by Ben S Reeder
“Not my secret to tell,” I said.
“Fair enough,” Pete said. “We know what you and the corporal can help with, lieutenant. But what else can you do that does not involve zombies or salvage? Mr. Stewart?”
“I can operate that radio,” I said with a nod. “Not that you probably need it that much right now. Aside from that, I’m pretty decent with my hands, and I don’t mind a little hard work.” Pete and Devira looked at each other for a moment before Devira spoke.
“In truth, Mr. Stewart, if the radio worked, it would be a vital part of our plan. We have one that can receive only. The one you saw upstairs has transmit capability, or it should.”
“When I was in the Air Force, operating and maintaining comm systems was part of my job. I might be able to fix it,” I said. “If I can’t fix it, I could also build one from scratch with a set of blueprints and the right parts.”
“Sounds like we might need to hit a Radio Shack,” Willie said.
“And a library,” Hernandez added.
“The library is already on our list,” Pete said. “But I think it just got bumped way up. Okay, Willie, get your team ready. Sounds like this might be a heavy run either way, so prep the truck. Stewart, take a look at that radio and see what you can do with it. If you can fix it, fine. Whether you can or not, I also want you to put together a new one if we can’t scrounge another one up.”
“I’ll need some tools,” I said.
Journal of Maya Weiss
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Fort Riley was a mixed bag. We lost ten of the Marines trying to get to the troops who were still alive, but we gained thirty men and women once we actually got to them. And we picked up a lot of stuff. Lynch and I didn’t see eye to eye on that part. He wanted to take some of the tanks and artillery, but that would have meant leaving other things behind. We compromised on some of the big armored vehicles called Strykers (the y is important for some reason,) and as much food and gear as we could manage. One thing we did agree on was the Stingers, a kind of portable anti-aircraft missile. We got some ammunition, but Lynch said it wasn’t enough. Captain Carson, the officer running the place, said her people had used a lot of what they had, and that the troops that had been deployed during the outbreak crisis had taken the bulk of the ammunition with them. So, we’re left with about ten thousand rounds instead of hundreds of thousands of rounds. We also have a LOT of food. MREs, First Strike Rations, and all the food that was left on the base. I’m not sure Nate is going to be ready for what’s going to be showing up on his doorstep.
The new government started broadcasting again last night, too. Martial law has been replaced by the Freedom Act. According to the man who calls himself the President, the new Freedom Act supersedes the Constitution. In other words, new laws. It’s illegal to be outside of a safe zone now and to carry a gun. It’s also against the law to ‘impede rescue efforts’ and to broadcast on the radio without a waiver. Of course, looting is still illegal, but now, so is sedition. And the list of seditious activities is pretty long, too. Lynch and Carson looked pretty upset, and they have good reason to be. If this is the government, it’s not the one they swore their oath to. All I know is that this government tried to kill us, and the two people I love most in the word are stuck in a city full of zombies because of them.
Since Mitchell showed back up, everyone carries a gun. Cassie never lets Bryce out of her sight any more, and she’s always armed. She taught Porsche and me to use the nine millimeter pistols, and all of us, Bryce included, got one of the Marines to show us how to use the M4. Porsche is still partial to the shotgun. I wonder if Amy will recognize me when she sees me again? Will I recognize her? If I know Dave, he’s already teaching her how to use a gun, how to kill a zombie (not like he was an expert, but leave it to him to figure it out) and how to build a car with a can opener or something like that. It’s funny the things that he knows. But that’s rule number one: 98% of survival is mental. I miss them both.
Chapter 11
Convergences
Great things are done by a series of small things coming together ~ Vincent van Gogh
“This doesn’t feel right,” Willie said as we clustered around the back door of a sporting goods store. Kaplan, Hernandez, and I shared glanced at each other and nodded. I felt relieved that it hadn’t just been me who was feeling like we were in someone’s crosshairs. “Kaplan, you’re on first sweep.”
Kaplan gave him a nod and went to the door while Hernandez and I positioned ourselves in front of it, her kneeling right in front of it and me to her right. I leveled the SOCOM at the door while she brought her P90 up to her shoulder, then we nodded to Kaplan. He tried the knob, then shook his head.
“Renny, you’re up,” Willie said. Renny, a lanky black kid with short cropped hair, hustled up to the door and pulled a set of lockpicks out. A locksmith before Z Day, the kid had more guts than most since he was almost always right at the door when a team entered a building. The bracer on his right arm told the story of how many times he’d been grabbed, with a long line of stylized hands in black, each covered with a red X to show a kill. In a matter of seconds, he had the lock opened. With a nod to Kaplan, he hit the door twice with his fist before he pulled it open and stepped to the side. Kaplan looked inside for a moment, then gestured at Hernandez and me.
She went first, and I followed behind her and on her left. The room around us was cool and dark, lit only by our tac lights. Kaplan followed on our heels and we swept the room.
“Clear on the left,” I said softly.
“Clear center,” Hernandez said.
“Contact right,” Kaplan said. His gun coughed and I heard something hit the ground. “Clear right. Looks like a dead end this way.”
“I have a door my way. Break room and stairs up,” Hernandez reported.
“Lucky me,” I muttered. “I have the doors to the floor.”
“We’ll clear the break room and the upper floor first. Willie, we’re going in. Cover us.” At Kaplan’s order, Willie called out.
“Team two, advance and hold their last position!” Four people came in behind us and took over the place where we’d been standing as we stalked up to the break room door. Hernandez pushed it open, and we were faced with tables, vending machines, and some overturned chairs. She called it clear, and we turned left to face the metal stairway. I led the way up, and found myself facing a small locker room and a small office on my left. I nudged the door with my foot and pointed the SOCOM’s barrel in as it slowly swung open. My light illuminated a man sitting with his face down on the desk with the left side of his head bloody. Dried blood was pooled on the desk, and as I swept my light left and right, I found blood and other more chunky bits splattered against the wall on my right.
“Dead guy with a gun in here,” I said.
“Locker room’s clear,” Hernandez said.
“Let’s go clear the front,” Kaplan said. Willie’s team advanced behind us as we moved to the doors to the main sales floor. The main floor was a wreck. Wind on our faces told us that the front glass was shattered. One of the big shelving units was completely missing, and almost everything on display was gone. I took an experimental sniff, and the smell of death was faint on the air. My hackles rose and I stepped forward. The two Marines followed me, and twenty steps later I was staring at a group of shambling people.
The SOCOM bucked in my hand almost on its own, and one of the zombies dropped. From behind me the MP5 and the P90 coughed single rounds, and two more hit the ground before it registered on me that they had all been standing there with their eyes closed. Then all I had time for was finding another target and pulling the trigger. The gun clicked as the slide locked back. There were three more zombies still standing, and they were only a few feet away, too close to reload in time. I shifted the gun to my right hand and reached over my shoulder with my left as I holstered the empty pistol. The Deuce slammed into the skull of the left most shambler, then I was wrenching it free. My right h
and closed on the grip below my left, and I pivoted the blade to hit the middle one across the side of the cranium. As it dropped, my arms were already moving the blade into an arc over my head and into the opposite side of the other zombie’s head. All in all, it had taken only a couple of seconds to drop the last three. With my breath coming in short gasps, I turned back to face Kaplan and Hernandez.
“Got ‘em,” I gasped. As my breathing slowed a little, I realized I was twenty feet down the aisle from them.
“No kidding,” Hernandez said as she lowered her gun and came forward. “What is it with you and zombies, man? It’s like every time we’ve run into them today, you’ve run up on them.”
“I dunno,” I said. “I just like it I guess. Every time I kill one, I feel…better.”
“Just keep your head on straight,” Kaplan said. “I’m not getting anyone else killed because you’re running off half-assed.” I nodded, conceding the point. The rest of the store was clear, and we made our way back to the stock room. Willie had half of the team already clearing out the shelves. Sleeping bags, tents, and camp stoves were the bulk of what they found. Kaplan and Hernandez went outside to stand guard while I took over the post at the stockroom doors. The cargo loading door was opened, and a pile of boxes steadily grew beside it.
“You like the 10/22, right?” Willie asked as the last of the gear was being stacked by the doors. At my nod, he handed me a cardboard box and a plastic sack. “Found this with a couple hundred loose rounds. Looks like another prepper got here first.” I opened the box to reveal a disassembled 10/22 and a carrying case.
“A serious prepper wouldn’t need to hit this place,” I said with a smile as I inspected my prize, a Ruger 10/22 Takedown. “And they certainly wouldn’t have missed this.” I slipped the rifle’s two parts into the carrying case and slung it on my back. With everything ready, we moved to the cargo dock and waited. Once we were back in sunlight, I unslung the M39 again. Kaplan had insisted that I pick it back up, since the SOCOM was my CQB weapon.
“This really doesn’t feel right,” Willie said as we waited for the pickup team to show.
“I’m waiting for you to say you’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I said as I checked the rifle’s safety. “Because I do, too.”
“You’re king of the bad movie quotes,” he said. “As long as I have you around to make them, I don’t have to.”
“Look out!” Renny cried out before I could reply. Both of our heads came up to see Renny running for cover. A black Blazer across the street turned into the parking lot with the driver’s side closest to us, and I brought the M39 up. All four doors opened just as I got my scope on the gap between the windshield and the front window. Men in windbreakers piled out with assault rifles and started firing from behind the doors. I dropped my sight to the middle of the door and started to pull the trigger. Around me, other guns were starting to fire; first the Marines in short controlled bursts, then the rest of Willie’s team in single shots. I put five rounds through the driver’s side door, adding to the growing number of holes already there, then moved my aim to the rear door and put another five or six rounds through it. The guns pointed at us jerked around wildly, and I heard the sharper crack of pistol rounds among the rifles, but like I’d seen back in Springfield, no matter what kind of thug was using the gun, gangster style shooting had almost nothing to do with actual marksmanship. Then the guns from the Blazer went quiet, and I could see someone moving on the far side. I took a step back into the darker interior of the stockroom and went to one knee as Willie called out orders to his team. People spread out and kissed dirt or sought concealment. Kaplan and Hernandez dropped to a knee as well and brought their guns up. They both fired a long burst at the truck, then Kaplan held his hand up, and Hernandez stopped firing.
“Reloading!” he called out, though his hand never left the foregrip. Hernandez repeated the cry, and the man wearing a blue windbreaker over a yellow polo shirt popped up from behind the truck. As I brought the scope to bear center mass on him, I could see that he had a pistol in one hand and a MAC-10 style SMG in the other.
“Got you fuckers now!” he yelled as he brought his guns up. The rest was cut short when I pulled the trigger. He staggered back, then squeezed the trigger on the little bullet hose, and I put two more rounds into him. He flopped to the ground, and suddenly it was quiet again.
“Reload and sound off!” Willie called. I waited until most of the team had finished reloading before I dropped the magazine on my rifle.
“Renny’s hit!” someone yelled. Kaplan turned and headed toward the man kneeling by Renny, and Willie turned to me.
“See if anyone’s still alive in the car…see what you can do for them,” he said before he trotted off. I jumped off the loading dock and headed for Hernandez. Without a word we headed for the car. Bodies were laying on the side nearest us, big men with only a little more fat than muscle on them. The rear seat held one body, lots of blood and a duffel bag full of guns. The dead man was slumped across the bag, his body riddled with bullet holes. I turned away when I saw that he’d taken a couple of rounds to the head, too.
“These two are seriously dead,” Hernandez said from beside me.
“So is this one,” I said. A weak gurgle came from the other side of the car, and we went in opposite directions with our guns up. I came around the rear to see her kneeling beside the man I had shot last. Blood bubbled up from the three holes in his chest and frothed on his lips.
“The Family’s gonna kill you all, bitch,” he wheezed. “You shoulda taken Frank’s offer while he was feelin’ generous…” he faded off and went limp, his eyes staring at nothing.
“Shit,” Hernandez said. “That’s the last thing we need, a god damn gang gunning for us. Alright, grab that bag of guns from the back seat, and let’s get back to the others.”
I tried to hold my breath when I leaned into the open door to grab the duffel bag, but the coppery smell of blood still overpowered my sense of smell and made me gag as I staggered back. The bag was covered in blood, so there was no escaping the stench. Hernandez opened the back of the truck to find boxes of food and cases of water. When we made it back to the rest of the team, Willie was squatting next to his wounded man. They had their right hands clasped together, and the younger man had his jaw set as Kaplan finished bandaging a wound in his leg.
“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Willie asked with false cheer. Renny told him what he could go do with himself with a strained smile. He turned his attention to us as we came up. “We need to get ready to make tracks, all that shooting is bound to attract some unwanted attention.”
“Roger that,” Hernandez said. “We might already have enough attention. That last guy said the Family was gunning for us.” Willie and Renny both cursed.
“I knew we were gonna have more trouble from them,” Renny said. “I told you they’d keep trying this kind of crap.”
“I was counting on that,” Willie shot back. “They just didn’t get themselves killed the way I hoped.”
“You’ve run into these folks before?” I asked. Willie nodded.
“Yeah, Frank ‘Pops’ Giovanni’s crew,” he said as he stood and led me away from Renny. “The Midwest’s representatives from the Mafia. Mostly, they run some small time internet gambling rackets. They offered to ‘protect’ us as long as we gave them half of our supplies every week, and saying it was because there were all sorts of bad folks out there that might cause us problems.”
“How’d that work out?” I said.
“About like it did today. Lots of bullets and threats. I want you and Renny out of here before he makes good on any of them,” Willie said. His radio squawked and he put it to his ear. “Pickup’s thirty seconds out. Renny, you’re riding back.” Renny started to say something, but Willie shook his head and held up a hand. While we waited, I went back to the side of the store and pulled a can of spray paint from my cargo pocket that I’d picked up from one of the stores we’d hit earlier. In
broad lines, I wrote DAVE WAS HERE in big red letters.
“What’s that all about?” Hernandez asked.
“Just pissing some people off,” I said as I put the cap back on and dropped it back in my cargo pocket.
“That might work a little too well, you know.”
I shrugged. “Might not work at all. But it will get the Prophet’s attention. I don’t want him to forget I’m out here.”
True to his estimate, the heavy duty truck that was ferrying back what we scavenged showed up a few seconds later. Between everyone, we had Renny and the things we’d taken from Radio Shack, and the sporting goods store loaded up in under a minute. Willie conferred with Kaplan as we tossed gear into the truck’s bed, and the lieutenant called us over as the last of our haul was being tied down.
“Corporal, I’d like you and Stewart to go back with Willie in the truck. The only reason Pete let you come along is because you knew what you needed to get to fix the radio. With this crew after us, you sure as hell don’t need to be out here. So no bitching, just get in and go.” I held up a hand and shook my head.
“The good of the many and all that,” I said. “You just be careful going back.” With that, I climbed into the bed of the truck. Whatever color it had been before Z Day was completely covered in black spray paint. Some wise ass with more with more wit than good sense had painted “Zombie Stomper” in red on the hood and on the front fenders. As soon as we were settled, Willie slapped the roof and the truck took off with a roar of exhaust.
We ran into the first infected less than a block away, and Zombie Stomper earned its first kill of the day when it splattered a ghoul on its front bumper. The guy behind the wheel hit the horn for a good twenty seconds while Willie lit the fuse on a string of fireworks and tossed them behind us. A series of shrieks and pops echoed between the buildings as we turned the corner and sped down a side street. Undead swarmed from the buildings on either side, but they were too slow or just too small to slow the truck down. Behind us, I could see more infected converging on the fireworks. Others were running behind us and catching up.
