“It’s not that,” Sandy said. The red marks around her eyes weren’t nearly as pronounced in her as they were in others, but like many, she had contracted the virus and had come out the other side. “I’ll be fine,” she swore, trying to sound stronger than she felt.
“I hope so, because ever since these raids, we’ve experienced a near-total shutdown in communication.”
Nobel was talking about most of the equipment they’d been forced to leave behind at both resistance headquarters. Gone were the days when one could fire off an email or a text. If you needed to get a hold of someone beyond shouting distance, you had to rely on a walkie-talkie or a shortwave.
“We’ve managed to get our hands on a couple of sets, mostly donated by ham radio operators in town, but we have to assume whatever we say is being listened to by the cartel. Besides, right now they think the resistance has been fatally crippled and we intend to keep them believing that.”
“What about using a code of some kind?” Sandy replied, for a moment forgetting her personal discomfort.
Nobel didn’t look impressed. Probably because she’d already thought of that. “If you’re going to suggest some kind of substitution cypher―”
Sandy lowered herself into a chair as two others passed through the room with two-by-fours and a pair of hammers. It seemed that everyone was pitching in to make this location as secure as possible. “I was thinking more about the Navajo.”
“Navajo? I don’t follow you.” The clipboard fell to Nobel’s hip.
“Not long ago, Walter was telling me how during the Second World War the government used people they called code talkers. See, soldiers kept dying because the Japanese had broken our communication codes, so someone up the military chain started thinking outside the box. They hired Navajo Indians as radio operators and taught them a simple code using their own native language. There weren’t many of them, but it was a code the enemy was never able to crack.”
“Tahoma is Navajo, isn’t he?” Nobel asked, intrigued.
“I believe he is, and I’m sure there are others in town. People who survived the plague and hate the cartel enough to help us.”
“Problem is, Tahoma is in the field, planning an operation.”
“Already? I thought you said we should lie low.”
“That’s right. But we also need resources, food, water, weapons and ammo.” Nobel moved over to a table they’d taken from the lunch room and set up here as a kind of staging area. “I already have Brooke and Caleb planting caches around town, which is why I need you to find Tahoma and get him working on recruiting more Navajo still in the area.” The eraser went back between Nobel’s teeth. “When Europeans first arrived in the New World as settlers, the weather was harsh and many of the early colonists perished. They were ill prepared, sometimes turning to cannibalism when the situation became particularly desperate.”
“You’re starting to sound like Walter,” Sandy said.
A voice from another room said, “I heard that.” Balancing on his crutches, Walter poked his head in and grinned. He was drafting defenses for their new home.
The two women turned back to look at one another.
“They nearly all died,” Nobel said. “Until they learned to utilize every resource at their disposal. Overcoming our inherent blindness and ego. It’s a powerful lesson. Thank you for helping me remember.”
Sandy smiled. Rising to her feet, she marveled at Nobel’s ability to inspire those around her.
Twenty minutes later, she was on a bike, heading on a dangerous mission into town to find Tahoma. But before that, she would stop by the pharmacy on Coronado to get some much-needed answers.
Chapter 20
Zach
After their narrow escape, Zach had never imagined he would set foot inside the community college again. With a shovel in hand, he hadn’t returned looking for discarded gear or weapons. Those, he knew, were long gone, pillaged by Fernando’s men just as ancient armies had done for thousands of years. Didn’t seem to matter how many days ticked off the calendar, human nature could always be relied on to never change.
He came to a dead body, which he nudged with the toe of his boot. A rat the size of a domestic cat emerged from out of the shadows, hissing through a pair of ragged teeth. Zach fed it some shovel.
The body next to the now-dead rat belonged to one of the cartel enforcers. He was lying behind a classroom door. His own men must have missed him as they stripped the place of anything worthwhile, including their own dead. Rigor mortis had already set in, along with the kind of nasty smell that made the hairs in your nose practically sizzle.
But I didn’t come here for this, did I? Zach told himself as he strolled down the empty hallways, the heels of his heavy boots drumming a steady rhythm. A rhythm made earlier by machine-gun fire and the screams of the dying. No, he’d come here for Colton. To pay his final respects and to keep the scavengers from performing any further desecration on his son’s body.
Making his way toward the sports complex―the location of the resistance’s medical ward―Zach counted more than ten more dead, many of them Rangers or fighters under Nobel’s banner. These had been left behind, a sight which conjured deep memories. His mind flashed to coming awake in that medical tent in Canon Ridge, alone and surrounded by dozens of decaying bodies. Only the very lucky could hope for a decent burial.
Halfway to the complex, Zach stopped and turned around, realizing there was something else he had to check on first. He retraced his steps until he reached the college’s front entrance and the doors, which had been blown clean off their hinges. From there he descended the staircase which had once led to Nobel’s headquarters, the central nervous system of her operation. Zach stepped over burned bodies and into a large empty room. Burn barrels gave evidence that she’d tried to destroy as much secret information as she could, although none of this was what he had come looking for. He searched around for a little longer before spotting the open closet and the staircase. Seeing it, he breathed a slow sigh of relief. There were a few other bodies in here, but none of the distended figures resembled Sandy or Nobel. They had made it out, it seemed, and he hoped he would find them soon.
With that bit of business taken care of, Zach proceeded back toward the sports complex and the retrieval of Colton’s body.
Nearly there, his nose registered the smell of pool chlorine right as he heard the sound of feet thudding along an empty corridor. He could tell they belonged to someone heavy-set, but more importantly, he could tell they were alone. Shifting the shovel to his left hand, Zach drew his pistol and crept forward. The steps seemed to be moving back and forth.
Clomp, clomp, stop. Clomp, clomp, stop.
He eased into the open space of the Agora and saw a figure in a dark jacket, tearing something off dead bodies with the edge of a knife. Ladies and gentlemen, we got a sicko on our hands, Zach thought. A real nutcase right here in Encendido, taking trophies off of dead heroes. His first instinct was to empty the magazine into him and leave him here to rot, but before he could extend his arm, the sicko twisted around, the barrel of a pistol in his hand.
“Zach?” the gruff voice asked.
“Caesar?” came the equally puzzled reply. “I thought you and your crew were dead.”
“Same here,” Caesar shot back. “Only, you’re half right. Eleven of us came this way to protect the wounded and only five made it out.” In Caesar’s knife hand was a stack of Bandidos patches. “Ain’t no way I can bury my brothers. Most of ’em got too fat to even be carried out.” He erupted in a bout of phlegmy, sardonic laughter. Even under normal conditions, it sounded as though a lug nut was rattling around inside Caesar’s lungs. “I came back to honor them in the only way I knew how. Maybe when all this is over, I’ll dig a hole in a quiet spot and lay them to rest.”
“I think they’d like that,” Zach replied. “Seems you and I didn’t get off on the greatest of starts. Maybe I was too quick to judge.”
“Not a problem, bro
ther. Takes a bigger man to admit he ain’t perfect.”
“Guess you could say I’ve learned that lesson the hard way,” Zach said, holstering his weapon.
Caesar eyed the shovel he was carrying over his shoulder. “You here to reclaim your son?”
Zach nodded, switching the shovel to the other side. “Something like that. Maybe I’m really here to tell him I’m sorry in the only way I can.”
“Well, I’ll be glad to lend a hand, if you need one.”
“Appreciate that.”
They reached the infirmary and grimaced from the odor. Seemed like anyone who was too sick or too wounded to be carted off under their own power had been executed. Colton’s body was in the makeshift morgue on the other side. With great care, Zach and Caesar carried him out a back exit which led to a tract of discolored grass. Zach dug the grave and when he was done, both of them lowered Colton inside. A few words were said before they filled it in, each man pushing with his hands until all that was visible was a small mound.
Zach patted it down with the shovel and wiped his hands against the legs of his jeans. “So where are your men holed up?”
“Bungalow two miles east of here. You?”
“Travis and Dannyboy are on the west side of town.”
“You three were all that made it out?” Caesar said, shocked.
“Those Brigade boys don’t mess around. Which is why I’m going to enjoy killing them so much more.”
Caesar smiled in agreement. “Situation’s not looking good, brother. We ain’t got nothing that can stand toe to toe with the kind of heavy weaponry Fernando’s professional soldiers are packing. You ask me, we may need to reach out to the 158th.”
Zach squinted, not sure he heard Caesar correctly. “What do you mean?”
“US soldiers, brother. A company of ’em are holed up thirty miles from here. We passed by one of their patrols on our way down to Encendido. Told us they couldn’t help cause they were on some sort of important mission. You ask me, they’d all gone a little mad. But you shoulda seen the hardware they were packing.”
“Hardware?”
“Yes, brother. Humvees jacked with machine guns, mortars. I’ll bet they even got a tank somewhere in there.”
“Inside their base?” Zach felt like was dreaming. For a moment, Caesar sounded like someone out of a Cheech and Chong movie and this whole conversation nothing more than a drug-induced hallucination.
That was exactly the kind of firepower they needed to kick the cartel back across the border. But if Caesar knew about it, then maybe Fernando did too. With the fog of imaginary reefer starting to clear, the real question was beginning to come into focus. If the tools for their salvation were really out there, the question was, who would get to them first?
Chapter 21
Major Gruber
Major Gruber understood that Forward Operating Base Zulu was not your typical military installation. That it had once been Big Jim’s Truck Stop, owned and operated by Jim Franks, an overweight lout who liked cheap cigars and cheaper women, was only part of the reason. Back when this whole virus mess first started, Big Jim had thought he had come down with a cold. But twenty-four hours later, he’d turned up dead, along with so many others.
Located along Interstate 10, east of Benson and north of Tombstone, Zulu protected a vital corridor into southern Tucson. It was also the spot Colonel Upton had ordered Gruber and Company C of the 158th Infantry Battalion―otherwise known as the Bushmasters―to set up camp. Before leaving, the Colonel’s final act had been to promote Gruber from captain to major. Although he had remained stoic throughout the impromptu ceremony, Gruber couldn’t help thinking of the way gladiators had once greeted their emperor from inside the arena: “We who are about to die salute you.”
At the time of C Company’s deployment, the cities had become cesspools of virulent infection. Their orders were to stop civilians from breaking the quarantine, which meant no one was allowed in or out.
Surrounded by desert on all sides, the truck stop proved an ideal location. First, the tanks of gas and diesel were half full. That meant they wouldn’t need to rely on unpredictable army supply lines in order to keep their vehicles fueled and ready to move. Another benefit was the nearby motel which housed many of Gruber’s men as well as the garage where vehicles could be repaired. Added to that was the diner which was easily converted into a mess hall and the dozen or so eighteen-wheelers abandoned in the parking lot they could loot for any supplies they might need.
Unlike the firebases Gruber had been stationed at in Afghanistan, Zulu was not surrounded by Hesco bastions―enclosures filled with earth. They didn’t have the equipment for such an involved defense. Instead, Gruber had opted to convert key rooftops into firing platforms, reinforced with sandbags and .50 caliber machine guns. He had also ordered additional strong points created throughout the area, a sort of defense in depth. Should anyone be foolish enough to attack them, they could repel the invaders from the forward line, retreating to an inner defensive ring if the need arose. But unlike his tours in the Middle East, he didn’t really anticipate many firefights being on the menu.
Colonel Upton had told them to stay put and maintain radio silence. Relief orders would be coming soon, he assured them. That had been two months ago.
Gruber certainly wasn’t one to disobey orders, wasn’t usually one to even question them, but as the days passed with no word, he began to lose hope. Fights broke out among his men. Soldiers refused to wear their biohazard suits. A week into their mission, the traffic attempting to leave Tucson had gone from a flood to barely a trickle. The eerie feeling was something Gruber would never forget, as though a giant hand had clamped down on a water spout and twisted it shut. But Gruber and many of the 150 soldiers under his command understood the dire implications. It was not that civilians had finally received a memo that the I-10 was blocked. It was that most of the population in Tucson were dead.
By the second week of their mission, soldiers began to desert. In the beginning the numbers were small, one or two, many of them leaving handwritten notes about returning to be with families or to find loved ones. By week three, the number of soldiers who had gone AWOL doubled. By week four, they had stopped leaving notes altogether. Major Gruber set up sentries to stop them, but by morning, sometimes even they were gone. In the end, his once proud company of over one hundred and fifty soldiers had been reduced to just twenty-five loyal men. Even a stickler like Gruber could not entirely blame them. The protection of loved ones during a crisis was an irresistible force for anyone. It was hardly a surprise then that, like Gruber, those who remained were largely estranged from their families. Although perhaps for those who stayed, C Company was the only family they had ever known. The same week they had been reduced to twenty-five men, PFC Culver, a rake-thin nineteen-year-old with a face full of acne, suggested they no longer call themselves ‘Bushmasters’―a name they had taken on more than a century before during the Spanish-American war. Gruber asked him what should replace it. Culver’s answer was short and rather poignant. “The Lost Boys,” he had said.
Gruber had nodded, his lips pursed as he stood deep in thought. “I like it,” he said at last. And from then on the new name stuck.
By week eight, Gruber’s thinking was beginning to change. They had not seen a desertion in weeks, nor had they heard a peep from Colonel Upton. Ever the optimist, Gruber made his daily visit to what was once a convenience store and now served as his command center and communications facility.
Private Vega was his radio operator and also a devoutly religious young man who sometimes fell asleep perched over his bed, his hands locked in prayer. Gruber admired his devotion, but sometimes wondered if the boy’s zeal blinded him.
Vega was rolling the dial back and forth, vying for a signal.
“Anything yet?” Gruber asked, hopeful.
“The usual ham operators clogging the airwaves, but not much else.”
“What about the 26th?” Gruber asked. He w
as referring to a battalion in the 26th Infantry division they had contacted up in New Hampshire a few days ago, although they too were merely a shadow of their former selves and lacked any ability and probably any desire to link up with Gruber’s unit.
“They’re spread out all over the country,” Vega said, barely hiding his disappointment. “And they didn’t know a thing about Colonel Upton. Nor have they heard anything from Centcom.” The two men looked at one another. Vega’s finger went to the cross around his neck. “You think they bit the big one like everyone else?”
Gruber shook his head. He didn’t want to believe that the US military could have completely disintegrated.
“Have Carmichael and Burrows returned?” he asked, ignoring Vega’s unanswerable question. In the last few days, the major had been sending out scouting parties looking for Upton or signs of the other companies from the 158th. They had gone as far as Tucson and found a city littered with skeletons, bleached in the scalding desert sun. Pushing further in, they had come under fire and been forced to withdraw. In many cases, this wasn’t the Wild West. It was something else. Something far worse.
Although Gruber wasn’t ready to admit it, their little oasis along I-10 was not going to last forever. It was only a question of time before their supplies ran out. If Colonel Upton and whatever remained of his command were still MIA, what would happen then? He’d already broken orders by telling Vega to reach Upton on the radio, but the only response had been heavy and unending static. Gruber refused to believe the military was no more. Be that as it may, he had given his word that he would never abandon his post and that was a promise he intended to keep.
Chapter 22
Dale
Defiance: Judgment Day (The Defending Home Series Book 3) Page 11
