The teenager did not look at all happy, being more than a little tired herself, but she dutifully plopped herself in a chair.
“Remember when you said you were going to be transferring fuel to Yellowstone, for their planes?”
I nodded. That had been mentioned right after dinner and a few minutes before Briana had to step outside to settle a dispute regarding someone’s cat pooping in the neighbor’s garden.
“You are going to have to be super careful with any tanker trucks, since they can’t go off road. While you were gone, a huge group of zombies was spotted on the highway heading straight for Rapid City. The early estimate was forty thousand shamblers.”
Mary sat up straight. This took precedence over getting some much needed shut eye.
“Turned out be closer to twenty five, which is still terrifying. I have pictures and a few videos on the computer. I’ll show you both later.”
“Where are they now?” I asked.
“Ronnie took his helicopter and slowly flew past them, real close to the ground, to get them to go back the way they came. It took some doing and a bit of time, since the ones trying to turn around kept banging into those further back who wanted to move forward, but it did work for the most part. We need to consider doing the same whenever we’re clearing a place. It is a whole lot safer than trying to lead them around with the Jeep or a truck.”
Briana was correct. Way back when, we had no access to aircraft, so the thought never occurred. During the war we were preoccupied. Most recently, when we were clearing Rapid City, we had so many shooters available that it hadn’t really mattered. However, now that the raiders were back, it was definitely worth keeping a pilot or two on standby as an additional safety measure should another horde appear.
“A few hundred ended up in the city anyway,” she continued, “so be careful when you go over to the Air Force base for fuel.”
Hundreds could be dealt with.
“Where’s the big group now? ” asked Mary.
“A scouting flight this morning said they were about sixty miles away. We’ll check again tomorrow, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have to worry anymore. Still and all, one big group means others may appear. You don’t want to be leading a convoy and run into one with nowhere to go.”
“We will definitely check out the route in advance,” I promised.
“Agreed.” Mary got up and started walking toward her room.
Our house, centrally located within the citadel’s protective walls, consists of a large living room, a small kitchen with adjacent dining area, and four bedrooms. There was an indoor toilet, but the pot had to be regularly emptied into one of our community septic tanks, a drawback of not having a sewer system. Fortunately, electricity was not an issue. That we had a surplus of.
“A few more zombies is nothing,” I commented, “but good to know they’re there.”
“I really shouldn’t be worrying, not when there is so much else going on.” Briana frowned. “I can’t seem not to. Things have been so pleasant the past couple of years.”
“Very true, but at least the fighting should be in mostly one place this time. As messed up as the roads are nowadays, I don’t want to be driving any more than I have to. Bad enough encountering them here or while transporting something, but imagine if we were running from the prophet’s men and came around a bend to find twenty thousand zombies shambling about in front of us. Be worse than when the castle fell.”
Briana shivered at the thought. Then she leaned up against me.
“Up side is that the zombies will keep them stationary too, for the most part. The bastards might go cross country some on dirt bikes or trucks, but they won’t be nearly as mobile as they were the first time around.”
“Do be careful when you’re gone, Jacob.”
“I’m always careful.”
She snorted. “Yeah, right. Well, you better be, because I absolutely insist you be here when you become a father times two. I mean three, with Mary.” She blushed.
“You mean you’re… That’s wonderful!”
“Hey!” called Mary. “Some of us are trying to go to sleep.”
“Think we should tell her?” I asked, lowering my voice.
“Tomorrow. If we tell her now, you know Mary will forget how tired she is and keep both of us up all night talking, and I need to get some sleep as well.”
“Fair enough.” It was a pretty accurate assessment of what would happen. “How long?”
Briana gave me a kiss. “I’m thinking sometime around October. Yvonne insisted on a pregnancy test, as if I didn’t know why my period was so late, and I’ll be seeing one of the doctors this week for an exam. Maybe he’ll be able to tell me the actual due date. And…” She curled up closer. “…just to remind you, try not to get killed in the meantime. I know it’s pointless to try to keep you at home…”
That was true. I was not one to sit back in safety while others did the fighting, and when it came to protecting my family I was definitely proactive. This time, the raiders were going down.
“…but I am going to worry. And no getting wounded either, like the last time when you were shot. That’s almost as bad. Remember, any stress I feel might affect the baby.”
“Boy or a girl, what do you think?”
I refrained from commenting on Briana’s nefarious tactics. Such blatant manipulation was an integral part of her personality. Nothing I did or said was going change that.
“Girl. Asher needs a little sister he can protect and who can steal all his toys.”
A thought popped into my head. “Think you are going get the morning sickness like last time?”
“I hope not, but I wouldn’t count on it being any easier than before.”
“I’ll make certain to position a couple dozen buckets around the house.”
That earned me a slap across the top of the head.
“Okay, one each in the bedroom, kitchen, and family room. Even if they only get used once, that’s one time the rugs don’t need to be cleaned.”
“I am going to need the one by the bed,” she admitted. “God, I really hated that the first time around.”
It had indeed been miserable.
“Think the doctor could give you something.”
“Hope so. I’ll ask when I talk to him. Oh, remind me to tell Steph first thing tomorrow. She’ll be really mad if I don’t.” Briana got up and switched off the table lamp. “We were just talking about children a little while ago, right after you left for Yellowstone. I was starting to think I might be then but really didn’t think so.” She laughed. “I’ll tell you about that later, and about her Lizzy based disciplinary strategy.”
* * *
I began making preparations for the fuel raid the following afternoon, the morning spent with Mary bouncing up and down and a series of visits from our friends. We do have quite a bit stored in the valley for the helicopters we keep there, with more at the two airstrips where we base our planes. There are also emergency supplies stashed elsewhere within the Black Hills. However, I wasn’t about to touch any of these, nor did I particularly want to take any aviation fuel from the various municipal airports we had identified and searched over the past few years. Those, being relatively isolated and secure, serve as our emergency emergency reserves. That left the Air Force base.
Ellsworth was one of those places that always seemed to have a sizable group of shambling bodies in residence, and our visits were infrequent enough that we didn’t bother remedying the situation, beyond shooting any that tried to eat us. Then again, it would not have mattered all that much. With zombies always on the move, more were continuously arriving to replace those we killed. Regardless, the massive stores of fuel, oil, spare parts, and so on more than made up for the inconvenience. We filled four tanker trucks, one for us and three for the people over in Yellowstone. Even after dropping off dozens of barrels at our preselected fuel dumps, our allies would still be receiving around thirty thousand gallons of the precious liquid. Tha
t should make them happy.
I’m not going to go into detail concerning this trip. It went smoothly enough, in large part because everyone slated to travel to Yellowstone was present. With a force that large, we were quite secure. The looting run also doubled as a training exercise, and we discovered a few issues that needed to be addressed. Coordination and communications between the teams was one, especially when it came to obtaining extra ammo. Resupply needed to be requested before a squad ran low. We had trained on this in detail, but, to be fair, it hadn’t really come up before in practice. I’d have to arrange for some refresher courses.
Another problem involved the need to shuffle personnel about to prevent married or otherwise romantically attached individuals from serving together. Really, just because a girlfriend says zombies are coming is no reason for a guy, who was assigned a specific task, to abandon his post in order to rescue her. The fact she did not need saving made it that much worse. The woman was only letting those nearby know that more were coming from the side. It was an informative comment, not a call for help. I had him stripped to the waist, tied to a tree, and whipped. It was only thirty lashes, nowhere near what he deserved, but still enough to get the point across. By leaving his position, and without telling anyone of his intentions, he allowed a trio of shamblers to come within a few feet of a squad mate. The things had approached from behind, and it is a miracle the fellow wasn’t bitten.
Drummed out of the militia in disgrace, he was further sentenced to spend a year mucking stables and cleaning pigsties. Afterwards, he could apply to rejoin the force, if he was so inclined. There were quite a few not so generous, demanding Charles be exiled or, in a one case, executed. If any of our guys had been bitten because of his actions, Charles would now be a corpse, but ultimately no one was hurt. Luck had been on our side, and as such I couldn’t bring myself to do more. Besides, the kid is only eighteen. There’s a very good chance he will mature and never again do such a thing.
As to the militia members I was taking, we had six squads, each with ten people. A squad consists of nine riflemen armed with M-16’s – between what we obtained from the Air Force base and what the government in the islands supplied, we have no shortage of these – and secondary weapons such as a .45 automatic, hand grenades, and a sniper rifle to be utilized if circumstances called for it or left sitting in the base if not. While it would be nice to carry both rifles so they were always available, I have to admit that doing so is not really practical. The tenth man is a machine gunner with the tripod and belts of ammunition divvied up between the others. It was far too much weight for one individual to carry on his own, and the squadmates never seemed to complain if it meant more bullets on hand should the need arise.
The leadership squad consisted of myself with Mary as my assistant. I’ll pause here and state that the splitting of people in romantic relationships did not extend to other familial connections. There were simply too many related by blood or marriage to effectively separate them. Lizzy was second in command, and we also have Tara and Dale, Carlson in the role of demolitions expert, and Xavier as a pilot. We were taking a renovated news chopper for him to fly, keeping our military craft out of sight for the time being. It had been painted a rather dull shade of green and was to be used primarily for recovering the wounded and general scouting.
Several old friends were present among the militia squads. These included Harvey, who had fought beside the twins when the zombie apocalypse first began. He was leading second squad. Terrance was going, along with Tim Myers. Tim was a few months older than Mary, having just turned seventeen. Upon first meeting two years ago, Tim promptly and hopelessly fell in love with my adopted daughter. That infatuation had resulted in a great deal of annoyance and frustration on Mary’s part, but things calmed down after a few months. I suspect Tim still holds out hope for a relationship, but Mary has zero interest.
* * *
“Keep digging,” ordered Mary. “Faster. Faster. Move those shovels. First to reach six feet gets to make the next hop aboard Xavier’s helicopter. Last gets made fun of.”
This was our second stop on the journey west, the first being roughly a third of the way between the Black Hills and Yellowstone. There, we had stashed fuel in several spots around an agricultural airstrip which was both out of the way and hard to find. It would serve as one of our emergency stopovers.
The current location was the same strip in Montana where Xavier and Kimberly frequently met. Shortly after fleeing to the Black Hills, we instituted a policy where a select number of pilots would land in a far off location in order to exchange news or supplies. This had remained the case even after the raiders began to disperse, and while the satellite connection the military since provided eliminated the need to carry reports by hand, there was still the occasional swap of people or materials.
“Mary,” I cautioned, “don’t play the taskmaster.”
“They like it when I order them around,” she protested. “That’s because I’m adorable, and they would do anything just to have me smile.”
“Keep dreaming,” muttered Brenda.
“You would if you were gay.”
The older woman flung a shovelful of dirt at the teenager who, totally out of character, did not succeed in dodging.
“I’m not gay.”
“Well, duh. But you think I’m adorable anyway.”
An interesting thing about our society was the breakdown of generations. By this I mean that the various age groups, with the exception of the very young and very old, were generally treated the same, holding the same positions, having the same responsibilities, working together constantly. An aspect of this was the transfer of terminology. Just about everyone spoke the same. There was no longer a teenage slang, and the kids had long ago stopped giggling at the phrases their elders used, having adopted quite a few themselves. Basically, everyone spoke the same way. I think I’m digressing, so back to the story.
“If you were,” continued Mary, “Lizzy would be all over you.”
Brenda shot her a menacing look which didn’t deter Mary in the least.
“You are cute, though not as cute as me which just isn’t possible, and Lizzy does like cute girls.”
I put my hand on the center of Mary’s back and gave her a gentle push, sending her straight into the hole.
“Your turn to help. Rest of you can get out. We’re switching teams.”
Digging was tiresome, more so in our case because we were trying to keep to a timetable. Not wanting to wear anyone out, I had the squads alternate every fifteen minutes or so.
“Where is Lizzy?” asked Mary. She’d taken Brenda’s shovel with a good natured smile.
“Off with the twins dealing with a group that’s ahead of us. Xavier spotted them and called it in a little while ago. Pretty small, so it shouldn’t take long.”
“It’s so not fair that they get to do the fun stuff.”
“Life isn’t,” said Brenda, before I could make a statement to similar effect.
One quick note, it was near this airstrip that we passed Lizzy’s Grand Cherokee and collected the last of the gear we’d left behind. With everything inside, it had been kept safe from the elements, and nothing was missing. Lizzy did have a few choice words for Mary concerning her breaking the engine however, as if that was anyone’s fault.
* * *
“Squad three gets to babysit the vehicles,” I announced. “The rest follow me and the local guides – thank you, guys – to where we are building the base. This outpost is going to serve as a rallying point. It will also be the main supply depot for those doing the fighting.”
“Are we going to be fighting?” asked Harvey. “That hasn’t been made very clear.”
“No idea,” I admitted. “Right now we’re reserves for the Yellowstone militia who will definitely be engaging the raiders, well, unless they turn around and run away, which I don’t see them doing. Being reserves, we have to assume we’re going to get pulled into it at some point, and be
cause we are a rallying point, we will be constructing some proper defenses, so get ready for more digging.” I laughed. “Yes, more digging. Those not digging will head back here so they and squad three can haul the gear up.”
“How far away is this?” asked Lizzy.
“Five miles,” replied Mary, “and there are hills, big ones.”
“Damn it!”
The teenager laughed. “It’ll do you good. Want to race?”
My stout friend scowled. “No.”
“Come along, people,” I called. “There’s only so much time in the day, and we have a lot to do.”
* * *
We got everything to the hillock before the sun set. My Jeep and about half the trucks were hidden back by the road. Others were placed closer to our base, giving us a little more flexibility and ensuring that if we did have to run away, we could do so in the direction of waiting transportation. The three big tanker trucks were somewhere. I have no real idea, they being handed off upon our arrival. Captain Briggs was busy with some logistical issues, possibly relating to the fuel supply, so Lieutenant Gikas was currently encamped with us to ensure there was proper coordination with the Yellowstone militia. Due to the rather large distance between our two settlements, we really haven’t spent any time operating together, not much talking to one another either, beyond the leadership.
“Us not doing the attacking is all fucked up,” declared Lizzy.
We were seated around a campfire. The tents were up, and one latrine was in place. We had cut the timber and plywood walls in advance, so all that remained was bolting it together. That and the beginning of a trench which would eventually encircle the hill were all that had been accomplished.
“I think it’s nice,” replied Mary.
“It is more relaxing,” I agreed.
“I don’t like it.” Lizzy rose and stomped over to the coffee pot. The beans were courtesy of the military, grown in Hawaii and dropped out the back of a huge transport plane. “How much time do we have before it starts? Anyone know?”
Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 3): Salvation Page 6
