by Dave Lund
Erin looked at her mother and Jessie, her mind awash with a changing kaleidoscope of emotions starting with being embarrassed that they were in front of so many strangers. Dark sadness drew across her face like the approaching shadows of nightfall.
“Hi ladies.” Brit stood by the table, looking down her nose at Jessie and Sarah. “Since you both haven’t signed up for any jobs yet, maybe when you’re done you could help clean up in the kitchen.”
A burning hot wave of anger swept through Erin’s body before she jumped to her feet, her plastic chair falling over.
“Fuck you Brit, fuck you and your stupid bitch attitude. You think you’re special? You wouldn’t last more than ten fucking minutes of what we’ve been through! You leave us the fuck alone I might let you live!”
Erin pushed Brit to the floor and walked out of the cafeteria, door slamming in protest to the silent stares. Brit sat on the floor, mouth open before she saw that every head was facing her. Her face flushed a dark crimson before she leapt to her feet and tried to walk out of the door with the false attitude of indifference.
Jake sat across the cafeteria, a spoonful of his lunch hovering between his bowl and his mouth, eyebrows raised. No one in the cafeteria moved; it seemed as though every person was holding their breath waiting for the next something, although what that something was they had no idea.
“Tell you what, everyone. We’ve all had a rough few days. Why don’t we ask our friends working hard to feed us if they have any of those wonderful chocolate chip cookies left,” Jake said as he walked to the front of the cafeteria by the serving lines. The survivors working in the kitchen looked at him and nodded, returning with two large trays of cookies wrapped in cellophane. Slowly conversation filled the room, mixed with the sounds of chairs scooting back from the tables, everyone excited to have a cookie, a rare treat after the end of the world.
Everyone except Jessie and Sarah. “Want me to go talk to her?”
“No, give her some time. She’s been on high alert for weeks; it’s going to take her some time before she relaxes enough to calm down.”
“We’ve all been on high alert for too long, I think it will …”
“Excuse me, Jessie and Erin, right?”
“Sarah.”
“Mind if I sit for a minute?” Jake asked as he sat down in Erin’s vacant. He pushed her nearly full bowl of stew away.
“If we could get enough salt stores that the logistics people felt comfortable using it for seasoning then we would have better stew.”
Jessie kept her arm around Sarah; both of them just looked at Jake.
“Sarah, Jessie, don’t worry about Brit. She, we, well you can imagine that everyone feels a lot of strain. We’ve all survived the end of the world thus far and are trying to do the same for the future. I’ll speak to Brit about maybe having a little more tact. Frankly I think she probably deserved to be reminded that everyone here is a team member and that no one is more important than the next. If we’re going to succeed then all of us are needed. Bill, the civilian in charge of communications, has made contact with many more survivors from all around the U.S. and we’re trying to bring them here so we have the best chance of restarting our great country.”
The lights flickered and went out, darkness pierced by emergency lighting over the doors, green exit signs glowing in between the battery-powered flood lights. Jake took a deep breath and frowned at the darkness.
“This is our problem. We haven’t found the source to these outages. The housing facility, the operations facility, all of it is nuclear-powered; all of it is a closed system like on a submarine. Cliff’s explanation is that everything should run automatically without any problems for at least twenty years.”
Jessie and Sarah sat in the dark room wondering what they were supposed to be doing during an outage. Most of the people in the cafeteria sat cheerfully, eating their cookies. Jake continued. “We haven’t explored the facility on the surface more than just passingly. Some of us think that for our survival we need to lay claim to the topside, like the pioneers of old: use the facility as our home base but create a homestead, a town of survivors on the surface. Before we can do any of that we have to clear and secure the topside, something we haven’t been able to do. I think both of your experiences and skills would be wasted with one of Brit’s housekeeping jobs, not that people to clean the kitchen isn’t important, it is, but I think you two have special talents. Skills that would be perfect to help teach others how to help establish that homestead, the topside town.”
“What exactly are you asking?” Jessie ventured.
“How far along are you?”
“I’m about six weeks, best I can tell.”
“That’s just fantastic. We, my wife and I, we were never able to have any children … she didn’t make it here. She was killed by a fanatical cult in Colorado. Cliff rescued us and brought the survivors we had here. Well, we’ve all lost loved ones. I’m sorry. Just think about what I asked. If you want to help then it would be appreciated.”
Jake stood and walked off, the lights flickering back on as he left through one of the exits.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know, Sarah. It would be better than the damn kitchen.”
“Let’s see if we can find Erin and see what she thinks. Think we would train underground or go aboveground for it?”
“No idea, but I assume that we would have to go up top at some point.”
“I’m worried that if we stay down here too long my little girl will explode worse or implode on herself.”
Coronado, CA
The sun drifted over the ocean waves, sparkling yellow and red as it fell into the sea. Aymond stood next to the lead M-ATV, safe from view due to the open-air overhead shelter. Happy, Chuck, Simmons, and Jones stood in a loose circle around him. A siren wailed in the distance.
“As you know, as of their last communication Kirk, Davis, and Snow are on the northern end of the base, near where the carriers would be berthed. The PLA is systematically clearing the facility. The siren attracts the Zeds; a team of the radar trucks kill them. At some point we are going to need to get our hands on one of those trucks and figure out what it really is. Or at the least put it to use. Once the sun sets, their plan is to make their way to the south, to the hardened bunkers. They are going to take what they can and demo the rest.”
Simmons and Jones fidgeted in their tactical kit. The MSOT members stood warily, taking notes on pocket-sized green waterproof notepads.
“The heavy-lift operations seem to have slowed in tempo. Our best guess is that the PLA is clearing Halsey Field to add another air facility into the mix. We’re not sure what the plan is after that, but with the PANAMAX fleet sitting at the mouth of the harbor, we can assume they mean to move in. Tonight’s operation is to support Kirk’s team in munitions extraction from the southern point of Halsey Field …”
An explosion ripped through the air. The siren cut off, leaving the sound of small arms fire chattering in the distance.
“Dagger-One, troops in contact, troops in contact, contact south and west, no, east …”
“Well shit. Simmons, Jones, crank’em up. Stand by to go get them.”
“Aye, Master-Guns,” they both said in unison, climbing into the M-ATVs.
“Dagger-Actual, Dagger-One, SITREP, over.”
Aymond looked at Happy. “What I wouldn’t give for a VideoScout feed.”
Happy shrugged. “Want in one hand, Chief.”
“Dagger-One, sporadic small arms fire to the south and east, one PANAMAX hard-kill, stand by, over.”
“Dagger-Two, Dagger-Actual, eyes on Dagger-One, PLA QRF approaching from the west, get small or get gone, Gonzo, over.”
A helicopter roared overhead past the M-ATVs, headed towards the mainland.
Hilton Parking Garage
Hammer stood behind a stack of pallets, his poncho draped over the front of the rough-cut pine, the big .50 caliber Beretta shouldered and stead
ied on the top of the pallet stack. Slowly breathing in, he scanned the scene in front of him through the powerful optic. In the shadows against the back wall, Hammer and Gonzo were all but invisible to the PLA five stories below and almost nine hundred yards to the southeast.
“Command vehicle approaching from the north.”
“I see’em, Gonzo.”
The four-wheeled armored carrier drove quickly across the railroad tracks and towards the slip. The PANAMAX ship’s bow crashed into the concrete, listing hard to port, crooked in the slip; some of the containers fell to the concrete below. Crushed against the large cargo ship and the side of the pier were two tug boats, one of which was now on fire. The lone heavy-lift crane rested against the top of the containers still on the ship, the foundation bent by the crash of the ship. Although moving slowly when Hammer took the shots, a ship with that much momentum has a stopping distance referenced in hundreds of yards.
When the command vehicle stopped, a radar truck drove to it and parked, facing the front of the transmitter towards the north, away from the water and towards any approaching Zeds from the mainland.
Hammer’s chest barely moving with each metered breath, his finger firmly pressed the trigger to the rear before the hard concussion from the muzzle of the suppressed rifle thumped dust into the air around them. The large round traveled over nine hundred yards before impacting the center of the radar transmitter. Two men with rifles climbed out of the patrol vehicle before another man, who did not carry a rifle, climbed out with them.
Gonzo made notes on what he was watching through the spotting scope. The man without a rifle pointed and appeared to be yelling, which he couldn’t hear over all the rifle fire. One by one the PLA troopers’ SKS rifles fell silent. The commander pointed and issued orders before he turned around to look at the wrecked cargo ship and began to raise a radio handset to his head.
“I see him …” the dust around the rifle bounced into the air from the concussion. A moment later the commander’s body rotated to the ground in a spiral of blood, his head vaporized from the 50-caliber impact.
“Dagger-Two, Dagger-One, water patrol approaching fast from the north-west, over, about two clicks out, over.”
“Dagger-One, copy.”
Gonzo set the spotting scope on the ground and walked the few yards to the pallet stack and his large Barrett rifle, shifted his aim and followed the boat’s wake to find a patrol boat approaching at a high rate of speed. Through the powerful optic Gonzo saw the silhouette of the boat’s pilot in the wheelhouse, adjusted for the tracking movement, and fired. Watching through the scope a few seconds later, he saw the pilot knocked out of view like an amusement park popup game. The boat continued on its path, turning left slightly as the rudder trailed without a pilot to control it. On the bow a man stood behind a mounted machine gun. Gonzo tracked him, thought about taking the shot, but instead watched in amazement at how long it took the man to realize that his boat mate was dead and they were now out of control. Estimating that the boat was traveling at close to forty knots, Gonzo brought his head off the rifle to track the boat in the twilight as it raced across the harbor. The boat neared the harbor edge of the pier before catching the edge and rotating hard, throwing the machine gunner to the pavement, boat rolling into the stern of the cargo ship in a ball of fire. The thrown machine gunner was out of view for Gonzo, but he seriously doubted the guy would walk again as the living.
Walking next to Hammer, Gonzo picked up the spotting scope and scanned the scene towards the crashed ship. Whispered, “what do you think?”
“I say we stay put and see what happens for another ten mikes or so, then haul ass north.”
“OK, where?”
“That park.” Gonzo pointed to the marina park next to the Hilton, just a few hundred yards away and jutting out into the water.
“Sure. I’ll call it in.”
M-ATVs
“Roger that, Dagger-Actual out.”
“OK guys, shut’em down. We’re back to the planned operation, except now we’re going to extract Hammer and Gonzo as well.”
CHAPTER 9
Near Kanab, Utah
March 14, Year 1
“Look Bexar, I know you want to keep driving, but I’m telling you it’s a bad idea. It’s bad enough dodging the walking corpses in the daylight, but it’s going to be much worse at night. You need to sleep; sleep is the most important commodity when you’re outside the wire … besides ammo.”
“Why don’t you drive while I sleep?”
“No. We’ll find a place here to secure up for the night and roll at first light. I know you want to get to Jessie, but she’s going to want you to actually make it. You have to make smart choices, choices with your head, not heart choices.”
Bexar grunted and frowned at the sunset. Glancing at the atlas, he knew that ahead he would need to turn left to stay on Highway 89. The town looked vacant; only a few dead roamed freely. “Look at that,” he said, pointing at the overhead sign. “I haven’t been to the Grand Canyon or Zion; I bet the crowds wouldn’t be bad this time of year.”
“Everyone dying to go, mano.”
The pun did get a half-assed smile, but Bexar was annoyed that they were going to have to stop for the night and rest. Although it would be nice to stop and rest without someone trying to kill them, without being overrun by the dead or worrying about some half-cocked secret agent strangling him in his sleep. He didn’t see that happening anytime soon.
The truck slowed as it approached the only stoplight in town.
“Something is creeping me out; something’s wrong and I don’t know what.”
Chivo nodded. “Me too. Everything is too clear, no movement … the only dead we’ve seen were back on the edge of town…something else too, I’m not sure.”
“Cars.”
“You’re right mano, no cars. There aren’t even any cars in the parking lots.”
“Fucking weird, dude.”
Bexar turned left to follow the highway, driving slowly, scanning though the windshield for any threats. Chivo looked out of his window at the glowing remains of daylight over the low mountains.
“We shouldn’t go too much longer, maybe five minutes or so, but I wouldn’t mind putting the center of this town behind us. Weird things going on and I don’t want to know what.”
Accelerating gently, Bexar continued southbound on the small highway, passing ranch land and tractors parked in fields. The center turn lane ended and the countryside became more and more sparse.
“Dude, airport.” Bexar pointed.
“So?”
“So? Airport means open area, hangars we can use for shelter, something we can hide the truck in with us, and fuel.”
“Fuel?”
“Av-Gas. The truck should run on it, especially if we mix it with the automotive gas we already have.”
Chivo shrugged. “If you say so.”
Bexar turned into the drive for the small airport and they saw small clumps of hangars jutting out of the landscape like big rocks, aircraft sitting on the ramp, tie-downs in place, tires flat and abandoned to melt into the tarmac over the coming eons.
Driving past the main office, Bexar stopped at the gate, blocking access to the ramp. Chivo climbed out of the truck and walked to the person access gate near the large vehicle gate. The person gate was unlocked, so Chivo walked through and opened the control box for the mechanically opened gate and flipped the safety lever. Now released from the mechanical opener, Chivo pulled the gate open and Bexar drove onto the ramp. Chivo closed the gate and flipped the safety switch to lock the gate closed once again. It wouldn’t stop much, but it was all they had.
Chivo tapped the side of the truck and walked northeast, tapping the top of his head and pointing left before practically disappearing like a ghost into the long evening shadows of the small hangars.
“I’ve seriously got to tell him I don’t know what the fuck he means with those hand signals.”
Bexar drove away
from the gate and near the tie-downs between the hangars, turning off the truck’s lights before putting it into park, conscious of the red glow from the brake lights. He had no idea where Chivo had gone, so all he could do was wait and haul ass if he heard gunfire.
A few moments later Chivo tapped on the side glass of the truck, startling Bexar.
“You going to sleep out here in the truck or you want to get in the hangar?”
Chivo walked in front of the truck to the second hangar on the right. A Cessna 182 sat inside, but the doors were open. The tires were flat, just like the aircraft’s cousins on the ramp.
“Back up to the nose, I’ve got an idea.”
Bexar did as he was told and backed up to the nose of the small aircraft. Chivo wrapped a ratchet strap he’d found inside the hangar around the nose gear and around the truck’s hitch.
“OK, pull it out and stop where the other planes are parked.”
Bexar pulled forward, the plane bouncing against the ratchet strap, the main gear’s wheels sliding instead of rolling. A few moments later he stopped, Chivo retrieved the ratchet strap and walked back to the open hangar as Bexar backed the truck in. They pulled the hangar doors closed and dropped the door pin into the concrete to keep the doors from being pulled open from the outside. Chivo rolled up the ratchet strap and put it in the bed of the truck, knowing that a useful tool like that shouldn’t go to waste, especially now that they had one.
