Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (51 page)

“The latter. I wasn’t blowing smoke when I told you these
glasses were doing the trick.”

Interrupting, Foley said, “Just yesterday Carson and his
crew brought three women back from their foraging trip.”

Suddenly wishing he hadn’t played his cards so close to his
vest, Cade asked, “Why didn’t you divulge that earlier?”

“You didn’t ask.”

Cade straightened up and ran a hand through his dark hair.
After a beat he said, “Enlighten me.”

Foley repeated what he’d overheard the other guards say
about the women, leaving out the vulgar descriptions of certain parts of the
women’s female anatomy.

Across the lake

Once downstairs, Bishop followed Jamie through the kitchen
and living room, then through the slider. That she’d eyed the block of kitchen
knives along the way wasn’t lost on him. At the rail he sidled up behind her
and whispered, “Have you ever seen a sunset so grand?”

Playing along—for now—Jamie answered, “Why no. No, I
haven’t.”

He pressed closer, grinding against her now.

Though the temperature had dropped a few degrees in just a
handful of minutes, the shiver Jamie threw was one of revulsion. Then his cheek
brushed hers and he pointed over her left shoulder north by west and said
cryptically, “In a short while you and I are going to be blessed by a sky show
few humans live to tell about.”

Reacting to the absence of direct sunlight, multitudes of
insects seemed to come on the scene at once, buzzing the two of them.

Pushing back against Bishop’s advance, Jamie said, “The bugs
are killing me. Can we go inside?” There was no word of warning. Not so much as
a grunt, but suddenly she found herself freed from his weight and following him
back inside, her hand in his.

Foley’s place

As the sun sank from sight somewhere far away in the west,
the windows across the lake broadcast the event, reflecting the oranges and
reds of the fiery evening sky. Meanwhile, inside the A-frame guest house
overlooking Mother Nature’s stunning sky show, Duncan said, “The way you
described the brunette ... athletic, medium height ... gotta be Jamie.” No
sooner did the young woman’s name roll off his tongue than he was staring her
in the face. And that face, amazingly, was unmarred. There were no obvious
signs of abuse, only a pinched smile and a hard set jaw—subtle tells of the
stress she was no doubt under.
Nothing like Jordan though
, he thought.
The image of her death mask he’d no doubt carry with him for a long time. “I
have eyes on Jamie. And I think I’ve made the Bishop fella too.”

“Carson?” asked Cade.

“Nope. Just the two. They just stepped onto the porch. And
oh how I wish I could kill the bastard right now.” Then, recognizing the fact
that he was observing them with Cade’s scoped rifle, he rose and backed away
from the dresser. “Shoot the fucker. Please take the shot,” he pleaded with
Cade.

Taking position behind the rifle, Cade switched frequencies
on his comms. He clicked the send button twice and, after less than a second,
was relayed instructions from somewhere on high. Responding with a quick, “Copy
that,” he switched back to the frequency shared by his small team, clicked the
send button twice, and then answered Duncan. “Timing’s got to be just right if
you want Jamie to come home with us alive.”

“Cade ... you’ve gotta make sure she’s not harmed,” said
Duncan. “You know Logan was smitten with that girl.”

Foley blurted, “Can I go with you ... wherever
home
is? I’ve got nothing here.”

“Stay in line and out of the way and I’ll consider it,”
answered Cade. A half-beat later, in his earpiece, he heard a pair of soft
clicks. He answered with a pair of clicks of his own and snugged the rifle in
and put his face to the scope.
Too late
. He watched helplessly as Jamie,
following closely behind Bishop, disappeared back into the house. A few seconds
later he saw a flare of light inside. Brilliant at first, then the single
flickering flame became two and the original died out.

He saw Jamie sit down, her face a golden mask of beauty
illuminated by the flickering candlelight. Then Bishop pulled out a chair and
sat down, his head and upper body eclipsing her entirely.

Chapter 83

Hearing the two clicks he’d been anticipating, Lev clicked
back twice and when his response was answered in like fashion, he flashed
Daymon a thumbs up. They’d agreed ahead of time that Daymon would start the
ball rolling and Lev would join the party only if necessary.

Twenty feet away, concealed in some low brush, his woodland
BDUs and rangy mop of dark hair effectively breaking up any kind of outline the
faint light of dusk might illuminate, Daymon received the signal.
Just a
bear
, he told himself. In fact, if the man at the gate had to be compared to
any animal—a bear would be the logical choice. Easily over six feet tall and
weighing in well north of two hundred pounds, the bearded man had already
displayed a nasty streak in the way he’d been toying with the arriving dead.
Instead of sticking a dagger in their brains like the other, much smaller,
guard had been wont to do, Big Beard was fond of carving pieces off of them
first.
Not a way to treat your former fellow Americans
. And though the
man appeared to be an asshole of the highest order, no matter how hard Daymon
tried to dehumanize the man in his mind, the thought, however doubtful, that
the sadist might still have kids or a wife somewhere gave the former BLM
firefighter reason to pause.

Sighting through the bow’s optics, Daymon could sense Lev’s
eyes on him, beaming the chanted words,
do it, do it,
straight into his
brain. Then he remembered that these men may have been the ones who’d kidnapped
Heidi. Who’d held her against her will and defiled her after Robert Christian
had his way and cast her out like yesterday’s trash. At the very least they
were guilty by association. Something shifted in him. The last modicum of
empathy melted like an ice cube on the surface of the sun. Suddenly he was
full-of-rage Daymon. The very same guy who had sacrificed the fat lawyer to the
dead in Hanna.
Bye bye Ursa
, he thought, drawing up a few pounds of
trigger pull. Then, with the crosshairs centered over the bearded man’s
throat—targeting the soft, fleshy indentation right below where the whiskers
stopped growing—he sealed the deal.

Silent, save for a barely perceptible twang which was
followed by a slightly louder crack, like a twig giving underfoot, the arrested
tension was released and the barbed arrow shot from the carbon fiber bow,
covered the short distance in the blink of an eye, and found its mark dead on.

Buried to the feathers, blood pulsing in sheets around the
fiberglass shaft, the arrow quivered for a second until Big Beard’s hands
instinctively came up and grabbed ahold.

Whether due to the commotion or the coppery smell of blood,
or both, the dead on the other side of the gate reacted instantly. Their moans
intensified and they thrust their stick-thin arms between the horizontal slats.

Busy notching another arrow, Daymon hadn’t been witness to
the actions of the dead or the bearded man’s eyes rolling back into his skull.
Nor did he see the man’s mouth working frantically to draw a breath against the
torrent of his own frothy blood that was effectively drowning him.

Daymon finished reloading and snugged the crossbow to his
shoulder and targeted the smaller man, who by now had turned a one-eighty and
was watching the life drain from his companion’s eyes.

As the realization that he had crossed over and was now a
killer of men settled heavily on Daymon’s shoulders, he hovered the crosshairs
on the little guy’s ribcage, right side, below the arm and above the hip. Just
a grouping of muscles and a few slats of horizontal bone protecting a whole
mess of important organs. Seemingly unfazed and presuming he was out of the
line of fire, the second guard raised a radio to his lips.
Too late and
wrong assumption
, thought a changed Daymon.
I’m behind you, fucker
.

From a spot of concealment thirty feet from the gate and
with his finger tensed on the Glock’s trigger, Lev watched as Daymon channeled
his inner Grim Reaper and put an arrow into the second guard’s right side. The
reaction was instantaneous as the guard dropped his weapon and another item
he’d just pulled from inside his fleece vest and then fell over onto his left
and curled up into a fetal ball.

Instantly Daymon popped up and sprinted towards the gate.

Lev covered Daymon’s approach and once he’d taken a knee
beside the second guard, broke from cover and hustled over there as well.

Having already disarmed the guard, Daymon held up the silent
two-way radio and said, “I don’t think he got the call off.”

“Let’s find out,” said Lev darkly. Over the moans of the
agitated Zs and the guard’s whispered pleas for help, he grabbed the arrow
shaft, gave it a tug, and hissed, “How many more men are inside the perimeter?”

The man’s glassy eyes suddenly gained some cognition. Mouth
moving, the man shot a hate-filled sidelong glance at Daymon but said nothing
substantive, just pained grunts and groans escaping his mouth.

Twisting the shaft, Lev hissed, “
How many?
”

Looking around, worried reinforcements were soon to emerge
from the lengthening shadows, Daymon said, “Cade wants us to get these guys out
of sight and then get right back.”

Hoping to get some extra intel, Lev ignored Daymon and
jiggled the arrow, an action that was met by a shriek and then a beat later a
muffled, “Thirty or forty,” left the man’s mouth between gasps.

Addressing Daymon, Lev said, “You can look away if you
want.” He unsheathed his matte black blade and without pause drew it across the
doomed man’s throat, pressing hard enough to produce the sound of honed steel
dragging against bone. Blood sprayed everywhere, hot and sticky. After a
handful of seconds the man went limp and the bleeding let up, signifying the
end of his life.

The stench of the dead when combined with the stink of
loosened bowels and the metallic tang of the freshly spilt blood was enough to
make Daymon’s stomach clench. Wondering to himself if the acts he’d just
committed, or the byproduct of those acts, was the responsible culprit, he
swallowed against a throat full of rising bile.

“You going to be OK?” asked Lev as he wiped away the blood
and sheathed his blade.

Nodding, Daymon grabbed the smaller guard’s arms and draped
the limp dead weight over his neck in a fireman’s carry. Then he rose slowly,
straightened his arms and heaved the warm corpse over the gate where it was
received with open arms and gnashing teeth.

It took a combined effort to drag the bear-sized guard into
the underbrush, and when they were finished both men were fighting for breath.

Without a word, Lev tossed the smaller guard’s weapon into
the mass of feeding dead. On the run back to the guest house the radio went
into his cargo pocket. Then, broadcasting the mission’s success, he clicked the
transmit switch on his headset twice.

Chapter 84

Finger tensed on the trigger, Cade felt the faintest of
stirrings in his chest, a sensation like no other, certainly one he’d never
forget. The first time he had experienced the unique harmonic overpressure,
which was the way his mind interpreted it, Mike Desantos had been on this side
of the dirt. The last time he’d had the pleasure was at the NBL in Canada,
when, exhausted and nearly overrun by the dead, the glorious sound like no
other signaled his Delta team’s imminent rescue.

He breathed in deeply, filling his chest with warm, still
air. Held it in check for a tick then exhaled, a whisper of breath escaping
slow and steady. Between heartbeats, he drew off the remaining trigger pull,
saw the barrel jump and felt the considerable recoil pummel his shoulder and
send gooseflesh rippling down his ribcage. Upstairs in the loft, the suppressed
report sounded like a single hand clap, sharp and attention-getting and, before
it had made the rounds and finished echoing off the slanted ceiling, Cade saw
the grievous damage inflicted by the .338 Lapua round. First to take the brunt
was the sliding glass door as the bullet riding the air at a supersonic pace
punched through both sandwiched panes, causing the entire 4X7 sheet to web
first then splinter and fall inward, leaving him an unobstructed view of what
came next.

When the bullet struck Bishop, his right arm was raised to
shoulder level; whether he’d been talking with his hands, about to strike
Jamie, or shoveling food into his mouth, Cade wasn’t certain.

In the time it took Cade to draw in his next breath, three
things were going on inside the target house. First he saw Bishop’s upraised
arm jerk violently forward towards Jamie as his entire bulk, reacting to the
kinetic energy behind the sudden mule kick, followed suit, hinging forward over
the table, scattering china and service as the dark wood slab reared up on one
end and he disappeared from view, pulling everything down atop himself. Next,
in slow motion, Bishop’s form was replaced by a spreading pink cloud of mist
and Cade saw, clear as day through the powerful optics, Jamie’s expression go
from one of taciturn acceptance, to surprise, to sudden revulsion as the
expanding cloud of flesh and blood pelted her from the neck up.

As Cade worked the MSR’s bolt back, simultaneously sending
the spent piece of smoking brass on a tumbling journey to the floor and the
next match-grade shell smoothly into the breach, he witnessed two things. First
Jamie disappeared from view, her slight form slipping behind the teetering
table. In the next instant, a black angular shape, the source of the harmonic
disturbance, crossed the night sky smooth and dangerous, its near silent rotor
wash rattling the open windows and frothing the lake’s placid surface.