Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (27 page)

Duncan slowed the Land Cruiser to a crawl on 39 near the
T-junction with Trapper’s Loop Road. He looked to the right out Daymon’s side
glass and whistled, low and ominous. A few hundred yards down the intersecting
road, and mostly shielded from view from 39 westbound by an upthrust mound of
earth, was a full-blown horde of walkers. And like most of the Zs they had encountered
since the temperature dipped below freezing, these too were stalled out,
upright and wedged shoulder-to-shoulder into the straight stretch of fenced-in two-lane
splitting the jagged rocky knoll.

Duncan’s stomach dropped at first sight of them. He guessed the
mass of rotten flesh to number close to a thousand, their snow-dusted heads
just little white dots going on and on southbound for as far as his old eyes
could see.

“I spotted them on the way out of Huntsville,” Cade said.

“I missed them,” Duncan said unapologetically. He brought
the Cruiser to a halt in the middle of 39.

The two-way warbled and Wilson asked, “Where the hell did all
those come from?”

The radio remained untouched in the center console, the Land
Cruiser’s occupants all fixated on the dead.

The 4Runner pulled to a smooth stop alongside the bigger
SUV. The passenger window pulsed down and Wilson was staring at Duncan, his
hand forming the universal
Hang Loose
gesture, thumb and pinky finger
extended, and pressed to his head like a telephone. He was mouthing, “Pick up
your radio.”

Ignoring the redhead, Duncan tapped his knuckles on the
leather-wrapped steering wheel in time to the low music coming from the
speakers. Voice thick with disappointment, he said, “No chance we’re going to
cull all of those today.”

“Or tomorrow ... or even the next. Why don’t we stop and do
these ones right now?” Daymon pleaded, gesturing ahead to another throng of
unmoving creatures hundreds strong. A few of them dotted the greenway between
39 and the cement boat ramp cutting the reservoir’s sandy shore. The majority,
however—no doubt attracted by the nonstop sound of water lapping the hulls of
dozens of grounded watercraft and looking like faithful fans crowding the stage
at a Phish concert—had congregated along the sandy shore down by the waterline.

“Hell, Urch’s right. We’re going to need a week of snow and
ice and every last person from the compound poking eyes to put all of these
down,” Duncan agreed.

Wilson was now gesticulating wildly with both arms.

Duncan snatched up the radio. “Keep your shorts on,
Red
,”
he said, still not ready to give the twenty-year-old the courtesy of his
attention.

“They’re not our problem right now,” Cade said. “If history
proves”—he craned and looked out the rear quarter window at the horde—“when
they do start wandering again they’ll continue on south to Morgan.”

“They’ll be back ... eventually,” Duncan said. “You know
that.”

“Yeah, they will,” Cade agreed. “But now that we have the
Ogden approach sealed off, we can winnow them down starting in Huntsville and
keep at it until midnight or so. Turn in and get up early and work our way over
to Eden while the weather holds.”

“All in a day’s work,” Daymon said, rubbing his sore right shoulder.

Duncan pulsed down his window. Stared daggers at Wilson. “Just
like an ankle biter … what was so goshdang important it couldn’t wait a few
seconds?”

Looking sheepish, Wilson said nothing.

Duncan cocked his head. “Come on. I’m sorry for callin you
Red
.
Now spit it out.”

“What about them,” Wilson stammered, hitching a thumb at the
distant horde.

The cloud cover parted momentarily. Duncan squinted against
the glare, collecting his thoughts. “You get your baseball bat, hop out, and
get started. We’ll be back for ya in the morning.”

Wilson stuck his hand in the window opening, first three
fingers extended vertically. “Read between the lines.” He smiled wanly and
powered up his window. Then, thinking out loud, he added, “Wonder what the eff
is eating Old Man?”

“He’s a
dick
when he’s not drinking,” Taryn said,
watching the Land Cruiser pull away. She looked Wilson square in the face. “If
you haven’t figured that out yet. You, my friend, are blind.”

He looked at the dead standing three deep at the reservoir’s
edge. Cast his gaze farther out to a lonely cabin cruiser anchored offshore. He
noticed a female form above deck, snow-covered and frozen in place, clutching
the rail two-handed. Suddenly his feelings didn’t factor into the equation.
Remembering how his mom always drilled the
golden rule
concept into his
head, he decided he didn’t have anything to say.

In the back seat, Jamie leaned against Lev and in his ear,
whispered, “See … I’m not the only one who has noticed the change in Duncan.”

***

A short distance east on 39, where the straight stretch of State
Route became a steady carving arc north toward downtown Huntsville, Duncan
braked and nosed the truck perpendicular to the shoulder and parked there
facing north.

“Is this good?” he asked Cade.

“Perfect,” Cade answered. He punched his window down and
flinched as a gust of east wind blasted him full on in the face. He reached
back into the cargo area, rummaged in his pack, and came back with his Steiners
in hand. He braced his elbows on the window channel and brought the military
grade optics to his eyes, their 7x magnification instantly adding sharp detail
to the panorama laid out before him.

With the stench coming off his clothing now invading every
crevice of the vehicle thanks to the intermittent wind gusts, Daymon twisted
his upper body around and faced Cade. “I could have sworn some of those
deadheads down there by Main Street were standing when we took the bypass
through here earlier.”

Unable to see for himself, and eager to hear Cade’s
response, Duncan lowered the stereo volume, putting Hank Williams Junior’s
crooning about
country boys surviving
way into the background.

“Why don’t you turn that all the way off,” Cade said. “I’m
getting a bad feeling about this.”

Duncan killed the radio just as the 4Runner pulled up
smartly outside his window. He looked and saw that all eyes were glued to the
town across Pineview Reservoir’s slate gray surface.

Duncan turned to Daymon. “How do you know there’s a Main
Street in Huntsville?” he asked. “No way you can read the signs from here.”

“Yes I can,” Daymon replied. “Next one over from Main is
Gullible Lane. Then comes Naive Drive and the far one there is ... I’m Yanking
Your Chain Boulevard.”

Doing his best to ignore the banter, Cade swept the
binoculars over the finger of land that curled west by south away from downtown.
It was narrow, maybe a few hundred yards wide at most, and dotted with
headstones of all different sizes and all with inches-high wedges of snow perched
atop them. There was a black hearse parked sidelong among the grave markers,
its last delivery, a gun-metal gray casket, still inside and visible behind the
curtained side windows. He continued the sweep left-to-right over Huntsville,
which was very small, encompassing no more than six blocks to a side. The
destruction wrought on it by the runaway conflagration was near total. Save for
the Queen Annes bordering the downtown core on high ground to the east and what
looked like a gas station plus a couple of nearby houses rising above the ashes
to the north, all that remained centrally was the same trio of buildings he
recognized from the cursory recon taken earlier from atop the hill southeast of
town. “Nope,” Cade finally said, lowering the Steiners and clapping Daymon on
the shoulder. “There is no Main Street. Nor is there a Naive Drive. But I did
see one called
Daymon Talks Too Much Crap Lane
. By the way”—Cade made a
show of sniffing the air—“you, my friend, need a bath.”

“Sheeit,” said Daymon, feigning slapping his leg. “Captain
America does have a funny bone in his body after all.”

“Yeah, but my timing and delivery are all off,” Cade replied,
deadpan. “In all seriousness, though, looks like the streets are all numbered.
If we keep going straight where 39 cuts east towards the compound, the road
turns into the central drag that splits Huntsville, demarking east from west.
That’s where we need to be.”

Now eschewing the radio in the event that anyone was
listening in, Duncan lowered his window and, talking over the whipping wind,
conveyed the information directly to the others. He finished by telling them to
be on high alert because both he and Cade still had a feeling that they may not
be the only humans in Huntsville.

With Wilson’s wide-eyed look on his mind, Duncan backed away
from the shoulder and pulled out on 39 ahead of the 4Runner. He caught Cade’s
eye in the rearview mirror. “Where to after we hit the center of town?”

“Let’s start west at the cemetery and work our way east to
those houses on the hill. Pause there at Glenda’s place for some food and then do
our best to mop up as much of downtown as we can before turning in.”

“Solid plan,” Daymon said, smiling. “Kindness likes a
bedtime snack before I tuck her in for the night.”

Duncan turned
Hank
back on. Then he caught Daymon’s
eye and winked. “You keep talking about that machete like she’s your new
girlfriend or something, and I’ll be obligated to tell your current one about
your infidelity.”

“Fiancée,” Daymon said, grinning.

“No shit?” Duncan and Cade said at once, seemingly in full-on
Dolby surround-sound-stereo.

“Nah ... just me talkin crap.”

Touché
, thought Cade.

Cade looked out his window and shook his head. There
was
a Main Street and it ran east/west. Then he gazed right and chuckled at the irony
on display. Hanging out over the sidewalk and gently swaying was a sign adorned
with red two-foot-high letters that read DAVE’S BBQ and, somehow, name
withstanding, the joint had survived the fire. The storefront faced west and the
reservoir was reflected in the small windows inset just above the thick sheets
of overlapping plywood that looked to have spared the larger plate windows below
them from falling to looters. That the place was still intact seemed a miracle
to Cade given the surrounding blocks had been razed by fire.

Sharing the wall to the right of the BBQ place and running
the length of the block was what used to be a bar called The Angle On Inn. The
mirrored back bar was trashed and the furniture reduced to sticks. It looked as
if one hell of a bar fight had broken out with the window glass and neon beer
signs suffering the worst of it.

Sandwiching Dave’s to the north was a sundry store called Rhonda’s
Reservoir Requisites. Cade especially liked the play on words here. The door
was but an empty bent frame hanging ajar by the top hinge, which looked to be
one loose screw from parting with the frame itself. Left of the entry, affixed
to the wall at eye-level, were a pair of steadfast survivors of the apocalypse.
The colorful cardboard sign advertising cold Budweiser twelve-packs for $13.99 was
done up red, white, and blue with stars and stripes, a holdover from the final
holiday America enjoyed free of death and destruction. Below the patriotic beer
advertisement was a weathered cardboard sign that read: LIVE BAIT $1.99.
Emblazoned on one flapping corner of the bait sign was a happy little worm
wearing a fedora and flashing a grin suggesting he knew nothing about the fishhook
and hungry predators in his future.
A fitting metaphor for mankind’s
upcoming tangle with the Omega virus, indeed.

Judging by the mess inside the store, Cade figured Rhonda
was all sold out on both of the advertised items. In fact, all he could see from
his seat in the SUV through the windowless storefront were emptied shelves and
a single cadaver standing in the lane designated
Express Checkout
. But
things were going slow for this one. Like the one at the Shell station, it was
charred black as night and rooted in place and, as if it knew something Cade
did not, its lips curled back over its teeth to reveal an evil, ivory-hued
grin.

Wasn’t that the truth about all of humanity?
Cade
thought as the Land Cruiser turned a left.
We were all in effect the worm
and little did we know that the hook called Omega was headed our way.

***

In the five minutes it took the group to get from downtown to
the entrance to the peninsula called Cemetery Point, as if God had grown tired
of punishing them with drab hues of gray and frequent gusts of biting wind, the
sun had broken through the clouds and the air had grown calm.

The single swinging gate, presumably used to block off
vehicular access to both the Cemetery Point Marina and Huntsville Cemetery
during off hours, was hanging wide open. Behind the useless gate and STOP sign
was a lonely toll collection station. The way it had been abandoned, with its
metal mesh window guards hinged up and battened in place, gave the impression
that the last person manning it had no intention of ever returning.

Wary of there being tire-damaging spikes under the snow,
Duncan stopped just short of the entry and, under Daymon’s watchful gaze, put
the SUV into
Park
. He exited the Land Cruiser, hustled forward and kicked
at the snow, finding nothing. On his way back, he paused for a second and ran
his gaze over the scraps of paper that covered every square inch of the little
one-person shack. They all contained desperate and very personal messages from
people looking to reunite with missing loved ones. Scrawled big and bold in
black Sharpie on one weather-beaten paper plate was a particularly poignant message.
It read: JOE HUSTED WAS HERE 7-29 LOOKING FOR VALERIE HUSTED. SOMEHOW I MISSED
YOU! LOVE YOU HONEY! LEFT FOR JACKSON HOLE 8-1. PS - MY MOM DID NOT PULL
THROUGH. Before moving on, he read another note written in old folks’ cursive on
a piece of cardboard ripped from a box of Pampers. It was lengthy and penned by
a mother named Sue Adler who revealed she was camping in her Volvo in a parking
lot nearby. After detailing her escape from Ogden, she expressed her dismay
that not one other Adler family member was here upon her arrival. She ended with
a plea for whoever read her note that knew her to come and search her out. It
was signed with a flourish and a bevy of X’s and O’s. There was no date on the
one-sided correspondence, nor was there evidence suggestive of how it had turned
out for the anonymous lady called Sue Adler.

When Duncan returned to the idling SUV, he was heavy of
heart and lacking the energy to proceed. He took his seat behind the wheel and
sighed.

Cade said, “Checking for spike strips?”

“Yep,” Duncan drawled. “Found more than I was looking for.”

“They’re usually facing out on the exit side,” proffered
Daymon.

“An ounce of prevention ...” Duncan replied, sounding tired.

Swinging wide right and with the sound of snow squelching
under tires, both vehicles left the guard shack behind. A hundred feet beyond
the shack on the right side was a matching pair of institutional-sized
dumpsters. They were brimming with all manner of trash and, taking dumpster
diving to a new level, a moldering corpse that had been stuffed in head first
with its horribly twisted legs sticking skyward.

“Damn,” Daymon said. “Someone threw out a perfectly good
white guy.”

Chuckling, Duncan swung his gaze forward and said, “It’s not
like the cemetery is all the way across town.”

***

From his seat in the 4Runner, Wilson noticed the macabre
sight passing by outside his window. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all,”
he said, shaking his head.

Lev leaned between the front seats and pointed out the
patchwork of colorful nylon tents through the smattering of trees to their left.
There were too many to count and looked to have been set up some time ago among
the trees near the reservoir’s edge. He said, “That’s some desperation right
there ... camping damn near inside a cemetery.”

“No, that’s desperation there,” Jamie said, pointing to an
old maroon Volvo wagon stuffed to the gills with half a house worth of
belongings. The side windows had been shored up with framed pictures of a large
family posing together in happier times. Looked to her like a couple and what
appeared to be their three adult daughters. And speaking to the normalcy bias
that had been in play when the dead began to walk and led to many a person’s
downfall, brown leaves of long dead houseplants pushed up against the car’s
long side windows, filling in the gaps between the photos. “Treated the event
like a simple cross-country move ... and paid the price for it.”

“That could have been me and Sash if Mom hadn’t been flying
that day,” Wilson said, his eyes glued to the overloaded car. “Hell, we even
had a Volvo ... and an apartment full of pictures and plants.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jamie said, putting her hand on
his shoulder. Next to her, Lev was shaking his head and mouthing, “Don’t dredge
it up.”

“It’s OK,” Wilson said. “I’ve let go of the idea she
survived her layover and is out there looking for us. Sasha, on the other hand
... when Jenkins took off to find Pauline, she wouldn’t leave the idea of us
looking for Mom alone.”

“I won’t mention it again,” Jamie said. “Around you or her.”

Wilson turned forward. Saw Taryn’s chest heaving. Tears were
streaming down her cheeks, falling onto her parka and sliding off the
Scotchgard-treated fabric.

She saw him eyeing her and immediately started the silent side-to-side
headshake Wilson knew to mean she wanted her space.

***

Duncan saw the Volvo as soon as they passed the dumpsters.
He instantly put two and two together, but said nothing. He’d already said a
prayer for Sue Adler and her outcome and considered it out of his hands now. No
reason to mention her plight and drag everyone else into his deepening emotional
abyss. So he drove on without slowing. Without casting so much as a second
glance at the Volvo, he wheeled the Land Cruiser along a gently curling drive
that was choked with abandoned vehicles and trash and corpses, the latter both
fallen and upright. To Duncan, who was old enough to remember seeing footage of
the Woodstock Music Festival on TV, it looked like the aftermath of that orgy
of drugs, drinking, and debauchery. Had he not been eyeing a career in the
military at the time, he probably would have made the trek. Hell, who wouldn’t
have liked to spend a weekend awash in booze and get to see Jimi and Janis and
one of his all-time favorite bands, CCR, live and in person?

***

When the two Toyotas finally passed through the yawning
gates and onto the cemetery’s hallowed ground, it was clear that the stiff wind
gusts that blew through earlier had toppled all but a handful of the
immobilized flesh-eaters. The tops of the tombstones had also been scoured of their
crowns of snow and the boats out on the water were now bobbing aimlessly, their
anchor lines no longer taut.

Duncan drove deeper into the graveyard and parked the Land
Cruiser beside the forlorn-looking hearse. He killed the engine and craned
back, looking at Cade. “What now, Boss?”

“We snuff them all,” Cade said, no remorse in his voice.

“I’m down,” Daymon said. He dug his whetstone from a pocket
and passed it over Kindness’s long curved blade. Examining the nicks and slight
waves in the metal, he added, “I’m going to have to get a hatchet like Jamie’s
... for when this girl gives up the ghost.”

“Nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned lock blade like
mine or some kind of a dagger like Cade’s,” Duncan said over the steady
schwicking
sound of Daymon applying a fresh edge to his blade.

Cade made no reply. He was consulting the barometer on his
Suunto and hoping that Mother Nature wasn’t getting ready to edge Glenda’s
parting words to the realm of prophecy. The doors opening his cue, he followed
suit and once outside got the blood flowing back into his gimpy ankle with a
quick set of jumping-jacks, followed by a few squat-lunges—all of which hurt
more than they seemed to help.

Taryn rolled up in the 4Runner and parked adjacent to the
Land Cruiser, the open grave and hearse taking up the space between the two.

Duncan and Daymon were already standing beside the open
grave and looking down on the half-dozen Zs trapped there. Nearby was a snow-covered
dirt mound, flashes of the green tarp covering it showing around the edges. All
that remained of what once was a spray of sympathy flowers awaiting the
unfinished ceremony were scattered stems and a bare wire stand lying on its
side and partially covered with snow.

Cade emerged from behind the hearse and waved the occupants
of the 4Runner over. After a brief huddle during which everyone had a say in
where and with whom they wanted to start, they paired up and fanned out to all four
points of the compass.

Daymon started on the southwest tip of the peninsula near
where the majority of the dead had become mired.

Duncan and Cade cleared the inner shore of dead, starting
south of the hearse and working their way north by east to an eventual
rendezvous with Jamie and Lev, who were culling the dead twenty yards east, and
on a mirror image tangent that also had them moving north by east.

Starting in the center of the cemetery near the vehicles,
Taryn and Wilson picked their way among the tombstone maze. With no real method
to their madness, they walked a counterclockwise spiral out from the hearse,
kneeling next to each prostrate form. The routine was always the same. First
locate the head and clear the snow from the face. Next, pierce the brain
through the eye socket until hearing the telltale crunch of bone losing to
steel. Wash, rinse, repeat.

“What do you think, Wil?” Taryn asked, taking a break to rub
her sore shoulder. “Are we going to be able to appease Cade and get our five
hundred kills before nightfall?”

“I figure I’m already a third of the way there.”

“Sorry I asked,” she said. “Let me rephrase that. Do you
think we’ll kill enough of these things to even make a difference before it
warms up? Or are we just spinning our wheels here?”

He went to one knee and plunged his blade to the hilt into
the eye socket of a terribly emaciated first-turn. Without a word nor rising to
move, he pivoted to his right and repeated the motion, giving a child-sized Z
the sweet mercy of final death. All in all, he put down four former fellow
human beings in less time than it took for him to fulfill a drive-thru order at
his last job. Fast Burger this was not. He was dealing death on a grand scale,
and with every thrust of cold steel a little part of him died. He took a
halfhearted swipe with the blade on some grass poking up through the snow. Eyes
downcast, he said, “Wanna know the truth?”

About to deliver a coup de gras, Taryn’s hand stopped in mid-air.
“Yes,” she said. “The honest to goodness truth. Lay it on me.”

A bar of sunlight lanced down, painting a wide swath of land
near the water’s edge a brilliant saffron yellow.

Wilson drew a deep breath. Exhaled and said, “I think we’re
just delaying the inevitable.”

She finished the motion, stroking her blade deep into a
first turn’s brain. “Death, or undeath?”

“Doesn’t matter. Either way we lose each other.”

A wild whoop carried from somewhere beyond their parked SUVs.

“Daymon’s going crazy,” Taryn said.

“Going? said Wilson, incredulous. “He’s got a shit ton of
issues.”