Allegiance (4 page)

After the jarring ride
downhill he parked the SUV near the gate, left the engine running, and slid
from the bench seat. Boots crunching a steady cadence, he walked the dozen feet
towards the stamped heavy gauge galvanized steel that had, so far, kept out the
small throngs of dead traipsing the back roads of Idaho.

Being a lifelong cynic,
he guessed that whoever had put in the gate did so mainly to keep out roving
salesmen hawking weatherproof aluminum siding, or the fly-by-night work crews
in rattletrap trucks towing smoldering pots of black goo who came with offers
to pave the driveway from road to house—at a ‘steep discount’ of course—and
carrying lifetime warranties which expired the second the half-assed job was
finished
and money had exchanged hands. Surely the thought of an America overrun by
insatiable dead never figured into the former owner’s decision-making—he was
grateful for it all the same.

As he made his way from
the truck to the gate he noticed the all too familiar, sickly sweet stench of
death. Craning his head, he looked up and down the road before spotting the
culprit. Dragging itself along the shoulder, headed for the gate, was the most
pathetic thing Charlie Jenkins had seen during his fifty-plus years on planet Earth.

The crawler fixed its
clouded orbs on the Chief’s slate-gray eyes, then a slow steady rasping sound,
like a small dog working a hairball, escaped the monster’s putrid maw.

“Talking loud... ain’t
saying nothin’,” Jenkins muttered, his smartass comment punctuated with a sad
chuckle, and then, as if the creature somehow knew what the words meant, or
grasped inflection or tone in the meat’s voice, it repeated the plaintive,
soulless sound.

Although the zombie was
but a third of its former human self, devoid of everything navel south and
trailing yellowed membrane that had once contained its internal organs, somehow
its scrabbling fingernails found purchase and it inched forward, a stalwart
determination to feed, its driving force.

Charlie had no idea why
he was having a one-sided conversation with the writhing mass of carrion.
Maybe, he guessed, two days cooped up in a rural farmhouse with a man of few
words and a young woman of even fewer—who he feared had a crushed voice box—was
beginning to take its toll. In fact, he had spent the last two days virtually
alone in his head thinking about his wife’s corpse rotting away in the bathtub
in his house on the west side of Driggs, and mourning for his daughter whom he
hadn’t heard from since the first days of the Omega outbreak. He looked at the
pathetic creature and a tear traced his cheek as he considered the possibility
she was no different than the hissing crawler he was about to dispatch.

As he unchained the
gate, and watched the zombie watching him, he realized he had clipped the
formerly ambulatory corpse with the Tahoe two days prior. “Persistent one, ain’t
you?” he said, clucking his tongue.

That the thing had tenaciously
clawed its way along the blacktop, following the vehicle that ran it down,
scared the bejeezus out of him.

He wondered whether or
not the dead had the dexterity to uncoil a triple-wound length of chain as he
swung the gate wide. Then he made a mental note to keep a look out for a lock
to replace the one he had been forced to lop off in order to gain access to the
property days earlier.

After being conscripted
by Ian Bishop, disgraced former Navy SEAL and leader of a mercenary force that
had descended onto Jackson Hole, Jenkins hadn’t had much time to contemplate
what the walking dead might or might not be capable of. During the first two
weeks of the zombie apocalypse, his sole job had been to watch over the hard
drinking local population of
Essentials
, the men and women who, because
of their individual skill sets, had been forced by Robert Christian’s king-like
decree to stay and
contribute
against their will.

The time and energy it had
taken for him to keep them in line, while walking on egg shells so as not to
rile the crazy man, afforded him little time to dwell on the what-ifs and
shoulda-dones.

He looped the chain
around the gate and post. “That oughta hold,” he said. “And you, my creepy
crawler, what to do with you?”

The creature hissed.
Still a good distance away, it posed no threat so Jenkins made an addendum to
his earlier mental note: he’d take care of the pitiful wretch when he came
back. He had no doubt it would still be here—he only hoped more wouldn’t show
up.

Outbreak - Day 15

Southwest of Logan
Winters’s Compound

Eden, Utah

Thirty minutes of his
life had ticked away since Duncan wheeled the SUV from the Eden compound’s
hidden entrance onto State Route 39. And in that span of time, as he drove
west, his passenger talked about his upbringing from day one and shared details
about every job he’d held since ten years of age—regardless of pay or tenure.

Finally, after Phillip
had seemingly run out of minutiae to talk about, Duncan enjoyed the silence
while contemplating the motor-mouth’s murder.

“Where are we headed, Sir?”
Phillip asked.

It was the fifth time in
as many minutes the swarthy-faced middle-aged fella had called him sir. Duncan
was beginning to think he had been knighted but had somehow slept through the
ceremony, and at any moment his southern drawl was going to disappear and he’d
revert to the prim and proper syntax of the Queen’s English.

“West by southwest,”
Duncan replied between clenched teeth. Thankfully he still sounded like his
normal self.

“We’re going to
Ogden
?”
Phil said, sounding quite surprised.

“Not all the way to
Ogden. That would be like signing our own death warrant. No, I just want to see
what kinda shape Huntsville is in. Maybe we’ll skirt the reservoir and do a
little foraging.”

Outside the Toyota’s gray-tinted
windows the encroaching forest blasted by, giving way intermittently to flashes
of fenced-in range before plunging them back into tree-flanked shadow.

“Huntsville was in bad
shape,” Phillip proffered. “When me and Ed rolled through a couple of days
after the shit hit the fan, the rotters were everywhere. Buildings burning.
People looting. Heard a fair amount of shooting as well.”

Sorry I mentioned it
, Duncan thought to himself. The situation he had
gotten himself into brought to mind the car scene in the movie Fargo where
Steve Buscemi’s character Carl Showalter had lost his cool because the silent,
stone-faced driver Gaear, who was also his partner in crime, would not engage
in the trivial never-ending conversation during the long road trip. And if
Duncan’s memory served, by the end of that movie, motor-mouth Carl had met the
sharp end of a fire axe before finally ending up in the wood chipper as the
credits rolled. Thus, by droning on, Phillip was doing himself no favors.

As they neared
Huntsville, the winding blacktop took them past a handful of seemingly deserted
farmhouses standing sentinel over rolling hills. Then the trees thinned and the
landscape turned khaki, and the rolling hills were replaced by a long narrow
valley with a looming hill at the far end.

As the air inside the
truck got warmer in relation to the sun’s upward climb, Phillip prattled on
while Duncan sharpened the axe in his mind. The Vietnam-era aviator remained
silent until a sign reading,
Huntsville, Population 608
, flashed by.

Looking over at Phillip,
Duncan said, “Six hundred souls... better stay frosty.”

On the right, a burnt-to-the-ground
gas station flicked by, nothing left of it save for the pumps’ skeletal steel
frames and a familiar yellow and red
Shell
sign. Duncan felt the
transmission downshift as the three and a half ton Toyota took on the
substantial climb. Then, as the top neared, Duncan had to swerve to miss a lone
shambler. Looking in the side mirror and seeing the gaunt form spin and fall
face first, the victim of its own failed motor skills, brought a trace of a
smile to his lips.

As soon as the Toyota
reached the apex, Duncan noticed a ghastly scene a mile or so away on the road
below. Without a moment’s hesitation he stabbed the brakes, slewing the truck
slightly sideways, and then changed gears and reversed until the big white SUV
was completely hidden behind the crest of the hill. No sense in crashing the
party below, he reasoned. At least not without first knowing who was in
attendance.

Duncan wedged the parking
brake and slipped the binoculars around his neck. He nudged the door open with
his boot, and slid from the driver’s seat. “Come with me Phillip,” he said as
he grabbed his stubby shotgun.

“Yes Sir,” replied
Phillip as he clambered onto the road, binoculars in one hand, carbine in the
other.

In a half crouch, Duncan
deliberately made his way to the hill’s crest. “Move slowly and keep your head
down.
Do not
provide a silhouette for anyone to take a shot at,” he
called out over his shoulder.

“Got it,” Phillip
replied.

As soon as Duncan
reached the roadside ditch he went to all fours, then laid flat. He shimmied
forward until he could see the entire valley to the fore. The Wasatch Mountains
formed a picket in the background while Huntsville and the Pineview reservoir
were evident in the foreground—the latter sparkling like a diamond tiara above
the town.

He braced his shoulder
against a gnarled wooden fencepost and took a long look through his Bushnells,
walking them slowly from left to right before returning them to center in order
to scrutinize the carnage in the middle of the road. From roughly a mile out,
the 10-power binoculars brought things into sharp focus. At the bottom of the
grade, where the countryside flattened, a military Humvee protruded from the
roadside ditch. In the foreground, a flock of blackbirds, sun glinting from
their blued feathers, flapped and jostled, competing to feed on a dozen naked
corpses. The scene was like something straight out of a war zone.
Hell
,
thought Duncan.
With zombies everywhere, what
didn’t
resemble a war
zone these days?

When Phillip made it to
Duncan’s side he leaned in and whispered, “Whatcha make of it Sir?”

Duncan said nothing and
continued glassing forward. His trained eye told him that the black Rorschach
patterns painting the gray roadway were spilled blood, and the fact that the
pools were no longer reflecting the sun meant they must have dried some time
ago.

“Nothing moving down
there ‘cept the birds. Still, I want to get a closer look at that vehicle before
we make a run at Huntsville.”

“Who do you think did
them in, Sir?”

“No telling ‘til we get
closer. But the one thing I know for certain,” Duncan said darkly. “The two of
us are no match for whoever killed those soldiers.”

“What do we do now Sir?”
Phillip asked.

Having had his fill of
being called sir, Duncan bristled visibly. He cast a glare at Phillip, who was
surveying the scene below through binoculars of his own. “We go check it out.
Haven’t you seen enough, Phillip?” he asked.

“Too much,” answered Phillip.
He lowered the binoculars and shifted his gaze to Duncan. “Sir... I have a bad
feeling about this.”

“A little fear is a good
thing, Phillip. It keeps us sharp.” Duncan rolled over, got to his knees, and
stood with an audible grunt.

Nodding in agreement,
Phillip rose and without saying a word scooped up his carbine, trotted to the
Toyota and clambered aboard.

Before climbing behind
the wheel Duncan looked down the hill at the zombie he had nearly clipped. It
had recovered fully and was laboriously inching its way uphill towards them.
Then he looked at Phillip, who, judging by the look on his face, was
formulating yet another question.

Why me?
Duncan thought as he unslung his shotgun and
strode purposefully down the hill. The female creature raised its arms and
hissed as he closed in from the high ground.

Utilizing the flip-down
vanity mirror on the back of the visor, Phillip watched the melee from the
Cruiser’s finely leathered confines.

Duncan stopped just
outside of the rotter’s reach, leveled his weapon, and jabbed the barrel into
its chest. He wanted nothing more than to pull the trigger, but couldn’t risk
the unwanted attention it would bring. Instead, he backed off, creating a yard
of separation, flipped the gun around, and swung for the upper decks. The first
blow to the head resounded with an earsplitting crack, knocking the shambler to
the ground. Duncan stepped closer before it could rise, and with a chopping
motion brought the shotgun down repeatedly on top of its head.

One less to worry
about
, Duncan told himself as he
dragged the dead weight off the road. He wiped the shotgun off in the knee-high
grass and trudged back to the truck.

“Holy shit,” Phillip
blurted the second Duncan slid behind the wheel. “What was that all about? Am I
getting on your nerves or something? ‘Cause if I am I can put a lid on it. Or
shut my trap. Or stow it Vera... I’ve heard ‘em all.”

Duncan took a deep
cleansing breath, eased the brake off, and popped the rig into drive. He crested
the hilltop once again and started the long coast downhill, riding the brakes a
little, keeping his speed under twenty-five. “No,” he lied. “I didn’t want to
have to worry about accidently hitting the thing on the return trip.”

“Good thinking, Sir,”
said Phillip.

Partway down the hill,
Duncan stopped the Land Cruiser on the center line, turned and said, “Phillip,
you seen the movie Fargo?”

“No, I haven’t. Why?”

“Never mind,” said
Duncan. He figured after they checked out the Humvee and got back on the road
he’d have a chat with Phillip. And if that didn’t work, he’d sacrifice one of
his socks. But, one way or another, their drive to the compound would be in
silence.