Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3) (9 page)

“Jesus H. Christ on a flying-fucking-mountain bike, woman. You just don’t have any kind of filter between your brain an’ your mouth, do you?” Foster ignored the dirty look Rae flashed him and kept his eyes on Kat. “Alright. So. Who’s gonna break the news to him?”

Cho stood, eager to be about the chore. “I will. He’ll listen to me.”

George grunted and leaned back in his seat again to think, absently puffing away on his cigar once more. “Uh-huh. What if he doesn’t?”

“Then I’ll get creative,” Kat told him calmly.

Rae followed Kat through the Mimi out into the sweltering garage, and headed for their water supply. They’d “salvaged” three dozen cases of Aquafina a few days before, and the liter-sized, plastic containers currently sat on the floor just outside the humongous transports rear hatch.

“Where is he?” Kat asked while she pulled two bottles and crammed them into her hip pouch.

Rae looked at her intently for a few moments, evaluating whether or not Cho was committed to her chosen course of action. Kat’s eyes were calm and almost desperate as she waited for the brunette’s reply, and Rae could see there would be no talking her out of it.

“Up at the park, on the football field,” she replied, wondering what Kat’s plan was. “Did you want someone to go with you?”

“I think it’s better I do this one-on-one,” Kat said.

* * *

Rae nodded, bent and retrieved a bottled water for herself. When she straightened up again, Kat had disappeared. She looked around quickly, but there was no sign of the pretty, pretty ninja-girl.

“Damn!” Rae marveled. “How the
hell
does she do that?”

* * *

Remo couldn’t understand it.

He’d checked his equipment thoroughly over the last nine hours and couldn’t determine why the hell that new group in Oklahoma couldn’t hear him. The whip antenna was firmly connected to the cable he’d run up the telephone pole out back, there were no breaks in the line, and he’d hard-wired it into his HAM set up. Thanks to a little forethought, his house had been “off the grid” for years, thanks to a quartet of solar panels on the roof, a pair of wind generators, and a small hydroelectric paddlewheel/power plant in the stream on the west of his property, he had plenty of juice, but he still couldn’t make contact. All of his electronics were working properly as well. He’d double-checked his transmitter and even cracked open the broadcast inverter looking for burned out circuitry. He’d run every diagnostic in the book, but found nothing. For some unknown reason, his signal just wasn’t reaching them.

Sitting back and taking a healthy swig of his Coors Light, Remo scratched absently at his large bicep. He was big. Not overweight, just big. He’d always enjoyed physical activity, and over a decade of service in the United States Navy had left their mark on him too. While he had scars a-plenty, the middle-aged man still possessed the deep chest, narrow waist, and bulging arms of a wet-behind-the-ears sailor half his age, but wasn’t really concerned with his appearance any longer.

Getting hitched to a really hot yoga instructor ten years younger than yourself would do that for you. He smiled at the thought of his wife above in the garage/weapons shop. She was currently tearing apart one of his semi-automatic shotguns (a Franchi-12) to modify it into a full auto.

He’d been lucky to find her, even before the zombies came along.

Even though he’d been—relatively—certain the problem wasn’t on his end, Remo had wanted to make sure. Like the old adage went: Don’t’ assume. Now he was one-hundred percent positive. This group of lunatics in the “Screamin’ Mimi” (whatever the hell that was) was sitting smack dab in a dead zone. Yes, that did mean there were a hell of a lot of those creatures in their area of the country, but it also meant they couldn’t hear any incoming broadcasts.

That brought a few possibilities to mind. They could just be running silent, unwilling to respond to anyone reaching out that they didn’t know. Or (the disturbing option) someone was actively making themselves their own little secure section, smack dab in America’s heartland during the Apocalypse. Jamming the airwaves with white noise, to insure radio communication wasn’t possible.

The second possibility didn’t bode well to Remo. It meant somebody out there—other than the forces within the Safe Zone—had their shit together. Enough so that they were actually trying to grow their territory.

Sipping at his canned pork chop again, Remo frowned. Maybe he should make contact with Durst and Stone again. He briefly considered asking them to take that RV from hell they were driving around in over to Langley and have a look, but reconsidered. Those guys had enough on their plate as it was, and little of it was good.

Remo stood and activated the fifteen hundred watt transmission booster lag-bolted to the wall above one of his gun safes in the basement. While he was pretty isolated in the Safe Zone’s northwestern-most state, he could still reach out to its defenders, pass along interesting tidbits to the men in charge, and even coordinate operations for some of the “spookier” units still operating in hot areas among the dead.

Command might be willing to fly over a drone, or assign a recon team out to do a “sneak-and-peek” in the area around Langley. They might even be able to link up with the survivors there.

Dammit, it would all be so much easier if he could just make contact with them…

CHAPTER FOUR

Footfalls thumped against the asphalt.

A mix of Vibram from the soles of combat boots and sweat stretched around the track’s surface again and again, making it almost impossible to discern exactly where the discoloration began. The worn oval circled the debris-strewn blacktop and came back to meet its point of origin opposite the gate, very much like the world serpent consuming the end of its own tail.

You keep going, motherfucker! You’re not tired yet!

No one had mowed the field for months now. The previously, perfectly painted yard-lines marking its expanse from end-zone to end-zone were faded, and had all but vanished into the overgrowth. There hadn’t been any joyous celebration to echo from the bleachers for some time either. Gone were the days of parental pride over the athletic triumphs of their offspring. Absent were skimpy skirts worn by pretty blondes who, despite their appealing smiles and overdeveloped attributes, were still just jail-bait.

The footfalls continued.

Don’t stop, you worthless piece of shit!

The weak breeze carried the pungent odor of rotten meat, not the savory scent of grilled hotdogs and bratwurst. There were no lines at the concession stand beside the bleachers, no cries of joy or disappointment from the enraptured crowd as the home team scored another goal. Only the chirping of the birds, the buzzing of insects, the impacts of boot soles, and labored breathing broke the mournful silence of the morning.

You stop, you slow down, and they’ll do the same to your other friends! What? You want to rest? Too goddamn bad! Move your ass, you lazy fuck!

Jacob O’Connor dug deep and increased his pace yet again.

The ex-writer was drenched in perspiration. His unruly brown hair and sharp-boned face streamed with sweat that dripped from the tip of his hawk-like nose, and fell from the bottom of his slightly stubbled chin. Moisture beaded on his neck, his shoulders, growing into rivulets which streaked over the slick expanse of his cabled chest, along the hard lines of his stomach, and finally trickled down to soak the top of his Khakis. If he’d been cognizant enough to notice, Jake would’ve felt it sticking the tan fabric to his legs as the salty liquid headed for the tops of his Blackhawk tactical boots. A shotgun sheath was secured tightly along his back by a sweat-darkened combat strap, which passed around his ribs and up over his right collarbone. It stood out in sharp contrast against the slick tightness of his sun-touched skin as he ran around and around and around in a daze.

Within the sheath, rode his crowbar.

The thirty-six inch, high-carbon steel persuader had been with him since day one of the outbreak. Even though he’d removed his shirt prior to the start of his run—which unbeknownst to him was almost ninety minutes ago—Jake kept the sheath secured across his back. The heavy weapon seldom left his side these days. He’d used it with great success to bash the infected into oblivion many times. He’d decided to hold onto it, despite the urgings of his companions, instead of opting for one of the machetes they’d looted from a Columbus Army/Navy Surplus outlet. Jake had taken it from a wrecked hardware store on the way back to his apartment, just before he, Allen and Kat had gone out into the madness to retrieve Laurel.

Laurel... She’s gone!

The thought sent a hot spike of anger into his brain that drove his legs faster still.

That was fine. Jake had been reasonably fit prior to the dead rising up to consume the living, thanks to time spent as a combat journalist with a unit in Britain’s SAS (Special Air Service). Most of
that
had been in places sane people tended to avoid. Now, since he’d been pushing himself for weeks, he was pretty much in peak condition.

After recovering from his brush with the Grim Reaper (due to taking a Purifier’s knife bone-deep into his left shoulder), O’Connor had spent his waking hours in silence. While still bedridden he hadn’t spoken a word to anyone, even after regaining consciousness. His friends had attempted to pull him out of it. They’d taken turns sitting beside his gurney as the Mimi slowly traversed secondary roads in the wake of their Hummer, talking and making jokes he never laughed at. It had been some time before he’d even consented to acknowledge their presence. Once he’d fought off the infection that made its way into his wound, Jake had been inconsolable. In his mind, he’d all but murdered his friends. Donna, Heather, Karen, Laurel; they’d all died because of his foolhardy plan. He’d turned himself over to the Purifiers in trade for Karen Parker, who they’d learned later had already been turned into one of the shuffling creatures. The agony of his knife wound, and the subsequent burning of his flesh with Rae’s heated knife blade, required to close the deep puncture keeping him from to death, were nothing. His mind hadn’t even registered the pain as he’d lay on the gurney, bouncing gently with the motion of Foster’s pink transport, damming himself over and over again.

When the others finally confronted him and tried to get Jake to take the lead in their group once he’d become stronger, he hadn’t replied to their requests. He’d just sat, listless against the interior hull of the Mimi, while Kat pleaded with him and George cursed him. The traumatized man had been positive whichever of his friends they chose to replace him, they would be a far better choice than he himself could ever be. Once they’d begun to move southeast again, he’d spent his time in the aft of the Mimi silently cleaning and re-cleaning weapons that had already been serviced. He did push-ups and sit-ups and pull-ups endlessly while they traveled on; stopping only to clean gear, the times his friends had all but forced him to eat, or when he was finally so exhausted he barely had the strength to climb into his bunk. He ignored the hot, painful twinges of his still-healing shoulder and continued his pace, day after day. When they stopped at caches, Jake would trot endlessly around the interior, or run the building’s stairs if it had any. His friends worried constantly, but they didn’t know what to say to him, so they let him be.

Because of this—along with the survivor’s diet of nothing but M.R.E.s, freeze dried food, and protein mixes—O’Connor had lost what little body fat he’d previously possessed. The muscles in his chest and upper torso had grown noticeably to become even more bulky. His waist had narrowed down to twenty-eight or twenty-nine inches from all the running, which further emphasized the size of his growing chest, arms, and shoulders. At six feet and 220 pounds, he’d actually begun to look somewhat fearsome.

Though to tell the truth, that was more due to his eyes than it was the additional muscle.

His pain-fueled scream at the explosion which signaled Laurel’s demise on the roof of the power plant had burst the blood vessels in his lower eyelids. Weeks later, the bruising still showed little or no signs of healing, and served only to give his sky-blue eyes a frightening, perpetually-furious look. They resembled the bright orbs of a hungry predator that gazed at you ferociously from the gloom, just beyond the light of your campfire; cold, unforgiving, and totally lacking of anything that resembles mercy.

The only time Jake seemed to come out of his mental and emotional exile was when they found it necessary to engage the infected. The few times the survivors had needed to clear small, two-horse towns as they searched for the local cache, his companions had been stunned at his reaction to the creatures. While no one would be foolish enough to
like
the smelly things—because zombies tended to chase, kill and eat people—his hatred was extreme and washed away any semblance of sanity from his face. He’d approached packs eight and ten strong, shooting the first few, and then viciously pounding the remaining number into the ground with his crowbar. Even though the dead were physically incapable of feeling pain or discomfort, he chose to render them immobile as painfully as possible, by shattering spines and breaking necks, before finally giving them the release of death. Rae and Foster tried to speak to him about it after the first such incident. He’d killed over a dozen infected up close and personal by smashing their brains from their rotten skulls in a maddened rage. The look on his face as he stood there shaking, lightly splattered with dead fluids, was beyond hate. Beyond anger. Beyond any expression of unbridled fury his friends, with the possible exception of George Foster, had ever witnessed.

It had been evident to all that O’Connor was in no condition to lead their little party so, despite her quite emphatic protests to the contrary, Kat had remained The One In Charge. That was fine with Jake, too. He’d been busy remembering how Laurel had gazed at him when she’d said goodbye from the roof of the Cincinnati Gas and Electric Plant. He suffered hallucinations about how her left cheek quirked up in a slightly lopsided smile. He had recurring dreams about how worried she’d been for him, during his terrifying game of Pac-Man with the dead on the streets of Columbus. Of how she crossed her arms and cocked her hips when she was angry. Of her touch, her scent, her kisses…

She’s gone-she’s gone-she’s gone-she’s gone-she’s gone!

Jake’s reasoning abilities fractured once more, and his pace increased two-fold. He all but flew around the track moving flat out like an Olympic sprinter, racing on over its faded, weather-beaten surface at speed. His arms pumped, his lungs worked like billows, his pulse thundered in his ears. Sweat began to stream back along his torso, flying into the air in his wake to splatter unnoticed on the asphalt as he passed. He ignored it all. The burning in his throat, the pounding behind his eyes, the protests from his straining and overworked muscles, the heat of the sun beating down on him. All he knew was the loss, the pain that bounced around in his skull like an awful, white-hot sea urchin.

Jake pushed everything away and ran.

He ran as if Skathach—the Celtic shadow-goddess of vengeance and ruination—trotted cackling madly at his heels.

He was on his third such lap, streaking along over the pavement, half-aware and nearly mad himself, when Kat entered through the field’s gate.

Unlike Jake, she still had her pistol, extra magazines and sword, while his only weapon was the crowbar sweatily riding between his shoulder-blades. She watched from beside the bleachers as he shot around again; arms pumping, legs blurring. Jake moved over the baking hot ground like his feet were turbine driven. Her chest tightened when she saw his wild unseeing eyes on his next pass. She sighed, and realized he was living in his memory again. The pretty Asian had done that a few nights herself, after Laurel’s rooftop sacrifice. The redhead
had
been her best friend for almost three years after all, but she could still only guess how hard it had been for Jake to watch his lover die.

As he raced around the far curve once more, Kat strode quickly onto the track and planted herself squarely in his path, fully intending to take him to the ground if need be to halt his maniacal dash. While Jake’s strength and endurance were certainly impressive, Cho judged the ambient air temperature to be in the high nineties. Certainly high enough to cause someone exerting themselves for extended periods of time—as he’d been doing for quite a while now—to suffer from heat exhaustion. In the Zombie Apocalypse, that could be fatal. Their group’s options for cooling a victim of heat stroke were limited, seeing that : A-there was no way for them to make ice or even refrigerate liquid, and B-the only nearby hospital was sure to be understaffed, considering everyone who worked there was a slouching, hungry corpse now. So, hoping to break him out of the self-imposed state of lunacy, she set herself in the center of Jake’s lane and began calling out to him.

“I need to talk to you.”

He gave no sign he’d heard her. Jake was halfway around the track when she yelled out to him again, louder this time.

“Jake? Did you hear what I said? I need you to stop.”

Still nothing. He was circling the far curve again now, and still moving fast. She knew if they collided, there was a damn good chance one—or both—of them might need some serious medical attention. Possibly from Kat taking him down hard, possibly from Jake knocking her ass-over-teakettle as his larger frame plowed through the spot where she was standing. Kat began to worry at that point.

“You can’t keep doing this. You’ll keel over in the heat! Will you stop already?”

He came on like a 220 pound bullet. There were seventy yards between them. Fifty-five yards. Thirty, twenty. She cringed inwardly.
Oh, this was going to hurt.

“Jake!”

The last she yelled almost into his face as O’Connor shot towards her. A second before impact, she saw reality impose itself in his eyes again. He realized that he was too close and moving way too fast for her to dodge, so he chose another option. With his next step, Jake threw himself to the left. Over the bench just inside the field’s edge. The one reserved to second string members of the football and soccer teams, or even just players who needed a break during the game. He cleared its top easily, bounding a good three feet over the bench’s dusty, aluminum seat-back. The awkward leap to avoid crashing into Kat broke his stride midair and, after an almost comical stumble, he went tumbling across the surface of the overgrown field. He slid to a halt fifteen yards away flat on his back, a bit scratched up from where the thick grass had torn at him as he rolled, ears ringing from where his own crowbar had glanced off the back of his skull, but basically unhurt.

The ninja-girl vaulted the bench and trotted quickly to his side as Jake sat up, groggily attempting to shake a Milky Way’s worth of stars out of his vision. Kneeling to support him while his eyes crossed and he swayed drunkenly, Kat leaned Jake towards her so she could check his head. There was already a fair sized lump rising on the back of his skull, but thankfully the heavy weapon hadn’t broken through his skin. He groaned when she probed said lump gently with her fingertips, and relief flooded through Cho when she didn’t feel any cracks or divots. Jake had almost pulled it together by then, and was giving her a look master chiefs reserved for new recruits on the first day of SEAL training’s Hell Week.