After what I had learned a few years back, I knew I had been right, but it wasn’t what I had expected.
Never in a million years would I have ever thought about civilization coming to an end in the way it did.
Looking back a few years at what I had seen, I now realized that I had been given a glimpse of what was to come. The problem was I was slow to realize what it had all meant and had chose to just be quiet and silently deal with my doubts so that I could go on with my life.
But deep down I knew this would eventually happen, maybe I didn’t do anything was because I was hoping that what I knew would eventually happen, wouldn’t occur until after I was long gone. Maybe the reason that I didn’t do anything was because I didn’t want to find myself locked up in an insane asylum because it had been determined I had gone crazy. I didn’t want to find myself locked up because I knew too much, things that I shouldn’t have known or things that weren’t to be talked about in public.
Maybe the problem was that there just wasn’t anything that anyone could have done about what was to happen. The ball had already started rolling, I knew there would be no way to stop it. The only thing left to do was to enjoy life for as long as I could.
I guess you could say that I felt that we were all living on borrowed time and our time was running out. Maybe, even now, we were still living on borrowed time, because honestly, even after everything that has happened, if you ask me, it’s not over.
It is far from being over.
It won’t be over until every last human on earth is dead.
In fact, I believe that we have only managed to survive the first attack. The worst is yet to come.
The world is filled with flesh eating zombies and what is left of the living is not able to do much more than hide and wait for death to find them.
How much worse could it get?
It depends upon what you are afraid of.
If I could go back, would I do anything differently?
Hindsight is 20 – 20, and at this point, thinking of such things is a waste of time.
But if I had to answer that question, the only answer I could come up with would be, probably not.
Chapter 2
Four years ago, Roswell, New Mexico
I grabbed my pack and along with our ten-man unit, began to exit the C-130 transport. My unit had been assigned to Roswell to provide security at the base for the next sixty days. Providing security to a base out in the desert seemed like a dream job and I was looking forward to a month of peace, quiet and boredom.
Five of the men on our transport I had never seen before, but the other four I knew very well, in fact, we had grown up together or had been friends since high school. We all had decided to join the Army together, after one of our weekend drinking binges. I honestly don’t remember or have managed to mercifully forget the hazy details of the chain of events that ended up with us enlisting. All I can say was it just seemed like the thing to do at the time.
My name is Mike Hodges, my family lived in the Overbrook neighborhood of Pittsburgh and my dad had worked at U.S. Steel, but had passed away when I was in high school. Except for my dad passing away, I thought it was a normal childhood and was the way everyone else in Pittsburgh lived and was raised. Half of my friends didn’t have a dad, so it didn’t make me feel too out of place or different from the other kids.
My best friend, Joe Bennett, lived down the street from me with his mom and two sisters. Of all the guys in our group, Joe and I have been friends the longest. I met Joe when I was tormenting one of his sisters and he came to her defense. We were just kids at the time.
The ice cream truck came through our neighborhood one hot summer day and all of us kids ran out to the truck to buy an ice cream cone. Joe’s sister tried to jump in line in front of me and I pushed her onto her butt. Joe came to her defense but decided that if I would let him get in line in front of me, he would buy me an ice cream cone, then he wouldn’t have a problem with me knocking his sister on her butt. Apparently, his sister was always making his life miserable at home and he liked me and ice cream better than he liked his sister. I liked the idea of getting a free ice cream cone, so our friendship began.
That was in first grade, but when we were in high school, things changed. Joe and I of course had remained good friends, but as we got older, I also became very good friends with Joe’s sister. She changed in ways that I couldn’t help but notice, and fortunately she no longer held a grudge about that day as kids when we met in line at the ice cream truck. We began to spend so much time together that our families thought that at some point we would end up getting married. But after she went off to college and began to experience life outside of Pittsburgh, we drifted apart and soon lost contact with each other. The last I heard, she ran off with a guy from Louisville, joined some environmental protest group and was living in a tent in Colorado.
Joe and I met and became friends with Albert Thomas and Bud Frick when we went to high school and we all went out for the baseball team. Al and Bud were from the Brentwood neighborhood a few miles away from where I lived. Kids from all the surrounding neighborhoods, thrown together for the first time, began to discover each other and make new friends when we all arrived at the high school. It was the next step in our growth and experiencing new and different things.
High school was also where we met Mickey “Wilson” DeAngelo. Wilson came from the Beltzhoover neighborhood. The Beltzhoover neighborhood was an area that all of us so-called normal people avoided. It was a rough neighborhood, a run down, high crime neighborhood that we were advised to stay out of for our own good as we grew up. Even at school, we didn’t interact with kids from Beltzhoover if we didn’t have to. The kids from Beltzhoover also stayed together in their own groups or gangs and seldom interacted with the other students, other than to threaten us or to glare at us. If anything came up missing from someone’s locker, everyone knew that it had been stolen by one of the Beltzhoover kids, but of course, unless you wanted to end up with a fat lip or worse, you didn’t make any accusations. It just wasn’t worth it.
Wilson had been at baseball practice for two weeks before we learned that he was from Beltzhoover. Wilson wasn’t like most of the kids from Beltzhoover, he seemed just like the rest of us, except for being a little weird. He was a short guy, about only five foot tall and not very intimidating. For a little guy though, he was pushy, and he was always talking about crazy stuff like aliens, ghosts, bigfoot, supernatural events and crazy things like that, but he never really caused any trouble.
By the end of the first semester, as we got to know the crazy Mickey DeAngelo better, he grew on us and he became a member of our small group of friends.
Joe was the first guy to start calling Mickey by the nickname Wilson. Mickey had a Wilson baseball glove, Wilson baseball shoes and Wilson sunglasses. None of the rest of us could afford an official Wilson glove or shoes. We didn’t think that Mickey’s family was able to afford them either, we just assumed that since he was from Beltzhoover he had obtained his expensive equipment the same way everyone in Beltzhoover got things, he stole them. Mickey had a habit of bragging about his shoes and glove, so Joe started calling Mickey, Wilson, and the nickname stuck.
Mickey actually liked being called Wilson because in Beltzhoover, Mickey was always referred to as Mickey Mouse. Life had been difficult for Mickey in the rough neighborhood where he grew up. He always stood up for himself, but usually being the smallest guy in the neighborhood, more often than not, he ended up on the short end of things. Being called Wilson, or anything other than Mickey Mouse, was fine with him.
By the end of high school, our small group had all been friends from four to twelve years. None of us were college material so we tried to get a job in the steel mill like men in the Pittsburgh area had done for generations. But the steel industry was dying, and with it most of the opportunities the area once held for its young generation. The Pittsburgh economy was not what it had once been and after a year of working de
ad end jobs, one night after celebrating a Steeler victory way too long into the night, we all agreed to join the Army together. The next day we marched down to the recruiter’s office and joined up.
The recruiter made us all kind of promises about what programs we would be eligible for, the special training we would be given, and the exotic places where we would be stationed. However, the only promise that the Army kept was that we were stationed together, most of the time, after boot camp.
The food was terrible, we were never stationed at the beach, we were never given the opportunity to be an undercover special agent or explosive experts. But life in the Army was better than hanging around with nothing better to do than stand out on the street corners in Pittsburgh and watch the world pass you by.
After a few years, the idea that we could earn a full pension, if we could manage to stay in the Army for twenty years, didn’t sound so impossible as it once did.
For a while, we started to believe we could actually make a career out of the Army.
“Mike,” Private Wilson whispered. “Do you think we will get to see the alien body they have locked away here? I wonder if it is still alive or if it is dead?”
“I laughed, “Wilson, I hope you don’t believe all that UFO crap that has been spread around over the years. You know there are no such things as little green men or flying saucers.”
“I know there are no little green men,” Wilson replied as he smiled. “They have milky white flesh and their spaceships can be any shape, they don’t have to be shaped like saucers. I hear they also captured an alien ship back in the fifties and have been studying it here for the last seventy years. I also heard that they finally learned how it works and they take it out and fly it around at night sometimes. I hope that we get to see that, that would be unbelievable.”
“What’s unbelievable is that they let you in the Army in the first place,” I laughed. “I thought you told me that you aced the psych test?”
“I did,” Wilson replied. “They said they liked how I was able to think outside the box.”
“If I were you, I don’t think I would go around asking to see any alien bodies or spaceships,” I added. “You might find yourself locked up in that box.”
“I guess your right,” Wilson replied. “I should just play it cool. I don’t want them to think I’m too anxious. Maybe if I just keep my eyes open, I’ll get my chance.”
“Just don’t get us in any trouble,” I said. “I intend on spending a few weekends up in Vegas and I can’t do that if you get us all confined to the base.”
As we walked down the unloading ramp with our packs swung over our shoulders, beads of sweat formed on our faces as the sun began to beat down on us in the 107-degree desert heat.
Sergeant Mitchell greeted us when we reached the tarmac.
“Welcome to New Mexico,” the sergeant smiled. “I want you to break up into two groups. Pete here will take one group to Barracks A, George will take the second group to Barracks B. Get settled in, at 1800 hundred hours I expect you to be in formation in front of your barracks. At that time, I’ll give you a quick tour of the base and explain a little about what will be expected of you during your vacation here at Walker Air Force Base.”
“Sergeant?” Wilson asked. “I thought Walker Air Force Base had been closed down years ago. I thought we were being transported to Canon Air Force Base?”
“Walker was closed down back in 1967, as far as the public is concerned,” Sergeant Mitchell smiled, “but we still do some very important work here.”
“Top secret work?” Wilson smiled. “Does the work have anything to do with aliens?”
“Way to play it cool,” I whispered.
The sergeant grinned, “So, you’re one of those people. No Private, nothing as exciting as aliens, we still maintain an important antiballistic missile system here and your job will be to provide security to the base and not to talk about what you see here. Understand?”
“Of course, Sergeant,” Wilson smiled.
“As far as UFOs and aliens,” Mitchell laughed, “I’m sure you will get your fill of rumors and stories by the time you leave here, but if that is what your hoping to find here, I’m afraid you are going to be very disappointed.”
“If you say so,” Wilson grinned.
The sergeant just shook his head, “Get moving. You would be well advised to keep your mind on your job and forget all the nonsense you’ve heard or the next few months are going to be hell if I have to lock your ass up for not doing your job. The brig here isn’t airconditioned. Move it gentlemen.”
We broke up into two groups. Wilson, Al, Bud, Joe, and I had joined the Army at the same time and had been lucky enough to be stationed together ever since then. We all walked over to the first truck as the rest of the men went over to the second truck.
When everyone was in the back of the trucks, the drivers started the engines, put the trucks in gear and started towards Walker Air Force Base. The base was located about three miles south of the Roswell airport, about a ten-minute drive. When we arrived at the base, we were all drenched in sweat and covered with a thin layer of dust that had been sucked into the back of the canvas covered truck where we all had been seated on hard wooden benches that were attached to each side of the bed of the truck.
The trucks sat at the front gate of Walker Air Force Base for a few minutes while the driver talked to a guard, then we started driving again. After a couple more minutes the truck again stopped, and the driver shut off the engine.
When the driver came back and opened the flaps, we all gratefully jumped out of the oven like enclosure to find ourselves in front of a building with a faded sign in front of it that said Barracks A.
“This place looks like it needs some maintenance personal more than it needs security guards,” I said as I studied the area. The barracks was a faded tan wood building. The paint on the building, that is what paint was still clinging to the building, was faded from many years of being baked in the desert sun and blasted by the sand that the wind was constantly pelting the buildings. The rest of the base looked the same, faded, sandblasted, rundown and except for us, deserted.
“This isn’t what I was expecting,” Wilson replied quietly.
“I feel like I died and went to Hell,” Joe added. “We’re going to be guarding this place for how long?”
“Why the hell does this place need security,” Al said. “Any self-respecting criminal wouldn’t set one foot on this place. It would be a waste of time.”
“Maybe we are being prepared for a tour of duty in Iraq, but they didn’t want us to know that for fear that we would go AWOL,” Bud said.
“That sounds like a good plan to me,” Joe laughed “Do you think if we left around midnight that would give us enough of a head start to reach the Mexican border before they came looking for us?”
“From what I hear,” Bud replied. “Mexico isn’t much better.”
“Quit your bitching,” I laughed. “This place is a soldier’s dream assignment, sand, sun, and no one shooting at you. We couldn’t ask for more.”
“If you say so,” Joe replied.
We walked over to Barracks A, our new home for the next two months. When we opened the door and stepped inside, it was if we had stepped into a different world.
The first thing I noticed was the cool air that hit me in the face, it was a good thirty degrees cooler inside the building than it was outside. The walls and the bunks looked almost new, it was as if the inside of the barracks had been recently remodeled. From the spot where we stood inside the door, I could see through another door into a spotless shower room. The bunks were made up with clean blankets and pillows.
“Wipe your feet,” I said, “I think we are going to want to keep the maid happy.”
“Mike, what’s with this place?” Joe asked.
“The hell if I know,” I replied as I stepped inside and continued to look the place over.
Bud walked back outside for a minute, looked at t
he sign in front of the building again, then he returned and smiled, “I had to make sure we didn’t accidently come into the officer’s quarters. We were assigned to Barracks A, right?”
Joe threw his pack on one of the beds and headed for the showers. “If this is a mistake, I’m at least going to get a comfortable shower out of this before they discover they made a mistake and send us out back to pitch a tent.”
“Look at these books,” Wilson called out as he ran across the barracks and knelt down in front of a bookshelf that contained about twenty books. A moment later he turned around holding a book out in front of him. “The Day the Earth Stood Still, did you ever see this movie? This is a classic. This is a book about aliens that come to earth to give us a warning, stop making war or be destroyed.”
“Someone has a sense of humor,” I replied.
“I’m starting to like this place already,” Wilson grinned. “Hey, look at this, they also have War of the Worlds, It Came from Outer Space, Invaders from Mars and…”
“Just what he needs,” Todd growled, “more encouragement, he is going to be seeing little green men in his sleep. Do you think we can trade him to Barracks B?”
“No, I think were stuck with him,” I replied. “Besides, he already sees little green men in his sleep.”
Joe, Wilson, Al, Bud and I each examined the bunks and finally claimed the one we wanted. Over the next twenty minutes we all had taken a shower and made ourselves comfortable on the soft beds and enjoyed the air conditioning. Al, Joe and Bud talked about the last time they were in Vegas, Wilson buried his face in Invaders from Mars, and I just laid back and listened to Joe talking about his last trip to Vegas. I had never been to Vegas but was looking forward to going there on my first leave, listening to Joe gave me an idea about what to avoid on my first Vegas trip. Joe had missed all the fun the last time he was there, instead of hanging out with chorus girls like he always bragged about, he had spent his time in the brig with card counters and drunks.
Apocalypse- the Plan Page 2
