Allegiance (22 page)

Outbreak - Day 15

Schriever AFB

Colorado Springs,
Colorado

Creeping steadily
towards an inevitable merger with the craggy Rocky Mountain range to the west,
the relentless sun had dropped another hundred degree day on the airmen and
soldiers tasked with guarding Schriever’s main gate.

A single bead of sweat
ran down the bridge of Staff Sergeant Leeland’s nose and curled over the tip,
wobbling there subtly but refusing to fall. He ignored the urge to take a swipe
at it and instead kept the binoculars trained on the lone truck barreling along
the northern fence line. The jittery tan vehicle he was tracking looked like it
was being pursued by an angry ochre snake. Shimmering heat waves further
distorted the image, adding to the illusion that the vehicle was breaking some
kind of land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Soon the roar of the
engine had alerted all of the guards, sending them sprinting from the
guardhouse towards the gate, carbines held at the ready.

As the truck rapidly
closed the distance, the two guards in the tower swiveled their Browning
machine guns in its direction, gaping black muzzles eager to hurl massive .50
caliber armor-piercing rounds at it if the need arose.

Donaldson fine-tuned the
Bushnells, bringing the driver and truck clearly into focus. “Stand down,” he called
out. “It’s Captain Grayson returning. Stand down everyone.”

Without missing a beat,
the soldiers lowered their weapons and backed away from the double gate as it
rolled open on big rubberized wheels. A murder of crows exploded from the pile
of zombie corpses piled a dozen yards from the entrance as the F-650 shot
through. The gate was already closing behind the rig before its rear bumper had
cleared the threshold. The entire operation appeared choreographed, like it had
been performed hundreds of times.

“Corporal Mouton,”
Leeland bellowed. One of the soldiers near the guard house looked up but made
no reply. “Get on the horn and see where that Dead Sled is. I want those rotten
Zs out of here five minutes ago.”

“Yes Sir,” replied the
soldier.

A few seconds later,
Leeland had descended the stairs and was approaching the Ford on the driver’s
side. Cade powered down the window, grimacing from the squelch it made as the
fine powdery dust invaded the window channels. The staff sergeant threw a crisp
salute Cade’s way. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, Cade broke a couple of
laws and returned the salute. He didn’t have the heart to tell the eager staff
sergeant that he was no longer in the Army, and neither was he a captain, thus
the age-old courtesy was no longer necessary.

“Welcome back Sir,”
Leeland said as his right arm fell back to his side. “Looks like you need to
take this thing through a Water Works. It’s a shame they are all closed down.”

Cade presumed Leeland
was referring to some local car wash chain, but didn’t ask for clarification.
“No... she needed a little camouflage anyway,” he replied.

Leeland chuckled at the
joke. “Where did you go—and what’s it like out there?” he pried. There was a
certain urgency in his voice. Like everything he heard on the base had to be
taken with a grain of salt. “I’m going stir crazy stuck inside here. Watching
people come and go.”

By now, just like they
had when he’d left earlier in the day, the guard detail crowded around the
dirty truck. “Nothing has changed much out there,” Cade called down from the
cab, loud enough so everyone could pick it up. “I just wanted to put this girl
through the paces. Do a little off-roading.”

“What’s the verdict. Is
she mission capable?”

“More than you know,”
Cade said, adding a conspiratorial wink.

Leeland grinned ear to
ear. “Copy that, Sir.” He fished a hand in a cargo pocket and retrieved the
white envelope Cade had given him hours ago, then strained to full extension
handing it up to the former Delta operator.

“Thanks for hanging on to
this for me Staff Sergeant,” Cade said with a deliberate nod.

“Any time, Sir.
Permission to speak freely, Sir.”

Cade nodded again. Said
nothing.

“Are things getting
better out there?”

“A little better, Staff
Sergeant.”

The same big grin
returned to the guard’s sun-bronzed face. “So maybe with a little luck we’ll
have the dead cleaned out of downtown Springs before winter, and all of the
Water Works opened by spring.”

“You soldiers from the
4th ID—Fourth Infantry Division—have done most of the heavy lifting. Colorado
Springs will probably be cleared sooner than you know,” Cade said.
But If I
were you, I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high
, is what he didn’t. He’d
leave the telling of the hard truths up to the man’s immediate superior. He
looked at all of the heads bobbing in total agreement.
A little boost to the
morale never hurt anyone
, he thought to himself.

Outbreak - Day 15

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Tran had no idea why the
zombie had ignored him up on Butte Road, but he was grateful all the same. Why
the thing had gone back to feeding on the moose instead of setting the whole
clutch chasing after him was a mystery he had been turning over in his mind
every agony-filled step of the way since he’d crossed the road.

The lower third of the
towering peninsula which the mansion commonly referred to as the “House” lorded
over proved easier to navigate than the part he had tumbled down. The pitch had
lessened and the underbrush thinned out dramatically. With the afternoon sun
boosting his spirits, and eager to get out of the woods and onto flat ground so
he could assess his injuries, he quickened his pace from a steady limp to a
sort of old person’s shuffle. Soon the forest and undergrowth gave way to
knee-high grass, and not twenty feet in front of him a sturdy looking fence
strung through with horizontal strands of rusty, barb-filled wire halted his
forward progress. Twisted from years of seasonal change, and held upright by
hard volcanic soil, the multiple gray posts spaced roughly ten feet apart appeared
to run the entire length of the Teton Pass Highway. He looked right—the road
stretched on straight as the ridge on a wild boar’s back. To his left the
shimmering blacktop met up with I-189 before curling off left to downtown
Jackson Hole; a right turn would take him to Hoback Junction and the Snake
River crossing.

That the interchange was
choked with dozens of shambling undead, and led to nowhere he wanted to be,
quickly solidified his decision to go right and trudge up the pass road.

Wavering on unsteady
legs, he gripped the wooden fencepost for balance. He lifted his right foot and
inspected it from the big toe to the heel, then plucked a handful of inch-long
thorns from the cracked and bleeding flesh. Thought about performing the same
maintenance on the other foot—the one attached to the ankle he feared was
broken—then dismissed the idea since there was no kind of feeling in it anyway.
Flies bombed at his head then alit and skittered around with impunity on his
mask of dried blood. With both hands he gingerly walked his fingertips along
the inches-long gash running from just above his left eye to the crown of his
head. His short-cropped black hair had soaked up a good volume of the blood
lost, along with dirt and twigs, and then had dried thoroughly, stiffening up
like a helmet. He looked at his fingers. “No blood,” he said aloud. The sound
of his own voice, hoarse and gravelly, caused his heart to skip. Aside from the
murderous brothers who’d left him for dead, he hadn’t spoken or heard another
voice for quite some time.

Ignoring the buzzing and
flitting insects, he about faced and kept to the inside of the fence line. He
limped along at half speed, passing dozens of the crude wooden crosses on which
noncompliant Jackson natives—whom Robert Christian had decided were no longer
necessary—had been crucified alive, then left as morbid examples for all to
see: a warning of what would happen to anyone who didn’t buy in lock, stock,
and barrel to his dystopian version of a New America.

Outbreak - Day 15

Schriever AFB

Colorado Springs,
Colorado

Throaty exhaust notes
reverberated in the confines of the metal airplane hangar as Cade wheeled the
gore-covered dust-bomb past a half dozen static aircraft in various stages of
maintenance.

Like everyone else on
the base, from the handful of doctors on down to the airmen fixing chow at the
mess, the crew chiefs and flight engineers were working with what they had— practicing
their own version of triage on the small fleet of aircraft that now called
Schriever home. The helos and aerial refueling birds received the most
attention; the rest of the fleet received spit and a band-aid if the manpower
became available.

He backed the big Ford
into the same spot where it had been parked earlier in the morning, set the brake
and looked through the open hangar doors at the aircraft sitting on the tarmac
just beyond Whipper’s office. One of the pair of charcoal-black Ghost
Hawks—larger, but stealthier and nearly silent versions of the venerable H-60
Black Hawk helicopter—sat crouched on the apron. Its carbon fiber blades were
tied down and both of the mini-guns had been retracted inside the bird, giving
the appearance it was taking some sort of nap while the SOAR pilots who put it
through its paces so capably were enjoying their seventy-two hours mandatory
stand-down.

Beyond the Gen-3 “Jedi
Ride,” he could see the unmistakable outline of Marine One, the President’s
hulking twin rotor Osprey. The bird’s V/STOL—Vertical and/or Short Take-Off and
Landing—capability, paired with its 275-knot top speed and the fact that it
carried a much larger fuel load than most helicopters made it a no brainer to
ferry President Valerie Clay to and from the super secure Cheyenne Mountain
complex. For a moment Cade stared, wondering why she was here at the base. Then
he zeroed in on First Sergeant Whipper’s stomping grounds. Though it was at an
oblique angle, he could just make out the taxi-yellow door which he expected
would fly open any second and disgorge an angry mechanic hell bent on revenge. After
a few seconds had elapsed and the wrath of Whipper hadn’t descended on the
road-weary operator, he unfolded himself from the truck and hopped out.

The tailgate hinged down
with a gunshot-like bang and a puff of powdery soil. Shooing the dust from his
face, he removed the cardboard box that was almost lost in the middle of
Yoder’s main drag. He made short work of the strapping tape holding the
rectangular box together, then unfolded the sides flat to the floor, revealing
a host of chromed and multi-colored parts. He looked at the components for a
few long seconds. Undeterred, he set off on a quest for a toolset.

***

Two hours, several
scraped knuckles, and a host of salty curse words later—most of them fully
accredited to the late Mike Desantos—Cade stood back to view the finished
product. Fully satisfied that he had done his best with what he’d had to work
with, he stowed the tools and locked the Ford. Finally, he righted the shiny
new contraption and headed for the Grayson billet.

Outbreak - Day 15

Near Driggs, Idaho

“Let’s hope the fourth
time’s the charm,” Lucas Brother said as he put the H2 into park.

“We won’t know until we
get inside,” Liam said. “After the last three you’d think this is a dry county
or some shit.”

Lucas rubbed his temples.
The cold sweats had returned, and his headache was getting worse by the minute.
This search for booze and a place to stay was beginning to wear him down.

“Quit yer stalling,”
Liam said. “It’s your turn, bro... get out and ice those things.”

“Hell, you mean get
out?” Lucas spat, throwing Liam a sidelong glare. “I’m driving, dumbass. I
thought we agreed... the driver always stays in the truck. Didn’t you learn
anything from the 189 Junction? We almost bought it back there.”

“Yeah, right. The driver
stays in
unless
I’m the driver,” Liam muttered under his breath.

“I heard that,” Lucas
shot back.

The house at the end of
the driveway was unremarkable. It was one notch up from a mobile home and
appeared to have been a one-level ‘50’s ranch style before someone decided that
adding an unsightly second floor on top to double the square footage seemed
like a good idea. Painted beige, with lavender trim that screamed “old folks
live here,” the humble abode seemed to be unoccupied.

“Looks promising,” Liam
said. “And that old pickup might have some gas in it we can siphon.”

Lucas squinted. Took a
long look at the burgundy older model Chevy. Checked out the house trying to
detect any movement. “All right... get out and pop the gate.”

Liam looked out the rear
window in the direction of the road they had just turned from, staring hard at
the three creatures stumbling along the blacktop. Then the wind shifted and
their moans carried uphill along with the smell of death. He looked over at
Lucas, who was grinding the wheel with his palms. “I’m
not
getting out
here. It’s
your
turn,” Liam declared. He crossed his arms and pressed
his body hard against the seatback.

“Suit yourself, Liam.
I’ll push that fucker in with the bumper.”

“No sense in smashing it
up if we don’t have to,” Liam whined. “Besides, I’ve never had anything as nice
as this thing. Shit... never had anything with leather seats.”

“Who says it’s yours?”

A staring match ensued.
Neither brother so much as blinked.

Finally, with the
zombies drawing nearer and his eyeballs drying to the point that they were
beginning to sting, Lucas relented. “Fine... let me show you how it’s done,
bro
.”
He snatched the entrenching tool from the back seat. It was a medium-sized
military shovel with a serrated edge that folded down small and compact. Ian
Bishop had no doubt left the thing in the Hummer and it had already proven
useful at killing silently.

He unfolded his long
frame from the Hummer and slammed the door behind. And with a swagger that
belonged in the
Octagon,
he loped towards the undead trio. “You’re
trespassing, fuckers!” he bellowed, veins on his neck bulging. The zombies
answered back with muted hisses of their own.

He chose the smaller of
the three, a teenager he presumed, judging by the video game-inspired tee
shirt.
Modern Warfare didn’t prepare you for this
, Lucas thought darkly.
Hardest war this kid ever faced was against puberty
, he mused. And that
was before something chewed half of his face and a goodly-sized chunk of his
neck away.

Lucas stopped
mid-stride, and then when the former gamer was at arm’s range, put everything
he had into swinging the entrenching tool. It traced an arc parallel with the
ground, and with a gut-churning crunch struck the creature just above the ear,
delving a half a foot in before the serrated edges seized on bone. He held the
limp body up with one wavering arm, planted a boot on the soldier silhouette
painted in the center of the soiled black tee shirt, and kicked the limp body
from the shovel. Then he pivoted on one boot and squared up for the next two
combatants. His nose crinkled at the stench wafting off of them. Only clumps of
gray hair remained, dotting their skulls like furry islands in a white sea.
First
turns
, he thought.
Probably a couple of travelers who got stranded after
the outbreak
. An eerie wet rattle emanated from the nearest one, setting
the hairs on his neck to attention. He raised his arms overhead like some kind
of medieval warrior and brought the tool down in an overhead chopping motion.
The blow missed by a fraction, glanced off of the Z’s skull, and severed its
ear, leaving a wet hole where the decaying lump of flesh and cartilage had
been. The ear plopped to the ground and the remaining inertia sent the shovel’s
sharp edge plunging deep into the monster’s clavicle, severing muscles and
tendon along the way. The arm, now rendered useless, hung limp at the
creature’s side while it continued flailing and grabbing with the other. Cold
fingers grasped at Lucas’s shirt as he struggled to pull the makeshift weapon
free. “Motherfucker...” he cried out. He released the handle and felt a rising
panic taking over. Then, against his better judgment, he pulled the .45 from
his waistband and fired a single-jacketed hollow point into the walker’s head.
The thing’s forehead imploded, spraying blowback in Lucas’s face. After a long
couple of seconds it finally released its frigid grip and collapsed to the
ground.

Lucas shifted his aim
and squeezed the trigger twice. The first round blew clean through the second
zombie’s upper chest but did nothing to halt the abomination’s plodding advance.
Things slowed and Lucas tracked the brass shell casing’s tumbling arc with his
eyes. The second lead slug hit six inches higher, shattering its jaw into a
hundred pieces and propelling teeth and bone upward through the soft palate,
effectively destroying its brain. The body hinged back and struck the asphalt
violently, producing a hollow-sounding thud. And as the booming reports rolled
away to silence, he shifted his gaze towards the Hummer where Liam had thrown
his arms into the air—a universal gesture silently asking his older brother—“
what
the fuck did you just do?”

Lucas shrugged. He
walked past the gas-guzzling symbol of excess and flipped his brother the bird.
Standing on his toes, he reached over the fence, feeling for a lock.
Nothing
.
He removed the six-inch cotter pin holding the gate in place, opened the clasp,
and let the gate swing wide aided only by gravity. “Hurry up!” he bellowed,
banging on the quarter panel as the Hummer squeezed by.

Liam spun the tires,
launching the truck over the threshold, and without missing a beat Lucas closed
the latch to lock the dead out and vaulted into the idling truck.

Pinning the accelerator
to the floor, Liam barreled up the unimproved drive, keeping the truck’s tires
glued to the well-worn ruts while the strip of grass growing in between slapped
the underbelly of the SUV, producing an eerie swishing sound and leaving a
turbid plume of husk and seed in its wake.

“Nobody home...” Liam
said as they neared the house with its darkened windows and closed front door.
Whether it was a question or a statement Lucas couldn’t be sure. “No one’s
shooting at us,” Liam added with a dumb grin pasted on his face.

Lucas couldn’t resist.
“Yet,” he replied.

Liam turned the wheel
sharply, decimating a family of garden gnomes with the Hummer’s off-road
rubber. He smiled, obviously happy with his handiwork. He finished off the
three-point turn without destroying anything else and backed the yellow rig up
to the tiny front porch.

The doors hinged open
simultaneously and the brothers jumped out, weapons in hand. “You go around
back,” Lucas called out, motioning with the AR-15. He jammed the dull gray .45
between his waistband and the small of his back. “I’ll stay here... give you a minute
or so and then I’m going in. If there
is
someone inside they heard the
gunfire and know we’re here. Watch for them rabbiting out the back.”

“How far you think
they’re gonna get?” Liam said, pointing out the AARP sticker displayed on the
Chevy Silverado’s rusted rear bumper.

“Don’t take ‘em for
granted, bro,” Lucas fired back, pointing to the NRA sticker pasted on the rear
glass slider. “
Now git
,” he snarled, and without any attempt at being
stealthy mounted the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Three strides and he was
standing on the square porch. It was four-feet wide and nearly as deep. A
sticker that read “NO SOLICITORS” was affixed to the inner door at eye level.
“Ohhh... I’d better leave now,” he said in a smartass tone as he tried the
outer screen door. He found it locked, but the metal mesh screen was nearly
rusted out. He easily thrust his thumb through, enlarged the hole and angled
his wrist so that he could reach the lock and pop it. To his amazement, the
pair of ancient-looking hinges didn’t screech out an alarm as he eased the
flimsy thing open.

He peered through the
inset glass. At first glance, the interior of the house seemed unoccupied and
didn’t offer many clues. There was no movement in the living room, and he could
see no farther than a shadow-filled hallway leading into the back of the house.
The furniture was plain. A low table containing dozens of dust catchers
displayed on yellowed doilies sat against the far wall, alongside an emerald
green davenport. Dominating the opposite wall, the television sat on wooden
legs, dark and quiet. It was an old console model of some sort, made from dark
wood with a rounded glass screen that had probably displayed its fair share of
Leave
It to Beaver
.
Bingo
, he thought to himself.
Old folks
. He jiggled
the doorknob.
Locked
. In his mind’s eye he could see Liam standing in
plain sight out back of the house. A bullet catcher if there ever was one.

He brought the AR-15
level with his head, preparing to break out the leaded glass. But before he
could follow through with the intended blow, a single gunshot, sounding like it
came from Liam’s Beretta, rang out. He froze with the AR’s collapsed butt stock
wavering an inch from the pane.

Then someone began to
shout but the words were garbled. Distant. Lucas grimaced because he couldn’t
make out whose distressed voice he was hearing nor what was being said. He
eased the screen door closed, backed off the porch, and instead of following in
his brother’s footsteps he peeled off to the left, keeping his head below the
windows as he padded past a number of chest-high bushes. He halted at the rear
of the house, pinned his blonde hair behind one ear and listened for a second.

But by now the shouting
had ceased, and the only thing he could make out was the noise of some sort of
fabric flapping and popping in the wind. He risked a one-eyed peek around the
corner. Liam stood in the center of the yard, roughly thirty feet away, his
face a mask of worry. The black Beretta clutched in his right fist was trained
on an elderly woman who in turn was pointing a derringer-style pistol of her
own directly at his midsection.

A gust of wind ruffled
the sheets on the line, revealing a man’s body lying near the woman’s slippered
feet. He was splayed out, pale and unmoving, atop a pile of white sheets that
had been splattered crimson with his blood.

“Put it down,” Liam
barked as he looked over his shoulder towards the front of the house.

Lucas crouched low and
sprinted a dozen feet to his left, keeping the line full of flapping laundry between
him and the gun-wielding granny. He glanced over and could see the look of
distress on Liam’s face change to one of recognition and then calm as their
eyes met.

“OK... I’ll put mine
down if you put yours down.”

The lady shook her head.
She began bleating, “
Why?
” Saying it repeatedly, her scratchy voice
rising in volume until her wails nearly drowned out everything else. The wind.
The clothes on the line. And Lucas creeping up behind her with his pistol in a
two-handed grip.

The small gun trembled
in the woman’s skeletal hand. Everything slowed down for Lucas as he cut the
angle, taking his brother out of the line of fire. He pulled the trigger on the
move and watched her head hinge sideways at an impossible angle as the slug
impacted behind her left ear, splashing chunks of brain and ruptured skull onto
the drying wash. The supersonic slap from the .45 caliber projectile lifted her
from the ground and out of her fuzzy slippers. Death had come so quickly that
the tiny Derringer remained unfired and was still clutched in her fist when her
body fell back to earth.

“Liam... you OK?”

“I don’t know,” came a
shaky reply as he checked his torso for bullet holes.

“So why did you ice the
geezer?” Lucas said as he stood over the man’s body. “He doesn’t even have a gun.”

“Shit... you look at
that face, it’s all pale and skinny. I shit you not, I thought the dude was a
zombie.”

“I can see the
resemblance.”

“Let’s see what they
left us in their will,” Liam said. Chuckling, he stepped around the corpses,
climbed the back stairs and entered the house through the open back door.