Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (7 page)

Chapter 11

A handful of things Jamie knew for certain. The first, and
hardest for her to admit, was that Logan was dead. Replaying the surreal scene
in her head for the hundredth time, she heard the out-of-place mechanical
buzzing of the egg-shaped helicopter as it flitted left to right. The black
flash of metal and glass skimmed inches above the borrowed police Tahoe. Then,
like an old film, jittery and slow in motion, she saw the needle antennas
quiver spasmodically from the disturbed air and the black and white SUV start
rocking subtly on its springs. A microsecond later, bullets were snapping the
air around her and the two men responsible for the barrage had materialized
from her right side near the trio of swaybacked sheds. To her left, Logan’s
breath left his body, producing a drawn-out wheezy groan unlike anything she’d
ever heard. Simultaneously, the fatal one-two punch registered in her side
vision and she saw his black bowler hat go airborne. Instinctively her eyes
tracked it as it tumbled slowly, then, a tick later, his feet followed his
hat’s trajectory and he was pitched onto his back, bloody red blossoms breaking
out on his tan fatigue top. Then, without warning, she felt a sharp pain in her
knee and was bowled over and face down on the cool concrete, wedged between
Logan’s inert body and Gus, who was by then flat on his back, gasping for
breath, his frantic eyes seemingly begging her to run.

But she couldn’t. She struggled to move but the strap on her
carbine had become twisted when she fell. She remembered feeling the weight of
the rifle against her back, but face down with her arms pinned fast there was
no way to fight back.

Everything had happened so quickly that her mind was still
collating the intense bombardment of stimuli when a dark shadow rippled over
Logan’s body and the light coming in through the roller doors was mostly
blocked out.

The last thing she remembered before everything went black
was the tempest of noise, the kerosene-tinged air and the metallic tang of
Logan’s warm blood as it wet her cheek and soaked into her hair.

Sometime later she regained consciousness in a helicopter
with a hood reeking of blood and fear-laced sweat cinched tightly over her head,
her wrists bound together so tightly that she feared a double amputation might
be in her immediate future.

Next, the gravity of her situation hit her hard and fast
like the bullets that had struck down the man she had grown to like and was
beginning to love.

Remaining calm, she had taken immediate stock of her
injuries, the worst of which had been a dull throbbing emanating from behind
her left ear where she guessed the knockout blow had been delivered. From her
right knee came the disconcerting sound of bone grating on bone. An injury
sustained when Gus, acting heroically, had violently pushed her out of the line
of fire.

Now, a sleepless night later, her brain felt like it was
caroming around inside her skull and her knee was still noisy and swollen, yet
remarkably could support her entire weight. Whether or not she could outrun her
captors if the opportunity presented itself was a question that would have to
be answered if, or when, the chance arose.

As the helicopter droned on, Jamie cocked her head towards
the pilots up front and listened to their conversation, which was businesslike
and spoken in a difficult-to-follow jargon. The only thing she was able to pick
up on were references pertaining to their altitude and present airspeed and
certain terrain features they were looking out for. Much to her chagrin, though
she had hoped for some tidbit to slip, their conversation revealed nothing
about where they were now, or where they were going.

After a few minutes of straight and level flight, the
helicopter abruptly nosed down and banked right, dropping a big chunk of
altitude in the process. Consequently the aggressive maneuver caught Jamie
unaware and, when the craft finally righted, her head moved past center and
thumped against the opposite bulkhead, further aggravating the concussion and
resulting in an intense wave of nausea that set her salivary glands into
overdrive.

“I’m about to throw up,” she croaked, her jaw beginning to
lock. She tried some shallow breathing but the hot fetid air inside the hood
only made matters worse. And though she could sense the man moving just inches
to her right, he made no reply. So she doubled down. Made it personal by
calling him by name. “Come on,
Carson
. What possible harm can I do to
you? You think I’m going to open the door of a moving helicopter and run for
it?” she asked, twisting her hooded head in his direction. He remained silent.

“I can’t even feel my
fucking
fingers.”

Still he made no reply.

She panned her head forward and called out loudly, hoping to
be acknowledged by the pilots. “I need help back here. I’m going to be sick.”

Nothing.
Just the rotor blades beating the air
overhead.

Her jaw locked open and a flurry of tremors wracked her
body. Deep in her esophagus she felt the first little acidic tickle, her body
forewarning her of the rising tide of bile. Then her stomach clenched tight,
involuntarily doubling her over. To her right, she heard a metallic
snik
that
was instantly recognizable, causing her to tense further. She imagined a
gleaming eight-inch blade locking into place. Then her mind began to jump the
rails, conjuring up the wolfish glare of a man whose face she hadn’t yet seen.
Breathe
,
she told herself.
If they wanted you dead, Jamie, they would have left your
bullet-riddled body back at the quarry alongside Logan and Gus.

Then something brushed her thigh, causing her to recoil and
shrink against the helicopter’s cool metal skin. She felt the hood go tight
around the crown of her head. She heard the rasp of rough burlap as her head
was being pulled toward the center of the chopper—towards the man she’d
overheard the pilots calling Carson. Then her mind messed with her again. Tried
to convince her the blade was being dragged across her neck, so real she could
almost feel the flesh parting as a mortal half-moon-shaped incision was opened
up under her chin. Then the blood sluicing down her chest, hot and sticky and
metallic to the nose. She waited for it. Welcomed it. Instead, the hood came
off with an audible pop. And as quickly as she had embraced the thought of
death, the stark terror of living the rest of her life in pain while suffering
through every type of degradation returned to haunt her.

The greasy sack collapsed into a pile on her lap and, for a
split second before the sun behind him became too intense, she saw Carson’s
profile in her peripheral vision.
We’re flying north
, she thought just
before closing her eyes.

“You puke anywhere but in that bag and you will find
yourself flying under your own power,” he said, catching her wholly by surprise.
His voice was gravelly and she wondered if he’d suffered some kind of injury to
his vocal chords in the past. She wanted nothing more than to see her captor.
To look into his eyes and gauge his resolve.

But she said nothing. Kept her lids sealed and fumbled to
grasp the bag with numb hands. Then she felt Carson’s hand, rough and
calloused, grip both forearms. Keeping her head bowed, she opened her eyes to
slits and watched as he severed the plastic tie binding her wrists with a blade
all of five inches long. Black and squared off at the tip—the Tanto-style
lock-blade was a far cry from the shiny twelve-inch-long butcher’s model she
had envisioned.

“Thank you,” she croaked, feeling blood course through the
ulnar and radial arteries. And as the blood continued on into the veins and
microscopic capillaries in her fingers, she welcomed the sensation of tens of
thousands of invisible pins and needles jabbing her there all at once. Because,
she reasoned, though it was probably just a figure of speech, if she ever got
her hands around Carson’s neck, she hoped to feel the life slipping from him as
she choked him to death.

Pushing the absurd fantasy from her thoughts, she opened her
eyes incrementally and surreptitiously scanned her surroundings. At her feet on
the floor of the helicopter were the black foot-locker-sized boxes she
remembered seeing in the underground complex at the quarry. And also taken from
the quarry compound, sitting on the fold-down seats with labels on their sides
that read
Simplot Idaho Potatoes,
were a pair of sturdy cardboard boxes
packed to overflowing with smaller rectangular boxes containing all different
calibers of ammunition. She moved her gaze left by a degree, looked out the
Plexiglas window and saw far below the terrain which appeared almost alpine,
comprised more of jagged rock and forest than the desert terrain of Utah. She
saw small hillocks and lush green pine trees standing out prominently among the
ground clutter.

Shifting her gaze to the right, she carefully scrutinized
Carson from the chest down. His belt looked to have been a military-issue item
at one time; braces ran up and over his shoulders. The whole system was
supporting a series of pouches bristling with tan polymer magazines, brass
glinting from the top of one of them. His pants were khaki-colored and made of
thick fabric with lots of pockets, the legs of which were tucked into his boot
tops and bloused smartly. His boots were lug-soled, black leather, and laced
tightly. The mud caking the waffle pattern looked identical to the stuff she’d
seen at the quarry, ochre red and fine like talc. And giving away which hand he
favored, a holster containing some kind of desert tan semi-auto pistol with
heavily knurled grips rode low on his left thigh. For half a heartbeat Jamie thought
about making a play for the weapon, then remembered what he’d said to her a
second ago and decided that nothing about
flying under her own power
sounded
appealing. Not to mention the fact that even if she succeeded in getting the
weapon from the man—which was highly doubtful considering her physical
condition—she’d still have the gunmen in the helicopters keeping pace with this
one to deal with.

She closed her eyes and her thoughts turned to Jordan, whom
she hadn’t seen since the previous day. The last thing she remembered was
seeing the young woman sitting in the Tahoe, blonde hair whipping as her head
followed the movements of the flitting helicopters. Lastly, before Logan and
Gus were gunned down, the look of incredulity on the young woman’s face morphed
into one of sheer terror.

With the horrible memories of the day freshly tilled, she
hinged up, opened her eyes and in a low voice asked, “Why? Why did you have to
kill them?”

He said nothing.

Risking retaliation, she looked at him full on and saw a compact
man crackling with nervous energy. Noticeable at once on his cheek, red and
ragged near the edges, was a trio of fresh scratch marks. Then she sized him
up, quickly deciding that the way he held himself—sitting ramrod straight with
his feet planted on the deck a shoulder-width apart—meant he was definitely
former military.

Shooting her a no-nonsense glare, he said, “Get a good
look?”

She made no reply. Instead she drew the bag to her lips and
faked a couple of dry heaves.

He fished a zip tie from a cargo pocket, fashioned it into a
loose cuff and tossed it onto her lap. “Finish up ... then cuff yourself,” he
said brusquely.

She spit into the sack. Looked up and said, “You going to
answer my question?”

He stared at her. Seemed to be contemplating the question.
His eyes were pale blue bordering on slate gray and bored into her with a
thousand-yard stare. Suddenly Jamie felt like a mouse in a room full of cats.
And worst of all, she found that she couldn’t break eye contact with the
predator to her right. Then it struck her how Aryan his looks were—like she was
in the presence of a Brown Shirt from Central Casting. High cheekbones and a
squared-off jaw framed a once-aquiline nose that had obviously been broken in
the past. The color of dirty straw, strands of his fine hair peeked out from
under a tan ball cap sporting an embroidered caricature of a monkey brandishing
a wicked-looking silenced weapon.

Suddenly she sensed his energy again. Only now it was less
nervous ... more like a spring in a giant bear trap, under tremendous tension
yet still keeping all of the deadly workings in place.

His eyes narrowed and he said, “I hate to be cliché but you
and your friends were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just asking for
trouble leaving that Black and White in plain sight.”

“They weren’t my friends,” she lied. “You could say it was a
marriage of convenience. No way to survive out there without having any kind of
numbers on your side.”

“Good ... ‘cause you’ll make new friends where we are going.
And numbers—that won’t be a problem either.” He shut down and turned forward.
Just like she wasn’t even there.

A beat later, one of the pilots called out over his
shoulder, “Twenty minutes out.”

Carson nodded at the pilot. Then he looked at Jamie and
pointed to the cuffs.

Message received. Jamie smoothed her dark hair behind her
ears, left the empty sack in her lap and worked one of the interlocked cuffs
over each hand, then took the stray end of the tie between her teeth and pulled
it taut.

Shaking his head disappointedly, Carson said, “Good try.” He
leaned over and cinched the cuffs. Then, spit and stink and all, he eased the
stifling hood over her head but, showing a little bit of compassion, left it
loose around her neck. The tie binding her wrists, however, was as tight as it
had been before.

Cursing under her breath, Jamie sat and stewed and
fantasized once again about how she’d kill him if she ever got the chance.