’s more of a badass than that guy in the book you gave me.”

“Mitch Rapp?”

“Yeah ... just one man’s opinion though.”

“What about the cards?” prompted Duncan.

“A bunch of military-looking guys, high and tight haircuts
... wearing camo. I’m pretty sure they were Bishop’s men. They were near the
door when I bugged out. They were playing a game of Hold ’em using an identical
deck of those cards.”

“And that’s the
only
place you set eyes on them?”

“Except for right now. Right here.”

“Well whose
eyes
are bad now?” said Duncan,
extracting an identical, albeit slightly waterlogged specimen from his hip
pocket. “Found this at the quarry. It was in a puddle a ways off from Jenkins’
rig.”

“And,” said Daymon, “what the hell does it all mean?”

“To a veteran of the Vietnam war ... a warning to the enemy.
A way to say ‘don’t fuck with us because we’re the baddest motherfuckers in the
valley.’ Hell, I dealt a number of these myself after kicking some ass and
taking some names—”

“And ears?” asked Daymon.

“Hell no. Not widespread at least ... that’s mostly crap
from the movies. But come to think of it, there were a couple of shadowy types
I knew who might have dabbled in a little of that. But if I told ya then I’d
have to kill ya.” The ice between them finally broken, he smiled broadly.
“Hell, right now I’d probably hack a few off if the opportunity presented
itself and the ears that I was hacking off belonged to those dirtbags that
killed Logan. And when we get back, after I bury him, I’m going to pick Tran’s
brain and see if he can’t decide once and for all what it is he
really
heard Bishop say.”

Daymon looked away, north by west, at the sun playing off
the reservoir and asked, “What then?”

But the answer didn’t come in word form. Instead, out of
nowhere there was a tremendous explosion that sent him diving for cover. And
before he’d even hit the bricks there was a second percussive blast that stole
his breath and set his ears to ringing.

Everything had happened so fast. A rotter had somehow gotten
around his blind side. But Duncan redeemed himself for his own slipup at the
roadblock and drew down on the freshly-turned monster.

“Motherfucker,” said Daymon as he rolled over onto his back.
“First thought I had when I saw you draw on me was that you were having a
flashback from Nam. Then I thought ... Daymon, you’re getting smoked by a big
ass pistol.”

Cordite smoke curling from the .45’s gaping muzzle, Duncan
reached his free hand out, pulled Daymon to his feet and, without missing a
beat, said, “Once I find out where Bishop and his Hold ‘em-playing buddies are,
I’m going to go there and kill him ...
very slowly
, or die trying.”

“Hopefully not the latter,” replied Daymon, hands shaking
from the near death experience. Never before had he felt the heat and shockwave
nor the crack of a bullet passing by his head, let alone two of them closely
spaced and traveling nine hundred feet per second. “I owe you one.”

“No shit,” replied Duncan. He clopped the taller man on the
shoulder and without another word set out across the driveway heading back to
the Black Hawk.

Near Grand Junction, Colorado

Terra cotta earth and gnarled trees trying hard to survive
the unforgiving high desert passed under the thundering Chinook. “We’ll be over
Grand Junction Regional in a matter of minutes,” said Ari, his voice broadcast
loudly over the onboard speakers. “I’m going to hover for a little while when
we get there so that we can observe a moment of silence for a fallen hero.
Because in this man’s opinion, if it weren’t for Sergeant Maddox’s ultimate
sacrifice, some of us on this ship wouldn’t be here.”

Nodding in agreement, Cade gave Brook’s thigh a squeeze.

Though she truly was grateful for the man’s sacrifice,
Taryn’s reaction to the news was different. Instantly she went rigid, the mere
mention of her former prison tilling up an entire harvest’s worth of new
nightmares—more than enough to last her the rest of her young life. She sat up
and drew her legs in and began a subtle rocking motion.

Drawing her near, Wilson matched the gentle swaying of her
body and caressed her shoulder the way a mom might console a hurt child.

Phone still in hand, Cade turned it over repeatedly,
wondering what good could come from inserting himself into the middle of the
Duncan and Logan equation. He looked around the cabin, finally settling his
gaze on Raven, who had somehow gotten ahold of some kind of electronic device.
White wires snaked from under her helmet and her head bounced to a rhythm he
couldn’t hear. Next to her, Sasha was dozing, a large tan handbag filling in as
a pillow between her head and the vibrating helicopter. Then he lingered on the
two lovebirds across the aisle from him, who were still wrapped in the same mad
embrace they’d been in since Taryn had come aboard.

Finally it hit him that if it weren’t for the crusty
aviator, Duncan, he might not be sitting here next to his lovely wife, with his
beautiful daughter, loving life no matter how difficult it was—or was about to
become.
Nope
, he thought. He’d have died on the highway near Boise if
Duncan hadn’t been there. Furthermore, he felt he still owed the man for going
out of his way and plucking him and Daymon from either a slow death in the
farmhouse attic or a fast death at the hands and teeth of the Zs that’d had
them surrounded.

So he extracted the phone and extended the stubby antenna.
He shifted his helmet aside and inserted the bud into his ear. Tapped out the
unlock code and waited for the phone to indicate it was connected to a
satellite. Meanwhile he scrolled through the
missed call
log, found the
missed call entry labeled ‘1’, and renamed it
Tice
out of respect for
the man’s ultimate sacrifice. Finally the compass icon flashed, letting him
know a connection had been established.

He looked around the cabin once again. Then he peered out
the window as the Chinook traversed the airspace over the outskirts of Grand
Junction. Down below he saw dozens of Zs ambling the gray concrete side
streets.

“Five mikes to Grand Junction Regional,” said Ari, forgoing
the usual hand signal.

No active military mission. No active operators aboard.
Therefore, no need
, thought Cade as he thumbed the send button.

Huntsville, Utah

Two hundred and twenty-eight miles away, Daymon had just
stowed his shotgun and was trying to find a comfortable angle for his legs.

“Why don’t you adjust the seat?”

“You can do that?”

“Just like a car.”

“All that way from Schriever to Driggs, and then today
tooling around with my legs scrunched up like a dead bug, and you couldn’t find
it in your heart to tell me sooner?”

After a sharp cackle accompanied by a leg slap, Duncan said,
“It’s not my fault the last person riding in that seat was a shrimp.”

Making no reply, Daymon instead fumbled around near the
seat’s edge and pulled a lever that sent the seat yawing right and tilting back
on its rail a few precious inches. “Ahhh,” he exclaimed at about the same time
the electronic trilling of the sat-phone emanated from within his pants pocket.

Duncan watched Daymon squirm in the tight confines, a mad
hunt for the phone. “Gonna answer the thing?” he said.

Daymon hit a key to talk and said, “Hello.”

“Daymon?” said a disembodied voice that was hard to place with
any degree of certainty.

“It is. Am I speaking with Captain Cade Grayson?”

“Affirmative. No rank is necessary ... Cade will do.”

“Did you listen to my messages, Cade?”

“Affirmative. I listened to them twice,” he replied.

“Well there’s more,” Daymon stated slowly.

The funny thing was that Cade wasn’t at all surprised.
Somehow he knew in the pit of his stomach that the two messages couldn’t have
contained all of the pertinent information. That would have been
way
too
easy. And as far as he knew, Mister Murphy was loathe to take even a day off—at
least where anything having to do with Cade Grayson was concerned. So he sat
back, ears perked, waiting to hear whatever Daymon had to add.

“You still there?”

“Affirmative,” Cade said back. “Lay it on me.”

Daymon went over the newest revelations concerning the death
cards, as well as the explanation Duncan had provided. Then, leaving no stone
unturned, he described the massacre in Huntsville and the similarities it
shared with the murders and probable abductions that had happened at the
quarry. Once Daymon had finished his three-minute oration there was a full
thirty seconds of silence on Cade’s end.

“Hello. You still there?” said Daymon, trying his best to
ignore Duncan, who had been sitting in the pilot’s seat, hand out, palm up,
mouthing emphatically, “Let me speak to him.”

Playing keep away with the phone, Daymon leaned as far away
from Duncan as possible and said, “So what’s your take on the situation?”

“I think Duncan’s a big boy and there’s nothing I can do to help
the
situation
from here.”

“Where’s here?”

Cade looked out the window briefly. “I’m staring at red
rocks and walking corpses from a Chinook helicopter—” He looked at the
altimeter on his Suunto. “—five hundred and two feet over the suburbs of Grand
Junction, Colorado, where I’ve got some important business to attend to. And if
all goes as planned, we should be wheels down in Mack within the hour.”

Sweet
, thought Daymon. He’d helped fight a complex
fire there a number of years ago and knew the lay of the land pretty well. He
imagined an overhead view of the area and did a quick mental calculation.
“Hell, give-or-take, as the crow flies, you’re only two hundred miles away from
the compound. Can’t you pull rank and bypass Mack and have them deliver you and
your family to the GPS coordinates?”

Not wanting to go into too much detail, Cade said, “It’s not
that simple—”

Daymon interrupted him by saying, “Didn’t seem to stop you
from getting that Whipper prick to give up this Black Hawk I’m currently
sitting in.”

“That was General Desantos’s doing. And that’s a whole
‘nother can of worms I don’t want to open and revisit.” Concentrating hard on
how much he should divulge concerning his leaving Delta, he stared out the
window and watched as the massive shadow of the Chinook and the blocky
silhouette of the captive F-650 seemed to skim along the contours of the
ground. Finally, after another full thirty seconds of dead air on both ends,
Cade realized since Daymon stated he was in the Black Hawk, then Duncan
had
to be within arms’ reach. “Put Duncan on,” he said sharply. “But before you do,
I think there’s something you need to know ... and your girl Heidi needs to
know. Robert Christian is dead. He’s probably having dinner with Hitler as we
speak.”