by Dave Lund
If that didn’t work, I don’t know what will.
Jessie walked back to her cabin and tried the sink. After a few moments of sputtering air and gargling sounds, water rushed out of the faucet. Satisfied, Jessie locked the cabin door, propped her rifle against the toilet, and took a cold but very satisfying shower.
CHAPTER 56
Groom Lake, NV
February 18, Year 1
Major Wright sat in conference room D-1 once again, this time without Cliff, but attended by Jake from Colorado and Mike from Texas, the elected leaders of each group. The civilian rules were laid out in a simple single-page document. It contained basic rules like no theft and no assault, and the general needs for a civilized community. The second page showed a duty roster dividing the workload of the facility. Simply built, once again, but dividing the tasks of cooking, cleaning, and maintenance across a few teams of people rotated on a schedule. It was important that there were skilled people in each group, including one who was an experienced radio operator. Quickly the conversation turned to Cliff.
“Jake, the last transmission was a mayday transmitted only once by Arcuni. We’ve completely lost contact since then. We won’t have another satellite pass over Cortez for three more hours. I don’t know where they were when that call went out, but that’s the place we’re going to start.”
“If something happened and the plane crashed, I hope my guys’ wives and children weren’t on it. I hope Sara wasn’t on it. The Tribe was bad enough. I don’t want to see what else could happen.”
“Your group aren’t the only survivors we’ve contacted who have had troubles with rogue groups trying to plunder like warlords. There’s a group in Texas that was overrun by a motorcycle gang.”
“Did you fly to them as well?”
“No, it’s classified.”
Mike slammed his hand on the table. “Classified my ass! There is no more classified. If you haven’t noticed, we’re in the goddamned Area 51. Everything has gone to hell. Who are you worried about, the fucking Soviets? It isn’t 1980 anymore, guy.”
Wright took a deep breath and sighed, shaking his head. “You’re right. I know you’re right. OK. A group of formal Special Forces who work for a joint CIA and DEA taskforce fought their way back to the United States from central Mexico. They intercepted the other group and eliminated the biker gang, but found and saved only a single survivor. They are en route to another facility similar to this one in Texas. Same one our new President is at.”
“OK, what then?”
“Quite frankly, I don’t know. Cliff had his own plan that fit his mission parameters. He didn’t tell me what the entire plan was or even what all the assets were.”
“Where in Texas?”
“Outside of Dallas.”
“There’s a secret base outside of Dallas? How did they ever build it?”
“I have no idea. Cliff didn’t go into it. Besides, it doesn’t matter.”
Jake said, “Dallas to Cortez is only about a fifteen-hour drive. Could they go after our kidnapped members?”
Wright shook his head. “I have no idea. We’ve had no contact with them since yesterday, and I don’t even know if they survived the trip to the other facility.”
“So you’re just going to give up?”
“No, we’re going to be patient. First, we have to figure out where the plane is, if there are survivors, and if your people were on that plane. As of right now, we don’t know enough to act.”
“Well that’s not good enough!” Jake stormed out of the room.
CHAPTER 57
Cortez, CO
February 18, Year 1
Cliff woke with the morning sun and considered the most pressing issue he had at the moment— where to pee. Figuring gravity would drain most of it away without any extra water, Cliff opted to pee in the master shower. He had blood in his urine. As violent as the plane crash had been, Cliff wasn’t surprised. His kidneys had probably taken a beating with the rest of his body. That meant he needed to drink more water and he needed another day or two of rest. First, he needed to get a message to Wright that he had survived and where he was.
Glancing out the window, Cliff was glad to see his friends from last night had wandered off. He would still need to be quiet, because the last thing he needed was to attract any unwanted attention. Cliff was in no shape to fight and would try to avoid a fight until he could heal up some.
After drinking the second pot of melted water from the previous night, Cliff unlocked the back door and quietly walked into the cold winter’s air. Across the road from the backyard was an open field. With the snow, he had a plan.
Twenty minutes later, Cliff went back into the house after stomping “CLIFF” into the snow in thirty-foot-tall letters. He went to the second story and climbed out of the broken window from the little girl’s room. A few moments later he stood on the roof of the house and carefully kicked the snow off the roof to form a plus sign.
Once back in the house, Cliff filled the pots up with snow again and began replenishing his water supply while he ate the can of stew cold. He wasn’t sure how long he was going to need to stay hidden and rest, but he was going to need more food very soon; even if Wright found his signal with a satellite pass, he had no idea how they could help him. Cliff was on his own to complete his mission. But first he was going to have to survive.
CHAPTER 58
The Basin
February 18, Year 1
It took an hour of being wrapped in every blanket in the cabin for Jessie to stop shivering from her cold shower, but at least she felt clean. Clean for now, at least. She still had a very long day ahead of her. Dressed in her scavenged clothes, Jessie pulled on her filthy scavenged blanket poncho.
Jessie retrieved a sheet from another cabin and cut a dozen long strips of cloth. For the next hour, she sat in the sunlight weaving a rope from the piece of cloth while trying to figure out what her next move should be. No matter how hard she thought, she couldn’t fathom what might have happened to Bexar.
Two ropes completed, Jessie drove the Scout into the middle of the parking area and began dragging bodies to it. After a few were piled up, Jessie tied one of the sheet-ropes around the bodies and then tied the bodies to the hitch. Slowly, she used the Scout to drag the bodies to the tent camping area so they would be out of her sight and smell, and so any scavenging animals would stay away.
The gruesome task of moving the bodies took a few hours, and on the last return trip to the cabins, Jessie turned and stopped the Scout by the Basin’s ranger station, climbed out, and looked around. The physical labor of moving the bodies caused her body to ache and she felt incredibly weak. She looked up at landscape, Emory Peak, and began to cry.
Eventually, the tears stopped and Jessie remembered that the radio was probably still in the cabinet on the mountaintop. Jessie was in no condition to make the long hike to the top—not yet—but she was confident she would be soon. First, she needed more supplies. She would drive back to Terlingua tomorrow to get all she could from the general store. That would be a start.
CHAPTER 59
I-20
February 18, Year 1
“I can’t believe we’re here. We’re really close to my group’s original cache site that was overrun in the beginning. That’s why we fled to Big Bend. What is this place?”
Apollo shrugged. “Best I can guess is that it is a bunker or supply cache. Cliff sent us to another underground supply cache in the middle of nowhere west Texas en route to you. That place was something else. Completely underground, and you would have never known it was there. Absolutely cavernous, and it seemed like there was any kind of gear you could think of short of a tank.”
“So if this is just a supply cache, are we going to stay here or what?”
Chivo shook his head, “I have no idea, mano. We tried to reach Cliff back before I-10, but someone else was handling comms and directed us here. Our plan was to go to Area 51.”
“That’s what
we were planning until I crashed the Wagoneer. Fuck.”
Bexar’s emotional burden was obvious to the other three, and they had no idea what to do about it.
“Hey mano, nothing more now than to survive. As long as you make it, so do their memories. That’s all we can hope for in our new world.”
Bexar took a heavy breath. “I guess so.”
The Land Rover slowed, turned into the broken gate, and passed a small guard shack with a sign that read “Waxahachie Creek Park.”
CHAPTER 60
Big Bend National Park
March 1, Year 1
Jessie stood alone. The clear morning air betrayed the previous week’s hard work, dragging the dead bodies out of the cabin area using the Scout and driving all over the park and area gathering enough supplies to survive. The work was slow and hard, given that she was completing it by herself, and the beating she’d taken at the hands of the bikers caused her whole body to throb in pain. The explosion surely hadn’t helped her in that regard.
The previous two days, huge storms had passed through; Jessie never realized how violent the weather could be in the high desert. She had always visited the park during the winter months, never this late in the year. Leaves and branches covered the parking lot from the wind and the hail, and the lightning was incredible, but at least all the rain washed much of the blood off the pavement by the cabins.
The morning sun reached over the top of the desert mountains. In her scavenged motorcycle boots and clothes, and with her M4 slung across her chest, she leaned against a tree to dry heave again. Her scant breakfast of MRE crackers with peanut butter had already been vomited into the bushes next to her cabin. This morning, she’d waken up feeling nauseous, and her breasts were sore. The tears followed specks of puke on her jeans and boots as she began walking up the trail to Emory Peak again, still feeling a little dizzy and nauseated.
If it was a concussion, it would have been better by now. And why would my breasts hurt?
No, it can’t be that. That couldn’t happen, not now.
Jessie climbed on top of a small boulder that let her look over The Basin from the trail. She looked at the morning sunlight warming the air below, a soft yellow glow giving the appearance of peace, but Jessie knew no peace. Her dreams were punctuated by the horror of the day she watched her daughter die and by a vision of Bexar. She wasn’t sure if the memory were real or not. Jessie walked back to the trail, starting her trek to Emory Peak and to the Yaesu HAM radio that she hoped would still be in the locker on the mountaintop.
If there’s no body, he’s not dead. He was here—I saw him—before the explosion. He has to be alive. I have to find him. I need help. I need to reach out to Cliff for help.
###
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
My name is Dave Lund. I hail from Texas and am a former Texas “motor-cop.” My family and photography round out my usual day-to-day passions, but post-apocalyptic zombie stories really fire me up. Before my previous stint as a motor-cop, I was a full-time skydiving instructor and competitor (in Canopy Piloting, aka swooping) with over 3,000 skydives. I am no longer an active skydiver so I can focus on my family, photography, and writing.
The characters in the Winchester series comprise some personality composites of people I have known or met in my life, but no character is based on a single real person or even two people combined. They are a complete work of fiction and do not represent any actual people, living or dead. Yes, that includes Bexar! Many of the themes, objects, weapons, tactics, and locations in the Winchester Undead series are pulled from my past and experiences, as many writers are apt to do, including my love of Big Bend National Park in Texas; although I have to admit there is no secret cache site in the small Texas town of Maypearl. At least none that I had any hand in creating.
The locations in Big Bend are real locations, with some minor artistic license taken, as are the cities and towns visited throughout the book. The jury is still out on the presence of the secret facilities that “Cliff” finds himself in, and the truthfulness of Chemtrails really depends on whom you speak with. If the writing about Cliff’s found Type 2 VW Transporter sounds a little detailed to those not acquainted with air-cooled VWs, that’s due to my love of air-cooled German autos, including the 1973 Superbeetle that I built and drive.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The people who make a single novel happen are numerous; it takes dedication and support from many facets of an author’s life. For a second and more books in a series the support and dedication is tremendous. First and foremost my wife, Morgan. Without her love, support, and faith in me I could have never even started on this journey, much less made it to this point. Her willingness to not only say “go” but to be my first line beta reader, biggest fan, and my cheerleader when I needed it most wasn’t exactly stated in our wedding vows, but she is my rock and my best friend and without her help the first step of this journey would never have been taken. My father lived long enough to know that I was writing a story and that I planned on publishing it, but he didn’t live long enough to see what has happened since. I know he would be proud even if a single book more failed to sell. From the beginning he taught me that I can accomplish anything I choose, but expect to work very hard to make the accomplishment happen. He was right and is right today.
Winlock Press, the imprint of Permuted Press, plucked my story of three prepper families out of Texas from the indie-author world and gave me the push to get the whole Winchester Undead rolling like I never had thought it could. None of that would have happened without all of my friends, new friends, and readers getting behind a story with excitement, telling their friends about Winchester: Over and the start of a new zombie apocalypse prepper series.
Numerous friends have reached out and helped me chase down details and given advice. Thank all of you: Mark, Jerry, Jason, the other Mark, Freeflier, Kristi, DFA 1 and DFA 2 … the list continues. Thank you, all of you.
Through the course of two releases in the series I have grown to know my characters, watching their journey unfold before me. Some of the twists and turns surprised me, but the characters told me it would be OK as long as I held on for the ride. So far they have been right. I hope as the series continues that the characters become as cherished to you as they have become to me. The foundation began twenty years ago, the project continues to be built, expanding through age and life’s journeys … DFA.
Keep your go-bags packed and be ready!
~Dave
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The Author Dave Lund Winchester Undead Newsletter, the place for unique content, special contests and tales of adventure can be found here: http://winchesterundead.com/main/winchester-undead-newsletter/
OTHER WINLOCK BOOKS YOU’LL LOVE
Winlock Press has a stunning range of post-apocalyptic adventures for fans of Thomas A. Watson. Be sure to click on the links below and enters the worlds of
J Rudolph’s The Reanimates: The Complex,
first in The Reanimates series!
It took no time at all for Shelton’s Disease to spread from an ugly rumor on the internet to the end of the world as Cali Anglin, RN, knew it. Now the half-abandoned gated community that she has taken for granted is all that stands between her family and the endless, ravenous hordes of reanimates. And with the government gone, electricity extinguished, and the food supply dwindling, she has to face questions she’s never asked herself before: just how far would she go to save her family, her friends, her rapidly collapsing community? Would she kill for them? Would she die for them? She’s about to find out.
In the terrifying tradition of George Romero’s Day of the Dead and Mira Grant’s Feed, Julie Rudolph gives us a fres
h and frightening look at the zombie apocalypse from the ground level, when ordinary people like you and me are forced to face extraordinary evil… and survive.
Tristan Vick’s Bitten: Resurrection,
first in the Bitten apocalypse series!
Rachael Ramirez has always been tough. Raising a son on her own in Newcastle City has made her that way. Alyssa Briggs, a Newcastle veterinarian, has always shown a gentler side. But when the world went crazy, and she literally ran into Rachael Ramirez as the risen dead overran them, everything changed. Now these bright and beautiful women will build a team of strange, courageous survivors, including a schizophrenic nymphomaniac, a narcissistic playboy, and a ragtag group of hardened soldiers: just what they need to stay alive in this weird new world. And none of them know that Rachael holds a shocking secret to the Resurrection Virus that may be the key to humanity’s salvation… or prove to be its worst curse.
