Dead America The Northwest Invasion | Book 10 | Dead America: Seattle [Part 8]

  DEAD AMERICA

  THE NORTHWEST INVASION

  BOOK 10

  SEATTLE PART 8

  BY DEREK SLATON

  © 2020

  CHAPTER ONE

  Day Zero +26

  “Are you sure you want to bet all your chips?” Marcus raised an eyebrow, tapping the back of his fanned out cards. “Don’t want you to go hungry, now.”

  Skylar’s tongue darted out, and she wet her lips, smirking. “That sounds like a man afraid to call,” she teased. “You’d have to dip into the sour cream and onion to match this bet.”

  Sporadic gunfire still echoed in the distance, a constant reminder that there was still hope in this shitshow.

  “Okay,” he said with a sigh, shoving the rest of the sour cream and onion chips into the center of the patio table. “I’ll call.”

  “Read ‘em and weep,” she declared, laying down a full house.

  Marcus groaned, picking up a rippled barbecue chip out of what was left of his pile and munching on it to soothe his loss. “I really thought you were bluffing,” he admitted through a mouthful of fried potato.

  “When will you ever learn?” Skylar replied, rolling her eyes. “We’ve been together four years and you still can’t see through my poker face.” She grabbed the cards and began to shuffle them idly, leaning back in her chair.

  He chuckled. “Your poker face is what hooked me in in the first place, remember?” He took a small sip of the cold tea they’d managed to brew on the windowsill over the course of a few days. “You wiped the floor with those guys back in college.”

  “Oh my god, I forgot about that,” she replied, laughing. “Jamie got so mad that night because he was trying to impress some sorority girl.”

  He shook his head. “And you were just cool as a cucumber as he threw a drunken temper tantrum,” he said wistfully. “I’m pretty sure I fell in love with you on the spot.”

  “Is that why you asked me out that night?” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Because I can beat the boys at their silly games?”

  He shook his head, reaching over to cover her hand with his. “No,” he replied. “Because the silly games didn’t affect you in the slightest.”

  “And that’s why I said no to the silly drunk guy asking me out at a frat party,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye.

  Marcus put a hand to his chest. “That hurt,” he admitted with an overdramatic pout.

  “Hey,” Skylar said, pointing a finger at him, “at least I wasn’t a total snow queen. I told you to ask me again when you were sober. Because I didn’t think you really meant it.”

  He grabbed her finger and brought it to his mouth, giving it an affectionate kiss. “But I did mean it,” he said. “I just needed the booze to give me the courage to ask.”

  “Silly boy,” she teased, and leaned in to peck him on the lips. Before she pulled away, she snatched one of his barbecue chips and shoved it in her mouth, leaning back in her chair with her prize.

  “You fight so dirty,” he moaned.

  She winked playfully. “Don’t you forget it, babe.”

  “You know, we should probably bag these up before they get stale and cook something real to eat,” Marcus said with a sigh, smacking his thighs before he got to his feet. “If we have anything real left.”

  Skylar got up, slipping the deck of cards back into its cardboard case. “Pork and beans it is!” she declared.

  They took a moment to look over the edge of the patio, watching the river of zombies fourteen stories down move towards the noise in the distance.

  “You think eventually they’ll just all clear out?” she wondered, running a hand through her long brown hair. “Just all of ‘em, wander out towards the lake, and leave everything this close to the interstate empty?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know…” he trailed off, looking out to the water. Their condo, the Lakeview high rise, stood tall at eighteen stories above South Lake Union, five blocks from the shore.

  They’d spotted boats in Lake Union a few days prior and hadn’t been sure if they were civilian or military. However, with all the gunfire happening, they were pretty sure it was the latter.

  “I hope they can deal with it all so they can come get us,” she mused as she gathered up all the chips and shoved them back into the large sealable bag they’d been keeping the last of their salty snacks in. “They’re the military, they’ll never run out of ammo, right?”

  Marcus reached over and pulled her against him, curling an arm around her waist. “I’d hope that if they’re sending boats in to fight them that they came prepared,” he replied, and leaned in to plant a kiss on the top of her head. “Now, how about them beans?”

  “Oh, am I cooking for you, Mister Man?” she asked, blinking up at him with a playfully defiant look on her face. “Send the woman to the kitchen? Should I go barefoot?”

  He swatted her backside, sending her giggling in through the patio door. “You could wear nothing at all,” he suggested, waggling his eyebrows.

  “Oh yeah,” she replied, rolling her eyes as she pulled a can out of the cupboard. “Super sexy, naked bean cooking.”

  He winked at her as he set up the little gas camping stove they’d been using since the apocalypse began. “Everything you do is sexy,” he assured her.

  She opened her mouth to retort something back, but before she could, an explosion rattled the windows.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “What the hell was that?!” Skylar cried, frantically looking out the patio door to see what had exploded in the distance.

  Marcus headed for the front door of the condo. “I think it came from the other side,” he said. “Let’s check across the hall.” He threw the door open and entered the condo across the way, which had been empty pre-apocalypse, even devoid of furniture.

  The couple burst out onto the patio and clutched the railing, staring wide-eyed at the plume of smoke rising from Volunteer Park. Troops poured down the interstate, guns blazing.

  “They’re coming this way!” Skylar cried, pumping her fist into the air.

  “Fuck yeah!” Marcus added, and wrapped his arms around her waist, swinging her around in a circle. They laughed and kissed, happiness radiating from them almost as if they weren’t standing on a high-rise above a sea of walking corpses.

  High on hope and adrenaline, they turned back towards the interstate, staring at the approaching army. Skylar was first to sober a bit, however, as she looked down at the glass siding of the patio. A jagged line zigzagged across it. She turned around, looking at the windows of the condo, cold dread sinking over her when she saw the weakened panes of glass.

  “Marcus…” she said hoarsely, face rapidly losing color.

  He turned around, goofy smile fading from his face, and his brow furrowed when he realized what she was looking at. “Shit,” he breathed, his own expression sobering.

  Their building had, at one time, been a convention hotel, before it had been repurposed into luxury condos five years prior. The convention center on the main floor had been modified into massive amenities, like a giant pool and a gym with courts for all manner of sports.

  When people started getting sick, the whole convention center had become a makeshift rescue center for people, before anyone had known about blood type or infections or how the outbreak worked.

  The high rise was sitting on top of a sprawling building full of thousands of flesh-eating zombies.

  And now the windows were cracked.

  “We need to talk to Jax,” Marcus said firmly, and g
rabbed Skylar’s hand.

  The couple took off back into the condo and tore down the hallway together. They thundered down the stairs to the twelfth floor and then paused to take a look at the barricade they’d built. Couches and TV stands and recliners piled up to the ceiling, everything they'd been able to throw down there.

  “How’s it look?” Skylar whispered as Marcus leaned over the railing to check the activity below.

  He tilted his head back and forth. There were dozens of zombies still down there on the other side, but at least they weren’t pressing up against the barricade. “As good as it needs to look,” he replied quietly, and then turned around to the stairwell door.

  They headed down the hallway on the twelfth floor and found the condo they’d been looking for. Marcus turned the knob, finding it unlocked, and the duo burst inside.

  Jax startled as they tore into his condo, looking up from his ham radio set up in the middle of the living room. He unlocked the brakes on his wheelchair and backed away from the table a touch, turning to face the fear-stricken duo.

  “Can you hang on a sec, Lennox?” he asked, and set down the mouthpiece for his radio.

  Marcus crossed the room to the patio door. Jax’s condo, being on the east side, had been privy to the blast, and the glass door was completely shattered, shards littering the carpet.

  “Are you okay?” Skylar asked, wringing her hands as she approached the wheelchair-bound man. “Did you see the explosion?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay, wasn’t near the windows when it happened,” he replied. “Any damage on your side?”

  “No, but everything’s cracked across the hall,” Marcus replied, turning back from the patio. “Looks like the military’s finally shown up, they’re marching up the interstate. It looks like they blew up the park.”

  Jax’s eyes lit up. “The cavalry’s arrived, huh?”

  “But the main floor…” Skylar trailed off, her voice cracking. “If those windows are broken…”

  The wheelchair-bound man shook his head. “They won’t be broken,” he assured her. “The convention center probably has safety stuff, so not as fragile as ours.” He tilted his head back and forth. “But… they could be weakened. I wouldn’t want to bet on them holding with a thousand of those things banging on them.”

  “We need to warn them,” Marcus said firmly, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of their rescuers. “They’re going to get overrun if the convention center can’t hold.”

  Skylar swallowed hard. “But how?” She shook her head. “We haven’t been able to go lower than this floor, there’s too many of those things. Even if we could figure out how to get to the main floor, we don’t know how packed it is down there. I don’t think we could even get through there, let alone get outside and get to the interstate.”

  Marcus turned and stared out the broken door, chewing his bottom lip. “I don’t think there’s an efficient way to signal them from here, or even from the top floor,” he mused. “I mean, we could let them know we’re here, but I don’t know how we could convey the probable danger.”

  “I can try to convince Lennox to go,” Jax said, rubbing his chin. “He’s not going to want to.”

  “Well, we’ll have a bit of time to convince him,” Marcus said, pointing through the door. “Looks like these boys are going to have their hands full for the next little bit.”

  Skylar approached him, sliding her arm into the crook of his elbow and holding on tight. A huge pack of zombies staggered up the interstate towards the army, and it wasn’t long before gunfire cracked in the distance.

  “I’m afraid to hope,” she admitted quietly.

  He leaned over and planted a kiss on top of her head affectionately. “Do you remember the last marathon we ran?” he asked, turning her away from the window to face him. “When the last week before, we saw Brad Perkins training?”

  “Ugh, Brad fucking Perkins,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes.

  Marcus smiled, watching her shoulders relax a little as her mind flipped to her memories instead of their possible impending doom. “He was such a dick that day, and bragging about his speed,” he reminded her. “Even though we already knew his stats.”

  “Everybody on social media knows his stats,” she muttered. “I would have respected his accomplishments if he hadn’t been such a jerk face.”

  “And you told me that you were afraid to hope to beat him,” he said, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.

  She shook her head. “This isn’t a good analogy, babe,” she said. “He beat us that marathon.”

  “Yes, but a teenage girl threw a milkshake in his face when he did,” Marcus reminded her with a smirk.

  Skylar chuckled. “That was pretty satisfying.”

  “And, even though we didn’t win, we still raised a ton of money for Kid’s Wish,” he added, cupping her cheek. “We did a lot of good that day. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  She sighed. “That even if we die horribly, our actions might still help people?” she asked.

  “I mean, well…” he trailed off, wrinkling his nose. “I guess that’s one interpretation. My point was that there could be unexpected victory despite things not going exactly according to plan.”

  She offered him a smile, leaning into his palm. “Thanks,” she replied. “It does make me feel a bit more confident.”

  He wrapped her in a hug, resting his chin on her head as he watched Jax roll back over to the ham radio.

  The wheelchair-bound man took a deep breath and picked up the receiver. “You still there, Lennox?” he asked.

  “Yeah, bud, you okay?” came the strained reply.

  “Yeah, I mean, as well as I can be, given the circumstances,” Jax said. “We need your help.”

  “This is… no,” Lennox said, voice breathy and panicked. “No, I can’t help anyone. That explosion has my head spinning, I don’t even know which way is up, man. What am I supposed to do to help anyone?”

  Jax swallowed hard. “That explosion weakened all the windows in our building,” he explained. “The convention center on the main floor has about a thousand of those things inside, and if they push hard enough, they’re going to get out. We need to warn the military, or else they’re going to get overrun. And that means no rescue for us.”

  “No, no,” came the immediate reply. “I can’t do that.”

  Jax shook his head. “But you can,” he said calmly. “I know you can. You didn’t think you could survive in the early days of all of this, but I knew you could, and guess what? You’re still alive.”

  “I wouldn’t have without you helping me,” Lennox insisted. “I would have been fucked in the first twenty-four hours if you hadn’t have guided me.”

  Jax nodded. “And I’m guiding you now, still,” he replied. “I know you can do this.”

  There was a long pause, and then his friend finally asked, “What about the others? The other people you helped?”

  The wheelchair-bound man lowered his gaze. “There’s only one left, and he’s too far away to make it in time,” he explained. “Everyone else… everyone else is gone.”

  Lennox groaned in frustration through the radio, seeming to war with himself.

  “I know it’s difficult,” Jax continued gently. “I can’t even begin to understand what you’re going through, what you’ve been going through since the start of all of this. But this is the only way to save lives. You’re the only one who can help them.”

  Another long pause. “Okay,” he finally said, eliciting triumphant smiles from the trio in the room. “I’ll do it.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lennox buried his face in his hands as the gunfire cracked in the distance. Images of bleeding and gutted bodies flicked through his mind, the screams of his comrades echoing in his brain like a chant of death. Muzzle flashes, explosions, the stench of shit and mud and copper mingling together in a heady cocktail of despair.

  The explosion in the park had nearly sent
him into a spiral, but instead of running to the closet, he’d run to the radio. He’d known that his one chance at a lifeline was Jax. The guy had been the guardian angel against his demons throughout this whole ordeal, not only having guided him home throughout the early days, but just being there for him as a friend, keeping him from falling into himself and becoming lost forever.

  And now, now Jax was counting on him.

  Pull your shit together, Lennox, he urged himself. Lives are at stake… if you don’t want these military boys to suffer, you have to help them.

  Steeling his resolve, he scrubbed his hands down his face and got to his feet. He looked around at his fortress, the house he’d barricaded himself in. The house that had protected him from those flesh-eating monsters outside.

  “Okay,” he muttered to himself, running his hands through his hair. “You’re ten blocks south of the park. Gotta gear up and get the fuck moving.”

  He headed to his closet, the one holding all of his old gear. It was a particular closet that he hadn’t opened in a long time. But it was time to face that fear and trepidation, now. Because this stuff would save his life.

  He opened the cardboard box in the back and pulled out a leather holster with his service revolver and an extra mag. Behind it was a consumer grade assault rifle, with two extra mags, and he slung it over his shoulder. He sheathed his hunting knife, and snatched up a small LED flashlight, stuffing it into his pocket just in case.

  Lastly, was his combat boots. He reached out slowly, hand shaking, gripping the boots between his fingers to lift them out. The toe still had a dark splotch of something—blood, that’s still blood on there—but he shook his head as if he could shake the memories right out of it.

  He laced up his boots and stood up, puffing out his chest to try to feel strong. He was out of shape. It had been a long time since he’d served, and with his PTSD he hadn’t kept up any kind of vigorous activity.

  “No time like the present,” he muttered. “Let’s go do some cardio, Lennox.”

  He dug around in his front hall drawer until he found an old map of the area and spread it out on the small table. The streets were packed full of zombies, given all of the noise, but he had fourteen blocks to get through before he could reach the troops.