A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse by Shawn Chesser Page B

all the fabric in direct contact
with the tender flesh of her inner thighs and crotch.
    “Fuck me...” Brook said at the sight of the
U-Haul truck. Looking down on her as if passing silent judgment for
her earlier outburst were the likenesses of four former presidents.
Originally carved in stone on Mount Rushmore but now just a silk
screened image adorning the moving truck’s slab side, the stern
faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and
Abraham Lincoln hovered above the words, Visit South Dakota,
Great Faces—Great Places .
    Sadly her mental image of the sexy Dakota
truck and its manly gun turret disappeared like a desert heat
mirage and the revelation that she was standing in the shade
of her real ride dawned on her. Now if I could just find this
Wilson guy , she thought.
    “You must be Brooklyn Grayson,” said the pup
of a kid who had snuck up on her blind side. The twenty-something
wore an olive green tee shirt which clung to his lanky frame, its
short sleeves from the pits to the cuff stained white with dried
sweat. His knee-length tan cargo shorts barely held up by a thick
leather belt swished when he moved, and with the unruly mop of
flame red hair bursting from under his desert tan boonie hat Brook
thought the kid looked like a younger version of Carrot Top. And as
she sized up her new traveling partner, she surmised that the
niggling sensation that she was experiencing was a portent of
things to come and the heat was the least of her worries. In the
back of her mind she feared that the day was probably going to get
much worse before it got any better.
     

Chapter 12
    Outbreak - Day 11
    Castle Rock, Colorado
     
    As Jedi One-One closed the distance to Castle
Rock, the two radioactive craters, which resembled twin asteroid
strikes on some distant desolate moonscape, crept into view. Ari
nudged the stick, feeding the Ghost Hawk incremental course
corrections in order to give the hot zone a wide berth. Several
hundred thousand Zs had been destroyed by the two strategically
placed five kiloton nuclear warheads. The destruction below was
incomprehensible; starting at ground zero, nothing was left
standing for miles in every direction. And nearly a full day after
the Z horde that had surged from Denver was destroyed, fires still
raged on the periphery, leaping from house to house, voraciously
consuming the fuel rich suburbs and everything standing in its
way.
    Ari had a hard time trying to fathom the full
scope of the destruction. He wondered how many survivors had been
holed up, hiding from the dead, when the devices went off.
Collateral damage was to be expected in war, but on a scale such
as this? Was it all worth it? he asked himself. Ari knew it
wasn’t his place to second guess the President, but still he wanted
to know why other measures hadn’t been undertaken before they went
with the nuclear option. Resigned to the fact that he would never
be privy to the Intel that shaped Clay’s final decision, Ari
shelved it and focused on flying.
    “Desperate times called for desperate
measures,” Cade said matter-of-factly and to no one in particular
over the onboard comms as he took in the blackened landscape.
“Pretty wild that the bombs didn’t even leave a scratch on Castle
Rock.”
    Ari shook his head. It was as if the Delta
operative had read his thoughts. “Cade, my man, that pile of red
rock is going to be standing a thousand years after we’re dead and
gone.”
    Tice shifted in his seat, pointing the camera
at Castle Rock and the devastated infrastructure passing below the
starboard side. His Nikon stuttered, capturing dozens of images
during the low speed flyby. “Just think what it would have looked
like down there if we would have used the 150 kiloton yield. We
wouldn’t be able to get close enough to see the craters without all
of us glowing like fireflies afterward,” the CIA operative and
nuclear weapons specialist opined. He had proven himself with the
Desantos-led