by Ben Reeder
True to his estimate, the heavy duty truck that was ferrying back what we scavenged showed up a few seconds later. Between everyone, we had Renny and the things we’d taken from Radio Shack, and the sporting goods store loaded up in under a minute. Willie conferred with Kaplan as we tossed gear into the truck’s bed, and the lieutenant called us over as the last of our haul was being tied down.
“Corporal, I’d like you and Stewart to go back with Willie in the truck. The only reason Pete let you come along is because you knew what you needed to get to fix the radio. With this crew after us, you sure as hell don’t need to be out here. So no bitching, just get in and go.” I held up a hand and shook my head.
“The good of the many and all that,” I said. “You just be careful going back.” With that, I climbed into the bed of the truck. Whatever color it had been before Z Day was completely covered in black spray paint. Some wise ass with more with more wit than good sense had painted “Zombie Stomper” in red on the hood and on the front fenders. As soon as we were settled, Willie slapped the roof and the truck took off with a roar of exhaust.
We ran into the first infected less than a block away, and Zombie Stomper earned its first kill of the day when it splattered a ghoul on its front bumper. The guy behind the wheel hit the horn for a good twenty seconds while Willie lit the fuse on a string of fireworks and tossed them behind us. A series of shrieks and pops echoed between the buildings as we turned the corner and sped down a side street. Undead swarmed from the buildings on either side, but they were too slow or just too small to slow the truck down. Behind us, I could see more infected converging on the fireworks. Others were running behind us and catching up.
“Ghouls!” I called out.
Willie looked back, nodded and grinned at me. “What are you waiting for? Put ‘em down!” he called out. Without another word, I brought my rifle up and tried to get the scope on one of the infected, but the truck wasn’t anywhere close to a stable platform, so I just ended up pulling the trigger when I thought I’d be on target. Still, one of the ghouls dropped, and I heard the P90 belch out a long burst, taking more of them down. Then one of the ghouls started coming at us fast, its skin bright red and its face drawn back in a feral scream. I started pumping rounds at it, and Hernandez concentrated her fire on it as well. Then it almost filled my scope as it gained on us. I waited for a moment, suddenly certain it was going to jump. When it did exactly what I expected it to do, I was almost too surprised to bring the scope up, but my body seemed to know what to do even if my brain was locking up. It sprang up through my crosshairs, then a split second later its legs and torso were falling back through my scope’s narrowed field. I pulled the trigger and opened my other eye in time to see it flip over in the air and hit the pavement head first.
When I brought the gun down, we were pulling away from the horde. We took a sharp right, then a series of alternating turns, and before long we were in the clear and cruising along quietly. A few blocks later we turned again, and I realized we had been heading in the opposite direction of the hidden tunnel we’d come out of that morning. The truck turned onto a broad roadway and slowly picked up speed. A little while later we were pulling into the parking lot of the building nearest the tunnel’s entrance.
“Grab what you need for the radio and go, Dave,” he said. “Leave the rest to us.” He shot a look at Hernandez who nodded and jumped down to the ground and looked back up at me expectantly.
“Well, crap,” I muttered as I grabbed the pack I’d stuffed with electronics and tools. I hated suddenly being important enough that my opinion didn’t matter as much as my safety.
An hour later I was safely ensconced back on the top floor of Heartland’s command center. In the twenty four hours since I’d first set foot in the place it had changed a lot. A generator now occupied one corner of the floor, sharing space with a line of deep cycle marine batteries that were hooked up to a set of solar panels and a disguised wind turbine. Where most wind generators used a horizontal axis, basically a propeller facing the wind, Heartland had set up a vertical axis using a modified turbine ventilator design like you’d see on most rooftops. Along with the scavenged solar panels, the wind turbine produced enough power to run the radio and several other vital things, including lights and a battery charger, with the generator acting as a backup. With the smoky sky to the east of us, the generator saw more use than I would have liked, but it was reliable enough, and they had enough fuel for it for the moment.
Fixing the original radio was easy enough. The power cord had gotten disconnected from the radio itself, so that just took a little bit of soldering to fix. Building one from scratch…that took as much artistry as it took parts. Crystals and capacitors aside, I also had to create the transmitter, which required making coils of specific gauges of wire, wrapped in precisely spaced spirals around, of all things, paper towel tubes, anywhere from four to thirty three and a half times.
By the time I looked up the sun had set, and someone had left a bowl of food and a bottle of water beside me. I recognized the recipe as one I’d learned while I was doing security for Missouri State University, not much more than Ramen noodles with cream of mushroom soup, tuna and crushed potato chips. Nothing that needed refrigeration and the only cooking required was to boil the noodles in water for a few minutes. It wasn’t bad, and it kept my stomach from complaining. Once I had eaten, I stopped by the sleeping area and grabbed my mini survival kit on my way to drop my dish off in the makeshift kitchen. The big, bubbling bowl of perpetual stew tempted my nose, but I reminded myself I was on a mission and forced my feet to turn back toward the stairs.
Once I was back at the radio table, I pulled the little survival tin from my pocket and opened it. It had started its life as a marketing gimmick from Provident-American: a box of mints with a clever pun for a logo. I’d given the candy to Maya and filled the metal box with necessities. One of those necessities was well hidden. I opened the tin and was greeted by my own reflection in the survival mirror I’d glued into the lid. My face was leaner, and I definitely needed a shave. But my own good looks weren’t as important as what the mirror concealed. Very carefully, I pried the reflective metal plate away from the backing to reveal my emergency list, three sheets of onion skin paper that I’d cut down to fit into the box at Nate’s direction, one of a hundred small things he’d encouraged me to do to safeguard what he’d always referenced as “the plan.” Each little page was too thin to print on both sides. The first page was a small map to Nate’s retreat in Wyoming, complete with coordinates. The map also had a set of frequencies and times written on it in tiny letters, most of which I had memorized months ago. The second page was a Morse code cheat sheet with Nate’s call sign and a duress call sign that was labeled as my own call sign. If I used that, Nate would know I was compromised somehow. As I set the second page aside, I wondered if Nate had been capitalizing The Plan this whole time when he mentioned it.
My own musings aside, it was the final page that was most important. On the third page was a series of codes that we had worked out months before. Shortwave radio used a series of codes that started with Q and Z, so Nate and I had created a series that used E and T, the two shortest letters in Morse code. With that in front of me, I grabbed the pen and notepad I’d taken from my tactical vest and set it on the table, then switched the retail set and my handmade creation on. The first thing I did was to set the retail set to scan.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Amy said from behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Damn!” I said. “It’s a good thing I didn’t have a soldering iron in my hand!”
“What are you doing?” she asked, ignoring my outburst.
“Testing the radios,” I said. “I think I got the busted one fixed, but the only way to know for sure is to fire it up.”
“Bullshit,” she said with a smile. “You like an audience. What are you really doing?” I cursed mentally. Sometimes I forgot that Amy tended to take after the best of bo
th her mother and her father. She had Maya’s instinctive understanding of people, and her father’s deductive skills, which made it damn near impossible for people she knew to get things past her.
“Okay, guilty. I am up to something, but it’s nothing really nefarious or diabolical. But you have to keep this to yourself, you got it?”
“Well, that’s disappointing,” she said. “I was hoping for some serious drama. But yeah, I’m a vault. So, out with it already!”
“Okay, have you looked around this place? I mean, yeah, it’s a great idea, but have you looked at the things people are doing? There’s the lady with the spinning wheel, Mel. Your mom would kill people to pick her brain. The knifemaker, Vali.”
“I’d love one of his blades,” Amy interjected.
“And Constance Mendoza, the lady who is handling all the canning. That’s just barely scratching the surface of the talent here. Most of these folks are SCA, some are either Mountain Men or bushcrafters like Vali. We have a lot of the skills here that would be needed to survive and rebuild. And Nate has the one thing they need the most: a safe place to do that.”
“You want to see if Nate will let them move in,”” she said.
“Pretty much. But I want to give him the chance to say no without backing him into a corner.”
“Word is they’re pretty much set on finding a spot in central Kansas, too. You’re going to have to talk them out of that.”
She had a good point, and I could only nod in agreement as I tried to figure out how to get past that hurdle. It was a hurdle that was still a ways down the line, so I set the problem aside while I plugged in the headphones and the continuous wave, or CW key for Morse code transmitting. With the sun down, the airwaves were perfect for skipping signals in certain frequencies over the horizon. I hadn’t heard anything operating on the amateur bands for the past few minutes, so I figured the airwaves were pretty clear for the moment.
CQ CQ DE K7DSE K7DSE I tapped out. I waited for a few seconds to let anyone out there decode it and respond. In radio terms, I was broadcasting that I was looking for anyone out there, and saying who I was two times in case they missed part of the call in the first place. I did it again and waited, and this time I got a response.
K7DSE DE K0A34T K0A34T I nearly danced with relief. Nate was still out there and he was still listening. Immediately after that came a query about signal strength. Next came the question I was dreading the answer to: RPCTQPCURDF INQ. TQPC was the T code regarding precious cargo. The INQ on the end turned it into a question about their status. I had embedded the T code within a long string of nonsense letters to mask which were the actual codes. Most code breakers would have fits trying to break it because there was no actual grammar or even words used. Without the key, it was virtually unbreakable. I also made sure I used another letter constantly in each message string, in this case, the letter U.
STILL ON WAY. N GOOD HANDS. USMC his reply came. My shoulders relaxed a little, and the burden of uncertainty lifted a little.
ACK GOOD HANDS. SEMPER FI. I added the coordinates for Kansas City, then scanned my sheet. Nothing covered this set of circumstances, so I had to improvise. NOT ALONE. 200 PLUS SOULS. I added the E code that meant “need assistance.”
ACK, he sent back, with the code TERP with an inquisitive at the end: Did you find anything of value?
I sent back the TER5, the five on the end assigning the highest value I could. EFPM CIV I sent back after that. EFPM was a code for a specialized unit, like Rangers or Green Berets, but the CIV at the end designated them as civilians.
Nate’s encoded reply had one code in it: TRJD1: Bring everything, or in this case, everyone. I signed off and turned to Amy, who had been sitting silently beside me, reading what I wrote out.
“Okay, Nate is good with it.”
“You got all that from that mess of alphabet soup?” she said. “I mean, I thought my spelling sucked when I texted, but if you had autocorrect on that thing, it would have revolted on you.”
“It’s code," I told her when I stopped laughing. I showed her the set of codes on my cheat sheet and where they were embedded in each message. As she sat next to me, entranced by what she was hearing, I felt that same sense of pride and trepidation I had felt back in the hospital.
“Will you teach me Morse code?” she asked.
“I can help you learn it,” I said after I overpowered my impulse to promise her I would. “It’s a little like learning to text. Different combinations for each letter and number. Only instead of remembering which key to press how many times, there’s just one key that you press short and long times.”
“It’s texting old school style. I guess with the cell companies out of business, it’s gonna become the new way for all the cool kids to text.”
“You’ll be the new it girl, I’m sure. But let’s go find Pete and Devira. I don’t want them to have to ask me awkward questions later on.”
“Like what the hell you think you’re doing?” I heard Pete’s voice from behind me. I turned to face them with a cold feeling in my gut.
“Well, you already know that part,” I said.
“Do we?” Devira asked from my left. Both of them stepped into the pool of light around the radio table. Both had their pistols in hand, and there was an armed guard with a shotgun aimed at us beside them.
“Remember the part about where I was saying not being my secret to tell?” I said. “Well, I can tell you now.”
“Seems to me you just told everybody where we were,” Pete said. “Any idiot with the right equipment could triangulate our position pretty easily.”
“Getting the right gear is only half the problem,” I said. “The military uses a different set of frequencies in their radios, higher than your average ham radio operator. The Prophet doesn’t seem to have any shortwave capacity yet. And operating in continuous wave, or Morse code, works differently than voice broadcasting. Plus, I only sent out five, maybe six transmissions. Not really enough to get a solid fix on us. Besides that, they’d have to know it’s me to start with. So, they’d have to have multiple radios operating outside the frequencies you’d find on a SINCGARs set, or one on a drone, they’d have to know I was on a radio and know which transmission was mine. Right now, no one has that intel. The only person with a drone that I know of doesn’t know I have access to a radio anyway, and even if the so-called Prophet had access to the gear he’d need, he doesn’t know I operate on CW, the call sign I used or the frequency I’d be on. Believe me, I thought this through pretty thoroughly before I even switched the radio on. Encrypted messages, short transmission times, and amateur radio frequencies. So, the way I see it, you have two options here. Let me tell you what I was coming to tell you, or shoot us.” I held my hands out to show empty palms, fairly certain I hadn’t just bet Amy’s or my life on anything less than a sure thing. Devira shot Pete a look, then holstered her pistol. The two guards lowered their weapons at a gesture from Pete.
“You’ve got thirty seconds,” Pete said.
“I only need five words,” I said with a smile. “Safe haven. I has it.” The four Heartlanders went wide eyed for a second, and they exchanged glances all around before looking back our way.
“I think you’re going to need a few more than that,” Devira said after a moment.
“Probably,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure I’m not on the clock now. Short, back of the book version is that I have a friend who seems to have known something like this was coming. He helped me get ready, and if it wasn’t for him, I might not have made it out of Springfield. He has a place already set up. We were on our way there before we got diverted to a processing center. You’re welcome to come with us.”
“Please understand, Mr. Stewart, it is not that we’re not tempted by this offer. But you have attracted a great deal of unwelcome attention. By your own admission, you have not one but three very large targets on your back. While I am willing to trust you on your own merits, I still have to evaluate the risks of anythi
ng you are deeply invested in. The Prophet and his New Eden cult are largely a local issue, and the Necromancer is equally limited in his scope. But Mr. Keyes is affiliated with two entities with a nationwide reach. I have to ask you…is this safe haven you offer of any interest to him?”
I looked to Amy and saw her face fall, much as I’m sure mine was fading into a disappointed expression as well. On my own, I wasn’t worth a second of Keyes’ time. I was barely even a blip on the DHS radar. But they were very interested in Nate Reid, which meant I was almost as noteworthy to them by association.
“It’s probably about as important to him as you folks are,” Amy said. Every eye in the room turned to her, mine included. “The government seems intent on getting people to the inprocessing centers. Guess who built them.”
“The government,” Gill said.
“Monos,” Devira said after a moment. “The main safe zone is in St Louis, but there are regional centers near Houston, Wilmington, Seattle, and San Francisco. All cities where Monos has major divisions headquartered.”
“Wait a minute,” Pete said. “Are you telling me that the government and Monos are part of some kind of conspiracy? Come on, Devira, you’re a doctor of sociology. You don’t believe in this conspiracy crap.”
“History is replete with covert plots, my friend,” Devira said. “But a true conspiracy is rare. For every hundred conjectures held by modern theorists, there is perhaps one actual conspiracy that no one knows about until after it comes to its fruition. All that I can accurately say is that the interests of the government and Monos appear to coincide. That is enough to lend a certain amount of credence to what the young lady says.”
“You’re a large group, you’re well organized, and you have a lot of skilled people. Conspiracy or not, there’s no way ether Monos or Homeland Security is going to let you do your own thing.”
“So we’re in the crosshairs whether you’re with us or not,” Pete said. His tone had changed from skepticism to a more matter of fact manner.
