Free Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse by Shawn Chesser Page A

hard for a few seconds, wondering
whether he wanted to open the Pandora’s Box of worry by disclosing what he
knew. Finally he decided full disclosure was what he owed everyone. He looked
Brook in the eye and added, “I left it exactly how I found it. Door latched ...
but unlocked.”
    There were a couple of gasps from the back seat, then it
went deathly quiet inside the Ford. First, Brook shot Cade a look of
displeasure to which he merely shrugged. Then, she looked away and all eyes
were on the zombie on the porch as it entered the house through the shadowy
doorway. Finally, after Cade had seen enough, he released the brake—an action
that started the familiar-looking house gliding by on the right—and everyone
decided to speak at once.
    Brook asked, “What does it mean?”
    “Can they learn to drive?” asked Raven.
    “Or shoot a gun?” added Sasha breathlessly.
    “What with the tattered clothes and hanging flesh on that
one ... it looked like the kind of zombie I’ve heard people calling a first
turn ,” was Wilson’s only take on the spectacle.
    Cade looked over at Brook and said, “I don’t know yet.” He
shifted his gaze to Raven. “Not in a million years ... especially not a stick
shift.” And to Sasha, whose eyes he met in the rearview mirror, his answer, and
the way he delivered it, left them all speechless. “If they learn ... or more
likely remember how to operate a firearm, then all of mankind is doomed. So instead
of worrying about what-ifs, let’s focus on staying alive for one more second .
Then try stringing a few more of those precious seconds into minutes and then
those minutes into hours and so on. Before we all know it the sun will be down
and we’ll likely be at the compound safe and sound.”
    “What my dad is trying to say—in way too many words—is that
he wants all of us to stay frosty .”
    Smiling, Cade gave Raven a playful nudge and said to Wilson,
“I think you’re on to something. Maybe more of their old lives and memories
creep to the surface the longer they’re walking around. And if that’s the case
... I hope to God it’s just rudimentary low-motor-skill-type of stuff they
regain.”
    After another long moment of palpable silence, Cade
disclosed the new behaviors that Sergeant Andreasen had witnessed at the gate.
Startling new revelations about the walking dead that kept them all thinking
inwardly until Mesa View 4x4 and the mini-herd of zombies seemingly guarding it
came into view.
     
     
     
    Chapter 13
     
     
    The turbine ratcheting up in pitch was Jamie’s first clue
that something was up. Then the falling sensation that came next instantly
transported her back through time and she was twelve with her father at
Disney’s Space Mountain and being flung around like a rag doll in pitch black
aboard the noisy rollercoaster—a feeling of spatial disorientation and utter
helplessness that had not been surmounted until now.
    And just like that she snapped back to reality and was in
the helicopter—probably somewhere over Idaho—the craft in the middle of a one
hundred and eighty degree turn and seemingly about to crash. She began to
panic, her head spinning in the claustrophobia-inducing hood, until finally,
after what felt like an eternity, the craft leveled out and she was reduced to
dry heaving and begging to have the hood removed.
    “Only long enough for you to empty your stomach”—Carson
growled as he yanked the sack from her head, turned it over and arranged it on
her lap atop her numb hands—“then it goes right back on.”
    Squinting against the sun, she looked down and saw rivulets
of blood seeping from the deep cuts where the plastic ties bit into her wrists.
Then, in order to see the full picture, she shifted sideways and accidentally spilled the makeshift airsickness bag on the cabin floor near her captor’s
feet.
    “Better not puke yet,” hissed Carson as he leaned over and
snatched the hood from the cabin floor.
    Swallowing hard, Jamie