And as he lay there, his eyes began to adjust to the semi-darkness of the area underneath the vehicle.
The low moans of pain continued above him, only somewhat muffled by the metal between them.
Suddenly, Matt spotted something. Something absurd. Something completely unexpected
It was a small black plastic metal box, appearing to hang off the undercarriage of the tank.
Matt recognized the strange little box immediately. It was so ordinary, so out-of-place on a tank, that he had to stifle a laugh despite the situation.
It was one of those magnetic boxes that holds a spare key.
Matt reached out and grabbed it, pulling it off the metal. Sure enough, it was what he thought it was and, after opening it up, he took out the key.
“Wow,” he couldn’t help muttering, turning the normal Toyota car key over in his hand.
Meanwhile, the groans of pain above, from inside the tank, had died down.
But even with the key in hand, Matt didn’t dare get out from under the tank. After all, it would just take one bullet. Nothing more.
So he waited there in the semi-darkness, with the four Toyota truck wheels around him and the crazy scrap metal pieces hanging down low around the wheels, blocking out most of the light.
36
Judy
“You’re lucky to be alive, you know that, right?” said Judy.
“I know,” said Matt, hanging his head somewhat sheepishly.
“Even so, we appreciate it.”
“We do?” said Jamie.
“Of course.”
“We couldn’t have done it ourselves, I guess.”
“Hey,” said Matt. “What’s done is done, right?”
All three fell silent, kind of nodding their heads dumbly together.
They were standing near the tank. The door was open.
“So you just found the key under the tank?” said Jamie, sounding as if it was too ridiculous to believe.
“Yup,” said Matt, nodding his head. “I couldn’t believe it myself.”
“We didn’t know what to do. We were watching from a distance...out of range...just hoping you were still alive.”
“But it didn’t seem like it.”
“I should have told you what I was up to,” said Matt. “That was dumb. For all I know, you two could have come after me, exposing yourself to danger.”
“Don’t worry,” said Jamie. “We’re not quite as dumb as you.”
“It didn’t exactly look like a battle we would have won,” said Judy.
She was trying to play it off like it was all a joke, like it was in the past and it simply didn’t matter. She remembered being there, waiting, holding her breath, watching the whole time, thinking that Matt was dead. Definitely dead. How could it have been any other way?
And then he’d just emerged from under the tank, standing up, clearly healthy.
And she’d wanted to scream out, to tell him to get back down. But she hadn’t known what had happened. She hadn’t known that Matt had shot him.
Then she and Jamie had watched as Matt had looked in the window, cupping his hand over his eye and then, bizarrely, simply opened the door of the tank and gone right in.
“When we saw you get in,” said Jamie. “We were just so confused...”
“Well,” said Matt. “I wanted to make sure he was dead...I’d waited how long, at least an hour, right?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“But I still wasn’t sure. I’d gotten my hearing kind of attuned to his moans of pain and those had stopped. But I didn’t want to ignore the possibility that he was faking it. Or that there was someone else there.... Or just something else unexpected...”
“So you just decided to head on in there, even when that was all a possibility?”
Matt gave a little laugh. “Well, I was fairly sure. I couldn’t hear any noise. I debated with myself endlessly and then I just had to go for it.”
“So, are you going to give us a tour, or what?”
“A tour?”
“Yeah. I want to see the inside of this crazy thing.”
“Ugh,” said Jamie, making a face. “What do you want to see more death for?
“It’s pretty messy in there,” said Matt.
Judy shrugged. “I doubt anything can surprise me at this point.”
Matt shrugged. “Your call,” he said. “He didn’t look infected...although I’m pretty sure we’re all immune at this point.”
“I don’t see how it could be any other way,” said Jamie, pointing at the various corpses that surrounded them.
It really was a horrible sight. All around them were the people that had been pumped full of holes by the man in the tank. Plenty of them looked as if they’d died, or at least been about to die, due to the virus. But they’d been shot for good measure either way. Completely indiscriminately. A complete massacre.
There was a level of blood and gore around them that would have been hard to describe to someone, if Judy had been in a situation where she’d had to do it.
Judy would have found the amount of gore uncomfortable, or at the very least unpleasant, had she been merely watching it in a movie or television show.
But now that she was here in person, now that she’d seen her son die before her own eyes, it really didn’t faze her.
In fact, it didn’t bother her in the least bit.
Her only concerns were practical ones. Like what would they do with the bodies? Were she, Jamie, and Matt really completely immune from the virus by mere random chance, or did they still need to take precautions?
“I want to see what’s inside this thing,” said Judy. “After all, you’re right. We need to get ready.”
“Get ready?” said Jamie.
“For whoever’s next,” said Judy. “This was my cousin’s land. Look how many people showed up here since the news of the virus...he would have never tolerated living and working with so many people on his land.... It may have been a while since I saw Joe, but I know his character...no, these people definitely came here...invaded...then this tank came in....”
“What are you getting at?” said Jamie.
Matt was listening attentively.
“What I’m getting at,” said Judy, “is that more people are coming.” She nodded at Matt, acknowledging what he’d said earlier. “We need to be prepared. And this tank might help us defend this place.”
“Use this tank?”
“Why not?” said Judy, shrugging.
“Come on,” said Matt. “Follow me.”
He went first, climbing up into the tank. In a way, it looked like the entrance to a normal truck and in many other ways, it looked nothing like it.
“Here,” said Matt, turning part way around and extending his hand to help Judy.
“Let me help you from this end,” said Jamie.
Judy hesitated. But just for a moment. She didn’t take either of their hands. “Now look here,” she said. “I know I had my...health issues back there...but that’s over. Okay? I’m feeling fine now, and I don’t want any special treatment just because I’m a few years older than you two. The way I see it, we all have something to offer. And I can offer experience. And not only that, but if I can’t even climb up into a car, then that’s it for me. I’m going to have to keep doing things myself if I want to get any stronger.... If I stop moving of my own accord, then I’ll just keep getting weaker until I’m no good in a fight...and there are going to be a lot of fights coming up.”
Matt and Jamie just nodded. But they didn’t laugh, or crack so much as the trace of a smile. They took it seriously. Which was good. She wasn’t going to go down easy. She was going to fight.
Judy followed Matt into the vehicle.
It took a little while for her eyes to adjust.
“What’s that smell?” she said.
“Urine,” said Matt. “He was urinating in these containers and had them stacked up around the perimeter. You’ll be able to see in a minute, here�
��”
Sure enough, in less than a minute, she could see okay in the dark space. And, sure enough, there were about a dozen open gallon jugs of urine in a ring around the perimeter of the crazy interior.
“He didn’t have lids, I guess?”
“Some of it spilled,” said Matt.
“So he built this on a pickup chassis?”
“Yeah. We’re basically on the bed of the pickup now, although you’d never know it.”
“And this swivel chair let him rotate around quickly.”
“Yeah. He didn’t have a gun mounted in here or anything. This helped with that. Kind of ingenious, really, in a cheap sort of way.”
“He certainly had plenty of firepower in here.”
Judy was examining the rows and rows of guns that the man had amassed.
“Definitely. We’ll put them to good use.”
“If we live long enough,” said Judy, crouching down and examining the corpse up close.
The fact that it was a dead body simply didn’t bother her any more. She found herself examining it in a clinical sort of way, the way a doctor might seem detached when examining a patient, or a former patient.
“No signs of the virus,” she said, grabbing his head by the hair and turning it toward her, so that his neck was fully visible. “Some face he’s got.”
It was really a horrible-looking face. Death hadn’t changed much about it. The features were still the same. The major pieces were all there. The bullet had hit him in the torso, probably some major organs.
He looked like he might have been a normal-looking guy back in the day. But years of hard living had done a number on his face, making it appear emaciated, heavy with the wrinkles one might expect of someone many, many years older.
“Looks like he lived a rough life,” said Judy.
“Take a look at this,” said Matt, holding up a long glass pipe.
“Drugs?”
“Meth, I think.”
“Explains the look. Jamie, don’t you want to check this out?”
“Uh, not now,” called Jamie from outside the tank. “You two have fun, though.”
Judy let out a dry little laugh. “So,” she said, glancing up at Matt. “What do you think? Can we use this effectively?”
“I keep running through the scenarios in my head,” said Matt. “I mean, there’s good visibility. Good shelter. The issue is that everyone knows exactly where you are...and it’s obviously vulnerable to certain attacks.”
“Like what you were able to do.”
“Exactly. We certainly should keep it.”
“Well, what else could we do with it?”
“Exactly. So we’ll keep it. But maybe we should think of it more as a last resort. Something to retreat to if things get really bad. I think we’re better being more mobile. Being able to spread out. There are a lot of places to hide and with access to these long guns...well, I think we’ll have a better chance if we can hide and move around rather than hole up in this crazy tank.”
Judy nodded. “Makes sense,” she said. “Come on. I’ve had enough of this.”
She let Matt go first and then she got down herself, crawling through the structure on her own.
When she got back down to the ground, her feet firmly in the dirt, she found that Matt and Jamie were both looking at her expectantly.
“What?” she said. “What is it?”
Then she realized what it was. Before they even could answer her.
They wanted the plan from her. They were both capable and intelligent. But they were recognizing that she had something serious to offer. Experience - that was what it was.
All she had to do was believe that she possessed a valuable trait and the ideas just kept coming to her. Strategic ideas.
She opened her mouth and found that the ideas just started to come out. “All right. We all know we don’t have much time. The first step is to camouflage the entrance. I know there are plenty of other ways to get onto this property, but that’s going to be the main one. The most obvious one.”
“How are we going to disguise it? There’s a gate and everything.”
“I don’t know,” said Judy, putting her hand to her chin, as if it would help her think. She knew that there wasn’t much time for pondering though. There was only time for action. “We’ll figure it out once we get up there. I’m sure Joe has all sorts of tools that’ll help us. We could disguise the driveway, or try to make the fence look as if it’s extended.”
“Maybe we could somehow dismantle the gate,” suggested Matt.
“Good one. All right, first things first. Food and water. We’re going to need to recharge. But we’ll do it in shifts.”
“In shifts?” said Jamie, puzzled.
“Yeah. I don’t think it’s wise for us all to sit down to a meal now. Not all three at once. Not when people are on the move. Not when things are happening. Not when we’re between two large cities, both of them in the midst of crashing down spectacularly.” said Judy.
“Got you,” said Matt. “Okay, Jamie and I will head up to the gate. You look through your cousin’s stuff. Get the food ready. Check out the well situation. And remember, we all need to make sure we’re armed at all times. This place is really wide open. Just because there isn’t a road doesn’t mean we can’t be easily attacked.”
“Right,” said Judy. “Right about expecting it from all angles, I mean. But my cousin’s hanging up there and I’m going to be the one to cut him down.”
Neither Matt nor Jamie said anything. They just sort of gave little nods.
“Why don’t you explore around here, Jamie?” said Judy. “See what you can find to eat. Get yourself something to eat.”
“What about you?”
“I’m fine for now,” said Judy. “I’m feeling better. A lot better. All right. No time to waste. Matt, you ready?”
“Sure,” said Matt, nodding. “Here, this might be useful.”
For the first time, she noticed that he had two long guns with him. He must have taken them from the tank.
She recognized them as AK-47s. The iconic profile was unmistakable.
Judy took one of the guns from him. It was heavy, but it felt good in her hands. “These are going to be useful,” she said.
“Definitely,” said Matt. “Let’s just hope we live long enough to give whoever is coming for us hell...with these guns, I mean.”
Judy nodded, and, without wasting any more time, the two of them were off, headed toward the gate off of Route 14, about halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
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About Ryan Westfield
Ryan Westfield is an author of post-apocalyptic survival thrillers. He’s always had an interest in “being prepared,” and spends time wondering what that really means. When he’s not writing and reading, he enjoys being outdoors.
Contact Ryan at: [email protected]
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Also by Ryan Westfield
Getting Out (The EMP, book 1)
Staying Alive (The EMP, book 2)
Pushing On (The EMP, book 3)
Surviving Chaos (The EMP, book 4)
Fighting Rough (The EMP, book 5)
Defending Camp (The EMP, book 6)
Getting Home (The EMP, book 7)
Finding Shelter (The EMP, book 8)
Final Chaos (Surviving, book 1)
Final Panic (Surviving, book 2)
Final Dread (Surviving, book 3)
Escape the Virus (Last Pandemic, book 1)
Last Pandemic (Book 2): Escape The City Page 20
