In Harm's Way (25 page)

Logan keyed the mic. “
Four tangos down on our side
.”

Lev didn’t have time to answer; he took the initiative and rushed the last two men from behind. One of them, a dead ringer for Howard Stern with long black greasy hair and a thin rat face adorned with oval wire framed glasses, was crouched near the rig’s rear bumper with a chrome .45 clutched in his hand. He was intermittently stealing glances through the side glass trying to figure out who was shooting at them. The other man had just retrieved an assault rifle from inside the Land Cruiser and was in the process of charging the weapon. Both of them were using the vehicle for cover, totally unaware that they had already been flanked.

Howard Stern
never knew what hit him; he took two 9 mm slugs behind the ear leaving some blood and brains of his own on the 4Runner before slumping to the ground.

Time slowed to a crawl for Lev as he swept his pistol to his
left
, bracketing the man with the assault rifle in his sights. “Drop it now,” he said forcefully.

The man either didn’t hear Lev or didn’t want to hear him; he turned his head first, and then his body and the assault rifle followed in a slow deliberate arc.

Without a thought Lev shot the man in the neck, covered the distance in two quick strides, and then kicked the rifle away from the dying man. Lev watched as the lifeblood steadily pulsed between the dirtbag’s kneading fingers, stared into the man’s dimming eyes and said, “Good choice, asshole.”

Logan’s voice came over the two-way and spoiled the moment. “Come in Lev.”

“Clear... two Tangos down,” replied Lev. The entire encounter lasted less than ten seconds.

Sheriff Gus
bolted into the clearing and pulled the woman out of the zombie’s reach. The look in her eyes didn’t say
thank you
, it screamed,
out of the fat and into the fire
, as she realized that a new group of armed men now owned her.

A single shot rang out as Chief took the initiative and put down the zombie.

“Sampson. You and Gus clear the house. Chief, keep an eye on the road, and Jamie, you need to take care of this one,” Logan whispered to
the camouflaged woman as she materialized from the foliage.

The prisoner’s eyes widened and she recoiled and began scooting away on her rear after her first glimpse of the gun-wielding bush.

“Don’t worry... we’re not going to hurt you,” Jamie said softly as she laid down her rifle and peeled off her hood and face mask.

A look of relief washed over the young woman; her shoulders and head slumped as her entire body seemed to uncoil.

Jamie flipped her blade open and held the woman’s cold white hands as she cautiously sawed through the zip ties, and then with kid gloves she slowly peeled the duct tape covering her swollen mouth. “What’s your name?”

The woman looked Jamie deep in the eyes and broke down. Between sobs she said, “Jordan.”

Jamie held her and tried to think of some comforting words. “That’s cool... we both have unisex names,” was the best she could
conjure up
.

The creaky cabin door opened, snaring everyone’s attention. Gus jumped off the porch and approached Logan. “The cabin is clear...  really clear... it’s spartan inside. There are only a couple of sleeping bags and a little bit of food. But I found these.”
Like he was displaying a trophy big mouthed bass, Gus held aloft two assault rifles and a sawed off shotgun.

“Good find Sheriff. Toss those in the 4Runner. Weapons and
ammo are as good as gold now. Especially the amm
o...  I don’t know about you, Gus, but I am not a big fan of reloading.”

“I never had to,” Gus replied. “The county provided as much ammo as we needed. Hell of a perk... while it lasted.”

Chief gestured to the cargo laden SUVs and said, “Looks like these desperados were just moving in. What should we do with the gear and the trucks?”

“I say we take the stuff as the spoils of war,” Lev said with a lopsided grin from the passenger seat of the 4Runner where he was sitting and reloading his pistol. “Besides, this thing still has that new car smell.”

“Maybe on the inside... but it’s
definitely
not smelling like lilacs on the outside. That thing looks like it crashed into a rendering plant,” Sampson said, crinkling his nose while he munched on a liberated power bar.

Logan stared off into the forest seemingly frozen in a kind of trance and said, “I’m siding with Lev... but we need to get out of here twenty minutes ago. For one thing these guys might have more friends on the way and second, the gunfire might have gotten the attention of any walkers in the area... not to mention it’s going to be dark in an hour or two.” Logan sighed. He was trying to find the strength to dispose of the body at his feet. Most of all he was having a hard time getting used to the killing part of
surviving by any means necessary
. Logan had no problem dealing with walkers. In fact they were rather easy to kill without striking a chord. The living though... not so much. The kid laying face up with his dead eyes wide open and the shock of dying prematurely frozen on his face was only number three for Logan.

 He had killed his first two men during his flight from Salt Lake City over a week ago. It had been necessary to prevent them from stealing his truck. They were manning their twisted version of a civilian roadblock outside of Ogden and had demanded that Logan and Jamie exit their truck unarmed. Logan played the tape through and didn’t like the ending... more so for Jamie than himself. As soon as he put two bullets into each of the menacing men he was a changed man forever. The look of surprise on their faces when things went sideways was going to the grave with Logan. And now he had added another death mask to the collection.

Lev stripped his kills of weapons and anything else useful before dragging the stiffening bodies behind the same fern-covered log he had used for cover. He retrieved his rifle and then
sauntered to his friend’s side. “What’s the matter Logan... are you feeling sorry for the soon-to-be rapist piece of shit? It
had
to be done.”

Logan shooed the ebbing thoughts of remorse from his head and softly said, “I know.” Then he grabbed the skinny kid by one thin wrist and dragged the leaking body into the underbrush.

“Cover up the blood trails,” Chief said loudly enough to be heard by the entire group.

“Everyone be sure to police up your brass,” Sheriff Gus added.

Lev took the wheel of the 4Runner with Sampson riding shotgun. Logan had Jamie drive the Land Cruiser while he rode in the passenger seat with the carbine between his knees. Chief hurled some of the redundant supplies into the woods and then crammed his large frame into the rear cargo area along with Gus. Initially Jordan did not want to get back into the truck where she had already spent untold terrifying hours trussed and hooded, but after some coaxing she eventually yielded and crawled into the Land Cruiser with the others.

***

After one-and-a-half grueling miles bouncing along the rutted single track road, Lev turned left onto the smooth blacktop and stomped on the brakes. The truck’s knobby tires chirped as the 4Runner came to a complete stop.

Jamie, who had been following closely, almost drove the Land Cruiser up the 4Runner’s tailpipe.

“Sorry for the abrupt stop but we’ve got a few walkers on the road. They’re about a hundred yards up ahead,” Lev said over the two-way radio. “Their backs are to us... scratch that, they made us and they’re coming this way. We are going to have company very soon.”

“Can’t we just go around them?” Logan inquired as he shifted in his seat to get a look at the zombies.

“I say we do ‘em now so we don’t have to worry about them later. Takes the same amount of ammo either way,” Lev said matter-of-factly.

“Copy that, Lev.” Logan said as he exited the Land Cruiser with rifle in hand.

Lev, who was already out of the 4Runner and standing in the road, removed his camo blouse, rolled it up and placed it on the hood of the truck to use as a makeshift barrel rest.

Slowly picking up speed, the quartet of moaning zombies lurched and staggered down the center of the double-lane highway.

Sampson, who was also now out of the 4Runner, said to Lev, “The rotters
were
moving north, they must have been coming from Ogden or Huntsville.”

Logan, who had just walked up, joined in on their conversation. “I hope they came from Huntsville... because we don’t want to tangle with the living dead from Ogden. I think there were like...
eighty thousand
people in Ogden.”

“Look alive,” Lev said as he shouldered his Les Baer and chambered a round. He sighted on the nearest walker. The female zombie looked like any soccer mom except she was definitely a “first turn;” her pallid skin hung slack from her ninety pound frame. She had probably been in her thirties, Lev guessed.

The .300 Winchester round struck the walker on the right side of the forehead with a glancing blow. The energy was still great enough to cleave a vee-shaped wedge in her skull, causing a gray geyser of brain matter to erupt from the wound. Before he could chamber another round, Logan had already dropped the freshly turned walker on the left with two well-placed rounds from his M4.

Two staccato volleys from Sampson’s AR downed the remaining two creatures.

 “Hey Logan... get the eff in here. There are more walkers coming up behind us and some more of them over there,” Jamie said, pointing out the open passenger door of the Land Cruiser.

Logan looked across the field where, silhouetted in the low hanging sun, more zombies lurched towards them. “Let’s go... we need to get back to the compound before dark,” he said. Then, heeding Jamie’s words, he hopped into the passenger seat.

Jamie followed Lev single file past the sprawled corpses, being careful not to run them over. She winced and looked at Logan after something popped under the SUV’s big tires.

Logan grimaced and said, “Better them than us.”

***

State Route 39 ran perpendicular to the compound’s two mile long, gravel covered front entry road. The swinging gate which was set back from the road and camouflaged with native foliage was concealed so well that if a person didn’t know where to look they would be hard pressed to locate it.

Logan jumped out of the Land Cruiser and manipulated the manual release he had hidden near the base of a red volcanic rock. Suddenly he froze and looked skyward.

Lev also
heard the thundering thwap-thwap of rotor blades cutting the air immediately overhead. The aircraft flew close enough to the ground to make the 4Runner vibrate.
“Come on Logan, hurry up,”
Lev barked. They had to assume that the helicopter wasn’t friendly and that meant that they needed to get to the airstrip in a hurry.

Outbreak - Day 8

Over Eden, Utah

Duncan checked the coordinates a second time, decreasing altitude and slowing the Black Hawk at the same time. The dirt strip looked the same but the colorful airplanes were gone. Either he was overflying the wrong clearing or his old eyes were failing him. The next thought that crossed his mind was that maybe he had keyed in the GPS coordinates wrong. Duncan brought the helo to fifty feet AGL. “Good work,” he said aloud when he spotted the mottled brown and green shapes. Since he was here last all of the aircraft had been expertly camouflaged and wheeled into the tree line on the periphery of the unimproved airstrip.

He settled the bird in the knee high grass as close to the edge of the clearing as possible without endangering the rotors. He cut power and waited for the rotors to slow considerably before exiting the DHS Black Hawk with his hands reaching for the sky.

Six armed men approached with their black guns trained on him. Duncan smiled; each of the men wore a different style of camouflage making them look like armed calico cats.

“
Keep your hands up!
” the man in the lead yelled convincingly.

Duncan complied.

“What’s your business here,” the same man stated in a more even keeled tone.

“I’m Duncan Winters... Logan Winters is my baby brother. I was here a couple of days ago... in a medevac Black Hawk.”

“What is your brother’s nickname?” the man asked.

“My mom and dad, may they rest in peace, gave him the nickname Oops. Safe to say at their advanced age he wasn’t planned,” Duncan said, a shit-eating grin spread across his face. He loved to divulge Logan’s secret to his peers and did so every chance he got. He noticed that some of the armed men were finding it hard to keep from smiling as well.

The man who had been doing all of the talking extended his hand. “That is correct. Good to meet you Duncan, my name is Seth. We’ll take you to the compound where you can get a bite to eat and put your feet up if you want to. Logan and a few others are out on a patrol and should be back before nightfall. Did you have a long flight?”