Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (4 page)

The single-car garage was nearly empty and illuminated only
by slivers of flat light working their way between the horizontal slats of a
set of aluminum blinds. The owner of the house, definitely not a car guy, used
the space exclusively for storing lawn beautification and gardening items. A
workbench was covered with bags of fertilizer and other growth aids, all
emblazoned with big colorful eye-catching font touting optimal PH levels and
assorted added minerals and the like.
No use.
However, there were
several tired-looking boxes, stressed and filled to overflowing with scores of
small packets filled with all manner of seeds. Upon closer inspection, Cade was
displeased to find the ratio of flowers and vegetables leaning more towards the
latter column.

Under the bench was a lawnmower, trimmer, rusted rototiller
and industrial-sized plastic spray bottles with marks for calculating
measurements and handled pumps for pressurizing the mix. Save for the meager
supply of vegetable seeds which got dumped into the pack, and a nearly full
fifty-five-pound bag of dry dog food which Max had shown keen interest in and
Cade had promptly heaved over his shoulder, there was nothing else of use to
either of them.

Recalling some items not on the list but logged into his
memory earlier, Cade grabbed a paper sack with stiff and sturdy handles from
under the sink in the kitchen. Nose wrinkled against the stench from the sink,
he padded through the front room and transited the hall to the bedroom. Without
hesitation, he went straight for the bookshelf he’d spotted earlier and emptied
two rows of paperbacks into the grocery bag. As they tumbled from the shelves,
the titles and author’s names on the spines and covers registered:
Tolkien,
Heinlein, Bradbury, Sagan, Asimov, Niven, Goodkind
. The list went on and the
bag grew heavy as all of the greats passed in front of his eyes and vanished
inside. He snatched a trade paperback off the top shelf and examined the cover.
Saw the book was by an author named
Forstchen
and the title was
One
Second After
. The blurb on the back cover revealed the book was about an
EMP attack on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States; a catastrophe he’d
gladly embrace over the current widespread Omega outbreak and resulting armies
of flesh-seeking walking dead. But the reality of the matter for both the
book’s content and what was happening all around the world was that there was
no reset button for either. No way to bring those already turned back to the
side of the living. And where Omega was concerned, time was of the essence. So,
making himself a mental note to crack it open later, he tossed the book atop
the others and, bag in hand, retraced his steps down the hall.

A quick glance out the window told him the temperature had
fallen since he’d been inside. The big, fast-falling flakes had seemingly been
supersized and were now floating to earth like goose down. The kind of snow he
and Brook sought out in their youth. Oftentimes elusive in the Pacific
Northwest, deep fluffy powder was his favorite surface to ride in the world.
The waist-high stuff his petite wife plowed through wearing a wide smile.

Youth
not
wasted on the young, he thought, focusing
on the dead down the hill. The further drop in temperature seemed to have
affected them greatly. Though they were still moving his way, uphill, their
pace was glacially slow. That was the good news.

Grabbing his attention a tick later was a sight that
wouldn’t have even registered on his give-a-shit-meter had it been moving at a
normal pace. However, it wasn’t. In addition, the sheer numbers involved were
staggering. Hundreds, if not more than a thousand migrating flesh eaters—which
in Cade’s mind after having seen the hordes in Denver and Los Angeles and at
the Conex roadblock standing between Ogden and Huntsville, still constituted a
herd—a grouping not large enough to move cars and topple poles, yet still a
force to be wary of. Under normal circumstances, he would lay low and let them
pass on by, but this turn of events was far from normal. Trying to wait them
out as slow as they were moving might get him snowed in and trapped outside the
wire overnight. The former he could dig out of. The latter was unacceptable.
The last time he’d been trapped in a house by the dead his life had been spared
by the appearance of a Black Hawk helicopter with Duncan at the controls. This
time, however, if the slow-moving train of death somehow got wind of him and
encircled the home, these flimsy pre-fab walls wouldn’t last an hour under the
kind of force numbers like that were capable of exerting.

But he had a plan. So he pushed the loveseat aside, opened
the broken door, and let Max outside first. Forgoing the keyless entry for fear
the dead might hear the alarm chirp, he opened the Ford with the key and let
the dog in. The overstuffed Kelty, unwieldy bag of Purina dog chow, and paper
sack full of reading material all went into the backseat area with Max. After
spilling out a liberal amount of dog food onto the floorboards for the
shepherd, Cade gently closed the rear passenger door, climbed behind the wheel,
and pulled his door shut with care.

Acutely aware of how fast and far sound could travel in the
open, before firing the big V10, Cade planned his egress route from the vantage
the higher ground afforded. By the time he came to the most obvious conclusion,
the dead had seemingly ceased all forward movement and appeared frozen in place
due west of the rehab place.

Adding a mental wrinkle to his plan, which he figured would
be doable only on account of this newfound turn of events, he started the motor
and jockeyed the truck around on the patch of snow-covered gravel.

Fear the reaper
, crossed his mind as he wheeled the
F-650 down the narrow gravel drive and what he hoped to be a quick in-and-out
stop at
Back in the Saddle Rehabilitation.
And if all went as planned there,
hopefully an uneventful meet-and-greet with the unmoving zombie herd.

The first missile came extremely close to taking out
Daymon’s eye. However, just as he was reacting to the first near miss, the
second whizzing projectile, coming from the opposite direction, caught him full
force on the top of his head. He let out a yelp and a plume of his own breath
enveloped his face as he went to the ground on all fours, numbed hands feeling
around blindly for something to fight back with.

“Incoming,” bellowed Wilson as he dove, joining Daymon on
the crushed grass where he instantly began pulling armfuls of heavy snow close
to his body.

Keeping his head down just below the bent grass stalks
demarking the edge of his and Duncan’s sad attempt at creating an alien
crop-circle, Daymon slowly walked a three-sixty—still on all fours—and was able
to locate both enemy positions.

A blur of white shot by a foot over their heads from the
direction Jamie and the others were holed up.

By the time Daymon was back to facing Wilson, the scrappy
redhead had already produced half a dozen perfectly formed snowballs each the
size of a navel orange. Then Daymon noticed the twenty-year-old’s breath billow
up around his ever-present camouflage boonie hat and knew instantly their
position was given away. So he grabbed two of the snowballs, winked at Wilson,
and laid flat. Tucking his arms in, he logrolled a few feet left and came up to
his knees, throwing arm cocked, eyes scanning for a target. Which he found a
few feet left of where he’d initially spotted movement.

Daymon raised up on his knees, arm cocked and the target in
his crosshairs. He let fly with everything he had in him, but before he could
see if the snowball had found its mark, there was an explosion of pain behind
his eyes and he fell back down onto his stomach, uttering obscenities and
trying to blink his eyesight back so he could go kick the shit out of the
headhunting waste of skin who had beaned him.

North of Ray and Helen’s Home

Dregan drove north on 16 with the venerable Chevy dropped
into four-wheel-drive and Helen’s mirthless smile still etched in his mind’s
eye. The snow was sticking hard to the road now, and though the military
version of the K5 had a fairly strong engine under the hood, keeping it from
fishtailing around the corners while rolling on worn tires was a full time job.

So he took the curves like he imagined Helen would—slow and
cautious. On the straightaways, however, trying to make up for lost time, he
kicked the speed up a bit. And it was on one of these stretches, moving at a
clip above the posted limit, when a sudden gust threw the snow horizontal at
the windshield and visibility was reduced to only a couple of car lengths.

Dregan doubled down on his grip on the wheel and was easing
off the accelerator when a human form materialized fast out of the clutter.
Facing away dead center in the road, the oblivious biter made no move to
acquire the engine noise that Dregan was certain it could hear. Instead, in the
few seconds during which he had a decision to make, Dregan saw the thing take
only one sluggish step forward. Then, the reaction severely delayed, its head
began a slow sweep left in the general direction of the rapidly approaching
SUV.

Turn evasively to avoid the thing and risk driving into
the ditch, or mow it over like the ones by Helen’s place?

Grimacing, Dregan chose the latter. The impact juddered the
vehicle to the frame and the unsuspecting shambler folded under the bumper like
it had been sucked up by a gigantic Hoover. There was a chorus of bangs and
bones crunched as a hundred and some odd pounds of frigid flesh ping-ponged
between the undercarriage and road. A tick later the noises ceased and it was
spit out, arms and legs windmilling until it finally came to rest face down on
the shoulder.

Cursing himself for choosing the Blazer over the Tahoe or
one of the military vehicles, he pulled over to the shoulder, more so out of
habit than the possibility a vehicle would rear end him if he chose to do so on
the centerline.

He dropped the transmission into
Park
and, in the
sideview mirror, watched the dead thing for a moment. In its futile slow-motion
attempt at standing, hands and feet slipping on the slickened road, its drunken
movements made Dregan think of a newborn foal trying to stand—not a biter
recovering from a catastrophic collision it neither felt, nor cared one way or
the other about.

Clearly the weather was affecting these things more by the
minute. He reached for the stereo and kicked the volume up so he could hear the
string section over the buffeting wind. When his gaze swung back to the mirror,
the biter on the road behind him was lying flat and not moving.
Either it
was giving up
, he thought, something he had never witnessed the dead do,
especially with prey in sight,
or the cold shocked it into suspended
animation
.

He spent a minute staring at its reverse reflection. One
elbow, bent at an impossible angle, jutted out from underneath its body and was
pressed against its cheek. Dregan remembered Lena sleeping in her crib all
funny like that, oh so long ago. Only her legs hadn’t been twisted around one
another, feet pointing skyward like some kind of a freak show contortionist.

Dregan pushed the memory of his second born from his head
and, just about the time he’d been sold on the cold-shocked theory, the
abomination pushed its upper body off the road and again started in on the baby
foal routine.

“Fuck me,” Dregan said, banging his palm on the steering
wheel. “Shit, shit, shit.”

After a prolonged effort, somehow the battered creature made
it to its knees. A single rib bone, curving unnaturally outward, protruded
through its threadbare shirt. A gust of wind kicked up, ruffling the thin
fabric and with enough force to topple the creature back to the road where,
exhibiting the same blind determination, it began the arduous process of
picking itself up again.

Seeing the tenaciousness on display brought to mind the herd
that was somewhere up ahead.
No reason to catch up to them just yet
, he
thought.
No matter the effect the dropping mercury was having on them.
Handling a dozen semi-sluggish biters by himself, no problem. Being near
several hundred all by himself—sluggish or not—that made his skin crawl. Even
inside the warm truck he could feel the imagined crush of clammy flesh and the
wanting frigid hands tearing at his clothes in search of firm purchase.

He had seen some of the dead play possum so, until he was
sure what he was up against, discretion would have to win out over valor. No
reason to go rushing headlong down the State Route. He had nowhere to be. So he
turned up the volume a little bit more and, with Bach serenading him, cast his
gaze to the east and stared longingly at the thin band of clear blue sky
sandwiched between the distant mountains and tail end of the storm.

Seeing the biter start to crawl hand over road-rashed hand,
he locked the door and peered down at the gas gauge, seeing that it was showing
three-quarters full.
Good!
The need to stay warm trumping a few ounces
of wasted diesel, he opted to let the engine idle and again kicked his seat
back and savored the Mozart flowing out of the aftermarket set of speakers.

Cade sat in the warm truck at the end of the long drive and
watched the herd inch down Main Street. After twenty long minutes it became
crystal clear to him that they were going nowhere soon. And at the pace they
were moving—if in fact they were still ambulatory at this point in time—the
Second Coming would likely occur before the entire column made it north of Main
and Center. So with his next stop no longer being dictated by the fear that he
might become trapped anywhere by the herd, he hooked a right out of the
driveway and onto Center and then headed east instead of west, taking him away
from the rehab place. He drove for a short distance, a block or two if measured
in the city, and turned right at the next drive.

The Ford’s tires printed a fresh set of tracks in the new
snow and Cade parked it on an identical white rectangle in front of a modular
home the same in every way to the one he’d just left save for its exterior
paint color.

Up close he noticed this house
had
been touched by a
woman. There were flower boxes full of drooping brown stalks attached to the
siding just under the larger two of the three windows gracing the front of the
place. Colorful garden gnomes and Bambi-type deer were arranged around the base
of a nearby tree, and a birdbath was erected on the lawn dead center to the
large picture window.

Max growled at something on the passenger’s side, causing
Cade to lift up off of his seat and follow the dog’s gaze. Next to the garage,
partially obscured by a knee-high burn pile, was an early-model mid-sized
sedan. Closer scrutiny revealed it was minus a rear wheel and canted sideways,
away from the house. Next to the root-beer-brown vehicle’s rear bumper, Cade
spotted a hydraulic jack lying on its side, as well as the poor soul who had
become pinned and died there as a result of its obvious failure. On the undead
man’s arms, raised purple bite marks stood out in stark contrast against the
pallid skin. The Z, whom Cade instantly nicknamed
Jack
, on account of
his unfortunate demise, was flailing its chewed-on arms and swatting at the
falling snowflakes. “Good job, boy,” Cade said. He reached back and gave Max a
good scratching behind the ears. Still eyeing the trapped creature, he rattled
the transmission into
Park,
stilled the motor, and exited the truck.

With Max on his heels, Cade skirted around a generic-looking
SUV hybrid that, sitting beside the Ford, looked like something from the
future. A byproduct of a mini-van’s fling with a Jeep, perhaps. It was bulbous
up front and sat a little too low to the ground considering the off-road tires
wrapped around the rims. The front windshield was spidered and protruding from
it dead center was the lower half of a long dead person. Hips to toes, though
the impact with the van’s bumper had left its mark, the bare legs were shapely,
pale, and all woman.

Intrigued as to what the legs’ owner looked like, Cade
swiped the snow from the driver’s side window and found himself staring into
the clouded lifeless eyes of a long dead Z that had registered in life, in his
humble opinion, somewhere between a solid seven or eight on the
easy-on-the-eyes scale.

The passenger door was unlocked, so he quickly searched the
mutant SUV and found only the usual: maps, registration, proof of insurance,
and papers showing it’d passed the last smog check. There was no chocolate.
Strike two.

He called to Max, “Let’s go.” Then together they made tracks
in the snow to the modular home’s front door, where he performed the same
routine as before.

He banged once on the door and called out.
Nothing.

Hackles up and growling, Max pawed at Cade’s right leg.

“We got us a Wal-Mart Greeter somewhere inside of there?”

Again, Max with the guttural growl.

“All right, wingman. We go in hot then.” He rapped on the
door again while drawing his Glock. With Max still voicing his displeasure,
Cade listened hard for another second and, when there was no discernable sound
from behind the door, he delivered the kick, but with his left leg this time.

The result was the same—but different.

Equal and opposite reactions happened next as Newton’s Third
Law came into play and the door blew inward. Instantly he caught a face full of
air heavy with the stench of rotting flesh. However, instead of the knob
drilling a fresh hole in the drywall like the house before, this door’s
vertical edge hit the source of the stench full on and, after a split-second
hitch, continued its inward swing. Cade got a quick glance at the Z as the door
began to shear away from its hinges. The hissing thing was massive and female
and thoroughly decomposed. It also had caught the door and the full energy from
his kick across the sternum and forehead and, like felled timber, had slowly
keeled over backwards. A tick after glimpsing the hideous face, Cade felt a
thud course through the joists, floorboards, and carpet and vibrate the sole of
his boot that he’d just planted on the aluminum threshold plate.

Wanting to preserve the advantage, he shouldered open the
remains of the door and put a boot on the struggling creature’s chest. As he
watched his tan combat boot sink into the nightgown-covered folds of flesh
there, he started to swing the Glock on line with the enormous target the
pasty-white forehead presented. And like clockwork, as it always did when he
entered into combat and the fight component of his hardwired fight-or-flight
instinct kicked in, time started to crawl. Sights and sounds became more acute
as his adrenal glands flooded his body with endorphins.

Behind him he heard Max growling.

To his right, a grandfather clock was ticking; then a click
sounded and suddenly it began to announce the time with a series of long,
sonorous gongs.

Between the first and second chime, the morbidly obese
undead woman was wrapping both meaty hands around his ankle and calf. Before
the second chime had dissipated, there was a pair of neat little holes punched
into her forehead and both clouded eyes were rolled back. And by the time the clock
had finished alerting everyone and everything within earshot that it was ten
o’clock in the morning, Cade had swept the house for more dead, returned to the
front room, and was eyeing the closed door leading into the garage.

A sudden wind gust carried some light flakes in through the
open front door. So Cade dragged the leaking three hundred pounds of dead
weight away from the blood-slicked four-by-four square of taupe vinyl flooring,
closed the buckled door as best he could, and then dumped the offending
grandfather clock over on its side, effectively barring entry to dead and
breathers alike—the latter of which concerned him more than the former at the
moment.

With Max watching his every move and slinking after him
through the prefab like a shadow, Cade went to the kitchen and scavenged a box
of heavy-duty Glad garbage sacks from under the kitchen sink. He made his way
to the bathroom first and raided the medicine cabinet, throwing everything of
use into one of the sacks. He opened the cabinet door under the sink and took
all of the feminine products there. What he wouldn’t give for the days when
Brook would force a
mission
to the Safeway on him
.
There was a
time in his life when he would gladly have accepted an excursion behind enemy
lines over a trip through the Express Checkout with a pink box emblazoned with
butterflies or feathers containing items he didn’t quite understand, nor
pretend to. Now, however, considering the state of the world, he’d gladly run
naked through Safeway stating his mission proudly while waving a bottle of
Massengill’s in one hand and the biggest box of Kotex he could find in the
other.

Still pining for normalcy to return to the day-to-day, he
stalked from the bathroom and checked out both bedrooms, looking in the closets
and under the beds and their mattresses. Finding nothing of use save for a
couple of fleece blankets, which went into the bag, he made his way to the
kitchen and started emptying everything from the cupboards into a second
garbage bag. The big woman had a huge appetite in life. That was for sure.
Especially for candy. But not Snickers.
Strike three
.

Somewhat crestfallen, Cade dumped a sealed bag of hardened
marshmallows (added to the list in Raven’s handwriting) into the second bulging
black bag, tied the drawstring, and then promptly peeled a fresh one from the
thick Costco-sized roll.

Empty bag in hand, he approached the door leading into the
garage. Performed nearly the same routine as he did on the front. Bang. Call
out. Listen hard. Max wasn’t growling at this point and the door was unlocked
so kicking it wasn’t necessary, which was good, because now there was a sharp
pain stabbing his left leg a few inches below his knee. The beginnings of a
shin splint, no doubt.
Getting old sucks
, crossed his mind as he opened
the door, leveled the Glock, and took a quick step back.