by Dave Lund
Chuck set a five-gallon jerry can of diesel about twenty yards behind the tanks, away from the shoreline. He pushed a shemagh into the fuel, soaking it before pulling the long scarf out of the can, draping it across the can and lighting it with his Zippo. A small flame glowed against the darkness, the orange and red colors dancing off the white painted tanks.
The fuel can was their piss poor attempt at a backup. If the tanks didn’t blow, if they only ruptured one, then hopefully the burning can of diesel would ignite what fuel had escaped. A little something was better than nothing.
Chuck jogged to Hammer, who was finishing up. They ran out of the gate, climbed over the fence, and ran towards the long walkway out onto the small pier, towards the safety of the water and towards their destination.
“Dagger-One, set and moving!”
“Dagger-Actual, copy Dagger-One.”
While they ran, the mouthpiece of the Mk-25 went into their mouths, swim masks were pulled down, and fins were on an arm and ready. Reaching the edge of the pier they never broke stride, both running off the edge and into the ink black water, sinking immediately to disappear. The rebreathers left no telltale bubble trail like a traditional SCUBA system, but they didn’t want to linger in one spot too long, worried that they may have been seen dashing away from the impending explosion.
M-ATV 1, Coronado, CA
In the lead M-ATV across Coronado, Aymond drove the big armored truck, racing past the narrow shoreline and towards Imperial Beach. Jones felt a little like an imposter; wearing full combat rattle wasn’t new to him, but being raced to his role in a Special Forces operation by a senior NCO like Chief, that was different.
Aymond steered the heavy truck around small pockets of Zeds on the highway as he rounded the curve in the road, heading towards the home improvement store where they had left the radar truck. The working theory was if the truck was still there and they didn’t drive into an ambush, then it wasn’t being tracked. If the truck was gone it was gone; if they drove into an ambush they would deal with it then. The simplest plans seemed to work the best, especially after first contact with the enemy. If this was a normal operation then a full MSOT would have been tasked with recovering the radar truck, other SOCOM elements handling the demo, the diving, the sniper work, and another MSOT probably handling the recon duties, but this wasn’t a normal operation and these weren’t normal times. Aymond wasn’t worried about succeeding, he was sure they would succeed. They couldn’t fail, wouldn’t fail, but he was worried about losing another team mate, another brother.
Happy swung the remote turret, the infrared viewer searching for any signs of an ambush, any signs of bodies with temperatures higher than ambient. “Looking good so far, Chief.”
Aymond only nodded, focusing on the driving, his task. The groups of Zeds were getting larger, gathering in numbers. It reminded Aymond of his old neighborhood. The neighborhood kids always knew when a fight was going to happen. No one seemed to say anything, everyone just appeared in their yards, then headed to the sidewalks and then to the streets, stirring, anxious, excited, and moving towards where the fight would be. Seeing the Zeds gathering like that made him a little uneasy, but he didn’t have time for emotions or unfocused thoughts as the wheels of the M-ATV bumped across the curbs and sidewalk, into the parking lot of the home improvement store.
“Still nothing on the IR, Chief!”
Jones had the NVDs on his helmet flipped down, viewing the green and black world in front of him, the gaping hole in the front of the store, the swarming dead. Aymond was using his night optics as well. “Tell you what, Corporal, how about curbside service?”
Before Jones could respond, Aymond hit the gas, heading into the store through the open hole. Zeds bounced off the front of the truck, falling beneath it as he drove it like a snow plow towards the radar truck, which still sat in the middle of the lumber section.
“Happy, climb up top and help a man out.”
Happy flipped open the roof hatch and climbed to the roof, taking a second to gather his bearings before raising his M4 and slowly taking head shot after head shot, working his way through the crowd of Zeds blocking Jones’ route from the back side of the M-ATV to the door of the radar truck. The muzzle flashes would be hidden to anyone outside the store, which worked in their favor; the mounted M2 would have laid waste to the Zeds much quicker, but probably would have destroyed the radar truck in the process. This was precision work to be done by a professional.
“OK, on my count and go … ready?”
“Oorah!”
Jones held the latch for the side hatch in his hand, cracking the door slightly, ready to bolt on command, trusting that Happy would take care of any Zed threats; his single focus was to reach the truck door and climb in.
In between rifle shots Jones heard Happy call out, “FIVE! crack FOUR! crack THREE! crack TWO! crack ONE! crack GO, GO, GO!” Jones bolted out of the M-ATV and towards the radar truck just ten feet away. The supersonic snap of rifle rounds passed near his head, Zeds dropping with each shot, fast shots coming more rapidly than before. Hand on the door, he opened it and climbed into the Chinese truck. The rifle fire stopped and Jones let out a breath, realizing he had been holding it. He scanned the dash, which was marked in Mandarin. It took a moment for him to figure out how to start the truck, but eventually it started and he was ready to drive. The M-ATV backed out, the remote turret swinging to cover its exit into an open area. Now the M-ATV was the armed escort for their special cargo, the radar truck. Since they had it and it wasn’t being tracked, they were going to make sure it survived.
Aymond was confident that they would find more military elements as they made their way back into the interior of the country, and the radar truck, the Zed killer, could be reverse-engineered and implemented on a large scale to take his land back from the Zeds. The radar truck followed the M-ATV out.
“Dagger-Actual, package secure, moving.”
Humvee, Coronado, CA
Simmons glanced at his watch; he was behind, not much behind but enough to make him worry. He drove his truck hard, giving it a good thumping, bouncing across the curbed median and across into the bike lane, using the entire road. He swerved to miss the Zeds coming into the roadway. The green black glow of the world in front of him was surreal, like a video game. Nearing the turnoff for the Coronado Bridge, and passing the beach resorts on his right, he felt a shockwave roll through the truck from behind him, and then the sound came, the deep thump and rumble of a large explosion. He glanced in the one good side mirror to see a bright red fireball boiling into the night sky and smiled. Looking up, he jerked the wheel to the left, a Zed slapping against his windshield head first and cracking the windshield. The Humvee plowed through a half-dozen abandoned cars in the parking lot and lodged against the wall outside of the swimming pool.
M-ATV 2, Coronado, CA
Kirk drove hard; if Chief checked on the radio that he was rolling then he knew roughly where he should be. If the systems had been up then the blue force tracker would have given him a precise location to the computer systems on board, as an overlay on their grid square, but the systems weren’t up. At this point Kirk was just happy that the team radios still worked. The sound of the distant explosion was more felt than heard as he drove as fast as he could around the Zeds at Imperial Beach. In the green world ahead he could see the faint movement of vehicles just before the edge of darkness.
“Davis, hit the IR and tell me if those are our trucks up there about two thousand meters.”
“Yup, looks like them alright.”
“Dagger-One, Dagger-Actual, approaching from the rear, two-clicks and gaining.”
“Dagger-Actual, clear.”
M-ATV 1, Coronado, CA
The I-5 was mostly clear except for a number of abandoned vehicles. This made easy going for Aymond as he threaded his truck through the vehicles, from shoulder to shoulder, using the entire roadway and focusing forward. They would pass the area where they’d used their IEDs, during the cha
se after the last raid; he wasn’t sure how well their IEDs had worked, and he was looking forward to seeing the damage as they passed, if he could see it at all.
Shelter Island, Coronado, CA
The lack of a good beach meant deeper water closer to the edge of land, which worked in Chuck and Hammer’s favor. Passing under the keels of the sail boats all anchored in a group, the dark water gave them near zero visibility. Counting kicks as he swam and watching his navigation board glowing faintly, Hammer led the pair towards their spot. Although the swim was short, the underwater visibility was so bad that without the compass on the navigation board it would have been easy for a swimmer to become disorientated and swim in a circle.
On his hand signal, they stopped and pulled their swim fins off, securing them on their gear. They were near the edge of the island where rocks had been placed to prevent erosion. Making their way underwater up the rocks, they reached a point where they both had to crouch to stay below the surface. Slowly, leading with the muzzles of their M4s, they broke the surface of the water without as much as a ripple to give away their presence. Scanning back and forth, they saw no visible threats. They continued sweeping their fields of fire, scanning as they moved, and quickly the pair was out of the water and onto land. The squat brick buildings housing the public restrooms were the perfect place to stash their dive gear; the usefulness of the gear to their mission was over, but they couldn’t leave it out to be found.
Through the dark of the night, using every bit of concealment they could, slowly Hammer and Chuck moved through the parking lot and towards the mainland. They had to get north; they had about two miles to cover and they needed to move as quickly as they could with as much stealth as possible. If they were found, they were dead.
MSOT Convoy, I-5, Coronado, CA
The second M-ATV took a position in the convoy at the rear, remote turret facing behind them for any following threat. Kirk worked hard to stay close to the radar truck and follow the turns and maneuvers it made to clear the vehicles and the growing number of Zeds in its path. Aymond drove hard and they were getting close to the destination, but he wasn’t exactly sure how to get there from the Interstate. When he saw the tower over the hillside, he took the next exit, which the sign said was for downtown. He took the first right, saw the road open ahead of him and what was probably a gorgeous park on his right. Their destination. He mounted the curb and kept driving onto the grass, up the hillside, moving between the trees. The further he drove up the hillside, the fewer Zeds he saw.
Maybe the high ground will help … but we had Zeds in the mountains, so that doesn’t make any sense.
Taking the sidewalk, the convoy traveled north, to the high ground, to the less manicured part of the area and a wooded hilltop that was supposed to exist.
“This is it, Chief.”
Aymond parked the lead M-ATV in a defensive position, turret pointed outward, obscured from above by the tree cover; the second M-ATV took a similar position on the other side of the hilltop, and the radar truck took a spot under the trees on the eastern side of the hill. This was to be their Forward Operating Base, their FOB, and their home for the next twenty-four to seventy-two hours. Just enough time to cause some havoc and strife, and from the response that the explosion had garnered from the airport less than two miles away, it was working.
Snow and Gonzo set off towards the Pan American Plaza to the south, a better vantage point from which to watch the Coronado Bridge. In the distance they could see the headlights of the Chinese trucks already heading towards Coronado. If they could get into position in time and luck was in their favor, they might be able to blow the bridge at just the right moment to cause some of the patrols to join that section of bridge on the way to gravity’s harsh lesson.
St. George, Utah
Bexar flexed his hand and wrist.
“Now squeeze, release … good.” Guillermo poked at his arm gently but firmly. Bexar’s left arm was a kaleidoscope of yellows and purple bruises but everyone agreed his arm wasn’t broken. Doc had no issue with cutting the cast off; she seemed genuinely worried about his wellbeing, and her eyes were sincere. Bexar thought she might have been flirting with him, which she probably wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. Only one woman mattered to Bexar and he was fighting his way back to her.
Chivo’s body and back brace were off as well. Doc explained for what seemed like the twentieth time that they were just trying to be careful, since they didn’t have any ability to take x-rays. She said the group had discussed buying certain medical equipment, but even a low-end, older-generation x-ray device was expensive and those weren’t even digital. They would have to store film and process film, so the group voted on it, as they did with all major group decisions, and had decided to make do without x-rays. To Bexar that appeared to be the only luxury item they didn’t have. That and vehicles. Angel explained that they’d had two trucks in the garage, which were old enough to have survived an EMP on their own, but they were both destroyed during fighting the other group.
Bexar just nodded; he knew all too well. Being a well-stocked, fat and happy prepper was great, until TEOTWAWKI actually happened and someone not in your group found out. Immediately they felt entitled to your supplies, the very things you needed to survive. When you denied them they wanted it by force, or in Bexar’s case with the bikers, they just wanted it because that was who they were, the wolves of society. Preying on others, even after The End of the World as We Know It, killing Keeley, splitting up his family, killing his friends and their young son. Bexar still seethed with rage, glad that the bikers were dead.
Bexar felt badly for Guillermo and Angel’s group; the more he spoke with them the more it appeared they were all genuinely nice people, but if there was anything that Bexar had learned from being a cop, it was that nice people are often the sheep to the wolves. That’s why sheepdogs like him had to exist. He looked at Chivo. Now he’s a fucking sheepdog; hell, he’s the dog at the edge of the herd taking down wolves by himself before the other sheepdogs even knew the wolf was there. He and men like him are why the sheep believe their world is safe … was safe. This fucked-up new life is anything but safe anywhere or anyhow.
Later that night, as the fire crackled, Bexar’s stainless steel insulated pint glass was full of John’s homebrew once again, and this time Chivo was with him, their chairs pulled close to each other to chat. But these moments were fleeting. Each person in the prepper group wanted to talk, ask questions about the rest of the country, learn about Chivo’s past and experience. They were genuinely curious, but there was tension in their voices. The questions about shooting ability, tactical skills, weapon usage were all too directed to be anything but a full-on group effort to interview them both. It felt like they were getting closer to asking for help with their assailants, since their efforts had worked inasmuch as they were still protected. Bexar got the impression they wanted to go on the offensive or were worried about worse attacks.
“Mano, we need to get back to the truck to see if my other rifle survived.”
“The truck burned, dude.”
“Yeah, but it was in the bed of the truck. If we’re lucky it was thrown free as we went off the bridge.”
“That’s a huge amount of luck, guy. Besides, what about the swarm? It appears like the herd of undead is growing larger, pushing towards the compound …”
“They are, they’re being driven. What did you say about the bikers doing that before?”
“They would lead the dead like a pied piper of gore to the survivors they were going to raid, let the dead kill them off and then take what was left … you don’t think …?”
“I do. That is exactly what I think and I think I’m really going need my other rifle.”
“How do we do it?”
“We ask for help. These guys want our help, they can earn it.”
“Chivo, they did save our lives.”
“No, Cliff saved our lives, they just came to the rescue after that. Besides, in th
eir minds that was just the right thing to do. We talk to them about their problem, see if they think the push of the dead is for the reasons we think it is, then tell them about our gear. See if they have any ideas. I mean, they did get through the herd to pull our ass to safety, they have a few horses.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Guillermo approached where they sat. “Can I join you?”
“Come and join us, Willy, please. We’re your guests, enjoying your fire, drinking your beer and staying at your house.” Chivo smiled.
“Guys, you’ve been told about the other group, the raiders, bandits or whatever you want to call them, right?” Guillermo looked at them each gravely.
“Something might have been said, but we don’t really know the full scoop. Did you know them before the end?”
“Yes, no, well, sort of. A number of years ago there was a large group, sort of a club or lunch group, nothing very formal, of likeminded people in the area. The leader was in that group. We met a few times and there were some serious disagreements so Angel and I never went back.”
“Because you’re gay?”
“Mostly, but that guy was unstable. An absolute extremist, even for a group of preppers.”
“Well fuck’em, their loss. So after you split from that group what happened?”
“This group formed up. It was really loose at first, a couple of dinner parties, but everyone really hit it off and we realized that we could be really helpful for each other.”
Bexar sat silently and watched the discussion, impressed. Chivo was a master interviewer; put him in a trench coat and have him say “oh one more thing” and he could have been a character in a detective show on TV.
