by Caleb Cleek
Everyone was stunned at Luke’s instant transformation from timid to fearless. Matt broke the silence with laughter. “Dr. Kemp, you’re a braver man than I am.”
Dr. Kemp said, “I have to admit, I was starting to wonder at the wisdom of my idea. It turns out the boy is a natural. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”
After the vaccinations were completed, we said our goodbyes. Katie and Eve were both strongly against us going after Curtis without help. We explained that tonight was about reconnaissance. If an opportunity to take Curtis out presented itself, we would obviously capitalize on it; otherwise, we had decided to wait until Tuttle could assist in a day or two.
As we left the house, tears were shed by the women. Katie questioned why we couldn’t let people fend for themselves. Inside, she knew the reason. It wasn’t right to leave people who couldn’t take care of themselves to die when we could help them.
By the time we finally got on the road, the sun had passed its peak and was beginning its downward trajectory to the west. It wouldn’t set until eight-thirty. After that, we would begin our surveillance of the ranch where Curtis was squatting. In the meantime, there was plenty to do in town.
Once again, we took the back roads to bypass Sgt. Martinez and his roadblock. When we got to town, we made a bee line for Wim Cummings’ house. He owned Northern Pumps, which was the local pump company. He also drilled wells. I wanted to see if he would be willing to drill a well in town and help get it set up with solar power so people would have access to water after the power went down. We stopped on the curb in front of his home. His truck was in the driveway. Similar to Marty’s house, and every other house in town, the shades were drawn.
“Well, I hope this turns out better than it did at Marty’s,” Matt quipped as we walked to the front door. Matt stopped short of the porch and took a step to the side into the grass. I rang the bell and banged the ball of my fist hard on the solid wood door. Ten seconds passed and I banged again.
Matt quietly said, “Someone is peeking through the curtains. I can’t see who it is, though.”
A female voice sounded inside, “Open the door, Wim. It’s Matt.”
The door opened two inches. Wim pressed his face up to the crack to verify what the voice had informed him. “Connor, come in,” he said, swinging the door wide to reveal the interior of his house. I knew Wim well, but had never been in his home.
“Are you expecting trouble?” I asked, eyeing the pistol in his right hand.
“Not really,” he replied. “If I was expecting trouble, I would have answered with the shotgun. I’m just being cautious.”
“Ahh, a man after my own heart. Nothing says leave me alone like a gun in hand. I’m going to recommend that in the future you bring the shotgun when you open the door, but that’s not why I’m here. Do you mind if we sit down?”
“Of course not. I was just about to offer,” he said, pointing into the living room. Prior to entering the house, Matt donned his gasmask. We entered and Wim closed the door. He led the way into the living room and sat in the recliner directly across from the muted TV, which was showing scenes of chaos from across the country. Matt and I sat on the couch. “What brings you to my humble abode?” he asked. “I figured you guys would be up to your necks in it by now.”
“You’re not far off on that one. We came by to see how deep your sense of civic duty runs,” I said cryptically.
“Oh, great,” he said, coming across as put off. I knew him better than to buy his act. “I can already see where this is leading. It’s going to end with me doing a whole lot of work for free.”
Turning to Matt, I asked straight faced, “Did you call and tell him why we were coming?”
“No, but it’s like I’ve always told you, Wim is a bright guy. It doesn’t take him long to figure stuff out.”
“Alright guys, out with it. What do you need?” Wim asked.
“The electricity isn’t going to last forever. We figure that within two weeks we’re going to be back in the dark ages,” I explained. “There isn’t a good source of fresh water in town. People won’t last long without water. We were wondering about the feasibility of drilling a well in a central location in town and putting a solar powered pump on it or even a hand pump.”
“I see,” he said. “What would you say if I told you I was already working on the problem?”
“I would say I want to hear about your idea,” Matt said.
“Solar isn’t an option. This morning, I talked with Ray over at Sparky’s about what you’re suggesting. He doesn’t have the panels in stock. I don’t know if you’ve seen the boys in camouflage with the big guns at the edge of town or not, but even if you could get someone to ship the panels, I don’t think they’re going to let the load past the roadblock. Besides, it would require too many panels to be practical. I do have an alternate idea that you might like, though,” he said as he shifted in his chair, rested the elbow of his raised forearm on the armrest, and leaned his head against his open hand.
“The Rocking X Ranch ordered a pumping windmill that arrived a couple days ago. We were going to install it next week. It turns out they aren’t going to need it anymore. I heard that a pack of those crazy people went through the area this morning and killed Walt, his wife, and the hired man. The windmill is the answer to your problem. I was thinking about drilling a well at the high school. There is a lot of room and it is right in the middle of town. I can probably have it drilled within a day and have the windmill set up within another day.”
“Is there enough wind to actually run the windmill?” Matt asked dubiously.
“Yes and no,” Wim answered. “There are a couple problems. First of all, there are a lot of trees in the area which will block the wind. To optimize the output, we would need to cut them down. Secondly, the wind doesn’t blow constantly. This is a very big windmill. It will pump a lot of water with a light breeze, but it does need a breeze. Since we don’t have constant wind, we’re going to need to build a reservoir. I also spoke with Paul Steele this morning. He agreed to bring his earth movers and a crew to dig the reservoir.”
“Okay. It sounds like your sense of civic duty is pretty strong after all. Is there anything we can do to help?” I asked.
After thinking for a couple seconds, Wim answered, “There are two things I can use help with. Even with everything that’s going on, I know there is going to be a lot of resistance to digging up the baseball field for the reservoir. People are going to be upset. It would help a lot if you could smooth that out. The second thing I need is some security. I haven’t seen any of those monsters since the sun came up, but they were thick last night. We need protection while we work.”
“We can do both of those. How long until you can start?”
“I’ll have the drilling rig in position in an hour.”
“Matt and I can cover you until 6:30 or 7:00. After that, we’re going to have to leave. Will that give you enough time to get everything set up?”
“Absolutely. I’m a little hesitant to work through the night, especially without you guys being there,” he said.
“What if we get a group of guys to cover you after we leave? We can equip them with some of the weapons stash from the station? I have four guys in mind who have combat experience. I haven’t talked to them yet, but I’m pretty sure they will all be game,” I said.
Wim nodded his head enthusiastically. “This is going to work. We’re going to have the ability to pump water by tomorrow night.”
“We need to do a few things before we start on the well,” I informed Wim. “We’ll meet you at the high school in an hour.”
Two of the guys I wanted to help with security for the well site attended my church. I had their numbers in my phone and dialed as I drove across town to the sheriff station. They were brothers and they lived together. I reached the first who spoke with his brother. They were eager to help with the project and agreed to meet us at the station where we would equip them with the gear th
ey would need. I also had the number for the third in my phone. He didn’t answer. The number for the fourth wasn’t listed, but I knew where he lived. We would pay him a visit after the others showed up.
We arrived at the station and quickly moved inside to the armory and began gathering supplies. Each of the volunteers would receive a gas mask, a rifle, a pistol and plenty of ammo for both guns. There were four sets of night vision goggles. Matt and I each took a pair for ourselves and the others would be given to two of the volunteers. By the time we had gathered the supplies and taken them to the reception area, a late eighties step side Chevy pickup was pulling up in front of the office. Jeb Black and his brother Frank exited the truck and enthusiastically climbed the steps to the front door. They walked in with smiles on their faces.
“How’s it going, Connor?” Frank asked. Although they were twins, the twenty five year old brothers had very little resemblance to each other. Frank had dark hair and was two inches shorter than his blond haired brother. Both had broad shoulders earned from the hours they spent moving hay. After graduating from high school, both had enlisted in the Marine Corps. When their enlistments were up, they returned home to Lost Hills and the ranch where they had grown up. Their dad retired and turned the day to day operations of the ranch over to them.
“It’s going okay, all things considered,” I responded. “Is everything okay at the ranch?”
“So far, so good,” Frank answered, not giving his brother a chance to respond. “We saw one of those things on the way into town. Jeb stopped the truck and I started to shoot it until I realized it was Amy Jenson. She ran at the truck and started beating on the window and howling. I couldn’t shoot her and we drove away.”
“It wasn’t Amy,” I replied. “It might have been her body, but it wasn’t her. The next time you see an infected, shoot it between the eyes. It doesn’t matter if it is me or Matt or Jeb. You guys were lucky. They have superhuman strength and won’t hesitate to tear your throat out with their teeth. I’ve seen it firsthand.”
“We know,” Frank said. “We’ve been glued to the TV all day. When it came down to it, we couldn’t shoot her though. We went to school with her since kindergarten. Jeb even went to the Sadie Hawkins dance with her.” Frank rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “We both killed quite a few people in Afghanistan. This is different, though. These are people we know.”
“They were people you knew,” Matt corrected. “These aren’t people anymore. Their brains have been twisted. Given the chance, they’ll kill you without giving it any thought. It’s their instinct. Don’t hesitate when the situation arises or we’ll be burying you, or worse yet, you’ll turn into one of them and we’ll be forced to shoot you.”
“I get it,” Frank said. “I’ll be ready next time. The first time I saw an insurgent in Afghanistan, I didn’t fire. I was in thick cover and he walked fifty yards in front of me carrying a rifle and a radio. There was no doubt that he was an insurgent. I just couldn’t pull the trigger.
“The next day, we were on patrol in the same area and we were ambushed. There was only one shooter, but we were pretty much in the open. He had good cover in the rocks above and had us pinned down. My buddy was hit with the first shot. I was at the back of the platoon and was able to get back to cover. I worked my way above the shooter and I killed him. As I descended the hill to his position, I realized he was the same guy from the day before. If I had taken the shot the previous day, Paul would still be alive. I’ve struggled with not taking that shot every single day since then. Believe me, I get it. The next time I see one, I’ll be the first to shoot.”
Chapter 33
We issued Jeb and Frank the gear we had procured for them from the armory. They both declined the pistols, saying they would rather use their own. Frank also declined the rifle, stating that he was more comfortable with his personal rifle. They boisterously proclaimed their excitement at the large quantities of ammunition and the night vision goggles.
We loaded into our vehicles and headed to Saul Timmons’ house on the edge of town. I didn’t really want to drive all the way across town to talk to him, but since I couldn’t find a phone number for him, we didn’t have a choice. One side of his road had sporadic houses dotting the alfalfa fields. The other side was unbroken sage brush for close to a mile.
As we approached his house, I noticed several indiscernible objects in the road. As we got closer, the forms began to take shape. There were six infected sprawled in the road, across about one hundred yards.
A gusty breeze was whipping the white curtains in and out of the open second story window of Saul’s house when we pulled up. I opened the door as the truck rolled to a stop. A strong gust of wind hit the curtains, causing an audible pop as they unfurled like a whip.
Saul had been a sniper with the Army Rangers. It was clear he had been shooting the infected from the upstairs window as they came out of the sage brush and crossed the street. If the dead infected in the street were any indication, Saul would want to be involved in securing the well site. The noise would probably draw infected from all over town and he could rack up a huge kill count.
We walked across the dirt driveway with the strengthening breeze driving dust into my eyes, causing me to blink and rub the grit away with my fingers. The other three had pulled their gas masks down over their faces, which protected them from the swirling dirt particles.
I approached the door and Matt stopped ten feet behind me. Jeb and Frank spread out ten or fifteen paces on either side of Matt. Their military training and time in Afghanistan left them cautious of congregating too closely together, lest a single burst of automatic fire or grenade take out the entire group. Hard earned habits have a way of hanging on.
I pressed the white plastic button next to the door and heard a faint chime inside. I waited with no acknowledgment and then knocked on the door. There was still no response. I walked off the porch and stepped into the dirt where I could partially see into the open window.
“Saul, it’s Connor. Open up so we can talk.”
Still no reply.
“Saul!” I yelled louder. This time I was greeted with the all too familiar howl which emanated from inside the house.
Saul’s form suddenly filled the window. In a smooth liquid motion, his body poured through the casement. He came erect to his full six feet as he took two steps across the steeply descending shingles and jumped twelve feet to the ground. He landed on slightly flexed legs. Without losing his stride, he charged Frank. Frank was already moving to the right toward Matt, creating a better angle so that I would not be in his line of fire. His rifle had already come to bear on Saul the moment he appeared in the window. True to his earlier promise, Frank didn’t hesitate. With a single boom, what had previously been Saul’s body crumpled to the ground. Frank swore loudly as he approached the figure of the man who had once been his friend. He stood over the corpse briefly and then turned and walked away to his truck as the pool of blood slowly grew around Saul’s pulverized head.
I approached the front door a second time. This time, Matt and Jeb were right behind. I tried the door. It was locked. I fired two rounds into the door on the frame side of the door knob. A shotgun would have been better suited for the task, but the rifle proved sufficient. On the second shot, the impact of the bullet shattered the remains of the locking mechanism and the door pivoted inward without any further action from me.
Without hesitation, we moved inside. Jeb was completely within his element. He had spent over a year in Afghanistan and much of that time was spent clearing houses. He took the lead. I followed directly behind and Matt brought up the rear. When we came to a new room, Jeb would pause and wait for me to signal that I was ready. Once he got the signal, he exploded into the room, immediately pivoting to the right all the way to the corner of the room. I came in directly behind and pivoted to the left, leaving Matt to hold the hall. In this fashion we quickly cleared the house. We located the body of Devon Martin in the upstairs bedroom with a rifle a
t his side. He had a gunshot wound to his head, which explained why he hadn’t answered my phone call forty minutes earlier.
There were only a handful of people in town who had served overseas in the military. That group was very tight knit in such a small community, especially those who had been in combat units. They had experienced things with which most people couldn’t relate and as such were drawn to each other. Devon and Saul were best friends.
My guess was that Devon had come to Saul’s house when he realized what was happening. Neither of them had any family in town. They would have wanted to make their stand together. The problem was Devon had already been exposed. He probably wasn’t sick when he came. Time had taken its toll. He succumbed to the disease. Saul put him down, but not before he had been exposed, too.
I had found it curious that there weren’t more infected wandering around town. After seeing the infected in Marty’s house and then seeing Saul and Devon holed up in Saul’s house, I realized there were probably houses all over town filled with infected. They were trapped inside. Their atrophied brains couldn’t remember how to open door knobs. How long they would remain stuck inside was unknown. The longer it took them to escape, the better it would be for us.
With only half the security force I had hoped to garner, we got back in our vehicles. Matt and I drove to the school in a silence that I was sure was mirrored inside Jeb and Frank’s truck.
Chapter 34
We arrived at the school less than an hour after leaving Wim Cummings. Wim was already on scene with his drilling rig. The four of us walked across the grassy area to where Wim was in the process of lifting the drilling rig off its wheels and leveling it with the extendable stabilizer legs at each corner. Within a couple minutes, he appeared to be satisfied with the results.
Wim approached the four of us while the three men he brought with him continued to scurry around the rig, working busily. “Once we get going, we should have the well drilled in six to eight hours, assuming we don’t run into any snags.”
