by Dave Lund
Cliff decided to access the facility through one of the escape exits, similar to what he had used to flee from the facility in Denver. In this case, the access point was an unassuming manhole cover on the base road to the west. If the electricity was still on in the underground portions, it would hopefully be lit and his card access would still work. That would make his journey much, much easier than his escape from Denver had been.
With no need to maintain any sort of stealth, Cliff simply drove his truck across the base, across the flight line, and out onto the road, stopping at the manhole cover that led into the facility nearly one hundred fifty feet below ground. Leaving most of his supplies in the truck, he grabbed his go-bag and his bump helmet, to which he attached a PVS-14 night-vision scope. Even though he assumed the facility would be illuminated, he couldn’t take any chances.
Chisos Basin Campground, Big Bend National Park, Texas
Pulling into the basin camping area, Bexar and the others were faced with a few surprises. A handful of tents were standing, but there were no vehicles parked in the areas they could see from the road. The restaurant and gift shop had burned to the ground, but that fire hadn’t triggered any other fires. The Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC-built cabins, were still standing, as were the two small motels, the little rangers’ station, and the convenience store, but again there were no vehicles to be seen.
Bexar couldn’t explain it. As the group pulled to a stop in the main parking lot, he began to get the same feeling he got while sneaking up on drug dealers when he worked nights as a beat cop. His sixth sense was setting off alarms in his head, and that usually meant something was wrong.
“Guys, something isn’t right,” he called out. “It’s really strange that there’s no cars around, and I’m worried about the buildings, the cabins, and the motels. That there are a few tents in the camping area isn’t too big of a deal and we can deal with them later, but the rest of it is a problem. We can circle the wagons here, feed the kids, and then start clearing cabins, or maybe we should clear the ranger station and use that building as our base of operations. What do you think?”
Jessie looked around at the motels and cabins, then back down towards the tents. She knew her husband, and if he felt something was off, it probably was. “Babe, let’s clear the ranger station and set up in there; at least the glass is tinted and it’ll let us hide.”
Jack and Sandra nodded in agreement.
“Okay Jack, you’re with me,” said Bexar. “Girls, hold tight for a couple of minutes so we can clear this thing.”
Sandra took station on top of the Jeep while Jack and Bexar jogged to the squat brown ranger station. Bexar gently pulled on the front door and found it unlocked. Jack grabbed a rock from the landscaping and threw it through the open door into the dark building. It clattered loudly as it bounced off the walls and rolled across the floor. They waited for a long ten seconds to pass. With no response from inside, they slowly made entry. About five minutes later, they exited and waved the girls over.
Will walked to the ranger station holding Sandra’s hand, and Jessie carried Keeley. Jack held the door open. “Don’t take the kids into the back office, looks like one of the rangers was bit and he killed himself. It’s pretty bad so we just shut the door to the office for now. The rest of the building is cleared, and we left all of those doors open.”
“Great, now what do you want to do?” asked Jessie. “You want Sandra and I to babysit while you and Bexar clear the rest of the camp? That’s bullshit, it’ll take all day and maybe some of the next!”
“Okay honey, let’s break for lunch and we’ll come up with a plan together,” Bexar replied.
Jack retrieved his Yeti cooler and passed out the last of the hotdogs, a few slices of cheese, and the last of the Shiner Bock beers. Everything was still fairly cold and they all knew that this would probably be the last of food like this for a very long time, if not forever. Will and Keeley drank the last of the condensed milk. From here on out, they would be on powdered milk until that was gone as well.
The lunch topic of discussion was the plan for the afternoon. Eventually they agreed that Jack and Bexar would go to the top of the cabins and start working their way back down the mountain towards the ranger station. There weren’t as many cabins as rooms in the motels, so it would be the easiest start. After two hours, or earlier if they were finished, they would come back and check in with their wives. If the girls got into trouble, one of them would fire a shot out the door as a help signal and the boys would come running down the mountain to them. If the kids cooperated and went down for a nap after lunch, the girls were going to take the binoculars and start scanning the tent area, the Window Trail, and the trail up to Emory Peak for any signs of survivors or the undead.
Finishing lunch, Bexar and Jack began gearing up for the expedition. Jack took a small pack with some food and his Camelbak hydration pack, as well as his AR, pistol, and hatchet; he also stuffed his short-barrel Mossberg shotgun into the Camelbak straps. Bexar shrugged on his Kevlar vest, followed by his Eagle chest rig, then his Camelbak. A broken-down MRE was also stuffed into his Camelbak. He press-checked his pistol and holstered it, then gave his AR a press check followed by bumping the forward assist twice and shutting the dust cover.
Neither of them could remember exactly how many cabins there were, but they knew there were quite a few, some of them designed to house close to a dozen people. Hopefully their expedition wouldn’t take too long, and if they were truly lucky, they would find nothing but friendly survivors. Geared up and strapped on, they took some time to look out the tinted windows towards their destination, scanning for any threats before opening the door.
The walk to the first cabin was short, and they decided to start low and work up instead of the other way around as planned. That way they started out closer to the girls, if something happened. Bexar held rear security while Jack looked in the windows, followed by tapping on the glass. Nothing inside the cabin responded to the window tapping so Bexar pulled the screen open, which creaked loudly in protest, while Jack opened the unlocked door and entered. The cabin was too small for two people to clear, so Bexar stood outside by the door, continuing his duty with rear security.
“Holy shit!” yelled Jack.
“Jack, you okay?”
“Yeah,” he replied, “but it looks like someone fucking exploded in the bathroom, there’s blood everywhere, and … shit, there’s a small foot in here. No leg, nothing but a foot!”
“Damn!” said Bexar. “Well, I guess we’re in for some undead love. Maybe there’s only one, and that was the one who bit the ranger.”
“Doubt it, coming out!”
Bexar expected Jack to exit, but instead his ears were suddenly ringing from the three shots Jack had fired in the cabin.
“FUCK!” yelled Jack.
“WHAT HAPPENED?” screamed Bexar back, his ears still ringing.
“Found the owner of the foot, little bastard was under the bed, damned near shot my foot off when it tried to bite me!”
“Jeez Jack, are you bit?”
“No, but fuck’n A, I’m going to stand on the bed and pull up the covers, you clear under the bed.”
Bexar drew his pistol, crouching low, and flipped on the TLR light attached to the pistol as Jack pulled up the blanket.
“Clear!”
The undead kid was now truly dead, so they stepped out of the cabin and shut the door behind them. A series of rapid-fire pistol shots rang out below them.
Jack and Bexar turned and begun sprinting down the blacktop road towards the ranger station. As they rounded the corner they saw Jessie on the roof, firing her pistol at a group of about fifteen undead by the front door. Bexar raised his rifle but Jack swatted the barrel down. “Dude, check your backstop, you’ll shoot through the glass and into the building. We’ve got to get a safe angle.”
Bexar peeled off to the right and kept running. Jack stopped, shooting at a safe angle to distract the undead and pu
ll them away from the front of the ranger station, which worked well enough on a few of the zombies. Bexar stopped and knelt, trying to control his breathing so he could shoot accurately. Jessie yelled at Bexar, “I’m out, and my rifle is inside the building.”
“Okay, get to the middle of the roof and lay flat,” he replied.
Jessie disappeared from view, and the undead turned their full attention to the two rifles firing at them from the parking lot. The horde thinned from the directed rifle fire, and as the undead continued to fall it became apparent that the glass front door was shattered. It took a mag change, but Bexar finally dropped the last undead, which had literally fallen at his feet.
“Jessie, where’s Sandra and the kids?”
“They’re still inside!”
“Shit Jack, form up, let’s go in fast.”
Bexar stood next to the door. Jack ran up behind him, got set, and squeezed his shoulder.
“Go!”
Bexar stepped forward. Planting his boot against the doorframe to keep his balance on the shattered glass, he pushed off and made entry into the building, rifle up and weapon light on. Three undead stood in view in Bexar’s field of fire. Bexar continued to run his wall, firing three shots at each zombie; he heard Jack do the same from his side of the room.
“Clear!”
“Clear,” Jack answered.
“Sandra, where are you? Are you okay?” Bexar called, but no one answered.
Both of their ears were still ringing from the rifle fire, but they could hear crying coming from the dead ranger’s office. The door was still closed, so Jack knocked. “Hey honey, it’s us, it’s safe, we’re going to open the door.”
There was no response from the other side of the door and the crying continued. Jack turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door. The dead ranger was still on the floor behind the desk. Sandra was crouched in the corner, holding both kids in one arm, pointing the dead ranger’s pistol towards the door.
“Whoa Sandra, put it down, it’s us.” Sandra didn’t move, so Jack slowly walked into the room and gently pulled the pistol from his wife’s shaking hands. Both of the kids were crying, and Sandra started crying when Jack hugged her.
“Coming in,” Jessie called from the front.
“Enter,” was Bexar’s terse reply. The adrenaline was already starting to fade, replaced by shaking hands and an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. Jessie retrieved her rifle and came to the office door.
“Hey guys, I don’t know how many there are, but there are probably a dozen or so more undead shuffling out from around the motels. We need to get clear.”
Bexar took Keeley from Sandra’s grasp and handed her to Jessie. “Right, we need someplace for the night, but first we need to decide whether we stay and fight, or flee for now.”
Looking at Sandra, Jack replied, “I say we flee for now, regroup, and try again tomorrow.”
“Okay, how about Hot Springs or Cattail Falls?” Bexar asked.
“Let’s do Cattail Falls, I think that’d be a safer spot for now.”
Everyone nodded. Bexar gathered Jack’s cooler and the rest of the gear in the ranger station and carried it out to the vehicles in two trips. Jessie took the kids to the Jeep, and Jack helped Sandra to the Jeep. The convoy left as quickly as they could, driving the winding mountain road with Bexar in the lead.
About thirty minutes later, Bexar turned onto the unmarked road that led to the Cattail Falls trailhead. The service road gate was locked, but Jack defeated the padlock with his shotgun. The small creek and trees at the trailhead would be their camp spot for the night, maybe longer. They were safely out of the way now; for any of the undead to make it to the camp, they would have to traverse The Window and the open desert.
Within the hour, the wall tent was up and the sun was setting across the desert mountains. Their dinner was warming on the Coleman stoves. Bexar opened a bottle of whiskey and, for the first time in nearly a week, allowed himself to relax slightly. They couldn’t live in this spot forever, but it would do well for right now.
CHAPTER 40
January 2nd
Groom Lake, Nevada
It was two o’clock in the morning and Cliff was soaked with sweat, hanging from a pipe in the ceiling above the drop-ceiling tiles. The last four hours had been an utter disaster. Cliff had run out of ammo for his FNP90 and resorted to using his pistol, which wasn’t suppressed. Then he ran out of ammo for his pistol, and was running for his life with nothing but his Emerson folder in his sweaty hands. He had missed the stairs, and was now hiding in the ceiling above a janitor’s closet on the second level below ground—the levels were numbered in descending order.
After opening the manhole above ground it took Cliff about ten minutes to climb down to the first level. In the first few minutes in the facility he had seen no signs of life, dead or alive. The facility had electricity and the lights were on, but it looked deserted. How wrong he had been.
On the first floor he had encountered only two undead security personnel. The security guards’ pistols and ammo were still on them; Cliff hadn’t taken them in order to save weight, but now he wished he had. Another bad choice in this series of fuckups.
He had to either make it to the fifth level to the storage area, or back up to the first level to the re-killed security guards to get their pistols and ammo. Regardless, he had to first get past the hurdle of the undead below him, on the other side of the ceiling he was hiding in.
Immediately after running his rifle dry of ammo, Cliff had transitioned to his pistol, letting the rifle hang by the sling. He lost count but estimated that he had taken down around seventy undead so far in the facility, and he was still in the primary underground facility. After he reached the fifth level to resupply, he had to make it to the seventh level to pull the hard drives from the labs used in the Kali Project. From there he could reach one of the tunnels that connected the primary facility to the hardened bunker.
He hoped that some of the people involved with the project had fled to the bunker when everything had started to go wrong, and that some of the people needed for the continuity of government were still alive and well in the bunker. However, at this point, he had his doubts that he would find anything other than what he had found so far—a large underground tomb of undeath.
The shuffling and moans below the ceiling were getting quieter, which was a good sign. He was confident he could take a single undead with his knife, even two, but the eight that had chased him into hiding would have taken him down without a doubt.
Still grasping the hanging pipe, Cliff reached down to the ceiling below and gently pulled up on a dislodged tile. A sliver of light broke the darkness, and he could see only a single zombie, facing away from him and beginning to shamble away from the janitor’s closet he was hiding above.
Too bad the building had correctly built firebreaks between the rooms, or he could have simply worked his way to his destination while above the ceiling tiles. Cliff pushed the dislodged tile out of the way and, hanging from his hands before dropping to the floor, landed quietly on the balls of his feet. He quickly pulled the Emerson knife and drove it into the side of the zombie’s head. He wasn’t sure where the other seven zombies had gone, and quite frankly didn’t care, as long as he could get to the stairwell.
Reaching the double doors at the end of the hall, he took a moment to listen against the doors for movement in the room. He couldn’t hear anything, and he tried to visualize the space from his visit here about ten years ago. He remembered the room being about one hundred feet across, with the doors he needed to access at the far end, and a large number of cubicles and offices throughout the room.
He pulled his keycard out from under his sweat-soaked shirt and touched the radio frequency (RF) pad on the right side of the door. The door clicked unlocked, and he pushed it open quietly. He had no ammo, so wanted to sneak into the room and through it. There were about thirty undead standing motionless towards his left.
At
his right stood a desk, and on the desk was an old government-issue desk stapler that looked like it was fifty years old, and weighed nearly as much. Cliff picked up the stapler and threw it over the heads of the undead, crashing it against the far wall. They snapped out of their trance and began lurching towards the new noise. Cliff ducked behind a cubicle wall and moved quickly and quietly in a crouch towards the doors at the far wall. About halfway across the room the undead lost interest in the stapler, and Cliff broke out in a sprint for the doors.
Reaching the doors, the moans growing louder behind him, he slapped his keycard against the RF panel and the doors opened with a satisfying click. He burst through the doors and leaned against them until he heard the click of the lock re-engaging. Standing in the dimly lit concrete stairwell, Cliff tried to slow his breathing. He was almost there, he thought. Maybe his chances were starting to look up.
CHAPTER 41
Big Bend National Park, Texas
Sandra stood security watch, and as the sun began to rise she put their trusty blue enamel kettle on the Coleman stove for the morning coffee. It was bitterly cold in the desert this morning, but it still felt better than the last few mornings. She had come to terms with the terror of the previous afternoon, and felt that the group had reached a point where they could take hold, stake a claim, and survive for their future. As light dawned across the clear winter sky, she knew the kids wouldn’t be asleep much longer. Even at the end of the world, toddlers slept in for no one. She dug through the food stored in the FJ, taking out what she needed for Will and Keeley’s breakfast. Milk for both kids was reconstituted from powdered milk.
Just as the water for the coffee began to boil, Jessie emerged from her and Bexar’s tent, yawning. Jessie had sat the first night watch and had therefore had the longest uninterrupted sleep, but she still felt like she needed to sleep for a couple of days just to catch up.
