Refuge From The Dead (Book 1): Lockdown

by Joseph A. Coley

“Somewhere around forty to fifty total. I know we don’t have a lot of ARs, but I know they have at least twenty Glock 23s. Why do you ask? We got plenty of guns here, that’s for damn sure.”

  Travis patted his HK416. “You think I’m going to let those assholes use my good shit? Hell no! They can have ammo, but I’m keeping my good shit for our trip. The safes are fireproof and next to impossible to break into. Whenever we decide to head out west we’ll stop by and get the rest.”

  Michael sighed. “All right. Fair enough. So what do you want to take with us?”

  “Take the 5.56, .40, and twelve gauge shells. We’ll have enough for us and enough to give them a little. I assume they have some extra ammo?”

  Michael nodded. “Yeah, a couple thousand rounds total.”

  Travis stared at Michael for a long moment. “You sure about this, Michael?”

  “About helping people? Yes. About whether or not they deserve it? I’ll plead the fifth,”

  “Look it don’t matter if they deserve it or not. Like you said, it’s up to the sheepdogs to keep the wolves away. The longer this…whatever it is goes on, the longer people will start to take advantage of the weak and less able. I ain’t no saint when it comes to my past, but I’ve helped people get rid of dictators, drug lords, and other generally shitty fucking people. People aren’t generally good deep down, I don’t give a shit what they say, but they do have one thing in common.”

  “What’s that?” Michael asked.

  “They want to live.”

  “So do I, Travis. So do I,” Michael said.

  “Well, then let’s get loaded up and head to Black Mountain. We can always make another trip back down here if need be. We can bug out of the prison and be back here in ten minutes or so. I know you mean well, but I don’t go anywhere without a backup plan,” Travis said, and head back upstairs.

  Michael let out a sigh of relief. Just being around Travis made him nervous. Hell, it made him nervous when he didn’t know about his past. The man just had a presence about him. It was the kind of presence that he would need to back him up on difficult decisions. If he could convince Travis to stay at Black Mountain long enough, it had the possibility to do something truly great. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn’t, it was too difficult to tell. Travis’ idea of goin out to Kansas was great and all, but he didn’t relish the idea of leaving his corner of Virginia. Aside from being in the Army and the places he’d seen while training and deployed, he’d rarely left Virginia. There was something about the mountains and the way the sky looked when it was about to snow. There was a veil of privacy to the mountains, as if nothing bad could get through them. They seemed like curtains meant to hold the terrors of the world at bay. Obviously, they didn’t work. The world had unraveled at the seams. The curtains had parted.

  It was time for humanity to take a bow.

  * * *

  Captain Winston stared at the monitors, although he really didn’t need to. The rattling of the chain link was plenty audible, even through the thick glass of Master Control. Winston wasn’t able to count all the undead, but they numbered at least a hundred. Most of them were banging away at the fences, trying to get to their cheese at the center of the maze. Winston hung his head.

  “Alpha building is full of fucking zombies. The goddamn parking lot is full of zombies. Now, the goddamn fences are lined with zombies. That about sum it up?” Winston asked rhetorically.

  Zachary Grant was still trying to catch his breath. Running for your life was good exercise. As he slowed his breathing, he tried to explain what exactly was happening.

  “Look, Captain. Those damn generators make a shitload of noise. You can hear them from the bottom of the hill, and that’s three-quarters of a mile away. Once one of those dead things hears another one, they follow. One becomes two, two becomes four, well, you get the picture.”

  “We have enough ammo to take care of all of them, sir. We can tell the tower officers to start getting them off the fence. Shouldn’t take but a few minutes,” Lane suggested, pointing at the monitor.

  Winston shook his head. “If the noise from the generators draws ‘em here, what do you think firing off a couple hundred rounds will do?”

  Lane sat down, dejected once again. It was starting to give her a complex. If she wasn’t built for this kind of world, it was going to kill her quickly.

  “How did the drive-by-mailbox-baseball approach go?” Winston asked.

  “It got one officer killed, sir. That’s how it went,” Putnam said sarcastically.

  “Well I am all for any better ideas, Putnam! You got any? No? Then shut the fuck up!” Winston yelled.

  Putnam looked up indignantly. He wasn’t one for talking out his problems and he damn sure wasn’t one for taking shit from the brass, despite the situation.

  “Fuck you, Winston. I did what I could to help Henderson. If you got a problem with my tone, you can shove it up your ass. Why don’t you turn the fucking generator off?”

  “Fat lot of fucking good that will do, Putnam!” Winston said, pointing outside. “They’re already fucking here!”

  “I’ve had about enough of your bullshit, Winston! If you want to kill the fuckin’ zombies on the fuckin’ gate, then you can do it your fuckin’ self!” Putnam screamed, quickly getting up out of his chair.

  Grant could see the fracas that was about to ensue, so he stepped forward and put himself between the two men, placing a hand in each one’s chest.

  “If ya’ll want to measure dicks, then I suggest you do it out of sight of the lady here,” Grant said.

  Putnam turned his anger towards Grant. “I ain’t in the mood for fuckin’ jokes, Grant.”

  Grant turned to Putnam. “And I’m not in the mood for you two to beat the shit out of each other. Fact of the matter is we need to take care of these dead fuckers outside.”

  “And what about the pod full of ‘em in Alpha? What the fuck does Captain America plan on doing about that?” Putnam asked.

  “Why? What happened in Alpha?”

  “Captain here almost got himself killed when he tried to clear out Alpha. Bill Young damn near put a bullet in his ass. If it weren’t for Henderson, your ass would be fucking dead right now. You know that, Winston? Why don’t you show a little fuckin’ respect? She’s dead, and you’re alive. Don’t fuckin’ take that for granted.”

  As much as Winston wanted to argue, he couldn’t. Lack of sleep combined with overwhelming stress was getting to him, and fast. In fact, he could almost feel his arteries narrowing as he waited. A sharp pain started on the left side of his chest, followed by a radiating pain to his neck and shoulder. At first, he dismissed it as gas, but as the pain started to run up his jaw, he got dizzy. Winston instinctively clutched his chest.

  The world spun. The ground seem to fall away slowly. It was such an odd feeling. It wasn’t entirely uncomfortable, but the fact he couldn’t breathe gave him a spat of panic. He felt unsteady on his feet. His legs were tubes of flesh void of any solidity that might be able to hold up his two-hundred-pound frame. His knees started to become weak and buckled.

  “Shit…” Winston started. As blackness started to creep in, he watched as Putnam, Lane, and Grant laid him down on the floor. He didn’t actually see it, but he knew they were doing CPR on him. For some reason, he couldn’t move, though. There he was, leaving his body, dying of a heart attack in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Captain Robert Winston wasn’t prepared to die, so his last parting thought was somewhat abstract.

  I’d love to have some blueberry pancakes right now…

  CHAPTER 27

  Travis loaded cases of ammunition into the back of the Bronco. While he didn’t grab everything he had, there was more than enough to go round once they got to Black Mountain. He wanted to keep another cache of ammo at home, just in case. The drive to the prison wasn’t a long one, around seven or eight miles, so getting back to the house wouldn’t be too much of an issue. Since there was an abundant amount of firearms available at
the prison, he didn’t concern himself with getting any more rifles aside from his HK416 and Michael’s SCAR-L. Most of the rifles he owned were M4 variants of some sort. There were a dozen more in the wall safes, again, just in case.

  Michael grabbed a box of MREs from Travis’ prepper stash. What surprised him about the last twenty-four hours was his clarity. Never before had he been so clearly been able to make decisions. Second-guessing himself had been in his nature for as far back as he could remember. Now it seemed like he could free up some of his brainpower. He didn’t have to worry about paying the power bill, trying to get gas money for work, or any other doldrums of day-to-day living. When an issue had come up, he’d tackled it with relative ease. That wasn’t to say there wouldn’t be bigger problems down the road, but they seemed like they still wouldn’t come close to the terrors of the “American dream.” Working forty-plus hours a week, and for what? Just to able to keep that meager “dream” alive. Whatever thought Michael had about trying to retire had passed years ago. He was convinced he would work until the day he died. That was one of the few beliefs still holding true now that the dead had risen.

  Manual labor was making a comeback, however.

  “How much do we realistically need to take with us, Travis? The prison has plenty enough food. Mostly non-perishable stuff, too,” Michael said, handing another box to load. Travis had opted to take his own vehicle as opposed to leaving it. He said that it was more likely that his truck would get stolen than his guns.

  “You think I been savin’ this shit up for no reason? Half this stuff I bought on a whim. Didn’t figure I’d ever get any use out of it. I plan on getting plenty of use now,” Travis replied, putting a case of bottled water into his truck. “Plus, there’s no guarantee of us making it to Black Mountain. If we get stranded – or worse – I want to able to keep us alive.”

  “Black Mountain will be fine, Travis,” Michael said. He watched as Betty and Lindsey put Anna in the Bronco, strapping her into her car seat. “Breaks my heart about Anna, though.”

  “What, growing up around this? Better that she grow up around it and get used to it than be like us. We’ve lived our entire lives thinking something like this is science fiction. We always thought something like this was just the stuff or horror movies. She will grow up not being surprised of anything. If the world returns to normal, then we might have a problem. The way I see it though, we’ve taken a big step away from ‘normal’ for quite a while.”

  “Is it bad that I function better around this?”

  Travis grinned. “No more power bill, no more rent, no more worrying about making a car payment. You know what that is? It’s survival instinct. Take away all the modern bullshit that people get used to and let them see what they can do. You’ve got the ability to compartmentalize. That shit will come in handy nowadays.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. When decision time comes, it won’t be up to me. I have plenty of help at Black Mountain.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask. How many people ya’ll got left?”

  Michael closed the hatch on the Bronco. “Last count was thirteen officers including myself and Helton. Add in Trent and that should put us at fourteen total. I doubt all of them have stayed, though.”

  Travis frowned. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well it seemed like there was a little dissention when we left. I can name at least one officer that probably has left, probably more.”

  Suddenly, something rustled in the woods behind them. Michael instinctively turned to the sound, bringing up his rifle. Travis did the same. Michael glanced to Travis, and he motioned for him to move forward. Travis stepped forward, moving the HK416 back and forth, scanning for targets. It didn’t take him long to find some. The undead weren’t the stealthiest creatures, rustling through the underbrush and snapping twigs and branches. Travis waited for a moment, waiting for the undead to clear the tree line. Such as it was, he couldn’t get a clean shot on any of them. The silhouettes of man-sized targets were appearing against the sun as it crested the ridge in front of them.

  “Ladies, let’s step it up. We got company,” Michael said.

  Ryan came around the passenger’s side of the Bronco, raising the 870 as he did. All three men moved forward as Trent helped Betty and Lindsey load the last of the supplies into Travis’ Silverado.

  “Come on, ladies. We need to get you in the…” Trent started. As he ushered Betty into the passenger’s seat of the Silverado, he noticed more noise coming from the woods in front of the vehicles. “Caine! Helton! We got company over here, too!”

  “Cover him, Ryan,” Michael said. He swung his SCAR over his head and stalked in the opposite direction, moving towards Trent. What Trent heard now appeared in the middle of the road. Two deer sprang onto the gravel, and disappeared just as quickly. Michael lowered his SCAR.

  “Shit. You scared the shit out of me Trent,” Michael said.

  Trent turned to him and shrugged. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “If you two are done playing with Bambi, we got plenty to do over here,” Helton said. No sooner had the words escaped his mouth, the first shot was fired.

  Michael swung his rifle back around to the rear of the vehicles, watching Travis squeeze off well-placed rounds. One after another, infected began to pour out of the woods. At first, two or three undead randomly wandered through the brush, followed by a half-dozen more. Travis fired one shot after another, the HK416 barely making a loud snap. The suppressor was doing an excellent job at keeping the sound down on the rifle.

  Michael’s SCAR was not suppressed, however.

  The rifle’s report startled Ryan as well as the girls. Even though Michael couldn’t hear well from the unsuppressed SCAR’s violent blast, he could still make out the cry of his infant daughter. Something broke inside him, and it damn near made him cry. Throughout all that Anna had endured in her short life, she never cried in fear. She belted out now that cry. The sound of uncertainty, the sound of needing her father; it was heartbreaking for Michael. Since Anna had been born, Lindsey had told him that he was just a big teddy bear now. He’d never been particularly emotional, but now those emotions were bubbling to the surface, threatening to escape. One emotion finally burst forth.

  Anger.

  Michael gritted his teeth to the point of breaking them. His hands gripped the rifle as if it were trying to leap out of his hands. Looking through the ACOG, he lined up the first headshot, a man in RealTree camouflage. Hunters were common in the area, just not this time of year. Damn poachers. Doesn’t deserve to die but, oh fucking well, Michael thought. He squeezed the trigger and the hunter’s head popped, the shot going through just above his right eye. Before the undead poacher could hit the ground, Michael lined up another shot. He squeezed the trigger, the rifle roaring another 5.56mm round towards a dirty, coverall-wearing zombie. As his shot went through the creature’s head, Travis’ went through its chin, simultaneously blowing off its jaw and a sizeable portion of its head.

  Smoke lingered for a few seconds, as did the noise, echoing through the valley. Michael loosened his grip on the rifle and lowered it down. It took a few moments to realize the threats were gone, at least for the moment. Anna’s cries were the only thing he could hear for a minute. Whatever force her fear had on him wasn’t letting go. He needed to get her safe. The shrill cry was sure to attract more zombies. Travis lowered his rifle and turned to Michael.

  “That’s our cue, Mike.”

  Michael nodded. “Damn straight.”

  Travis lowered his rifle and brought his eyes to the sky. The crimson and orange trails of clouds looked as if the world was on fire. Travis couldn’t help but smirk a little as he gazed skyward. Michael noticed his father-in-law fixated on the heavens.

  “What is it?” Michael asked.

  Travis didn’t take his eyes off the sky. “Red sky in the morning…”

  CHAPTER 28

  When dealing with the undead, sometimes it’s best to do what is
necessary, even if the idea is somewhat crazy. For example, the remaining officers at Black Mountain had decided to load up as many guns that they could and take the undead horde head-on. The sound was going to draw more out of the woodwork, but they planned on turning a good portion of the prison’s ammo supply into smoke and noise. There were thousands of rounds available, so taking out a hundred or so zombies wasn’t going to put a large dent in their supply.

  An army it was not. After losing Captain Winston and Officer Henderson, they were down to a select few. Four, to be exact. Putnam, Lane, Grant, and Nate Freeman were it. Freeman was the last to show up in the Master Control room. After scouring the other buildings for any other officers, he’d come up short. What few officers were left had abandoned post, leaving without so much as a ‘goodbye.’ Lane tossed a Glock holster at Freeman as he entered the control room. Freeman caught it and gave her a puzzled look.

  “What’s this for? I’ve already got a holster and a Glock, Lane.”

  “That’s a left-handed holster, Freeman. Might as well carry two. Twice the guns, twice the firepower,” Lane answered.

  “Why can’t I just carry extra mags?” Freeman asked.

  Lane rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Freeman. Just take the damn gun. We’ve got plenty of them to go ‘round.” Lane handed Freeman a second Glock. Grant and Putnam came into the control room, both carrying AR-15s.

  “So what’s the plan?” Freeman asked.

  “Putnam and I will take out as many as we can from the towers. Hopefully, the sound will draw them away from the front doors. Once they do, you and Lane can get out there and start taking shots on the closest ones. Remember, you have to shoot ‘em in the head. Anything other than that will just piss ‘em off,” Grant said.

  “All right. What are we waiting for?” Freeman asked.

  Grant and Putnam exchanged a look and shrugged. Without a word, they both left the control room and headed towards their respective towers.