by J. L. Bourne
Stunt was studying the maps over his dad’s shoulder. I could see him calculating the distance in his head, trying to figure out how long they’d need to be on the road to get there.
“It’s got high iron gates, food, hot water, and electricity. Everything you need.” I didn’t think it would do any good to mention the bunker.
1500
Mitch quickly agreed to this morning’s proposal. He and his kids would travel south to the stronghold I marked on my maps and wait there for evacuation. After rummaging through the pockets of the corpses we’d slain last night, we only found two sets of keys. One set belonged to a vehicle that wasn’t in the parking lot and the other was a switchblade laser-cut key belonging to a black Volkswagen Jetta. We spent most of the afternoon getting the thing road worthy. After putting a spare on and scavenging another from a different vehicle, I plugged the DC air pump into Goliath’s outlet and aired up the small car’s tires to the spec listed inside the door. With the tires fixed, I put the car in neutral and Mitch helped me roll it closer to Goliath so the jumper cables would reach a little better.
I poured some of my stockpiled fuel into the car’s tank and gave it a quick jump-start with Goliath’s charged battery. After letting it run for about thirty minutes, we shut it down, leaving the jumper cables attached between the vehicles if a quick getaway was needed. Stunt and Bailey played in the parking lot, sprinting back and forth from one side of the pavement to the other. They weren’t laughing and carrying on like children used to do. They knew the evil that would show up if they did. After putting Mitch’s provisions in the trunk, Mitch tended to my wounds once more. Again he noticed my shaking hands and told the kids to go downstairs, but not outside.
“Listen, I know what’s going on with you. I’ve seen it enough that you can’t deny it,” Mitch said.
It was difficult to hear myself admit it, but he had me dead to rights.
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”
Mitch proceeded to hand-write me a weaning-off schedule and instructed that I stick to it strictly, doctor’s orders. He confiscated most of the codeine, leaving me with only enough to complete his written schedule, reassuring me that it was for my own good.
“If you can make it hundreds of miles through territory like this, you can break the spell of those damn drugs,” he said confidently.
I honestly hoped that I’d see him again.
We’d go our separate ways before first light.
2340
The kids were sleeping up in the loft, and Mitch and I had brewed up some hobo tea in an empty tin can over the low fire we’d kept stoked. We couldn’t risk too high of a fire, as the building was up on a hill; the fire could be seen for miles if we let it get out of control. The undead could detect heat and smell living flesh.
The folding chairs we sat in had seen better days, and the same could be said about most anything. They’d been left out in the elements since the beginning, their paint oxidizing and rubbing away onto our clothing.
After a brief pause in the conversation, Mitch stared at the fire stoically and began to speak of his wife. At first I wanted to tell him to stop; I wanted to tell him that I’d heard it all and seen it all before. I let him keep talking; his words played out like a pastor’s funeral speech.
There was no dramatic story of having to shoot her in the head as she lunged for his kids, no tale of Mitch putting her down after she died on the living room couch. She just simply never came home from work. She was a cop and Mitch knew what that meant. Like so many others, she stood her watch until properly relieved, most likely by Death himself.
While Mitch spoke, he rubbed a golden lapel pin attached to his sleeve, a small police badge. Just as the first tears began to build up in his eyes, my pack began to chirp and vibrate loudly. Something on the inside was flashing. I instantaneously reached for my carbine while parting the flap on the top of my pack.
The tablet.
I pulled it up to my face and unlocked it. Instantaneously, I could see the GARMR’s sentry feed displayed on the screen. The machine’s sensors were tracking bipedal movement coming up the vineyard road.
“Get to the kids and have your gun ready,” I whispered to Mitch, who tore off in a flash to the building.
The colors looked strange compared to the GARMR’s normal feed, and it wasn’t until I noticed the setting in the upper right that I understood.
THERMAL.
I was looking at heat signatures, not IR night vision mode. The movement was human.
I obsessive-compulsively checked for brass in my carbine’s chamber and slipped the NOD over my right eye. I stuffed the tablet inside my waistband in the small of my back and left my pack by the pit. I needed to be fast. Although my ankle wasn’t fully ready, I ninja sprinted around the far side of the building, checking the tightness of my silencer as I ran. The NOD bounced on its strap, shaking my assisted view of the dark night. Rounding the corner, I got low and pulled the tablet for another look. I could see three contacts with rifles moving toward Goliath and the building proper. I headed to the right in a wide arc to get a better view and began to low crawl about five feet from the pavement.
From what I could hear, they did not have good intentions.
“That the fuckin’ truck?” I heard one say.
“Yeah, same one from Tallahassee. It’s him,” the other spouted off.
At first I thought they were actually dumb enough to be using a bright flashlight, but then I realized that one of them was wearing a cheap NOD. Its bright illuminator beamed like a spotlight from his head. I could see it only through my NOD, not my unassisted eye. I quickly became one with the tall grass when the IR beam swept my position and kept looking around. I hadn’t been seen.
“Should we ventilate the truck?”
“Naw, we ice him and take the keys. Might need it.”
Still prone, I tucked the carbine into my chest and looked down the Aimpoint. Its bright dot washed out my device, so I selected the lowest red-dot setting. The tamed glow of the dot was just enough to see via the NOD.
One of them stepped up onto Goliath to check the door and jumped down, disgusted when he found it locked. The one with the shitty NOD climbed up to look inside but soon discovered what happens when you try to use illuminators through glass. No worky very well.
The one with the NOD panned his illuminator over to the tall grass opposite my position, where the GARMR was parked in sentry mode.
“What the fuck is that?” the one with the NOD said.
“We can’t see like you, idiot,” said the third voice.
The NOD-equipped bad guy became curious and began to approach Checkers.
Why couldn’t the machine have guns? I thought to myself as the man approached.
As he raised his gun level with the GARMR, I put the bright illuminator shining from his head inside my reticle and my finger on the trigger.
I squeezed a couple pounds of pressure into the trigger in anticipation.
“It’s some sort of fucking camera!” the man said as he went to kick the machine over.
Just as the man made contact with the machine, it took itself out of sentry mode and stood up, trotting away from the attackers. The only one that could see in the dark opened fire, a round that glanced off the GARMR’s frame, with bright sparks sending it stumbling off into the grass. Asshole. I lit the guy up for shooting my dog, putting a round right through the top of his head. He hit the ground mouth-first with a crunch and the other two panicked and began shooting wildly in my direction.
Unexpectedly, they returned fire with silenced guns.
I placed the dot on their heads and put their lights out, bringing my round count down to twenty-four in the magazine and one in the hole. With the threat neutralized, I let them bleed out for about ten minutes before making an approach. I made sure their brains were destroyed and went back for my pack. I could hear Checkers approach through the trees, but commanded it to wait as soon as I could see it emerge from cove
r. I pulled the Geiger from the bottom of my pack and slowly approached. If any rounds had pierced the machine’s nuclear RTG battery, it could now be spewing lethal radiation wherever it stepped. But the Geiger stayed silent, minus the ambient background radiation coming from the cosmos, so I breathed a sigh of relief before commanding the machine to approach.
I clicked on my LED torch to give Checkers a quick physical exam. It didn’t take long to notice the bright strip of bare titanium where the bullet had skidded across the frame, stripping off a micrometer or two of the gray metal. Running my finger over the machine’s new shiny battle scar, I patted it on the head and scolded it for getting shot. Any onlooker would have thought I was insane and they’d be absolutely right.
• • •
I returned to Goliath with Checkers following behind and decided not to loot the bodies just yet. Pools of blood circled their heads like demonic halos, the reflected starlight glowing unholy green through my NOD. The shock of killing the men caused me to overlook a serious threat.
They came all the way from Tallahassee and didn’t just walk here.
They had somehow tracked me, intercepted my CB comms with Mitch, perhaps.
I followed the winding road down the hill for a very painful two miles and positioned myself within fifty meters of the closed gate. I adjusted my NOD and swept my gun back and forth along the adjacent road.
The glint of a reflector caught my eye, so I approached the gate to get a better look.
A large tow truck was parked near the bend in the road, pointed from the direction I’d driven when coming to the vineyard. I supported my gun on the metal gate and watched the cab glow brightly in random intervals.
They were smoking cigarettes.
I quietly slinked over the metal fence, careful not to bang my gun against it and alert the probable bad guys in the tow truck. Nearly forgetting the GARMR, I pointed back up the vineyard road and gave it the command to scout. I crossed the road into the tall grass and moved up, parallel to the cracked and weathered concrete, in the direction of the truck. Starlight reflected from the large metal cross of the tow mechanism. A crude painting of Christ adorned the metal cross in direct contrast to what I’d encountered at Goliath. These were likely murderers who would kill me if they got the drop on me before I wasted them first. Still needing a fix and shaking from killing three human beings half an hour before, I could smell the cigarette smoke wafting from the cab of the tow truck as it glowed intermittently through my NOD like a large alien lightning bug.
I was only ten meters away when the door opened and a large man stepped out of the truck with a squeak of the struts. He walked to the back and unzipped his pants before watering the opposite ditch.
Zipping back up, he said over his shoulder, “Let’s tear that gate off its hinges and see what the fuck is taking so long.”
“You’re the boss,” the second voice said.
“Get the fuckin’ RPK ready,” the big guy ordered.
My stomach sank at the thought of killing more men, but nothing back at the vineyard could survive an RPK mag dump assault. My fears were magnified tenfold when I saw the outline of the machine gun emerge from the truck. The passenger loaded a large drum mag into the receiver and charged the weapon. The fixed bipod dangled from the gun like mantis legs. The second man placed the machine gun in the back of the tow truck between the cab and the metal cross.
My window to engage was closing rapidly when I heard the crack of a twig coming from the trees on the other side of the road.
“What the fuck was that?” the big guy said. “Spotlight it.”
I raised my NOD just as the blinding 12-volt light beamed from the passenger window of the truck. I stood to look over the hood to see if I could find out what they were looking at.
A creature in a badly stained lab coat stood there, bathed in the bright spotlight, as if analyzing the men inside the tow truck. My cargo pocket began to click and vibrate, confusing the shit out of me before I remembered.
The Geiger I’d used an hour ago to scan the GARMR was going nuts.
In the span of half a second, the corpse cocked its head sideways and then charged the passenger window before cramming its upper torso inside. As the creature thrashed, one of my would-be attackers screamed in agony. I pulled up my gun and sank a round into the big guy’s head as he simultaneously stood on the gas pedal. The trucked revved and jerked forward, dragging the lab coat–adorned corpse with it as the other guy continued to scream and fight for his life. The large spotlight beamed all throughout the cab and he tried to open the door, likely to get to the RPK sitting outside the truck.
It might as well be a million miles away.
The creature was vicious, tearing into the man like a starving animal. Unable to take the screaming any longer, I raised my weapon and popped a shot into the side of the thing. I listened to the round drill into its rib cage a few milliseconds after I pulled the trigger.
FWAP!
With my NOD back down I watched it pull itself out of the truck, its jowls covered with warm blood. It had a look of confusion as it scanned the darkness for who attacked it. The altered gray orbs sunken into its skull didn’t reflect IR back at me like healthy retinas, but I could still see something different in there, something a few notches higher in intelligence.
The Geiger clicked with more intensity as the creature edged in my direction.
After looking around for a few more moments, it locked onto me without warning and craned its head forward before breaking out in a run. I raised my gun and placed a round into its nose, dropping the thing to the ground. Its legs kicked and spasmed for about ten seconds before the movement finally stopped.
I gave the creature a wide berth to avoid the radiation that was no doubt shooting outward in a half sphere. The corpse had endured a nuclear event, either weapon or power plant meltdown. I didn’t bother to flip it over to read the words embroidered on its once-clean lab coat.
My heart began to race and then fill with dread as I approached the passenger side of the tow truck.
“Don’t let it . . . don’t let it eat me, okay?” the dying man begged, hyperventilating.
He was bleeding out fast; it wouldn’t be long now. Warm black blood oozed from a wound on his forearm and his right cheek was gone, revealing white teeth underneath. His speech was slurred as his blood-starved brain began to shut down.
“What were you and your friend gonna do with that machine gun? Lie to me and I’ll drag you out of there and fire off a few shots,” I hissed, trying to stave back the lump in my throat.
I felt sorry for him.
“We were going to kill everyone, take everything. It’s what we are,” he responded between shallow breaths.
Another snapping of a twig caused me to turn and drop the NOD over my eye in one muscle memory movement. Here was one more creature lurking in the darkness, wearing the same type of lab coat. Light from the 12-volt spot beam shot up through the window like a Hollywood premiere beam, attracting the creature to the truck.
“Please, no!” the man screamed from the cab.
I instinctively broke contact and took a defensive position on the opposite side. The creature snapped its head to face in the direction of the man’s pleas and began to charge. As the monster stepped onto the road, it tripped and slammed headfirst into the passenger door, rocking the heavy truck from side to side. I moved back around to the passenger side, unsheathing the long-knife bayonet and stabbing it deeply into the back of its skull as it attempted to stand up. The Geiger’s piercing noise drove me away from the corpse. As I stepped back, I caught a glimpse of the slain creature’s lab coat.
An atom was embroidered into the fabric right under the letters Vogtle Electric.
These were nuclear power plant workers and were obviously traveling together.
Wherever that Vogtle Electric was, I didn’t want to be anywhere near it.
The passenger was gone, so I deliberated on whether or not to let him turn.
After pulling both bodies out of the truck from the driver’s side and searching them, I put the vehicle into reverse and crunched over one of the creatures I’d just slain. I opened the gate and pulled the truck through it and back up the winding hill to the vineyard. I could smell the blood in the cab and heard more twigs snapping in the woods off to the left. My ankle ached from the recent strain and I needed something to calm my nerves.
The bright headlights cut through the darkness but thankfully didn’t reveal any more lab coats lurking. I hadn’t considered power plant fallout as a source for enhanced creatures before.
I was startled when I saw movement in my rearview mirror, but began to calm down when I saw the GARMR trotting behind the truck, trying to keep the vehicle’s pace.
Just before getting to the vineyard, I turned off the lights and drove on NOD so that Mitch wouldn’t shoot me. At the parking lot, I stopped the engine, revealing the sounds of gravel popping under my tires before coasting to a stop near Goliath. I got out but didn’t shut the door. I could see the glint of Mitch’s revolver pointed out the window and yelled up to him.
“Mitch, it’s me. They’re gone!” I said.
“I heard an engine rev . . . maybe a gunshot, too. Was that you?” Mitch asked.
“Yeah, that’ll bring more of them. Get ready to skin out,” I told him.
We loaded his supplies into the tow truck. It would be a smarter choice if Mitch had to push a wreck out of the road on his way to the prepper stronghold, but I made it from there with Goliath, so it shouldn’t be a huge deal for him. I gave Mitch the bandits’ guns but kept the RPK and five full magazines. He wouldn’t know how to use it anyway. It wasn’t that much different from the machine gun I had mounted on Solitude, which I hoped was still anchored just off the shore back in what was left of Pensacola.
After debriefing Mitch on what happened, I went over the route back to the house with him again and told him to monitor the CB constantly. If he found trouble, shoot first. Don’t hesitate, just do it. The types of people we were dealing with were savages, and they wouldn’t hesitate with him or his children. Once he got back to the stronghold, I advised him to shelter in place and not draw the attention of anyone outside the iron fence, living or otherwise. Finally mentioning the bunker, I told him not to worry too much about it, as whatever was inside was behind a few inches of hardened steel. Mitch’s eyebrow rose for a moment while that sank in.
