by Phil Maxey
“We need to see what’s out there. But not out the front office door, we leave that barricaded. Maybe we can open one of these shutters a few feet and see what’s going on,” said Zach. Walking over to the shutter, he grabbed hold of the handle at the bottom and pulled up but it wouldn’t budge. “I think it’s locked. The key might be in here, in the back office.”
Just as Bass went to disappear into the gloom of the workshop area, Rob stood up, walked to the shutter, grabbed the handle and pulled. His tendons stretched as he pulled upwards with all his might, eventually a clunk sound came from the lock and the shutter slide upwards a few inches. Zach and the others immediately raised their guns and crouched trying to see under the shutter. Rob walked back to his previous position and sat down.
Zach and Bass lay on the floor, their heads turned to get a look out into the darkness.
“What can you see?” said Zach to Bass.
“Not much, the light’s almost all gone. I can see shapes where our vehicles were, but it’s hard to see any details. I’ll go out there. Grab what I can and run back.”
“Not alone, I’m coming with you and one of the privates.”
“I’m coming too,” said Dr. Tanner.
“No way, we can’t risk our only doctor,” said Zach.
Tanner stepped forward to face Zach. “It’s dark out there, who knows what’s left of my supplies, will you know what to grab? Your friend needs me to get this stuff, Zach.” She then leaned in further. “I think he’s got internal bleeding, I might have to operate. If I don’t get my supplies he might die.”
After a few minutes of making sure their guns were fully loaded and locating a source of light for each of them, Zach, Bass, Dr. Tanner and private Hall stood near the shutter.
“I’ll go first, if it looks clear I’ll flash my radios light in your direction, then you all come out. Bass protect the doctor. I’ll get what other supplies I can.” And with that they lifted the shutter and Zach rolled out. Immediately he listened into the night for sounds, but there were none apart from the wind blowing against his face. He waited for his eyes to adjust then ran towards the first large dark angular shape he could make out. Arriving at the front wheel of one of the coaches, he felt along the side but only made it a few feet before his hand lost contact. Only the front of the coach was remaining. In his mind he tried to remember the order the vehicles were in. This coach was roughly in the middle. He then flashed his torch in the direction of the shutters. It rose and fell quickly with Bass, Tanner and Hall running across to join him near the remains of the coach.
“Was this the coach you were on?” said Zach to Tanner.
“I think it was. There were more medical supplies in the supply truck, that should have been a few vehicles to our left.”
“Bass, go with her. Hall your with me, we’re going to check out the first Humvee.”
Keeping low, Zach and private Hall ran past the remains of another coach and some buses until they reached Zach’s Humvee. His hand touched the back of it then ran along the side until he reached air, but this time it was due to the side door still being open. “It’s still here,” he said to himself climbing inside and grabbing all the backpacks he could find. Examining the inside with the glow from his radio, he couldn’t find any real damage. Only the back right window was smashed.
Bass and Tanner ran past the other Humvee which hadn’t gotten off so lightly, the top half of the vehicle was completely missing, with its seats exposed to the night air. Directly behind it was what remained of the supply truck. The cabin and engine were gutted, but the canopy at the back was largely undamaged. Bass climbed up into the back of the truck, and used his torch to see the damage, but there wasn’t any. All the food, ammo and other supplies were still there.
“How’s it look?” said Tanner in a whisper. A hand reached down and pulled her up to see for herself.
“Go and help Bass and Dr. Tanner, I’ll return these backpacks then come back out.” Zach ran to the gap under the shutter threw the backpacks inside then ran back to the supply truck. Tanner was standing outside the rear of the vehicle her arms full of medical supplies and a large bag thrown over her shoulder. Bass and Hall were carrying a large supply crate they had hastily filled with other things as well as ammo. Walking as fast they could, they all returned to the shutter, sliding everything underneath then rolling inside themselves.
Bass took a deep breath. “Looks like most of our supplies were left untouched. We got off pretty li…” Bass was about to finish the sentence when he saw Rob suddenly look up at him. “umm, all the vehicles we saw were destroyed.”
“The first Humvee wasn’t, and I could be wrong but Rob’s bus still looked the same shape as before,” said Zach.
“Nothing can take her down,” said Rob. Raj smiled and clenched his fist in silence.
Zach flipped the lid of the supply crate to reveal boxes of ammo, food and bottled water. He then turned to Dr. Tanner who was already back in the rear of the car, looking at Michael’s wound. Michael was awake and attempting a smile when Zach leaned into the back to see his friend.
“Just need a night’s rest and I’ll be good to go,” said Michael.
Dr. Tanner put Michael’s shirt back down. “Exactly do not move! Just rest, I’ll be back in a bit.” She then pulled Zach towards the back of the workshop. “There’s internal bleeding, but I can’t see where. I’m going to need to operate and stop it, otherwise he might bleed out, or get an infection.”
Zach looked around at the grime laden walls and floors, then further back to the office at the back of the building and its large desk. “Would that work?”
They both walked to the rear office.
“Yes. This will do,” she put her bag down. “I’ll need thirty minutes to set up, then I’ll be administrating a sedative to put him under. I don’t have to tell you that this is a highly irregular situation, usually I wouldn’t attempt it, but I think he has no choice, can you ask Dr. Joshi to come in.” Zach left and Raj walked in.
“What can I do for you doctor?” said Raj.
“Do you have any medical training?”
“I did some basic training when I was in London, why?”
“I’m going to have to operate on Mr. Chang. I’ll need you to assist.”
Raj wasn’t sure how to respond. “When I said basic training, I meant basic training, I’m not qualified…”
“Look behind you, do you think anyone out there is better qualified?”
Raj didn’t answer.
Cal and Zach carried Michael into the back office. Candles were lit as well as private Hall holding the torch according to Tanners directions. Tanner then put Michael under and started her procedure. After an hour she came out of the office.
“I’ve stopped the internal bleeding and sewn him back up. As long as he doesn’t get an infection, he’ll live.”
Abbey grinned and hugged Zach and a wave of relief swept through the gloomy auto-repair workshop.
“Now, I’m going to get some sleep, when he wakes up, tell him not to move, and if he’s in a lot of pain, give him two of these.” Dr. Tanner threw Zach a small plastic bottle and walked off in the direction of the first car.
Raj and Hall emerged from office, looking exhausted and sat down against the wall. Grabbing a bottle of water and some food Zach and Abbey went into the small front office, and closed the door. Placing the food and bottles down, Zach lit a few candles placing them on the counter, then half sat half slid down the wall behind the counter. Abbey sat next to him.
“We got lucky with the Humvee, I was sure all the vehicles would be eaten or whatever it is those things do,” she said.
“I’m not sure lucky is the word I would use for this rescue mission. We started two days ago with fifteen vehicles and thirty men, now we have a lot less of both.”
She grabbed his hand. “We could of all died today. But we didn’t, and we can still rescue the people in Portland.”
“That’s a good point, we
didn’t just lose the soldiers and Earl’s brother, we also lost another twelve Portlanders by losing another day. At this rate there won’t be anyone left to rescue.”
Abbey pulled her hand back and looked angry, then sad, tears started rolling down her cheeks.
Zach sighed and then went to reach for her when he felt something sticking into his leg and remembered. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a small metal computer model on the end of a key ring.
“I found this and thought of you,” he said smiling and offered it to her. Abbey looked nonplussed at first, but then took the small gift and gave out a quick stifled laugh. She then leaped forward and threw her arms around him.
“I think we better eat, who knows when we will get another chance,” said Zach.
After some crackers, nuts, canned tuna and bottled water they sat watching the shadows from the candles flicker on the walls of the small room. Zach got out the small road guide to Albuquerque they found earlier and started flicking through its pages, he then stopped and looked up.
“I want to ask you something, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want too.”
“Okay…” Replied Abbey not sure of what was about to be asked.
“New Mexico, why where you there?” Zach got up and lit another candle, sitting back down next to Abbey, who look hesitant to answer. “Trust me I’m sure it’s not as bad as the reason I was there.”
She took a deep breath. “It was summer of 2011, my department head had been tasked me to look into some rich overseas assholes bank accounts. So I did, and I found the usual crap you find in rich assholes accounts, money that shouldn’t be there. There was no trail from where this money came from. So I dug deeper and found that it connected to another rich asshole, only problem was that this asshole was my department head.”
“So you were framed?”
“Not exactly. I kind of blew a gasket, went off the rails. Over the following weeks I kept digging into these accounts and I found that a lot of the work I had been doing over the previous months was for my department head to make money. He had been subcontracting my services and I had no idea. He used to tell me ‘Abs remember it’s always the people you can’t see, that you’re helping” I thought he meant unfortunate people in countries around the world, what he really meant was himself. Anyway I wanted to get back at him, so I kind of put malware into our spy satellite network…”
Zach started laughing. “Wow you really are a genius.”
“Yeah well, the malware made the satellites flip out, they were sending all kinds of messages in all directions, they tried to gain control of them, but it was too late, they were too far out from their orbits, and well, the government lost around fifty billion dollars worth of equipment. They couldn’t tell anyone of course, if our ‘enemies’ knew our network was down it would have been chaos, so they threw me in that hole in New Mexico, frightened I would talk.”
“How long where you there for?”
“It would have been five years this Christmas. What about you?”
“Maybe we should talk about something else,” said Zach, trying to hide his discomfort with a smile.
“Whatever it is, I can take it.”
He looked away and took a deep breath. “I used to be military police.”
“I know...”
“The reason I was inside, it’s not a pretty story.”
“Whatever it is, did you do it? Just tell me that.”
“I was responsible, but I didn’t do the act.”
“Okay…”
“So, yeah I was married, had two children. Millie and Adrian were my children’s names. Jaclyn was my wife’s name.” Abbey went to say something, but then stopped. Zach didn’t notice and continued. “They were great, you know, really great,” he said these last words looking at Abbey and she could see his eyes were red. “So, there had been these murders, young girls, strangled, raped, the kind of stuff most people know happens, but like to think it doesn’t. The police in the area’s it happened in had hardly anything to go on. It wasn’t really my jurisdiction but I noticed when reading the reports in the paper that the murders always happened close to a military base. I’m sure they happened close to lots of other types of places as well, but something about it just stuck with me, so I decided to look into it on my own time.”
“Did anyone know?”
“What I was doing? Nobody knew, not even Jaclyn. I just told her it was work I had to do for the higher-ups.” Zach went to continue, but he could feel the tears well up inside him and his throat start to feel tight.
“If you don’t want to continue it’s fine.”
“I’ve not told anyone any of this, not even my attorney. So over some months I did my own investigating of the crime scenes, using my credentials to get me into places I probably shouldn’t have been. The detectives didn’t have much to go on, so they thought not give this crazy MP a go at it. I started to get a feel for the person that was doing it. I know that sounds nuts, but the bits of evidence I was finding started to point towards a certain type of person,” he swallowed then continued. “Somebody in the military, someone who traveled from base to base, definitely an officer of some sort. I started looking into what officers in the bases close to the murders fit that picture. Zach clenched his fists and closed his eyes.
“Did you come up with someone? A name?”
Zach wanted to say the name, the person who he felt was responsible. Erik Tinley. Major Erik Tinley. But he couldn’t speak the words. “No. But they knew who I was,” Zach looked at her. “They killed my family.”
The blood drained from Abbey’s face, and she felt nauseous. She felt like she should say something, but no words came to her. He continued.
“I’ll spare you the details, but when I found them, I knew he had killed them to make a point, and I knew it was my fault.” Tears rolled down Zach’s face but his expression was emotionless. “So I let them charge me, lock me up, it made no difference to me by that point, I had lost everything.” Zach went to say something else, but Abbey hugged him and his words became lost in her embrace.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A slim line of morning light emanated from the bottom of the metal shutter. Raj opened his heavy eyes and immediately stretched his neck, turning his head from left to right. It was probably the most uncomfortable nights sleep he had ever had, but trying to sleep in the driver’s seat of the sedan was still better than sleeping on the oil stained floor like most of the soldiers had to do. The candles had long since burned out but there was enough light for Raj to make out the workshop around him. The door to his left opened and Zach appeared holding a small road guide. Bass then appeared from the same door and started walking around the workshop quietly waking people up. Zach walked up to the sedan and looked at Raj and pointed to where he had just come from. Climbing out of the car as quietly as possible as to not wake up Michael who was sleeping in the backseat, Raj walked into the workshop next door followed by soldiers.
A number of boxes, some metal some wooden were arranged into a small circle, with a larger box stationed in the middle. Raj sat, along with Dr. Tanner. Cal, Fiona, Jacks and Jacob then appeared and sat, then Rob and Tyler. The soldiers filled in and stood against the walls, finally Bass and Zach sat on the remaining boxes. Zach opened the small book to the back, and opened up a large road map of Albuquerque setting it down on the box in the middle. Zach then looked around the group.
“Yesterday was a bad day. We lost a lot of good people.” Some of the soldiers shifted uncomfortably on their feet. Zach went to continue but was interrupted by a slim dark-haired soldier, who hesitantly stepped forward.
“Me and some of the other guys have been talking and we feel we should return to Camp Bravo.”
Bass immediately grew angry and went and stood in front of the soldier. “Private! You will shut the hell up, and when you do talk you say Sir!”
Zach put his hand on Bass shoulder. “Sergeant it’s okay, let him talk.” Bass stepped back. �
�What’s your name?”
“Jenkins, Sir, Ashton Jenkins.”
“Very well private, say your piece.”
The young man looked unsure of how to continue, being surprised that he was being allowed to talk. “We lost nearly half our company yesterday and a civilian, we lost another one of us the day before. Each day we move further towards Portland we lose more people… we just don’t feel it’s possible to rescue those people… Sir” Zach nodded as Jenkins talked.
“Where were you when the Cascade happened?”
“I was stationed at a base in Alabama, Sir.”
“And where were your parents?”
The young man looked away for a moment. “They were in San Diego. Sir.”
“And are they in Camp Bravo now?” Zach felt a tinge of regret using the young privates parents in this way, but he felt he had no choice.
“No. Sir.”
Zach then backed off and looked around the soldiers around him. “There are eighteen-hundred people right now fighting for their lives. Mothers, fathers, sons, brothers, sisters. Families and loved ones who if we don’t make it to Portland to help them will just be more casualties of this war.” The soldiers shifted uncomfortably again. “That’s what it is, it’s a war. And yes we as a species are on the ropes, but the only way we are going to win this war, is if we fight every single day to survive and help each other.” Zach looked down then back to the young faces around him. “I can’t tell you that none of you will die on the way to Portland, any of us might at any moment in this new world, but what matters is how you lived, and if you died for something.” Zach sat back down. “There’s a route that avoids the highway for a few miles and then rejoins it. We’re going to take that route today.”
“We don’t have enough vehicles?” questioned Dr. Tanner.
“I had a quick look outside before you all were awake, it looks like Robs bus is one piece, and the same for the Humvee. That will be enough. No more big convoy, we were too big of a target. We are going to just keep these two vehicles until we get to Portland.”
