Bryce walked into the manager’s office and started rummaging around. He pushed aside a large bookcase that was partially ajar and found a small metal door. Outside the metal door were scratches, like something had tried to get inside. Probably infected, Bryce figured, and lots of them.
He turned the knob on the door, and surprisingly, it opened into a small chamber. The smell of death immediately overcame Bryce’s senses. Inside the chamber a dead man held on to a pistol that apparently blew the top of his head off, as evidenced by the brain material splattered on the wall behind him. He sat next to a gigantic door in the ground that looked like a bank vault.
“Logan! Get in here!” Bryce yelled.
Logan came running into the room and backpedaled a bit due to the smell.
“Whew, that’s some nasty shit right there,” he said.
“Check this out,” Bryce said and completely ignored his comment. “I think it’s a big gun vault.”
Logan took a look at the door and nodded his head. “We need to get into that vault; there could be extra munitions in there.”
Bryce tried to crank over the large wheel of the vault with no success.
“Well the good news is it’s still locked so nobody has gotten in to steal whatever treasures are locked inside. The bad news is that it’s still locked and we aren’t getting in either,” Bryce laughed.
In a gesture of genuine interest, Bryce walked over to the dead man and rummaged through his pockets. He pulled out a giant key, held it up with amazement, and smiled.
What are the fucking odds, Bryce thought.
“Logan, this guy must have been the owner,” he said.
The poor guy must have barricaded himself in with his vault as the infected trapped him in here. Realizing the futility of the situation, he took his own life, rather than stand and fight.
Bryce quickly tried the key on the massive vault and sure enough it disengaged tumblers on the inside of the door. Bryce turned the large wheel several times and the vault unlocked itself as if it waited for someone to enter.
Logan reached over to help Bryce lift the heavy steel door, and what they found was a stairway leading down into the ground.
They climbed down the steps, turned on their flashlights, and what they saw below amazed them. It looked like a full-blown military armory, and Bryce would know what that looked like. There were hundreds of rifles, fully automatic machine guns, grenade launchers, hand grenades, explosives, and all sorts of illegal weaponry.
“This guy was preparing for a damn zombie apocalypse!” Bryce laughed. “Looks like he missed the party though.”
“I think we are going to need a bigger vehicle,” Logan told Bryce.
“Why don’t you and Robby go find a truck we can use, and I’ll work with Jessica on getting some of this shit out of here,” Bryce directed.
Logan nodded, turned around, and headed up the stairs to find his son, who waited by the door as instructed. Logan led the way out of the gun shop and looked around in the parking lot for a decent pickup they could use. After they didn’t find one in the immediate vicinity, Logan and Robby walked across the street to a small shopping center and scouted around. They looked behind one of the stores and found exactly what they needed tucked away. It was a big Ford F350 dually truck. Logan approached the vehicle and found the cab empty, so he tried to open the door, which of course was locked. Logan pulled out a small set of tools from his pocket and broke into the truck in under a minute.
“This day keeps getting better and better,” Logan told his son.
They opened the door to the truck and looked around hoping to find the keys. They searched for a couple minutes with no luck.
“Well, on to plan B,” Logan told Robby and ripped open the steering wheel column.
Logan quickly pulled out a multi-tool from his pocket and hotwired the vehicle, a little trick he learned in the SEALs. His son looked on in amazement, as he watched his father do something that a month ago would have been illegal, but now was just a matter of survival.
After about a minute, the truck sprang to life, and its engine rumbled. Robby ran around the back of the vehicle, hopped in the passenger side, and rolled down the window to stick the barrel of his rifle out. Logan crawled out from under the steering wheel, hopped in the driver’s seat, and threw the truck in gear. They quickly drove back across the street to the gun store and put the rear of the truck near the door where Bryce piled weapons into his Outlander. He had the seats folded down, and filled the back half of the vehicle with weapons and munitions.
Robby and Logan piled out of the truck and walked up to Bryce.
“Help me pile as many rifles as we can in the Outlander, and then we will put the ammunition and the rest of the guns in your new ride,” Bryce said, while he admired their choice of pickup.
Logan and Robby nodded to Bryce, then they helped Bryce and Jessica make trip after trip to the vault; each time they passed the dead man. It took about two hours, and at the end of it, all four of them had sweated profusely. The Outlander was jam-packed with rifles, and a few of the machine guns, which both Logan and Bryce knew were “SAWs” or Squad Automatic Weapons. The poor Outlander was practically sitting on the ground from all the weight. The Ford, on the other hand, was full to the top of the bed with large ammunition cans, and it seemed to barely feel the weight. The guys loaded the back half of the dual cab with as many rifles and shotguns as they could cram in there. The rest of the equipment they threw on top of the ammunition cans and covered it all with a few camouflaged tarps that were also in the bunker.
They finished after they added as much gear as they could fit and sealed both the vault door and the steel door leading to the vault room. Bryce attached the key ring to a chain around his neck and dropped it down his shirt. He was going to keep this key close so that next time they were in town he could finish the raid the gun shop vault.
Bryce jumped into the driver’s seat of the Outlander and on the seat next to him was an assortment of explosives and hand grenades. As he turned over the engine, he flinched a bit, somehow concerned that the entire car would explode.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Bryce yelled out his window.
Logan and Jessica jumped in the Ford and Logan reached over to hotwire the truck again, as Robby hopped on the pile of gear in the back of the truck. Logan got the truck started and they headed out toward the highway.
Bryce originally had wanted to stop for some extra food supplies, but since they were pretty much full with ammunition and guns, he decided to head toward the hatchery with today’s amazing haul.
Bryce realized how lucky they had been in every situation in the past week. He knew it was almost impossible to figure out how he had stumbled upon a weapons cache of this size, or how he had found the perfect man to help him, or even how he and the others had set up the hatchery so quickly. Bryce knew now that his plans were had worked, and that success had to be in his destiny. For so many things to go right, he had to have something good going for him, and he planned to follow through on his goals.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Payson, Arizona
Lieutenant Trevor Steele and his three remaining soldiers were out in Payson on the lookout for food and supplies.
They had made it to the outskirts of Payson on fumes the day that Tucson had fallen. The four of them had abandoned their Humvee and hiked the rest of the way into Payson on foot. Since then, they had stayed in a small home just on the outskirts of the city and had entered the city as often as they could to rummage through the shops for supplies. Trevor and the guys had stolen most of what was left at the gun shop, so ammunition and weapons were not a problem, but food was much harder to come by. The larger stores had been picked clean, and they now were forced to clean out the smaller stores and shops, because they weren’t yet ready to clear out homes. They had discussed the idea of looting people’s homes, but decided against it since they could be inhabited by both humans, or infected. The risk was just t
oo high for the small reward while they had low hanging fruit still to pick.
Their largest problem by far had been security. Since there were only four of them they were forced to sleep in shifts to keep a lookout for infected. For some reason the infected seemed to be more active at night and would constantly pester them in their home. They had boarded up all of the windows and doors and used a second-floor window to get into the house, but the infected would nevertheless find them and paw at the boards every night. It had begun to drive them all crazy, to say the least.
The guys had chosen to stay in Payson instead of heading farther north. The city was large enough to get what they needed, but small enough to have a relatively low amount of infected and survivors.
After a few days they had run into some other survivors who thought it would be smart to try and rob four heavily armed military personnel. Trevor and his men had cut down the hooligans in a matter of seconds. It hadn’t even been a fight for Trevor and his men, and left them all with a sour taste in their mouth. On one hand, none of them wanted to kill civilians, but on the other hand, who was the enemy in today’s war? It was simply the survival of the fittest at this point.
Two more weeks went by, during which the guys had secured their home, and stored quite a bit of supplies. They were all perfectly content with riding things out in this manner. Eventually they would need to have greater ambitions, but now was not the time for that.
Today, they looked for food of course, but they also looked for a way to bolster their security so that they didn’t have to worry so much.
Trevor hopped out of the SUV that they had commandeered on the second day in Payson. The vehicle was an old beat up Suburban and it suited their needs just fine. It had more than ample cargo room and the best part was that the keys were in the ignition. The door had been left ajar, however, so the battery was dead, but they had found a replacement battery in another car nearby and soon enough they were mobile again.
Trevor, Anthony, Jose, and Nathan all entered the grocery store with their M4A3 assault rifles switched to fully automatic.
They swept through the aisles in teams of two, cleared each aisle, and whispered “clear” as they went. Their military training died hard, and even in the apocalypse, they kept to what they knew.
After they cleared all of the aisles in the small grocery store, they began their pillage session. Three men grabbed shopping carts and loaded them up with whatever they could find, while Trevor stood watch by the entrance. He didn’t want to get ambushed by other survivors, and with this store being one of the last ones in Payson with anything good left, he wanted it all.
Twenty minutes into their supply run, a large pickup parked in front of the store and six heavily armed men jumped out.
Trevor made a clicking noise with his tongue, which the others caught, and all four men hurried to group together.
They all stood at the doorway and watched as the men came toward the building. Trevor didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know if these men were hostile or friendly, but he knew he had to make a decision right this instance.
“Stop where you are!” Trevor yelled out.
The men stopped in their tracks and raised their rifles; each of them had some form of semi-automatic rifle.
Then, with no hesitation or warning, the six men opened fire on Trevor and his men.
“Run!” Trevor yelled over the hail of gunfire.
Trevor took off toward the rear exit of the store with his men behind him. The four of them busted through the back door and took off at a flat run.
They ran as fast as they could away from the store, toward their home. They could hear the shooting stop on the inside of the store, then only thirty seconds later they heard the truck peel out on the other side of the building.
Trevor changed his mind and made the decision to run in the opposite direction from their home with the hope that they would lose the marauders and be able to return safely. They headed out east toward the highway as fast as they could.
The guys covered the distance in record time, but as soon as they rounded the corner, the marauders in the truck waited for them.
Trevor told his men to run as fast as possible and head for the highway. Their only hope was to make it to the woods on the other side of the highway before the gang of men shot them down.
It was a mad dash across the parking lot and with every step, the truck gained on them. Just as they reached the highway, two gunmen in the back of the truck opened fire on Trevor and his men. The highway was only a few steps away, but for Trevor it felt like it was miles. Trevor pulled on every ounce of strength he had left to run faster, but he knew it was too late. He had failed his men and now they would all die because of it.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Payson, Arizona
Bryce and Logan steered the two vehicles out of town, and just before they passed the last stop light, Bryce saw four men in what looked like military outfits sprint across the road. Then, Bryce heard gunshots and watched as they landed just behind the men.
Bryce slammed on his brakes, which slammed his cargo into his back. Logan slid to a stop just shy of Bryce’s bumper. Logan piled out of the truck with his M4 aimed toward the group of men only a hundred feet away.
Out from behind the last set of buildings, a pickup truck full of men careened onto the highway at a high speed. Two of them stood in the bed of the pickup and fired at the four men on foot.
Bryce jumped out of his vehicle and grabbed his AR-15 and without an ounce of hesitation, he fired on the truck. His first volley struck one of the men in the bed of the pickup. Logan hesitated only a second longer than Bryce and dropped the second man in the bed of the truck with his first three shots.
If Bryce hadn’t been in the middle of a fight he would have stopped to give Logan shit about his excellent accuracy.
With new entries into the fight, the pickup truck came to a complete stop, which was the wrong move.
Bryce shot the driver in the head with one carefully placed shot, and Logan took one of the passengers.
The deceased driver must have slammed his foot on the gas in his death throes, because the truck suddenly jumped back to life, and with nobody driving, it careened toward a light pole, then struck it head on, at about twenty miles an hour, which was enough force to trigger the airbags. The resulting impact was more than enough to slam the last two living passengers forward, and without seatbelts, the airbags knocked them out cold. Unfortunately, they never came to, after Logan, Robby, Bryce, and Jessica riddled the truck with bullet holes.
After the shooting stopped, Bryce and Logan ran over to the truck to make sure they were all dead and then quickly raised their guns at the four men who still stood in the road.
The group of four brought up their M4A3s instinctively as well, but did not fire, largely because Bryce and Logan had just saved their lives.
Logan yelled out to them, “Why don’t you boys put those weapons away so we can talk for a second!”
They didn’t move, or even attempt to lower their weapons.
Bryce took a different tactic, “Where were you boys stationed?”
“Fort Huachuca,” the leader of the group replied.
Bryce looked at Logan and said, “I might actually know these guys.”
“Put your shit away, I’m coming over,” Bryce said and dropped his rifle into its sling.
He took a few slow steps toward the men to make sure they were not going to get spooked and poke him full of bullet holes. When he had made it a few steps without getting a hole in his head, he walked with more haste.
When Bryce reached the group, he didn’t recognize any of them right away, but he did recognize the unit insignia on their arms.
“I was at Fort Huachuca too, about a year ago. Any of you boys there around then?” Bryce asked the soldiers.
“I was,” a man stepped forward.
Bryce stuck out his hand, “Bryce Sloan, nice to meet you.”
“Lieu
tenant Trevor Steele,” Trevor said and shook Bryce’s hand.
Trevor nodded to his men and they relaxed slightly, but still remained in a state of battle readiness. One could never totally let their guard down during a time like this.
Bryce called over to Logan to introduce him as well, and he joined the group immediately. Jessica and Robby stayed behind to guard the trucks, and watch their backs.
“Lieutenant, this is Logan Black, he was a Navy SEAL,” Bryce told the soldiers.
They all looked Logan up and down, like it was some visual test to see if it was true. Bryce didn’t bother to throw in his quartermaster rank; he figured he would let Logan seal the deal.
“Well, thanks for saving our asses guys, but if you don’t mind we are going to get our truck back and head home,” Trevor told Logan and Bryce.
Since he didn’t want to waste the opportunity, Bryce chimed in, “Where exactly is home? Is it safe from idiots like that? Because I can guarantee that our home is safer than that.”
Trevor hesitated a second, then shook his head. He thought about it for a few seconds longer and debated about how much he should tell the strangers. Finally, he said, “No, not really, we’ve been having problems with infected, and now this deal has struck a little too close for comfort.”
“Look, we need guys like you in our group. We have plenty of food and water, but what we need are good strong soldiers,” Bryce pitched.
“That does sound like an excellent idea, but me and the boys will need some time to think it over. Are you guys able to come back in a few hours and meet us in the center of town?” Trevor proposed.
The Extinction Pandemic: A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Hatchery Compound Book 1) Page 17
