Rolling Hunger

by R W Krpoun

  The Gnomes’ night camp was under a large pole shed intended for baled hay, ten miles north of the encampment. They circled the trucks, trailers, and the Cherokee around the shed and set up quickly and quietly. Marv required lightless camps so a deep hole was dug and meals were heated at its bottom using Sterno. It made for a cold and quiet camp, but the Associates were mostly young men who had had a long day, and other than the four sentries few were still awake after having eaten.

  Marv held an officers’ meeting once the camp had been set up and a sentry roster established. “OK, how did we do?”

  “Pretty good,” Dyson blew on his can of stew to cool it as he stirred. “The SUV itself is an easy sell. We couldn’t see from where we were at on the roofs, but there was a bunch of dropped gear and packs south of the cabin along with some defunct zeds; I expect a bunch of survivalists didn’t make it to their vehicles. I grabbed a Mini-14 and a pack in passing, so with that Ruger GP100 you got we’re short two sidearms for the Associates, and we have one second-line long-gun in reserve. I figure we’ll pull the bolt-actions first. Plus the truck had a lot of ammunition and magazines for various wseapons.”

  “Good. Chip?”

  “It was a major haul, dude. A hundred man-days of light-weight camper’s food, a bunch of camping gear, and a case of Sterno. Two major scores were a PAUL unit and a drone,” the big Gnome reported as he dug a Milky Way bar out of an ammo pouch.

  “What’s a Paul unit?”

  “Portable Aqua Unit for Lifesaving, PAUL. It looks like a blue trash can you could carry as a backpack, dude. You pour up to twenty-five gallons of water into it and ten minutes later you can start drawing off potable water.”

  “What does it run on?”

  “Nothing, dude, that’s the beauty of it; it’s got a high-tech membrane filter, and gravity pushes the water through. What comes out is as good as what comes from a tap. The only thing it can’t filter is oil.”

  “It come with spare filters?”

  “No need: the filter is good for years. You just flush it out every couple weeks and you’re golden.”

  “Wait, you mean you just pour in regular water? Like from a stream?”

  “Yeah, exactly. You use the cleanest water you can find, but it will filter bacteria and even viruses.”

  “So how long does it take to do twenty-five gallons?” JD asked. “We use around thirty gallons a day, more if it’s hot.”

  “A couple hours. We’ll still need water cans, dude, but we don’t have to worry about clean water once we get a supply built up.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Bear asked. “It sounds too good to be true.”

  “According to the owner’s manual the Germans developed it after some big monsoon.”

  “German engineering is the best,” JD conceded. “Use test kits on the first few batches, just in case. The Germans are also known for a double-cross on occasion.”

  “Bunch of bastards,” Brick agreed.

  “What about this drone?” Marv asked quickly, seeing the inevitable tangent debate rising.

  “It’s a Harris H18 heavy-left Octocopter. The manual says it can fly up to forty minutes at around twenty miles per hour, depending on the wind. It’s got a digital video camera and a digital still-shot camera, and you can live-view the video camera, dude. It fits into a hard case the size of a guitar case.”

  “Useful,” the Ranger nodded. “Addison?”

  “I’m charging the laptop. I probably won’t have a full picture until we get back and I can study it.”

  “OK. Well, we’re ahead by a laptop no matter what. JD, did you call in the site report on the encampment? Great. Anything else? All right, let’s get some Zs. We’ll roll at dawn, check the safe house, and beat feet back to Texas, see what the DSR wants.”

  There wasn’t any wifi out here so JD just looked at the pictures on his tablet. When the outbreak had hit he was in Miami looking over a couple Cubans who seemed ready to break into the big time. By the time he (along with Marv, Bear, and a few others) had walked, floated, and fought their way to within a few miles of Tallahassee he had gotten an e-mail from his wife informing him that she was departing for Belize with the new love of her life and their two children. It wasn’t something he could blame on the outbreak: she had sold the house and moved his belongings into a storage unit, so it wasn’t spontaneous. She must have been working on it for quite some time.

  He had been on the road a lot, he had to admit, and they had been married a long time, but still it had hurt like hell. Ironically, the running battle that was their initial trip to Texas had left him so emotionally drained that much of his animosity had drained away unnoticed amidst the struggle to stay alive. The fact that his kids were in an area that was unaffected by the virus had taken some of the sting out of the issue.

  He had been exchanging e-mails with the kids for the last couple weeks, and neither appeared to be blaming him; at least the zombie crisis had stripped away some of the trauma of the family break-up by overshadowing it with a greater trauma.

  They seemed pretty impressed with the fact he was rescuing people and killing zombies, and he had sent them a couple pictures of himself in uniform with his rifle. The divorce paperwork was moving apace, and his soon-to-be-ex had put half their money in an account for him, so as such things go it was running pretty smoothly.

  He oscillated between a desire to speak to her face-to-face in order to pin down what went wrong, and a hope that he would never have to lay eyes on the two-timing piece of work. All these years running all over the country milking his share out of the business of pro wrestling and he had never once strayed, and there had always been plenty of girls around.

  More urgently, he wanted to see his son and daughter again and tell them…something. Something wise and fatherly, something that could help them make sense out of the insanity that had broken their family and the greater insanity that was threatening to break their world. He was working on it, but so far nothing solid was coming forth.

  At least they knew he was in there trying to make things right, that their old man was stepping up and helping solve the problem. That ought to be worth something, he figured.

  He hoped.

  They found the safe house, a double-wide trailer off a county road, around ten in the morning. It looked quiet, with an old pick-up and a well-used sedan parked under the car port. The sky was still heavily overcast but it hadn’t rained yet, and there were no fresh tire tracks in the short, muddy driveway.

  Marv used it as a training exercise, sending Dyson with a third of the Associates to maneuver on foot in a wide circle to come in from the rear, while JD and Bear led teams in from either flank. It killed nearly an hour, but it was good training.

  He personally led the team that breached the front door and swept the building, emerging a minute later thoroughly disgusted. “Two dead people and nothing else. Addison, see what you can find out from the place; Chip, take a look at the bodies.”

  “Was it a safe house?” JD asked.

  “Dunno for sure, but there’s two dead people in there and one was shot in the head. Dyson, look in the vehicles for the registration, their last name was Gonzales,” Turning back to JD, he shrugged. “Two people, two vehicles, no signs of a struggle or a search. ERF pamphlets near the bodies but no damage to the cars or major appliances.”

  “Who are the ERF again?” Bear asked. “I know I read about them.”

  The Ranger handed the biker a crumpled pamphlet. “The Environmental Restoration Front, an eco-terrorist group. They oppose technology and think that Mankind should revert back to a hunter-gatherer level of existence. I think the ERF split with FASA about the time of the first bio-war attacks, but I’m not sure.”

  “They hate technology? What are they, Amish fundamentalists?” Bear grinned. “Think about it: suicide bombers with kegs of black powder strapped to them.”

  “Funny. No, they think Stone Age is the place to be. They oppose vaccinations because the smallpox
virus has a right to live, or some such nonsense.”

  “I guess they’re willing to use guns and printing presses, though?” JD pointed at the pamphlet.

  “Just until modern society is overthrown. The last DSR circular had a write-up on them. Am I the only one who reads those?”

  “Man, what a bunch of psychos,” Bear folded the pamphlet and put it in his pocket. “I’m saving this for toilet paper.”

  “So you don’t think it was the ERF?” JD asked.

  “No. Not that they don’t kill people, but the circular said they’re big into flair and drama. This is too tidy.”

  “Both were shot in the head, the man twice, I’m not sure if the woman was shot more than once,” Chip reported, a little pale but professional. “The bullets didn’t exit. From the rigor I’m guessing no more than twenty-four hours ago, not less than ten.”

  “Not bad,” Marv nodded. “Those courses are working. Any shell casings?”

  “No.”

  “Any shots miss?”

  “Nope.”

  “Caliber?”

  “Small, I would guess twenty-two Long Rifle, dude.”

  “OK,” the Gnome leader rubbed his jaw. “The way I saw it the man was sitting at the table, the woman was at the stove. So they let the killer in and he shoots them by surprise. Anything you see change that?”

  “No. One thing: she was making stew, and the burner is off. The whole kitchen is very neat and tidy, and the fridge is super organized. But there’s crumbs on the counter and what sandwich makings are left are sort of untidy. I think the killer turned off the stove and made himself some sandwiches before he left.”

  “Dammnnnn,” Dyson drawled. “Check out the big brain on the big boy. I guess regular applications of Cuban cutie done made this boy wise.”

  Chip shot the martial artist the finger.

  “Good work, really good work,” Marv nodded thoughtfully. “This suggests a pro, and him making himself some lunch could suggest he had some distance to go.”

  “Any proof it was a safe house?” JD asked. “And I asked that once already.”

  “All the pictures were just of the two of them, so no kids, but they had a fully furnished guest room,” Marv shrugged. “They got clipped by a guy they let in, who made himself a sandwich before leaving without apparent theft. That supports a safe house, but it’s not damning proof.”

  “Why would someone other than the government take out a safe house?” Dyson asked.

  “Tying up loose ends,” Marv guessed.

  “Why? FASA is in the middle of a war, and they’re getting their butts kicked left, right, and center. Their top man is dead, there’s signs of serious loss of organizational structural integrity, and all that, so why would they care about a safe house?”

  “Good point,” Marv conceded. “But the big question is whether we can learn anything here. I have hopes of bagging a CATL critter.”

  “Well, Addison has been in there two hours so far. If there is anything, he’ll find it,” JD pointed out. “He’s as crazy as a rat stuck in a two-inch sewer line, but that’s useful in situations such as these.”

  “Speak of the devil,” Dyson jerked his chin and the group turned to see Addison emerging from the double-wide carrying a green cloth shopping bag, a nylon equipment case, and wearing surgical gloves.

  “What did you learn?” Marv asked as the dark Gnome joined them.

  “They had a very good quality closed-circuit camera system watching the entire exterior of the house, but no video record. Their laptop computer is missing,” Addison set the bags down. “The power cord was still plugged in. The bed in the guest room had been slept in and was made up in a different fashion than the bed in the master bedroom. There was a very good quality fingerprint kit under the sink in the master bath, and I found a deck of Department of Defense CATL cards in the nightstand. They were largely unused, and one card is missing.”

  Bear pulled a well-shuffled deck out of his pocket. “Which deck and what card?”

  “Version 1.2. The queen of spades.”

  “Prefect: my deck matches.” The biker began sorting through the cards.

  “Cards have version numbers?” JD raised his eyebrows.

  “The list expands and contracts. Mostly expands,” Addison explained.

  “Got it: Franklin Hodges,” Bear studied the card. “Looks like my high school English teacher.”

  “Let’s see,” Dyson took the card.

  “More importantly, what’s he worth?” JD asked.

  “Half-mill,” Bear grinned. “Tax-free.”

  “So why was the card missing?” Chip asked.

  Addison held up a number of hinge-lift fingerprint cards that displayed smudged prints. “I believe the couple did not know the identity of their client. I expect they lifted his thumbprint to confirm the identity. They probably had the playing card and the best lift on them, and the killer found it.”

  “He looks like an ID photo,” JD observed, passing the card back to Bear. “Like they put on sample ID cards.”

  “Dude, we were a day behind him,” Chip shook his head. “So close.” Opening the pouch on his vest he counted Milky Ways by touch. Sighing, he closed the pouch without removing a candy bar.

  “And now he’s in the wind,” Dyson sighed.

  “The wind is blowing north.” Addison produced a brand-new road atlas from the cloth bag, its cover stained purple. “This was behind the nightstand in the guest room. I had to kill their goldfish to free up their aquarium to test for prints; I used ninhydrin to bring up fingerprints, and the only pages with more than just ‘flip through’ prints are a series of adjacent states culminating in Minnesota.” He fanned the stained pages to illustrate his findings.

  “So he’s heading to Minnesota,” Marv said. “Yeah, he handled every state between Oklahoma and the land of ten thousand lakes and six public docks. He didn’t happen to circle any towns or something similar?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing is ever easy. Are they Hodges’ prints?”

  “They match the partials the Gonzales had stashed. I’ll check the playing card, but it seems likely.”

  “Do it. Nice work, Addison,” the Ranger drummed his fingers on his magazine pouches. “So Hodges figures out the Gonzales have developed a commercial interest in him, pops them, drops the ERF stuff to cloud the issue, makes himself lunch to go and hooks it. He leaves earlier than planned and loses his road atlas, which is no big deal because he was too careful to write on it. Trouble for him is that it’s brand-new so only certain pages have been handled.”

  “You thinking of trying to chase him?” Dyson asked. “Because Grand Forks is right on the border.”

  “Not directly, Minnesota is a big place. But we have a lead on a CATL list member, which ought to win us at least enough goodwill with the Feds to translate into a freight-class plane ticket for Anna to Texas.” Marv thumped Dyson on the shoulder. “By hook or by crook the Yard Gnomes get the job done.”

  “Its Hodges,” Addison reported, handing the card back to Bear.

  “Good. Preserve the atlas and the other stuff like evidence, you’ve got the handbook the DSR gave us, right? Its leverage. Chip, Dyson, do your thing, but only food, weapons, ammo, and really high importance stuff. We’re on the line, salvage-law-wise. Make it quick and we’re heading back to Texas.”

  “Some canned goods, some batteries, nothing else,” Chip reported.

  “We got an tricked-out AR-15, two Beretta 92 pistols, a Colt Mustang, lots of ammo, plenty of spare magazines, and a good selection of tactical web gear. Plus this thing: I think it’s a shotgun.”

  “Oh, it is indeed a shotgun,” Marv picked it up. “This is a Vepr-12, one of the few things Russia does well besides mass executions and vodka. It’s a twelve gauge shotgun built on a RPK receiver; basically think of it as a shotgun version of the AK. It can feed any sort of twelve gauge ammo, it has a straight-slide magazine well instead of the stupid AK latch and swing, a picatinny rai
l on top of the receiver, and a built-in muzzle brake. Shit, this baby has been modified for full auto!”

  “The stock looks like the one on your M-4,” Bear observed. “Let me see that. How big are the magazines?”

  Dyson sorted through the box at his feet. “They had a few ten round mags and several drums, let’s see…twenty-five per.”

  Bear turned on the reflex sight mounted on the rails and sighted the weapon, “Man, I think I’m in love.”

  “Well, if you want it, turn in your AK. That means we can swap out two manual-action weapons, and the Berettas fill the gap in sidearms,” Dyson nodded, pleased. “Who doesn’t have a back-up?” He held up the tiny Colt Mustang.

  “I take it,” Brick stepped forward.

  “All right, get the loot loaded up and let’s head south,” Marv hitched his M-4 around to the front. “We have business elsewhere.”

  “Polish vodka better than Russian vodka,” Brick advised Chip as they headed to the trucks.

  “I don’t doubt it, dude. But how are you guys on combat shotguns?”

  “Not so great,” the Pole admitted.

  Chapter Four

  The Gnomes called Patriot Homestead Texas Two home at the moment. Texas Two was two counties in north-central Texas secured by two brigades from the Texas National Guard’s 36th Infantry Division and a provisional security brigade made up of Navy personnel; with the bulk of the USN anchored in port served by skeleton crews and its shore billets largely empty, sailors were issued rifles and assigned security posts guarding Homesteads.

  The navy personnel manned checkpoints and patrolled the Homestead’s perimeter, and the National Guard infantry mounted regular zombie-hunting or counter-terrorist operations into the surrounding areas, as well as aiding groups of survivors. So far the safe zone concept was working, albeit on an ad hoc basis.