by Joseph Coley
When it snows around Camp Dawson, they don’t do a goddamned thing.
The weather had taken out one of their choppers on more than one occasion in the past, and they didn't take any chances losing another. If they got a call and didn't think that they could make it through the air, then they could at least take some ground vehicles. They had several Humvees and a couple of the LMTVs that were left over from the West Virginia National Guard. They would go damn near anywhere, just not nearly as fast as the Yankee would. The team did as much as they could with what they had, but they were severely limited sometimes. They did not like leaving people stranded, but when you can’t call 911, shit happens.
Ogre was nice enough to stop his shenanigans for long enough for Joe to get some recon on Charleston. They hadn’t made a concerted effort to try to make it back there since it had been such a populated area, but they wanted to. As far as Joe knew, it was the only capital city that had not had the pleasure of being nuked in the early days of the apocalypse. Joe carried a Geiger counter in the chopper, and every team had at least one team member with one. There was no radiation in Charleston. It had been checked out several times, with the Geiger not making any noise.
Ogre flew within a few miles of the capitol building, the gold-flaked dome not exactly glimmering anymore. In better days, people would say that all the gold in West Virginia was on top of that dome, and if that was true then the wild, wonderful state had slipped considerably. The little gold that did flash off the dome did look beautiful, though.
Once Joe looked away from the shiny gold, he saw that there were literally thousands of zombies still milling about in the city. Only now, it looked as if there were considerably less of them since the last time the team had passed over it.
Joe pointed the throng of zombies out to Rick, who had never seen Charleston before. “Check this out, Rick. We’ve been over Charleston a couple of times, and it looks like there are quite a few less zombies down there than usual. Any thoughts on why?”
Rick moved over and looked out the side of the Yankee. He studied the landscape below and looked back and forth over the teeming masses of undead. He looked back at Joe and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe since they aren’t irradiated they are finally dying off – for good. They have to start breaking down and rotting away permanently at some point, don’t they?”
“You would think so, but I haven’t seen any of ‘em just lie down and croak out. If they would, we would be out of a job.” Joe laughed heartily as he responded to Rick.
Rick chuckled and sat back. It warmed Joe’s heart to see him in such a good mood; he had almost forgotten what it was like to see Rick cheerful. He was eighteen now and had grown up so fast that Joe hardly recognized him. He had lost about twenty pounds since the last time he had seen him, almost eight months ago, all of it replaced with lean muscle. He looked good, a little rugged-looking and appearing a bit older than eighteen, but it served him well. Every member of the team looked about five or ten years older than they would have liked. Surviving an apocalypse did that to you. Jamie was now full on gray-haired, and Joe was starting to get more gray up top than in his beard. Chris had the salt-and-pepper look going on. Balboa was the only one of them that did not look like he needed to be considering retirement.
Rick was well suited to the life that he was now going to be forced to live. Out in the sticks, it took a lot out of you just to make it day-to-day. He seemed a little disinterested about Charleston; in the old days if a kid saw a real zombie he would have shit his pants. Nowadays it was the norm, not the exception.
Ogre keyed up the radio and informed them that they were fifteen minutes out from Beckley, but he was unable to raise them on the radio. It was no secret that communications was a haphazard thing, but it unnerved Joe nonetheless. They were lucky still to be able to receive the weather reports that they were getting; the satellite orbits were degraded and most of them were no longer working. Unfortunately, their communications were through UHF radios that had decent sound to them, but you had to be within range. If they had better VHF systems or a lower frequency to go to they could get longer range, but shoddier clarity.
Most of their backup in the area worked off several different channels, but Ogre said after scanning several that he was unable to get anybody. Joe was not overly concerned; bad communications was something they had gotten used to. He told Ogre to relay the information back to Curtis at Dawson. They had not told Curtis that they were taking a detour over Charleston, as it was not in a direct line with their destination in Beckley. However, they liked being over an area where they could still land the chopper in an emergency, and Charleston had an airport.
Rick’s nervous tapping of his leg was temporarily back in session as they neared Beckley and still had no radio contact with Beckley’s ZBRA team. It was always in the back of their minds that even the ZBRA units could be overrun; they’d lost plenty in the past due to that very reason. At one point, they’d had four to five units per state, but now they were down to only two or three. Lack of preparedness and the elements had taken over as many units as the undead had.
They had not had any calls for help recently. Aside from their last mission near the Ohio River, the area remained quiet. The ZBRA unit that was camped outside Cincinnati had some trouble with a paramilitary group that tried to take over their camp by force, and had called Joe and his team to assist. They managed to take out about three-quarters of the marauders before they split. Several dozen of the wannabe soldiers had tried to take shots at the Yankee before Joe’s crew opened up with the GAU-17/A miniguns and tore them up worse than the undead did. The noise attracted more zombies to the area, and what the chopper didn't take care of, the dead did. No matter how well you planned, you had to take into effect the fact that they still ruled.
Ogre continued towards Beckley and the closer they got, the more the uneasiness set in. They still were not able to connect with anyone on the ground in Beckley. They kept going towards their target area, despite the graying skies and impending snow. It seemed that their weatherman was spot on again. The skies were the color of set-in snow, and it did not look like it was going to be a fun next few days. Beckley came into sight and, almost immediately, they realized that there was something wrong.
Very wrong.
The Beckley encampment was at the Raleigh County Memorial Airport, and a popular destination for the team to stop and refuel the last year or two due to their commercial-size tanks. The fuel was not as good as it had been because it was not meant to withstand being left for as long as it had. They were able to keep it useable with some additives that they had collected over the past few years, thanks in large part to taking over several military bases and raiding the last of the useful stuff. All of their armory runs over the years netted them more than just guns and ammo.
They were just above the airport when Ogre hovered over, showing them what they had been afraid of. The Beckley camp had been overrun by the undead – recently. Fires burned, and the area was riddled with destroyed buildings that had not been that way the last time they had been there – about three months ago.
Joe’s heart sank. He knew several of the guys from there, and had actually known a few from before the world went to shit from his time at the Beckley MEPS (military entrance and processing station). They were very able-bodied country boys that fared better than most at the apocalyptic scenario, and it was not like them to be overrun by the living dead. They had tolerated no instances where the undead made it past their sentries and into their compound. How had they gotten by now?
“Set us down over by the tanks, Ogre. That way we can at least see what’s coming. I wanna take a look around while you refuel.”
“Roger. I wonder what the hell happened here,” Ogre crackled back over the radio.
“I have no idea, but I'm gonna find out if I can.” Joe knew that the rest of the guys wanted to know what went down too. It was hard to make friends, and even harder to make friends with people that you
trusted. The Beckley crew were extremely reliable, and damn good at what they did.
As they circled back around to a decent landing spot near the fuel tanks, Joe spotted someone waving them down on the ground. He looked to be a guy named Wagner that Joe recognized. He had been a star football player in college at WVU when the world had ended, and somehow ended up on the other end of the state visiting some family when the dead began to rise. He was a nice enough guy, but definitely had the mindset of a linebacker when it came to killing zombies. On their last mission together, he’d run headlong into a group and had tackled three at once. A good man to have on your side, if a little overly enthusiastic.
Wagner was flailing his arms violently as they got about forty feet away from landing. “What the fuck is Wagner’s problem? Doesn’t he want us to help? If he doesn’t move his ass soon I’m gonna just land on his damn head!” Ogre cursed as he fought with the controls on the bird, trying his damndest not to have to land on Wagner's head.
The boy finally got the picture that Ogre was not fucking around and moved out of the way, glaring at the chopper the whole time. Ogre slid the chopper over a little more and set it down. Joe didn't even get the chance to open the doors when Wagner flung one open.
“WE NEED TO GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE NOW!” Wagner screamed over the sound of the engine as it wound down. The team all filed out and Joe grabbed the big linebacker by the elbow, guiding him away from the chopper and the rotors. He did as he was directed; there wasn’t a rank system in the ZBRA units, but he knew that Joe was in charge of the Camp Dawson crew and he did not hesitate to do what he asked.
“What the hell happened here, Wagner? I thought you guys were good to go on ammo and supplies for six months or more. Why did you get overrun?”
It wasn’t until then that Joe noticed the fear on his face. Wagner was part Cherokee and did not fear any other man, and yet here he was looking like his mom just caught him having sex with the dog.
“I don’t know what happened. These guys just came out of the woodwork, shooting the place up with all kinds of military-grade shit. They had Bradleys and .50 cal guns and a whole bunch of weaponry designed to fuck our shit up. They ran over the fences and just wasted our ass while we were sleeping. The only guys that made it were me and another fellow named Duke, and he’s dead now.”
“Who was it? Was it the paramilitary guys from Cincinnati?” Joe asked as they walked towards what was left of one of the airplane hangars. Joe needed to get the skids to pull the chopper around to the tanks.
“No, I don’t think it was them. These guys looked like straight-up military – uniforms and everything. They had more firepower than we could handle even if we had been ready for ‘em. I didn't hear much of what they said, but Duke said that they all answered to one guy – they called him the Captain.”
“The Captain? Captain who?” Chris asked as they walked out of the hangar with the skid.
“I don’t know. Just Captain as far as he heard,” Wagner said, still looking around to see if the coast was clear.
“Why the hell are you so paranoid, Wagner? How long ago did he come here?” Joe asked as he got to the chopper with the skids. Ogre got his sizeable frame out of the Yankee and took the skid to get it ready. Balboa and Jamie assisted him while Joe pulled Wagner off to the side.
“He was here about an hour or so ago. I don’t really know what time it was, I just tried to get to a weapon, but before I could, he had killed off almost everybody so I just hid. I was hoping that y'all would show up soon. I knew that y’all were comin’ so I just waited it out. I wasn’t tryin’ to wave y’all off, I was seein’ if we could get goin’ fast so we could catch up with whoever this is and whoop his ass!” Wagner’s face flushed as he told Joe about his encounter. Joe could see the big guy was pissed off and wanted revenge, but they had a job to do and it was hard to tell where this mysterious ‘Captain’ was headed or how big his group was.
“Just get your shit together and come with us to Blacksburg. We can regroup some of the guys from there and bring some of our guys down from Dawson and get what’s left here that is still of use. I hate to say it, Wagner, but you may have to relocate with us or the Blacksburg crew.” Joe really didn't know what to tell him, but it was certain that the Beckley ZBRA unit was lost and they needed to make sure that they got all the stashed items that they could. There was plenty of spare ammo and guns lying around. Whoever had come through, they had no intentions of stopping or taking anything with them. It didn't make any sense.
Wagner nodded somberly and started back to his living area inside the terminal. The airport was a little larger than the one they’d been holed up in while they were in Alabama. It had a full-fledged ticket counter and did a little more commercial traffic back in the day than the Monroe County Airport did.
Joe watched him go off on his own and tried to figure out why the storm trooper brigade that had come through did not take any of the plentiful supplies that the complex had. He didn't have time to ponder it much before Rick and Chris discovered something.
“Hey Joe! Come here! Looks like the Beckley boys managed to get one of ‘em! He’s alive… for now,” Chris said as he helped Rick drag the man towards Joe. The guy looked like a U.S. Marine, dressed in worn out DCUs (desert combat uniform), and looked as if he was in his late thirties or early forties. He dragged his feet as Rick and Chris brought him over, then winced in pain as they tossed him down none too gently. Joe knelt down and addressed the man.
“Seeing as how there ain’t a prison system in the good ol’ state of West Virginia, I don’t see us taking you prisoner. So here is how it’s gonna go; you tell me what I want to know or I beat it out of you and kill you when I'm done. Or, you tell me what I want to know without me having to beat the shit out of you and I consider you a loose end.”
The man held up his hands in surrender. “I don’t want any trouble. I was lookin’ for a reason to get away from those assholes anyways.”
Joe didn't know what to make of the guy. He looked to be sincere, but after nearly a decade of having to talk to assholes like him, it was hard to tell anymore. During more than one mission, Joe would have to talk to people just like the straggler. Most of the time he could be around them for thirty seconds or so and be able to tell if they were full of shit or not. This guy was hard to read. Joe couldn’t really tell what his deal was. Joe studied his face, trying to look for something that he could use against him, but there was nothing. Guys like this were more common than he cared to mention; they wanted to be part of a group – it was the only way to survive. The lone wolf nowadays wasn’t able to stay alive very long without help.
Joe handed him a bottle of water from his assault pack. He grabbed it and downed three-quarters of it in one long draught.
“Careful, there buddy. You gonna end up seein’ that again if you take it down too fast.”
He wiped his face with the back of his sleeve and breathed heavily. “Sorry. The Captain doesn’t let us have too many provisions, especially since we have been on the move.”
“Yeah, about that. Who is this ‘Captain’ y’all keep goin' on about? By the way, why the hell does he want to take out the ZBRA units? We don’t infringe on anyone that doesn’t need an ass whoopin’ – especially if they are trying to hurt innocent people or trying to run the world over.” Joe needed to get intel on this “Captain” douchebag, and this guy seemed like he would be a good source if he kept giving him a little food and water. Joe looked over at Chris.
“Go get an MRE for our friend here.” Joe turned back to the man and met him eye to eye. “If we give you some food, you give us some information – deal?”
He nodded vigorously and a few seconds later Chris came back with an MRE. It was one of the vegetarian MREs and they were, unbelievably, the best ones. Cheese tortellini was Joe’s personal favorite. Chris handed the food to Joe and he in turn handed it to the man.
Joe gave Ogre the signal to finish fueling the chopper, got to his feet and
motioned for all the guys to follow him; it was starting to spit snow and none of them was particularly dressed for an extended stay outdoors. He let their ‘prisoner’ lead the way and directed him to the hangar, one of the only buildings still standing. Chris split off, grabbed one of the fifty-gallon drums for a hobo campfire, and dragged it inside. They lit the barrel with a little tinder and busted parts from the destroyed terminal. They all stood around the fire as the man started to tell them his story. Joe had learned by now that everyone had a story, none of them were the same, and very rarely did they have a happy conclusion.
“I really don’t know what y’all need to know, but I suppose I can answer questions if you have some. I was with the Captain and his men for almost a year. I can tell you they are not to be fucked with; they have plenty of firepower and they are getting more since we started moving out.”
Joe warmed his hands on the fire. “You keep saying ‘since you were on the move.’ When and where did you start out from, and how long have you been on the road? Most folks nowadays don’t venture out any further than they have to, and they damn sure don’t go on some Bataan Death March in the middle of winter,” Joe said, watching their prisoner open his MRE and begin to eat.
“I don’t know where they started from, but they picked me up on their scouting mission down near Chattanooga, Tennessee. I had lost most of my friends after that hurricane that hit last August. We had a good thing going out near the South Carolina/Georgia line, and the storm took out most of our shelter. After that, the dead started flooding in. Those of us that didn't die in the storm were overrun by the dead or starved to death. We escaped as best we could, but there were only about a dozen of us left.” He tore into the main course of the MRE and ate slowly as he talked, continuing his tale.
“We had been on the run since we left and were trying to find some decent shelter when we first saw them. They looked so official that we thought that the military had finally gotten together and were trying to retake some of the areas that they had lost years ago. We were welcomed in with open arms. They fed us, clothed us, and took generally good care of us for a few days; then they conscripted us into their ranks. We were told that what we were doing was for the good of the United States, and that we should help them out in any way that we could, so we did.” He took another spoonful of tortellini, chewed it down, and continued. He had all of their attention now.
