Quinton had been on leave from his Air Force job in Arizona and he had chosen to take his family on vacation in northern Arizona. They had chosen to stay at a small resort on the Mogollon Rim. The resort offered Quinton the quintessential “staycation” which meant he could take his family away on vacation, but still be within a few hours of home.
Quinton’s job in the Air Force wasn’t exactly high priority, but he never knew when some officer or another would need something right away. He was essentially a machinist and general maintenance man at Luke Air Force Base, but it was up to him to make sure everything ran efficiently. When he had left for vacation, he had left his Senior Airman in charge. He trusted the kid, but he was only nineteen and who knew what could happen. Hell, Quinton had a seventeen-year-old son, and he knew Freddie could do just as good of a job.
Of course all of these worries had disappeared after the Outbreak started. When they first heard about the infection, Quinton extended their stay at the resort by four more days. That was all it took for the virus to make it to Arizona, and all it took to firmly cement their residence in room 54 of the resort.
Quinton looked over to the kitchenette where his wife Dana prepared breakfast for their three children; Freddie their oldest, and the seventeen-year-old, Jackie, their fifteen-year-old only daughter, and Austin, the youngest son, who was twelve.
Quinton walked into the kitchen to see what she had prepared and it wasn’t much. Dana was an excellent cook, but even she couldn’t turn the meager rations they had left into a decent meal.
They had nearly run out of food last week and it looked bleak. Roger, the village idiot who had somehow been declared the de facto leader of the group, was too chicken shit to send anyone to town for supplies.
Quinton knew that the man had been the manager of the resort and had assumed control of things when the shit hit the fan. How he had remained in so-called “power” since then, nobody really knew. Nobody “voted” him in, or even so much as cared for the man. Roger just walked around like he owned the place, which prior to the Outbreak was probably somewhat true, but now those days were gone.
The only reason that Quinton even took his shit was because the accommodations here weren’t all that bad. The fireplace was more than enough to keep them warm and boil their water for bathing and drinking. The beds were super comfortable even after the sheets had long since been soiled. The only thing Quinton could honestly complain about was the shortage of food. They had lived off the supplies the resort had for more than three weeks after the Outbreak, but as their group had grown, the supplies dwindled.
Quinton ate his meager breakfast, after he left the lion’s share for his wife and children.
After breakfast he grabbed his AR-15 rifle from next to the door and waved his son Freddy over. He gave his Remington hunting rifle to his son, and together they walked out the door. As they walked down the short path to the lobby Quinton checked the magazine on his AR-15 and grimaced. He only had about twenty rounds left. He had only brought a few boxes of ammunition for his rifles when they came up for vacation. He had wanted to take his son shooting and spend some quality time with him. Instead they had been using the ammunition for survival and had shot at a different kind of target.
The infected had wandered into their resort on more than one occasion. They never came in packs of more than a few, but because the resort was right off the highway, it was inevitable.
Quinton and Freddie comprised part of what was essentially the security force for the resort. Quinton had been assigned the leadership of this force due to his military experience.
Along with Quinton there was a rag tag group of others, but his best people were Joey and Jade Allen, who both worked in law enforcement prior to the Outbreak. Nick Bark was also one of his good shooters due to his firearms obsession. Nick had brought along no less than six guns when he came up to stay at the resort. Evan Spader was also part of his group and he could always count on Evan to keep everyone upbeat, even when nobody cared to be happy.
Quinton and his son made their way into the lobby of the resort, which they used as an informal meeting hall, and supply storage. When Quinton arrived the rest of his group was already assembled, Roger was in the center of the room, and Quinton could see across the room that his ego had been stroked by the look on Roger’s face.
Quinton and Freddie walked up to the group as Roger said, “We’ve run the numbers people and we only have about a week’s worth of food, but I vow to you all today that we will find a solution to this shortage.”
Quinton rolled his eyes at the political bullshit that had no place in such a ridiculous setting. Roger talked like a fucking politician on campaign for the presidency, and Quinton hated every vile word he spewed.
The end of the discussion was that Quinton needed to get the group together and go on supply runs. No fucking shit, Quinton thought to himself.
“How do you propose we do that with one running vehicle, Roger?” Quinton asked with resentment in his voice.
“We all have faith in you Quinton,” was all Roger said in reply.
Fuck you, Quinton mumbled under his breath as he walked away.
Joey, Jade, Nick and Evan joined up with him outside, along with the others. There were nine of them who regularly patrolled around the resort and went on these kinds of runs. They never went so far as Payson, but they had looted homes and vehicles along the way. Quinton was not afraid to go into Payson, but Roger had expressly told them not to go. Quinton didn’t really give a shit what Roger said, but some of the others did, and Quinton wasn’t going to create dissent among the ranks. Dissent in a group setting as small as theirs would ultimately lead to their failure, and with what was at stake, failure was not an option.
“Let’s round up whatever fuel we can and get more than one vehicle going,” Quinton said. “Today let’s go back to the neighborhood and clear out some more houses.”
They had been systematically clearing houses about a mile west of their resort in a small residential neighborhood. There were about fifty or sixty homes in total and they had only cleared half of them. It took a considerable amount of time to go through each home and pick through everything. Since they were so remote, they didn’t have a lot of options so they took everything of value.
Quinton sent everyone off to gather their gear while he and Freddie went through all of the vehicles at the resort and tried to get just a few drops of extra fuel from the tanks. They needed fuel like they needed food and it was hard as hell to come by. The nearest gas station was thirty miles away in Payson and there wasn’t enough fuel on the property to get them there.
After they failed to get enough fuel to start another vehicle, the entire patrol group did their best impression of a clown car and squeezed themselves into the back of their only fueled pickup truck.
Quinton wondered how much more life was in the old truck’s shocks if they kept overloading the truck, but he put the trusted jalopy in gear and drove across the parking lot toward the highway.
He took the short bend in the driveway and went up the ramp to the highway.
When they arrived at the intersection, across from them were four soldiers on two ATVs armed with M4 assault rifles, which were pointed directly at Quinton and his group.
Chapter Forty-Three
Hatchery Compound, Mogollon Rim, Arizona
When Bryce and the others arrived back at the hatchery, Trevor and his men waited for them. They looked like they had some urgent news, so Bryce and his team jumped out and walked over to them.
“Bryce, there are people on the other side of the highway,” Trevor blurted out.
“What?” Bryce exclaimed.
Trevor told them all how the two groups had explored around the road that led to the highway. The road split off in two directions along the way, one headed east and one headed west. At the end of the east road was a summer camp that had all sorts of cabins, and a few other outlying buildings. The road west ended in a neighborhood full of h
ouses and another small camp. Trevor told them how they hadn’t explored either one of the locations initially, because they wanted to do the heavy reconnaissance with the rest of the team, just in case they ran into any infected, or otherwise.
“That’s not the exciting part though,” Jose chimed in, “When we went farther south and crossed the highway. Then, before we could cross entirely, a group of people came out in a pickup truck.”
Jose explained to the group that they had run into a group of people and initially they had brandished their weapons in a standoff. Then, after both sides had calmed down and they had come together to talk to each other, Jose and the others had found out that these people were neighbors. After a few tense minutes, the group had invited them back to their location to meet their leader.
The leader of the group told Trevor and his men that there were forty-eight people camped out in the resort and that they had started, like Bryce’s group, with just a few survivors who were at the resort when the shit hit the fan. Then after the Outbreak, they all had stayed and then collected more survivors as time had passed.
Bryce looked at them in disbelief. He couldn’t believe that there had been a group within miles of his compound and he had never seen them.
Jose confirmed this when he told the group that their neighbors had kept to themselves and had largely been dependent upon the resources the resort had to offer.
After he heard the story about the people to their south, Bryce pulled Logan aside and asked him what he thought they should do.
“Well, we certainly need to tread carefully. We aren’t strong enough to pick any fights right now. I think we should be diplomatic, maybe even join forces,” Logan
“You’re absolutely right, but we can’t let them know what we’re doing up here, and we need to get our defenses up ASAP,” Bryce replied.
Logan nodded his head in agreement, and they both stepped back to the group of fighters.
“Let's gear up and head back down there, I want to meet our neighbors,” Bryce said.
Everyone gathered their M4s and sidearms, and they jumped in the two pickup trucks to head down the hill.
Bryce hoped that the show of force on their part would keep the people peaceful, and would plant a seed in their newfound neighbors’ minds that they were outgunned, even if they were not outnumbered.
The two trucks rolled down the hill, crossed the highway, and entered the resort perimeter. The resort group was clearly on the alert now, and met them with mixed feelings. There were about twenty of them, and they all held an assortment of weapons. Some of them had hunting rifles or shotguns. Others had handguns, and only a couple had semi-automatic rifles like an AK-47 or AR-15.
Logan sized the group up immediately, and calculated their odds, just in case things didn’t end well. He figured his group of nine with superior firepower more than likely could take the group out, but there would be heavy casualties, and there was a very definite possibility that they wouldn’t survive it at all.
Logan expressed as much to Bryce, who nodded, and placed trust in the advice of his second in command.
Bryce’s group stopped thirty feet short of their neighbors, and they dismounted their vehicles. They all let their rifles lay slack in their slings, after a cue from Bryce and Logan.
A few of the resort group members did a double take after they saw the well-armed men and women step out of their vehicles with military-style rifles and holstered sidearms. Bryce saw his show of force had the right effect and signaled for his men to stay by the trucks so that he could approach the group by himself.
Bryce spoke to the group, from a safe distance, “Hello, my name is Bryce Sloan. Which of you is the leader of this group?”
A middle-aged man stepped forward from the ranks of his group and said, “I guess that would be me. The name’s Roger Wilson.”
The two men stepped forward warily, but chose to shake hands, even though they both sized each other up as they did it.
After a moment of awkward silence, Bryce spoke up, and introduced Logan, “This is Logan Bartlett, and he’s my second in command.”
Logan stepped forward to shake Roger’s hand as well and Roger waved toward another nearby man.
“This is my head of security so to speak, Quinton Grymes,” Roger told them.
Quinton never took his eyes off Bryce and Logan but he stepped forward to shake their hands nevertheless.
To cut into that awkward silence once more, Bryce said, “So, how long have you guys been calling this place home?”
Roger told Bryce that they had been here since before the Outbreak. He explained that the original group of employees and guests numbered about twenty people, but that they picked up some stragglers along the way and now there were forty-eight of them.
“What about you guys?” Roger asked Bryce.
“Most of our people are back at our compound, but this is my main recon group,” Bryce replied.
Roger accepted Bryce’s false answer and continued, “Where did you guys come from exactly? We haven’t seen anyone in this area in weeks.”
Bryce took a second to think about his response and completely dodged the question, “We’re just down the road. My guys were out patrolling the area and ran into you guys.”
“Hmm, well it’s good to know that there are other good people around these parts,” Roger said, with hesitancy in his voice.
“Yes, it is good to know. Perhaps we can sit down someplace and discuss how we could help each other out,” Bryce tried to point the conversation in the direction he wanted to go.
Roger figured that would be a good idea, and he and Quinton led Bryce and Logan into the main building, after Bryce told the rest of his group to stay behind.
The main building, which used to be the lobby of the resort, looked like a trailer park after a meet and greet with a tornado. There were boxes of supplies both empty and full, equipment, trash, and all sorts of other junk thrown all across the room.
Roger led Bryce and Logan over to a small table and chairs and offered them both a seat. The four of them sat down and discussed what their situations were. Roger told Bryce that he was critically low on just about everything; guns, ammunition, food, and clean water. They were forced to boil their water from the creek since the well that ran the resort had been without power for weeks. They also had a backup generator, but it had run out of fuel a while back. Roger told Bryce that they had a small group of fighters and the rest were women, children, or the elderly parents of some of the families.
Roger also explained to Bryce how they desperately needed someone with medical experience because they had a few people who were sick or wounded. They would need medical supplies to go along with the medical experience, of course, but Roger made no indication of that, he just assumed. Bryce, however, made no indication that they had not one, but two medical professionals in their midst.
Bryce took a second to digest all of Roger’s problems, and then told Roger that the main thing he lacked was fighters. He needed to have more rifles at the ready to be able to gather more supplies quickly, efficiently and safely.
He decided to play this angle and told Roger that maybe they could work something out where the resort crew could tag along with his team and they could split the spoils. Roger pondered the idea for a second and told Bryce he would run that by his guys, but admitted that it sounded like an excellent idea. Roger asked that Bryce and Logan give him the evening to discuss it with his group and then to come back in the morning.
At the end of their discussion, they shook hands and Bryce went outside with Logan to join the rest of their group. Logan and Bryce got into the vehicles with everyone else and they headed back across the highway to their own home.
On the way back to the hatchery, Logan spoke with Bryce. “For the most part they look like a bunch of rag-tag civilians, with a couple trained guys thrown in. Bryce, do you want to throw them out there as backup for our guys?”
“Not necessarily, but we need m
ore people and vehicles on our supply runs to efficiently stockpile. If we are going to keep the twenty-something people we have fed, we need to have a massive stockpile of food. Don’t even discount that we need more fuel soon, more medical supplies, and we need to construct quite a few more domiciles for our increasing population. Our current setup is a logistical nightmare and we need the manpower to ensure the Hatchery’s success, and even more critically, our survival.” Bryce explained his logic to Logan and the others.
Logan pondered on that for a couple seconds and agreed with Bryce. Their team of nine fighters was not enough to man all the vehicles they already had, let alone any form of expansion.
“We need to be careful how we approach this, because I want to use their people, but I don’t want to feed their people and deal with their problems. They need to be self-sufficient,” Bryce said.
“Plus, the agreement was that if they helped us make supply runs, we would share some of the supplies,” Bryce said, “I did not, however, explain what share we would give them.”
“The other thing we might want to consider is recruiting their good people and bringing them over to our side of the fence,” Logan said.
Bryce had put some thought into that, but he wasn’t sure how to approach it. If Bryce simply dangled the carrot in front of their faces, more than likely, the resort members would abandon their group all together. The problem was that this type of action could be viewed as hostile. That issue would have to be handled deftly.
“Let’s just head back tomorrow and see what they are thinking first, maybe take a few rifles with us and see how his group reacts to pressure under fire,” Bryce said.
“That sounds like a plan,” Logan replied.
They made it back to the hatchery and everyone piled out. They scurried around and performed some of the routine tasks that needed to be done around the compound before it got too dark.
Since it got dark much faster than they would like, not a whole lot got done before dinnertime. Bryce and the others ate dinner and discussed tomorrow’s plans in full detail. Not long after their at length discussion for their plans in the morning, the Hatchery group decided that it was time to retire for the night.
The Extinction Pandemic: A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Hatchery Compound Book 1) Page 23
