“Ah, the Wall, the last great refuge for humanity.” Benjy sarcastically smirked. “Well, I got some more bad news for you. I think I might’ve caught the front end of this horde just east of Columbus. It was the biggest group I’ve seen yet traveling together. At least a couple hundred, maybe more, I barely got away from them myself. They surrounded me in moments. You could tell they had been feeding as they were moving pretty fast. Looks like it might be worse than last year’s migration.”
“I was hoping last year’s run was a fluke, but it looks like they’re trying to go south again before winter gets here. Guess we can officially declare they don’t like the cold.” Kyle sighed while he remembered the constant waves of slabs they had to fight off the previous winter, all while still trying to get the camp completely secured and the wall finished. “Well, at least this year the wall is secured and stronger than ever, and we know a few more tricks for running them off.”
“So what do you want to do about your visitor? I can take him out of here after I unload your supplies and drop him off south of town on my way back to my camp. If I get him far enough away, he won’t be a problem again.”
“That will work. You want me to send a couple of guys with you to get the truck?”
“Naw. Give me 30-minutes. I’ll be pulling up to the front gate.”
“Alright. I’ll let them know and when you get back, you gotta tell me where you breached our wall so we can secure it.”
“Nope. Trust me, not just anybody can get in here the way I did. I’m just that good.” Benjy grinned as he headed out the back of the garage.
Kyle watched as Benjy disappeared into the darkness. He had known Benjy for many years, a friend of the family for as long as Kyle could remember. It wasn’t until about six months ago that he had even thought about him for years until he showed up at the front gate one night. Kyle wasn’t surprised, though, as Benjy was always a loner, and had lived out in the middle of the national forest in a little one-bedroom cabin. He was always the resourceful type, hunting, fishing, and the like. And he definitely had some kind of military training. Recently, Benjy had become like an advance scout for the camp. He would disappear for days, weeks, or a month, then show up with new supplies and news of who or what he had run across.
Kyle headed up to the front gate to let them know Benjy would be coming, and then he had to go find the girls. They were always excited to see Uncle Benjy and hear his tales. Renee would probably keep him up all night with history questions, which seemed to be his forte. Hope would quiz him about survival techniques while Patch would just want a piggyback ride.
CHAPTER 24
Kyle, the Girls, and Benjy
Kyle reached his house and was greeted by screams coming from inside before he even touched the doorknob. He covered the last 10-feet to the door in a run and bolted through it not knowing what to expect. As he entered, he found Hope and Renee tumbling over the back of the couch tangled in each other’s arms.
“I hate you!” Renee screamed as she placed Hope into a chokehold.
“Get off me, you crazy wench!” Hope screamed back.
“Hey, Daddy,” Little Patch yelled as he hopped off the dining room table he was using as his viewing station for the fight of the week.
“Girls! Stop!” Kyle snapped loud enough to get in over the screams. “Renee, get off your sister. Hope, let go of her hair. NOW!”
The girls let go of each other, but not before each got in a last push as they separated.
“Do I really want to know what this one was about?” Kyle asked.
With a rush of emotion both girls started telling their side of the fight at the same time, while getting a little louder with each word trying to drown out the other.
“Whoa. I will get to the bottom of this later. For now I want both of you to separate and get the table set. It may be the end of the world outside these walls, but we will still need to act civilized in this house. Understand!”
Both girls responded with a compliant shrug and headed toward the kitchen to begin the nightly routine of setting the table and getting the supper out to it. For the last six months, Kyle had made it a point for the whole family to sit down to eat together as often as possible. It was his way to inject a little of the old days before the world turned to hell. Back in then, his wife made it a must to have the family together at least five nights a week, so they could talk about their day and joke around. He used to think it was a little silly then, but now he understood how important it was to keep the family bonded and communicating. He just wished Sam were there to see them and so he could tell her that he finally got it.
Dinner went by with no continued drama, and then the girls began their final chores for the night. Kyle scooped up Patch and headed to his room to tuck him in and read his favorite bedtime story. After The Cat in the Hat was read and all the windows were secured, Kyle patted his little man on the head and blew out the lantern before he returned to the dining room. The girls were done with the chores and sitting quietly, awaiting the lecture to come.
“Listen, I know we are living in a hard time and—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hope blurted. “We know, Dad, hard times. Amazing we’re alive. Gotta stick together. We know, Dad. We’ve heard this a thousand times. But you don’t know what it’s like when you have finally made up your mind that you like someone and then a backstabbing, boy-stealing wench comes along and tries to steal him from you before you can even let him know how you feel.”
“I’m not stealing your boyfriend!” Renee barked back. “OOH! I’m not even interested in having a boyfriend now. God, get over yourself.”
“Listen, you two,” Kyle said. “Get a grip on yourselves. I ain’t got the patience to deal with this crap. We have more pressing matters to deal with than your teenage drama crap. I wish your mom was here to deal with this, but she’s not. So you two need to work through your issues together, and wrestling each other to the ground ain’t the way to do it. Now we have company coming over tonight that I think might cheer you up, so go get yourselves cleaned up. He should be here any minute.” Kyle started to put the furniture back in place from the fight.
“I’m going to bed. I don’t care who’s coming over. I just want to be left alone.” Hope stormed to her room and slammed the door.
“Ugh,” sighed Kyle. “Renee, go get cleaned up. I need to go clear my head before Benjy gets here.” Kyle headed to the kitchen.
Renee smiled at the mention of Uncle Benjy as she went to her old bedroom to put on some clean clothes. She’d been saving up questions since he last visited and had to find the notebook she wrote them down in.
As Renee exited the room, Kyle went into the kitchen to get some water. Just as he filled the glass, he saw Benjy approach the front door. Instead of continuing to the door, though, Benjy turned and headed to the side of the house. Curious, Kyle went outside to see what had gotten Benjy’s attention. As he started over to the side of the house, he heard two familiar voices talking. One was Benjy’s, and the other was Hope’s. The two of them stood outside of her bedroom window. Kyle decided to listen for a minute before he made his presence known.
“But I’m not a kid anymore,” Hope said. “He needs to let me grow up. I can handle myself.”
“Hope, your dad’s just doing his job protecting you,” Benjy replied. “After everything that has happened in the world, and especially with your mom, he’s just trying to do right by the three of you. Give him time, and he will come to realize you are growing up and have your own life to forge ahead with.”
“It’s just so frustrating. I’ve learned everything from everybody here about survival. Hell, I’m one of the best shots in the camp, and I’ve killed my fair share of slabs, too. I’m just tired of being treated like the other kids. I’m 18, and I’m ready to start going out on supply runs. I’ve been cooped up in here since we moved back in. I want to see what has really happened out in the world.”
“Well, sneaking out isn’t gonna help your
case any. I’ll tell you what. I’ll try to talk your dad into letting me take you out on a nighttime supply run. I think I can convince him. You just have to trust me on this and get back in there before he finds you gone, or you will have a whole new set of trust issues to deal with.”
“Okay, Uncle Benjy,” Hope said as she headed back over to her bedroom window. “I’ll see you inside.”
Kyle slowly made his way back into the house, not wanting to give away that he’d just heard everything that just happened. He waited for the knock at the front door and once it came, he opened it and greeted Benjy and called out to the kids. He didn’t want to, but he decided he’d wait for Benjy to broach the subject of Hope with him in his own time.
CHAPTER 25
Hutch
“Here comes the pitch,” Hutch said as he tightened his grip on the bat. He had a split-second decision whether to swing or not. He swung and it made solid contact. “This one looks like it has the legs to make it. Yes, it’s a homerun! And the crowd goes wild.” As the slab fell to the ground, Hutch started to jog around the bases on the field of Busch Stadium, former home of the St. Louis Cardinals.
Hutch had set up shop in the stadium for the previous two weeks while he put together his latest plan. Being a lifelong Cardinals fan, it seemed like a great idea to come see the stadium one more time before the elements made it unrecognizable. Already the outfield grass looked like a jungle after just a year and a half. And the infield looked more like a dirt-bike track than the finely manicured dirt that was once there when he used to come as a kid and see the great players of the past play. It also just so happened to be the site of his latest eradication plan.
He had spent the better part of the last two weeks prepping the stadium for one last event to take place in her presence. He hoped it would be a maximum capacity crowd the day when he opened the gates for the main event. He had also taken a little time to secure some souvenirs to preserve some of the history from the great stadium. The museum in the stadium was loaded with hundreds of items from some of the greatest players to ever don the iconic red and white jersey. Being the diehard fan that he was, he couldn’t let the items just perish with the stadium, and decided to salvage what he could before the big moment. Ozzie Smith’s cleats, Stan Musial’s glove, and Mark McGuire’s bat and jersey. He had on the jersey and used the famous bat to ward off the few remaining slabs. Those were just some of the mementos he secured and would take to one of his storage areas after the job was complete.
After finishing one last run around the barely-recognized base path, Hutch gathered up his gear and went to take a look to make sure his guests had continued to line up outside and to see if it was time to open up the gates.
He made his way to the upper deck and surveyed the awaiting masses outside. For the most part, the crowd was very docile, but rather large. He had thrown his well-worn clothes, which had enough scent in them to gain the attention of the slabs, but not enough to whip them into a frenzy, out into the parking lot and surrounding areas for the past two weeks. He learned this trick by accident one day when he’d stripped off his clothes to take a bath in a pond, and while he was bathing, noticed three slabs trying to eat the old laundry he’d left to air out on some rocks. In fact, they were so enamored with his clothes they didn’t even notice him slip out of the water and into the truck before he’d gunned them down.
Hutch made a complete sweep of the stadium one last time before falling back to his vehicle to suit up. After all the final preparations had been made, he reemerged from his mobile HQ and climbed into the baseball-shaped golf cart next to his van. He pulled away in the propane-powered cart and headed to the main gate.
Upon arrival, he pulled out one of his remote detonators from a vest pocket and pushed the button. A series of very small, yet loud explosions ran all the way around the perimeter fencing. The small detonations did their job, as one-by-one the fences fell over, opening up the stadium to the waiting horde.
Hutch honked the horn on the cart and blew one of the air-horns he’d found in the security office. He gained the attention of the slabs in front of him, and one by one they realized there was a meal waiting for them inside.
He pulled inside, going deeper into the stadium, still being as loud as possible to attract as many of the slabs as he could. Once there, Hutch disappeared into one of the announcer’s booths and locked himself inside. He then had an unobstructed view of the entire field below, and as he looked out, watched as the field level filled up with arriving slabs. He could see some of them start to fight over the clothes he had left scattered all over the field to draw them into the stadium. He figured it would take a while for them all to get in, so he pulled up a chair and watched the ever-growing mob arrive below him.
After about an hour, he could hear them wandering around the halls just outside his room. As he looked down onto the field, he calculated that the area was as full as it could get and still give him a chance to escape if the need arose.
Hutch produced another switch out of his vest. This one was a little larger, with a series of switches covering the entire facing. He toggled on the main power and looked out onto the stadium as six large light machine guns, placed strategically around the stadium’s stands, snapped up and pointed onto the field. The guns were situated on the stands usually reserved for video cameras and were hooked up to a bank of car batteries to power each of them. He then individually activated the guns. Almost immediately, they started to fire into the crowd of slabs on the field. Motion sensors on each gun picked up the movement and unleashed a hail of bullets into their targets. The thundering report for a single light machine gun was impressive, but with six simultaneously firing, it sounded like the largest thunderstorm ever happening right in front of him.
He sat back in his chair and watched the slaughter as the wandering slabs were cut down and obliterated as each gun hit its mark, shot after shot. Then out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the gun on the third-base line slowly turning from the field and picking off slabs in the stands to his left. As he followed its trek, he realized it was also steadily turning toward the booth he was in, and with each shot, it rose upward. By the time he decided to react and shut down the gun, it aimed directly into his booth. He dove onto the ground just as an incoming round shattered the window he had previously been looking through. Six more rounds were fired into the booth before the gun moved onto its next target.
Hutch rolled over to grab the control box and found it had become a victim of one of the stray rounds. He decided that he would just have to lay low until the gun ran out of ammo, then he could make his escape and activate phase two of his plan. So he scooted over to the wall and leaned against it to wait for the sound of gunfire to cease. Unexpectedly, he heard another sound and looked over at a large gaping hole through the door and found a slab peering in at him. “Shit!” Hutch cried out as he lunged toward the door just as the slab started to push it open. Part of the hole created by the machine gun had also taken out the doorknob and deadbolt. He braced his feet up on the door, drew his pistol, and fired a round through the head of the invader. As the slab dropped, he saw a dozen more directly behind it turn their attention to him.
Realizing he wouldn’t be able to hold off that large of a group with the busted door, Hutch came to the terrifying realization that he was going to have to escape out the window. He hoped he was fast enough to out-maneuver the guns on the field.
CHAPTER 26
Kyle, Benjy, and David
“And that was what the first American Revolution was fought for,” Benjy finihsed. “Now go to bed so your dad and I can talk. He patted Renee on the head as she headed down the hall to her room.
“That one has a great respect for learning about history, and she picks it up quick, too,” Benjy said to Kyle. “You’re going to have a hard time keeping up with her as she gets older.”
“Yeah, she’s already giving me a run for my money in Trivial Pursuit on game nights.”
Before
they’d sat down to business, Kyle had made sure to shut the doors to the kid’s bedrooms in an effort to keep the eavesdropping to a minimum.
“Benjy, give me your honest opinion on this horde you ran into.”
“I’m not sure what to think. It was definitely one of the larger groups I’ve run into since the outbreak. They were moving well, so they must be eating while migrating. I saw several with fresh bloodstains, either from game or people, either of which seems to rejuvenate them. I ran into this group at night, so even though they surrounded me pretty quickly, I was easily able to avoid them and make it back to my truck. They were heading straight south, so eventually they will run smack dab … right into here. Depending on the total size of the horde that shows up, you might still be able to hold them off if you have enough ammo and the other defenses working.” Benjy slipped his hand into his inner pocket and produced a bottle of Rum he had hidden. “A little present for you I picked up in Columbus.” He passed the bottle over to Kyle.
“Man, you don’t even know how much I appreciate this. It’s been two months since we’ve been able to find any alcohol, and we’re down to two bottles left in our storeroom. I’m going to put this away for a special occasion, but first I better check it and make sure it’s still good.” Kyle smirked as he popped the top and took a big swig straight from the bottle.
“Well, I figured after we caught up, I thought I’d go check out this monstrosity that David built before I took off.” Benjy got up to gather his stuff. “I also want to pitch something else to you to while we walk.”
“Let’s go. The Devastor is what we’re calling it and it’s pretty impressive, actually. If you give David enough time and supplies he can come up with almost anything.” Kyle picked up his gun and the two friends headed out the door.
Humanity's Hope (Book 1): Camp H Page 10
