Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 12): Abyss Read online

  Cade clapped Tran on the shoulder. Then, ignoring a burst of laughter emanating from the Kids’ quarters not far from the entry, he pushed aside the blackout curtain and led Raven through the metal door, up the packed-earth ramp, and around the camouflage blind.

  Once out in the open, Cade ducked his head against the icy onslaught and trudged across the clearing toward Duncan. Creating a staccato ripping noise, BB-sized hailstones pelted the bill of his ball cap. They stung his cheeks and nose and found their way down his fatigue collar.

  Emitting a little yelp, Raven took hold of her dad’s slung backpack and pressed her face against its loose folds.

  In just a matter of seconds the knee-high grass dominating the clearing began to bow and knuckle under weight of Mother Nature’s untimely barrage. The hail continued falling in near impenetrable sheets, the pellets sticking and lending the flat surfaces of the vehicles in the motor pool a shiny pallor. The pair’s boots squelched on the accumulation as they stepped from the grass and trooped across the makeshift airstrip’s twin dirt stripes.

  “I’d double time it if I were you,” Duncan called from under cover of the tree line. “Not like the sun’s comin’ out any time soon.”

  As Cade and Raven finally made the tree line, the door to the Winnebago hinged open and Glenda Gladson emerged grim-faced and glaring at the sagging metal awning. It was white with hail on top and nearly brushed the top of her head when she stood underneath it. In her hands was a bleach bottle that looked to be empty judging by how she carried it: one finger through the neck handle and hanging limply at her side. Cade got confirmation of this when the fifty-seven-year-old widow chucked the gallon jug to the ground and it skittered lightly atop the matted-down semicircle of grass beside the RV.

  Duncan looked groundward then let his gaze slowly follow the fresh footprints all the way across the clearing to the compound’s hidden entry. “Still think we should have burned the ‘Bago,” he said, regarding Cade with one brow arched.

  Cade nodded. Message received. He said, “Leave that for me to do, Glenda. I said I would get to it … and I meant it.”

  “We may be needing it down the road,” said Glenda. “That’s why I didn’t want you boys to torch it.”

  Changing the subject, Duncan drawled, “Where are you taking my little Raven?”

  Noting Glenda’s glare directed his way, Cade said, “We’re starting bushcraft one-oh-one. Basically, an entry-level course on how to move effectively outside the wire.”

  “Perfect weather for it,” conceded Duncan. He wet a finger and tested the air. “It’s pushing fifty degrees. Might even get to the ol’ double nickel come noon. Means the rotters’ll still be mobile.” He removed his aviator-style glasses and started wiping them with a handkerchief. Finished, he leveled a knowing gaze at Cade. “About as mobile as a fella stuck in quicksand, that is.”

  Cade nodded. “Thanks for what you’re doing,” he said to Glenda.

  Expression softening, she said, “Glad to. Jamie’s been helping me.” She smiled and glanced at Raven. “Besides, you’ve got your hands full with that tween of yours.”

  Eager to get on the move—or ‘Oscar Mike’ as Dad liked to say—Raven shifted from foot to foot and tried catching his eye.

  Shifting her gaze to Raven, Glenda asked, “Where’s Sash? You two have been darn near inseparable since—” Catching herself before she finished the thought, she went silent.

  Rescuing his loose-lipped damsel in distress, Duncan said, “Since you saved the day and a life by giving your dose of antiserum to Gregory. That’s what Glenda was alluding to … right?”

  Glenda pursed her lips and looked away.

  Shooting the pair a look colder than the precipitation still falling in sporadic bursts, Cade said, “All of a sudden Wilson isn’t comfortable with Sasha going outside the wire.”

  “Understandable with all that’s happened lately.”

  Elbowing Duncan in the ribs, Glenda made a shooing motion at Cade and the youngster who was a spitting image of her mom. “Go and bushcraft,” she said. “I’ll have some hot stick-to-your-ribs venison stew ready by lunchtime.”

  “I owe you for all you’ve done for me and Raven since …”

  Glenda shushed him and shook her head. “No, you don’t. We’re family here.”

  Cade made no reply to that. Instead, he consulted his Suunto, nodded, and led Raven in the direction of the feeder road.

  Watching the pair slog off through the clutching grass, Duncan performed the sign of the cross over his chest and drew Glenda in close.

  “Not that that’s done anyone any good this last week,” she said, wiping at the tear slowly tracking down her cheek. “For Oliver, especially.”

  Chapter 2

  Walking at a measured pace, heads on a swivel and aware of their surroundings, Cade and Raven made the inner fence in under fifteen minutes.

  Scaling the chest-high fence was going to be no easy task considering the hail clinging to it in places. After determining no dead things awaited them in the bushes flanking the road on the other side, Cade unslung his rifle and threaded it through the fence, careful to keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction during the entire process. He did the same with Raven’s carbine and then clasped his hands and offered them to her to use as a sort of stirrup.

  “Can’t we just open the gate?”

  “Keys are in the compound,” he answered. “Just pretend you’re in boot camp.”

  Raven shook her head at the offered leg-up. Instead, grunting from displeasure more than exertion, she stepped up on the middle horizontal crossbar and hooked her left leg over the uppermost part of the gate. Then, making it look easy, she snaked her left arm across the top and pulled her small frame to the opposite side in one fluid motion.

  “That move would have made my first drill sergeant proud.”

  Already scanning the road and steadily encroaching forest ahead for any kind of threats, Raven said, “What was his name?”

  Following the same basic procedure Raven had, Cade hauled his five-ten, hundred-and-eighty-pound frame over.

  “Why couldn’t my DS have been a she?” he asked, wicking the accumulated moisture from his fatigues.

  “I know how the world worked back then,” she said, handing over the M4, muzzle to the ground. “And not much has changed now.”

  Save for telling Raven about the crazy Adrian woman who had killed Oliver—something that he was going to have to do, eventually—Cade had no rebuttal to that.

  Bracketed on both sides by wet undergrowth and skeletal bramble runners, the pair began to walk the gravel feeder road, keeping to the grassy center strip where their tracks wouldn’t show. A couple of minutes passed and Raven said, “Even in the zombie apocalypse I’ve noticed that the women are still doing the dishes and darning clothes.”

  The dishes part was your doing, young miss, he thought, but held his tongue on the subject. Instead, he said, “Who knows, maybe one day you and Sasha will be running the show here.”

  Raven slowed her gait. “What about you? Duncan? Glenda and the others? You all planning on dying on me, too?”

  “Bird, I’m going to fight until I draw my last breath,” he said softly. “It’s what we Graysons do.”

  Raven said nothing to that. Just kept putting one boot in front of the other with metronomic precision, the crunching cadence the only thing rising above the encroaching silence.

  ***

  They made better time getting from the middle gate to the main gate paralleling State Route 39 than they did on the first leg of the feeder road. Seeing the foliage-covered netting and dark wood lattice hanging from the hidden gate, Cade motioned for Raven to move to the shadows beside the road while he went forward to investigate.

  Cade found the gate locked and undisturbed. He peered through a seam in the camouflage blind and saw the road running left to right along the fence line. Because of the recent deluge, it was one unending strip of white for as far as he could see in bot
h directions—a mile or so in total.

  Across the two-lane was the knoll where their dead were buried. Too many for him to count without giving it serious thought. Though he could see the three new graves in his mind’s eye—Brook’s, then Foley’s, and finally Oliver’s on the far right—there was nothing pointing to the fact that the unkempt patch of white and green and brown was a graveyard. There were no crosses or stones bearing names and dates. The important details were kept written down in a ledger in the compound. And, at present, the date of Brook’s death was the only one he could recall. In fact, though it was just days removed, he’d never forget October 28th for as long as he lived.

  He looked back to Raven. Though she was only a dozen feet away, he could read the question in her eyes: Can we?

  With a subtle move of his head, he summoned her over. “Not now,” he whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “You tell me,” he said, craning to see the road.

  A contemplative look fell over Raven’s features. She stood shoulder to elbow with her dad, staring at the knoll for a long moment. Finally, she said, “Because our tracks crossing the road and going up the hill will be a dead giveaway if a breather comes along.”

  Suppressing a smile born of a father’s pride, Cade nodded.

  “This way,” Raven said, striking off west while staying just inside the fence line. “I know a game trail we can follow to the far corner of the property. It dives deeper into the forest from there. Or, we can follow the road from there. It should be free of hail on the shoulders under the tree overhang.”

  That’s my girl.

  “My thoughts exactly,” he said. “No telling when this storm system will pass. Better to be safe—”

  “Than sorry,” she finished, whispering the words over one shoulder.

  ***

  Keeping up with Raven wasn’t the issue. Dodging the small boughs and reaching bramble runners she was sweeping from their path with her rifle barrel was. Twice he was whipped across the face by the seemingly spring-loaded obstructions.

  Raven whispered, “Why are we going to the roadblock?”

  “Just keeping an eye on things,” he replied, blinking away the sting from the slap of another incoming barrage of wet leaves. “That’s all.”

  In reality, the reason for the increased vigilance of the past few days was the sudden arrival of a survivor with no known local ties and a very suspect backstory. That Bridgett was a self-professed loner and had purportedly driven through the area where Elvis detonated Bishop’s nuke and showed no signs of radiation exposure set Cade’s bullshit alarm a‘jangling. Keeping to herself after undergoing a lengthy questioning session and then being offered a place to stay before moving on didn’t help to endear her to the group. Which was why Cade had ordered everyone to keep their eyes on her. Save for visits to the pit toilets and when she was in her rack, she’d had little alone time.

  Raven stopped and put her gloved hand on the corner fence post. To her right, the barbed wire fencing disappeared into the verdant forest. To her left the road entered a treed stretch and was lost from view rather quickly.

  “What’s in your pack?”

  She made a pretty good drum roll sound with her tongue, then said, “Now for part one of bushcraft training.” She shrugged her pack off, opened the top compartment, and removed the items from inside one at a time.

  “An MRE and a couple of bottles of water … that’s good,” Cade noted.

  “I snuck an extra thirty-round magazine.” She patted the backpack’s still-zippered front pouch.

  Cade nodded. Good thinking. “What’s with the Stephen King paperback?” he asked, one brow arched.

  “I brought it to read when you stop to rest your ankle.”

  “My ankle’s nearly one hundred percent, you little Smart Alec. Good job on the packing. You can put it all back now. However,” he said, his voice a near whisper, “next time might I suggest something other than a horror novel to read in your downtime.”

  Raven playfully stuck out her tongue then proceeded to return the items from where she had taken them. Finished, she stood and shouldered her pack. Then, letting her rifle dangle from its sling, she said, “Let me guess, part two of the bushcraft test comes when we get to the roadblock. I have a feeling you’re going to make me help you cull any Zs that we find there.”

  “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Do I get to use this?” Raven patted her new rifle. “Or this?” She drew the knife from the leather scabbard resting against her right thigh.

  “That,” Cade said, indicating the item in her hand. He had personally liberated the blade from the quarry compound weeks ago with the sole intent of making it hers one day. The handle was fashioned from a length of polished antler. The blade was six inches long and tapered to a fine dagger-like point. If he had to describe it: two parts Daniel Boone (the leather and bone components) and one part Arkansas Toothpick (the blade, which was in a style said to have been designed by James Black of Bowie knife fame) would just about do it. It fit her to a “T,” and though she had yet to use it against the dead, the time loomed nearer with each westward step.

  Chapter 3

  Tran was focused on the particular rectangle on the flat panel showing the Winnebago and small congregation of survivors—Bridgett now among them—when in his side vision something registering as a light-colored blur passed by the camera trained east down SR-39. By the time he shifted his gaze to the partition displaying the feed from the west-facing camera, a light-colored pickup had entered its field of view and was already retreating down the center of the hail-covered two-lane. Blossoming behind the truck was a turbid slipstream that obscured all but the fact that there were a pair of head-shaped blobs visible through the dirt-rimed rear glass.

  Still staring at the two panes displaying the tire tracks bisecting the once-virgin blanket of white painting 39, Tran plucked a Motorola from the desk in front of him and thumbed the Talk button. “Cade … Raven, Tran here. How copy?”

  While waiting for the reply, Tran noticed a ripple of movement in the crowd of survivors topside. Then he saw Duncan, standing under the awning and wearing the ubiquitous white cowboy hat, pluck a radio from a pocket and bring it up to his mouth.

  Expecting to hear Duncan’s soft drawl, instead, Tran heard Cade say, “Good copy, Tran. What’s up?”

  Tran quickly rattled off the pertinent details. Which were basic, but all he could provide.

  Topside, Duncan regarded the stunned looks on the faces of the others. There had been no mistaking the engine growl and hiss of radials carrying on the crisp morning air. After looking a question at the others, to a person, they all agreed the sound had come from the direction of the distant state route.

  Hearing Tran hail Cade, Duncan took the radio from his pocket and was about to respond when Cade broke in over the channel.

  Lifting his thumb from the Talk key, Duncan locked eyes with Glenda and listened intently as Tran described the vehicle and personnel in minimal detail. He was already rolling the volume up when Cade came back on and described where he was and indicated he could hear the vehicle drawing near.

  Having opted to scale the fence and walk the road under cover of the double canopy, Cade and Raven were standing on the shoulder a mile and a half west of the corner post when the radio’s muted warble sounded in Cade’s pocket.

  The chat with Tran lasted five seconds at most. Signing off with a curt, “I hear them coming,” Cade regarded the jumble of hail-dusted logs making up the roadblock two hundred feet west of him. Pressing their element-ravaged bodies against the formidable head-high mound of fallen old-growth were the dozen or so shamblers Tran had reported seeing pass by the compound entrance earlier. Holding a finger to his lips, Cade motioned for Raven to come to him. Then, praying the dead couldn’t hear the faint hiss of the approaching vehicle, he plucked his daughter off the shoulder, deposited her on the opposite side of the knee-high guardrail, and clambered over to join her.<
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  Grabbing Raven’s hand, Cade slowly backed away, eyes never leaving the Zs. As they melted into the wet undergrowth, the engine growl increased exponentially, which meant the person at the wheel of the unseen vehicle was taking advantage of the lack of hail and accelerating down the nearby straightaway. Looking to Raven, he said in a low voice, “They have no idea what’s about to happen.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  Jaw taking on the familiar granite set, he said, “Just watch.”

  The engine roar didn’t lessen one iota as the vehicle neared the end of the heavily wooded stretch of road. When the silver Toyota Tundra exited the forest and no downshifting was happening, it was clear to Cade and Raven that the driver had yet to realize the road ahead was blocked by tons of formerly standing firs and pines, let alone the small herd of walking dead trapped this side of it.

  Just prior to the first high-pitched howl of automobile rubber trying to find purchase on the hail-slickened road, Cade heard the distinctive click of Raven throwing her rifle’s selector to Fire. In the next beat, with the beefy 4x4 beginning to slew sideways a dozen feet in front of their roadside hide, Cade thumbed his rifle “hot,” snugged it to his shoulder, and tracked the slow-moving train wreck through the M4’s EOTech optics.

  Voice raised to be heard over the cacophony, Cade said, “Don’t open fire unless—”

  “Unless?” interrupted Raven. “You meant when, right?”

  As Cade let Raven’s unexpected response sink in, the Tundra began to slow and right itself in relation to the centerline. “Fire only if I do,” he finally reiterated. “And aim for the tires. I’ll concentrate on the breathers.”

  By the time Cade returned his attention to the slowing rig, only a couple of seconds had elapsed and the Zs were fully aware of the approaching vehicle as well as the potential meal of fresh meat inside. In unison, the creatures whipped their heads around and slowly got their bodies to follow. The sudden about-face set twelve heads’ worth of matted, ratty hair flying. In turn, the whip effect sent a spray of ice pellets airborne.