by Dave Lund
The road signs were still flattened, so finding the turn-off for Highway 89 was going to be difficult. Looking at the atlas, it appeared that the turnoff was just before the heart of the city. Large billboards in fields well off the road became more numerous and were referencing hotels and restaurants in Flagstaff at distances between fifteen and twenty miles. Jessie held her hand up to the horizon, moving it up and down. Eight fingers until sunset. Two hours.
“We have about two hours until sunset. Want to shut it down early, or do you want to try to make 89 first?”
“I say we go for it, get north of town. Things are already becoming too populated for my tastes.”
Jessie couldn’t disagree. More homes, ranches, shops, and businesses were appearing on the roadside. They drove past an exit, seeing an increase in businesses off the road. Jessie slowed as they approached an overpass. Sarah strained to read the signs on the road overhead, but the signs were still missing from the highway, flattened by the stampede.
“We missed it!”
Jessie stopped the FJ in the middle of the Interstate.
“The bridge above us has a sign pointing north for 89.We should have gotten off back there,” Sarah said, pointing behind them.
Both of them looked in the side mirrors at the approaching undead behind them. The groups they had passed had grown in frequency and number as they got closer to Flagstaff. They all continued to follow and were shambling towards the idling SUV.
“Think I can get around them?”
“I think you should go up there and drive the wrong way up the ramp.”
Jessie nodded, letting the clutch out and making the sharp turn to go up onto the overpass. Even now, months after the end of the world, she still thought in terms of past traffic laws while driving. Bexar was a hardass about driving correctly; his idea of correctly meant legally as much as it meant safely.
At the intersection, cars were abandoned in every direction. Blood and gore was smeared on the outsides of the cars. Following the road signs, they traveled north until reaching the intersection for 89, then turned right to follow. The abandoned cars were thick in the roadway; a mall lay next to the road. Jessie slowly navigated around each vehicle, undead bouncing off the FJ’s fenders as she drove. The view would have been staggeringly beautiful if not for all the carnage. Jessie sped up, the FJ rocked hard side to side with each sweeping turn of the steering wheel. Trying to escape the mass of cars and bodies before they were swarmed, Jessie did what she could. Erin woke up from all the movement. She rolled her window down and leaned out with her short M4.
“Settle it the fuck down so I can actually hit something!”
Jessie tried her best to drive smoothly. The sound of the M4 barked sharply, a tongue of fire flashing against Sarah’s window with every press of the trigger.
“Hang on. I’m climbing on top.”
“What?”
Before an answer could be returned to her mother, Erin had climbed out of her window and onto the roof rack, her feet dangling over the middle of the windshield, the M4 in her hands barking rapidly, the undead in front of them dropping after each shot.
“Mom, mag change!” Erin yelled, slapping the passenger side window with an empty magazine. Sarah rolled down her window, took the empty magazine, and passed up a fully loaded Pmag.
As quickly as it had started, they were past the worst of it all, the number of undead in front of them dwindling to manageable and navigable numbers. The trail of destruction in their wake from the hands of little Erin looked like a battalion of troops had rolled through. Jessie began slowing to let Erin off the top of the FJ, but she climbed back through her open window before Jessie could stop.
“Erin, what the hell?”
“Chill, Mom, it worked, didn’t it? Better than losing this ride like we lost our Jeep.”
Sarah looked at Jessie, who had no comeback. Keeley had been a sweet little girl, not the strong, spirited teenager that Erin was. Jessie wondered if Erin was like this before the end of the world or if she had grown into her new lifestyle.
The sun was falling behind the mountains; it was time to find a spot to stop for the night.
Cortez, CO
Around the kitchen table, Cliff, now fully clothed, held an intel briefing for Chivo and Bexar, making marks and notations on the map.
“After nearly a week of recon, all I have is that this church is somehow important, the cult is probably operating out of this elementary school, and the middle school was turned into a shrine or altar or serves as some sort of fucked-up payback. Honestly, I have no idea. These guys are well-armed and way off the reservation. I don’t even know how many members we’re dealing with exactly, but I guess there were around thirty before the fight at the bus. Between the ones I’ve killed and the group you killed when you rolled into town, we’re dealing with about a dozen people or so left. That could be their entire group minus some leadership, or that could be just the beginning.”
“I haven’t seen any patrols come by the house, nor have I heard any gunfire or any other activity,” Chivo offered.
Bexar shook his head. “Turds. They’re like turds. You can’t use normal military logic; think like a meth-headed gangbanger. The middle school was a rival gang’s hangout; they shut it down and made sure that if anyone showed up again they had a vibrant example of what would happen to them. The church is storage or possibly a hangout. The other school is their mom’s house; it’s where they quietly operate from. If they had bigger weapons we would have seen them. Twice we’ve seen them with RPGs; that’s the best they got. Otherwise, they would roll with the scariest thing they owned. Fucking bangers are like that. If they have a $50 ghetto blaster, that is what they carry. If they have a Desert Eagle or a sawed-off pump, that’s what they bring when they go to war with a rival or if they want to do their stupid alpha wolf bullshit.”
Chivo nodded. “That’s what it was like growing up. This isn’t the Stan. Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way, treating them like tribes with elders and a complex social structure.”
“Don’t get me wrong—they have structure, but it’s short. There is a leader; there is a trusted lieutenant, and then there are the rest. Amongst all of that are their women, the chosen ones who are property of the leadership, and then the whores that sucked their dicks on the side. The whores were the ones fucking the regular members.”
Cliff had spent months in war zones, guerrilla wars against narcos and terrorists, but he hadn’t thought of this angle before. “Let’s say you’re right, Bexar. What’s our first step?”
“Same that you thought. We go to the church to see what they’re doing with it. If we really want to fuck with them, we tag it with spray paint or burn it down or something to let them know we’re still here and we’re hunting them. They’ll circle the wagons, and believe me, it’ll be obvious. Then we figure out how to burn their fucking wagons down.”
“What about the survivors?”
“They’re dead.”
“How can you be sure?”
“In police work, if someone went missing who didn’t mean to go missing, like it wasn’t a wife skipping out on a bad marriage or something, they would typically be used for whatever purpose the turd wanted and then killed. If this cult already has their own women, if they already have their members, they’re not going to keep people in cells or pens where they could rise up, escape, or fight.”
“So you think we should just leave?”
“No, let’s check the church first, and then we leave.”
Cliff looked at Chivo who nodded. “Fine. After sunset, we go to the church.”
Groom Lake, NV
“Send the SSC a message. Have them tune their HF comms to this frequency and let’s see if we can make contact with them.”
“Alright, Bill, but what makes you think it will work?”
“I don’t, but we have to start testing and adapting. If the SATCOMs are down, if all the space-based equipment is down, we have to assume that
this electronic link will go down as well. We need to get a solution in place so we can communicate.”
The airman shrugged and typed the message, copying the frequency off the scrap of paper that Bill wrote on.
SSC
“Clint, do you know what this means?”
Clint walked to the console where Amanda sat. “Yeah, Bill is the civilian commo guy; he wants to try to make over-the-horizon contact using our HF radios.”
“What makes you think that will work any better?”
“Well, High Frequency works differently. It can reach a long way, halfway around the earth, if conditions are right. The problem is that it isn’t consistent; solar flares, atmospheric conditions, strong smells, birds flying, all sorts of shit makes it fail.”
“Strong smells?”
“Not really,” Clint smiled. ”But the point is that it isn’t reliable. That’s why SATCOM technology was developed in the first place. Then the secure VoIP and the secure Internet Relay Chat were built using the government’s own shadow internet.”
“Well, give it a try. Even if it works only sometimes, we might reach a point where it’s all we have.”
Clint switched to a different console, punched in the numbers that were sent over the secure IRC, and waited. “Tell them I’m listening.”
Groom Lake, NV
“Alright, Bill. They’re ready.”
Bill smiled and keyed the PTT. “WC5GLA calling WC5SSC ...”
“What are those call signs?”
“A variation of old RACES licenses.”
“What’s RACES?”
Bill smiled. “When we’re done here I’ll see if the library has an ARRL Operating Manual you can read.”
SSC
“Well, I heard something, faintly, but I couldn’t make it out.” Amanda typed in what Clint said and hit return.
Groom Lake, NV
“Bill, it looks like they picked you up, but it was so faint that they couldn’t make any of it out.”
“Damn. OK, I wish we had more information about the meteorological conditions … tell them I want to try again tomorrow at 1400.”
Flagstaff, AZ
The city was replaced by trees and the countryside, which quickly gave way to suburban neighborhoods before going back to trees again. Every time Jessie thought they were out of the danger area, they fell right back into it again. The sun was now completely behind the mountains, the sky barely glowing orange. The trees, full of darkness and shadows, moved in the wind. Jessie wasn’t sure what was just a shadow or what was going to shamble out into the beams of her headlights.
Amongst the trees, two signs on the side of the road flashed, reflecting the headlights. The brown sign stated: “Forest Access,” and the blue sign had the tent symbol, universal for camping.
“This better work out, or we might as well drive on till daylight.”
Sarah was exhausted from the emotional roller coaster and from riding in a vehicle all day, and could only manage a grunt. Jessie took the turnoff to the left and followed it across the other side of the highway. The road crossed a metal cattle guard and was no longer paved. She drove a few hundred yards off the road, drove into a copse of trees, turned off the lights and the motor, and cracked the windows. There would be no tent tonight, so they took turns making use of the rugged facilities against a nearby tree while the other two held security. They climbed back into the FJ, locked the doors, and ate their MREs in silence. The fun of camping the previous two nights was gone, if for no other reason than their day on the road had been long. Pulling through the mass of undead in Flagstaff had left all three of them frazzled.
No words were exchanged before one-by-one, each of them drifted off to a restless sleep, curled up as best they could on the vinyl seats.
Cortez, CO
With the cover of darkness, the intrepid group of three made their way to the truck stashed in the trees near the house. Cliff walked stiffly, limping with each step, but he insisted he would be OK. Bexar wasn’t sold on him coming, having been so close to death only hours earlier. Chivo assured him that if Cliff said he was good to go, then he was. Bexar hadn’t been exposed to the “mission first” dedication of special operators before; that level of mental toughness and ability to focus on a task simply didn’t exist in the civilian world.
Bexar opted to ride in the bed of the truck, leaving the two old friends to drive, headlights off. The cold air suited him and he was happy to have the elbow room, room to bring his rifle into a fight. The ambush in the bus the previous day had flipped a switch in his mind. Like thousands of men throughout the ages, when they went to war they hoped for the best, but once combat started, the primal switch of a warrior flipped and it would never fully turn off again, even if it could be learned to be controlled.
Bexar was angry, but unlike back in The Basin, he wasn’t out of control. It helped that he wasn’t half-drunk, nearly hung over, and in full berserk mode. No, this anger was focused, like a spotlight aiming out of the bed of the truck. He wanted a fight.
Cliff, behind the wheel, opted for the direct approach, driving by the church and parking in the driveway of a three-unit apartment close by. They saw no movement; the bus wasn’t anywhere near the church, and in fact, Cliff realized he hadn’t seen it for a few days.
The double red doors at the front of the church were locked; Chivo went to work on them while Cliff stood back against the wall, facing the main street to the north. Bexar looked at the small windows of the entryway and saw flies on the inside of the windows.
Whispering to Chivo, he said, “Dude, flies inside the windows.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, that’s a giveaway that there’s a body inside. Typical of the decomps that I dealt with as a cop.”
Chivo shrugged just as the last cylinder clicked out of the way and he turned the deadbolt over. Bexar turned and took the first-in-line spot against the other door, ready to make a fast entry into the church. Cliff took the last spot just because he was moving slower than usual. Chivo ripped the door open, Bexar planted his right foot in the door frame, the light on his rifle flipped on. He pushed left into the vestibule of the church, Chivo followed fast to the right and Cliff to the left, each holding a slice of the pie inside the building to engage any threats.
They stopped in the vestibule. Bexar lowered his rifle, removing the Surefire from the pouch on his carrier. None of them were prepared for what they found. At about head level hung dozens of feet and legs, twitching and swaying. At the altar of the small church was the body of a young girl, no more than five or six years old. She lay on her back on a table, the cloth underneath her stained deep red. She was tied down; her dead eyes staring at the three intruders, teeth snapping as she twisted against the ropes. Blood had puddled below each of the hanging undead feet, staining the carpet down the steps and under the pews.
Bexar walked forward, shining his light up at the vaulted ceiling. Nearly twenty bodies hung from ropes strung across the rafters, their weight gruesomely stretching their necks out of proportion in death. Their hands were tied behind their backs, their feet bound together, and they writhed against the restraints. Their blackened teeth snapped hungrily at the fresh meat standing below them, frustratingly out of reach. Some of the bodies were very small; children. They hung from longer ropes, presumably so their feet would dangle at the same level as the adults.’
Chivo crossed himself.
Cliff scanned the room. “They all have crosses cut into their chests.”
Bexar dropped to his knees, overwhelmed at what he saw, and asked Cliff, “Are these the survivors?”
Barely heard above the gnashing teeth was the soft answer, “Yes.”
“But yet this, which ought to have been done long since, I have good reason for not doing as yet; I will put you to death, then, when there shall be not one person possible to be found so wicked, so abandoned, as like yourself, as not to allow that it has been rightly done.”
“What?”
&n
bsp; Bexar wiped tears from his face. “Marcus Cicero. These people need to die. We have to kill them … we must kill all of them.”
CHAPTER 33
March 11, Year 1
Fallbrook, CA
The first recon patrol checked in, Aymond requiring hourly radio checks from his teams. They were stationary overlooking the airfield, and the only thing they had found moving were a lot of Marines in utilities. The problem was that they were already dead. The team wanted to move in and check building to building, but after the ambush at Twentynine Palms, Aymond denied their request and sent them to the second objective. There was too much ground, too many people, too many buildings, and just too much to cover with any sort of detail for such a small unit. Even with air support, they would never attempt penetrating an enemy-held military installation of this size. They would complete their current mission, centered on the one thing that the MSOT members knew well: reconnaissance.
