by K. S. Black
“If there’s enough daylight. May as well get my Jeep while we’re there. I’ll let Hayley know where we’re going.” He paused for a moment. “Wonder if Jeff’s okay.” Cooper took off his baseball cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead. There had been no sign of him when he had retrieved the designs for the Tom Ogle Black Box.
* * *
After arriving at the Army National Guard compound, he and Kevin found the maintenance bay without much difficulty. They made a quick sweep and made sure the building was empty.
Within seconds, they located several racks full of tires and found six tires that would fit the Behemoth. They were all used but still in good shape and would do for the short run until he could find more. After loading the tires into the trailer on the back of the Humvee, they looked around the compound to see what else they could find.
Behind the maintenance building, they found an armory. Because of the heavy duty steel doors and complicated locking system, it took an hour to get inside. Empty gun racks lined the walls. In a work room off the main gun depository, they discovered five M16/A2 semiautomatic rifles that looked almost brand new, but the work bench with its large metal drawers caught Cooper’s eye.
Inside the drawers were enough gun parts to build five more M-16s and parts for other types of guns plus every tool a gunsmith could want or need to maintain almost any handgun or rifle. He wasn’t a gunsmith but knew the value of keeping guns in good working order.
“Let’s get everything loaded. While we’re out, we may as well take a quick detour to my favorite Home Depot to look for another generator. You’ll probably need one if you going to do any work over at Stillson’s shop.”
* * *
They got out of the Humvee next to the burned out truck and a makeshift memorial in the Home Depot parking lot. “This is where they jumped you?” Kevin asked.
With one good sweep of his leg, Cooper kicked over the plastic flower covered cross and the grocery store prayer candles. He ignored Kevin’s question and kept walking.
With their weapons ready, they were about to enter the store through the same side entrance that Cooper had used before. He stopped and put his arm out so Kevin couldn’t pass and pointed to a dead body hanging by a rope fifteen feet in the air. Off to the right was another dead body impaled on a four by four with eight-inch spikes. They checked for other booby traps and found one more. Cooper set it off before taking a closer look at the impaled body. The man was infected.
Working together, they used a heavy-duty hand truck to move the propane powered generator. Kevin tossed a large dog bed for Okami on the load.
* * *
“I didn’t expect Baja Motorsports to be a crummy little hole in the wall shop.”
“I doubt Jeff cares much about building aesthetics. He’s like the Viking version of the nutty professor. Let’s get the door open so we can get the generator inside.”
After some foul language and several failed attempts, Cooper opened the roll up door to the body shop with the help of a crowbar. They carried the generator inside and set it down in an empty work space.
“I think my Jeep’s in the back.”
Kevin followed him. Sunlight filtered into the garage.
“There. Jeff was going to convert it to a Tom Ogle engine, but I doubt he had time to do anything to it.” He lifted the hood. The engine compartment was untouched. “You can drive it while you’re fixing your monster truck. Gas should be easy enough to find until we can install a black box in this thing.”
“You mean until I can install a black box in this thing.” Kevin walked to the next bay where a Baja Bug was under construction. A trophy truck with no wheels or suspension sat in the next bay. A tarp covered a vehicle in the last bay. Kevin pulled it off with one tug. A Tom Ogle converted engine sat next to it.
“No way! Do you see this thing?” The vehicle body was still in several pieces, but Kevin’s face brightened when he saw it.
“He was making a replica of the Warthog from Halo. Too bad it’s not finished. Cover it back up and let’s get ready to go.”
“This is yours?
“I was having this made so Hayley and I could go off-roading in the desert.”
“You might not be wound as tight as I thought you were.” Kevin laughed and slapped Cooper on the back. “This is so fucking cool. Somebody needs to finish it. The engine looks done, so it’ll mostly be body work.”
Cooper tossed Kevin the keys to the Jeep. “Follow me home. Hayley’s probably getting worried.”
CHAPTER 41
June 5 – Tucson
It had been a month since life as they knew it changed forever. Cooper sometimes referred to the time they were living in as TEOTWAWKI or living in SHFT times, the prepper version of when the shit hits the fan.
Chores and various projects from rigging solar power to security kept all of them busy from morning until evening when they gathered together for dinner. The power grid had been down for over two weeks. Before that, it had been spotty, but they had the generators and solar power to run anything that required electricity.
The days took on a kind of rhythm, except for the run-ins with the gangbangers and the dozen or so infected they had killed. Of course, there was no thrill in the killing. If Cooper thought about it too much, it would become too hard to do. They were still people, but killing the infected improved their chances of survival. He began thinking of it as a chore.
He insisted that Hayley learned how to kill the infected. It was one thing to shoot at a paper target but another to shoot something alive with flesh and blood. He didn’t like the idea of forcing her to kill anything. But if she ever came across an infected by herself, he wanted her confident in her ability to defend herself. He made her practice with him whenever an opportunity arose.
* * *
Hayley spent a large chunk of time caring for and feeding the animals. Okami was growing noticeably every day. The goats had fared the best out of all the animals, and Hayley was learning how to milk them. Cooper helped Hayley with the livestock, but most of their care fell on her shoulders.
Between taking care of the animals, and helping with chores around the house, she practiced with her compound bow. After a week and a half, she was hitting her target every time. Moving targets were a different story. She wasn’t going to get better if he didn’t help her, but time slipped away from him with all he needed to get done.
When she came to him and asked what he thought about using the bow to kill the infected, he told her it was a good idea, because ammo was going to become scarce eventually. But the first time she tried, her hands shook so much she couldn’t get a shot off. He ended up shooting the infected woman with his Tavor. After that incident, he set aside time every day for practice.
Hayley seemed to be adjusting to her strange new routine, but there were several nights that her crying roused him from his sleep. Her nightmares had begun again. This was no surprise.
He’d rush into her room in the middle of the night and sit on the edge of her bed, stroking her hair or holding her hand until he heard the rhythmic breathing of sleep.
He tried to get her to talk about Shannon, but they both found it difficult to know where to begin. She hadn’t asked about Noni or Tito.
* * *
After Kevin had appropriated the Behemoth, he spent most of his time at the Baja Motorsports garage. Cooper was excited about the big unveiling. He hated to admit it, but he kind of missed having Kevin around.
But when he was around, most of Kevin’s attention and energy was focused on his truck. He didn’t add much to the dinner conversation, except to kid around with Hayley or update them about the truck. A couple of times he told them about the gangbangers he had spotted in the distance.
Something was definitely going on with Kevin, but that was Kevin’s business, and he wasn’t going to butt in.
* * *
Cooper checked several of the dead drops but none of the flash drives had been uploaded with new informatio
n. There were gangbangers on the other side of town, but the survivors on the east side of town barely made their presence known, and he wasn’t going to seek them out unless he had to. Not yet.
He tried to focus on the present and how best to ensure his and Hayley’s survival. Dwelling on the past served no purpose and would only hinder his efforts to move forward and find out what had happened. But at night, when he was alone with his thoughts, it was difficult not to revisit the past and think about what he could have and should have done better.
With the house and supplies secure for the time being, Cooper got back to his computers. His data collection program was designed to sort and file information into different folders according to keywords, but the amount of data it had already collected was overwhelming. He had gotten a portion of the code for the search program from his former hacker friend months ago. He suspected that it was getting into places he had never intended. The possibility of that happening had deterred him from using it before the SHFT. He wasn’t a hacker, at least not on purpose.
He worked for a couple of hours reconfiguring the folder system to include additional keywords since his original program was not designed to handle such a large quantity of diverse information. How much longer they would be able to access the internet?
* * *
The dining room served as his office now. He crossed the room to remove the external hard drive from the main computer that sat on a rectangular desk with three other towers, each networked to the computers in his underground bunker. He plugged the hard drive into the middle computer and typed in several commands. The screen immediately went blank.
Hayley watched from the doorway. “Was it supposed to do that?”
Cooper wrinkled his brow as he frowned.
The screen lit up again with code running from top to bottom at blinding speed. After five minutes of scrolling, all the screens went blank again and the towers powered down.
He took a deep breath in. Then he let out a deep sigh. “Damn! I guess that didn’t—” Before he could finish, the computers resumed one at a time. The monitors flashed from black to blue to black again until they finally revealed that the program was sorting documents as well as extracting files from compressed folders.
“Is it working, Daddy?”
“It looks like it. But I won’t know for sure until it’s finished.”
“How long is it going to take to give you an answer?”
The corners of his mouth turned up in a closed mouth smile. “The computer isn’t going to give me an answer. The program is collecting the information I want from across the internet. Then it puts it into different folders so it’ll be easier for me to sort through and find out what’s going on. I’m hoping that once I read through all this information I can figure out what happened.”
“Cool.” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and trotted off with Okami close at her heels.
Cooper continued watching as document after document flashed across the screen. He was anxious to begin looking through the data so he could make something more than just a guess about what was going on.
* * *
Hayley looked up from the sink where she was washing the lunch plates.
“What is it?” Cooper asked.
“I thought I heard a woman’s voice coming from the dining room.”
They both ran to the radio. The woman spoke quickly. Cooper turned up the volume.
“—Cooper Reid. Please respond if you can hear me! We’ve entered Northwest Tucson from I-10. Hostiles in armored trucks are in pursuit! Over.”
“Dad! That sounds like Julie from Starbucks.”
“This is Julie Harvey from Blythe, California looking for Cooper Reid. Please respond! Over.”
Cooper grabbed the mic. “Deputy Harvey? This is Cooper Reid. Over.”
“Cooper, please. We need your help. I don’t have a head count, but some of the locals took out two of our vehicles. We have casualties. We have cover for now, but I don’t know how long it’ll be until they find us. We need backup A-S-A-P! Over.” Panic was rising in her voice.
Even though Julie was a trained law enforcement officer, Cooper guessed that she hadn’t encountered a situation like this before. “Take a breath, Julie. Kevin and I are going to come find you. Can you tell me where you are? Do you see any street signs? Over.”
He turned to Hayley. “I brought the shotgun inside. Could you find that and grab a couple of boxes of ammo and see if you can reach Kevin on the walkie.”
“We’re parked behind a building off of Grant Road near Stone.”
“Roger that. As soon as you can, get back on Grant and head east. Be careful when you get to the intersections. There are abandoned cars blocking the roads there. I’ll be back in contact as soon as I’m on the road. My ETA to Grant Road is fifteen minutes. Over.”
“Hurry!”
He and Hayley geared up and strapped themselves into the Humvee. They drove west on Tanque Verde Road to get to Grant. Kevin was on his way.
“Tell Kevin we’ll meet him at the Grant intersection. And ask Julie where they are now. Ask her what they’re driving.”
Hayley relayed the message to Kevin and asked Julie for her location and the make of their vehicles.
“We just passed the Alvernon and Grant intersection. We’re in two Suburbans. Tan and gray. Over,”
Cooper accelerated through the turn onto Grant. “Tell Julie to keep coming.”
Cooper slowed and parked behind a car lying on its side to the left of the intersection. He told Hayley to stay on the radios and to roll the window down only far enough so that she could hear him outside. He ran to the back and took out the .50 caliber machine gun and ammo. The vehicle bounced from Cooper’s weight as he climbed on top. He set the machine gun on its tripod and laid the ammo next to it.
“Where’s Julie now?”
“She said they’re passing Craycroft.”
“Tell her I’ll let her know when I see them. After that, bring me the big rifle above your head.”
Hayley relayed the message and got out of the Humvee with the Barrett M107 .50 caliber sniper rifle. It was almost as big as she was. Cooper reached down and pulled it up.
He positioned himself on his stomach, careful not to knock over the M107, and looked through the scope. “Tell Julie I can see them now.”
The technicals following them were much larger than the converted pickup trucks that had chased Kevin. These were F-150s armored with steel plates.
The gray SUV held the lead position. The tan one followed and took fire from the technical behind them. Cooper shot a five-round burst from the .50 caliber machine gun. One of the rounds hit the metal plate that covered the driver’s side of the technical. The vehicle jerked from side to side before the driver lost control and clipped the curb. It rolled end over end before landing upside down. The roof of the cab collapsed onto the passengers inside.
The others sped past the mangled wreckage. His next shots hit another truck low in the engine compartment. The hood blew open, and the engine exploded from the impact of three .50 caliber rounds ripping through the engine block.
Cooper aimed for the driver of the third vehicle. The windshield shattered, but he missed his target. With only one more round left, he aimed for the engine, but the truck swerved to the left. He missed again, but hit the right front tire. The tire blew, and the rim dug into the asphalt at an odd angle. The truck flipped and rolled. As it broke apart, glass and metal hurtled through the air.
The back end of the tan SUV exploded. The driver veered off the road at high speed and crashed into two burned out cars. The impact filled the air with the unmistakable sound of metal crunching against metal. Cooper moved up to the machine gun and fired at the oncoming technical as the gray SUV zoomed past him.
Tires screeched and a horn sounded behind him, barely audible through the four and five round bursts he let loose on the technical no more than twenty-five yards away. It had to be Kevin. “Hayley, get down and b
race yourself!”
The gunner from the technical sprayed the gray SUV before he turned the machine gun toward the Humvee. Cooper fired again.
A large black blur passed him on the right. The Behemoth, bigger than he remembered. The technical and the Behemoth met each other on the road in an unfair game of chicken. The Behemoth bore down on the smaller vehicle like a monster rhino. The technical swerved to avoid its no win situation. The gunner grabbed onto the mounted gun to keep from falling out of the truck. But with his balance lost, he fired wildly into the air.
The driver must have misjudged the Behemoth’s speed or was stupid enough to think that Kevin would turn at the last second. The Behemoth sideswiped the truck at an angle. It flew through the air for twenty yards before crashing with such force that it broke in two when it hit the Costco building on the corner. Blood from the cab splattered the light colored masonry. The gunner’s body lay several yards away, his neck broken and arms and legs bent in unnatural angles.
Kevin slowed to a stop. Cooper spotted a fifth vehicle through the scope of the sniper rifle parked about a hundred yards away. Something whizzed past his left ear. He felt a rough tug on his shoulder. He touched the spot. His finger traced the bullet hole, but it had missed his flesh.
He looked through the scope again and recognized the shooter as one of the gangbangers from the incident at Home Depot. His heart pounded as heat crept up his neck to his face. He gritted his teeth to keep from yelling. The gangbanger spat out several epithets before he jumped into a waiting truck and sped away. Cooper had no time to reload and get off a decent shot. He secured the weapons onto the roof rack with bungee cords.
As he climbed down from the top of the Humvee, Julie ran past him on her way to the wrecked SUV. He hurried into the driver’s seat. When he was sure Hayley was uninjured, he backed up and drove around the car he had been using as a shield. But before he could go to Julie, he needed to take care of some business.
