Chapter 10

 

The drone rose up and over the heating and ventilation equipment, crossed over the razor-wire coils atop the chain-link fence, then immediately began to shed altitude. As it left the near side of the prison wing and passed over the perimeter fence, the down-facing camera picked up movement on the ground between the jail walls and guardhouse. Curious, Riker stepped around the Shelby and walked his gaze down the short drive and gave the pair of parking lots beyond the abandoned guardhouse a quick once-over.

Expecting to see only the handful of zombies that had followed the undead guard through the destroyed front doors, instead, what Riker saw gave him pause. It was way worse than he feared. Ten-fold worse. A damn disaster considering how he had hoped to get the warden and her men off the roof.

The parking lot, once home to only a pair of zombies, was now teeming with more of them than Riker could count. Most of them were barefoot and dressed in county-orange. On a positive note, they were contained by the fence running around the parking lots. On the flip side, in order to access the no-man’s-land sandwiched between the jail’s east wing and its twelve-foot-tall razor-wire-topped perimeter fence, all those acres of asphalt the dead now owned would need to be crossed.

“Great,” Benny said. “Not only do we have biters coming up the road behind us, now we’ll have to deal with these.”

Standing clear of the truck bed as the drone came in for a landing, Riker said nothing. He was deep in thought, searching for a solution to their newest problem.

Though he didn’t need to, Benny ducked as the quadcopter drifted down from the heavens. Craning to watch the thing touch down on the exact spot it had launched from ten minutes prior, he said, “You know, if Steve-O was out here, no doubt he’d be singing that song about clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right—”

Interrupting, Riker sang the chorus. “Here I am. Stuck in the middle with you.”

“Yeah,” Benny said, smiling, “that’s the one.”

“He would also know the artist. I, unfortunately, do not,” admitted Riker.

After quickly stowing the drone under the tonneau and slamming the tailgate home, he prompted Benny to board the truck.

The zombies from the highway had closed to within thirty feet of the tailgate. Though Riker had no way of measuring their speed, it seemed as if they had somehow found another gear.

Hand on his door handle, Benny drew his Glock. “What about them?” he asked.

“Just get in. I have a feeling we’ll need the ammo where we’re going.”

Leading by example, Riker tromped around the driver’s side. As he was climbing in, a strong gust following the storm’s leading edge closed the door on his leg. The metallic clink of the door’s lower edge hitting his bionic was instantaneously drowned out by a huge clap of thunder that seemed to have originated directly overhead.

The stink of death riding the wind was beaten down as the first sheet of rain pummeled the truck. The rain infiltrated the cab, drenching Riker’s left side before he could haul the door shut.

Firing the engine, he slammed the transmission into Reverse and started the first leg of the three-point-turn necessary to get the Shelby facing back the way they’d come. No sooner had the pickup started backing away from the tire spikes than the zombies careened into the tailgate.

With the hollow bangs of dead flesh striking sheet metal rising over the staccato pings of rain pelting the roof and windows, Riker hauled the wheel hard left and slammed the brakes. Only when he saw that the zombies were just outside his window did he spin the steering wheel back around and get Dolly moving forward again.

“You hanging in there, Steve-O?”

No response. Only the fleshy thumps of splayed-out hands coming down hard on the window next to Riker’s face.

As Benny was thrown back in his seat by the sudden acceleration, he hooked a thumb toward the prison. “The ones set free from the main building are almost to the gate.”

With the shriek of nails raking the paint loud enough in the cab to set everyone’s hair on end, Riker stomped the brakes. Ignoring Benny’s warning, he performed the same maneuver. Reverse across the road, more spinning of the steering wheel, then another sharp stab of the brakes.

“C’mon,” Benny urged. “Stop here for a few seconds. Let’s do these ones.” He started his window running down. “Eventually we’re going to have to deal with them.”

“Until we find more ammunition,” Riker stressed, “we need to be mindful of how we use what we have.” That being said, he used his master control to run Benny’s window back up.

The action earning him a prolonged dose of stink eye, Riker spun the wheel right, all the way to the stops. Then, with the power steering pump emitting squeals of protest, dead hands beating steadily on the window glass, and a sudden fork of lightning cutting the sky overhead, he fed the motor gas.

Without a shot fired, Riker had gotten them around the dead things and headed for the road that would eventually spill them back onto Highway 14.

 

Trinity House

 

Tara stood in the center of the clearing, hands on hips, admiring her handiwork. Though the field of pavers exposed by hours of back-breaking work was shot through with splintered nubs of wood, the surface was solid and level underfoot. Perfect place to land a helicopter.

In the hour since Dozer had first detected something prowling around in the woods, the fog had lifted completely, leaving the clearing awash in the flat light of midmorning.

Done for the time being, Tara sheathed her machete. She gathered up the waist-high pile of saplings, lugged them across the landing pad, and dumped them unceremoniously between a pair of marked trees awaiting their date with the chainsaw.

You get to deal with those, bro.

Pausing where the pavers ended and the forest started, Tara sniffed the air. Detecting the faint odor of decaying flesh, she looked to Dozer. “Where’s the stinky?”

Dozer rose from his spot on the pavers, sauntered over to the piled saplings, and cocked his head to one side. He sniffed the air in the general direction of Trinity House, then answered with a single yip.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, peering into the trees to her front. With the watery sun at a higher azimuth, she could now see dozens of feet into the tangle. Nothing moved in the gloom. There were no dead eyes staring back at her. And unlike the earlier non-event, she kept her imagination in check and the Glock holstered.

Satisfied that whatever had Dozer on edge earlier—be it a wild animal or newly turned zombie—was not an immediate threat, Tara set off for the overgrown trailhead. Faced with the daunting task of getting the pad ready for Wade Clark’s pending arrival, she had put off widening the trail until the pad was ready to go. Though she couldn’t see it as the forest closed in around her, Trinity House was down there somewhere. Unfortunately, she reminded herself, so was the source of the stench.