Free Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse by Shawn Chesser

River’s
not safe either.”
    “Colonel Beeson briefed me,” replied Cade. “But thanks. I
figure we’ll be doing most of our driving on the back roads.” He untangled the
coiled power cord and plugged one end into the sat phone and the other into the
accessory outlet. Eased off the brake and, as the Ford rolled through the gate
and over the fully extended bridge, he cast a quick glance towards the
makeshift FOB and noted Old Glory popping in the wind over Beeson’s quarters.
What he failed to see, however, was the salute—totally unwarranted and against
regs—given him by Staff Sergeant Andreasen as he left the relative safety of
the base for the second time in less than an hour.
    Inside the cab, a slightly robotic and totally unnerving
female voice emanating through the Ford’s over-the-top sound system said, “In
two hundred feet, turn left.” Then she rattled on the distance to I-70,
instructing whoever was listening to take the on-ramp west.
    Two hundred feet ahead Cade did not turn left. He did just
the opposite. And it was an action that sparked an immediate and explosive
outburst from Taryn. Gesticulating wildly with her tattooed arms, she called
out from the back seat, “Where in the hell are you taking us?”
    Cade looked into the rearview just as Taryn launched herself
part-way over Brook’s seatback and began shouting at him, “Grand Junction is
this way and I do not want to go anywhere near that place ... seeing it from
the safety of the helicopter was barely tolerable.”
    Having never heard her husband dressed down in such a
manner, Brook stared wide-eyed at him, waiting for a response.
    Saying nothing, Cade turned off the navigation system, a
move that silenced the piped-in female voice. Half a block later, Taryn crawled
back into her skin when, without warning, Cade turned north, halting further
progress toward her former home.
    There was a brooding silence in the cab, as if each of them,
save Cade, had some kind of a preconceived notion of where this deviation was
taking them but were afraid to ask.
    Finally, Cade pointed to the Craftsman-style house on the
northeast corner a block distant. “Anything look familiar?”
    Brook walked her gaze along his outstretched arm and when
she finally picked out the two-story house with the shiny SUV parked in the
drive, a wide range of emotions welled up inside of her.
    “Looks like our old house, Daddy,” blurted Raven. “And
there’s one of them on the porch.”
    “Keep driving, Cade Grayson,” said Brook icily.
    Craning his head, Wilson added, “Looks like it’s got a hold
of the door knob.”
    After doing a quick double-take and corroborating Wilson’s
observation, Cade recounted out loud for everyone’s benefit the behaviors he’d
observed the Zs exhibit at the cemetery in South Dakota. However, he had to
work extra hard to convince everyone that the Z at the crash site had in fact
been stalking him. And then when he mentioned that one of the monsters had
tried to open the door to Jasper’s truck, he ran into a five against one
roadblock with Wilson saying that it had to have been some kind of an anomaly.
    “It was probably just its body coming into contact with the
outside latch ... accidentally jiggling it or something,” Brook reasoned.
    Shaking his head and slowing the truck to a crawl, Cade
answered her challenge, “No way. I’m pretty certain the door handle on that old
truck was the kind that you reach under and pull up on. No way leaning on
something designed like that is going to move the handle on the inside. Take a
look.” He applied more brake and peered across Raven and Brook. “That’s exactly
what I’m talking about.” The Z’s form now filled up the doorway and the wooden
door was swinging slowly inward.
    “Your point is?” said Sasha, joining the pile-on-Cade party.
    “I was inside that house forty-five minutes ago.”
    “And you left the door ajar ... right?” queried Brook.
    “No,” he said. He thought