Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (19 page)

Wilson’s voice came through the speaker. “Sasha has to pee.”

Cade sighed and applied the brakes and stopped dead center
in the fast lane. “Kids,” he muttered. “Anyone else have to go? Raven? Max?” He
felt a staccato thumping on the backside of his seat. “Max does.”

“Me too,” said Raven, a sheepish look on her face.

No better place than here
, thought Cade. Two hundred
yards removed from a half-dozen soldiers and a lethal pair of machine guns.

Doors opened and bodies jumped to the asphalt.

After averting his eyes, Cade called out, “Make it snappy.”

***

Sasha was back to the Raptor first. Then Raven sprinted
across the hot pavement, scaled the F-650 and took her place in the back seat.
Finally, after a long ten count, Max bolted from the brush, hackles up and
growling. Crossed the two lanes in three long strides and vaulted into the open
door and spun a one-eighty, teeth bared and shivering. A tick later the reason
for his discontent became obvious as the upper half of a human slithered out of
the shin-high scrub. It entered the fast lane five yards in front of Cade,
trailing an unidentifiable softball-sized internal organ. Slowly, hand over
hand, it advanced, dragging its dust- and twig-coated innards through the
steaming puddles where Sasha and Raven had just finished their business.

The moment the rear door thumped shut, Cade engaged the
transmission, turned a slow arcing right to avoid the crawler and then
accelerated rapidly to fifty miles per hour. Taking his eyes from the road for
a split second, he looked to Brook and said, “That was close.”

Remembering how Raven had nearly become Z food while peeing
outside of a thoroughly looted supermarket in South Carolina weeks ago, Brook
parroted something she had heard Cade and every single one of his operator
buddies say at one time or another “Close only counts in hand grenades and
horseshoes.”

“Copy that,” Cade said agreeably.

Chapter 28

With the first checkpoint miles behind them, and Green River
nowhere on the horizon, Cade suddenly began to feel for the poor bastards
somewhere up ahead baking under the hundred-degree sun.
Yep
, he thought.
Every coal mine had to have its canary
. And just like those true
patriots back there, he had been on that first line of defense. His stomach
clenched involuntarily and just like that he was back in Iraq. There truly was
something to be said for loitering behind hastily positioned Jersey barriers at
surprise checkpoints, surrounded by restless locals, most hostile, while hoping
to get lucky and ensnare an unsuspecting high-value target or low-level Baath
party member.
Yep
, he thought.
Being that kind of canary had its own
unique pucker factor
. Because whether detonated fifty feet or fifty yards
away, a SVBIED—suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device—was usually a
fatal event for anybody unlucky enough to get caught inside its blast radius.
Thankfully though, the higher-ups had decided rather quickly that his unit’s
services were needed elsewhere and he had made it through that first deployment
without getting caught on the receiving end of the enemy’s most cowardly,
destructive, and widely used tactic firsthand. But he had seen the aftermath of
several of those suicide attacks up close and personal and right now, much to
his surprise, the rapidly approaching scene looked eerily similar.

In the median, a rectangular swath of scrub brush the size
of a football field had been razed by fire, and a handful of vehicles in the
adjacent eastbound lanes had been reduced to nothing but soot-covered
see-through metal frames resting atop pools of melted dashboard, interior
panels, and tire rubber. Left of the freeway, the conflagration had spread and
burned, by Cade’s estimation, tens of acres of the bone-dry landscape down to
the dirt. And dead ahead, several hundred feet of the once gray Interstate was
blackened and had bubbled and boiled and melted in places, leaving large tracts
of asphalt resembling some kind of prehistoric tar pit. He abruptly slowed the
F-650 to walking speed and then stopped ten feet short of the line of
demarcation where the firm roadbed ended and the soupy-looking morass began.

“Ewwww,” exclaimed Raven. “Bet there are some dino bones in
there.” To which Brook chuckled and smiled for the first time since Cade’s
verbal faux pas. Then, interrupting the moment, the two-way’s harsh electronic
warble filled the cab. “What’s up?” asked Wilson. “I thought we weren’t going
to stop for anything.”

Thumbing the talk button, Brook said, “Pull up beside us and
take it up with Cade.”

“Copy that.”

“Let them know that we’ve got company. Ten o’clock,” Cade
said, pointing at a tangle of scorched vehicles in the eastbound lanes.

Shifting her gaze left, Brook picked up the pair of pale
figures. Watched them emerge from the wreckage and trudge across the median,
kicking up dust and charred flora with each labored step. While she keyed the
two-way and relayed the warning, Cade looked past her and down the embankment
and regarded the hulks of a dozen cars and pick-ups that were burned and
compacted nearly beyond recognition, the majority of them resting under the
skeletal remains of an eighteen-wheel tandem fuel hauler—its thousands of
gallons of fuel no doubt responsible for liquefying the road. And though there
was no telling VW-sized crater in the road, he still marveled at how strikingly
the damage resembled the work of a successful suicide bomber.

“Didn’t end well for them,” he said off the cuff.

“Well at least they didn’t end up as one of
them
,”
exclaimed Raven, the resident pragmatist.

Brook shook her head ruefully and said, “I’m with Raven. I’d
rather die quick in something like that ...”—she gestured towards the charred
bodies and mangled metal—“ ... than not
really
die ... like that.” She
nodded to her left at the pair of walkers.

“Let’s not die at all,” proffered Cade just as the Raptor
pulled up smartly and stopped on a dime, leaving barely a yard between the two
vehicles.

Wilson’s window was already open and he was looking up and
holding the Beretta at a ninety-degree angle, its muzzle almost touching the
moon roof glass. Arching a brow, he nodded towards the Zs and, none too
convincingly, said, “I got this.”

Ratcheting the transmission into Park, Cade said, “Whoa ...
slow down, Trigger.”

“You sit up there and figure out how we’re going to get
through this sea of crap,” said Wilson, gesturing with the Beretta at the
ruined run of road. “And I’ll get out and take care of those two pusbags.”

“Not yet. There may be more where they came from. And that
truck of yours ... ” Cade hitched a thumb at the Raptor. “I’m not convinced
it’ll be able to make it across
La Brea
without getting stuck.”

Taryn called out, “Let’s find out. You follow those tracks
and we’ll follow you.”

“There’ll be no way for us to dig you out of this shit if
you get stuck,” answered Cade.
Then you’ll be riding with us again
, he
thought.

Hanging halfway out of the rear passenger-side window, Sasha
craned her head to see over the side mirror and called out to Taryn, “What do
you think it is?”

“Looks like a lake of oil to me,” replied the tatted
brunette as she slipped the Raptor’s transmission into Park.

Once again regretting his decision to have the younger trio
tag along, Cade tried his best to shut out the inane banter and followed the
established set of tire tracks with his eyes. The deeply cut chevron patterns
ran perpendicular from his vantage point and then straddled the breakdown lane
near the center median for a couple of hundred feet before abruptly shooting
off into the distance at a diagonal to the point on the shoulder directly
overlooking the tangle of burnt-out vehicles.

Unable to continue following the tracks with his naked eye,
he pressed the binoculars to his face and saw that the tread marks continued on
straight and true, skirting the remaining stretch of melted roadway before
returning to its normal muted gray which was crisscrossed by black tire marks
for an additional hundred yards.

“We’ll go first,” said Cade. He lowered the field glasses
and fixed Wilson with a no nonsense gaze. “And when we get to the other side,
Taryn can follow our tracks. That way if either one of the rigs gets stuck, one
of us will be on firm ground and can use their winch to pull the other out.”

“Solid plan, Cade,” said Wilson, tugging his boonie hat
tight. “
Now
can I shoot them?”

Seeing that there were now four Zs that had made it through
the maze of static metal clogging the eastbound lanes and were trudging across
the dozen yards of car-choked median to their left, Cade went against his
better judgment and obliged the redhead. “Got a taste of it back there and now
you want more, eh?” And then laying it on thick, he added, “Go for it. Knock
yourself out,
buddy
.”

Hopping out as if he had something to prove, Wilson winked
at Cade and walked calmly in front of the idling Raptor while holding the
Beretta two-handed, its business end tracking the closest of the now rapidly
approaching cadavers. He shuffled to his left and halted near the truck’s driver’s
side front fender and set his feet a shoulder’s width apart. Then, with the
heat of the Raptor’s engine warming his skin through his tee-shirt, he drew in
a deep calming breath and caressed the trigger.

Fired at near point-blank-range, the 9mm slug covered the
three feet from muzzle to impact in a microsecond and punched a dime-sized hole
in the male cadaver’s forehead, starting in motion a picture perfect display of
Sir Isaac Newton’s Law that saw the thing instantly crumple to the pavement in
a vertical heap.

Meanwhile, the ‘
equal and opposite reaction’
component of the scientifically proven theory, visually more violent than the
‘action’
component, manifested in the form of an eruption of flecked bone and congealed
brain matter that fanned out and up amidst an opaque mist before finally
raining back to earth in wet little clumps.

Back in the F-650, where he had a better view and feel for
the unfolding action, Cade drew his Glock. He didn’t bother with the
suppressor, nor did he check the chamber for a round. Instead he braced the
pistol against the massive side mirror, drew back a few pounds of trigger pull,
and waited and watched the remaining trio of Zs.

Wilson sidestepped the first fallen corpse and backpedaled,
keeping the next closest—a pre-adolescent female—a few feet in front of him
and, wisely, both idling vehicles off of his left shoulder.
Good job
,
thought Cade, as he tracked the delicate dance while keeping the nearest
abomination bracketed in his sights.

Shuffling backward and away from the Raptor while trying to
create a better angle from which to engage the Zs, Wilson’s mind began playing
tricks on him. Suddenly he saw not matted hair and tattered fabric and bared
yellowed teeth, but a little girl in distress, all pigtails and lace and worry
painting her face. His pace slowed and he shifted his gaze and fixated on the
ashen withered arms peppered by horrible purple-ringed bite marks still
glistening red where whole mouthfuls had been rent away. He stopped retreating
and inexplicably the outthrust pistol became heavier and wavered in his hand.

Noticing the barely perceptible downward tilt to the
Beretta’s barrel and seeing the definite hitch in Wilson’s gait was enough to
set Cade’s sixth sense off. Somewhere in the background—competing with the rush
in his ears as adrenaline surged through his body and the scene began to slow
and his vision narrowed at the edges—he heard Brook or Raven or maybe both
exclaim in unison: “What is he doing?” Then he heard the unmistakable rasp of
the tiny Z and, like he was watching a moment of jittery old film footage, time
seemingly sped forward and the monster had covered the distance and somehow
scaled Wilson’s lower body. In the next instant the thing was clutching the
redhead’s tee-shirt with one dainty, clawlike hand, and the other had gotten
ahold of the strap on the kid’s ever-present boonie hat.

Head suddenly bowed under the added weight, Wilson came to,
realizing that the Z had him in a two-handed embrace and its teeth were
snapping dangerously close to his face. A millisecond later the reptilian area
of Wilson’s brain came alive and his fight or flight mode kicked in;
fortunately for him, he acted on both simultaneously. Adrenaline now flooding
his body, he instinctively leaned back and twisted his torso away while his gun
hand traced a lazy half-arc from left to right, loosing a trio of shots
rapid-fire out of the Beretta.

The first slug shattered the thing’s breast bone, lifting
its toes off the road. Round number two snapped its clavicle like a twig, the unleashed
kinetic energy adding a reverse twist to the corpse’s upward trajectory. His
third unaimed shot left the gun’s barrel a microsecond after the last, with his
arm sweeping downward, and entered an inch lower and right of the newly
shattered clavicle. The Parabellum, travelling at 1,250 feet-per-second, tore
through three inches of rancid flesh and disintegrated the ball joint and bursa
sac behind, and started the newly severed appendage on a flat trajectory around
Wilson’s back with all five fingers retaining their death grip on the cotton
tee.

With all twenty years of his short-lived life flashing
before his eyes and fifty pounds of snarling one-armed dead weight grating its
teeth against his exposed jugular, Wilson heard a foreign sound, a kind of sonic
crackle. In the same instant, coupled with the sense of falling and the blue
sky tilting strangely overhead, he felt a subtle tug and then an immediate
flare of white hot pain enveloped the right side of his face. Next, in his side
vision, he saw the Z’s temple crater inward and heard the second disruption of
airspace near his face as what he would soon come to learn was the back-half of
a vicious double tap.