El Paso Under Attack - 01

by Michael Clary

  “Well, they didn’t,” said Georgie. “The military has a lot of toys that can detect that sort of thing.”

  “How does the public feel about all this?” asked Dudley. “Hard to believe they aren’t freaking out.”

  “They are…but, they can’t prove anything yet. So far, the military has kept all civilians far away from the borders and the open space in between. Only a few reporters have managed to get any kind of footage.”

  “What kind of footage?” I asked.

  “One that was real bad was a woman at the fence begging to be let in and getting a rifle shoved in her face as an answer. There was also another that showed something trying to cross in the desert. Whether alive or dead…it was shot to hell.”

  “How upset would you say the public is?” I asked.

  “On a scale of one to ten…I’d say about ten,” answered Georgie. If they were upset before, they’re good and pissed now. Riots are breaking out in Washington. Smaller riots are breaking out around the fences. People are really up in arms. It’s all the news is talking about. Even other countries are going nuts over the way we are dealing with our own people. It’s so bad, that the military brought in some helicopters to patrol over the open spaces with the hummers. They’re worried about some kind of underground railroad thing starting up.”

  “Well that explains the helicopters that you saw.”

  Yeah it does and I was glad that the civilians were causing problems. It was nice to know that the people outside of El Paso cared about those of us stuck inside.

  “How many civilians are gathering around the gates?” I asked Georgie.

  “About a hundred, they aren’t really at the fence though. The military keeps them about a mile away. None of the civilians and none of the reporters are aloud any closer than that.”

  “This is good,” I replied with a smile. I had a plan…kind of.

  “Tell him how famous he is,” said Lucy.

  “Yeah…Jax, you’re getting pretty popular out there in the real world.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Everyone’s talking about you man. You’re all over the news. We’ve been watching online. Your reputation has spread. Some of them are hailing you as some kind of savior, a few of them think you’re just a red neck with a rifle, but most of them think you’re make-believe.”

  “It’s important that you don’t start believing the hype Jax,” added Tito. “We don’t want to follow you if you’re going to do something risky.”

  “Whatever,” I replied. “How popular would you say I am Georgie?”

  “Whenever they mention the zombie outbreak, they mention you right along with it. Like I said, they’re curious about who you are and if you’re real or not. There have been some artist renderings of what you must have looked like during some of your battles. I even saw an entire cartoon play out that showed how you saved Ivana.”

  “You’re bigger than Mickey,” said Lucy with a laugh.

  “This is very good. I wanna meet my fans,” I said with bravado. “Let’s make that happen. You said there were about a hundred people at the fences…lets increase those numbers. Get on the computers and start typing. I want thousands of people at those fences by tomorrow afternoon. I want them to storm past where the military is keeping them and I want them right at the border.”

  “How are we going to do that?” asked Tito.

  “You’re going to get on the internet and ask them to go there,” I replied. “Duh.”

  “Why would they go and do that?” said Georgie. “They’ll get arrested.”

  “They’ll do it, because we are going to meet them there,” I said with no trace of a smile. “It’s time for us to leave. This is our stand. We are going to those gates and the military is going to have to choose whether or not they are going to shoot us or let us out and they’re going to have to do it with the entire world watching…so make sure the reporters have their cameras.”

  “Shit,” said Dudley. “That might work. With the world watching, they may be forced to let us out. We should also post that we will voluntarily allow ourselves to be quarantined for the safety of others. It will make the military look real fucking bad if they don’t let us out.”

  “It won’t work,” said Tito. “If we move everyone here, we’ll attract the wrong kind of attention. Even if we make it to the fence, that entire horde of zombies will be right behind us. The military wouldn’t be able to open the gate even if they wanted to.”

  “I guess we’ll have to split them up.” I answered. “We’ll divide into two groups. I’ll take most of the fighters with me, and someone can take all the non-fighters in another group. My group can make a lot of noise…get the bulk of the horde to follow us. As soon as the non-fighter group is safe, my group can zig and zag until we lose the zombies and then we can head for the border as well.”

  “That would work, said Dudley. “It’s not exactly difficult to get them to follow. We could even have the non-fighters head for the Las Cruces border and the decoy group can head for the Santa Teresa border after they ditch the zombies.”

  “Everyone in favor of this plan raise your hand,” I announced.

  Everyone but Tito raised their hands.

  “Something on your mind Tito?” I asked.

  “I don’t like the way you forced us to take action. You took it upon yourself to make certain decisions that led us to this point. I would like to have waited for outside help. Now, I have to make a run for it. I agree that it’s the only plan available, I’m just not happy that I wasn’t more involved with the decisions that led us here.”

  “We knew that we’d have to leave eventually,” said Georgie. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

  “You could always stay here in protest Tito,” added Dudley.

  We all laughed at this. Tito didn’t appreciate it, but we couldn’t help ourselves.

  “I want you all to start raising hell on those computers,” I ordered. “And don’t stop till we hit the road tomorrow morning.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Tito.

  “I’m gonna make a speech,” I answered.

  The survivors were waiting for me when I got outside. Tito and Georgie were right behind me instead of working on the computers. I hopped up on top of a pickup truck and everyone surrounded me. Merrick began to whine, and someone lifted her up to join me. I looked out over the sea of faces and for a moment I froze. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I finally took a deep breath and began.

  “By tomorrow afternoon this safe zone will no longer be safe. It will be crawling with the dead and they number around ten thousand.” The crowd gave an almost collective gasp. They even turned their heads around to look at one another as if they weren’t quite sure that I said what I just said. I waited for a moment and just let the panic and urgency sink in. “The good news is…we will no longer be here. Tomorrow morning, we make our move. Tomorrow morning, we make a run for the gates with the entire world watching. The military will be either forced to let us pass, or they will be forced to shoot us.”

  “How did the crowd react to that?”

  Some of them began to cheer, others began to panic.

  “Listen to me. I’m not forcing anyone to follow me, if you want to make a run for it on your own, that’s your choice. But the dead are coming. Eventually, they will find you. There is no long term solution if we remain in this city. Eventually, we will die. Now is as good a time as any to take our chance. The world is outraged at us being abandoned and forced to stay in this city. The military will have to let us out. I know that some of you came here so that you wouldn’t have to run anymore and I know that some of you came here in search of a safe place to hide. Unfortunately, there is no safe place in this city. Our only chance for survival is to leave. This is our moment, this is our time and this is our chance. Tomorrow morning we will show the world that we have had enough. Who’s with me?”

  This time, there were a lot more cheers. They were afraid,
who in their right mind wouldn’t be? Yet, they were with me. That was the important thing. They were with me.

  “Did you expect them to be with you?”

  I didn’t expect anything. I didn’t know what they would say. It would be fair of me to point out that not everybody was happy. In the world we live in, that’s relatively impossible. Some of them were far from being happy.

  I let Tito go over all the details. I had nothing left to say. Tito likes that kind of thing anyway. Maybe he’d even smooth things out with those who were upset, or maybe he’d just add fuel to the fire and agree with them that I’m an asshole. Who knows, but it did make me a little nervous that he was hanging out with Calvin.

  “Was Calvin trying to turn the survivors against you?”

  I wouldn’t have put that past him, but the way I figured things, people had to do what they felt was right. I don’t believe in forcing others to do what I think needs to be done. I simply do what I think is right and those that want to follow me are more than welcome. If the survivors all chose to do something else, I wasn’t about to try and stop them. I would simply continue with my plan.

  I was never able to grab that shower or grab any sleep. I spent the rest of the night helping others prepare.

  “Mentally or physically?”

  Both, some of them needed help with their weapons. Some of them need help packing. Some needed words of encouragement. The worst of them were the kids without parents. They were scared to death. I tried to give them a little pep talk, and I’d find them a family to hook up with so they wouldn’t feel so alone.

  “It sounds somewhat draining.”

  It was.

  He doesn’t elaborate, he doesn’t need to. It’s obvious that the man was worried and along with that worry is a very serious dose of self-doubt. It’s probably the same reason that he doesn’t force his ideas upon anyone. He’s not completely sure that he’s right. Of course this is just conjecture. It’s nothing he ever said. It’s just the vibe I get from him on occasion.

  As the night wore down, I pulled Dudley off the computers to help Georgie and I arrange the two groups. It didn’t work as well as we had hoped. In fact, our plan went out the window almost immediately. We wanted the fighters in one group and the non-fighters in another, but there were only about fifty fighters with experience in firearms and some of these men and women had families. We couldn’t ask them to split up.

  It took hours to sort it out. In the end, we still had two groups split as evenly as we could make them. The fighters were also divided almost equally in both groups.

  “Didn’t that ruin your plan of using your group to distract the zombies?”

  Not really. We just put a few nimble vehicles to the side and I let Georgie take charge of the group I was going to lead. The vehicles we pulled aside consisted of my Jeep, and two small trucks with four-wheel drive. Our job was to distract the zombies while both of the main groups headed for the borders.

  “So the job of the three vehicles was to provide a distraction while the main groups reached the border gates and after they were safe, you’d ditch the zombies and join them?”

  Exactly, it wasn’t our original plan, but for all I knew it might even work a little better. At the very least, it gave a greater number of people a chance to make it to the border gates without being attacked by a large group of zombies.

  “Who did you pick to drive the Jeep and two trucks?”

  Dudley, me and a guy named Jack who also happened to own one of the trucks. We put an experienced shooter in the back of each truck. They alone had orders to fire whenever they felt it was needed. My copilot was Merrick. I was hoping that she’d bite anything that grabbed onto my Jeep.

  After all that was organized, Tito came up to me. He’d been supposedly working all night in his efforts to smooth over any problems people were having.

  “Problems with you?”

  That’s what he said when I’d asked him. He was supposed to eventually find his way to a computer and help the others broadcast our escape plans, but instead he informed me that some of the survivors were still upset and the best way he could help would be to smooth things over.

  “Was Calvin with him?”

  Yeah, they were pretty close together whenever I saw them.

  “Were that many survivors upset?”

  Not one single person came to me with any problems. I’m sure many of them were nervous, but nobody was complaining. I’m not sure what he was dealing with. From where I was standing, I definitely had enough support.

  “What did Tito tell you?”

  He said that a lot of the survivors had trust in him and he wanted to be the one that led the second group.

  “How did you feel about that?”

  I didn’t really mind. Like I said, I didn’t see anyone with problems, but just in case, I figured he was as good as anyone else. I really didn’t think Calvin would play into any of this.

  “Did Calvin end up…causing problems?”

  I’ve never talked to Tito about it, but my guess is that he did.

  “So what happened the next morning?”

  The sun broke early and before we knew it, the morning was already getting hot. There was zero humidity in the air and not a lot of clouds. Personally, I prefer the humidity. I know that it makes you sweat some kinda nasty, but at least the sweat somewhat cools you down. This dry desert heat felt a lot like I was beginning to cook. I hated it.

  Kingsley wasn’t happy, I didn’t know if it was because he wasn’t in my group or he was just nervous. He was sitting in a truck and chain smoking. I think I caught him drinking during the night. It looked a lot like the signs of an alcohol binge.

  Jack, Dudley and I were the first out of the gate. There were no zombies in sight, but I was nervous. Not for myself mind you, I was just hoping that my plan was going to work. Too many lives were at stake.

  I should also mention that I had a touch of the shakes. I guzzled an entire thermos full of coffee. I couldn’t remember that last time I got any sleep and I was really dragging my ass. At least until I drank all the coffee. Now I was slightly more awake, but damn near vibrating.

  Tito led his group off towards Las Cruces and Georgie’s group held back somewhat while my three vehicles scouted ahead. My mind was on the Santa Teresa border. I was hoping that the people would show. Everything depended upon the people outside the borders. If they brought their support, the military would be forced to let us through. Without them, we were screwed.

  I thought of my wife. It was something I forced myself not to think about until now. I knew she was safe. That had been enough for me. Now, if I was able to leave the city, I would see her. I knew she’d be worried. I knew she was going to be pissed that I’d put myself into so much danger.

  My wife has the biggest smile that I’ve ever seen on a woman’s face before. I think she reserves it only for me. It’s the kind of smile that brightens up the worst kind of day. I wanted that smile. I knew she would be at the gates. I knew that smile would be waiting for me.

  I was on my way. Damn was it hot. Damn I was tired.

  I think this moment was the scariest part of the entire ordeal. The fact that we were moments away from safety and freedom and any number of things could ruin it for us. There was no way to deal with this kind of anticipation; all we could do was charge head long into whatever destiny lay in wait.

  There weren’t any sightings of massive zombie hordes in the direction of Las Cruces. We figured that Tito’s group had a straight and easy shot. As long as they kept moving, they shouldn’t have had any major problems. Then again, it was a guessing game. Nobody really knew what either group would encounter.

  “Were you shocked later to find out about what happened?”

  I think devastated would be a better word. There weren’t a lot of homes in that area (it was mostly open desert), that meant they shouldn’t have to worry about any massive hordes of undead attacking them. If they kept moving, they…

  We
ll, we kept the plan of two different groups just because we didn’t want all our eggs in one basket. Four hundred and thirty people mean a lot of cars. Moving that many cars is a slow business. Way too slow when zombies are involved. Splitting into two caravans made traveling a little bit faster and if one group failed for whatever reason, another group would hopefully succeed. Hopefully, both groups would succeed. Anyway, the three distraction vehicles stayed with Georgie’s group. We knew for certain, that there were hordes of undead in his direction (we led them here in the first place) and there were also a lot of homes. I figured they’d need my help the most.

  “But it was all just a guessing game?”

  Yeah. Who could say what either group would run into?

  I can remember telling Tito almost those exact words. I told him that I didn’t know what he’d run into and that no matter what, he needed to keep pushing forward and towards the border. I told him not to stop for anything. Just keep moving forward.

  Jaxon is quite for a moment after saying this. It’s just a moment and then he resumes as if nothing happened.

  Anyway, I had the one of radios that we took from Martin in the back of my Jeep. Georgie had the other one in his vehicle. The three decoy vehicles scouted ahead and when I gave the all clear, Georgie moved forward.

  We avoided places like the supermarket and Lowe’s. I figured that even though it took a little more time because we weren’t going the most direct route, it would be better to avoid the large hordes for as long as possible.

  However, it was only a matter of time. Somewhere out there, there was a group of ten thousand zombies and I didn’t think it would take too long to find them…or for them to find us.

  The caravan moved pretty slowly. I was glad we ended up keeping the two different groups. I didn’t want to imagine how slow a caravan twice that size would be moving. Still, I guess moving slow was better than petal to the metal.

  “Why is that?”