by JT Sawyer
“Well, this seems like another good reason to recon the prison like you mentioned,” said Shane. “And I have just the team in mind.”
Duncan rested his hands on the table ready to OK the request but reluctantly looked back at Lavine for the final go-ahead.
The sec-def nodded. “Shane and his team will head to the prison. The rest of you I want poring over the routes from the prison to the dam. Get back to me with a full tactical assessment of our options and countermeasures for defense of that region. I will be in my office configuring our manpower, fuel, and resources.” He placed his hands on his hips and craned his neck back to look at the image of Grand Coulee. “It looks like we’re back to open warfare with our own kind again over resources and geography.”
While the others flowed out of the room, Carlie moved to the front beside Duncan and Lavine. “I’d like to take a small recon team to Yakima, which is ninety miles away from the prison. That’s the region Eliza was holed up in a few months ago in early winter. She described that group as being well-versed in the lay of the land there—it might provide us with a forward staging area or at least locals who know the routes between there and the dam.”
The two men looked at the region on the map and then towards each other. “With Shane’s group departing, I don’t have the resources to muster a full recon op until our other helos are back in from their sweeps for research equipment around the west coast.”
“I wouldn’t need a full ground element—just one helo for six of us.” She inserted herself between the two, pointing her finger at Yakima. “If the group from the prison is headed north, then the route through Yakima is going to be of significant strategic value as it’s the only primary road heading to the dam. That mountain encampment of survivors would provide an excellent resistance force of guerrilla fighters if we can convince them to join us.”
Lavine exhaled and ran a hand through his wavy silver hair. “Alright, but keep in close contact with Duncan and coordinate any efforts there with our troop movements headed to the dam. This is going to be a hasty operation if we’re to fortify that facility.”
***
Two hours later, Carlie passed Shane in the hallway as he headed to the airfield. “You just had to jump at the opportunity to go recon the prison, didn’t you?” she said with a grin.
“Duty calls.” He paused and looked softly into her eyes. “I guess Matias is with you again. Looks like they’re short on chopper pilots with all the other helo crews out along the west coast.”
“Yep.” Her mind was racing, overwhelmed by a barely contained flood of passion constrained by the walls of her trepidation. Her thoughts were foggy and she struggled to convey her feelings from their previous encounter.
Shane tugged on the shoulder strap of his pack and nodded, looking down at the floor and then back up. “I’ll see you soon, eh.”
As he walked away, she abruptly grabbed his shirt sleeve. “Hey, you, uh, get back here in one piece, OK.” He let out a half-smile and squeezed her hand then turned, walking away through the dimly lit corridor.
Carlie pressed her back against the concrete wall, thrusting her hands in her pockets and shaking her head as she let out a sigh. Why couldn’t I say something—tell him what I feel and really want? Why did this have to be so damn hard? He was right there—a foot away from me! She bit her lower lip and squinted. Screw these feelings. I don’t need this right now. I’ve got a mission to prep for—another mission. She stood upright and threw her shoulders back, then stomped off in the opposite direction back towards the armory. For crying out loud, get your head in the game, Carlie—back into something you’re good at—focus on the op ahead. She stopped dead in her tracks, her cheeks flushing, then turned and looked down the hallway that Shane had just disappeared into. I should tell him, now, just grab him and throw my arms around his neck. What if we don’t see each other again—if something happens? He’ll never know and… She balled her fists as her shoulders tensed. This is bullshit—get it together! Things aren’t like they used to be in more carefree days—you’ve got a job to do and a team to lead. Now get your shit wired tight for crying out loud.
She pivoted back around and stormed down the hallway, resuming her former direction to the armory as the furious sound of her boots resounded off the walls.
Chapter 16
In a detached warehouse at the rear of the prison grounds in Walla Walla, Jimmy Pulaski was completing the removal of the cylindrical back section of a large fuel truck obtained from the recent outpost attack. His work crew had spent the previous day draining the eighteen-wheeler of its precious payload and mopping up the interior. With the 8600-gallon tanker dried out and the insides rubbed down with fire retardant to eliminate the risk of igniting any residual vapors, Pulaski was confident he could safely cut away the rear panel.
He stood on a ladder above the tank he was going to modify. His leather-gloved hands gripped a portable chop saw whose abrasive metal-cutting blade was slicing through the thick walls of the tanker, the storm of sparks cascading onto the cement below. With only two feet of metal left to cut through, he paused, pulling up his tinted helmet to call over five men who were inspecting recently acquired rifles.
“This section is nearly ready to come off. Brace the underside with your hands and get ready to lower it once I make the final cut. And fellas, keep your fucking eyes closed.”
After the burly crew was in place, he flipped his helmet down and continued cutting, the blade shrieking as it slowly tore through the smoking layer of metal. As the last few inches disappeared the men below grunted and strained, lowering the six-foot-diameter section to the ground, the metal clanking against the cement like a church bell.
Pulaski stepped down from the ladder. He placed the heavy saw on a rolling workbench and then removed his protective equipment. The short man’s black hair was matted and greasy from sweat. He dragged a filthy rag across his forehead and peered inside the rear like he was examining the mouth of a metal eel.
A skinny man in his mid-twenties clad in a jean jacket moved alongside him. “What you gonna do with this now, chief?”
“The colonel wants me to weld in a steel baffle separating the last two-thirds of the cylinder from the front part where the fuel will go then insulate the inside so it’s soundproof. After that, I’ll put in a separate entrance hatch at the bottom and conceal it with a panel of gauges.”
“Then what?”
“What do you mean, ‘then what’? How the hell should I know—I didn’t ask the old man. I just do what he says so I can continue enjoying solid food each night.”
Pulaski went back to the workbench and swigged down half a liter of water then donned his gear again. “You guys scribe the metal section we just removed onto a flat piece of steel. I’ll cut that out next and shape it to fit the interior.”
Chapter 17
Crowley Homestead, 119 Miles Northwest of the Prison
Jonas Crowley was hauling a bucket of water from the spring as the sun stretched its plum-orange fingers across the eastern meadows of his ranch. The immense spread of fields bordered by conifer trees had been in his family for four generations and occupied a stretch of sparsely populated landscape in the highlands of south-central Washington. Despite the hard times his community of survivors had faced in the months that followed the pandemic, they had managed to fortify their location and hold on through the onslaught of winter, tending to the needs of their twenty-three members. Crowley’s crops provided a mainstay for their group and the self-reliant nature of the other ranchers from adjoining areas had enabled them to adapt easier to the pioneer-like conditions of this new era. He had heard about the stronghold at Fort Lewis—some of the people in the surrounding communities had retreated there during the early days of the pandemic—but Crowley was determined to stick it out at his ranch with its ample resources and isolated location.
He placed the dripping bucket down on the leaf-strewn ground and wiped the sleeve of his Carhart jacket across the
frost-encrusted whiskers around his mouth. He kept glancing back at the treeline, wondering why there were no ravens cawing with their usual irritating ruckus. The forest was still, harboring its own secrets as his senses strained to plumb the dark interior.
Crowley had worked his range most of his six decades, being yanked away for a few years during Vietnam. The elements scouring his face for so many decades had left an indelible print upon his furrowed cheeks, which resembled a piece of driftwood. As he lifted the galvanized steel bucket, he slid back his Remington shotgun, the handmade leather strap resuming its place over his shoulder.
He trudged along the snow-encrusted trail leading to the main two-story house. He gazed upon the surrounding hills whose morning fog was beginning to dissipate in the stabbing rays of sunlight. The barn to his right held a dozen horses that they used for negotiating the countryside, saving the precious fuel in their two trucks for occasional forays further out. He saw the faint shapes of two teenagers inside the barn as they flitted hay around the stalls while an older man outside was busy skinning three squirrels that he’d just removed from wire snares behind the building.
Next to the immense gable-roofed structure was a large plankboard building that served as the blacksmith forge and tool shop. A steady rivulet of smoke rose from the chimney as Norm, his oldest son, was inside feeding the forge for fashioning small utilitarian knives from rebar.
Behind the blacksmith area was a smaller home that had once served as temporary housing for ranch hands. Now it housed three families that had sought refuge during the early days of the virus. Crowley could hear the faint murmurings of the children inside being rustled awake by their parents to start their daily chores. Life had returned to the days of his youth when he had worked his fingers raw, trying to wrest a living from an unforgiving landscape that always sought to reclaim what you had just taken.
As he walked up the steps of his own two-story house to the left, silver vapors of moisture puffed out from his thin lips. He walked around to the front of the wraparound porch and was met by his grandson, Jake, a stocky man who had just turned twenty-one.
“Here, I’ll get that for you,” said the young man, reaching for the bucket. “Grandma said that she needs some kindling to get the woodstove in the kitchen going. I need to help at the barn or I’d get it myself.”
“I reckon that’s the only way we’ll get breakfast this morning. People gonna get ornery if they don’t get any coffee, eh,” he said with a faint smile as he nodded at his grandson. “Tell her I just gotta look in on the chickens and get some fresh eggs, then I’ll be right back with that wood.”
Crowley stepped towards the railing and loosened a few buttons on his jacket. The walk up from the spring had broken off the morning chill and he hardly felt the forty-degree temperature. He arched back to stretch his shoulders and caught sight of two women heading into the treeline with their bows. No birds sang as the women approached the forest. They were two sisters from a few miles away whose ranch had been lost early on to marauders. Now, they were the deer hunters who often brought back fresh venison to replenish their stores of smoked meat.
Crowley looked at the two women disappearing into the thick forest and thought he saw them stagger and fall but the woods were still too foggy to be certain—maybe they had just slipped on a wet, moss-covered log. Before he could step off the porch to investigate, he was pushed back and felt his midsection reel in pain as two rounds pierced his abdomen, the blood saturating his tawny canvas jacket. He sputtered out a partial yell before collapsing to his knees, wondering where the shots had emanated from. Crowley heard more rounds shattering the window behind him and screams from his wife inside.
The man skinning squirrels by the barn was the first to rush up to him only to suffer the same fate as a round to the head sent him crashing back through the front window. Seconds seemed like minutes to Crowley as he slumped on his side, trying to unsling his shotgun. He heard others running out of the buildings and taking up defensive positions or trying to get to him while the shrieks of frightened children filled the morning air. As gunshots echoed out from the dwellings around him, he heard the rumble of a vehicle and saw a black armored truck roll into the meadow a hundred yards away. Men in army fatigues raced around the back, opening the heavy doors. Crowley raised himself up on one arm, his hands slipping on the blood-covered porch. He saw a black stream of fifty or more flesh-hungry monsters pouring out of the trucks led by several fast-moving mutants. Within minutes the creatures made their way to the main ranch, and he could hear the screams of his people slowing being snuffed out by distant gunfire or the mutants quickly taking down his fighters in front.
He felt the color draining from his face and he collapsed again on his side. As he struggled to stay conscious, the pain searing his belly, he saw a yellow-faced mutant bound onto the porch by his feet. It looked down at him and hissed then reached for his leg. It paused when the front door swung open and his grandson appeared. Crowley used his final bit of life force to raise his shotgun up and blast the beast in the chest, sending it backwards off the railing into a mud puddle.
His grandson dragged him into the house and propped him against an antique bookcase. He saw the slumped, bullet-riddled body of his wife in the living room, her eyes still open, looking his way but without the sparkle he had known for so many years. He clutched his grandson’s jacket. “You need to get everyone out of here, Jake,” Crowley said, his voice reduced to a whisper as his throat filled with blood. “Go out the back game trails. We can’t stay and fight…too many...too many.”
With the mantle of responsibility passed unexpectedly to him through his grandfather’s last breath, Jake grabbed his rifle and ran to the back porch. He yanked a survival pack from a shelf and checked behind the house. He saw two girls by the far edge of the barn, twin sisters clinging to their lifeless parents. He bolted out the door and ran towards them, slamming the butt of his Winchester into the head of a lone zombie. Not slowing his stride, he reached the edge of the barn, scooping up the eight-year-old girls and kept running for the treeline. He ran and ran, his legs powered by the words of his grandfather and the echo of the last few screams filling the burning homestead behind him.
***
It was early afternoon when the last of the undead were shot by Mitchell’s men. The two remaining mutants were rounded up using the remote control device and loaded back into the armored truck. Mitchell drove to the main house to inspect the results of his handiwork. He got out and sauntered up the steps, leaning his hands against the door frame and peering inside as his goons gathered behind him. “This might make a nice summer home one day—I like the earth tones on the dining room walls.” His men hung on his every word, dissecting them for hidden meaning, unsure if he was being sarcastic again, straightforward, or sputtering something riddled with metaphor.
As Mitchell dragged his soiled boot across Crowley’s blood-spattered jacket near the doorway, a gangly man with thick chin whiskers came up beside him. “Colonel, everything’s secure. The place is ours.”
Mitchell stood silent, issuing a nod then taking in the quaint living room and antique furniture. “Alright, bring up the trucks with the rest of the alpha teams. Tell the men to make themselves at home here tonight. I’ll brief them shortly on their role in the upcoming assault.”
The wispy man glanced around at all the supplies being ransacked from the homes and barn by the constant trickle of Mitchell’s men. “Looks like one more threat to overall security in the region has been removed from the picture, eh.”
Mitchell opened his shirt pocket under his thick wool coat, prying out a single stick of Beeman’s gum. He unwrapped it and slid the gray wedge into his mouth. As he chewed, he looked back at the ravaged meadow that was strewn with corpses. “Oh, they were no threat, least of all to us—just peaceful ranchers trying to forge a new life for themselves.” He chewed vigorously, glancing down at a severed arm on the porch. “However, make no mistake, they were in the path to
our main target and I didn’t want to waste time on a surrender speech—and why they should think about their kids’ futures—and then give ’em two hours to pack up, blah, blah, blah.” He leaned forward to spit the gum out onto Crowley’s chest. “This was a helluva lot easier and I’m all about easy these days. Besides, this was a good test run for our new fighting tactics.”
Jeffers came up from the rear section of the walkaround porch. “Do you want me to radio back to the prison for the rest of the men to prepare to depart for the dam tomorrow?”
“I’m going to head back there right now and will speak with them when I arrive. In the meantime, have this place cleaned up and these disgusting bodies burned—this place just reeks.”
Chapter 18
The helicopter with Shane’s team glided in just over the treeline, flying map-of-earth until they set down in a tiny valley eight miles out from the prison in Walla Walla.
This would provide them with enough distance to not draw attention to their arrival but just close enough where they wouldn’t have a major mountaineering trek to make. Under previous wartime conditions, Shane would have preferred a HALO jump instead which would have put them much closer. However only a handful of guys on his team were so qualified and they didn’t have all the hardware they needed for such an operation. They were back to using footpower as so many campaigns throughout history had been waged.
As the helo set down, Shane jumped out of the side door, his camo-white jacket fluttering under the rotor wash. He headed to a small cluster of spruce trees a hundred yards away, followed by the five other operators. It had been a long time since he had done a mission without Matias by his side and he already felt his friend’s absence. The rest of his team had proven themselves on countless missions during the past months and he knew each one was solid in their technical abilities, physical prowess, and specific expertise. Shane had gone back to the groundwork he learned in the SEALs by having each person on his team cross-trained in a wide set of medical and fighting skills along with comms, urban warfare methods, and survival techniques. With Jared’s help he had also added in a component of lockpicking, vehicle acquisition skills, and electronic security hacking. In the past two months they had all trained hard at Fort Lewis and sweated profusely on missions, gelling into what felt like, at times, a single-celled organism and forming an example for other teams of how to structure their own internal training.
