by Dave Lund
Problem was that they were close enough that the PRC-150 radio in the trucks should be reaching Camp Pendleton by now. Ryan Hammer plugged through his last known freq list. SATCOMs appeared to be completely down, which really gave Aymond cause for concern. Once Snow and Davis returned from their observation post across the next ridge line east, he would at least have some Intel as to what lay in the town behind them. Gonzales, Happy, and Ski rolled west in one of the M-ATVs to scout the route ahead and the north end of Camp Pendleton. The scout/sniper pair simply checked in every half-hour with a click of the push-to-talk switch of their radio. On a separate frequency, Aymond had constant updates and communications with the mounted patrol. Kirk used the down-time to begin training their newly joined members from Twentynine Palms, Corporal Simmons and Corporal Jones. Every Marine is a rifleman, but not every Marine knows how to operate like Force Recon, much less an MSOT member. Both of them would have washed out of the process early on if things had been normal, but things were far from normal, and the two young Marines were making progress. Aymond was happy to have both of them, since outside of Ski’s basic mechanical ability learned from his hobby of four-wheeling his built-up Jeep, the team had no way to repair, much less maintain, the big armored 4x4s.
Aymond glanced at his plain old windup watch, its nylon strap hanging from his LBE. It showed that Snow and Davis should have clicked in five minutes ago. No colored smoke on the horizon; no gunfire, so Aymond would wait another thirty mikes before breaking the radio silence on their frequency, followed by sending a Quick Reaction Force after them if necessary. Depending on where Happy and his patrol were, he might have to send Kirk and one of the corporals on their own. Two people and a single vehicle ... not much of a QRF.
The Compound
Bexar still had problems running; the wound in his leg was not fully healed. So after some discussion, Chivo suggested that he go up the fence line and fire a few rounds to get the undead motivated to move away from the gate. That would allow Bexar to start the bus, open the gate, and drive out. Neither thought it was a great plan, but it was the only plan they could agree on, so it was their plan of choice. Chivo stood on the fence frame and, after breaking the lock and removing the chain, he leaned over the top of the metal siding in front of the second house on the compound, east of the gate, and started yelling and firing his M4. Roughly fifty undead turned in unison towards the new stimulus and began shambling away from the gate. Bexar pulled the pin and lifted the cross bar off the gate and pushed it open before starting the bus.
The bus burped thick black smoke and a loud backfire as it started, but it ran. That was all they needed for now. It took four tries to get the shifter to hit first gear, but eventually the bus rolled slowly onward. Chivo ran the distance back to the gate, closed it, dropped the pin into the pavement, and jumped into the open back door, slamming it behind him. Bexar pulled against the large steering wheel and let the clutch out. The bus lurched hard and died.
“Smooth, punta,” Chivo said, climbing up front.
Bexar worked the starter. On the third try, the motor finally caught and roared to life with another cloud of greasy exhaust.
“Fuck you and your bullshit polka music.”
“It’s not polka, pendejo, it’s Tejano. You keep this up, I’m buying you some pointy toe boots and a deep, taco-shaped cowboy hat.”
Both of them laughed as the bus slowly accelerated with each change of the gears. Seeing open road ahead of them, Bexar pressed the gas pedal to the floor to see what the bus would do. The needle stopped climbing just before fifty mph, and the bus shook like a cheap hotel mattress. Forty-five was about all it could do.
The unlikely duo drove south along the eastern edge of Albuquerque. It became progressively more apparent that the city had not fared well; there was significant fire damage
Yelling over the rattling old bus, Bexar looked over his shoulder at Chivo. “How is it that the only survivors we’ve met so far have tried to kill us, and we’ve ended up killing all of them?”
“Fucked if I know, mano. But even in the worst places I’ve gone, there were good people. I’m starting to worry none of them made it.”
The Garage
Jessie had forgotten how terrible it was to be pregnant, since all of those bad memories had faded quickly from her mind the moment she’d held Keeley in her arms. Throwing up in the corner of the dusty old garage brought a flood of those bad memories back. At least she had her hair in a ponytail, otherwise there would be puke in it.
Breakfast being a lost cause, Jessie returned to loading the Toyota for their departure. Sarah wanted at least one more day to scavenge before leaving. From what she’d said, it sounded nearly pointless. Much of the city had burned, destroyed following the attack; the rest of the city was overrun with the dead. Regardless, Sarah wanted to get more fuel cans, more fuel on board, and as many baby supplies as she could find. Diapers and formula were going to be a bitch. Cloth diapers sounded great until Jessie thought about actually trying to wash them somehow. She hadn’t had a shower since leaving Big Bend; how could she possibly wash dirty diapers?
Out of breath, Jessie sat on the floor with the shortwave radio, turning the handle to crank up enough juice for it to work. The numbers station was still there, but it was on a different frequency. The recorded broadcast from Groom Lake continued to repeat, fading in and out, seemingly at random. Malachi would have known why, but I don’t have any idea about the technical side of radios.
Cortez, CO
Sitting on the cold concrete floor of the garage, Cliff cleaned his wound, slathered most of a tube of triple antibiotic ointment on the oozing flesh, and wrapped a fresh bandage on his thigh. If that didn’t work, he would have to run a drug store raid and get his hands on real antibiotics. But for now, he went back in the house, ate a can of cold chili, and went upstairs to sleep. Hydrate, elevate, sleep. If I can do those things, I have a good chance.
Albuquerque, NM
Chivo and Bexar rattled along slowly southwards on Highway 556, bouncing the bus across the median at times to avoid abandoned cars and walking corpses.
“Where did all those deaders from two days ago wander off to?”
“Chivo, dude, I don’t know, and frankly I don’t give a shit. Just as long as they’re not here now!”
After a half-hour of deafening, vibrating, bus enjoyment, Bexar slowed as they approached I-40. So far, all the neighborhoods and urban sprawl they had passed on the edge of town were mostly destroyed, burned-out shells of homes; even some of the vehicles in the roadway were burnt. Their plan was to scavenge for fuel and recon the city for a better vehicle. So far, they were possibly one up on the fuel situation, since they had come across an abandoned semi-truck that still had both saddle tanks full. Now all they needed was some hose to syphon with and something to put the fuel in. Bexar mentioned that they would have to fill the bus with five-gallon jugs to be able to carry it all.
Attempting to complete their lap around the eastern side of the city, Bexar took the turn to hit I-40 west and, dodging more vehicles, drove up the ramp. Behind them a growing gaggle of undead could be seen in the distance, steadily following the big smoking bus.
On the Interstate, it appeared that one of the roaming herds of undead had marched through; all the vehicles had been crushed and pushed to the sides of the road and off the pavement. The concrete barrier between the travel lanes had somehow remained intact. Even at their slow speed, they reached San Mateo Boulevard quickly and took the exit to travel north. Chivo kept track of miles and direction so they could locate the compound again. As of yet, they still weren’t exactly sure where it was, but by making a big loop they were quickly narrowing down its location.
The surface street looked like an IED had gone off. Cars had been thrown off the roadway, and the light posts, signal lights, and trees were destroyed or flattened. The gas station was only recognizable because the awning over the pumps still showed a big yellow logo.
“Turn down one of the neighbor
hood streets; see if the undead clawed through there as well.”
Bexar took the next right into what used to be a neighborhood. A few of the homes still stood seemingly unscathed, but many were very badly burned. The vehicles parked in the road sat where they were left, not pushed out of the way by the massive wave of undead that seemed to have conquered every large road in town.
Ignoring the stop sign, Bexar kept rolling, turning left to head back towards San Mateo before they got lost in the neighborhood streets. The sound of a horn caused him to instinctively slam both of his feet to the floor, clutch and brake, just in time to see a motorcycle roar past the front bumper of the bus, a girl on the back of the bike holding her middle finger in the air as they sped away.
“Who the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know, mano, but she’s got style.”
“Want me to follow them?”
“No, mission first. Besides, everyone we’ve met we’ve had to kill, remember? Let’s just assume they’re cool and we shouldn’t fuck with them. We need to figure out how to get that fuel; we’ve got to roll tomorrow if we’re going to complete our mission. Looks like this fucked-up bus is our current ride, so roll on, mano.”
Bexar drove on, turning onto San Mateo Drive to travel north again. Chivo sketched the map on his notepad as he observed the route in. A few more turns, and they were on Eubank Boulevard, where they found a pickup with three big fifty-five-gallon blue plastic water barrels in the bed. The barrels were empty, but now they had their fuel containers. Another turn onto Highway 423 and they were back to the compound for the night. Gate secured behind them and bus turned off, Chivo found a garden hose still wound up on a reel next to the house and brought it to the pile of gear. There was no way they could lift a fifty-five-gallon barrel of diesel fuel into the back of the bus, but they could load the barrel empty, syphon the fuel up, and syphon it back down into the bus’s tank as needed. Their plans were in place: leave at sunrise, fuel the bus, fuel the barrels, and point towards Cortez. If Bexar’s math was correct, they should be able to roll into Cortez in under eight hours and might only need to burn about sixty gallons of fuel ... but that was if there were no problems.
“So, you said you knew Cliff. How well do you know him? Do you trust him?”
“He’s a fucking ghost, mano. I haven’t decided about him yet. But like him or not, a rescue op is a rescue op; that’s part of the code.”
The Garage
Jessie rolled the door open; Sarah and Erin rode the motorcycle in and shut it off as the door closed behind them.
“Those prepper assholes are out again.”
“Who?”
“Some family that’s holed up out on the east side. They roll around in a fucked-up old school bus. They’re weird. Met them once when we first got into town, about the only survivors we’ve found here. Like really weird; wanted to take me as a ‘sister wife.’ I don’t have time for that shit. I have Erin, and we have to survive. They were really upset when we turned them down. That was about a month ago, and since then, I think they’ve been trying to figure out where we are. ”
“Could they have followed you here?”
“No way. Not how we rode away from them.”
“Good. You’re the first two survivors I’ve met that didn’t try to kill me.”
“And on the upside, we found two more gas cans, a box of diapers, and three cans of formula.”
CHAPTER 29
March 9, Year 1
The Garage
The loaded FJ sat heavy on its rear springs. Besides the large box with the wall tent and all the supplies that Jessie had salvaged from their surviving prepper cache in Big Bend, Sarah and Erin had added a considerable amount of gear. Really, it was all useful, and it was better to have more gear than they needed to go over the mountains than to hope for places to resupply en route.
Sarah took the first shift driving, Jessie rode shotgun with her AR-15, and Erin sat in the back with her short M4 in her lap. The big fifty-caliber rifle rested in a case on the roof rack. Jessie rolled up the garage door and locked the chain in place to hold it open. This was it; this was their trip out, and they had no desire to turn back.
As they traveled down a small dirt road, Jessie realized that their garage sat very near I-40 and I-25, in the middle of a cemetery. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t noticed before. In short order, the women were on the Interstate and traveling west. At Jessie’s prompting, Sarah kept the FJ below sixty mph even though the road was clear. All the cars were pushed aside, crushed and tossed like a giant hand had swatted everything off the road.
“They start forming up into big herds and travel like a slow motion stampede—everything in their way is crushed, moved, or destroyed.”
Jessie nodded in response to Sarah. She saw the dried blood and gore all over the crushed vehicles on the side of the road.
“If all of the vehicles are destroyed like this, we’re not going to be able to syphon gas when we need it.”
“We’ve only started seeing the stampedes in the past few weeks, and only on the big roads. It’s like they’re drawn to the wide open Interstates and wider roads; they bounce off the small roads, I can’t really explain it, and I don’t know why, but it’s really weird.”
“The vehicles look like they were pushed forward in the direction we’re driving.”
“Then if we catch up with the stampede we’re hosed. We’ll just have to take it slow and hope for the best. Worst case, we get off the Interstate and into the mountains, but those roads are sparse; who the hell knows how long that would take.”
The Compound
One final check of the gear and they were complete. The garden hose was left intact for now; they knew that trying to syphon gas through a thirty-foot hose would be borderline impossible, but they didn’t know exactly how much hose they needed to reach the semi’s saddle tanks. After diverting the undead by the gate again, Bexar and Chivo were off, although in the wrong direction for a few miles, so they could start the fueling process.
Bexar stopped the bus in front of the semi-truck and backed slowly until the rear bumper of the bus hit the nose of the truck. With the bus idling, Chivo walked out the side door with hose in hand, and Bexar stood in the back of the bus by the large blue tanks. One end was in the top of the barrel, the other end eyeballed for length and cut. Once they got the fuel going, it would syphon on its own; the hard part was getting the fuel started. Bexar lost the rock-paper-scissors round, so he got to be the one who sucked on the hose.
Red in the face and feeling dizzy, Bexar spat diesel fuel out of his mouth. Having started the process, he stood in the bus, holding his rifle and monitoring the barrel. Guessing that the saddle tanks of the truck held around one hundred fifty gallons each, and being that they had three barrels, Bexar hoped to top all of them off with one tank so he only had to get fuel in his mouth once. He watched the tank fill slowly, ready to pass the hose to the next tank, hopefully without losing suction.
Chivo sat on the side step of the semi, holding the hose steady in the saddle tank, head down with his shemagh on his face, hiding from the black exhaust billowing out of the back of the running bus. Bexar watched the first barrel’s level near the top and made ready to quickly move the hose, hoping not to spill too much fuel. The fumes of the exhaust, combined with the fumes of the fuel, were making him dizzy, but the transition went quickly with only a little bit of fuel splashing on his pants, boots, and floor. Making sure the hose wouldn’t pull out, Bexar let go and looked up in time to see a corpse stumbling towards Chivo, who still had his head down from the fumes.
Bexar shouldered his AR, exhaled slowly, and smoothly pressed the trigger to the rear. Twelve inches from Chivo’s face, the corpse’s head ruptured, splattering black pus, skull fragments, and blood on Chivo, who leapt to his feet, rifle in hand. More undead continued to close in on the sound of the running bus. Chivo quickly began lining up his targets and pressing the trigger, his M4 barking rapidly as he walked qu
ickly towards the open side door, leaving the hose hanging in the saddle tank. Bexar continued to fire on the undead as they approached Chivo from the rear. An errant round from Bexar’s rifle skipped off the side of the saddle tank with a spark, and the mouth of the tank erupted in a four-foot tall spit of fire. Bexar held onto the hose while Chivo bounced into the driver’s seat, grinding the selector into first. The bus lurched forward slowly as he changed gears. The cab of the semi-truck caught fire and was becoming engulfed. Bexar pulled the hose through the open window until reaching the blackened and melted end. Two out of the three basically full—not bad. That’s roughly one hundred gallons, and that might be enough.
Bexar walked to the front of the bus. He heard the deep thump as the semi-truck’s other saddle tank exploded, the sound reaching them four blocks away.
Yelling over the engine, Chivo said, “Thanks mano, I owe you now,” and gave Bexar a fist bump.
“We have about a hundred gallons and one empty barrel. The fuel gauge shows three-quarters of a tank, so the next truck you see we should probably resupply, but I want to get out of this fucking town first.”
“Me too, mano. Fuck this dead place.”
Outside of Temecula, CA
Just as Aymond was readying his woefully small and undertrained QRF for his scout sniper pair, they walked back into the FOB. The batteries in their radios had died. Normally, multiple spares are carried on patrols, but this being the end of the world, they simply didn’t have any extras. The mounted patrol set a safe rendezvous point on a truck trail that intersected near their current FOB and just north of Fallbrook. The M-ATVs and the lone Humvee set out following the waypoints provided, and were able to reach the rest of the team’s location with little effort, since that was the sort of driving their vehicles were specifically designed for. The upside was that they were able to avoid other towns en route. The report back from the OP was that Temecula was destroyed, deserted, and populated only by Zeds. Aymond still hoped that there were survivors somewhere; everyone couldn’t be dead. He wasn’t sure how he could keep his team together and motivated if all they continued to find were walking corpses and burned-down cities.
