Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (18 page)

“And?” asked Lev, his hand making a circular reeling motion.
Universal semaphore for
spit it out
.

“My good Karma kicked in ... he let us through.”

“Karma my ass,” said Duncan. “Look where it got him ... and
Logan.” Anger building, he jumped into the Toyota. “I don’t need to see a death
card to know that the same dirtbags who killed Oops and Gus and took the girls
also sacked Etna.”

“That would explain why some of the rotters had GSWs,” added
Lev.

“Who’s getting the gate?”

“I got it, Duncan,” snapped Lev. He squared up to the Toyota
and looked the old aviator in the eye. “Sorry. I guess being this close to
where it happened is kinda getting to me.”

“Makes two of us, kid,” Duncan conceded. He started the
Cruiser and performed a series of short maneuvers, a combination of reversing
and then pulling ahead in small increments until he had the SUV parallel with
the road. Then he pulled forward a few feet and stopped next to Lev. “Apology
accepted,” he said.

The passenger door creaked again and Daymon sat in the
passenger seat.

A minute later Lev had opened the gate which had been
locked
only cosmetically, the chain merely threaded through the fence, a piece of
previously snipped padlock falsely
securing
it.

Thirty seconds later the Cruiser was through and the gate
was closed and
locked
behind them.

Once Lev was back in the vehicle, Duncan urged the SUV
forward and said, “Y’all ready for this?”

To which there was no reply. Only engine noise and the sound
of tires splashing through puddles would accompany them to the scene of the
crime.

Chapter 26

After surprising Taryn with the impromptu inquisition, and
satisfied for the most part with the answers, Cade had nosed the Ford right and
onto O Road, then backtracked nearly two miles west leaving the outskirts of
Loma and the still-rising sun in his rearview mirror. Along the way he would
occasionally speed up and brake hard, a concerted effort on his part to
evaluate her reaction times. A short while later both trucks were stopped
side-by-side at the intersection of Mack Road and US-6 which used to be the
only thoroughfare connecting Mack with Grand Junction, Taryn’s hometown, thirty
miles on a diagonal east by south.

And dead ahead, finished in the late nineties and instantly
making US-6 and the unincorporated community of Mack north of it obsolete,
Interstate 70 ran away on a parallel tack with little more than bulletproof
desert soil and tumbleweeds between them.

With a decision looming Cade, fixed his gaze on FOB Bastion
off the right front fender a half a mile distant. Rising up from the desert
floor, the hastily constructed front gate and makeshift guard towers all
interconnected with newly strung barbed-wire looked more like some kind of
World War Two internment facility meant to separate and keep safe the majority
from a scant few of the population who were in fact quite harmless—not the
polar opposite. He looked the length of US-6 and could see it hadn’t received
the same scrutiny from Beeson’s boys as the other connecting roads. Like an
afterthought of civilization, a number of abandoned vehicles were scattered
here and there in both directions, most on the shoulder, some not. Birds
fluttered around one of the nearest vehicles, squeezing their feathered forms
through a partially open window to get at the sweet treats festering inside.
No
go
, he thought.

So he hung a left and drove ahead a hundred yards and stopped
before the westbound ramp to Interstate 70.
Three roadblocks manned by the
2nd ID and then no-man’s land
, Beeson had said.
And the final one is
thirty-six miles west on the I-70 and then you’re on your own
. Cade looked
down the four-lane which was empty and desolate, a diminishing gray scar
cutting through the low scrub towards Grand Junction, over the majestic Rockies
and on into Denver to the east.

He looked right and saw more of the same. Only there were no
knife-edged crags magnified by the distant haze. There was mainly flat terrain.
Miles and miles of desert with scattered hillocks and groves of trees lucky
enough to have found a water source near which to flourish. And like the cities
of Grand Junction and Denver to the east, which he couldn’t see but knew were
there, a number of small towns and communities dotted their route of travel,
the writing on the green road sign planted in the hard soil confirming it.

Taryn maneuvered the Raptor alongside the Ford and the
window pulsed down; while motioning for Cade to do the same, Wilson stuck his
head out.

After Cade’s window seated with a solid thunk, he stuck his
head out and looked down at the redhead. “Yeah?” he said.

“We taking the Six or the Seventy?” asked Wilson. “Taryn’s
curious.”

Cade stuck one finger in the air—the universal sign shared
among his old Delta Unit for wait one minute—and then pulled his head back
inside. He hinged over and pointed Brook towards the laminated maps he’d
stuffed under the seat and asked her to form an opinion on which route they
should take based on the map’s key and the corresponding markings on I-70 and
US-6 farther along to the west.

FOB Bastion

The baby-faced corporal lowered the Steiner’s and called
down to First Sergeant Laurel Andreasen, urging her to join him up in the guard
tower.

After climbing thirteen rickety stairs that amounted to
nothing fancier than one-by-fours nailed horizontally to a pair of vertical
two-by-fours, she poked her head through the opening cut into the floor and
accepted the corporal’s outstretched hand. And once she was standing next to
the southern rail on the eight-by-eight platform, she accepted the field
glasses from the corporal, looped the strap over her head, and said, “Whatcha
got Keefe?”

“I’m not certain,” answered the corporal. He directed her to
gaze down the length of his arm. “Two-thirds of a click. You see them? Two
vehicles in the shadow. What do you think?”

“The nearest pick-up ... that’s got to be Cade Grayson’s
rig. It’s the right color ... plus it dwarfs the other truck. ”

“What do you think about the other truck?”

“Spoils of war left by the fallen for the living to inherit.
There were five other people and a dog in his truck when they left the wire. So
it makes sense to me that they’d go into Fruita or Loma to liberate another
vehicle.”

“Which way did he say they are going?”

Wearing a mask of worry, First Sergeant Andreasen said in a
low voice, “West. Towards Salt Lake.”

The corporal whistled, drawn out and hollow and filled with
portent. He asked, “Should I alert the pickets?”

“Good thinking,” she said agreeably. Then, while the
corporal consulted a laminated sheet with all of the radio frequencies on it,
Andreasen put her elevated vantage spot to good use, swept the binoculars left
and scanned the area around the perimeter fence. And when she reached the
northeast corner where it made the first of the four sharp ninety degree bends,
she witnessed a dozen or so Zs stagger lemming-like and disappear in ones and
twos into the trench. Cognizant of the Zs new behaviors, and fearful of FOB
Bastion being overrun like Camp Williams which had been Beeson’s previous
command, she looked over the rail and ordered a pair of camouflage-clad
soldiers to gear up and go outside the wire and as she not so eloquently put
it:
Cull the bastards before they have a chance to climb out
.

In the short time it had taken the corporal to call ahead to
three different forward listening posts, and while First Sergeant Andreasen was
directing the armed response to the new threat, the two trucks had started to
move.

Chapter 27

“It has been decided. Interstate Seventy it is,” Cade said,
casting a sidelong glance at Brook. He rattled the shifter into Drive and asked
over his shoulder, “Do you concur, Raven?” Waiting for her answer, he flicked
his gaze to the side-view and for the first time noticed the big block letters
spelling out FORD centered in the white Raptor’s contrasting matte black grill.
Then he stared a little too long at the reflection of the HID—High Intensity
Discharge—headlights and the equally bright bumper-mounted driving lights and
noted that though the sun was painting everything in a flat light, the eerie
blue glow was still very intense and likely visible for miles. Blinking from
the glare, he glanced up at the rearview mirror and noticed Raven, head listing
a few degrees right and staring back at him like he’d been speaking to her in
French or Pig Latin. The quizzical look frozen on her face, she said nothing
for a long second, presumably mulling over the question, weighing its context.
Finally her face lit up with recognition and she shot back, “I concur. The
Interstate is wider and has a lot less stalled cars on it than the old
highway.”

Holding the two-way close to his mouth, Cade keyed the Talk
button. “The boss ladies are telling me the Interstate is the way to go.” He
risked another look in the side mirror just as Taryn acknowledged with a double
supernova flash of the Raptor’s high beams.

Wishing he knew where he had misplaced his Oakleys, Cade
placed a hand over the side mirror blocking the light hammering into the cab
and said, “Before we go
anywhere,
Taryn is going to have to kill those
headlights. Things are so bright everyone and their dead brother is gonna see
us coming.” The instant the words
dead brother
rolled off his tongue he
wished he could reverse time and reword that last statement. Grimacing, he
handed the radio to Brook and saw tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he
mouthed. “Awful choice of words. It won’t happen again.”

She made no reply. Took the radio and crossed her arms and
turned her gaze to the scraggly roadside scrub.

A long, tense second passed in the cab before Taryn
extinguished the Raptor’s lights. Simultaneously, mimicking and skewering
Cade’s vernacular horribly, Wilson said over the two-way, “Roger, copy that ...
loud and clear. The Interstate it is. We’re oscar mike when you are.”

Feeling like a heel after inadvertently reminding Brook of
her late brother, Cade made a silent pact with himself to run anything he might
say through a mental filter—
twice
—before letting a thought fly like that
again. So with a heavy heart and fond memories of Carl’s spirited and uplifting
banter echoing in his head, Cade nosed the F-650 onto Mack Road and accelerated
south. At the next intersection the two-truck convoy made the sweeping
right-hand turn, blasting aside an accumulation of tumbleweeds and merging onto
the westbound lanes of I-70.
Beeson’s Boys did a hell of a job
, thought
Cade. Both lanes for as far as he could see were clear, the inert cars and SUVs
and long-haul trucks having been shoved aside onto the scrub-dotted median.
While on the right shoulder the vehicles were left where they had either run
out of fuel or broken down after presumably fleeing Grand Junction, Loma, or
perhaps even Denver two hundred and fifty miles to the east.

The opposing lanes, however, were a different story
altogether. No care had been taken to move any of the static vehicles or put
down the infected still trapped inside. For all intents and purposes, that
stretch of two-lane had been largely forgotten by the soldiers at FOB Bastion.
And
rightfully so
, thought Cade. No reason to police more than one viable route
of ingress and egress. Furthermore, putting out listening posts was another
sound tactical move.

As they motored west with the AC keeping them all cool and
comfortable inside the suddenly spacious cabin, Cade kept close tabs on Taryn’s
driving and quickly learned that she was indeed a lady of her word. Even at
speeds pushing seventy, she seemed in complete control of the souped-up pick-up
truck and never once did she crowd his bumper; instead, she maintained a
minimum three-truck-length buffer. And apparently adhering to the adage that
four eyes are better than two, she saw fit to keep the Raptor’s left wheels
tracking with his passenger side—a sort of vehicular right echelon stack—so
that he could keep an eye on both of their sixes and she could also see the
vast countryside they’d yet to cover.

Cade peered left at the Colorado River twisting and turning
and glittering silver. For the first few miles west of Mack it had kept them
company while the mercury continued to rise, and by the time they identified
the first checkpoint shimmering wildly in the heat waves on the horizon, half
an hour had passed and the outside temperature according to the F-650’s onboard
computer was bumping the south side of one hundred degrees.

From a hundred yards out, Cade knew that the checkpoint
consisted of two opposite-facing Humvees and at least two soldiers who were
dismounted and facing the same direction as their respective vehicle. One due
west. One facing due east and, judging by the flare from the circular lenses,
presently scrutinizing them through a substantial-sized pair of binoculars.

As the F-650 ate up another fifty yards of roadway, Cade
eased off the pedal and noticed that each of the low-slung boxy vehicles had a
top-mounted turret with a helmeted soldier sweltering in the sun while
dutifully manning what Cade supposed was an M-240 light machine gun. And as
those fifty yards were halved, the sun suddenly glared off the oddly canted
ballistic-proof panes and the desert tan vehicle blocking their passage
reversed onto the outer shoulder. Then, without saying a word, the dismounts
stepped aside, nodded and waved both of the pick-ups through.

Barely ten seconds had elapsed and the two-way crackled to
life. Cade nodded and Brook snatched it up and said, “What now?”