I shouldered my rifle and looked through the generation three night scope. The panorama in front of me glowed green with light amplification, and I could clearly see a solitary figure half stumbling against the block building, but at a distance of almost fifty yards, it was impossible for me to tell with certainty whether it was a ghoul or not.
Both of us watched as the figure continued onward, passing in front of two windows and the door before hesitating momentarily. Whatever caused its delay was lost on us, and a moment later it stumbled forward, passing the third window before tripping on the body in front of the fourth, and last window. It went down hard, and we watched as it thrashed about on the gravel before latching on to the corpse. A moment later there was no mistaking what it was as it began to feed.
“Eric there’s a . . .”
“I see it,” I whispered as a faint light blossomed inside the ranger station. The light source, artificially brightened by our night scopes, momentarily flashed the windows vivid white. It was gone a second later.
“What now?” Michelle asked.
“Why is nothing easy?” I shook my head in frustration as the latest stumbling block lined up in front of us. My question, rhetorical as it was, still sent me fuming, and I lowered the rifle across my lap and took some deep breaths.
The waves lapping at the sides of our aluminum boat stirred me out of my self-imposed pity party a moment later, and I began to think of our options. Michelle had known me long enough to recognize my mood, and she waited silently as I brooded.
“I’m an idiot,” I whispered.
“Sometimes,” Michelle answered, “but why now?” Her reply was soft and neutral, but even in the darkness I could sense her restrained grin.
“We need to back out of here and get some distance . . . somewhere that we can figure this out quickly.”
“OK.”
I twisted the throttle gently and spun us out of the cove at slightly above a snail’s pace. When we passed the cattails, I opened it up just a bit and the engine thrummed, pushing the craft on an angled trajectory through the low slapping chop. After a solid two minutes, I spooled the throttle to max, and the work prop dug in and pushed us out towards the open water. I let the boat keep that pace for only a minute before idling it down and taking it out of gear. The night scope confirmed that we were about 300 yards offshore, and I scanned a full circle around our momentarily stationary position. I saw no other boats on the water.
“I’m sorry Michelle, I should’ve anticipated this.”
“What . . . that the ranger station might not be a walk in the park?”
“Huh? . . . no, not that. I mean about our time frame. But we can fix it, I hope.”
“What the heck are you talking about?”
I held up the AR and nodded towards it. “This. Back on Silver Lake, it should have occurred to me that we might need to use the silenced .22 after dark. I should have switched out the reflex sight for the night scope.”
“How . . . or what do we need to do to make this happen?” Michelle’s tone was all business now that the problem had been identified.
“We’ll need to land somewhere and set up a quick target. Then we’ll have to fire a few rounds and adjust the zero. The mounts of the night scope and the reflex sight are different heights, so I’m sure they won’t have the same point of impact until we sight it in.”
She lifted her AR and scanned the shore. “You know this area, I don’t . . . but what about that little promontory over there?”
I lifted my night scope to the area she indicated. It was about a quarter mile from the ranger station, and from what I could remember, held little besides the rusty remains of a long forgotten farm tractor. “I guess that’s as good as any—probably better than most, now that I think about it.”
“Do what you have to do right now to get ready,” Michelle said, “that way we can just land, fire, and then get back on track.”
I nodded in the darkness—the action bringing forth a thought that I shared. “You know, not counting all of the uncertainty that we seem to be mired in, but now at least something seems to be working in our favor.”
“Explain,” Michelle answered as she fumbled around with her seat cushion life preserver.
“That ghoul—the one back at the ranger station—it tripped over the body by the window, so that means that no matter what else changes about them when they become infected, they’re still as night blind as a normal person.”
“Yeah well, let’s hurry up and do this, and then we can show them just how unlevel the playing field is when you have generation three night vision equipment.”
The landing operation went as smooth as we could have hoped for. A scan from just offshore revealed no intruders except the rusty tractor, and as soon as we disembarked, Michelle trotted over to the old International Harvester and wedged her life preserver in a gap above where the tractor’s weight plates used to hang. She jogged back and took up a position to the left of where I was lying prone.
“You’re at twenty-seven yards from the muzzle to your target.” Her statement was blunt, and I knew from the loss of several wagered sodas through the years that her assessment of the distance would be spot on. Never bet the distance with someone who shot competitive archery.
“That’s just about perfect,” I mumbled as the bright, sea green landscape materialized through the night scope. The clarity was amazing, and I could easily make out the pattern of nickel-sized dots that Michelle had drawn on her seat cushion. It took nine quiet shots to zero the weapon, and I was careful to count the number of adjustment clicks that I’d had to make for the scope’s eventual return to my AR. It wouldn’t guarantee a duplication of the point of impact, but it should be close.
We collected the target and hopped on the bass boat. True to Walter’s promise, the motor fired up on the first pull, and once we got oriented, I opened the throttle halfway and headed back to the ranger station.
Chapter 48
“I’ve got nothing. No movement. What about you?”
“Negative,” I replied, “no movement, no lights, nothing. What do you think?”
“I’d feel more comfortable,” Michelle replied, “if we knew where Mr. ‘fall down-got the munchies’ went to.”
“Agreed. Let’s switch to radio and start the leapfrog.” I reached down and turned on the GMRS unit, confirming a second later that Michelle’s radio was still on the same channel and active.
My hand gripped her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “Ready?”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
She covered while I moved forward through the semi-soft mud where we had beached the aluminum boat a few moments ago. After a dozen paces, I spun to the right and searched with the night scope through the roofed over fuel depot. Nothing was moving that I could tell, so I dropped to a knee and scanned in a wide circle while Michelle eased up to my position. When she squatted next to me, I scuttled toward the fuel tanks. A closer inspection showed that they were locked.
“We’re going to need a key if either of the boats need fuel.”
“I can cover you from here,” Michelle said, “so go check on the fuel, and while you’re there, see if anybody left the keys in the ignition. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“What are the odds?” I mumbled back as I half stood and paced down to the wooden dock, stabbing through the night with the rifle scope held up to my eye as I stepped. It was a weird feeling, like looking through a windshield with a pair of low magnification binoculars while the car was moving. Both of the patrol boats in front of me were similar—twenty-three foot NauticStar’s with twin 250 horsepower Yamaha engines. Originally designed for tournament fishing, they had been modified to more adequately serve in the law enforcement role. Extended run fuel tanks, high intensity spotlights, engine tweaks, and a few other bells and whistles completed the package.
The first boat I came to was the one tied to the dock. There was no key in the ignition, of course. Using the scope, I managed to worm my w
ay into the craft and back toward the fuel port. These boats have a redundant fuel check system, with an electronic gauge on the center console, and a manual float gauge on the modified tank. Without a key, I looked at the float gauge. The pale needle that I knew to be yellow under normal light conditions appeared off white in the scope. The capital “E” on the rotating gauge smiled up at me as it rested midway underneath the needle. That figures.
“Boat number one has no key and no gas,” I whispered into the microphone as I hopped back onto the dock. Taking a moment to scan the darkness for any changes also reoriented my sense of direction in the pitch black night, and I walked the night scope in a slow arc from our bass boat through a two hundred degree sweep, ending at the beached patrol boat lying partway on its side at the top of the cement launch. Aside from the parking job, something else didn’t look right, and it took me exactly nineteen quiet steps to get close enough to confirm.
“Boat number two is a no-go. It’s got busted props.”
“OK,” Michelle replied, “let’s circle the office to look for our missing friend, and then we’ll deal with whoever’s inside the station.”
I joined her a few seconds later, pausing momentarily by her side. “You OK?”
“Yeah, but I’m getting a little antsy, so let’s get this over with.”
“Here I go.” I led the way to the front corner of the ranger station, holding for a moment as I studied the corpse under the partially shot out the window. Caucasian, mid-thirties, heavy canvas work pants and an insulated denim jacket painted a picture that would adequately serve as a BOLO for just about every guy in North Dakota. At least until you got to the shredded remains where his abdominal cavity still steamed into the cool night air. That, and the small caliber bullet hole almost dead center in his forehead.
“Our first guy is dead. It looks like he’s been shot and then used as an appetizer. I can’t really tell his skin tone with the night vision though,” I whispered.
“I’ve still got a pretty wide field of fire from here, at least if anything comes around to this side of the building.”
“Roger that. I’m going to move up and peek around the corner.” The loose gravel that butted up against the block foundation scrunched weakly underneath each of my measured paces as I stepped to the back corner. At the juncture, I lowered to a kneeling crouch and scanned the area behind the building. The electronic green viewfinder brought the flat landscape to light as I turned a slow swivel. On this side of the ranger station, the gravel parking lot narrowed and morphed into a 200 yard artery comprised of a wild variety of aggregate chunks. Everything from sand through pea gravel, and all the way up to several dump truck loads of bowling ball sized rocks had been piled into a slightly raised roadbed that connected the station to Highway 19. Both the highway and the gravel road were empty. Scanning further to the left revealed a few clumps of low shrubs—ornamental varieties that were planted as part of a state sponsored beatification initiative two summers ago. None of them had survived their first North Dakota winter. I moved on through the remaining thirty degree arc, and a blob of movement appeared in my scope.
“Damn it,” I hissed.
Michelle’s reply came through immediately. “What is it . . . did you find our friend?”
“And a few of his friends.”
“I’m on my way.” A few seconds later Michelle squatted next to me and we both studied the situation. About eighty yards past the maintenance shop was a cluster of kneeling and crouching ghouls. At least three bodies were on the ground being fed upon by the baker’s dozen of infected that loosely surrounded their meal. We could see another pair of ghouls on the fringe of the group that seemed to be ambling slowly in random directions.
Michelle was the first to speak. “They’re what . . . about a hundred or so yards away—total distance from here?”
“Yeah.”
“Eric, we need to move right now while they’re occupied. I mean right now.”
“Agreed . . . let’s go.” Both of us stood and slipped backwards to the front corner of the building. The parking lot gravel, looser in this area, made me grimace with each step that we took. I was in the lead, and as we crested the body in front of the window, a large chunk of the remaining glass shattered.
CRACK
Michelle and I hit the ground in tandem.
The gunshot, muffled by my ear protection, still rang out in the silence of the night, and I felt a burning sting on the side of my face. The bitter taste of coppery blood began to spill against my tongue, and I swore out loud. The instinctive jaw motion that accompanied the words made me wince in pain, and my hand reacted by itself, immediately searching out the source of the discomfort. My sailor’s vocabulary got another refresher course when I found the inch long shard of glass embedded dead center in the fleshy fold of my cheek.
“Eric, are you alright?” Michelle’s voice was a loud whisper.
“I took a piece of glass in my cheek . . . nothing to worry about.” My words were spoken through winced teeth as I pulled out the splinter.
“Who’s out there? You bastards want another dose of lead? I’ve got enough for all of you . . . just come and get it.”
The voice—slurred, but piercing and nasally obnoxious—boomed into the night. I knew that voice, and I whispered that fact to Michelle.
“Who is it, another wildlife officer?”
“No, it’s the maintenance guy from the main Devils Lake ranger station. His name is . . . um . . .” I stopped in midsentence as my frazzled mind searched its archives briefly before returning with the answer. “Tempsee . . . Chuck Tempsee . . . he’s a douchebag.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“I have no idea.”
Cupping my hand around my mouth to give some direction, I called out in a loud whisper. “Tempsee, stop shooting . . . it’s Officer Coleman.”
We heard some shuffling from inside the cabin, and then the man’s voice sounded again. “Who’s out there? You dead eyes can’t fool me. I’ll kill all of you.” Another sharp crack shattered glass, and I felt several small pieces drop down on me.
Michelle’s hand gripped my jacket and pulled backwards, and a moment later we got to our feet around the corner. “He’s going to bring that whole pack down on our heads,” Michelle hissed.
“That sounds like something I’d expect from him . . . cover me.” Without waiting for her answer, I padded away from the building until I was on the packed and car crushed gravel of the parking lot. My footsteps were quieter here, and I shifted direction until I gained the angle to see past the maintenance building. The white blob of infected had altered. Most of them now stood and appeared to be looking our way. Several others were milling about, and I couldn’t tell which ones were the original pair that had been walking when we first observed them.
“They’re up and looking this way.”
“Are they moving towards us?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ve got nothing from here . . . still clear,” Michelle replied.
“Let’s wait and watch for a minute.”
“10-4.”
I stared through the night scope as the group of ghouls cocked their heads and looked our way. Several of the pack seemed agitated and soon began glancing in different directions. True to my prediction, with no lights, and the stars hidden above a layer of clouds, the pitch black night caused several collisions between the infected. It was weird though, and something about their reactions triggered another thought in my biologist’s mind. For now, I managed to push it back into the “think about it later” compartment.
“Anything change?” Michelle asked.
“Yeah, they’re up and are walking around a little bit . . . same general area though. Hold on . . .” As I spoke, the small gathering began to condense, and then as I watched through the night scope, the group sank back down and began to feed again—all except a pair that remained standing. I watched for another minute, and then I called Michelle.
“Meet me by our bass boat.”
A minute later we were crouched together at the edge of the lake. “OK,” I started, “here’s what I’m thinking. We need to get in that office. But I’d rather not put all of our cards on the table, so to speak. Chuck . . . like I mentioned . . . is an asshole, but at least he’s not one of ‘them.’” I tilted my head in the direction of the pack behind the maintenance building. “What do you make the distance to be from the land end of the dock to the office?”
Michelle looked through her scope again. “Straight to the front door you’ve got maybe eighteen yards.”
I nodded, although the gesture was lost to her in the darkness of the night. “OK then, what I’d like to do is give you the .22, and get you in position as a sniper. You’ll have a great field of view, and your back will be to the water. Ninety percent of any shots you’d have to take are going to be at a max range of thirty yards—most of them less than that—so you won’t have to adjust your aim. Just put the crosshair on their head and squeeze the trigger.”
Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending Page 48
