Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (38 page)

He drew the Glock 17 as the Ford lurched to a halt and, out
of habit, ejected the magazine.
Full.
He slapped it back into the
magwell and then racked the slide back a third of a pull.
One in the pipe.
Lastly, he screwed the suppressor on and nudged the door open with his good
foot.

“You sure this is necessary?” asked Brook.

“Very,” he replied icily. He stepped out and down and walked
a few paces toward the Raptor and broke the bad news to Taryn and then motioned
for Wilson to join him on the roadway.

Wilson hopped out and crushed his boonie hat down low on his
head. Beretta in his right hand, he slammed the door behind him. Wasting no
time, Taryn gunned the engine and sped off in reverse, spitting a hail of
gravel and moist soil at their boots.

Startled by the howling exhaust note, a flock of emboldened
crows took flight in an explosive flurry of black feather and attitude. Cawing
and cussing, they took station overhead, cruising languid ovals as Brook,
driving by feel and sound, retraced her hard-earned forward progress in
reverse.

With the noise of scraping metal and breaking glass
signaling the forced retreat, Cade and Wilson pushed forward on foot,
approaching the dead from an oblique angle off to their right.

Leaving the thoroughly scoured carcasses to the birds, the
Zs angled doggedly towards what the instincts buried deeply in the reptilian
part of their atrophied brains told them was a meal of fresh meat.

Motioning for Wilson to stop, Cade said, “There was a reason
the Guardsmen picked this spot to set up their roadblock. See the rocks and the
steep grade on both sides of the road? Makes it pretty much impassible from
this point east”—he pointed to the terrain on both sides and then to the
incline beyond the Jersey barriers as he spoke—“And that means doubling
back—which could take hours—and that’s assuming there
is
a way around
Huntsville.” He paused while Wilson took it all in. “But to avoid all of that,
we’re going to clear a path with the winch. All of the noise is probably going
to draw a lot more Zs our way. So for now, your job is to stay frosty and watch
our backs.” He gestured at the Zs with the silencer affixed to his Glock and
stuck a vertical finger to his lips.

Wilson nodded and checked their six position. He scanned the
horizon. Nothing to see. Then shifted his gaze towards the Raptor and glimpsed
Taryn’s form hunched over the wheel, tatted arms wrapping it in a death grip.
Then the rear passenger window slid silently into the channel and Sasha poked
her head out and shot him a harried look. He flashed a tentative thumbs up to
her before returning his attention to the advancing cadavers.

Using the contour of the back window for support, Cade
stretched his arms across the red and blue Union Jack painted atop the tiny
white Mini Cooper and, feeling the heat of the sun-baked glass warming his
chest and stomach through his tee-shirt, sighted down the Glock and waited. A
tick later, the first of the Z procession, a shabby looking thirty-something
male, squeezed its rotten torso between the closely spaced fenders of two
nearby sedans.

After letting the hissing monster lead the others a dozen
lurching steps into the metal and glass chute, Cade settled the Glock’s tritium
sights on its forehead, just below its greasy looking widow’s peak, and
squeezed off two quick shots. Simultaneously the silenced weapon bucked
slightly in his gloved hands and the two sizzling 9mm Parabellums plowed a
jagged V-shaped chasm through bone and brain. A half beat later, its bare feet
left earth as the headshot body contorted into a U-shape and followed the
spritz of bone and hair and gray matter airborne. With the sound of the twice
dead corpse pin balling off of sheet metal, Cade shifted aim and engaged the
next two behind it—a long dead female and a recently turned male teenager—with
a rapid-fire pair of double-taps. The female walker received the initial 9mm
round to the right temple and, as the 115-grain hunk of lead bored through bone
and tumbled end-over-end, cutting a path through putrid gray matter, the second
bullet entered obliquely, sending the rear half of its skull, dirty blond
ponytail and all, spinning off and away like a bloody hunk of peeled orange
rind. Brains dribbled from the gaping head wound as the female Z collapsed
vertically to a kneeling position, wedged between the two inert vehicles, and
then slowly, like a felled tree, hinged forward atop Cade’s first victim.

Hands kneading the steering wheel, Brook watched the
one-sided melee unfold from her high perch in the F-650. Had there been more
than a dozen undead she might have climbed down and joined in. But, as always,
it appeared that Cade alone had everything under control, and after the first
three Zs were down and effectively blocking all passage between the two cars,
he did exactly what Brook thought he might. He pushed off of the small car, and
with Wilson clinging like a shadow, flanked the remaining undead. She saw him
stop and square up against the line of creatures. Then, arms outstretched and
sweeping left to right, he ticked degrees off an arc like a slow-moving
sprinkler head, the silencer twitching once at each barely perceptible pause.
The instantaneous and deadly result: a daisy chain of airborne pink mist as
each of the hurtling bullets found their mark from near point-blank range.

All total, from the time Cade told Brook to stop and
extricate the truck until his last shell casing had finished spinning and
pinging across the pavement, a little less than two minutes had elapsed and all
of the Zs were wedged chest to back, their still vertical forms leaking
brackish liquids onto the blacktop. Loosening her grip on the wheel, Brook
exhaled and watched Cade swap out magazines. A second later her man was
stuffing the empty into a pocket and he and Wilson were on the move, crabbing
past bumpers and grills, stopping now and again to look underneath the higher
clearance vehicles for anything lying in wait.

The closer they got to the roadblock, the more evidence Cade
was able to pick up on. Scattered everywhere were shell casings in multiple
calibers. The gravel shoulder adjacent to the fallen Guardsmen had been chewed
up by something. Two furrows, eighteen-inches wide and darker than the
surrounding soil, had been gouged several inches deep into the sloped edge of
the roadside ditch. There was also a pair of faint black smudges in the
right-hand lane. They continued across the yellow centerline. To Cade, up
close, they resembled interconnected chevrons—elongated horizontally. As he
eyeballed the scene, he tried to picture a Humvee in his head. To gauge its
wheelbase. Coming up empty, he resorted to pacing off the furrows. Then he did
the same with the skid marks on the blacktop and found that, give-or-take an
inch or two, both were identical. Lastly, he paced off the width between front
wheels on the nearest passenger car and discovered a two-foot deficiency on its
part.

“What do you make of it?” asked Wilson, who was leaning
against an old GM station wagon with a bullet-riddled cadaver slumped over the
steering wheel.

“Those Guard soldiers manning this roadblock were ambushed
and died right here.” After a long pause, Cade pointed out the Jersey barrier
closest to the right shoulder. Judging by marks scribed into the road near its
base, it had been pushed back a few degrees. There were more tire marks on the
shoulder, and black rubber streaks like the ones on the road marred the base of
the barrier. “And whoever did this to them stole their vehicles and went east.
But worst of all ... they now possess whatever heavy armament was attached to
those vehicles.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that from here on out, until we get to the
compound, we’ve got to be on high alert.” Cade bent down and retrieved a
massive four-inch-long brass shell casing from underneath the rust-marred front
bumper of the tired-looking station wagon. It looked like it could almost
double as a flower vase. He held it up in front of Wilson’s face and said
ominously, “Because if we run into the Ma Deuce that spit these out ... we
better kiss all of our asses goodbye.”

“What’s a Ma Deuce?”

“A fifty-caliber heavy machine gun ... bad news to vehicles
and personnel alike. It’d punch a hole clean through both of our rigs and keep
going for a mile after. I figure it was probably turret-mounted on the Humvee
the bandits towed from the ditch.”

Toeing through a pile of smaller shell casings, Wilson
asked, “How are we getting through this ... all of these cars and cement
barricades?”

“Follow me. I have an idea.” Favoring his left ankle, he
slowly walked back and relayed to Brook what he had in mind. He disengaged the
winch and, with the curved steel hook in hand, looped the 3/8-inch cable over
his shoulder, leaned in and trudged forward, spooling forty feet of it out
behind him. He rounded the first vehicle in the left lane and called back and
had Wilson feed him an additional twenty feet.

The heavy-duty eyehooks embedded in the top of the Jersey
barrier were there to make them easy for a front loader to quickly lift and
position them wherever they were needed. But Cade had a different use in mind
for them. He wound the cable around two of the barriers and then clicked the
metal hook into the right eyehook of the barrier farthest from the Ford. Then
he pulled the cable taut and let the leftover cable snake into the ditch. After
having Wilson engage the winch and draw up most of the slack, Cade caught
Brook’s eye and pointed with two fingers in the direction of Huntsville and
ducked in between the first two cars.

Message received, Brook engaged the four-wheel-drive and
jammed the transmission into reverse. There was a roar as the engine’s rpms
rocketed upwards. Then the big Ford’s rear end settled under load, the two
massive tires on the passenger side found purchase on the roadway and the two
opposite bit deeply into the gravel shoulder.

Simultaneously there was a resonant
twang
as the
cable stretched tight, a chirping of tires trying to hold steady, and a grating
of stone against stone that Cade could feel through his boot soles. A beat
later, as the barriers gave in to applied horsepower and several tons of
rolling 4X4, there was a sound like a bowling ball finding the gutter, only a
hundred times more explosive as the barriers slapped together. Then, just as
Cade had envisioned, both slab-sided hunks of white concrete did a slow motion
barrel roll into the ditch.

After making a slashing motion across his throat, telling
Brook to shut it down, he called Wilson forward, pointed at his bum ankle and
said, “I’m afraid you get the honors. You’re going to have to unwrap the cable
and take it to the farthest vehicle and thread it all the way through ...”

Wilson said incredulously, “All seven of them?”

“And do it quickly.” Cade pointed to a small herd of dead
just topping the hill east of them.

Thankfully the barriers had landed mostly upright and it
only took Wilson a few seconds to unwrap the cable and run it back. Then, on
hands and knees, with Sasha who had defied orders and left the confines of the
Raptor following his every move and peppering him with questions, he shuffled
forward and passed the hook behind the driver’s side tires of all seven
vehicles.

“Better hurry,” Sasha urged.

“Shhh,” he hissed.

“There are more than twenty of them.”

Ignoring his motor-mouthed sibling, Wilson rose from his
knees and asked, “What now, Cade?”

Interrupting again, Sasha said sharply, “They’re getting
closer.”

“I want you to wrap it around the front axle and click the
hook back onto the cable. Then I need you to get inside the car and put the
transmission into neutral and make sure the brake is disengaged.”

Throwing his hands in the air, Wilson said, “Is that all?”
He rolled onto his back and scrunched his lanky body underneath the GM wagon.
Then a slew of choice cuss words later, he resurfaced with sweat dripping from
his brow and blood oozing from a couple of scraped knuckles. He hinged the door
open and was hit face first with a cloud of flies riding the nose-scrunching
pong of weeks-old carrion. Holding his breath, he hauled the cadaver out and
performed the necessary tasks inside. He shimmied off the slimy bench seat,
steadied himself on the open door, and took a deep cleansing breath. Held it
for a second and exhaled, saying proudly, “Done.”

Seeing that the throng of Zs had closed to within a hundred
yards, Cade said to Wilson, “One down, six to go.” Without waiting for a
negative response, Cade looked Sasha in the eye. Unsmiling, he shifted his gaze
a one-eighty, let it waver on the advancing dead for a tick before completing
the three-sixty and nodding the teen toward the safety of the Ford Raptor.

She put her hands on her hips. An act of defiance against
the worst person du-jour on the face of the earth—the man who she perceived as
trying to act like he was her dad or guardian or something.

The heat was oppressive coming from above and radiating off
the blacktop underfoot. Cade was losing his patience. He stared for a tick and
said forcefully, “Now!”

After spewing a flurry of excuses crammed into a few seconds
with the former Delta operator’s unwavering icy glare cracking her resolve,
Sasha finally realized she wasn’t winning this battle. Relenting, she
harrumphed
and turned and stomped back towards the second worst person du-jour on the face
of the earth—the woman who she perceived as trying to replace her mother.

Six minutes later, Wilson had six of the seven vehicles
ready to roll. The seventh and last in line, however, was one of those new VWs
done up to look like an old VW and had a fully bloated Z occupying the driver’s
seat.

“Paper, rock, scissors for this one?” asked Wilson.

“I’ve got it,” said Cade. Nearly in unison, both men gazed
down the line of cars and saw that the dead were now nearly to the roadblock.
Cade went on, “You can take care of them.”