by Jeff Ping
Chapter 3
Pete finished his story as we climbed the last flight of stairs. At the final landing, Pete opened the door and we entered the control room. There were two banks if equipment that I figured were the radar and communications consoles. On the floor between the equipment consoles, four sleeping bags were neatly folded. On the floor sat a very pretty young woman, with the clearest blue eyes I had ever seen. Her long blonde hair was in need of a shampoo, but that still didn't detract from how pretty she was. She and two kids were seated playing cards.
"Hey! I could have been eaten or murdered by this guy and you guys would have just sat here and played another hand?" said Pete indignantly.
"No, silly, June sneaked down and listened at the door till she thought it was safe to unlock the door and come back up here and wait for you," said the younger girl.
Pete looked at me and shook his head, "This is Mrs. Mathews or June. Little miss know it all, is Beth, and that guy is her brother Jack," Pete said.
Everyone smiled and said hello.
"Hi, I’m Bill, Bill Mason. Pete has told me how he got here. How about the rest of you what's your story?"
June spoke up and said, "I live here on the base in base housing with my husband, Lt. Tom Mathews. Her eyes welled up and she took a deep breath and then everything she had to say just came out in a rush. Tommy and I dated all through high school. We continued to date while we attended Texas, A&M.
We got married a month after he graduated from Air Force Flight School. That was about six months ago. I love Tommy and even though I miss my folks, I was happy living here with him.
This part of southern California isn’t a lot different from the area of Texas where we both had grown up. Besides, I still talked to mom on the phone at least once a day. Mom would give me advice and recipes and always listened patiently when I complained about some silly argument Tommy and I had."
She paused for a few seconds and then said, "I can't believe Tommy just left me alone here." She sobbed and the tears started to roll down her cheeks.
"OK, slow down. Take a drink of this, and a deep breath," I said while handing her a bottle of water.
June took a ragged breath and continued, "The last week or so mom and I had talked mostly about the news reports on the new "flu" or whatever it was. I could tell mom was worried about me. But I told her I felt safe here on the AFB. There was hardly any crime, and that I knew all of my neighbors and felt safe. There were lots of soldiers here to protect us if there were any problems.
The reports on the TV said the virus that had started on the east coast had spread to the west coast in a matter of days. The News reporters talked about a pandemic occurring. The reporters said the virus was causing people to go mad. They were attacking and killing people, family, co-workers, or strangers.
The reports said if anyone was bitten, stay away from them, because they could be infected.
Tommy had reported into work Monday morning but he had called me about 11:00 am and said his unit was on alert and he was restricted to his duty station.
He told me to lock the doors, stay inside and not to let anyone into the house. He also told me to get his old baseball bat from the garage and keep it handy till he came home.
That was over a week ago. Tommy called to check on me several times a day the first two days. But he hadn’t called the third day, and I couldn't get through to Mom either.
I had tried to call my mom for about the tenth time that day. I sat down to watch TV and wait for Tommy to call. I was sitting on the couch watching the news and crying. I was worrying about Tommy and my folks when there was a pounding at the door. I could hear the voices of my neighbor's kids, Beth and Jack, screaming from outside the door. I opened the door and Beth and Jack started yelling that a man was hurting their mom. I grabbed Tommy’s baseball bat and ran next door.
A man had Shirley my neighbor, the kid's mom, pinned against the door of her car. He was scratching and trying to bite her. I hit the guy in the back over and over, but he just kept biting and tearing at Shirley.
Suddenly, a man, who of course was Pete, came up beside me and grabbed the bat out of my hands and told me to get back. He swung the bat three or four times striking the attacker in the head. Shirley collapsed to the ground with her attacker.
I was surprised because Pete appeared to just be a kid, 16 or 17, and he continued to pound the attacker until he had crushed the guy's head in. I started to kneel to check Shirley but Pete yelled, "STOP! Don’t touch her. Take the kids inside and let me check her out first." After about five minutes there was a knock at the door. When I opened the door it was Pete, he told me that the kid's mom, Shirley, had died from the infected man's bite. I couldn’t see the bodies and then Pete said he had moved the bodies to the other side of the car."
June continued her story, "Pete told me that there were at least six more of the things walking down the street in this direction. He said that he was leaving to find a safer place. He said if the kids and I wanted to come with him to get into his van.
He said to hurry because he wasn’t waiting around. I could see the creatures walking in our direction. I told the kids to get in the van. When they protested and started to scream for their mom, I just picked Jack up and threw him in the back of the van. I dragged Beth to the van pushed her inside with Jack and closed the side door.
The first of the new group of things were almost to the van. Pete grabbed my bat again and hit the first one in the knee then rained blows down on its head. He turned and ran to the van and jumped in and fired up the engine.
In the van the kids were crying and calling out for their mom. Pete yelled, 'SHUT UP! THEY CAN HEAR YOU!' The kids continued to sob but at least they got quieter.
As we drove away, we finally had a chance to introduce ourselves to one another. Pete told me that on his drive from Rosamount where he lived, he had only seen the creatures in large numbers. Mainly where there were large groups of people. Most of the area between here and Rosamount was sparsely or completely unpopulated and he hadn’t seen many creatures, except at a diner and a gas station.
Pete asked me if I knew where all the soldiers had gone. I gave him directions to the airstrip where Tommy worked. When we got there we looked around the terminal building and the hanger area. But they were completely deserted.
We saw some bodies, but no living people or creatures. We decided to climb up in this tower hoping for a better look around. We could hear gunshots but even from up here we couldn’t see anyone shooting. We haven’t seen anyone but the creatures the whole time we’ve been up here. Pete and I decided that we were safer up here where we could see anyone or anything before they could see us.
Like I said, several times we had seen the creatures. You can always identify them by the shuffling walk they have. But you are the first living person we’ve seen all week," June finished.
The next morning talking over a breakfast of canned peaches, I discovered that June had grown up around guns and even gone hunting with her dad.
After walking June through the loading and firing of the MP5, Pete and I headed down to his van to drive over and checkout the research center.
Well before we had been spotted by the creatures, we saw them. There were hundreds of them milling around the high cyclone fencing surrounding the research center. Rather than attract their attention, we decided to slowly back the van up the street away from the creatures.
"Well, I guess that would be a poor choice of places to go charging into. Let’s check out the motor pool and trade this van for an APC. An armored vehicle would be a lot more secure if you got caught by those things. Then the armory, we really should get more of these suppressed MP5’s and we should even get some M16’s and as much ammo as there is. I have a 9 mm Pistol and a scoped bolt action 30-6 deer rifle. But the things are attracted by sound so the MP5's would be our best choice," I told Pete.
"My dad taught me to make a homemade beer can silencer but they are only go
od for about six to ten shots. But they are fast and easy to make," Pete said.
At the motor pool I decided on an M1117 APC. I had wrenched on these beasts while serving as a mechanic in Iraq. They were easy to drive, fast and about as safe as you could get short of being in a tank. We located an M1117 in excellent condition and it was already fueled up and ready to go.
Pete suggested we check out the armory then return to the control tower. Fortunately, there was no other traffic on the streets. Pete caught on to handling the APC pretty quickly.
We loaded the APC with all of the available ammo and some of the M16’s as well as all of the MP5’s. A search of the weapons room rewarded us with six hand held radios and a box of battery packs. Now we could leave the tower and still stay in touch with it.
That night as we sat around in the tower talking, I told Pete and June that I was concerned that the creature activity or presence was increasing. When I first arrived here I only saw about a dozen of them the first two days. Now, after only four days, we were killing six to eight a day and seeing even more.
I told them my plan of heading north to a less populated area. June said it made sense to her but she couldn’t leave without knowing about her husband Tommy. Pete said that he thought it made sense to him too. But he felt responsible for June and the kids and would not leave without them. So, he would leave the decision to her. If June was staying then Pete said he would stay and watch out for her.
I told them that I had been thinking about a method for checking out the Research center on the base which was about three miles away from the Tower. I told them that tomorrow we should load all the supplies we could manage. Then Pete and I would take the D9 Caterpillar from the motor pool and destroy as many of the creatures as possible. We would then break into the Research center and see what happened to the military personnel.
The next day Pete and I spent several hours at the motor pool modifying my truck in preparation for our trip to the Research compound. We loaded a large land/sea container onto the tow truck bed. I welded brackets to the container and bolted it securely.
Pete drove my truck to the tower and picked up June, and the kids. Then June, and the kids piled into my tow truck and Pete drove them to get supplies from the exchange. The kids stayed inside the truck with a radio to keep watch out for any creatures. Pete and June loaded supplies into the trucks new container.
I stayed in the motor pool and prepared the D9 for my attack on the creatures. I welded some heavy duty diamond stretch wire around the seating area and some large steel plate material to the back where they might try to climb onto the D9.
At sun up on the following morning, thanks to June thinking to get coffee at the exchange, we had coffee. Sipping the coffee made on Pete’s camp stove and camping coffee pot I felt better than I had for a couple of days.
After the coffee, Pete and I left for our trek to the Research Center while June and the kids stayed at the tower and waited for us to return.
Using my truck, we towed the Cat as close as we dared to the Research Center without attracting the attention of the creatures. Pete disconnected the trailer and backed up several blocks. Armed with my scoped deer rifle, Pete settled in to observe and be ready to come to my rescue if needed.
Pete signaled me that he was ready so I fired up the Cat. The noise from the exhaust as I revved the engine and maneuvered off the trailer was starting to attract the attention of the creatures. The creatures were still about 400 yards away. Well out of my effective gunshot range.
I shifted the Cat into neutral and stood up. I stepped out of the protective cage, grabbed my M16 and fired a clip of rounds at the Zombies in order to attract the attention of as many as possible. I replaced the clip with a fresh one and picked up the M79 and loaded the first He-Frag rounds.
I fired the first round when the creatures were about 200 yards away. It was short so I increased the angle on the next one. A few Zombies went down. Increasing the angle of fire even more, the next shot was much more effective and the next seven shots dropped dozens of the creatures. But even with the obvious damage most of them continued to limp or crawl toward me.
