In Harm's Way (17 page)

Duncan held the chopper in a hover five feet above second base and shouted to be heard over the blasting rotor wash, “
Take the shotgun!
” Daymon appeared not to hear him. “
Take my shotgun... that’s an order!
” Duncan bellowed again at the top of his lungs.

Daymon reluctantly grabbed the stubby 12 gauge and opened the sliding door. His eyes met Duncan’s one last time, then he nodded. The way he was crouched low, like a coiled spring, made it obvious that he was prepared to hit the ground running.

Duncan felt a slight bump as the wheels kissed the dry brown grass of the outfield and he watched the young man leap to the ground, duck his head and bound away from the helicopter at a full sprint. Daymon never looked back and the last thing Duncan noticed as the ground fell away under the Black Hawk were the man’s bouncing dreadlocks as he effortlessly vaulted the cyclone fence.

***

Daymon landed softly and scampered across the street, his head constantly moving, on the lookout for the walking dead. The chain link fence rattling behind him resonated with metallic discord. The initial sprint from the chopper and his poorly thought out vault over the fence left him a bit winded and reopened his freshly scabbed over wounds. A spike of pain in his side urged him to slow down while the moaning coming from nearby zombies spurred him on.

Daymon noticed that several blocks to the west, the blue and gold helicopter hovered noisily.
What a brilliant move.
Duncan was drawing the walkers to him by creating a diversion that they couldn’t resist.
Cagey bastard,
Daymon thought appreciatively.

After running three city blocks at full speed with the Kelty pack weighing him down and the crossbow bludgeoning his lower back with each footfall, he slowed to a trot to formulate a plan. His little house was on the left three blocks up ahead.
Front door or back?
he asked himself. Since he had already determined from the air that there weren’t any threats behind the house, the decision was easy. He was going to go through the neighbor’s yard that butted up against his and jump the fence, hopefully ending up behind his house without being seen.

Daymon caught sight of the three walkers the moment he rounded the corner. The trio staggered in the middle of 4th Avenue, rubbernecking at the hovering Black Hawk. Without thinking he went to a knee, readied the crossbow, and aimed for the nearest walker. He watched with satisfaction as the rotter crumpled sideways, then hit the asphalt face first, with the arrow protruding from the base of its neck. Oblivious to their brother’s demise, the other zombies continued gawking at the helicopter.

***

Thirty foot aspen trees lined both sides of the street; Duncan held the bird in a near perfect hover a few feet above their whipping branches and watched Daymon’s escape. He didn’t feel at all comfortable with the situation, but it wasn’t his decision to make, so just seeing Daymon make it to safety would have to be good enough.

Duncan cheered aloud when the first walker dropped.
After dispatching the second zombie with a swipe of his machete, Daymon was up and runni
ng directly towards the remaining monster. Duncan chuckled as the ghoul’s head went airborne and then bounced twice before finally coming to rest next to the storm drain.
Just a little off the top please
. Duncan’s chuckle evolved into a belly laugh and then his trademark cackle as he rooted for his friend on the ground.

***

Daymon was almost home now, literally. He needed to navigate two yards and one more fence and he would be safely in his unkempt backyard. God how he hoped his home was secure.

The Robertson’s Ford Taurus was parked in the driveway leading Daymon to assume the elderly folks were in the home. He stepped onto their porch with every intention of asking their permission to cut through the yard.
What the hell am I doing
, he thought, a millisecond before he rang the doorbell. For a moment he had allowed the familiarity of his surroundings to lull him into a false sense of security, and before he could regret his action a pair of bodies slammed into the ornate oak door. Daymon raised the crossbow, training it on the door as he backed off of the porch. Since he didn’t want to further rile his undead neighbors, he stayed close to the house, ducking when he passed by the windows.

Once he entered their nicely maintained backyard, he couldn’t help but stop and stare. The mere sight of his house brought goose bumps to his arms. After all that he had seen and been through during the last hellish week, it was a strange, yet comforting feeling to be back in his hometown, about to break into his own home.

***

Good going lad
. Duncan breathed a sigh of relief as the cocksure fool cleared the fence, traversed the knee high grass, and bounded up the back steps. Then Duncan slowly rotated the noisy chopper towards the southwest and stole one last lingering look as Daymon disappeared into his house.

***

Daymon jiggled the doorknob.
Locked
. He remembered that he had left his keys
and
his Honda Accord at the fire station in Jackson before taking the trip to see his mom one week ago. He cursed himself for not hiding a spare key outside. Every time he had lost or misplaced his keys in the past, which was often, he swore he would follow through. Maybe it could be attributed to forgetfulness or maybe his penchant for smoking Mary Jane in his downtime--whatever the case, the door was locked and he had no key, so he bit the bullet and shattered the glass pane adjacent to the lock with one soft tap from the shotgun barrel.

Once he was inside with the door locked, he relaxed a little. The house smelled just like he remembered: days old pizza and the overlying scent of jasmine incense. The latter was necessary to cover up the pungent smell of marijuana and it started him thinking--he hadn’t given weed a second thought since the ordeal in Hanna a few days ago and he could take it or leave it now.

Scattered on the floor inside the front door, like poorly dealt playing cards, was the mail that had accumulated the week before the outbreak. When he was on fire duty, and not out in the field actively fighting a fire, he called the firehouse close to downtown Jackson home. The three-story brick building was built like a bunker and had the ubiquitous pole running down from the bunk area to the garage. Best of all, it was nearby all of the watering holes frequented by the out-of-townies and just two blocks from his favorite BBQ joint. The thought of a slow cooked slab of brisket set off a Pavlovian reaction, making him drool just a little.

After taking a quick check of the house with the crossbow cocked and loaded he returned to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, more out of habit than the need for sustenance.
Good Lord.
The noxious smell of rotted meat and spoiled milk blasted him in the face. The nauseating odors, though not quite as bad, took him back to the farmhouse in Hanna. Since he was in there already he figured a warm beer wouldn’t hurt. After cracking the seal and taking a small pull, the bitter taste and skunk nose instantly changed his mind. He poured the Bud down the drain and went to check on Lu Lu.

Outbreak - Day 8

I-25

Castle Rock, Colorado

“I think we can make it to Colorado Springs before dark,” Ted stated with a newfound optimism.

“If the road stays this clear... I think you’re right. I can’t believe those
dumbasses
didn’t cross over and drive on this side,” Wilson added incredulously.

“Humans are very unpredictable when under great duress. Especially when it involves large numbers of them forced to cope with unexpected calamity. You and I... we all possess a fight or flight instinct hardwired into our brain and act on it differently... that’s why we’re surviving--so far. Take the Titanic for instance: a majority of her passengers waited patiently on the listing deck for a rescue that wasn’t going to happen while their fellows were already drowning in the icy water, many of them oblivious to their own fate--the others accepting it as fact and giving up.  Hell, some of them busted out the bubbly while an impromptu band struck up music on the deck as the supposedly unsinkable cruise liner foundered. Those people that got trapped in traffic and died over there... they took the sheep route,” Ted said, addressing Wilson’s observation.

Suddenly William coughed repeatedly, a seismic event that caused his frail body to buck.

Sasha flinched from the outburst and held her Louis Vuitton handbag in front of her face, determined to block any potential showers of spittle.

Until now William’s breathing had been punctuated with a wet rattle that resounded deep in his chest. It was apparent after the coughing fit that the drugs were helping his immune system fight what Ted had suspected was the onset of pneumonia. A dam seemed to have burst inside of the sick man and his breathing ceased sounding like a punctured bellows.

Sasha looked out the window, fighting the urge to hurl. 

Ted offered words of encouragement. “That’s it, Will. Keep fighting, the drugs will take effect soon.” Ted was a trained psychologist, not a pharmacist; still, he was confident that the medicine liberated from the Rexall Drug would bring William back to him.

“Take a look at that,” Wilson yelped from the back seat, pointing out the rising column of black smoke dead ahead. “It looks like a plane wreck or something.”

Ted’s attention was divided between William, dodging obstacles in the road and the mysterious wreckage ahead. While his eyes were fixated on the smoking blackened hulk, a lone walker materialized from behind a stalled SUV. Slow reflexes, dulled from lack of sleep and the monotony of the road, left Ted unable to avoid hitting the limping zombie. The Subaru’s bumper sheared the creature’s bad leg off at the knee. With an explosion of U.S. currency, the one-legged monster sailed over the hood and speared the windshield head first.

Glass peppered Ted and Sasha around the face and neck. Wilson, fully eclipsed by the much larger man in the driver’s seat, emerged relatively unscathed.

Sasha, mouth fully open, cued the scream soundtrack and let one loose.

Adrenaline blasted Ted’s brain but still he reacted a second too late. The Subaru fishtailed and completed a full, hair raising spin before he could stab the brakes and stop the car.

“
Shoot it!
” the stress-laced scream escaped Ted’s mouth along with fragments of safety glass.

Luckily, William had been fully reclined before the impact; still, the zombie’s gnashing teeth were dangerously close to making a meal of his entrails. The creature snapped and hissed, trying to wriggle through the windshield. Every twitch spilled more cash from the pack strapped to its back, making it rain dead Presidents onto William’s lap. All of the creature’s extra effort to get at the meat only lodged its stinking corpse more firmly into the spider webbed windshield.

Wilson retrieved the shotgun from the floorboard and leveled it at the zombie’s face. He narrowed his eyes, braced for the explosion, and pulled the trigger.
Click
. Nothing but silence.

The zombie struggled to get its arms through the hole, spilling more money from the backpack in the process.

“Pull the slide, kid,” Ted bellowed.

Wilson had seen enough shoot ‘em ups on TV to know what that meant, so he followed directions and racked a shell into the chamber.

Sasha acted while her brother was fiddling with the gun--jamming her precious leather handbag between the creature’s salivating maw and William’s motionless body.

Boom!

The deafening shotgun blast vaporized the zombie’s head and deposited the remains of the windshield onto the car’s hood.

Sasha, hands numb from shock, dropped the gore-slickened Louis Vuitton handbag atop the brain-splattered Benjamins and Grants heaped in William’s lap.

***

Keeping up with the survivors was easier than the Traveler had anticipated. Someone had partially cleared the southbound side of the freeway, leaving a navigable lane between the silent procession of cars pointing towards Colorado Springs.

For some reason the blue car he was shadowing swerved unexpectedly, spinning a full three-hundred and sixty degrees before coming to an abrupt stop in the middle of the multilane tollway.

The Traveler pulled over to a clear spot on the shoulder, brought his binoculars to bear, and glassed the motionless vehicle. The cause of the accident was immediately apparent. A bruised and battered leg and a mangled bloody stump protruded from the battered windshield. He could see the pale foot working to get traction on the hood of the station wagon. Suddenly a torrent of sparkling glass and pink-gray mist erupted from the front of the car. The flailing body went still and the remains of the splintered windshield fell out of the car and slithered over the hood onto the asphalt.

A few hundred yards ahead a wispy column of gray smoke trickled heavenward. From the Traveler’s vantage point the source of the smoke was obscured; however, the multitudes of walkers heading from the smoke towards his quarry were not.

“Shit.” The Traveler’s plan was quickly unraveling right before his eyes.
Fuck it
, he thought,
no better time than the present to introduce myself.
He tossed the binoculars onto the seat and put the 4x4 into drive.