Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Book 4): Walking In The Shadow Of Death (10 page)

They were following an old path
now. Connected to the lookout, it snaked its way down the side of the hill and
connected with a sidewalk below. Just like any other small town, this trail was
probably used by kids on dirt bikes. The thought made Brad smile as he slowly
worked his way down the hill, cautiously searching the area in front of him.

The trail dumped them onto the
sidewalk still short of the main street and three blocks from the clinic. Brad
took two steps onto the approach and kneeled down, looking in both
directions.  His side of the street was void of structures until the next
block. There was a small house across from them, and a side street that looked
to be stacked with similar homes.

“What’s the call, Chief, stick to
the main drag, or roll through the neighborhood?” Brad whispered.

“Stay on this side of the street.
Stick to the walls on the left. We will look for a clear place to cross farther
up,” Sean said.

Brad lifted himself from the damp
snow. Even though he could feel the cold through his pants, he was still
sweating from the exertion of the day’s march. He walked slowly in a low
crouch, sticking to the left side of the street. Sean was right behind him, close
enough to reach up and grab his shoulder. They continued to move, taking short
deliberate steps and scanning the area in front of them. Every few feet, Sean
would turn to look at their back trail.

They moved towards the end of the
sidewalk and again Brad took a knee. Across the street was the beginning of the
downtown. A long row of store fronts lined both sides of the street. Across
from them began the chaos of parked and jumbled vehicles. Brad could also make
out the beginnings of the primals’ footprints in the snow and the heavy path
they had created.

Brad felt the tap on his shoulder,
the ‘go command’ from Sean to move forward. Brad crouched down near the very
edge of the sidewalk, feeling exposed on the street corner. He quickly looked
both ways and ran across the street, looking for cover. Finding it, he quickly
moved into a hide near a car fender. Brad quickly scanned left and right then
signaled for Sean to move up.

Keeping his eyes up and down the
street, he heard Sean coming, then quickly felt his presence next to him.
“Okay, we’re doing good, keep moving, hug the wall, avoid doors and windows,”
Sean said as he tapped Brad on the shoulder.

Brad stepped off and moved to the
wall next to him. He remembered hearing instructions to never walk close to
walls, that bullets could hit a wall, ricochet then follow the wall right into
you. But he wasn’t fighting insurgents today, so hugging walls and staying in
the shadows was the order of battle. As he moved along the building’s surface
he began to pick up the familiar stench of death and decay. Even in the crisp
cold air, the stench drifted heavily.

He reached into his collar and
pulled his shemagh tightly over his nose and mouth. He moved forward, walking
low, ducking and even crawling below windows. When they came to a door they
would quickly move past it one at a time. Brad was curious what might be inside
each building but that wasn’t today’s mission. They moved under a low
storefront. The glass was broken and mannequins lay in the display and on the sidewalk.
Brad put his back to the wall, quickly peeked into the building, then ran past
the window.

Brad posted up on the far side of
the window and waited for Sean. He looked down the street and saw the lumps in
the snow. The street in front of him was littered with frozen and twisted
bodies. He pressed back against the building as Sean came up beside him. “What
is it? You see something,” Sean whispered.

Brad pointed at the cluster of
bodies in front of them. Sean nodded and signaled for Brad to keep moving.
“Come on, only a bit further.”

They continued moving the same way
down the length of the street. Brad again hugged the corner and looked down the
side street when he reached the end of the block. The crosswalk here was
littered with bodies and jammed with vehicles. Brad did a quick scan in all
directions before stepping off quickly and clearing the danger area. Again he
searched for cover and stuck himself to the nearest wall, trying to blend in.

Sean moved up behind Brad; Brad
felt the tap and began to step off. They were now one block from the clinic. He
could just see it at the end of the street and on the other side. He moved on,
still hugging the walls and ducking under windows. He felt Sean grab at his
shirt and deliberately tug him, then push him low to the ground. He took the
pressure and fell to both knees, hunched over. He let himself slide into the
wall in a low kneeling position.  Sean crawled up next to him.

“What!” Brad whispered.

“J.D.L.R.,” Sean whispered back
quickly.

Brad gave Sean a puzzled look.

Sean shook his head, “Just doesn’t
look right,”

“No shit, it’s a city full of dead
things!”

“Something’s wrong … I can’t place
it. I’ll take point, fall in behind me,” Sean said as he began to low crawl
forward.

Brad followed in the trail Sean was
making in the snow. Now instead of hugging the building, they were slowly
making their way to the curbside. Sean dropped between two cars and moved
towards the center of the street with Brad close behind. Sean dropped his right
arm at an angle and showed Brad his outward turned palm. Brad stopped and
looked for cover. Sean had again dropped into the snow and was crawling
backwards. He turned and placed his face close to Brad’s.

“We have to get inside … now!” Sean
said.

“What is it? What did you see?”

“Alphas,” Sean said as he began
crawling to the closest building.

12.

The two men moved quickly to a
nearby store front. Sean put his shoulder against the doorframe and tried to
look inside.  It appeared empty. He put his hand on the door and slowly opened
it, then moved in and to the right.  Brad turned to look behind him. He
still didn’t see the threat that Sean had mentioned. He followed his friend
into the building.

Sean slowly let the door close
until the latch caught, then turned his attention back into the depths of the
building. They had found themselves in some sort of coffee shop or diner.
Booths were along the right wall, while a long counter ran the length of the
left wall. Far to the back they could see a restroom sign and an exit door.

Sean pressed his back to the wall
and slowly lowered himself into a seating position with his legs in front of
him. Brad moved next to him and sat shoulder to shoulder.  “You smell that
Brad?” Sean whispered.

“Mildew?”

“Exactly. It don’t smell like fucking
primal. We may be secure in here for the time being. Follow me to the back.”

Sean dropped to his hip then slowly
rose to his hands and knees as he moved deeper into the coffee shop. Brad did
the same and followed him. When they were farther from the front windows and
safely concealed in the shadows of the structure, Sean rose to his feet. He
walked quietly on the toes of his boots and looked over the counter.

“Clear,” Sean whispered.

Brad climbed to his feet and walked
beyond Sean, holding his rifle level to the back exit door. As he got closer he
could see the door’s bolt was latched in the locked position. He moved down the
passageway to the restroom door and swung the door in: darkness. Brad held the
door for a moment before letting it close. “No need to go in there, if a primal
was using the shitter I’m sure he would have come out to say hi.”

Sean didn’t acknowledge the
comment; he had moved behind the counter and was setting up his rifle. He had
it up on the bi-pod and was looking out of the window and into the street. He
let the rifle rest on the counter before looking down and smiling. He reached
into the cooler behind him and pulled out two cans of Coke. “Here,” he said to
Brad as he tossed one in his direction.

Brad caught the can and moved around
the counter to join Sean.  He popped the top on the can and heard the all
too familiar hiss. He sipped at the soda; it was at a pleasant room temperature
of nearly frozen. After weeks without a carbonated beverage and drinking
nothing more than water, the soda burned and the sweet liquid made him clench
his jaw. Quickly he chugged the Coke and placed the empty can on the counter.

“What did you see out there?” he
asked Sean.

Sean was leaning against the
cooler; he pointed to the rifle. “Take a look, across the street at the
market.”

Brad knelt behind the stock. The
magnification of the scope quickly picked up the walls of the buildings across
the street. He moved the barrel left and down until he could see the broken
glass of the market. Just inside the frame of the window stood a single figure.
Behind him more were moving through the building. Brad counted five of them
total.

“What are they doing?” Brad asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine.
Their behavior is no longer predictable, and this is going to make things more
difficult for us,” Sean said.

“You want to call it off and go
back?”

Sean turned to look at Brad before
smiling. “No, we aren’t calling it off.” He moved towards Brad and lifted the
rifle off the counter and to his shoulder as he looked through the scope. “I
figure we have three choices,” he said as he looked at the figures across the
street.

“One, go hard in the paint …
violence of action … rush the fuckers and take them all down. I’m confident we
could kill the ones in the market, maybe even hit the clinic, but I don’t know
if we would ever get away.

“Two, look for high ground, stay
quiet and drop them from afar, might work for a while, but we still have to
move eventually. Or we wait until dark, see if we can sneak past them in the
darkness, and make our way into the clinic,” Sean said in a soft voice.

Brad looked down. “This is your
expertise Sean … I’ll go with whatever you decide.”

Sean took the rifle and collapsed
the bi-pod. “Let’s check out the rest of this place, no reason to rush getting
ourselves killed.”

He slung the rifle across his back
and lifted his MP5 to the low ready position.  Brad fell in behind him and
they moved to a set of doors that led into the kitchen. The doors swung in; the
kitchen area was dark and surprisingly clean. Brad had expected to see rotting
food, or worse. But the place was spotless. “They musta been closed?” Brad
whispered.

“Yeah, looks that way,” Sean
grunted.

They continued through the kitchen
and into a stocked pantry where they saw shelves of dry goods and canned meats
and vegetables. Not only that but more than two cases of coffee. Brad used his
light to examine the shelves of stocked goods. “Look at this place, it’s a
fucking gold mine,” Brad whispered.

“Too bad we won’t have room for
it,” Sean said.

He shined his light deeper into the
room. There was a small manager’s office with a glass window looking into the
kitchen, and a heavy wooden door at the end of the wall. The two men walked
towards the door. Sean leaned down and tried the handle. It turned easily in
his hand, but there was a heavy bolt lock that prevented the door from opening.
Brad took out his tomahawk and prepared to strike the door, when Sean held up
his hand.   

“Go check the office for keys,”
Sean said.

Brad turned and headed back to the
office. He could see into it through the glass window. The room was small,
maybe six foot by six foot. A desk sat directly under the window, a row of
filing cabinets on the back wall. Brad entered the room and ran his hand across
the desk top, knocking over stacks of paperwork and invoices. On the wall to
the right of the desk sat an antique timecard machine.

Brad saw a stack of timecards
sitting in a rack, each with a name and photo stapled to the top. Brad grabbed
the stack of time cards and sat heavily in the chair positioned behind the
desk. He slowly flipped through the cards looking at the photos of the diner’s
employees.
What happened to you
? Brad said to himself somberly as he
stared at the pictures.

“Any luck with those keys?” he
heard Sean call out.

Brad woke himself from his mood and
tossed the stack of timecards onto the mess covering the desk. He heard a
metallic cling as the stack landed. Brad reached over and moved away the
paperwork to see a large ring of keys. He scooped them up in his hand and
walked back towards the heavy door. He handed the keys off to Sean who grinned.

“We must have a key to everything
in this town,” he chuckled as he started working his way through the
ring.  Key after key failed to fit the lock, or refused to turn. “It’s
always the last one,” Sean said just as one of the keys clicked home, then
easily turned in the lock. They heard the metallic clunk as the bolt returned
to the open position. Sean reached down and tried the door again. He pulled and
the door opened in his direction.

They stepped back and saw a set of
stairs leading up. “Game face,” Sean whispered as he put his shoulder to the
door and shined the light up the stairway.  Brad acknowledged him and got
into position just behind Sean. Together they slowly moved into the staircase.
Sean’s light lit the top of the stairs and ended on another heavy door.
Together they walked the stairs to the top.

Sean slowly got in position on the
doorknob side; Brad lined up on the opposite wall. Sean slowly moved his left
hand down to the knob while keeping his weapon’s barrel elevated. He turned the
knob and pressed the door in and it quietly swung into the space. Quickly they
were both hit with the smell of death.  The old, pungent stench they had
both grown accustomed to. Sean let the door continue to open. At the end of its
range the door let out an audible squeak before it clicked against the far
wall.

Brad stepped into the opening and
took a knee with Sean just over his shoulder. Their lights illuminated a small
hallway that led into a small apartment. They sat still for several minutes,
waiting for a howling and growling beast to come tearing at them. None of that
happened. Sean reached down and tapped Brad on the shoulder. Side by side they
moved into the apartment, visually clearing every corner.

The home was decorated in a homey
style: plaid armchairs and wooden end tables. Brad could see that a small
dining room and kitchen connected to the living space. On a far wall were two
doors that were hanging open. From their position they could see that one was a
small bathroom. Shining the light at the second doorway, they could just make
out the corner of a bed.

Together they moved in the
direction of the two doors. They opened the bathroom door fully and did a quick
scan of the room before moving onto the bedroom. Here the smell got stronger.
Brad again pulled the shemagh over his face before they stepped into the
bedroom. The source of the smell was obvious. Lying side by side on the bed was
an elderly couple. They were locked together in each other’s arms. At the
bottom of the bed was a golden Lab, curled up, its eyes closed in death.

Sean moved to a nightstand and
found several empty bottles of medication. “Looks like a mix of sleeping pills
and pain killers,” he said, putting the bottles back on the table.

They walked out of the room and
closed the door behind them. “At least they left on their own terms,” Brad said
as he walked across the room and sat in one of the plaid chairs. Sean followed
him and fell onto a sofa covered in hand-knitted blankets.

“What are we doing, Sean?”

Sean leaned back on the sofa. A
tall window sat behind him and he carefully pulled back the curtain. He had an
expansive view of the street below. From the window he could see the market and
the clinic. He let the curtain go and turned back to face Brad.

“You are not going to like what I
have to say,” Sean said.

“Just give it to me fast, I’d
rather have you kick me square in the nuts then squeeze and twist on them all
afternoon.”

“I’m going to send you down into
the clinic by yourself,” Sean said.

“What the fuck? Have you lost it
Sean?”

“No … Maybe. I’ve been bouncing
ideas around in my head and I think that makes the most sense.”

Brad sat up in the chair and looked
Sean in the eye. “Me going down there alone makes the most sense?”

“Give me a chance here. I’ve been
trying to think this through. How would I have ran this op a year ago? Two men,
hostile terrain, we need to fill a shopping list from a semi-secured location,
get in and out without being seen,” Sean said.

“Me, alone! That’s the best you can
come up with?”

“Now hold up, you won’t be all
alone.”

“Continue.”

“I’ll be up here on the rifle. I
don’t see how else to make this work. We wait till the sun goes down. We
already know those things can’t see in the dark … that gives us some advantage.
We can goggle up; with night vision we should be able to stay a step ahead of
them. I’ll be up here on the glass. I have a good eighteen to twenty subsonic shots
for the long gun and plenty of loud rounds after that. I’ll stay silenced and
guard you the entire way. If any of them picks up on you, or looks funny, I’ll
put them to sleep.”

“But in the dark? They move around
more in the dark!”

“True, but hopefully most of them
are still out hunting the brothers. Brad, this is the best plan I got. If I go
down there with you, we won’t have any over watch.  I’d leave you up here,
but I’m better on the rifle. Don’t worry, if shit goes south, I’ll twist free
and go loud. That will draw them to me, and free you up to haul ass. Just keep
moving, get as far away as you can.”

“Bro, your plan fucking sucks,”
Brad said as he sat back into the chair.

“Yeah, well, sometimes you have to
embrace the suck. Let’s get some shut eye, it’ll be dark in a few hours and I
want to be ready to do this.”