The Extinction Pandemic: A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Hatchery Compound Book 1)

by Grayson Hawkins

  Logan asked Bryce if he thought the resort group would be a problem, and Bryce told him that they would undoubtedly be pissed off about the loss of their men, so Logan and the others should probably be on the lookout. Logan figured that was a valid point that coincided with his train of thought, so they established watch patrols to keep an eye on the roads that led in and out of the compound.

  The next order of business was more scouting missions. Bryce wanted to run more scouting missions to the camps and neighborhoods south and west of their location to check for survivors, food, supplies, and anything else of value, especially vehicles. Another goal Bryce had was to fill the parking lot at the hatchery with good working vehicles. Having ten or fifteen maintained vehicles would be preferred in case they needed to leave in a hurry. He told them to take priority on trucks, and anything with four-wheel drive, because he thought of the path that led out of the compound to their north.

  Bryce also wanted to head over to the resort group the next day to see how they had handled the loss of their people. Additionally, he wanted to speak with the fighters and see if any of them were going to make the decision to come over to his group.

  He knew that if he got any of the resort crew to make the switch they would be invaluable to his plans, and while he didn’t want to push them too hard, he knew that some of them would come over. Bryce hypothesized that the living conditions at the resort were abysmal compared to how he and the others lived at the hatchery. He would play that card first to see how they responded and decide which path he would take from there.

  After they completed their business, they decided to wind things down for the day, get some grub, and hit the hay. Tomorrow, Bryce wanted to start to fulfill the plans they just created. He didn’t want to waste any time at all, because he felt like they had gained a great amount of momentum in the past week or two and he wanted to keep that going forward. He could finally see that his overall goal had started to take shape and soon, with some hard work, additional manpower, and some plain luck, he could start phase two of his mission. He also didn’t want to rush things. He knew that his plan would come to fruition eventually, but he knew that if he wasn’t calculated and patient he could make mistakes, so he would continue to take one carefully placed step at a time.

  The whole group turned in for dinner as the sun ducked below the canyon ridge, and they all ate their food in relative silence. The only words that were exchanged were to pass the salt, and only that broke up the clanging of silverware on plates. After a longer than normal cleanup, everyone split off and went to their respective sleeping quarters.

  Bryce tucked Trystan into bed after Bryce had gotten him ready, and he got himself ready after that. He crawled into bed with his wife and he held her tight. He whispered that he loved her in her ear, and as he let sleep take over his mind, he hoped that he would not have any dreams about the men he had let die this day. Part of him knew that the lives of the men he had lost would always haunt his dreams, but he hoped they would stay quiet, at least for one night.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Hatchery Compound, Mogollon Rim, Arizona

  Dawn broke over the compound, and already Jessica was awake and in the middle of cooking breakfast for their quickly growing group of people. She had gotten much better at preparing large meals and she had become quite the “MacGyver” of the apocalypse when it came to food preparation with the random assortment of supplies they had on hand.

  Everyone at the compound ate their breakfast, before they headed out of the crew quarters to get to work. Trevor and his guys loaded in one of the pickup trucks. Logan, Robby, and the Steeple couple waited for Bryce and Jessica by the Ford pickup truck.

  While Bryce waited for Jessica to get out of the kitchen and leave the rest to his wife, Bryce pulled Greg aside and spoke with him for a minute.

  “Greg, I need you to start thinking about building some additional sleeping arrangements for any future people we bring onboard. Do you have any idea how to build a structure that will hold a decent amount of people?” Bryce asked him.

  “Well, I’m not going to say I’ll build you a four-bedroom house with running water and plumbing, but I think I could throw up four walls and put a roof on it. How big are you thinking?” Greg replied.

  “I want it to have at least ten small rooms, and I want to line those rooms with bunk beds on both sides. If it works out how I’m envisioning it, we should be able to sleep forty people,” Bryce told him.

  Greg whistled. “That’s pretty damn big, Bryce. I don’t know about that. We don’t even have enough open land here to do that.”

  “We would need to clear some of the trees out and expand our compound. I need you to think about that when you are building the fence. Leave some extra room over there,” Bryce pointed to a flat area of land across from the main hatchery compound.

  “I’ll do it, Bryce, but where are we going to get the lumber to build a building that large? We can’t exactly build a log cabin.”

  “Actually,” Bryce said, “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  Bryce explained how he wanted to use the logs they cleared from around their compound to build the basic structure. The rest of the building supplies they would get at the Home Depot in Payson. He told Greg that they just didn’t have any trucks large enough to haul enough lumber to build an entire building, and he didn’t want to make twenty trips into town because of the unnecessary risk involved.

  “Any tools or building materials you need for the inside of the building we can get from the store. Plywood and two by fours I think we can get, no problem,” Bryce said.

  Greg told him, “I’ll get to work on putting a plan together, and work with my guys to see what they think. We need to get this fence done first before we start another large project, though.”

  Bryce agreed with him, they shook hands and went their separate ways.

  Bryce sprinted over to the waiting Ford and hopped in the passenger seat. Logan cranked up the engine, pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the hill. Bryce sent Trevor and his men to the western neighborhood and camp to see what was over there. Bryce and his group planned to check out the summer camp and cabins.

  Logan headed down the road for two miles and then took the turnoff for the summer camp. He headed straight into the camp, and right toward the main building, where they came to a stop in a cloud of dust.

  They all got out of the vehicle and fanned out, weapons at the ready. Bryce approached the main building, walked up to the door, and tried to open it while the others covered him, but the door was locked and didn’t budge.

  Bryce looked over at Logan and shrugged his shoulders. He took the butt of his rifle and smashed in the glass panes on the front of the double doors. Bryce stuck his hand through the glass and unlocked the deadbolt that held the doors closed.

  With the doors unlocked, Bryce swung them open, and what he saw caused him to bring his rifle up and look around. Logan sensed Bryce’s change in behavior, so he brought up his rifle and entered the building to Bryce’s left.

  Inside, there were clear signs that someone had lived there. There were supplies all over the place, sleeping bags in the middle of the room, clothing draped across chairs to dry, and the most obvious sign, the remnants of a fire that smoldered in the fireplace.

  Bryce called out quietly to Mitch and the others so that they would come to help scout out the building. He told Robby to stay by the door and watch their backs. Everyone but Robby spread out and cleared the building room by room. They found a large kitchen stocked with a decent amount of supplies, bathrooms, classrooms, and a small church chapel. What they do not find, however, were any people.

  They left the main building, scouted the grounds of the camp, and checked each cabin and outlying building. Most of the cabins had been picked clean; probably by the people who lived here, Bryce figured.

  Thirty minutes into their search, they returned to the main building and decided to wait for a little while. Whoever
lived here would come back eventually. The guys moved their truck to a more inconspicuous location and staked out the building.

  They hunkered down in one of the cabins directly across from the main building and waited. Another half hour went by and soon they heard whistling and laughter. A group of seven people approached the main building. There were two adults, one male and one female, and five children, probably in their early teen years.

  Between the adult male and two of the bigger kids was a small deer hung upside down on a large tree branch. The man had a large hunting rifle slung around his chest, and it was clear where they had been, and how they had survived this long. The man was obviously a decent hunter.

  Bryce and Logan watched out the front windows as the group approached the main building. They saw that the glass was broken on their front door, and the man calmly set the deer down and raised his rifle. His eyes scanned the surrounding area, and he spotted their pickup truck.

  As they quickly lost the element of surprise, Bryce decided to step out of the cabin, with his rifle hung in his sling.

  The man saw Bryce, then his gun, and the stranger immediately raised his own weapon and pointed it at Bryce’s chest.

  “Whoa, buddy. Don’t shoot!” Bryce said and put his hands up.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” the man asked.

  “We were just coming to see what we could find here, and stumbled across your camp,” Bryce replied coolly.

  “My name’s Bryce Sloan and I operate a small group of survivors up near the hatchery. We are practically neighbors.”

  “Yeah, we hear you guys heading up and down the road, and shooting your guns. We have left you alone this long, why don’t you leave us alone now?” the man responded.

  “We don’t intend to cause you any harm. Hell, we kept to ourselves for the first month, too, that’s why we didn’t even know you were here,” Bryce told him.

  “Why don’t we just put the guns down and have a casual conversation? I’d like to see if we can help you guys out. It looks like your supplies are getting pretty meager, and we could help you out,” Bryce continued as he closed the physical gap between them.

  The man reluctantly lowered his rifle and extended his hand to Bryce as he came within arm’s reach.

  “My name’s Pastor Luke Abrams and this is my wife Amanda Abrams. These kids were left at the camp when the Outbreak hit, and we have unofficially adopted them.”

  The pastor had a knack for being able to read people, and he could sense that Bryce was not there to harm him or his family. Without so much as an attempt to hide anything, Luke told Bryce about how he and his wife had lived at the camp year round, to maintain and take care of everything. He told Bryce that when the outbreak happened, they had a group of teenagers at the camp who were part of a youth group that had traveled north for some winter fun. Most of the parents had come to collect their children in a hurry, but some of them didn’t make it, because five got left behind. The pastor and his wife had cared for them for the past month. They had lived off the land mostly, and rationed what supplies they did have stocked up.

  Since the pastor was the only one with a gun, and since he had not wanted to leave the children and his wife unprotected, he hadn’t made any provision runs anywhere.

  After he heard his story, Bryce gave them a brief summary of what they had set up at the compound and invited them to become part of his group. That was when a stroke of genius hit Bryce. Why should he have them come sleep in tents at the compound when they could stay here in the comfort of these cabins? The cabins didn’t have running water or electricity, but they all had fireplaces and would be perfect quarters for anyone who needed a place to sleep.

  “How many cabins do you guys have here, and how many people can they hold?” Bryce asked the pastor.

  “We have twenty usable cabins, and some of them are full-sized homes. We could probably sleep a hundred people if we packed them in,” Pastor Luke replied.

  Logan saw where this was going, and the same idea popped into his head. He smiled at Bryce, and realized that through an alliance with this group, their people would have all new quarters. It would also give them room to grow for any future members of their group.

  Logan looked around and saw that the area was vast, and utterly impossible to fence in like their relatively small compound. This area would not serve well as a defensible position, but if the shit hit the fan, they could always fall back to the compound, being that it was less than three miles up the road.

  Bryce explained his plan to the pastor about how he would like to use their cabins for housing his people in return for food, water, weapons and ammunition, and the use of their facilities.

  Luke took a second to discuss it with his wife, and in the end they both agreed. The prospect of a warm meal, hot shower, and the ability to arm themselves was far too much to refuse. Besides that, the idea of additional armed people in the cabins nearby who would add extra protection appealed to both the pastor and his wife.

  Bryce shook the pastor’s hand and offered them a ride up to the compound with them to get initiated, cleaned up, and armed. The pastor looked at his wife. She nodded her head, and they decided to come along. The group walked to the truck with Bryce and his team, and they jumped in the back for the short trip back to the hatchery.

  Logan eased the truck out of the camp area and back onto the road toward the hatchery. As they got on the road, two vehicles full of people were straight ahead of them. Logan immediately went into combat mode, revved the engine, and caught up with the vehicles. He cut them off and jumped out of the truck with his weapon aimed at the lead vehicle. Bryce was only a second or two behind Logan, and did the same. The vehicles stopped and everyone inside threw their hands up. The driver of the first vehicle got out with his hands in the air and said, “Hey guys, it’s just us.”

  Upon first sight of Quinton Grymes from the resort, Logan and Bryce both dropped their barrels and relaxed. The pastor and his group looked around in confusion, and tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.

  “Five of us decided to pack up and come join you guys,” Quinton told him.

  Apparently, Quinton, Joey and Jade Allen, Nick Bark, and Evan Spader all liked the idea of the creature comforts and organization that Bryce and his group offered. Quinton also had a wife and three children along with them.

  “We’re glad to have you and your families. We just acquired a whole new living arrangement thanks to this group of people here,” Bryce said and waved at the people in the back of his truck.

  “Sounds good to us! Where do we sign up?” Quinton replied.

  “Just follow us up the hill, we were about to get this group initiated, as well,” Bryce said.

  Bryce and his team jumped in the truck and started to head up the hill. The short two-mile drive ended quickly, and everyone got out of their vehicles. The resort group brought two of their pickups, which would be sorely missed by the rest of the resort group, Bryce assumed.

  As Bryce and his team got out of their vehicles, he noticed that Trevor and his team were also at the compound. Bryce thought that it was weird, so he immediately headed up the hill toward the buildings.

  In the middle of the compound was a group of people seven strong whom Bryce did not know.

  Bryce walked up to Trevor and gave him a quizzical eyebrow, but Trevor returned the look after he looked past Bryce toward the gaggle of people Bryce had just brought in.

  “We found this group of survivors hiding out in one of the homes in the westerly camp we were checking out. They were almost out of food, had almost no water, and they had a few hunting rifles, two handguns and one shotgun between them,” Trevor explained.

  Bryce looked at the group, four adults, two teenagers, and a small girl. He sized them up and looked them up and down. They were all famished, dirty, and in sad shape.

  Bryce did a quick mental tally of everyone who had just walked into his life. This group of seven, plus the four fighters
and their families, which totaled nine, and the camp group of six added to that. That was a total of 22 people in one day, and that would bring their group total to almost 50 people. Bryce wondered, how in the hell did this happen? They had only actively looked for survivors for less than a week, and already his group had grown exponentially. Bryce had absolutely no idea that there were this many people holed up in the mountains, let alone within a stone’s throw of his compound. They had been up and down the road to the highway numerous times and never seen a soul, now people were coming out of the woodwork.

  Bryce knew that he walked on thin ice by adding so many people to the group so quickly, but ultimately he knew it was good for the long-term vision.

  He did wonder, though, would this always be what happened when they ran scouting missions? Bryce wasn’t sure he could keep up with these numbers. He said he wanted to rebuild civilization, and this was the way to do it, but if they grew too soon it could cripple them just as easily.

  “My name is Bryce Sloan,” he said to the new group, “Welcome to our home. This, of course, can be your new home as well, if you choose to stay.”

  The entire group of people looked around, chatted among themselves, and looked at each other, but nobody objected. The way most of these people had been living paled in comparison to how Bryce and the others had lived at the Hatchery Compound.

  “Let’s get everyone initiated, cleaned up, fed, and armed,” Bryce said to his people.

  Logan and the others rounded up all the new members and they headed over to the crew quarters. Since they couldn’t all fit inside the crew quarters any longer, Logan brought out a few chairs and asked everyone to make a line. Victoria came out with them and helped build a new roster for all the newcomers.

  The resort fighter group, including the Grymes family, Allen family, Nick Bark and Evan Spader, lined up first and told the Hatchery group their stories, skill sets, and information so that it could be recorded.