The next four weeks melted by like the last of the snow in the canyon.
Immediately after the nuclear destruction of almost all major US cities, and the broadcast suicide of the president, the shit hit the fan in its entirety. People had no direction, no news outlets that told them how to live their lives, and most importantly, there were no police forces to enforce the law. Anarchy ensued in full. People killed each other for food, water, and supplies. The power grid began to fail in many places, because there were no workers to maintain it. Fires had started, and with no firefighters to put them out, entire cities burned to the ground. To make matters worse, gangs of marauders and looters had banded together and started their own little armies.
Luckily, Bryce and his family were left largely alone due to the remoteness of their hideaway. A few stragglers had found the road that led up to the hatchery, but Bryce, Benjamin, Greg, and Jessica had taken to patrolling the road since the fall of society. They all kept their walkie-talkies on them and looked out for signs of survivors or infected.
The group had run into more than a few infected stragglers on a couple of occasions down by the highway. They had more than likely been survivors on the run when they succumbed to the virus one way or another and had wandered up toward Bryce’s little haven. Bryce used them as a sort of training regimen for himself and the others. He would shoot them in the leg to cripple them and knock them to the ground, and then he would try and take them out with a knife or other blunt weapon as they crawled toward him with their mouth open and teeth bared.
Once, after he jammed his knife into the neck of a particularly feisty infected, he bent over to pick up the blade, and the thing actually grabbed onto his leg and bit his shoe. Bryce almost shit his pants and leapt back as he pulled out his Taurus .45. He fired two rounds into the top of its head, and blew its brains all over the concrete.
After that, he stopped his game of close combat training with the infected; one close call was all it took for him to learn a lesson.
For Bryce and his group, things had been pretty good up until now. After a month, they had begun to run pretty low on supplies. For the first couple weeks, since they had so much food, they had eaten three square meals a day and everyone was satisfied. By week three, they realized that they had to start rationing their food if they wanted it to last longer. By week four, they saw the impact of all the waste in the first two weeks. Their pantry was half empty, and the freezer was down to the bare essentials.
They had also run the generators since the power kicked off, because they wanted to keep the freezer cold and use all of their electronics. Now, they were almost out of fuel for the generator due to their waste and lack of knowledge. Jessica had known that the load on the generator had been too much, but she was dismissed.
Bryce decided it was time to take another venture into Payson and see what was left to salvage. Benjamin and Greg did not like the idea, because they remembered what happened the last time they went into town. They still hadn’t completely gotten over what Bryce had done on the last excursion, and viewed Bryce in a strange light.
“We need to go into town, and at the bare minimum, fill up the fuel tanks,” Bryce told the group.
“It looks like we only have a couple, maybe three days of fuel left, and if the generator runs out then we lose the freezer and all the food in it,” he explained.
“I’ll go with you, son,” his father said.
“Me too,” said Jessica, almost too eagerly.
“That’s good. Greg, maybe you should stay here, just in case anybody wanders onto our property,” Bryce said.
Bryce said “our” property and he meant it. Jessica had let the group move into the crew quarters weeks ago and quickly became part of their family.
“That’s a good idea,” Cindy added.
With that settled, Bryce started to plan for the outing to Payson. The last one didn’t end very well, and he didn’t believe it would be a walk in the park this time either. With the whole world gone to shit like it was, he knew they may have to protect themselves from both infected and survivors alike.
As Bryce paced back and forth by the large fishpond outside, he proceeded to explain his plan to Benjamin and Jessica. He wanted make the trip to town in the large flatbed truck stored in the warehouse. Both Benjamin and Jessica volunteered to drive, which would let Bryce ride shotgun and keep an eye out for threats. They decided to let Benjamin drive with Jessica in the back to watch the rear, and Bryce in the passenger seat to cover the front.
Bryce also told them that they needed to load the gigantic fuel tank for the generator in the bed of the truck. Before they shut down the generator, they told Greg, Cindy, and Victoria, not to use the fridge or freezer so that it could hold in as much cold air as possible. The faster they got the trip finished, the better, for multiple reasons.
They went through the process to shut down the generator, disconnect all the fuel leads, and readied to load up onto the truck. They decided to pick up the fuel tank with the Bobcat bucket and place it on the back of the truck. After they had gotten the tank wrapped in straps and readied for pickup, Greg operated the bucket on the Bobcat since he was the only one with significant experience with operating heavy machinery. At first Greg played around with the knobs and levers and thought he had a decent handle on things. Greg started to pull on the straps and jerked the controls, which lifted the tank off the ground and swung it toward Bryce. Bryce dove out of the way and the tank glided over his head. Bryce rolled over and got up quickly.
“Watch out!” Benjamin yelled.
Bryce spun around, and watched as the tank hurtled back toward him again. Bryce ducked down and rolled away once again just in the nick of time.
“What the fuck, Greg! I thought you said you could do this!” Bryce yelled, over the noise of the Bobcat’s engine.
“Sorry Bryce, it’s been about twenty years! Don’t worry I’ve got it now,” Greg yelled back.
Bryce stood up, dusted off, and stood well back.
Eventually, Greg did figure it out and successfully got the tank to hover right over the truck bed and held it steady. Bryce got up on the truck bed hesitantly and tried to bring the tank down. After a few tense minutes, they were able to guide the tank to the truck bed and tie it down with some straps.
“See, I told you, it’s like riding a bike,” Greg said to the group.
“Yeah except in this instance failure means crushing me with a five hundred-pound tank, I can’t just get up and try again,” Bryce quipped.
“It’s a good thing you think fast then,” Greg shot back.
“Fair enough, old man!” Bryce laughed at Greg.
“Who you callin’ old, you’re no spring chicken,” Greg dished out another round.
“Yeah and this shit is making me age much faster than I would like,” Bryce shouted back.
Bryce left it at that and loaded up some of the extra gas canisters that lay around so that they could collect as much fuel as possible.
Lastly, Jessica and the guys said their goodbyes to everyone at the hatchery and loaded up their weapons and some ammunition in a duffel bag and threw it in the cab of the truck. Bryce threw both his AR-15 and his AK-74 in the cab, Benjamin took an AR-15, and Jessica took the last one. Not quite sure what they were going to get into, Bryce figured that the more firepower the better. As always, all three had their sidearms. Bryce holstered his .45 on the inside of his waistband, and his 9mm on his thigh.
With a final wave out the side window, the three of them backed up the truck and started to head down the road toward the highway. As they entered the highway, they could begin to see the fallout from the past month for the first time. There was litter on both sides of the highway that had been left by travelers on their way north. All sorts of personal belongings like luggage, trash, and an assortment of junk lay in between broken-down beater cars. The mountains were particularly unforgiving for vehicles that had not kept up on regular maintenance. The final push to the hatch
ery from Payson ascended over fifteen hundred feet in less than 30 miles and was especially brutal. Being at the high altitude killed some of these vehicles. One car they passed looked like it had overheated, caught on fire and been abandoned to burn. Some of the vehicles they passed, on the other hand, looked brand new. These ones must have run out of gas, Bryce figured.
As they entered Payson a short time later, the setting changed. Buildings had been burned to the ground; in some places, their skeletal structures were still standing, other buildings were partially fallen over or had vehicles driven through the front or side of them. Parking lots were full of burned-out cars, and everywhere around, there were bullet casings and dead bodies. The dead bodies lay everywhere and disturbed all three of them. No strangers to death over the past month, they were still somewhat taken aback at the number of bodies that lay in the streets, parking lots, and even inside cars.
Bryce grabbed his AR-15 rifle and chambered a round. He set the rifle next to him with the barrel pointed toward the floorboards. Benjamin similarly took out his handgun and placed it in the cup holder of the truck.
Bryce’s head spun back and forth, his eyes scanned in both directions, and he looked for signs of trouble. The whole scene was unsettling, and Bryce felt a sense of urgency to complete their mission and get out of town.
Since the power was out, they needed to find a gas station that also had a backup generator. That would be the only way they were going to get enough gas to fill up the hatchery’s generator tank. Modern day had squashed the old ways, and reliance on the power grid was commonplace at every gas station in the city. The shiny new neon lighted stations had all but replaced the personal touches of a mom and pop-run gas station.
Benjamin and Bryce searched exhaustively for about an hour to find such a station. On the outskirts of town, they found an old station that looked like it had been around for at least forty years and was run-down well before the Outbreak. Bryce thought this might be the place, and had Benjamin pull into the lot.
“Stay with the truck for a minute, we need to take a look around,” Bryce said to his father.
“Will do,” Benjamin replied and placed his 9mm Kel-tec on his lap.
Bryce hopped out of the truck, signaled to Jessica for her to follow him, and wrapped his sling over his head to bring up his rifle. First, they scouted around the outside of the building and looked for any sign of potential infected, looters, or whatever else lurked around and waited for them.
After they checked the perimeter and found nothing that would pose a threat, they continued. Bryce turned the corner to the rear of the building, and saw exactly what they had hoped for. The gas station had a large shed with a sign that read, Keep Out: High Voltage Electricity. Bryce approached the shed, tapped on the door with the butt of his rifle, and listened closely. After he heard nothing, he quickly swung open the door to the shed and took a peek inside. After he determined that there was no threat, he opened the door to the shed, and inside the generator stood in front of him like a holy grail. He signaled for Jessica to watch his back so that he could examine the generator.
Bryce tapped the tank with his rifle, and it sounded hollow. He kept tapping it and followed it to the bottom where it sounded a little different, which confirmed that there was still some fuel in the tank. He figured it had not been used in quite some time, so hopefully the fuel was still good.
Not quite sure how long the fuel in the tank would last after he fired it up; Bryce decided to get everything else done before he started the generator.
Bryce and Jessica both went around to the front of the building and Bryce told his dad to get the truck parked near a pump and get it ready to pump gas into the holding tank. Within a minute or two Benjamin had this done. The pump was ready, and now they just needed some electricity.
Bryce went around back and hit the button to start the generator. Nothing happened.
“Shit!”
He took a quick look at the knobs and levers and found a lever labeled “fuel shutoff” in the off position. Bryce rolled his eyes, looked behind him to make sure Jessica hadn’t followed him back around and caught his mistake, and flipped the lever back to the on position before he hit the start button again. The engine cranked over a few times then sprang to life.
With the power turned on, suddenly all the lights in the building came on, along with the freezers, the random assortment of electronics, and most importantly the pumps in front. Bryce could hear music playing from some recently resuscitated device inside. He walked around to the front of the station and gave his father the thumbs up to pump the gas. Bryce watched as Benjamin tried the handle, and nothing came out. They both looked at each other and shrugged as their brains tried to figure out why it wouldn’t work. Then Benjamin realized it a moment before Bryce, they hadn’t paid for it!
Bryce thought quickly, with all the noise behind him, he knew they needed to get this over with and get out of here.
There had to be a switch on the inside of the station that controlled the pump for cash customers.
Bryce sprinted to the front doors of the small station and peeked inside, just as Jessica came up right behind him. With all of the lights on, he could see the entire store. It looked clear, but he dropped his rifle in his sling and pulled out his 9mm from his tactical holster just in case. Jessica pulled out her Colt 1911, and followed Bryce’s lead.
Bryce stepped gingerly inside the store, careful to avoid some broken glass and took a look inside. Last time he was in a store like this, it ended with four dead bodies. Since he hoped not to repeat the same mistakes, he took a look around the whole store. After he didn’t see anything, he ran over to the counter and looked behind it. Sure enough, there were switches for all the pumps. Bryce flipped the switch for pump three, where Benjamin was parked. He also flipped the switch for pump four, because he figured he could fill the smaller cans while his dad filled the large generator tank.
Bryce looked behind him and saw Jessica load up a duffel bag with all of the candy, preservative laden food, and snacks she could.
He gave her a nod of approval, and said “Grab some sodas too. I’m sure everyone would enjoy them.”
“Sounds good, I’ll load them up and catch up with you in a minute,” Jessica replied.
“Just keep your eyes peeled,” Bryce warned.
He left Jessica in the convenience store and walked back toward the truck where his father was.
Before he even reached the truck, Bryce heard Jessica scream.
Bryce spun around and ran toward the store, with his weapon in his hand. He watched as Jessica raised her handgun to fire at a large infected male.
The infected knocked her gun out of her hand before she could bring it to bear, and crashed into her with the ferocity of a feral animal, the force of which knocked her down and directly underneath the man.
Jessica got her hands up before it could tear a chunk out of her neck and was able to hold the man off of her.
Bryce ran over to help her and kicked the infected man in the head with all his might. The force of the blow sent the infected sliding across the floor. Before Bryce had processed the event, the infected had already recovered and charged directly at Bryce.
As the infected man charged at Bryce, he opened his mouth and exposed yellowed broken teeth, right before he shoved Bryce against the cigarette shelves and pinned him. Bryce dropped his gun from the force of the blow, but reached up to defend himself.
Bryce had the man’s shoulders in his grip and pushed off with all of his strength, but the tall man was clearly stronger and his head inched closer to Bryce’s face. Bryce thought fast and grabbed a bottle of vodka off the shelf behind him and hit the man over the head as hard as he could. The sudden impact knocked the infected off center slightly, which was just enough for Bryce to escape his grasp. Bryce ducked down and slid in between the man's legs, and then got up and ran to the other side of the store. He pulled his backup .45 from underneath his shirt as he ran. With incredible
speed, the beast of a man leapt toward Bryce from behind the counter, and bowled over Jessica as she tried to intercept him. Bryce spun around and brought his Taurus up to his line of sight. He fired, once, twice, three times and then the infected man collided into him.
The impact of the collision sent the infected man and Bryce to the ground and knocked the wind out of Bryce. His weapon dropped from his hand for a second time and fell just outside his grip. He had one hand that kept the infected man from biting him, and the other hand inched toward the grip of his .45. In the last moments, just before the man could take a chunk out of his neck, Bryce felt the grip of his gun. He had never felt something so beautiful in his life.
He grabbed the gun with his left hand, and placed it against the temple of the infected man and pulled the trigger one last time. A hollow point crashed into the man’s skull and came out of the other side with dramatic effect. The left side of the man’s head disappeared in a spray of blood, brain, and bone fragments, which splashed all across the front of Jessica, as she shook off the bells in her head. Bryce was covered from the waist up in the man’s filth during the decapitation process as well, and finally the behemoth slumped down on top of him.
Bryce scrambled out from underneath the vile putrid body and stumbled away from it. The close gunfire had made his ears ring and thrown off his equilibrium. He waddled over to the counter, grabbed his 9mm, holstered it, and ran out of the store with Jessica.
Benjamin heard the gunshots, and ran up with his Kel-tec as Jessica and Bryce stumbled out of the store covered in blood and gore. He stood and looked at them with a look Bryce had seen before.
“Thanks for the backup Dad! Holy shit!” Bryce exclaimed.
“I grabbed my gun and came as fast as I could!” he pleaded.
“Not fast enough! That thing almost killed both of us!” Bryce yelled at his father. “Let’s just get these fucking gas tanks full and get out of here before we get any more company.”
With that, Bryce grabbed a rag from the back of the truck and wiped off some of the blood on his clothing. He handed the rag to Jessica so she could do the same.
The Extinction Pandemic: A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Hatchery Compound Book 1) Page 13
