Deadfall: Survivors

by Richard Flunker

  “Here’s the key thing I found though, Brian. Digging back through to the first logs he created when they first arrived at Black Mountain. Here, (he pointed the laptop at me, so that I could verify what he was about to say) he talks clearly about a Richard Arche. Brian, is that not your father?”

  There it was. Clearly on the computer screen was my father’s name, his well known name that is. It wasn’t the name he was born with. He had changed it when he began writing and making movies. But there it was. I tried scanning what was being said about him, and Tague was explaining what he had read.

  Apparently, this group was searching for him, specifically. They had tracked down a rumor of my father having visited with a group that was holed in a water tower in Pittsboro, but had not been seen since. There was more information in there about finding my father, and that his capture would ensure a more rapid discovery of their prize.

  The news completely stunned me. I had assumed my father dead, and although he may still be quite dead, at least at a water tower in Pittsboro, he had not been. It also painted him in a far different picture. We were getting involved in something here, something big. These people were very clearly after our house, and needed my father to find it. I can only imagine if they found out who I was, or who we were, we could become targets, as well.

  I wanted to see more, to go through the laptop even more, but Tague warned me that there was barely any charge left in the laptop, and that when they got back to the house, they would easily be able to go through it in more detail. It would be up to us to get back first. Suddenly, getting back home took a far higher priority that it even had before this revealing information. It was time to get back.

  Even here now, as I'm typing up this entry, Tague is up in the computer room, going through as much as he can find, and if I didn’t think that recording these events into my journal wasn’t so important, I would be in there with him. I’ll just have to be patient. Besides, Tague probably knew what he was doing, while I’d just be bumbling through everything.

  We locked (barricaded) ourselves into the concession stand area, and I must admit, that at least I enjoyed a very calm restful night. I think it was that added chill during a summer day, that change of temperature that helped me sleep a little deeper.

  We woke up clear headed, and ready to get back to the house. It was raining lightly that morning. As we had already agreed not to head into Asheville at all, we found a possible route up and around the city, which, while still had us crossing both I-26 and I-40, we hoped it was far enough from the city to avoid the larger amounts of zombies usually found there.

  The trip home took us nearly two whole days. Our first day, we had driven down to where our planned trip crossed I-26, and found it blocked by a large semi truck. We moved it aside slowly by just pushing on it with the truck, but had to wait twice, for a few hours each time, while groups of walkers went by. Both groups were headed south, towards Asheville. By the time we were able to squeeze by in the truck, our focus shifted to finding a gas station with diesel, and that took us the rest of the day to find. With the gas light on in the truck, we managed to find a station where we were able to get enough to fill the truck up. We drove up into the mountains to get out of the lower areas and slept, but this time, as we weren’t that high up, we rotated a night watch.

  That second day we drove down south, this time crossing I-40, west of Asheville, at a town called Canton. The overpass was clear this time, of both obstacles and zombies. In the town itself, there were a few walkers, but nothing that we couldn’t just drive by. By early that afternoon, we had arrived at our house. The sense of relief was great; you could just tell from everyone’s happier demeanor, that everyone was glad to be back in our safe haven.

  We had decided to keep the truck up there with us this time around, and so Aaron and I worked with Evan to set up our little hidden outdoor garage. Mostly, we just made sure the truck was clearly off the road, and we just covered it up with as much brush and downed branches as we could. It took us a few hours, but by the end, it would be nearly impossible to find, unless you ran into it. Of course, if, for some reason, we had to flee from there quickly, it might be a pain to remove all that brush quickly. Hopefully, that would never be the case.

  Dawn was not around when we got there, and Chris told us that she had been acting strangely. He told us that she had supposedly seen a rabbit while out walking and that she had decided to go capture it. According to him, she had been going out every afternoon for the past three days, in her attempts to capture the animal. He said she usually returned before nightfall, but that it was all bizarre nonetheless.

  She did reappear that night, just as we were all sitting down for dinner. She looked so unkempt, disheveled, and plenty surprised to see us all back. We related our adventures to Chris and Dawn; that made for a long evening, and we were all up quite late last night, talking about everything under our roof.

  Here I am now. Today is the day after we returned, and I have spent the entire day typing up these events into my journal. I’ve had to keep going back and forth with everyone else, to make sure I was remembering things right. For now, I will end. I suspect we all have things to decide. I know there’s something really important on my mind.

  Notes: The Battle at Black Mountain, as it became known as, was unofficially the first battle in the War of the Dead. It would set the standard of the Followers use of the undead to wage battles against the Army Department of Containment and Restoration. For more details on the events noted in this entry, please see Volume 4 of this series.

  Entry 37 – Lessons in Engineering (Trying to Build Stuff)[35]

  There’s one clear thing that completely rocks about being back. The hot water. I washed my hands in hot water. Then, I had some hot coffee, even though I don’t like coffee. Then, I took a hot shower, and to top it off, I washed my clothes in some hot water. Granted, it took me all day to do those things, mostly because the hot water heater kept shutting off to save electricity. Still, hot water.

  I spent all of yesterday typing up that very lengthy entry. I only took bathroom, eating, and hot water breaks. I got it all finished, obviously, but now we’re kind of at an impasse here. Tague is still digging through that laptop. He wants to see everything before he attempts to put anything together, and he doesn’t want anyone bothering him, for some odd reason. What can I say, he’s European. (Lame joke).

  Today therefore, was spent mostly hanging around. Chris sat with Heather and I most of the morning, as we retold the events of our little adventure, and he was bummed not to have been along. Kind of a teenager thing to think, I guess. As close as we got to dying, I rather wish we’d not gone, but in any case, there simply would not have been room.

  That got to Chris, and apparently he had a talk with Evan and Aaron about this.

  Evan spent most of the day with his new toy. He had brought the machine gun inside, and after digging around on one of the computers, was able to bring up schematics or diagrams, or just a machine gun instruction manual, whatever you would officially call it. He then spent four to five hours taking the thing apart, and then putting it back together.

  Now, I’ve seen the movies where the crack soldier rips the rifle apart in three and a half seconds, and then puts it back together, before the sound of the dismantling of the gun even reaches the instructors ears. Then the drill sergeant yells at him about how his momma is too fat, or how he is a homosexual of some sort. Well, that’s not how this happened. The first time, there were pieces all over the place, and I thought for sure that there was no way he would put it back together again, but eventually he did. Then, he repeated that action again a few more times, and, truthfully, he never got any better at it. If a horde of zombies is ambling towards us, and that gun is in pieces all over the floor, I’m not counting on his ability to put it back together in order to save us. I’ll be running at that point. For all its worth, even with his rebuilding of the thing, I have no idea if it works. Granted, there were no parts
left over. I have this odd feeling that we’ll find out if it works before I die.

  But back to Chris, he convinced Evan and Aaron that we needed another vehicle. It made sense. Even in the truck, if we were all to ride, it would be cramped, or people would have to ride in the bed. So, Aaron plopped out a large map on the floor of the room, and asked me about the local towns. He then began plotting out a course that would keep him out of any potential death trap (which was essentially, anywhere, really), but close to any potential car lots, or auto repair shops. There he would look for something that might be useful.

  Evan on the other hand, wanted to go along, because he was insistent upon creating a mount for his gun in the back of the truck. We thankfully never had to use that wooden contraption he had rigged at Mount Mitchell, but it made sense, especially after our car chase, that maybe we should have something, just in case. I never like a “just in case” having to rely on guns, though.

  In either case, Evan was sure that he could find the right “stuff” at auto repair shops. They also decided that if they did find the right vehicle, a van or another truck, that they would try to find a way to bring back as much extra fuel as they could, again, just in case. “Just in case”, with fuel and bullets.

  On a side note, Chris motioned at me with his head when Dawn walked by and went outside. He made a face, sticking out his tongue and crossing his eyes, but I wasn’t about to laugh. Maybe I would have to approach this. I wasn’t an expert, but the last thing we needed was someone going suicidal on us here. Also, it was the right thing to do.

  I caught up with Dawn outside, sitting on the ground at the edge a small meadow on the north side of what was “our” mountain. I sat next to her, and was about to go into this whole spiel about how we were here for her, and some other stuff I may have either read about or seen in a movie, when lo and behold, this rabbit came jumping out in front of us. By in front, I still mean a good fifty feet from us, but we were facing it. It stopped, did what rabbits do, and then went on its merry way.

  Dawn looked at me and smiled.

  “I overheard Aaron mentioning he was going to try to find another truck or car?”

  “Yeah, that’s the plan,” I said.

  “Do you think I can ask them to find something for me?”

  She told me how she wanted to build some cages. She had read about making some non-lethal traps, and she wanted to see if she could catch the rabbits. For a brief moment, I pictured a bunch of rabbits as pets, running around the main living floor, but she quickly related the rest of her plan.

  She wanted to see if she could breed them and raise them, for food.

  “I'm alive, and I’m grateful. I'm just very lonely and bored. I need something to do.”

  I hope I didn’t sigh too loudly. I was relieved that she was just finding her own way of keeping busy, of coping with that loneliness that was just created by the death of billions. In her case, her loneliness was far more personal.

  We all had our own ways of staying busy. We had just come from lives where we had schedules, jobs and daily routines. We were busy in our own ways, and suddenly we were ripped away from that mundane, yet very comfortable existence, and made to run. So, we all found our ways. Aaron and Lucy found each other, and found comfort in their intimacy. I'm sure it’s far more than that, but it all boils down to being together. Tague had his “journalism”, his investigations, or trying to figure things out. It kept him busy, and it kept him close to that old life. I had my hiking at first, and now obviously, I have Heather. Heather had her brother to take care of, and I’d like to think she has me now. Chris is just a teenager, so that doesn’t count.

  And Evan, he had his guns, which he makes love to. Of course, I meant that figuratively. That didn’t paint a good picture.

  If Dawn wanted to try to catch rabbits and breed them for food, I can’t see any reason why she shouldn’t try.

  Entry 38 – My Father[36]

  I didn’t write an entry yesterday, mostly because my mind was quite heavy in thought, and I just didn’t feel like typing.

  Aaron and Evan left with Chris yesterday morning. I had to convince Heather that it would be ok for him to go. We certainly couldn’t keep him cooped up in here. She agreed, but up till now, I can tell she’s nervous about him being out of here, without her. It was one thing to leave him here when we went out to look for the cult guys, but she felt really bad “sending” him out into the wild.

  They haven’t returned yet, but they had planned on being gone for three days. They had also said that they would NOT deviate from the route, no matter what. If they saw something they wanted that was off the route, they would try again at some future date. Tague mentioned later that they could have taken a radio, as apparently we had some decent powered ones in storage somewhere. It would have been nice if Tague hadn’t been locked up in his own investigations the whole time.

  Regardless, I'm not too worried. I’ll worry if they don’t return tomorrow.

  So, Tague finished up his recording of any useful information from the laptop, and there are some revealing bits in there. I’ll try to get the non-important things out of the way. Well, everything is quite important, but the final bits of discovery are what I want to talk about.

  This group, the men who we heard on the radios, and I am assuming, the same men at the compound, the conference center, call themselves the Followers of Inanna. Who or what this Inanna is, we’re not sure yet. Tague is doing some Meta search in the databases, the digital books and documents, but he says it’s going to take some time, as he doesn’t know how to do the search parameters to function with the highest efficiency. Yes, I didn’t understand that last part, either. He did say that if there’s anything in there, he’ll find it.

  Second, it seems quite clear that they are indeed looking for my house, which they call a Datila, a vault. When you think of it, this is what this location is, a vault. It’s a hole in the ground, a very large, highly technological hole in the ground, where my father stored all sorts of things, but most notably, at least according to these follower guys, knowledge. According to them, somewhere in those very same files Tague is searching, is some very important information they really want, and that it’s available nowhere else. What it is, we don’t know, but my father knew, and it has something to do with the zombies and something called Ionatite. Yes, there are more questions than answers. Tague said he’ll be searching for that term, as well.

  Now, how these people know about my father, still remains a mystery. One thing for sure though, they began trying to find him shortly after the zombies started rising. They had his Hendersonville address correct, although I have a feeling he hadn’t been living there for some time. He seemed quite moved in here, when he first asked me to come up here.

  Here’s the other really interesting piece of information. According to a log here on the laptop, they were looking for me at one point, just a few days after the zombies began rising. They even had my correct address. Now, thankfully, I wasn’t there, I was up here already, but whoever did this searching, put in his log that they found me already dead. Tague even made a joke congratulating me on my death.

  They knew who I was, but had confirmed me dead. They don’t say how they confirmed that it was me, but it clearly stated at the end of the entry that with me being dead, that all focus was on finding my father.

  Some other small tidbits of information:

  a) They had people from their group in Asheville, within days of the zombies coming to life.

  b) Tague made an assumption, and I guess I can agree with him, that these guys were really into the whole overthrow the government thing, by many of the comments they had in emails and notes. I wonder what they think of the zombies completing that task for them.

  c) As we had somewhat understood before, this is not the only vault, but this is the one that has this information they’re looking for.

  I had always known my father to be quite secretive. When I was much younger, he never told me
anything about his books or movies, until they came out. He told me it was so that people wouldn’t bug me about them, asking me for spoilers or hints. But as I got older, it remained the same. For a while, I began to think that he didn’t trust me, or think I could keep a secret, but after that, I just assumed he was just a quiet, secretive guy. I do vaguely remember my mom yelling at him a lot for his silence in many things. She was a horrible human being.

  Again, I don’t remember much about her. I do remember her yelling, and I somewhat remember her indifference towards me. I'm not sure if it was that she didn’t love me, because I do remember some kindness, but mostly, it was as if she just ignored I was there, but took care of me if needed. Again, I was very young.

  And then things get fuzzy. My dad lost his job, and things got hairy financially. This I got from my dad, as I was too young to understand. Not long after that, she was simply gone. I just remember a sense of relief from my dad. He did reveal to me later, that he had initially been really worried that she would take me, but she didn’t, and never returned.

  I would find out many years later that my mother had been having an affair with a wealthy married man, some big shot banker type guy, for a good two years before she left my father. I figured she had just left because things got too difficult at home. My mother left him, because she was in it for herself. Not six months after she left, my dad said, he published his first book, and it only went uphill from there.

  My dad never remarried, and I can remember him having only one girlfriend. I liked her, but I don’t remember her too well, either. I do remember that my dad had this amazing gift to just ascertain how things worked, and not just in a small mechanical sense, but from the littlest detail, up to a whole global scale. It’s hard for me to explain, but at dinner time, he could go on about how something as tiny as a little plant in the Amazon, could be developed into a cure for certain cancers. Even that isn’t a good explanation. He could just see the whole picture, and well beyond. Not just beyond, but the many possible beyonds. I suppose that’s what made him such a good writer.