“You know, I was thinking,” Zach started, “We’re going to need keys for the truck.”
“I thought about that too,” Cale said.
“The officers were all held up in operations. You think they’re still alive?”
“Don’t know. Pretty sure I saw one of the---“
“Zombies?” Zach finished Cale’s sentence.
Cale still felt silly saying it out loud. Zombies were a fictional creature, based on real life tales of people being buried alive. They were turned into flesh eating ghouls for entertainment.
“Yeah, zombies. Pretty sure I saw one of them getting through the door when we fell back to the stage.”
“I think I’d rather deal with the infected, instead of brass. Don’t think the leadership would approve of desertion.”
“Ha. True. I didn’t think about that,” Cale said.
They would, after all, be breaking the law by doing so. But all Hell had broken loose. There was no way they’d get in trouble, especially if everyone was dead. Zach still felt uneasy about it.
“One of us will have to go into operations for the key then,” Cale said.
“We taking our truck?”
“Yeah. Because there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“G112 then,” Zach said, “So who’s going in for the keys?”
“We could draw straws,” Cale suggested.
“How about rock, paper, scissors?”
“Loser goes for the keys?”
“Yeah.”
Cale and Zach assumed the position. One hand laid flat, palm up, the other balled into a fist and placed on top of the flat hand.
“One---Two---Three!” the two whispered together.
They often settled arguments in this manner. Most times, it was what they were going to watch, or what they were going to eat. Today, it was who was potentially going to die.
Cale’s hand had two extended fingers, scissors. Zach laid his hand flat, paper.
“Fuck. Best two out of three?” Zach said jokingly.
They never went best two out of three. One and done was their rule. It was decided. Zach would go into operations for the keys, and Cale would get supplies out of the other trucks.
“What are Cacy and Travis going to do?” Zach asked.
“They can go get the jump bags,” Cale suggested.
The other team was getting up now. It was time for Zach and Cale to try and get some sleep. The two tried but failed in the attempt . Cacy sat up and rubbed his eyes sleepily.
“Well, I guess this wasn’t a bad dream after all,” He stated.
“No dice,” Cale said back.
“I’m going to go get the keys, and Cale will get supplies from the other trucks. We figured you and Travis could go and get our jump bags together. We’ll drive by the living area and pick you up,” Zach said as he handed Cacy his room key.
“You sure you guys don’t want help here?” Cacy asked.
“No, we’ll get more done and on the road sooner if we split up,” Zach answered.
The final team was pacing the floor now. Everyone was awake and discussing what they’d be doing. The other group decided they would go to the Post Exchange, and barricade themselves in. They’d have food and water; all they had to do was wait for rescue. Rescue that Cale didn’t want to take the chance of not coming. The other group’s leader, a Specialist named Lowell, told them that they’d be opening the door in about ten minutes.
“Roger. We’ll be ready to leave by then,” Cale told him.
“How much ammo does everyone have?” Zach asked their group of four.
They didn’t need a ‘ring leader’. They made decisions together. Quickly, they all checked their magazines. Cale had four full, and one at about half. He must have dropped his sixth magazine outside.
“One empty, four full, and one missing about three rounds,” Zach said out loud to the group.
“About the same here,” Cacy said.
“Three full, one half, and two empty,” Travis stated.
Cale and Zach gave a thumbs-up to Lowell, to signify that they were ready when his group was. Lowell gave a nod.
“Lock and load your magazines,” Lowell ordered his group.
The room was full of the sounds of bolts slamming forward, loading the first round in their rifles. The quartet did the same. Two of Lowell’s guys started to move the shelf blocking the door. The heavy wooden shelf screeched across the floor, till finally it was far enough out of the way to open it. Everyone stood ready to run out and fight what they needed to.
“One---Two---Three,” one of the soldiers said, just as he threw open the door.
Everyone filed out of the one room structure and onto the stage. Cale exited the building. Everything was bright white. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the sunlight, and as his vision cleared, and the world came into focus, he looked around. The sun was high in the sky. The once white rock of the company area was now stained brown and red. Lowell’s group, which included Bret, jumped off the stage and ran to the east, toward the Post Exchange, which was a good mile and a half to two miles away. Cale hoped they’d make it. There were only a few infected shambling around the area. Most of them had moved to the living areas. No doubt people had run to them for shelter.
“All right. We know what to do, now let’s do it,” Zach said, taking charge.
Cale quickly ran down the stage stairs, and to the trucks in the motor pool at the north east part of the company area. Cacy and Travis made their way across the company area to the south east, toward their living area. Zach proceeded to the south. Operations was only about eighty yards away. Along his route there were only three infected, but they weren’t watching him. They were staring at the sky in a daze. Zach pulled out his combat knife; he was going to do this quietly if he could.
Quickly and silently, Zach dispatched each of the infected. Two of them were local males who had been mauled too badly to see their faces, and the other was a local woman who had to have been dead a long time. Parts of her skull could be seen through her hair. Strips of dried flesh were still wedged between her teeth. Her eyes were grey, or appeared to be, most likely caused by micro scratches from dust, now that she was unable to produce tears to moisturize them. He stabbed each target in the temporal region, with a sickening squish. Zach wiped his blade on the woman’s clothing and continued toward operations. As he moved around the tall barrier into the smoker’s pit, he could see the door to operations was open. Moans could be heard inside, but outside the coast was clear. Zach could also hear gunshots; they were too close to be anyone else, so it had to be Cale.
“He can handle himself,” Zach said to himself quietly.
The room was barely lit. Zach could only see what was in the narrow slit of light provided by the busted down door. The brass from last night’s gun fire littered the floor. Zach readied his rifle; it was too dark to play around with these things. One of them, still snacking on a severed arm, stepped into the light. It was the lieutenant. Half of his face was ripped off, and what was left of his ear was barely hanging on.
“Sorry about this,” Zach said, as he took an attack stance.
He shot the lieutenant in the face. The round punched through one of his eyes, into his orbital cavity, and out of the back of his head. His now lifeless body fell backwards, and hit the floor, hard. Zach waited a moment while his own eyes adjusted, to see if any more would step into the light. Comfortable that the room was clear, he moved to the lock box mounted on the wall. Inside, he found the keys he needed. Zach emerged from the building clutching the keys to G112. It was time to go meet Cale.
Cale watched Zach move toward operations, readying his knife as he went. Cale moved toward the north east. The motor pool was large, and the rock there was still white. The trucks were lined up facing the east, backed into the stalls; this was referred to as combat parking. Cale ran north along the line of trucks, not looking at bumper numbers. He knew right where G112 was. His plan was to open the back, ransac
k the other trucks for supplies, and just throw what he gathered into it. G112 already had five cases each, of MREs and bottled water in it. Each truck also already had ten five-gallon buckets of fuel. Cale thought about leaving his rifle behind, but decided it would be smarter to keep it, just in case he found an infected. He slung his weapon across his back and started to open the door to the first truck. The inside was empty, but as he went to climb into it for supplies, a hand grabbed his ankle.
Cale hadn’t noticed the undead laying under the vehicle. He scrambled back and fell. Crawling backwards to avoid the infected, he fumbled to move his weapon to the front. It was a man wearing a Romanian Army uniform. His left arm had been ripped from its socket, and his bloodied sleeve hung empty and loose. His mouth was bloody, and his gnashing teeth were stained black. Cale fired two shots. The first one missed, but the second punched through his nose. The bullet lodged its self somewhere in his brain, killing what he had become.
Cale let out a sigh of relief. That was a close call. Quickly he gathered other supplies, only pausing when he heard a shot from operations. He hoped Zach would be alright. As he filled the back of G112, Zach came running out. He looked tired, but unhurt.
Zach held the up the keys and smiled, “Should we go get a .50 cal too?”
“I vote we just get the fuck out of here,” Cale said with a smirk. The truck didn’t require keys to start the ignition; it had a switch lever start. The keys were actually for the padlock on the door. A small group of the undead began approaching them from the maintenance tent to the west. Cale’s IBA, (interceptor body armor,) was hindering his movement. He ripped it from his body, and threw it onto the ground. Quickly, he undid his helmet strap, pulled it off, and left it there in the dirt. Zach, watching Cale do this, followed his lead by leaving behind his body armor and helmet. Once in the vehicle, both soldiers combat locked every door, Zach in the driver’s seat and Cale in the passenger’s. The truck roared to life, Zach slammed it into gear, and hit the gas. It made a lurch forward but went nowhere.
“Oh, yeah. The chop block,” Zach shrugged. “Do you mind?” he asked Cale.
The chop block is placed under the wheel of any military vehicle to ensure that someone with no sense, who leaves it in neutral, doesn’t come back to an empty parking spot.
Quickly, Cale jumped out and reached for it under the passenger side wheel. It was stuck, pinned by the wheel.
“BACK UP! YOU HAVE TO BACK UP, IT’S STUCK!” Cale shouted urgently. The group was getting closer now. The vehicle rolled backward, freeing the chop block. Cale threw it at the nearest attacker, and jumped back into the vehicle. Zach hit the gas again, and once again halted.
“You forgot the one under the rear wheel,” Zach said gravely.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Cale exclaimed. Again, he jumped out, and Zach backed up.
He grabbed the chop block and threw it at the encroaching crowd.
Finally, inside the vehicle and ready to go, Cale asked,
“We ready now?”
“Actually, you wouldn’t mind ground guiding me out of the motor pool, would you?” Zach said with a smile.
Cale just shook his head, as they tore out of the motor pool. Avoiding the large groups of undead shambling on the sides of the road, Cale and Zach proceeded toward their living area. As they put the truck in neutral, and pulled the hand break, they both noticed Cacy leaning up against the barriers. He was hurt, and was cradling his left forearm. The two of them dismounted the vehicle.
“You okay?” Cale asked.
“I dunno. I’ve been better, that’s for sure,” Cacy exclaimed.
He’d been bitten. All three knew what this meant. Zach made a face at Cacy’s wound.
“Let us help you,” he said.
“Let’s just get everything in the truck,” Cacy replied.
He’d managed to scrounge up three or four 9mm pistols and numerous boxes of ammo, along with the intended jump bags. Where he’d gotten the pistols and ammo, Cale couldn’t even speculate. Zach welcomed this new addition to his growing arsenal. Quickly, the three loaded the supplies Cacy had gathered into the truck, stopping only to shoot an infected that got too close.
“Where is Travis?” Zach asked.
“He---he didn’t make it,” Cacy managed to say.
The three of them piled into the vehicle, with Zach driving, Cacy in the passenger seat, and Cale in back. They traveled to entry control point one. The gate was unpopulated by the living, but did have a dozen or so infected moping about. It was time to leave. This would make it official. They rolled out of the gate onto the dirt road, and turned to the west. They were deserters now.
51
The Deserters
“So, what’s the plan?” Zach asked, looking from Cale to Cacy and then back again.
All three of them looked stunned. What were the chances that they’d get thrown into this situation? All three of them, after all, had a Z Plan, or zombie plan, just in case the apocalypse came via legions of the undead.
“Stick with the original plan,” Cacy spoke. “Get to the western coast of Europe and find a boat---well, anyway, I mean you guys’ could,” he said, looking at the bite mark on his arm.
They all knew that a bite was a death sentence, or at least it was in the movies anyway.
“You might be okay, we don’t know for sure,” Cale said, trying to comfort Cacy.
“Look, we all saw what happened to Fox, and then up close when it was McGregor and that other guy.”
“Yeah, but their bites were fatal anyway, and regardless of infection, they were going to die,” Cale said, as he tried to rationalize his conclusion. “Maybe now you’re only infected, but it won’t kill you on its own. What if you have to die before it takes over?”
“Always the optimist,” Zach said, glancing over his shoulder at Cale in the back.
“I’m normally a pessimist by nature,” Cale said with a smirk.
“I guess I’ll stay with you guys till then,” Cacy said, as he stared out of his window at nothing but dust. Zach had crossed over the main supply route a while ago.
Going off road would be faster anyway. This way, they’d be able to avoid fleeing civilian traffic, or massive groups of the undead. Zach’s priority was to get as far from people as possible. The more people there were, the more infected there would be, trying to eat them. His main fear was stumbling upon a group of insurgents who didn’t realize the war was on hold. It was for them anyway.
“You need to swap out?” Cale asked. The roar of the engine almost drowned him out. They didn’t think to grab the radio headsets before they left, not that it would have mattered; they were under lock and key, and Nick had that key, wherever he was now.
“Nah. I’m still good,” Zach replied.
“You sure? You’ve been driving for five hours or so now,
and we didn’t really sleep last night,” Cale pressed.
“I’m used to not sleeping much.”
Zach had had trouble sleeping since they’d arrived in country; they all did actually. By this time, Cacy had been asleep most of the trip. His bleeding had stopped before Cale and Zach even found him. Still, Cale wanted to see how bad the bite was. Hopefully he was wrong, and Cacy wasn’t infected at all. But deep down he knew that was very unlikely.
Zach drove the whole first day. They only stopped occasionally to empty their bladders, or to fuel the truck. Cale had stayed awake to make sure Zach was still good to drive, but Zach didn’t want to give up the wheel. It was just his way of keeping his mind occupied. It had been dark for a couple of hours now, and Cale was worried they might drive right into a ditch or something.
“Why don’t we call it a night?” Cale suggested, “Just stop where we are and pick up in the morning. We don’t want to drive too far and end up near a city or something.”
“Yeah Zach. We should probably stop here,” Cacy agreed.
“All right. I just want to get out of this desert is all,” Zach said, and reluctan
tly halted the vehicle.
“I kind of like the desert, given our predicament,” Cale stated, “We get a full three hundred sixty degree view of our surroundings. Nothing can surprise us.”
Cale had a point.
“If it’s all the same, I still don’t want to be driving around in the desert forever,” Zach fired back.
He was hostile, most likely from the lack of sleep. Cale knew he didn’t mean it personally, and shrugged his comment off. Cale still had the night vision goggles tethered to his belt loop.
“Maybe I’ll open the hatch and check to see if everything is clear,” he said, already popping the first lock on the gunner’s hatch.
“Good idea,” Zach said.
Cale panned around after flicking the switch to ‘ON’. He looked around the eerie green scenery at nothing but desert. They were alone in all directions. Cale couldn’t help but look up at the stars, their light magnified by the goggles. After looking for a couple more minutes Cale lowered himself and sealed his hatch.
“We’re clear in all directions my friends,” he stated.
“Should we have someone awake to guard?” Cacy suggested.
“Na, we should be alright. The doors are locked, and the glass is six inches thick. Nothing’s getting in here,” Zach said smugly.
It was agreed they’d be fine to sleep. No one living or dead could get in without them hearing first. It didn’t take long for them to fall into an exhausted sleep. Not long at all.
54
No Friends of Mine
The next couple of days were filled with driving and the occasional pit stop to fuel and piss. Sleeping in the locked truck at night was still a working plan. Only once were they awakened by the frantic banging of an infected trying to get in, where the food was. Cale’s iPod was all that kept him sane. Day after day they continued westward. Even though they still had plenty of MREs and water left, they rationed themselves to two meals a day. Zach and Cale watched as Cacy’s health steadily declined, and he became more and more fragile. One of them would always have to stand guard. Cale and Zach quickly monopolized the guard schedule, knowing that Cacy wouldn’t last any longer without sleep. After what seemed to Cale like a month, but was really only a week, they encountered a caravan of travelers.
Blood on the Sand (Z Plan) Page 5
