Antonio shook his head without answering. The young ones; some of the old sayings go right over their heads. I’m starting to feel pretty damn old.
“We need to rebury these tanks and mark them,” he said to change the subject. “We have some old plastic drums that were used for pool chemicals. We saved them because they were so big but weren’t sure about putting drinkable water in them. Diesel and gas should be okay, though. We also have a few metal drums. We’ll bring them all here in a couple of trucks with more people to lift them up in the beds.”
“Why not make longer hoses that will reach the drums and leave them up in the trucks?” Zach suggested. “It’d be better to keep them in the back to take them wherever they need to go, wouldn’t it?”
“Good idea,” Edd replied, “but are we going to use our hand and foot pumps to pump that much fuel? Do you know how long that will take?”
“We’ll have to come up with something bigger and faster,” Antonio said, looking at Rodrigo.
“I’ll think of something,” he replied, glad that Antonio wasn’t mad at him any longer.
They closed the tanks back up and spread the sand over them again. A couple of rocks were randomly placed and the location added to the map they had with them. On the drive back, Rodrigo was already thinking up an idea for the new pumps.
As soon as they got back and told everyone the good news, Tamar searched out Shirley. She asked her if she could make her an easy pie.
Chuck and Rodrigo searched through the storage rooms of Salvation. Anything that could hold a decent amount of fuel was pulled aside so others could take them out to the truck.
“Shirley said there were old pool chemical drums here but I don’t see them,” Rodrigo said to Chuck after they pulled out everything they could use.
“What’s that in the back?” Chuck pointed to the corner where some old burlap blankets were stacked. They pushed their way through and tried to pull them off. The burlap was so old it tore in half, spraying them with burlap pieces. After spitting them out, they pushed the remainder of the blankets off to reveal five fifty-five gallon drums covered in dirt.
“Didn’t anyone clean anything before putting it in here?” Chuck wondered aloud.
He left the storing and sorting to others but thought it strange that everything in the room was covered in dirt as well as dust. Rodrigo reached up to pull the barrels stacked on top to the ground.
“Wait,” Chuck said, pushing him gently aside. “I’m a whole hell of a lot taller than you. Besides, we don’t even know if these are empty, yet.”
Rodrigo agreed, “And you’re a lot stronger too.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to rub it in...” Chuck teased.
He pulled one experimentally to see if anything was inside. He was happy to find that it was empty. He pulled down the other one and they opened all five of them carefully.
“No chemical smell,” Rodrigo noted, “so they’ve been cleaned inside but left filthy outside?”
Chuck shrugged, “Shirley’s the one who told me these were here. She’s one of the founders of this compound. These were here before I got here. I’m betting when these were originally placed here, they were clean. Whoever added the other things must have gotten lazy and managed to get everything dirty when they loaded more stuff in here.”
“It probably does need to be cleaned in here,” Rodrigo said with a grin. “Now, who’s on our shit list?”
Five days later, they had as much diesel that they could fit in four of the barrels. They filled the remaining barrel with gasoline for other uses. They reburied and marked the tanks with stalled cars they had pulled from nearby. With the tires removed, no one would want them and they wouldn’t be covered as easily as rocks in the next storm. They could come back when they emptied the full ones.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
There was excitement at the gate when Mason Henry spotted Trader Joe far down the road, heading their way. Tracy was working sentry duty with him, as she usually was now. They requested to have simultaneous shifts and Chuck and Antonio were happy to oblige. They were obviously in love but never let that get in the way of their guard duty.
Mason Henry waved to Trader and was rewarded with a beep of the horn.
“Go ring the bell once, please, would you baby?” he asked Tracy.
She kissed him and went to the bell rope. Within minutes, all of Sabaton was outside except for Tamar and Jim. They had drawn sticks to see who would clean the storage room and Jim drew the short stick. Tamar had offered to help him and it was easy to see the attraction between the two.
Chuck was a little worried about the age difference but Tamar was not your average thirteen-year-old. Mentally she was much older, but Chuck still felt protective about her, and would keep an eye on their budding relationship. When word spread that Trader was coming, almost all of Salvation came out carrying their tradable items, hoping to score something they coveted. It was like a holiday whenever Trader came calling. As he got closer, he leaned in the windshield and waved. Chuck patted Mason Henry on the back.
“You really do have great eyes,” he told him. “How far away was he when you saw him?”
Mason Henry grinned slyly, “Pretty damned far!”
Trader had been driving as far on the right side of the road as he could. Now he quickly switched to the left side. This was a routine for him; it enabled Mason Henry to see behind him just in case he was being followed. Mason Henry scanned the surroundings, not just around Trader’s truck but in both directions. He also had eyes in Tracy and the sentries at the other sides, so when he gave a thumbs up to Trader, he knew it was safe. Chuck and the others pulled the gate open and shut it as Trader came to a stop.
“What have you got Trader?” Shirley asked, holding a box with a few items she planned to trade.
“Oh, I got all sorts of stuff,” he replied, jovially. “I’ve been to three other settlements and one of them had a very good crop of corn. I’ve been trading that a lot.”
Whispers of corn scattered throughout the crowd.
“Hope you brought a lot,” Antonio joked. “We haven’t had corn in a while. We’ve been getting the greens to come in but some corn would be nice.”
Trader made no attempt to set up his table yet, which was usually the first thing he did. Instead, he walked right up to Chuck, keeping his right hand in his pocket, grinning.
“You didn’t?” Chuck asked, hoping Trader was planning to make the most important trade of all their lives.
Trader grinned and handed a folded pieced of paper to Chuck, “The Z.E.D.s; your Z.E.D.s—I found them!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine – Three weeks later
The scouts set up camp in a small cave they found within a few miles of the Z.E.D. camp. Their camouflaged trucks stood nearby and they ate their meals without a fire. Chuck, Susan, Tamar, Zach, Edd, and JJ sat on the ground, putting smears of mud in their hair and on each other’s skin. Even the clothes chosen for this mission were the same dull color of the landscape. The cave was so small that no one could stand in it. Chuck even had trouble squatting, his head brushing the rocky ceiling. They planned to pair off and sneak in close from three different directions on foot. Each pair was to explore the area on their side and determine the weak spots for an intrusion.
“Shh,” Susan whispered, crouching and pulling out her axe.
The others froze then jumped up as she made her way to the mouth of the cave.
“Remember, whatever you do; no noise,” Chuck reminded everyone, “we’re too close to the camp.”
They nodded, got up on their knees, and got their weapons ready. Before they reached Susan, they saw her duck down and swing her axe. From the low angle, she could only take off the leg of the zombie that had wandered near the cave. She rolled out in the open, scanning the area as she did. She jumped up and slammed the blade into its skull. She held up her hand to the others before they came out of the cave, too.
She tilted her head; she could still hear som
ething. A low growl to her right straightened her up as a zombie dog ran around from the side of the cave. She whistled low and turned to the dog. The others came out, jumping to their full heights as they spread out. Edd ran to Susan and the dog turned at his approach. Susan used that moment to swing her axe and take off the top half of the dog’s head. It dropped to the ground and the green slime around the brain shook like gelatin. Susan briefly thought she might throw up.
“Thanks Edd,” she whispered.
“Sol would kill me if something happened to you. I wasn’t just saving you, I was saving me too!” he joked as they fist bumped.
They all met back at the front after searching and finding no undead in the area.
“That’s a lot of zombie activity around here,” JJ said. “We saw dozens, both people and animals, within a few miles of getting here. What makes this area so much worse? I can see them being attracted to all that ‘food’ at the Z.E.D. camp but you would think they would have patrols to wipe out any zombie threat near them.”
Tamar remembered The Arena and theorized that they probably had something similar. She sighed and told them what she knew.
“So they just let them roam, so they can pick them up whenever they need some for this arena?” Chuck was shocked into silence.
“Maybe,” Tamar admitted. “If one camp had it, maybe the others do, too.”
That kind of stuff could have been going on when Chuck was in the Z.E.D.s. He’d have never known about it with all his own worrying over his daughter’s impending womanhood. He bowed his head in shame; he should never have joined the Z.E.D.s. A moment later, he lifted his head back up, even more determined; he was going to put a stop to that and any other sick and depraved practices when he wiped out that camp.
They left at dawn. Each pair went their own way and found hidden spots to nest in while they checked over the camp from their view. Chuck and Susan had the area furthest from the cave. They found a group of boulders that provided cover for them.
“Would you say that largest structure is a cabin or a lodge?” Susan asked Chuck.
He looked to the center of the camp then back at Susan and saw she was sketching out the camp, at least the portion of it that she could see.
“Damn you’re a good artist,” he said, admiring the detail she had drawn, “And it looks like it was built with mostly wood and some earth around the corners and base, so I guess you’d call that a cabin. That’s the commander’s office. He usually lives in it, too.”
“Hmm,” she muttered under her breath, as she labeled it and simply noted it down as HQ on the next page, “that will make it harder to breach.”
Even he, as long as it had been since Chuck had been with the Z.E.D.s, noticed they never changed the basic camp structure. Chuck looked back at the camp, making sure his eyes captured the sentry guards in their usually spots. There were three, two at the main entrance and another facing Chuck and Susan. Obviously, nothing generally happened on this side because he napped a few times and rarely looked up, and he kept sneaking out a worn paperback to read when he thought no one was near. After a couple of hours, they had the Z.E.D.s’ schedule down. The Z.E.D.s seemed to have no worries about any intruders, except for zombies. They were predictable in their shift change and the way they guarded. The front was the only entrance large enough for a vehicle to come through. The front sentries looked around and when they saw one of the frequent zombies, they only watched it. They never seemed to look anywhere else, focusing only on them. To them, the only threat was the zombies. Chuck planned to change that.
“We could use some of these zombies as decoys,” he told Susan. “Get a couple of them in an area where we want the guards to look as a distraction, then our way in would be clear.”
“Oh, so now you can control zombies?” she teased him. “How do you plan to make a zombie go where you want it to go?”
He was stumped. If either of them tried to lure one of the zombies, they’d be seen. That was not an option.
“I have to think on that one,” he admitted.
She pulled out another sheet of paper and a nub of a pencil and handed them to him, “Write it down.”
He thanked her and found a flat rock to put the paper on. Since he only had one hand, he put small rocks on each corner to hold it down. His gaze searched the camp for anything that would make his plan work, any idea that would give him a workable scenario. He heard a commotion from the camp and tapped Susan.
“Hey, something is going on.”
She peered around the boulders to get a better look. Their worst fear was that one of the others had been captured. They both breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that it was one of the Z.E.D.s struggling and being dragged into the main building. Chuck looked with interest, remembering Antonio’s story of being whipped.
Did this man rebel against orders? Was he someone they could use? On the other hand, was he just caught sleeping with someone’s wife?
There was too much at stake to consider his use to the mission. Chuck continued to watch as the soldier came back outside. He offered no resistance as he was led to two posts near the building. Chuck and Susan were too far to see the cuffs and straps that hung limp, attached to both poles.
“I wonder what he did. Think he might help us?” Susan asked as if reading Chuck’s mind.
Chuck shook his head, “I was thinking the same thing. But since we don’t know, we can’t risk it. He might just be an asshole.”
Susan grinned, “Every place has one.”
“Wait!” Chuck exclaimed, pointing towards a tent, “Look!”
Susan leaned over him and glanced, “Yeah, the dog. Thanks! I need to add that to this. We have to remember they’ll have trained attack dogs.”
She went back to her drawing and he smacked her lightly on the back of her head.
“What the hell?” she asked as he directed her view by pulling her chin.
“Not the dogs. That dog!”
She squinted to see what he was so excited about and smiled, “It’s nursing.”
Tamar and Zach chose the area completely opposite of Chuck and Susan. They angled everyone a third of the way around the camp so the entire encampment was observed. Tamar chose this area first because she wanted to see if they also had an Arena. She was horrified to find that they did. Even from the trees in which she and Zach were hiding, she could see the dried blood was so excessive that she was sure it was still being used. She looked around for the cages she was sure would hold the zombies for the entertainment. Antonio had asked her to look for them; he was working on a plan to use them to Sabaton’s advantage.
Tamar only shrugged at that. The only good zombie was a dead zombie; didn’t matter to her what they were used for.
“Found them,” Zach whispered to, pointing to an area about fifty feet past the latrines.
“Makes sense,” Tamar said wryly, “put the smelly dead guys out near the shitter.”
Zach glanced at her and raised his left eyebrow at her use of the word.
“What?” she asked. “You’ve never heard of a shitter?”
“I’ve heard of it. I’ve just never heard you say it,” he replied laughing.
“Edd taught me that word,” she replied, her eyes still monitoring the camp. “I kind of like the sound of it.”
“Obviously,” Zach tittered.
“I think there are actually a couple ways into the camp from this side. The problem is that it’s the hardest to get to without being seen. No offense to the oldies but we are much better at stealth.”
“Well, you know who to thank for that,” Zach said dryly.
Tamar thought it would be ironic that the very skills the Z.E.D.s taught her and the others would be their downfall. She got down to business and began telling Zach what she saw.
“They only have one guard near the rear. At least to me it’s the rear. It’s close to the shitter. You know, the rear–the shitter?”
She shifted her eyes to see Zach’s reaction and was
rewarded with an eye roll and a snort.
“Bet he hates that,” Zach commented. “He must really be on someone’s shit list to get stuck guarding there.”
Now it was Tamar’s turn to roll her eyes, “It is a really shitty job.”
She snickered then looked down at what he was drawing.
“You really suck at that you know,” she teased. “Susan draws way better than that.”
“I was trained to kill, not draw. Besides, I don’t see you drawing anything right now,” he retorted.
“Because I know I can’t draw anything but stick figures. I’m happy to admit it, too,” she said. “Oh wait… really? You’re drawing stick figures, too!”
“Hey, you could tell what they are right? That’s the important thing,”
“Don’t forget to show the shitter here,” she teased as she pointed on the page.
“Already have it down,” Zach replied. “I think that would be the best way in.”
“Really?” Tamar said, “Because of the single guard?”
He nodded, “No one wants to be close because of the smell. The zombies are moving around in the cage and moaning, I can hear them from here, so that would cover any noise the oldies make.”
She thought about it, “When we go back, let’s find a different way around.”
They could see a large building in the center of the camp but were limited on their vision of whatever was on the other side of it. Surely, Chuck and Susan could see that from their location.
“You know one thing I haven’t seen at all?” she asked him, her voice trembling.
“What?” he replied, already knowing her question.
“No Imperials–or whatever they are calling them these days. Not… a single… one. Do you think they stopped the program after we all left?”
“Tamar, we were the program. I doubt they’d start that over knowing it could happen again.”
She turned her head quickly, but not so fast that Zach couldn’t see the tears falling from her eyes.
Survive (Book 1): Salvation Page 18
