A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (11 page)

Braided hair now coiled in a bun—so Dickless
or Karen or one of the many nameless creatures lurking below would
have one less thing to grab onto—Taryn cracked the door and craned
her neck to assess the situation below.

Either gunned down by airport security or
torn apart and consumed by the lifeless mob, the bullet-riddled
bodies and piles of bloody remnants which were formerly human posed
a gory minefield Taryn would be forced to navigate.

The yellow Subway sign beckoned from the far
end of the terminal. The only food option in the airport, save for
the gift store, had been positioned where the building took a
slight bend so that passengers waiting to board and people meeting
arrivals would have equal access without having to overwork the
security personnel by going to and fro. With over two hundred
flights daily, ninety percent of them private planes and
helicopters, GJT, the moniker given the airport by the Federal
Aviation Administration, had been a hopping little place.

A thin trail of saliva escaped the corner of
the teen’s parched lips. All she could think about was a veggie
foot long on wheat.
Earthy tasting bean sprouts, cool ripe
tomatoes, crisp green bell peppers, and red onions. No cheese for
this vegan please, oil and vinegar... what’s the point? Hell I’ll
take three white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies. Better yet
six and a forty-four ounce pop.

Taryn
, a little voice informed,
you
don’t drink pop.

“The hell I don’t.” Startled by her own
voice, she returned to reality just a little freaked out by the
vivid food fantasy. Boys—certainly, she daydreamed about the boys
of Denver State often in between making iced Americanos, blended
Frappuccino’s and Caramel Macchiatos, all the while feigning
amusement in the random musings of the annoying travelers passing
through her line.

Slumping, back to the wall, she let her body
slide down until she sat on her haunches. “
I’m on my way honey.
Be ready. I’ll pick you up outside of Chester’s post.”
Those
were the last words her dad had uttered. She looked at her phone
wondering if anything had changed. Was the ringer on? Taryn came to
the realization that she was slowly losing it and that her
overexuberant wellspring of hope was quickly running dry.

Chapter 11

Outbreak - Day 11

Schriever AFB

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Waking up and realizing the handwritten note
was missing from the table and that Cade was already gone had been
the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

The paragraph of no more than fifty words had
simply asked him to wake her before he deployed. The fact that he
hadn’t honored her one tiny request triggered something inside of
her, and like a Jack-in-the Box whose jester had been replaced by
something demonic, she snapped.

Still shocked and confused, a crestfallen
Brook escorted Raven in total silence to Annie’s quarters. As Brook
trudged on, embarrassed beyond belief by her actions, she performed
a sort of mental inventory—searching for an answer to her
outburst.

Instead of acting out in front of her very
impressionable soon-to-be twelve-year-old she wished she would have
harnessed all of the pent up negative emotion to wield against the
dead.

She wondered whether the anger and blind rage
she had exhibited had actually stemmed from stuffing the emotions
brought on by Carl’s murder, or if it was from the creeping
feelings of abandonment that grew stronger each time her man went
on one of his missions. In her heart she hoped it was the former
and not the latter. The former would be sorted out when she started
her mourning process for Carl. Dealing with Cade was going to be
interesting. Hell, she thought, one look from his brown eyes and
she might forget all about the perceived sleight. However, the one
thing she did know with an absolute certainty—the person who had
smashed up the Grayson quarters was
not
really her. And she
vowed silently to herself that she would
never
let it happen
again.

Brook’s stomach knotted as she recalled the
baffled look on Raven’s face after witnessing her usually calm and
collected mom topple one of the unused bunks, which, in domino
fashion took another, and then yet another with it. Then, with the
covers pulled above her nose and wide-eyed like she had seen the
dead, Raven had uttered the question that caused Brook to ask at
that terrifying moment, who, or what she had become.

“Mom...” she had whimpered, “is it a mountain
or a mole hill?”

***

Motor Pool Mission Staging Area

As was her penchant for punctuality, Brook
was at the motor pool half an hour early. She killed the time
standing in the middle of the dusty staging area, sweltering in her
newly issued ACUs as her brain baked under the Kevlar helmet.

She amused herself by watching Colonel Shrill
dart about issuing orders to the thirty or so civilians dressed in
colorful shirts, blue jeans and tennis shoes, who were milling
around and talking about anything and everything in loud boisterous
voices.

To Brook it almost looked like he was herding
feral cats; calling the scene in front of her controlled chaos
would be way too kind.

Distancing herself from the cacophony, she
gravitated towards the half dozen rough looking men clad in the
newest multi-cam fatigues. Judging by their tactical helmets which
bristled with night vision goggles, and high-tech streamlined comms
gear complete with boom mikes—the men had to be Special Forces
operators. As she got closer she noticed that although their
weapons were M4 carbines similar to hers, theirs had obviously been
highly modified to suit each of their personal tastes. All of their
rifles were outfitted with scopes and silencers for stealthy longer
range engagements as well as vertical fore grips and collapsible
stocks making them effective for close quarter battle as well.
These were multi-purpose weapons—that much Brook knew. She also
knew she wanted one.

Shouldering her plain Jane vanilla M4 she
tried to blend in—as well as a five foot tall female amongst a
forest of men could.

“You... little lady,” Shrill said singling
Brook out. How he knew it was her underneath the bulky helmet and
the military garb was a mystery. Surely there were short men on the
base. “Find the...” he paused to consult his clipboard, “I’m
designating you gunner in the Dakota truck. You’re riding with... a
civilian by the name of Wilson.”

Designated gunner
, Brook thought,
sounds better than
burial detail
. She envisioned herself,
wrapped safely in a plate metal turret with a .50 caliber Ma Deuce
blazing away. She wasn’t sure, but she thought the Dakota was one
of those exotic gun trucks from the Stan that Cade had once
mentioned.

As Shrill’s booming voice continued pairing
people and assigning vehicles Brook headed to where the desert tan
military vehicles sat cooking in the sun. She didn’t want to waste
any time finding her “Dakota” gun truck and the fella named
Wilson.

“Brook,” Shrill bellowed.

She stopped and aboutfaced.

The base commander jabbed his finger in the
opposite direction.

Confused and slightly embarrassed at being
called out by her first name by the baritone voiced colonel, Brook
avoided all eye contact, especially with the men dressed much like
her, and padded off towards the cluster of liberated U-Haul
trucks.

She set course for the nearest truck and the
shaded soil next to it. Before she had tromped twenty paces
rivulets of sweat had soaked into her fatigues up and down her
back, under her arms and worst of all the fabric in direct contact
with the tender flesh of her inner thighs and crotch.

“Fuck me...” Brook said at the sight of the
U-Haul truck. Looking down on her as if passing silent judgment for
her earlier outburst were the likenesses of four former presidents.
Originally carved in stone on Mount Rushmore but now just a silk
screened image adorning the moving truck’s slab side, the stern
faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and
Abraham Lincoln hovered above the words,
Visit South Dakota,
Great Faces—Great Places
.

Sadly her mental image of the sexy Dakota
truck and its manly gun turret disappeared like a desert heat
mirage and the revelation that she
was
standing in the shade
of her real ride dawned on her.
Now if I could just find this
Wilson guy
, she thought.

“You must be Brooklyn Grayson,” said the pup
of a kid who had snuck up on her blind side. The twenty-something
wore an olive green tee shirt which clung to his lanky frame, its
short sleeves from the pits to the cuff stained white with dried
sweat. His knee-length tan cargo shorts barely held up by a thick
leather belt swished when he moved, and with the unruly mop of
flame red hair bursting from under his desert tan boonie hat Brook
thought the kid looked like a younger version of Carrot Top. And as
she sized up her new traveling partner, she surmised that the
niggling sensation that she was experiencing was a portent of
things to come and the heat was the least of her worries. In the
back of her mind she feared that the day was probably going to get
much worse before it got any better.

Chapter 12

Outbreak - Day 11

Castle Rock, Colorado

As Jedi One-One closed the distance to Castle
Rock, the two radioactive craters, which resembled twin asteroid
strikes on some distant desolate moonscape, crept into view. Ari
nudged the stick, feeding the Ghost Hawk incremental course
corrections in order to give the hot zone a wide berth. Several
hundred thousand Zs had been destroyed by the two strategically
placed five kiloton nuclear warheads. The destruction below was
incomprehensible; starting at ground zero, nothing was left
standing for miles in every direction. And nearly a full day after
the Z horde that had surged from Denver was destroyed, fires still
raged on the periphery, leaping from house to house, voraciously
consuming the fuel rich suburbs and everything standing in its
way.

Ari had a hard time trying to fathom the full
scope of the destruction. He wondered how many survivors had been
holed up, hiding from the dead, when the devices went off.
Collateral damage was to be expected in war,
but on a scale such
as this? Was it all worth it?
he asked himself. Ari knew it
wasn’t his place to second guess the President, but still he wanted
to know why other measures hadn’t been undertaken before they went
with the nuclear option. Resigned to the fact that he would never
be privy to the Intel that shaped Clay’s final decision, Ari
shelved it and focused on flying.

“Desperate times called for desperate
measures,” Cade said matter-of-factly and to no one in particular
over the onboard comms as he took in the blackened landscape.
“Pretty wild that the bombs didn’t even leave a scratch on Castle
Rock.”

Ari shook his head. It was as if the Delta
operative had read his thoughts. “Cade, my man, that pile of red
rock is going to be standing a thousand years after we’re dead and
gone.”

Tice shifted in his seat, pointing the camera
at Castle Rock and the devastated infrastructure passing below the
starboard side. His Nikon stuttered, capturing dozens of images
during the low speed flyby. “Just think what it would have looked
like down there if we would have used the 150 kiloton yield. We
wouldn’t be able to get close enough to see the craters without all
of us glowing like fireflies afterward,” the CIA operative and
nuclear weapons specialist opined. He had proven himself with the
Desantos-led Delta team on both of their previous missions. That he
was knowledgeable when it came to all types of nuclear weapons and
power plants made him a very valuable asset to the team, and the
fact that he was a counter terrorism expert who had headed the JTTF
(Joint Terrorism Task Force) while serving under former President
Odero only sweetened the deal.

Directing his question at Tice, Sergeant
First Class Lopez asked, “Spooky man... why are you taking all
those pictures?”

“I have orders,” Tice stated, keeping his eye
glued to the viewfinder as the camera whirred.

“General Gaines?” Lopez asked, furrowing his
brow.

“No. Not that high up the chain,” Tice
retorted. He knew Ronnie Gaines from running joint ops in the field
with the operator, but calling the man General was going to take
some getting used to. Gaines was one hell of a SF officer and fully
capable of running Delta as well as leading the diminished Spec Ops
cadre garrisoned at Fort Kit Carson. Battlefield promotions were to
be expected, but rising from Captain to General in one fell swoop
was extraordinary. That Mike Desantos had enjoyed the same rapid
promotion from President Valerie Clay spoke volumes to the
attrition rate suffered by all branches of the United States
military since Z day. Cade’s words, uttered only moments ago,
recycled through Tice’s mind.
Desperate times call for desperate
measures. Yes indeed,
he thought to himself before answering
Lopez’s question. “The President ordered Nash to re-task all
available KH-12 satellites to fully recon the CONUS (Continental
United States).”

Never taking his eyes from the ground below,
Sergeant Maddox queried, “Why aren’t they deploying drones for this
TMZ overflight? If they did, then we wouldn’t be hovering over
Chernobyl getting unwarranted x-rays.”

Ari interrupted. “You bozos think I would fry
my balls so you all can get some digital shots?”

“Misery loves company,” Cade replied
grimly.

“The pilot is correct,” Tice said
reassuringly, patting his portable rad meter. “If this baby was
humming I assure you I would have barged up there and taken the
stick myself.”