by W. J. Lundy
Sean finished with his horse then dropped beside the old man on the bench, waiting for the rest of the men. “I’ve lost people too; a lot of ’em.”
“Aye,” Henry said, exhaling smoke. “Let me ask you, Chief—”
Sean shook his head. “Please, call me Sean.”
Henry smiled. “Okay, Sean, let me ask you—what the hell are you doing out here?”
With a puzzled expression, Sean tipped his head before looking toward the door at two young boys running into the barn. The kids greeted Henry by name before filling grain sacks and attending to the horses. Henry waited until the boys were out of earshot before looking at Sean for an answer.
Sean shrugged. “What do you mean? You know I’m looking for my man.”
Grinning, Henry shook his head. “No, that’s bullshit. You could send someone else to do that. You’re a capable man; you don’t need all of this. You could leave at any time and make an easy life, even in the middle of all this. I don’t think you’re just looking for your man.”
“You don’t?”
“Nope. I don’t know you very well, but I know your type. I think you’re hooked on it. You don’t like it none, but you can’t rest. Because it’s in the downtime that you really consider just how lost you are, just how much you’ve lost.”
Sean forced a laugh. “Why would you think that?”
Henry smiled and looked out the barn door, squinting at the sunlight. “Us warriors all have a type. Like those boys that used to kill each other in Northern Ireland, maybe like them British fellas against the Zulus, or even our own General at Custer’s Last Stand. We always seem to be doing the wrong thing because we can’t help but be led into a fight. I tell you what, son, maybe I didn’t go off to war like you did, but I still managed to find one. It’s just what boys like us do.”
Sean stood and rolled his shoulders. “Maybe you’re right; guys like us are just drawn to the fight.”
Nodding, Henry turned back toward the others. “Come on, fellas. Let’s see what sorta grub that ginger is keeping from us,” he said loud enough for the others to hear.
Chapter 10
Northeast of Coldwater Compound, Michigan Safe Zone
It had begun to grow dark before they reached Palmer’s hiding spot—an out-of-the-way strip mall. Surprisingly, the shop windows were covered with sheets of plywood. The parking lot, instead of being filled with burnt-out and rusted vehicles, was completely empty. Palmer drove into the lot and then circled around to a back-loading dock. He reversed the big vehicle into an elevated bay that had been modified to marry up with the armored vehicle perfectly. “This is my home away from home,” he said.
Palmer pulled himself from his seat and moved to the rear compartment. Brad could see that the rugged soldier in the back was closing the firing ports but keeping his weapon ready. “The strip mall is sealed up tight, but you can never be too careful out here in Indian country. I don’t worry about the zombies breaking in. They don’t have much need for spare parts and diesel, but there are looters out here and the scumbags have been known to leave the gate open when they leave.” He chuckled.
The driver gripped a heavy bar and looked to the soldier beside him. The man nodded, expressionless, and Palmer pulled the lever then let the door closest to him swing out. Cold, musty air quickly filled the compartment. The soldier exited, wearing a night vision device lowered down from his helmet. Palmer stayed in the vehicle, waiting until the soldier called the all-clear from inside, and a warm yellow light filled the space outside.
“They’ve got power?” Brad whispered.
Brown unbuckled himself. “Palmer’s got more than that in this little He-man Primal Haters Clubhouse,” the big man grunted, working his way to the back and leaving the vehicle.
Chelsea turned and looked at Brad. “You regret volunteering for this yet?”
Brad smiled. “I regret everything I volunteer for. Never again, right? Come on, let’s see what I got us in to.”
He climbed over the seat and moved through the vehicle, pausing before stepping down onto the concrete floor. He turned back as Chelsea moved in beside him, carrying her rifle and looking deeper into the building. Brad could see that the doors of the MRAP were pinned back and chained to the walls of the building then heavy canvas tarps had been pulled over the doors in a sort of airlock. It wouldn’t stop an armed entry, but a Primal would have a hell of a time trying to chew its way in. He turned back and could see that the soldier was gone, having moved out of the empty room they were in.
With the rest of the group, they moved out and into the larger room. It was long and deep, filled with rolls of carpet and flooring samples. The walls were lined with boxes of supplies and random goods—everything from large cans of fruit to motor oil. Palmer was in a corner feeding bits of wood into the mouth of a steel drum converted into a stove. The other soldier was back pulling boxes down from a high shelf, rummaging through canned goods and MRE packets. He came walking back toward the stove with a coffee pot and a sack of ground beans. Brad saw Brown leaning over a desk in the corner, working the controls on a SINGARs radio set.
Chelsea looked at Palmer and called out, “Is there a head?”
Palmer looked at her confused.
“A bathroom,” Chelsea said.
“Ahh, yeah, through that office; use the rain barrel to flush,” Palmer said before getting back to building the fire.
Chelsea turned to Brad. “I’m going to go clean up. Make sure I get some of that coffee.”
Brad nodded and moved to the desk where Brown was working the radio. He was wearing a headset and talking into a microphone. The big man looked up as Brad got closer; he removed the headset and flipped a switch, diverting the sound to a small speaker.
“The attack has stopped, but we can’t get out to repair the fences until daylight. Over.”
Brown lifted the handset and spoke. “Understood, we are holing up at site Tango with six souls. We ran off the raiders but made no contact. Over.”
“Roger that, Rodeo Five. Oscar Rodeo is activating Operation Juliet. Hold position and contact us at daybreak for instructions. Over.”
Brown pulled the handset away from his mouth and looked at the other soldier then looked back at the mic. “I’m sorry, Rodeo Six; did you say Juliet? Over.”
“Affirmative, Rodeo Five, Operation Juliet is active. Check your timelines. Rodeo Six, out.” The radio transmission clicked back to white noise.
“Rodeo Six?” Brad asked. “Who’s the commanding officer at the factory?”
Brown shrugged and pulled an old office chair from the wall before plopping into it. “I wish you’d had more time to get a read on things before this happened. It would have been a hell of a lot easier to understand.”
“What’s Operation Juliet?” Brad asked.
“The senator is evacuating civilians from the camp. They’ll convoy north within seventy-two hours. Only a small military presence will stay back to maintain the compound and the gates.”
“The senator ordered?” Brad said. “Who exactly is in charge out here?”
“Well, we’ve got military, local authorities, state government, and then the folks that think they are Feds just because they came up with a title.”
Brad rubbed at his chin. “But who is in charge?”
“We’ve all got responsibilities. When shit goes sideways, they blame us,” the man replied. “The man on the radio—Rodeo Six—is the captain you met at the gate a night ago. He’s good people. The military runs all ground operations and security for the camp. We also are charged with protecting this sector. The civilian leadership is charged with the people and making sure they stay happy and that the camp doesn’t go hungry. They’ve elected their own little government of sorts. They do a good job of keeping the peace, so us Joes can stick to doing our jobs.”
Brand nodded. “And the senator?”
Smirking, Brown shook his head side to side. “Yeah, the senator… Well, he’s supposed to keep us res
upplied. Sort of acts like a trade baron between colonies, tasked with keeping this fragile thing from falling apart. Now don’t get me wrong, he’s done a great job, and I can’t fault him when he’s gotten us this far.”
“But?” Brad said, finishing the man’s thought. “Don’t hold out on me, there is always a but.”
“I don’t know. Maybe there was nothing he could’ve done, but some of us think he’s been too weak in dealing with the East. Maybe if he’d been stronger from the start, we could’ve avoided all of this.”
Brown looked up as the rugged soldier approached, carrying tin cups and a pot of coffee. “Hot Joe, fellas?” the man said with a deep voice, setting the cups on the desk and topping them off.
Brad asked for an extra for Chelsea as she returned from the back of the room. Then he took his cup and backed away from the desk, surveying the space that was filled with shelves full of goods. He spotted chairs near the now-glowing wood stove.
Brad moved and pulled up a chair near the stove before looking back to Brown. “What do you mean if he’d been stronger? You mean like not evacuating your compound at the first sign of trouble?”
The big sergeant frowned and crossed the space, finding a stool of his own. “It’s a lot to explain. When we first set up here, things were okay; nothing to brag about, but at least everyone was trying. We all pulled together to survive. We all shared a common goal, and it wasn’t hard to convince people to work together. We constructed the barriers, we took over large grocery stores, warehouses full of food. Took control of fuel stores and power plants. Hell, we had a gravel pit and a cement factory working around the clock. At one time, eighteen trucks and five hundred workers were assigned to building that wall.”
“And a beautiful wall it is,” Brad said.
Brown shrugged. He took a sip of his coffee and continued. “We got people safe behind fences and then let the military and the locals loose on the Primals.”
Chelsea took a sip of her coffee then looked at Brown sideways. “You set the locals loose on the Primals? What does that mean?”
“Excuse me, Corporal, but where are you from?”
Chelsea looked puzzled by the question. “New York, why?”
“From the city, I guess?
Chelsea shook her head. “I’m not from Manhattan, if that’s what you’re asking. But yeah, I grew up in a city, lived in apartments most of my life.”
Brown nodded and rubbed his chin. “No offense, Corporal, plenty of my soldiers grew up the same way. But here in Michigan, we’ve got loads of local boys that grew up in the woods hunting deer, and I’ll tell you, they were pretty damn effective at clearing out the Primals. Hell, if the senator hadn’t authorized it, they probably would’ve gone and done it anyway.”
Brad grinned, knowing exactly what Brown was talking about, having spent most of his own youth in the woods with a twelve-gauge or a .22 rifle. “So, what went wrong?” he asked.
Sighing, Brown took another long sip from his coffee. “Even with Primals growing scarce, the concrete walls up, and the security fences keeping folks safe, you know there will always come a time when people wear out. It was all holding together until supplies dwindled and people got hungry.”
Brad frowned. “The bad thing about taking food from warehouses and off the streets is it’s a finite amount.”
“Exactly,” Brown said, nodding in agreement. “And apparently, conditions were even worse in the East; they had more people and less reserves.”
“So, they came for what you had here?” Chelsea asked.
Shaking his head, Brown looked down. “No, too cowardly to face us head on. They opened the walls out east and moved south. Claimed they were looking for survivors. The leaders in Philadelphia said they were going to expand the safe zones. It started small; first they took over smaller communities just beyond the wall, requisitioning supply stores. Relocating survivors.” Brown paused on the last word, locking eyes with Brad.
“Let me guess—women and children,” Brad said.
Brown nodded. “I swear we didn’t know. I read your brief. If we’d known, we would have done more to stop it.”
He took another sip of his coffee, looking at the glowing fire in the stove. “We had people show up at the wall. They started telling stories of raiding parties, attacks on settlements, the burning of the gated communities in Indiana. We still didn’t want to believe it was the East. The captain sent a request up to the senator, asking for formal permission to send a recon team out south of the wall, but the old man shut it down.”
“You went anyway,” Brad said.
The big sergeant clenched his jaw as the other men moved closer to the fire. Palmer opened the stove door and filled it with wood. Brown nodded and pointed to the rough veteran soldier who was sitting just across from him. The man was young, but his face was leathered and serious. “Captain wasn’t having it. He gave me three vehicles and provisions for a week; he wanted to know what was going on. I took this man here and a few others, and we rolled south then cut east toward the reports of violence.
“Not fifty miles beyond the wall, we came upon a turned-out village… buildings burned, bodies on the street.”
Brad sighed. “Places like that are a dime a dozen in the wasteland. How do you know it was raiders?”
Slowly dipping his chin, Brown again pointed to the soldier across from him. The rugged man removed his patrol cap, exposing dark hair and piercing blue eyes that stared into the darkness beyond Brad. Eyes that Brad recognized as having seen their share of violence.
Brown sighed and continued. “It wasn’t circumstance that I asked him to come along. He knows the wasteland. Because of him, I knew it was raiders… because we had Gyles. This fella has spent more time outside the walls than any of us. Maybe even more time in the wild than you.”
Gyles shook his head. “Not by choice; I was just surviving,” he said in a low voice that rode on the edge of anger. “But I know that place was standing six months earlier. And unless some shit has changed, I don’t know nothing about these zombie dicks clearing out supply cellars. They don’t steal casks of homemade wine, and they don’t shoot men execution style in the back of the head.”
Chelsea’s expression softened. “You knew them?”
Nodding, Gyles reached into a pack and removed an amber bottle. He popped a cork and poured a bit into his coffee cup. He looked at the bottle and handed it to Chelsea. “It’s local-made and horrible, but you all are welcome to it.” He waited for Chelsea to add a bit to her cup and pass the bottle to Brad before he nodded his approval and continued. “I knew them. Had family there once.”
He saw the expression on their faces and waved off their concern. “It’s not like that. They didn’t survive the fall, but folks in the community still knew me. They took me in when I was making my way north. I spent close to eighteen months moving from settlement to settlement, ever since the meatgrinder. They were smart, good people, and somebody killed them for a cellar full of canned goods and some shitty homemade wine.”
Brad sat up. “You were at the meatgrinder?”
The soldier nodded. “Yeah, I was there; not part of the defense, but I was there.” The man’s eyes seemed to burn as they focused on something against a far wall. His voice dropped low. “A lot of shit went on during the fall. Nothin’ went the way it was planned—the way they planned it. But yeah, you could say I was at the grinder. I managed to link up with some other units, and somehow we survived.” He paused again, and his jaw hardened. Instead of speaking, he took a sip from his mug and looked away.
Brown cleared his throat and, getting back on topic, said, “It didn’t stop there. We cut a trail east and hit several places, following along just south of the wall. Every place we found told the same story. Cellars cleared out, dead men in the street, burnt structures. It was all the same until we came across an old nuke plant near Toledo. Big place on Lake Erie; they had walls and the lights still on.”
“I know the area. Was it a sett
lement?” Brad asked.
Shaking his head, Brown continued. “Not a settlement. Not like any you would imagine, anyway.” He swallowed hard, looking down into his coffee cup. He took a long sip then continued. “It’s a massive compound built up around the power plant. We kept our distance and watched them. It was built up like a base: lots of activity, convoys coming and going. There was a lot of traffic for the place being so remote. Trucks came in from the south and rolled out, headed east. They were processing people, but they weren’t survivors. It was like a prison. Women and kids under guard… they were driving them up from the places they hit then shipping them back up north, along with all of the goods they stole.”
“What did you do?” Chelsea asked.
Brown’s face drooped, and he looked away. “What could we do? The place was heavy with armed men. What were we? A heavy recon team—a squad at most.”
“I’ll tell you what we did,” Gyles said, his voice low and cold. “We waited for their patrols to go out, and we followed them. We headed south down that main road. We dropped a tree across the street—a spot where the shoulder was low and tight to the trees—and then we waited for them to loop back.” He took a drink from his cup and smiled sadistically. “It didn’t take long before they returned. Three big moving trucks and an old ambulance.
“Those trucks stopped just short of the tree. A man got out with a length of chain like he was going to pull the tree out of the road. Like it was a task he’d done hundreds of times before. But this time they would find things a bit different. They found out the hard way when Sergeant Brown boxed them in with an armored Hummer in the back.”
