“Tell them to survey the area several miles out as best they can. Get Kimberly and that fancy heat sensing stuff of hers in the air too, if she isn’t already. If they see anything move, blast it. Just make sure they are back and refueled before dark. Go ahead and let Captain Briggs know too, if he doesn’t already.”
“We need to cut those boys down,” said Carlson.
“They stay where they are. We’ll get them – I swear to God and all the saints and angels in Heaven that we will – but the odds of it being another trap are just too much. The local militia is wrecked and demoralized. We’re not much better. One more disaster, and the people are going to shatter.”
“We can always pull back to the Black Hills,” offered Mary.
“It would be more defensible,” agreed Lizzy. “They won’t be able to hide from our helicopters and planes, not like they do here. It’s all open around us, and we can fit all the Yellowstone folk there easy enough.”
“Do you think they would pursue?” I asked. “The prophet knows what will happen if he goes into the open. They wouldn’t have a chance. No, those… They would just scatter again, and we would have a repeat a few years from now when they came back looking to get even. We can’t keep doing this. It has to end.”
Interlude – Briana’s Story
“What’s going on?”
“Just received a call from Melody down on the southern edge,” replied Harlan. “More raiders were spotted. They haven’t come close like the last time, but they are definitely checking out our border defenses. They moved out of her view, heading east.”
Placing Asher on the floor, Briana withdrew one of his toys from a pocket. “Here you go.”
He gleefully grabbed the plastic figure. “Thank you, Mommy.”
“Get one of the planes over there to take a look. Maybe they can find out more.”
“Already done, per your prior instructions.” He was grinning.
“Then, Harlan dear,” began Briana, “why did the messenger tell me to hurry up and get right over here. You might be inside the citadel wall, and not all that far away, but it’s still a pain to drop everything.”
He shrugged. “I said to let you know we saw some raiders. I never said you had to come yourself. As it is, I don’t have much information yet.” He paused. “Is that why you brought the baby?”
“Not baby,” stated Asher stubbornly. “Big boy.”
“That’s right,” cooed Briana, patting him on the head affectionately. She looked at Harlan. “You have to watch what you say. Little ones pay way more attention than people think. And, you are so lucky it isn’t bath time yet, or I really would be upset.”
“Maybe you should get a live in housekeeper,” he suggested, “at least while Jacob and Mary are away.”
“The thought has occurred to me. You know, I’ve gotten a bit spoiled having Jacob around. He’s always ready to play with Asher or do any of the baby chores, and Mary’s good for babysitting pretty much anytime.”
“You could always ask Steph,” he suggested.
“Please.”
The redhead remained unmarried and unattached. Nonetheless, Steph had a brood of adopted children to look after, the first being Johnny who had been with us from almost the very start. As far as Briana was concerned, she was the ideal mother, never shirking her duties and always spending plenty of time with the kids. When she managed to sleep was unclear, as was how Steph maintained her sanity. Still, the woman seemed happy with her life.
“Yeah,” agreed Harlan. “Steph might be a little busy. Talk to her though. I bet she knows someone who could help out until Jacob gets back, if the regular ones aren’t enough. Plenty of people have the time, now that all the crops are planted.”
“Maybe. Anyway, where is our plane?” asked Briana, changing the subject back to the matter at hand.
He connected with the pilot in short order and referenced the map tacked to the wall beside him. “Coming up on the area in less than ten minutes.”
“Hopefully they’ll see something.”
The older man didn’t comment. The raiders had either been very lucky, or they were waiting for the planes to fly over before moving. Briana could only get so many in the sky at once, and they tended to travel in large circles in order to see as much as possible. Since they rarely deviated from this pattern, there was a brief period after they passed when the raiders, or anyone else, could act with impunity. It was less than ideal.
In this case, the raiders either returned to their hiding place or found some other cover. When the Cessna passed overhead, there was nothing to see. The pilot hung around the general area for over an hour before heading back to refuel, but there was no sign of any breathers. A handful of zombies were spotted, however, stumbling along a farm road miles off.
* * *
It was later that same night, shortly after midnight, when my wife learned what the raiders had been doing.
“For goodness sake… Renee, what do you want?” Briana stifled a yawn. “And what time is it?”
“There are zombies moving straight toward us, several thousand.”
“Thousands?” My sweetie headed back to the bedroom, the commander of our militia in the Black Hills following close behind. “Where are they?”
“Melody just reported in. They’re heading right for her. She’s up high and well hidden, so she doesn’t plan on moving. They shouldn’t notice her or even come all that close.”
The nightgown was tossed, and Briana removed a pair of jeans and a lightweight sweat shirt from the dresser.
“What is she doing on watch? Melody was there this morning, wasn’t she?”
“She traded part of her shift with Christia. She was due to be replaced in about a half hour.”
“Bad enough they’re sitting there doing nothing for twelve hours at a time.” Briana shook her head. “As long as they aren’t falling asleep, I guess it’s okay.”
“The zombies should turn away from the barriers,” continued Renee. “They always have before, but it is a big enough group that you need to know. I’m about to head down there myself to take a look. Ronnie is going to fly me.”
“He’s awake?” asked Briana.
“Should be. I sent Tony to get him, and I got Tony heading this way to keep you updated. The two of us have satellite uplinks. I’d give them to the lookouts, but we only have so many and they all seem to be in Yellowstone at the moment.”
“Well, it’s not like… Hey! Are you making some sort of derogatory comment about my husband?”
Renee smirked. “Me?”
Briana began to glower, which did nothing to lessen the other woman’s amusement.
“Be sure to pump Ronnie full of coffee,” she said, giving up on the dirty looks, “especially if he’s going to be flying in the dark.”
“Will do.”
* * *
“What do you mean the barricade is gone? How can it be gone?”
Tony had announced that bit of news as he entered the house. Briana was waiting in the living room, sitting beside a table upon which rested a large topographical map of the area. The town and all the secondary valleys and outposts were clearly marked, as were the outer walls and obstructions.
“Melody just told us. The zombies are following the raiders. They were keeping very, very close to the things, no more than fifty or sixty feet ahead, usually less. The bastards didn’t break away until the last moment when they drove up and set some bombs with real short fuses. Those went off before we realized what they were doing. Right now, the wall and screens that blocked US-385 are history.”
Briana began to mutter under her breath. “How many are inside?” she asked, a few seconds later.
“The raiders rode their bikes through the entrance they made with the zombies following. Pretty much the entire horde, moving north.”
“Are they coming here?”
“No idea,” admitted Tony. “I sent someone to the valley wall to alert them to the threat, and I let Renee know wh
at was happening too, in case she hadn’t heard. Want me to go ahead and sound a general alarm?”
“No.” Briana began to tug on her hair. “It won’t do any good to wake everyone up, not yet anyway. If Harlan’s not currently in the radio room, find him, and have a couple of the teenagers wait outside in case we need them to take messages back and forth or for whatever.”
* * *
The next few hours were eerily quiet. The zombies poured into our home unopposed, tromping along the highway in the darkness, which was just as well since we had next to nothing in that general area. The raiders were a bigger concern. No one knew how many were present or where they might be. Renee ended up sitting atop a ridge with several militia members and volunteers impatiently waiting for the sun to rise. It was a dark night with no moon and scattered cloud cover. She couldn’t see anything and wasn’t about to risk running into a horde of monsters under those conditions.
The sun did peek over the horizon eventually, as it must, and events began to speed up. To start with, the zombies had separated into two groups. One was milling about the town of Custer. Those were of no immediate concern. The town had long ago been stripped of anything valuable. A few items, such as extra vehicles, were stored there, but nothing that might be needed in the short term. Those vermin would be eradicated later.
Far more pressing was the second band of the shambling dead. These had drifted along a back road toward one of the valleys used to raise livestock, guided by a single raider. That news came in too late for Renee or anyone else to react, and the butcher managed to get close to the low lying wall and drop another explosive device next to it. A breach was formed, and he shot off at an angle. Some of the zombies followed the raider, but most poured into the valley drawn by the sight and sound of the inhabitants rushing to see what happened.
The struggle lasted four minutes, maybe less. There were far too many of the dead, and the nineteen people residing there, along with two guests who had been spending the night, could never hope to hold them off on their own. They quickly pulled back, passing the cabins where they lived in favor of one of the steeper hills. Rudy, the settlement’s resident expert rock climber, was one of those visiting – he had planned on doing some climbing the following day with a friend – and he was instrumental in getting everyone to safety.
Spotting a suitable ledge, he screamed for the others to follow. Finding the easiest route took only moments, and Rudy quickly got the folk twenty five feet up the cliff face, albeit with some difficulty. The ledge was long and in most places six or seven feet wide. Everyone could fit. There was even ample room to lie down. The zombies tried to follow of course, but the uncoordinated, awkward things could barely manage to get up a ladder. They had no chance of scrambling up a mountainside.
The livestock, as was typical, shied away from the dead. They moved to the far side of the valley and milled about, ignored by the shamblers. Eventually, a few began to graze, but the animals never relaxed, not while so close to creatures they understood to be wrong.
“Renee is moving in with most of the active militia,” said Tony. “She’s going to get to the people who are trapped.”
“Any chance of reaching them by helicopter?” asked Briana.
Asher was in the kitchen eating some waffles and watching a Disney DVD, and she suddenly found herself in wholehearted agreement with Harlan. Having the boy around had never been an issue before, but this was the first time Jacob and Mary, not to mention Lizzy and the twins, had been absent for a prolonged period. It was so easy to hand Asher off to one of them if she needed to do anything. Briana truly had become spoiled. Even before they relocated to the Black Hills, during the time Jacob was off fighting in Wyoming, there had been no problems. Everything was so cramped back at the settlement in the Nebraska National Forest that no one thought twice about having children underfoot. Also, Asher had been a newborn and didn’t do much other than sleep, burp, and make dirty diapers.
“Not enough room for Ronnie or any of the others to get close. Our Pave Hawk could lower a harness and pull them up one by one, but that would take time, and the crew hasn’t practiced it yet. It might be more dangerous than just leaving them there for the time being. The wind is picking up too.”
“Fine. Keep the chopper ready in case we do need to collect them.” Briana glanced at her map. “What about Renee? What else has she done?”
“She has been killing every zombie they come across. Her plan is to clear that valley or at least pull the things away from the ledge so our people can get out.” Tony paused and put a hand against the earpiece he was wearing. “Raiders just attacked. Four of them from atop a hill. Renee’s shooting back.”
* * *
“Casualty count?”
After news of what was happening became common knowledge, Steph appeared with Laura at her side. They’d taken Asher off Briana’s hands, much to her relief, so he could play with some of the other children. Steph also forced Briana into the washroom so she could get cleaned up while relaying any messages from Tony who remained in the living room. Briana was not at all pleased at being told what to do. After all, she was the boss. Personally, I can relate. I’m often forced to do all sorts of things I rather avoid.
In this particular instance, Steph’s primary concern was that Briana might get sick. With our system of scavenging just about everything while producing next to nothing and our doctors forced to use expired medication, or if very lucky one of the handful of poorly manufactured drugs from Hawaii, sanitation and preventive care are considered extremely important. Briana was pregnant and had barely slept the night before, both risk factors. Steph completed the abuse by forcing my wife to park herself in a chair, accompanied by a direct order to not pace back and forth.
“One fell off the ledge in Ranching Valley Number Three,” answered Tony.
Briana took a deep breath. “What happened? I thought they were safe there.”
“It looks like he moved too close to the edge to get a better look at the zombies and lost his balance.”
“Poor guy,” she whispered. “What about with Renee? Anything new?”
“No change. They have two wounded from when the raiders first opened fire, a third with a sprained ankle. That was from jumping behind a tree and not realizing there was a drop off on the other side. All should be okay. They succeeded in killing two bad guys, with the other two running away. Renee’s still after them, and more volunteers have headed to the ranching valley. Once they get there, they will form firing lines on what’s left of the wall. She thinks those zombies will be gone tonight, but Ronnie’s dropping food and water to the people on the ledge just in case.”
“Any other raiders?”
“Two others, both alone, were spotted,” said Tony. “They are somewhere in the north part of the Black Hills. So four total who are still alive, as far as we know.”
“I want all of them found,” stated Briana. “Put more regular people on the valley wall and get the more experienced out looking for them.”
“Already have several teams doing that,” he pointed out.
“Then make more teams.”
Tony called for one of the runners and sent him to gather volunteers to man the wall so those who’ve received training in marksmanship and tactics would be free to go hunting.
* * *
The fighting began to calm later that afternoon. It took three hours to clear the ranching valley of zombies and would take days more to gather the corpses and haul them away so they could be burned. Custer was still infested, but that would be dealt with later. As for the raiders, Renee caught up with the two she was chasing. They died under a hail of bullets and were tossed on a trailer with the same shamblers they had led into the Black Hills.
The other three – a third lone raider had since been discovered – took longer to deal with. The first was caught by a sniper who shot him in the leg. The man lost his balance and tumbled from his dirt bike, sliding across pavement and gravel. The impact tore through
his jacket and pants, leaving him with deep brush burns. In a few spots, bone was visible. A gunshot to the head ended his screams.
Another, a woman, was killed when she came around a copse of trees and nearly collided with a search and destroy team. The seven members were being led by Thompson, a rough speaking drill sergeant who was integral to the militia’s training system. He’d lost a leg in an accident shortly after the apocalypse began, the reason he’d been denied an active position in the Yellowstone war.
She reached for a pistol, paused, and then reconsidered, trying to turn the bike around instead. As surprised as Thompson and those with him were, she might have accomplished something if she simply selected a plan and stuck with it. As it was, the woman was shot several times and bled to death in the dirt.
The third faced a similar dilemma. He went off road and sought to escape through a box canyon. There was no exit, and the people who spotted him immediately took up positions. He was trapped. An offer to accept his surrender was given, but he told the militia to go “fuck themselves with a lead pipe” right before he shot himself, placing the barrel of a revolver beneath his chin.
* * *
“Johnny likes Asher,” commented Steph.
The boys were playing on the floor, and Johnny was allowing the toddler to climb all over him.
“They do get along,” agreed Briana.
The two women were sitting in the kitchen. With things winding down, Briana was making beef stroganoff for Tony and the teenagers who’d been sitting outside her door all day. They were all tired, and while Briana was every bit as exhausted, she felt it only proper to do something nice before they headed off to their various homes to collapse.
I will insert an editorial here and point out that Steph likely would have forced Briana into bed if she had not been cooking for the others.
“Renee’s upping all the patrols to make sure the area is clear,” continued Briana. “We should have the last of the shamblers gone in a few days. Some wandered off and have been seen in the weirdest places. Finding those will be fun.”
Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 3): Salvation Page 13
