Winchester Undead (Book 3): Winchester [Quarry]

by Dave Lund

  “Hoorah, Chief.” Hammer and the rest of the team members jogged to the gear storage to start testing the Draeger rebreathers, to find one of the Combat Rubber Raiding Craft, and hopefully one of the SEAL training cadre’s side-by-side ATVs to pull it to the water. Referred to as the MK 25 by the Navy, Force Recon and MARSOC used them extensively as well as the SEAL Teams. Like SCUBA, they gave operators underwater operational capabilities, but unlike SCUBA, they were closed-circuit and made no bubbles in the water to give away a team’s position. The problem was their limitations for time and depth.

  Cortez, CO

  Three hours after sunset, Bexar stood in the shadows of the open glass doors of the middle school, watching the road. One patrol had already driven by, but didn’t stop. It was an ancient-looking Ford truck with three men in it, a large machine gun that Bexar didn’t recognize mounted in the bed. Cliff’s truck was parked in the courtyard between the back of the building and the baseball field, well-hidden from the passing patrols.

  Pushing a cart with a box full of glass bottles from the lab, each wrapped in a towel and filled halfway with liquid, and another sealed glass vial sitting in a glass bottle, Cliff and Chivo waved at Bexar to follow, and out the back doors to their truck they went.

  “So what’s the deal with the bottles in the bottles?”

  “Bexar, ever see a video where someone drops Mentos into a diet cola before?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s like that, but with more fizz, oh, and fires, except our Mentos are sealed in glass that will break when we throw it ... or shoot it.”

  Bexar nodded at Cliff’s explanation. He still had no idea exactly what the special cocktail was, but they had ten bottles of it. Chivo sat in the bed of the truck with the box of explosives, Bexar sat in the cab with Cliff, and they left, slowly rounding the corner of the school, towards the church of bodies.

  “What’s the deal with this town? There aren’t any walking corpses wandering around.”

  “My best guess is the cult spent a considerable amount of time eradicating the majority of them, at least the ones not trapped in homes.”

  A few minutes later, the truck stopped at the front of the church. Bexar started to climb out, but Cliff stopped him. “Hang on a minute; Chivo will do this and then we move.”

  Chivo climbed out with one of the glass bottles, opened the door to the church, and pitched it underhand into the sanctuary, where the outer bottle and inner vial broke with a crash, followed by a loud pop and flames lapping the side of a blood-stained wooden pew. Chivo propped the front door open with a rock from the parking lot so the fire could breath and climbed back into the bed of the truck. Cliff drove across the street and parked the truck in a driveway two houses away from the main road. The three of them climbed out of the truck and used the shadows to walk to the manufactured home sitting across the street from the church. With some hushed words and subtle pointing, Chivo explained how an L-ambush was set and worked, before running across the street to set the other side of the trap.

  Ten minutes later, the heat from the fully engulfed church warmed the cold spring air, and felt hot on Bexar’s face. He lay prone across his rifle, behind a tree in the yard. The first patrol showed up to the church, the same that Bexar had seen passing the middle school. They stopped for a moment then sped away. Looking right and across the yard at Cliff, he raised a finger to imply: “Wait a minute.”

  They didn’t have to wait long. Three trucks arrived, nine men total, each of them armed. They stood in the street, talking while looking at the church. Bexar couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he guessed the conversation followed the lines of, “How did this happen?” and “What do we do now?” Following the animated conversation between the men, the one whom appeared to be the leader, (although it would be hard to tell from their matching uniforms of white button-down shirts, black ties, and camouflage field jackets), pointed to the homes around the church. The men fanned out from the church in four pairs, each heading towards a different home to search for the saboteurs they believed they had in their midst.

  Chivo took the first shot, his metered firing tempo taking careful aim with each shot. Cliff and Bexar immediately joined, each taking shots in their assigned fields of fire. The targets tried to return fire and retreat, letting loose with full-auto bursts with their M4 rifles, emptying entire magazines of ammo into nothing as they died. The leader dropped to the ground and began crawling towards the closest truck; his eight comrades had been quickly killed before they could return any accurate fire. He was not entirely sure where the ambush was coming from. Chivo fired, striking the man in the leg. His knee erupted in a shower of blood, stopping the man just feet from the side of the closest truck. Chivo fired again, striking the man in the shoulder—deliberately aimed shots that would eventually kill the man, but hopefully hold him to the ground in pain for a few moments first. Cliff and Bexar jogged from their positions across the street, Chivo holding cover as they approached the fallen man, writhing in pain on the pavement, shattered bone and blood on the road around him.

  The strong heat of the fire burned against Bexar’s skin. A bright orange glow illuminated the man as the blood and fat of the undead survivors popped and smoked in the fire behind them.

  “How many more of you are left?”

  The man shook his head. Cliff put his foot on the man’s ruined knee and applied pressure. “Tell me how many more of you are left!”

  “Three—including The Prophet.”

  “Are they in the elementary school?”

  Gasping, he cried, “YES! God help me!”

  Cliff raised his rifle slightly to kill the man, but Bexar swatted the barrel away. Before Cliff could respond, Bexar pointed behind them. Most of the dead cult members were reanimating and beginning to stand. “Fuck this guy, let his brothers have him.”

  Bexar drew his pistol and shot the man in the other knee and shoulder, rendering him unable to move or defend himself, and walked away, around the approaching dead and back towards their own truck. Cliff watched him striding off before walking over to join him.

  Chivo jogged from his spot to Bexar. “What was that, mano?”

  “He didn’t deserve a mercy kill; he deserves his brothers’ hunger.”

  “That’s fucked up.”

  “Yeah, well, so are they. Fucking 8-ball is neutral, buddy. If you’re going to play it, be prepared to lose. They don’t get to sacrifice innocent people for their own shitty religious beliefs, then get to play the shot they left on the table. Now we fucking end this and go home.”

  Cliff joined Chivo, who stopped walking to allow Bexar to go ahead. He climbed into the passenger seat of the truck and shut the door.

  “Dude, what the hell is wrong with your friend? He’s unhinged.”

  “No, I think he gets it. They flipped his switch. He didn’t even know he had a switch, but now it’s flipped, and we just have to keep him alive long enough to teach him what we know, how to control it.”

  Cliff shrugged and climbed into the truck. Chivo jumped into the bed and they drove east, towards the school.

  Groom Lake, NV

  Bill had taken to sleeping on a cot in the radio hut. Civilians, other HAMs, had cobbled together HF radios out of their resourcefulness and tenacity, so survivor first-contacts were becoming more frequent, adding more pins to the map. But he also figured that they should have heard from the mission group that left the SSC for Cortez. Specific instructions had been passed on how to operate his own HF radio left behind in the middle school, if their other communications failed. The team should know that the SATCOM was down, and they should have checked in on the radio upon arriving. He didn’t know what was wrong, since by his estimate, they should have arrived by yesterday.

  At least for now, the secure IRC connection between Groom Lake and the SSC was operating. Jake checked in every hour or more, anxious to hear news of the rest of his group, including his wife. Also, being the elected “Mayor of Groom Lake” for t
he civilian population, it was his duty to check in. He’d just returned from the quarantine and his interview with the new arrivals. Everyone’s past skills and assets were noted, as well as details about their overland routes and the countryside. That helped Jake plan where people could best fit in the civilian population and what jobs they could help with. It also helped Wright and his team plan safer routes for other survivors trying to make the journey. One important note he’d made from his interview with Jessie, the pregnant woman from Texas, was that the signs on the highway were too vague. He would have to talk to Wright about that in the morning. Now well past midnight, he sat in the radio hut with Bill, drinking coffee, unable to sleep, anxious for a report from Cortez.

  Cortez, CO

  Parking the truck between mobile homes on Washington Street, the team climbed over the low fence into the schoolyard, creeping through the shadows towards the back of the school. They could set fire to the school and wait for people to come out, but there were only three of them; the remaining cult members could exit in a direction they couldn’t see and then disappear. The decision was made early on that if able, they would make quiet entry into the school and slowly search for the rest of the members.

  The firebombs were left in the bed of the truck, too dangerous to carry on an operation like this. They planned to return and retrieve them if needed. Chivo picked the lock to the door on the south end of the building, pulled it open, and then picked the padlock holding the chain between the crash bars of the doors. Five minutes after walking to the door, they quietly crept inside, moving in a three-man formation that was similar to what Bexar had learned as a cop in active shooter training scenarios. His nightmare was always that he would be doing this for real in an elementary school, but he’d never guessed it would be with people like Chivo and Cliff, or in a situation even remotely like this. He imagined the scenario as rushing towards the sound of gunfire in the school, a hard lesson from Columbine, now taught to law enforcement across the country.

  The classroom doors were propped open; some of the rooms were obviously used as living quarters, others arranged in a strange manner for purposes unknown. Each one they passed was quietly checked and found empty. Farther down the hall, the dancing flicker of candlelight skipped across the floor and walls, a dim beacon calling to the three men in the darkness. Their approach slowed as they neared the final corner, and the source of the light. Chivo knelt and cautiously peeked around the corner. He gave hand signals to his team, holding up his right hand, four fingers up: four people. He pointed right, one finger, and left, one finger: a man to the right, and to the left. Finally, he pointed forward, two fingers: and two in the middle. Then covered his eyes to indicate he couldn’t see everything.

  Chivo pulled back slowly from the corner, standing, first in the chalk. Bexar, in the middle position, duplicated Chivo’s hand signals to Cliff, who had been holding rear security and facing away. Cliff nodded and put his left hand on Bexar’s right shoulder. Bexar put his left hand on Chivo’s left shoulder. Cliff squeezed Bexar’s shoulder. Ready ... Bexar squeezed Chivo’s shoulder ... ready … Chivo lifted his head back ... set, then nodded sharply—GO!

  Chivo stepped through the door, turning left to cover his slice of the room, the cafeteria. The man in front of him started to raise his rifle—Chivo fired twice, both rounds striking the man in the forehead. Chivo’s muzzle was already sweeping right before the man’s body landed on the ground. Bexar stepped straight through the doorway to the right. The man in front of him also raised his rifle. Bexar fired six times, hitting the man in the chest and neck twice. The man fell to the floor, dropping the rifle to clutch his neck, already gurgling blood. He would die soon. Almost a dozen men stood in the room, all facing one man standing at an altar. The three of them fired and moved rapidly, striking each of the worshipers either center mass or in the head. One by one, in a blink of an eye, all the men except the priest were down or dead.

  All three of them turned, rifles pointing at the last man standing in the room. Wearing white robes, a table in front of him with a small body tied to it, he dipped a gold chalice into the body cavity, lifted it over his head, and poured the contents on his head. Blood.

  “You men will repent, for my prophecy is true; judgment has come, in the ancient heart of man blood flows of ancestor warriors of God …”

  A single shot echoed in the room, Bexar firing once, his round striking the prophet in the head, a single hole just above the left eye. The man fell to the floor dead. The child’s body on the table writhed against the ropes, dead eyes staring at them, teeth snapping, hoping to find living flesh. Chivo fired once and ended the little girl’s fate of living death.

  Searching the rest of the school, they found the cult’s arms cache, an incredible amount of ammo, wrapped pallets of MREs, and a dozen wooden cases of rockets for the RPGs. Silently they walked out of the school the way they’d come, back to the truck, which they drove to the front of the school, carrying the box with the rest of the firebombs. After loading the bed of the truck with as much ammo and MREs as they dared to weigh the old suspension with, they tossed the firebombs in the hallways and the cafeteria.

  “Once the fire reaches those crates of RPGs they should go up spectacularly. We probably don’t want to be standing around for this one. Cliff, I still have Bill’s instructions. We need to check in before leaving.”

  “You’re right, Jake has a right to know. We go there first, then back to the house. At first light we leave for the SSC.”

  Chivo nodded. Bexar ignored the conversation and sat in the truck’s passenger seat, lost in his thoughts. A short drive later and the three of them climbed out of the truck. Bexar helped Chivo take the battery out from under the hood and carried it into the middle school. Following the directions in his notepad, Chivo hooked up the radio and tuned it to the correct frequency.

  CHAPTER 35

  March 11, Year 1

  Coronado, CA

  The first fire team—wearing wetsuits from the SEAL Teams’ gear lockers, their tactical gear over the wetsuits, holding rifles, their swim fins, masks, and with the Draeger systems already on—drove the only working side-by-side ATV they could find. They pulled a trailer holding the only CRRC with a working motor they could find through the gate and across the wide roadway and east towards Glorietta Bay. This mission was cutting it close for gear, but all of them knew they would not fail; they could not fail. Clouds obscured the moon, making for a dark night, but also making for conditions the MARSOC Marines were happy to have. Riding the ATV through a small park and past an empty children’s play place, they drove the ATV, the trailer, and the CRRC to the water’s edge. Slipping silently into the dark water, the CRCC’s motor coughed quickly to life and the team was off, lying on the gunwales as they sped across the water.

  Hammer piloted the CRRC across the harbor and past the Coronado Bridge, gliding quickly across the water to the USS Midway. The aircraft-carrier-turned-floating-museum was as close as they dared bring their craft. Mooring the rubber boat to the rudder on the southern side of the ship, the team slipped over the gunwales and into the still water. Swim fins kicking, they kept in formation and followed the compass heading on their dive boards. Swimming under the anchored and abandoned sailboats in the harbor, they quickly found the rock edge of the harbor. Slowly the team broke the surface of the water, the suppressors on the end of their M4 rifles leading their progress. Passing the moored sailing boats, the team silently made their way out of the water and across North Harbor Drive to the overgrown triangle of a median, using the grass and palm trees as cover. This time, equipped with night-vision-equipped spotting scopes from the gear lockers, the team was able to make better use of their reconnaissance time.

  With one man on the scope, and the other three holding a defensive perimeter, no one said a word. Maintaining their highly trained discipline, the team held still, secreted in the tall grass as clusters of undead shambled by. Although suppressed, the rifles still made a lot of no
ise and the muzzle flash would give their position away. Contact with the enemy, living or undead, was to be avoided at all costs. This was the sort of operation that the men had cut their teeth on in Force Recon before rotating into their positions in MARSOC.

  Happy, propped up slightly to peer through the spotting scope, made mental notes as they waited. Hammer kept an eye on the dive watch attached to his board. They needed to be back at the compound by sunrise, and they had two more hours before they had to leave to make the swim back to their boat in time.

  Through the scope, Happy watched as a large tactical airlift jet was unloaded. Around the flight line were the paratroops; at least he assumed they were the paratroops. If we’d stopped at the Recruit Depot we would be in the middle of that shit right now.

  The troops had improved their emplacements, but in addition to what looked like crew-served weapons were what appeared to be large radar panels, sweeping in short arcs back and forth. There were ten of them arranged in a semi-circle facing away from the offloading cargo aircraft. The equipment looked vaguely familiar, probably Russian, but the men didn’t look Russian. They looked Asian.

  Fuck. Chinese, the PLA.

  Slowly adjusting the scope’s view back towards the radar panels, Happy watched the crew manning it. Beside each was a cart that looked to be a generator for power. The panels were mounted on trailers, and each had an operator manning a control panel on the outside of the trailer. Scanning slowly outward, he saw undead shambling towards the improved positions from the flight line and terminal, approximately thirty yards from the emplacements. As the panel swept across the Zeds’ path, the damned things fell to the ground, unmoving.

  Holy shit, they’re zapping the Zeds with that thing.

  Happy tapped Hammer’s leg with his foot to gain his attention. Slowly turning his head, Hammer looked at Happy, who made a small circular motion with his finger. Time to go. Hammer nodded slightly and passed the signal to the others. Slowly Happy stowed the advanced spotting scope in his waterproof pack, and the four of them slowly made their way to the water, slipping beneath the inky surface for their journey back to their improvised FOB.