by Dave Lund
The Defender lay partially exposed in the rubble, the semi-truck covering much of the vehicle. Chivo stood on the far side of the embankment, where the bridge had ended, his shemagh also over his face. He had his rifle shouldered, scanning the debris below. Among the rubble twitched hundreds of crushed undead bodies, some dead for good, some merely trapped and destroyed, but still very much alive in their way. Bexar saw her first. Lindsey’s arm and head were barely visible in the broken concrete under the semi-truck. She was dead. He fired a single round, splitting her skull apart to make sure she had peace after death. Chivo did the same for Apollo.
Chivo’s voice crackled in Bexar’s ear. He had completely forgotten that they had comms. I should have used the headset to warn them. Defeat washed over Bexar, his knees felt weak, he sat down on the pavement, staring at Lindsey’s body and the crushed Defender.
“How copy?”
Bexar looked up and saw Chivo pointing at his own ear.
“10-9 … sorry, repeat.”
“OK, stay there. I’m coming to you. One piece at a time—watch your ass up there; I need you alert and your head in the game. We’ll have time for our friends later, but right now you have to be straight. Get fucking straight, mano!”
Bexar stood up and turned his back to the broken edge. He scanned for any incoming threats from the south and waited for Chivo.
Albuquerque, NM
Jessie climbed off the motorcycle. The driver swung her leg over, pulled her knit cap off, pulled down the bandana that covered her face, and closed the overhead door.
“Holy shit. Look at you—you’re a hot mess.”
Jessie just blinked at her. The woman standing in front of her looked about forty years old. She wore filthy jeans, leather boots, a black t-shirt, and a broken-in leather jacket. Her hair hung nearly to her waist.
“OK, I get it. I’m Sarah; my daughter Erin should be here shortly. Who are you?”
“Jessica … Jessie Reed.”
“Alright, Jessie. So what’s your deal, sightseeing in New Mexico? You seemed to know where you were going.”
“I, well … I’m headed for Groom Lake.”
“As in Area 51? Why the fuck would you do that?”
Jessie turned. A girl, no older than fifteen, walked out of the shadows across the concrete floor with the largest rifle that Jessie had ever seen thrown over her shoulder like it was a shovel.
“Uh, yeah, like Area 51. We were going there because of Cliff.”
“We who?”
“Bexar. My … my …” Jessie sat down on the floor. I can’t do it, I just can’t do it anymore.
Sarah nodded to Erin, who came back with a bottle of water and handed it to Jessie.
“Just relax for now; we’ll get your story when you’re ready. Until then, we’ll figure out what to do about your ride.”
Twentynine Palms, CA
The M-ATV and Humvee convoy of four drove west on Highway 62 at a steady forty mph, rolling through the town of Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley with no problems. Aymond understood why the towns were deserted. All the residents had fled to the installation.
The small communities along the route until they hit the mountains were equally deserted, as if one day everyone had simply left their cars and their homes and flown away. They rolled down the other side of the mountains. Huge windmills dotted the area, spinning slowly in the wind, generating power for no one. If they are able to generate any power at all. Aymond wasn’t sure; he didn’t know if windmills would survive an EMP. Mechanically, they looked fine from miles away, but if their generators had ceased … it really didn’t matter if there were no other survivors to use the power anyway. The MSOT’s spirits were lifted by the two new corporals joining their merry band of travelers. If we found two people on an overrun installation, we’ll probably find more in San Diego, and more elsewhere. There might be a chance that there are people left everywhere: survivors.
After turning onto I-10, Aymond had expected to find a parking lot of abandoned vehicles in the road. Instead, many of the smaller vehicles were pushed off into the ditches. The larger vehicles were badly damaged; dried blood was smeared along the sides and the western-facing ends of the vehicles.
Reaching the town of Banning, the convoy encountered the first underpasses of their journey. The first M-ATV drove under, followed by the second; a Zed dropped from the bridge above onto the windshield of the last M-ATV.
“Holy shit, Chief! A fucking Zed just fell onto our windshield from the bridge above!”
“Any damage, Davis?”
“I don’t see any … just blood smeared across the windshield after the fucking thing bounced off.”
“Do we need to stop?”
“Hell no, Chief!”
Davis wanted to stop. It creeped him out to have Zed blood smeared across his windshield, but he couldn’t risk losing face in front of the team. Besides, he didn’t want to pull over next to a town anyway.
The same thing happened with each overpass they cleared. A walking corpse would inevitably fall off the bridge and land on Davis’s M-ATV. By the third body he was no longer startled—just pissed that he was the third in line and the one catching all the jumpers.
In Beaumont, they turned south to head over more mountains. Away from I-10 and away from the towns, the number of abandoned vehicles diminished, but more importantly to Davis, no more Zeds splattered onto his windshield.
Albuquerque, NM
Chivo stood with his back to the edge of the collapsed bridge, scanning for any threats that came up the road. The mass of undead that had pushed the bridge over were mostly gone, the parade of death and gore becoming a limping and stumbling gaggle of bodies shambling by, detoured by the incredible piles of rubble.
Bexar glanced over his shoulder. They have a really hard time climbing over the rubble; they’re basically stuck. He turned, shouldered his rifle, and fired half a dozen shots, dropping four of the shambling dead trapped in the debris. Chivo made his way to the side of the bridge that Bexar could only refer to as “downwind.” The remaining horde of bodies hit the debris and pushed out on either side, failing to navigate all the broken concrete and crushed vehicles. The Defender lay partially destroyed near Lindsey’s and Apollo’s bodies.
At the sound of a rifle firing, Bexar spun around to see a body drop about thirty feet behind him. Chivo walked up the incline of the road towards him. Bexar’s life in law enforcement had given him the experience to read people’s emotions and actions, but Chivo’s face was a complete mask, absolutely unreadable.
“Alright mano, looks like we’re on the leather express until we find another ride. I think if we stay on the side of the road where that mass of dead passed we’ll be OK, or at least better off than on the other side. First, we need to pull gear and salvage what we can out of the Defender. Come with me.”
Chivo walked down the road towards where he could lower himself to the road below. Bexar gave him cover until he found his footing, then Chivo returned the favor as Bexar climbed down. The road beside the overpass was thick with abandoned vehicles. Faces slapped against the inside of closed cars as they passed, each of them startling Bexar. Chivo appeared impervious to any emotion whatsoever. I wonder how he can flip a switch like that. How does he turn it off? Bexar wondered.
Reaching the broken mounds of concrete and rebar, both of them carefully climbed over the rubble, mindful that there could still be undead active and trapped beneath the collapsed bridge. Neither of them wanted to survive just long enough to get bit.
Surveying the scene ahead of them, they faced the ruined Defender. A rasping moan behind them caused them both to spin in place to address the threat. Chivo kicked the corpse, knocking it over before firing a single shot. Its rotting skull exploded across the pavement. Dozens of undead were closing around them, followed by dozens more, and more after that. The first horde of undead may have passed, but a new one simply took its place at the bridge, now an altar of ruin and death.
“Fuc
k, mano. Come on!”
Chivo turned north and started a steadily paced trot. Bexar, never much the runner, was quickly gasping for breath after only a block, limping hard with his still-healing leg. He was used to a thirty-pound duty belt, but he wasn’t used to the higher altitude and a combat load-out that weighed more like fifty pounds. For once in his life, Bexar wasn’t the chaser; he was the chased. He didn’t like it at all.
Focusing on each step, Bexar kept Chivo centered in his vision, matching the fast-trotting jog step for step. Bexar’s eyesight became obscured; dark curtains edged towards the center, white flashes popped just on the edge of his peripheral vision. Don’t look down, don’t look back ... focus, focus, focus, focus, focus ...
Bexar ran right into the back of Chivo, who had stopped suddenly in the middle of an intersection, nearly knocking him over. Chivo wasn’t even breathing hard; Bexar gasped for breath like a guppy out of water.
Chivo scanned the urban world surrounding them. More dead streamed out of the alleys and around the buildings to either side. The horde they’d outpaced while on the jog was beginning to close on them. Bexar tried to raise his rifle and control his breathing, but that only resulted in chucking up the remnants of the last MRE he ate. Specs of vomit, spit, and snot flecked across the front of Bexar’s load carrier and AR magazines.
“This way, Bexar!”
Chivo dashed towards a building to the east. Bexar tried to keep up but was quickly left behind by Chivo’s much faster sprint towards possible safety. Reaching the target, Chivo held open a heavy metal door, pistol up and firing, the rounds cracking in the air as they flew past Bexar’s head.
Bexar never stopped running; he fell through the open door and hurtled into the darkness. Tables and chairs were thrown aside by Bexar’s crashing body, and he lay sprawled, dry heaving on the floor. Chivo closed the door, turned a deadbolt, and flipped his NODs down. All he could hear was Bexar dry heaving what was possibly left in his stomach onto the floor. Probably not the first time that has happened here, Chivo chuckled in his thoughts.
Bodies thumped against the door, the moans barely audible through the heavy cinderblock walls of their safe haven. Then a louder moan sounded, very human and reverberating in the darkness.
“Get a fucking hold of yourself. Jesus Christ, Bexar, suck it up and shut the fuck up!”
Bexar gulped air and held his breath, his stomach still spasming, trying to be quiet, but all he could hear was his own heartbeat thumping in his ears.
Two Miles South
If society had still been standing, the three of them might have shared some coffee, or more likely Sarah and Jessie would have shared stories over coffee while Erin did her own thing, ignoring and judging her mother as teenage girls are wont to do. As society was not still standing, the three of them sat on an oil- and grease-stained concrete floor inside a mechanic’s shop of some sort. Erin’s rifle, roughly the same size that she was, lay on the floor; an M4 with a very short barrel lay across her lap.
Jessie had just met the two of them a couple of hours ago, but already they felt like family. Jessie brought both of them up to the here-and-now of her story, from Bexar running into the house still in uniform, to losing Malachi and the battle against the bikers at Big Bend. With every triumph, each failure, Jessie’s emotions felt like a train with no conductor, gaining speed out of control on the way down the mountain, chugging around turns and passes without being able to stop or slow down.
Erin watched passively, glancing around the darkened interior every few moments. Sarah held Jessie’s hand.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Yes. Well, I think I am … I haven’t seen my OB yet to confirm it.”
Erin stared at Jessie for a moment. She had no siblings, she had never really cared for a newborn before, and she didn’t understand why her mother reacted so strongly to the news.
Sarah wrapped her arms around Jessie. “We’ll help you. We have to help you … we have to help you for your baby’s sake!”
“Thank you. But, how will we get to Groom Lake? We can’t all fit on your motorcycle.”
“We have to fix your ride.”
“I don’t know how.”
Erin rolled her eyes, stood and peeked through a small hole in a paint-smeared window. “Mom, there’s about three hours or so to sunset. We have time to check on it if we stop fucking around.”
Sarah nodded. “Stay here. We’ll be back soon.”
Jessie smiled weakly. Sarah threw her leg over the big motorcycle; Erin climbed on the rear and leaned back against the sissy bar, the short-barreled M4 clutched in her hands. Deftly, Erin gave the rifle a quick press-check and verified the safety was on before Jessie pulled on the chain to roll the door up. The motorcycle barked to life, echoing throughout the workshop. Erin raised her rifle as the motorcycle rolled into the harsh sunlight, firing rapidly at the encroaching undead as they rode away. Jessie lowered the door and sat quietly in the dim light, the sound of the bike getting fainter.
Twenty minutes later, the low pops of Sarah’s motorcycle grew in volume. A horn honked twice, and Jessie pulled sharply on the chain, quickly raising the overhead door. Erin rode the motorcycle into the shop, followed by her FJ, steam pouring out of the hood.
Chivo and Bexar
“Did you hear that?”
“No … I can’t hear shit.”
“That’s because you’re a fat cop.”
Bexar didn’t respond; for once he actually agreed with someone when they said that. As hard as he’d trained in the gym, Bexar was outmatched. Chivo wasn’t even breathing hard. Slowly, Bexar stood, the dry heaves mostly passed; his skin flushed hotly in the cold air, sweat drenching his face and beard.
Bexar flipped the NODs down and looked around. He was still getting used to having them at his disposal. Up till now they hadn’t been a tool that he would immediately think of. Even with the NODs, the green flash of a screen was mostly black, so little light was available in the interior of the building. Feeling down the quad rail on his rifle, Bexar found the thick square sitting on the outboard rail and pushed the button to turn on the IR light. With infrared on, he swept his rifle across the room. Mirrors glittered and flashed in his goggles. To his right, Chivo used the outside wall as a guide, and to protect his flank. Bexar followed suit and began down the other wall, stepping slowly and deliberately. Chairs and cocktail tables lay strewn about the room. Bexar continued scanning, lingering on the open doorways that bled into the darkness of the other rooms. The solid wall gradually turned into curtained partitions. Bexar gently peeled one of the floor-to-ceiling curtains back and found a wide booth with a low table. A glistening metal pole went through the middle of the table, reaching the ceiling. A fucking strip club?
Bexar glanced at Chivo. He was at the mirrored bar, checking behind it for any threat. One by one, Bexar cleared the small VIP rooms. He found no one, which sort of made sense, with the attack having occurred the day after Christmas.
“Bexar, I’m about to throw a bottle to see if we get a response,” Chivo’s whispering voice cracked in the radio earpiece.
Bexar turned to face the rest of the strip club; he could see Chivo at the bar with a bottle of something in his hand, which he threw towards the stage. It exploded in a loud crash, showering the stage and poles with liquor and shattered glass. A loud moan erupted from behind the stage and a single woman shambled out from the darkness of an open doorway, right into one of the poles.
Chivo wasted no time and a single rifle shot cracked through the building. The undead woman, wearing only a G-string, crumpled to the ground, her skull painting the mirrors behind her in blood and pus.
“Bexar, I’m checking the back, you go up front—and give that young lady a good tip, she’s trying to work her way through school.”
“Fuck you, and if that was the only bottle of Jack Daniels you broke, you and I are going to have problems.”
They looked at each other in the glow of the illuminated green, sur
real world in which they stood. Bexar could see the smirk on Chivo’s face as he disappeared into the back of the strip club.
Cortez, CO
The sun fell closer to the western horizon. Cliff, up and awake, cooked his breakfast on the grill in the garage. He had to be careful not to build up too much carbon monoxide; he could pass out and possibly die, so with a single burner on low, the chili slowly warmed as he stirred the brown goop in the can.
His mind absent from the activity, Cliff’s thoughts drifted in and out of operational details and the overhead map he held in his memory. I have to check out the middle school; there could be stores left from the survivors. Or the cult might have cleaned it out; they could be using the school. Either way I have to determine what the status is. Besides the women and girls from the first night of surveillance at the elementary school, Cliff had not seen any activity that would lead him to believe that there were any other persons in the town besides the cult members. The survivors and those they’d abducted had to be somewhere. The town just wasn’t that big; he had to find them and get them out, and then somehow get them back to Groom Lake.
Groom Lake, NV
Bill continued to man the radio systems, mainly sticking to the high frequency HAM bands. One of his assistants continued broadcasting on the shortwave emergency frequencies and the weather stations, hoping that there might be weather-monitoring radios that couldn’t pick up other shortwave transmissions. He sent continuous details on how to contact the facility using HF radios and channels available to many civilians with HAM radio sets. Bill’s first concern was that the fellow HAMs probably already knew this and were trying to cobble together a radio with parts that had survived the EMP; the other was that there might be people hearing the shortwave broadcasts with malicious intent. Wright assured Bill that the facility was prepared for any sort of attack and could go into a fully defensive posture: locking the doors and blocking all access from the outside. With the subterranean nuclear power plants, Wright said that they would be safe and able to live on the stores for something like twenty years.
