Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (26 page)

Going by his mental stopwatch, six seconds had ticked by
since they’d crested the hill. And without consulting the speedometer, his gut
told him that the multi-ton truck, aided by gravity and 365-horsepower, was
picking up a great deal of speed. He looked at the speedometer and saw it creep
past fifty. Closing in on sixty and figuring they’d already travelled roughly a
third of a mile, and without taking his eyes from the road, he said to Brook,
“I need you to glass the roadblock and give me a detailed play-by-play.”

Traveling at the speed of sound—seven hundred and
sixty-seven miles per hour, a mile every five seconds through the atmosphere at
sea level— the engine roar ripped across the sage-covered flatland ahead of
them.

Five seconds. A nice buffer
, thought Cade. But since
they were at altitude and the air was thinner, the dual notes reached the
watchers’ ears only four seconds after leaving the four-inch exhaust pipes.

Two screaming Ford power plants.

Two pickups, both technically not a color. Yin and Yang
approaching, speeding up, seemingly tethered together in close formation like a
couple of high-performance fighter jets.

Noticing the four heads turn in unison, on the faces
expectant expressions, Brook called out, “They’re onto us. A real big man is
getting up. And now he’s waving at us. Motioning to stop.”

“No way we’re stopping,” said Cade. Then he smiled, knowing
exactly what was going through their heads at that exact moment. First, relief
in the knowledge that the trucks coming straight for them were black and white
respectively, and relatively shiny versus dull desert tan and bristling with
high caliber weapons. Gun trucks full of 4th Infantry Division soldiers from
FOB Bastion the approaching vehicles were not. And that’s why the fool was
flapping his arms like a flightless bird. Cade slowed down a tiny bit. A feint.
A bluff that he figured just bought them another six seconds. And shaved
another tenth of a mile of closing distance.

“Now the two other men are making a break for the SUV. They
both have rifles,” intoned Brook. Then she added, a hint of incredulity in her
delivery, “And it looks like another is going for his motorcycle.”

In that instant Cade saw their actions for exactly what they
were—precursors to aggression. And the only way he knew to counter
aggression—the way he had been taught first in Ranger school and had honed
later in the Teams—was to hit hard and fast and pull no punches. “And the
fourth guy?” he asked, his decision as to their next course of action having
just been decided for him.

“The big guy ... I don’t see that he has a gun. And for some
reason he’s making a beeline on foot for the Interstate ... and just turned
uphill to the west ... keeping to the right shoulder.”

“Shit,” barked Cade. “Keep an eye on him.” He rapped the
steering wheel. Checked his speed.
Seventy-five.
Twenty seconds had now
elapsed and they were on the straight and level and seemingly playing
catch-me-if-you-can with the heat mirage dancing in the road dead ahead.

“The two are in the SUV now. Driver’s bending forward ...”
She saw a puff of gray exhaust. Said, “He started the engine. But they’re not
moving ... just sitting there idling.”

“Good,” said Cade. This little tell all but confirmed his
theory. He eased up on the gas, keeping the needle wavering near eighty.

The big tires thrummed against the pavement, creating a
strange harmonic that sounded like an out-of-balance washing machine.

He viewed the Raptor in the side mirror. Taryn still had it
nosed close in on his six.

Inside the Raptor, Sasha said, “Why is he slowing down?”

Wilson and Taryn shushed her simultaneously.

Back inside the F-650, Cade asked, “What’s number four doing
now
?”

“He’s still running along the shoulder, slowly,” answered
Brook. “He’s no Jesse Owens.”

Mister Murphy’s taking a powder
, thought Cade. Ten
more seconds had elapsed and the odometer indicated the crest of the hill was,
give-or-take, eight-tenths of a mile behind them. He guessed that the roadblock
was two-tenths of a mile ahead and the item the man was running toward was in
the general vicinity.

“The guy’s got his motorcycle on the shoulder now, facing
west,” added Brook. “And the SUV is now rolling towards where the ramp meets
the Interstate.”

Cade said, “Thanks ... I can see ‘em clearly now.”

“Hurry up or they’re going to block the road.”

No way
, thought Cade.
They’d have to be crazy to
get in the way of all this metal screaming their way.
“Don’t worry,” he
said. “They’re going to let us drive right on by.”

“Why?” asked Brook.

“Because I’m guessing they liberated some State Trooper of
his or her spike strips. You’re going to have to take the runner out ... before
he gets to wherever he’s going.”

Judging by the advanced warning that the long straightaways
from both east and west provided the watchers from their position, along with
the ramifications of their little trap being discovered by a patrol from FOB
Bastion, Cade would have bet his right arm that the fourth man still had a
little ways to run to get to his no doubt cleverly hidden and instantly
deployable tire-shredding roadblock.

Flashing Brook a grim smile, followed closely by a wink
letting her know that he loved her, Cade coaxed some more speed from the V-10
power plant and instructed Raven to shrug off her shoulder belt and lay flat
and keep her head down.

“Down, Max,” added Brook. Then, in order to keep it from
whipping into her face, she wrapped the M4’s sling around her forearm and
powered down her window.

Keeping his eye on the road, Cade asked, “You OK with this?”

Superheated desert air thundered in, creating a savage
racket. “Have to be. Just keep it steady,” she bellowed as she pulled her cap
off and threw it to the floor. She snugged the carbine to her shoulder and
flicked the selector to fire in one practiced move. Then she stuck the muzzle
out first and then her head, and finally her upper body, not entirely
aerodynamic, cut into the vicious slipstream.

To equalize pressure in the cab, Cade used the master controls
on his armrest and lowered the driver’s side rear glass, creating a sort of
breezeway that helped to bring the sonic tempest down to a more tolerable gale.
He saw Brook train her carbine on the cream-colored Suburban still sitting idle
fifty yards off the right fender at her two o’clock. Another twenty yards ahead
of the SUV and coming up rapidly, also on their right, was the black
motorcycle, its rider directing a knowing look at the vehicles careening
towards him.

Then the two faces in the Soccer Mom assault vehicle tracked
left-to-right and Cade made brief eye contact with the driver as the F-650
blazed past the Suburban.

Seeing the man on foot begin to slow, arms flopping, head
tilted back, clearly laboring for breath, Cade applied the brakes evenly and
angled a few degrees to the left in order to afford Brook a better firing
angle.

“I’ve got the runner,” Brook hollered over the wind as two
closely spaced shots rang out.

In clipped slow motion, Cade registered the results as he
continued braking. He saw the rotund runner stop and skid, the man’s back
heaving, his black leather boots kicking up a cloud of ochre dust. There was a
glint of metal in the man’s hand and when he turned back towards the roadway
and uncoiled halfway out of a sprinter’s crouch, Brook’s words were already
trailing off and a spritz of red had blossomed on the left side of his neck
where major blood delivery occurs. A millisecond later, before the man knew he
had been mortally wounded by the initial 5.56mm hardball, the kill shot entered
his temple left of his ear, a tumbling sixty-two grain hunk of lead that added
all of its kinetic energy behind the first and sent the man sprawling onto the
hot asphalt, face-down, ass up, dead as a doornail.

Instinctively Brook tracked her rifle a hundred and eighty
degrees to the right and fired a four-round salvo head-high at the man on the
motorcycle, causing him to dive for cover, the big Harley nearly toppling over
on him.

Hot brass casings pinged around the F-650’s voluminous
interior. “Center mass,” Cade bellowed. “No need for a head shot ... they’re
not Zs.” From the corner of his eye, he saw the headshot corpse, and then the
flare of sunlight off the spike strip which had been dragged three feet into
the right lane. Instinctively he jinked the wheel hard left to avoid the
vehicle-disabling device.

Back in the Raptor all hell was breaking loose. Sasha
whining about speed. Wilson saying “She shot him!” over and over. Through all
of this, Taryn retained her cool and also avoided the partially deployed spike
strip.

Seeing Taryn match his maneuver and the Suburban nose onto
the Interstate right behind her, Cade powered down his window, pulled into the
right lane and slowed to fifty. Then, inexplicably, going against his earlier
orders, he stuck his arm into the slipstream and waved the Raptor by.

Through the black sheet metal Cade felt the vibration of the
Raptor’s big engine hit his thigh as it roared past in the fast lane. He
consulted his mirror and, just as the Suburban was abreast of the biker who was
not injured but still righting his fallen steed, swerved left and pulled the
F-650 in behind the Raptor. “Get ready,” he said to Brook, watching the SUV
closing fast in the passenger side-view mirror. Hands kneading her carbine,
Brook nodded slowly.

When Cade figured that the Suburban had closed to within the
M4’s acceptable range, he shot Brook a glance and said, “In three, two, one ...
”

Body coiled, face a mask of concentration, Brook snugged the
carbine tight and said a silent prayer.

After abruptly slowing the F-650 to thirty miles per hour,
Cade then locked up the brakes, hard, slewed the wheel right and yelled, “Light
‘em up!”

Carbine leading the way, Brook leaned out the window and
brought the Eotech on line as the big Ford shimmied, the smell of burnt rubber
hit her nose and the world spun by her face. She kept the sight’s red
holographic pip centered on the approaching vehicle’s windshield and caressed
the trigger even as the F-650 beneath her continued shifting on axis, fully
engaged in a juddering power slide. “One, two, three, four,” she counted under
her breath with each pull of the trigger and when she hit
five
the SUV’s
windshield spider-webbed and a tick later imploded behind the intense
overpressure. As she watched the crumpled sheet of mostly intact safety glass
lose all tensile strength and fold in on the driver and passenger, her head was
jerked sideways as the truck under her came to a full and screeching halt
perpendicular to the outside shoulder.

Suddenly hit with a face full of opaque glass and unable to
see the road ahead, the man driving the Suburban apparently panicked and locked
up his brakes.

Brook saw the blue-black smoke coming off the tires first
and then noticed the ungainly SUV begin to fishtail. Then, seemingly in slow
motion and suffering from an extreme amount of body roll, the SUV’s rear end
broke free and swerved hard to the right. Until the driver, presumably still
batting the glass from his face, felt the change of inertia and overcorrected
horribly by hauling the wheel in the same direction as the slide but with more
vigor than necessary.

Still engaging the moving target, Brook shifted her aim
right and emptied the magazine into the windshield and passenger side door.
Everything around her seemed to slow to a crawl. She smelled the sharp tang of
cordite. Then registered the passenger grimace and throw his hands up and then
crumple over in obvious pain. She heard shell casings pinging off the door
pillar to her right and felt the hot brass hitting her shoulder but didn’t
count how many rounds she had pumped into the out-of-control SUV, nor did she
remember hearing the metallic
snik
of the bolt locking open on the empty
chamber. However, the Suburban going up onto two wheels and then rolling over
and over while ejecting the broken and bloody bodies of the two men amid a
roiling carpet of broken glass and spilt fluids would be forever etched in her
memory.

Cade looked ahead and saw the Raptor speeding off into the
distance, growing smaller.
Don’t stop for anything.

He shifted his gaze right. Saw that Brook was fixated on the
smoking wreckage. Her eyes were narrow slits. Her jaw was set, the muscles
knotted under tanned skin. The empty M4 was still snugged tight and trained on
the bullet-riddled corpses.

“Good shooting,” he said. He reached over and gently helped
her pull the rifle back inside the truck. Immediately she loosed her grip and
her hands began trembling. “I just killed three people,” she whispered.

“Their fault, not yours,” said Cade, a grimace twisting his face.
“And if they had anything whatsoever to do with stuffing amputated genitals
into another human being’s mouth—regardless of the perceived crime—they got
exactly what they deserved.”

“Is it over?” Raven asked meekly, still out of sight.

Exhaling hard, Cade wondered if Raven comprehended the word
genitals. Then said to her over his shoulder, “Not yet. Keep down.” He spun the
steering wheel around to the left until it hit the stops and locked and the
power steering apparatus squealed in protest. He looked past Brook and far off
in the distance noticed two things. The fella with the motorcycle was
struggling to get it started. Rising up off the bike’s saddle, one leg extended
and then coming down hard on the kickstarter. That went on for a second with no
positive result. Then Cade saw the gray Hummer pull alongside the finicky
Harley and pick up the rider. Knowing full well that the F-650 could easily
outrun the Hummer, and confident after the recent shooting display that they
could outgun the occupants if need be, he snatched up the two-way, and though
it didn’t need repeating, hit the talk button and told Taryn to take the next
exit north and keep moving—no matter what. He released the talk button and
Wilson came back with a strained sounding, “Copy that.”