Dead Drop Series (Book 1): Dead Drop (Rise of the Elites)

by K. S. Black

  Cooper removed the spoons. Kevin flinched when the boy’s mouth snapped shut.

  “I don’t know. I’ve seen pictures of people with extra teeth, but it didn’t look like that.”

  CHAPTER 31

  May 16 – Double J Ranch

  After putting in two sixteen hour days, Jake was only half-way finished with securing the ranch. Rounding up the cattle had used up a huge chunk of time. He found thirty-three live ones within a quarter mile of the house. Two dozen half eaten carcasses were scattered along the northeast edge of the property. He planned to find the rest eventually.

  He led the small herd to the side pasture, close enough to keep an eye on them but far enough to use them as a buffer against attacks from the crazies. A small sacrifice he could live with if it kept him alive.

  Earlier, he had recognized his sister’s handwriting in the live-stock ledger. In it, she had recorded the number of cattle and other useful information. She had kept meticulous records of everything that had to do with the ranch. But nothing to indicate where she had gone. At least he had some idea where to search for the animals.

  Did she even have a boyfriend that she could’ve taken off with? Who did she hang out with? He didn’t know her habits anymore.

  The Johnson’s place was more than a small cattle ranch. His dad had also trained and sold some of the finest horses in Texas. According to the ledger, there were three quarter horses, two pintabians, and a chocolate palomino mare in training for three different ranches, one in Texas and two in Arizona.

  There were also the four stock horses and two Arabians that belonged to the ranch, for a total of twelve. He could only find three—two quarter horses and a pintabian. He placed them in the east pasture closest to the house.

  When he found the pintabian, he discovered that part of the fence near the road needed repair. Two of the four by four fence posts were broken in half. He constructed a temporary fix. It wouldn’t take much to knock it over again but it would have to do until he could get into town.

  He prayed that he’d find Sonora, his dad’s Class A Champion, Arabian gelding. His dad had been training him since he was a yearling. There was nothing that horse couldn’t do better than any horse in the state of Texas. The old man loved that friggin animal almost as much as him and Charlotte.

  Jake’s horse, Grim, was a black Arabian stallion that his dad got for him a few years back as a gift after he made rank. He looked everywhere for him, but couldn’t find him either.

  The two quarter horses and the pintabian were excellent cattle horses. He had never paid much attention to the details of how his dad trained any of the horses. He only rode them when he was working with the cattle. He used his truck or a quad for everything else. What a dumb shit. Why didn’t he pay more attention to the important things?

  * * *

  His mother’s vegetable garden was a mess. What the chickens and horses hadn’t eaten they had trampled. Fuckers. But he couldn’t blame them.

  The food in the four freezers was spoiled. Except for some canned food, the food storage in the house was compromised by Jake’s mother. He had one case of MRE’s left; this was four days of food or six if he only ate two meals each day. He had some jerky and junk food that he and the other marines had pilfered from convenience stores during their trip east. He also had eggs when he could find them. The hens were probably stressed and probably weren’t laying much any way. He needed to round up the chickens and keep them in the barn for now.

  If he rationed everything, he could stretch the food out for ten or twelve days. But he’d be fuckin’ hungry. He could slaughter a cow if he needed to but had never done it by himself. Would the crazies be able to smell it and come running like he was ringing a fucking dinner bell? He could kill the chickens, but he wanted to keep them for the eggs.

  The ranch’s pickup had three-quarters of a tank of gas. The next morning, he planned to drive the thirty miles to Georgetown, the closest town and the best chance to find some food and other supplies.

  * * *

  Maneuvering around the abandoned cars on the interstate tacked on an additional hour to his trip. He passed Wal-Mart and Home Depot—two of the places he had planned on checking out. Not much remained of either of the burned-out buildings. In and out—that was supposed to be the plan.

  When he reached University Avenue, Target came into view, as well as at least a hundred canvas tents set up in rows in the parking lot. The area looked like a military staging zone.

  He parked the truck and got out with his M-4 and his gas mask. He had put on his body armor before he left. The copious amount of dried blood splatter on the tents and on the pavement should have been a warning. So what if most people would’ve high-tailed it back to the truck? He wasn’t everyone. He was a marine. The dumbass move might have made him a contender for the Darwin award, but he had to check it out.

  He looked through some of the tents and found several boxes of medical supplies and equipment. The area was a smaller scale version of the facility in L.A. where he and his men were ordered to shoot into a crowd of civilians.

  Moving quickly from tent to tent, he scattered spent brass with every step. When he rounded the corner of the last tent, orange traffic cones marked a path to the entrance of the store. He had been getting whiffs of decomposition the closer he got to the building. The taste in his mouth made him want to gag. Was he tasting the stench he was breathing in? He put on the gas mask before he entered the store and made sure he got a good seal.

  Fuckin’ flies. They were everywhere. Inside, it was worse.

  The store was dark, but he could see well enough with a small flashlight illuminating his way. Racks and shelves had been moved to the back. The store had been turned into an emergency medical triage center with hundreds of cots that each held a dead body. More fuckin’ flies. Everywhere! Swatting at them was useless.

  He mustered enough courage to walk through the rows of cots. He was a marine for fuck sake. He could do this. Three quarters of the dead had been shot in the head and were zip-tied to their beds so they couldn’t sit up.

  The cots near the back of the store had been turned over and the bodies dumped out onto the floor. Like the parking lot, brass casings littered the floor inside. Sunlight shone through an employee access door. After two steps in the direction of the door, he realized that the back of the store had been used as a temporary morgue. Hundreds of bodies were piled on top of each other making the air feel thick and oily as he moved through it. Maybe that was his imagination.

  His fortitude had run its course. He bolted past row after row of cots and hit the front doors hard. He crashed through the glass, almost knocking himself unconscious when his head hit the pavement outside. It was his own friggin fault for not remembering his helmet.

  After his head cleared, he sat up. He ripped off his gas mask and retched.

  A couple of minutes later, he picked up the mask. It had taken most of the impact when he landed face first on the concrete. One of the filter canisters had broken off and would need to be replaced. None of the tents or vehicles he searched on his way to the truck had a gas mask or an extra filter.

  His Georgetown plan was FUBAR.

  CHAPTER 32

  May 17 –Tucson

  Cooper brought Kevin along to board up all the windows on the inside of each of the eight houses on the street. Any door that wasn’t the front door was barricaded from the inside. He wanted only one way into each house for security. With this done, they would have secure storage for more food and supplies as well as other places to hide from the infected or anyone who might come looking for them.

  Smaller stashes of food and the propane tanks were divvied up between the eight houses. He and Kevin had even stumbled across a propane truck with a five thousand gallon tank. For safe keeping, they parked the truck in an inconspicuous spot in one of the neighbors’ backyards. With the houses secured, he planned to spend the day going from property to property in the nearby area looking for live-s
tock. Hayley accompanied him.

  Kevin was using his leg as an excuse to stay close to the house. Something was up. He could tell by the way he had been acting after they found the boy. Kevin was quiet. This wasn’t like him, but his sullen behavior didn’t make Cooper trust him any less, so he let it slide. What else was he supposed to do? Ask him if he was depressed? Not likely. He had enough on his plate making sure they all stayed safe.

  Many of properties in the area were zoned for small quantities of livestock, mostly horses. He was grateful that he and Hayley hadn’t come across any animals that looked as if they’d been attacked by the infected. But most of the larger animals they found were dead or dying from dehydration.

  They stopped next to a corral with four dead horses inside. “We could’ve saved them if we had come out earlier.” Hayley’s words came out more angry than sad.

  He didn’t comment. She wasn’t angry with him.

  They found a couple of small ranches that had wind or solar driven pumps for their wells and watering systems. Water was readily available. The animals behind the fences were bony but were in better shape than the others they had seen.

  The two feed stores up the road still had enough food to last the livestock for a couple of months. They brought over as much feed and hay as they could take in one trip and planned to go back for more as soon as they could. After feeding the animals, they brought them to the Abbott’s makeshift barn a few at a time.

  Cooper had spotted some small chicken coops earlier in the day. He sent Hayley to the house to tell Kevin they needed his help. He had enough time to sulk or do whatever he needed to do.

  With the chickens locked inside, the three of them carried two coops to the back yard. These would do for now until they could make something bigger. While he and Kevin positioned the coops in a shady spot in the yard, Hayley ran to the retaining wall and hoisted herself on top.

  “What are you doing?” Cooper asked.

  “I thought I heard something.”

  “Wait!” It was too late. She had already jumped down.

  He ran to the wall with Kevin trailing behind him and vaulted up and over. Hayley was out of sight, but something rustled behind a row of purple sage bushes humming with bees.

  He drew a Kimber from the right and walked forward.

  Hayley’s head popped out from around a bush. “Look what I found! The babies are so cute! We can probably get milk from the mother.”

  She herded four pygmy goats, two nannies and two kids, towards him as he shoved his pistol back in its holster. He wanted to hug her and strangle her at the same time.

  * * *

  Cooper put Hayley in charge of feeding and watering the four horses, nine head of cattle, four goats, and seventeen chickens. She rose with the sun without having to be told—wonders never ceased. He wished Shannon could see her. She even had Kevin teach her how to cook the eggs she collected. Scrambled seemed to be her favorite.

  He was out of his element with livestock. He had a steep learning curve to conquer to keep the animals healthy. But the thought of supplementing their food stores in the future with roasted chicken, barbecued steaks, and a plentiful supply of fresh eggs made him feel better about his and Hayley’s survival. It was certainly more palatable than wild rabbit. He wasn’t so sure about the goat’s milk, but they could learn how to make cheese and soap out of it. They had found two roosters to help populate their little flock but needed a bull if they ever wanted more than nine head of cattle.

  He warned Hayley not to get too attached to the animals because some of them were going to end up as dinner. But she couldn’t help herself and gave them all names.

  When the weather turned, they would need to plant a vegetable garden. Maybe Kevin knew something about gardening, given his recent livelihood. And beekeeping—that was some-thing he wanted to read up on. He had a book about it somewhere.

  * * *

  Without his computers and the flow of information that his network had provided him, Cooper was growing more uneasy. He thought he might cross paths with some government agency like the FBI, the NSA, or Homeland Security, but he never imagined that they’d confiscate his computers and destroy his files.

  His motto wasn’t two is one and one is none for nothing. He had prepared for that scenario. All the software and hard drives that he needed to reconnect to the servers in his bunker were safely sealed inside a PVC pipe buried in the backyard.

  While Cooper and Hayley were busy with the livestock, Kevin had found several flat panel televisions to replace the ones that had been destroyed inside the house. After some creative networking, he connected them to a satellite tuner he had found. The one in the house no longer worked. He even gave Cooper a list of which houses had computers and what kinds.

  Five of the houses had security cameras in them. He had brought those back, as well. He volunteered to install them around the storage houses for extra security and rigged them to work using the solar powered, laser trip sensors he had found. Some of the houses already had solar panels, but they would need to find more.

  With the list in hand, Cooper collected three workstation computers, five portable data storage hard drives, four laptops, eight large monitors and another satellite tuner. By the end of the afternoon, he had everything working and had installed the software from the PVC pipe cache.

  The new computers were connected to his network in the bunker that evening. To his relief, he could still access the inter-net. He wasn’t sure how it was still working, but he was grateful that he could continue collecting data.

  * * *

  Cooper popped his head into the living room to see what Hayley was doing. She had turned on the televisions for the thousandth time, clicking through channels trying to find any stations that were still broadcasting.

  “You’re probably not going to find anything.”

  “Naysayer.” She scowled at Cooper.

  Thirty seconds later, the satellite picked up a station from Japan. She almost clicked past it but stopped and let out a shriek. Cooper sat down on the couch next to her.

  Kevin hobbled into the room from the kitchen. “You almost made me crap my pants! What’s all the screaming about?”

  She pointed at the television. “Look.”

  Although the news reporters were speaking Japanese, the images were clear enough to confirm that the terrorist acts and pandemic were not isolated to the US.

  * * *

  Kevin stood at the doorway leading to Cooper’s operational hub. Eight monitors ran off of three linked computers and were downloading data from numerous sources.

  “I am officially impressed.” He had taken his time surveying the room.

  “I think I have what I need in order to try and figure out who did this to us, but it’s going to take a while.” He hadn’t told Kevin about the bunker yet.

  CHAPTER 33

  May 24 –Tucson

  Kevin smelled pancakes as he was getting dressed. His doe-eyed apprentice in the culinary arts was catching on fast. Hayley had already made a tall stack along with four fried eggs by the time he got downstairs. Her face was pink from the heat, and she was humming some unrecognizable tune. He wanted to hug her but didn’t.

  “How many pancakes do you want? They’re not as good without butter and syrup, but I found some honey. We also have some of those small jelly thingies. Do you want a fried egg, too?”

  “I’ll take 3 pancakes, some honey and two of those jelly thingies, and one fried egg,” Kevin said. “Those smell like some world class pancakes. And that egg—perfection.” He brought the tips of his fingers to his mouth and kissed them. “Marvelous.”

  She giggled at his gesture. “You’re a good teacher.”

  “Aw shucks, ma’am.” He feigned humility. Life was almost starting to feel normal again, whatever normal was supposed to be. But this was not a life he wanted to get comfortable with.

  When she was done cooking, she brought over two plates and sat down next to him. He stabbed a pa
ncake and stuffed the entire thing into his mouth. Honey and jelly dripped onto his beard.

  Frowning, Hayley stared at him while he ate. “Geesh, I know your parents must have taught you manners. That’s just gross.”

  “What’s gross?” Cooper walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “Him,” she said and pointed to Kevin’s beard.

  He smiled at her with pieces of pancake sticking out of his mouth. He swallowed before he spoke. “I’m going out for a while. Not far.”

  “Take a walkie.”

  “Yes, Dad.” He and Hayley laughed like they had some inside joke between them as Cooper drank his coffee.

  An hour later, he drove up to the house in a late model Land Rover with several five-gallon jerrycans filled with fuel. Cooper and Hayley walked over from the barn.

  “Nice Land Rover,” Cooper said. “Are you headed somewhere?”

  “I’m driving up to Phoenix for a couple of days. I think I can find a way through.”

  “Alone?”

  “Do I need a chaperone?”

  “Sorry. You can do what you want. But it’s not a good idea.”

  “I’m not going to do anything stupid. I just want to have a look around and see what I might be able to find up there.”

  “Hey.” Cooper paused for a moment and looked him in the eye. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do. But are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I’ll be fine.” He didn’t know what else to say.

  Cooper offered his hand, and Kevin shook it.

  “Are you sure you have to go?” Hayley asked.

  “Stop worrying, kiddo. I’ll be back in two days. Tops.” He reached his arm around her and squeezed her shoulder.

  After he had found replacements for all of Cooper’s electronics and set up the security system, he felt like he had paid his debt to Cooper for getting him out of Cali. He was ready to get his own plans underway. He spent every free moment under the hood of the Humvee studying the engine and its components, especially the Tom Ogle black box. Cooper had given him all the information he had and had even gone back to Baja Motorsports to collect all of Jeff’s notes for him. He had an idea for a project now that his leg wasn’t bothering him as much.