by Dave Lund
“We should have brought something to hold the door open with.”
“Mom has a point.”
“She does, so if we see a door stop or something that we can use for one, grab it, and we’ll take it with us.”
Sarah and Erin nodded in agreement with Jessie as they switched on the lights mounted on their rifles. The bright lights piercing the dark room brought no surprises. No alien corpses, no dead, nothing but a dank-smelling foyer that could have been in any government building in America. Erin stepped into the dark room, flicking the light switch on the wall up and on, only to be greeted by another locked door with an RF reader for access.
Two for two, Jake’s ID opened the doors they’d found, and the trio of women found themselves in the most secret lab of the U.S. government. It was empty, and Erin was again disappointed that there were no aliens.
“You would think with all the technology and the secrecy that there would have to be an alien in the mix somewhere.”
Jessie looked at Erin as they pulled open the cabinets looking for anything interesting.
“Come on, what about the pyramids? Didn’t you ever see that guy on TV talking about that?”
“The guy with the crazy hair?”
“Yeah.”
Sarah raised her hands in front of her face like she was on TV. “But what if...aliens.”
Jessie and Sarah both started laughing, until Jessie snorted, and then all three of them began laughing so hard that Jessie had to sit down.
Catching their breath, they turned out the lights and shut the doors behind them as they left. Standing in the stairwell once again, looking at the dark stains and now puke on the floor, Erin asked the question that all three of them were thinking: “Has anyone seen a zombie go upstairs before?”
Jessie shook her head. “No, but it doesn’t matter. Always take the high ground. Make them fight up to you if they’re dead or alive. Now I need to get out of this horrible stairwell before the dry heaves start up again.”
Starting up the stairs, Jessie wondered how this pregnancy would go. Keeley’s was easy, or at least her memory of the pregnancy was that it was easy. She knew about the blessing of giving birth; once you hold your newborn in your hands for the first time, all the memories of the terrible trials of pregnancy and childbirth begin fading away.
SSC, Ennis, TX
Amanda sat on her bunk eating her dinner. After her shower and haircut, she’d cleaned her rifle and pistol, disassembling each magazine one at a time to clean them and check the springs. Her gear reassembled and ready for the morning, she ate quietly and wondered where Clint had been; she hadn’t seen him all day. The facility was quite large for being underground, but being the only two people in it meant that you tended to bump into each other a lot unless you disappeared on purpose. Even when she tried to do that, Clint would magically find her, accidently of course, and inquire as to what she was doing. Today he had been a ghost, until he walked into the bunkroom.
“I see you got your hair done. Get your nails did too?”
Amanda held up a hand, calloused from the pull-up bar and weight room, in front of her face and feigned blowing on her fingernails, which were cut short and unpainted.
“Yup! Now I’m just waiting for my facial and cucumber wrap while I eat my organic locally sourced MRE while wearing a pistol on my hip.”
“There you go; the President deserves to be pampered a bit now and again.”
“Where were you all day? Run to the store or something while I was getting my hair done?”
“Nope, I took the day off and spent it on the lake fishing.”
“Seriously?”
“No, but I did spend some time up top pulling down some of the HESCO, so it looked more weathered and wouldn’t give us up with SATINT.”
“With what?”
“Satellite intelligence,. Remember, I have to assume that the Chinese and Koreans are jamming our ability to update imagery, but they probably still have full access to theirs. We need to keep ourselves under a dark rock for a good while until everything blows over, and having the entry gate completely blocked would stick out like a poodle at the dog track.”
“Did you contact Groom Lake and warn them?”
“No, you know we can’t do that. We have to run completely dark. Cliff knew what was up; he should have warned them before he left.”
“He didn’t know he wasn’t coming back.”
“Well, he should have finished up his task by now; hopefully he’ll be back in the next few days. Depending on his outcome, we might be able to come out of the shadows.”
“Why is that?”
Clint’s expression didn’t change, but he didn’t answer.
“No, seriously, what was his mission, or what is his mission? After all we’ve been through together you still keep secrets.”
“Don’t we all?”
Amanda tried to keep her facial expression neutral, but she doubted she did it as well as Clint, who seemed to flip his emotions off and on like a light switch. “Honey, I’m an open book, and you’re always a dark hallway.”
“I’m sure.”
Clint striped out of his utilities and walked into the shower room naked, dark scars on his back betraying his fit body.
Shit. He knows something is up. Will he try to stop me? Should I leave early? What if he blocked the exit while he was topside?
Her mind spun faster and faster before she finally took a few deep breaths and realized there was nothing she could do about it at the moment. If she tried to leave now, it would tip her hand. If she waited until just before sunrise as planned, nothing changed, except if her path was blocked. If Clint had taken steps to stop her, she might have a chance to figure it all out before he realized she was trying to leave.
So many problems, and all of it caused by one asshole at the end of the world.
Yuma, AZ
“Marines, we have a choice. We can’t go west because that’s where we came from. I don’t want to go south because we’ll quickly be in Mexico, and we need to find friendly forces to help bring the fight back to the tangos. Do we go north or east?”
Aymond stood next to the loaded trucks, which idled loudly, his team standing in a half circle around him.
“We don’t have much time to chat about this, gentlemen. We have to assume the PLA is about to make it rain and we’re out of umbrellas.”
“Did you actually just say that out loud, Chief,” Gonzo replied.
A mixed response of “north” and laughter was all that came after from the rest of the men.
“OK, north it is, but why north?”
“Fucking Vegas, Chief. We’re going to get us some shore leave and party.”
“Sure, Happy, of all the places in the world that survived, Vegas would be it.”
“We could also see the Hoover Dam, Chief.”
“I’ve always wanted to hit up Area 51; I want to see some spaceships.”
“And aliens.”
“Hammer, Snow, fine. You two can hold hands and go be fucking tourists in the ruins of our country. Maybe as high rollers, you’ll get comped a room. The rest of us are going north with purpose. Load it up!”
Nothing else was said. The Marines took their spots in the two M-ATVs, while Jones took the driver’s seat of the radar truck. They drove out of their HESCO-lined position to the wilds unknown. Aymond wondered if the Hoover Dam might be a good place to take a low-key defensive position under all that concrete, before realizing it would be catastrophic if the dam were bombed or if it failed for some reason.
Pulling out onto Highway 95 and pointed northbound, Kirk finally asked, “So where are we headed, Chief?”
“You chuckleheads want to go to Vegas, we’ll go to Vegas, but I want to see if any PJs are hanging around Nellis. We could use some of them in our merry band of raiders.”
“That we could, Chief, that we could.”
Lost Bridge Village, AR
Andrew enjoyed the best dinner that he and Oreo had eaten in some time and all out of a household fireplace, cooked in a single Dutch oven. It was amazing. Either it was amazing or his standards had slipped significantly since the fall of man; regardless, he felt welcomed and happy amongst his newly acquainted fellow survivors, which was better than some of the receptions he’d had in the past few weeks.
“Andrew, where was you saying that you saw the military units?”
“I’m not sure they were actually military units. They were driving military vehicles in a short convoy and appeared to be wearing camouflage uniforms, but I gave them a wide margin for fear they weren’t military and weren’t friendly. Overall, I’ve had much better luck landing next to small communities that have built up and walled off.”
“Walled, how walled?”
“Well, I’ve seen a little of everything, Will. The best I saw was a ring of those metal shipping containers that they put on train cars. The guards could walk on top of them and shoot from an elevated position if necessary.”
“I can see it. Those containers are hard to come by ‘round these parts. Besides we got no way to move something heavy like that.”
“Do you need it, with the lake at your back?”
“We need sumth’n. We get about a dozen a week falling down the hillside into our neighborhood here.”
“A dozen? You should be so lucky. Tomorrow I can show you my atlas. I’ve been tracking massive swarming herds of the dead, like bison of the old frontier, roaming the countryside but destroying all they find. I’ve see cars pushed off bridges, lights knocked down. I even saw a couple houses knocked over from the sheer relentlessness of them all together. Scariest thing I’ve seen so far. I can’t imagine how someone would survive if caught in the middle of a swarm.”
Will and Warren both looked at Andrew with surprised expressions.
“The worst part,” Andrew continued, “is the smell and the flies. Sweet Jesus, the flies are bad, like a thick dark cloud. I made the mistake of trying to figure out what the pulsing cloud was when I first saw it and flew down next to it all. Took me a solid hour to wipe all the dead flies from my windshield and the leading edges of my wings.”
They all sat in silence for a moment, Warren and Will imaging what Andrew was describing and Andrew reliving the scene in vivid detail.
“So, uh, Will, what is your plan for a better power supply for the radio? What’s wrong with the one they described?”
“Their plan means that you have to keep cranking with one hand while you tap out your message with’n the other. Nope, I’m going to use a bicycle on a stand to turn an electric motor from my workshop to charge a car battery. All I’m have’n to do is modify the motor and the bicycle and make a stand. The rest is the easy bits.”
“So what first?”
“First is you go on back up the hill with Warren before it gets dark. First light, I’ll be up to start build’n, and you come on down here and help. Sound good to you, Warren?”
“Yes, sir, it does.”
“Great, be see’n you in the morning. God’s speed to you all.”
Will stood up and scraped the remaining food on his plate back into the Dutch oven, set the plate on the hearth, and walked to the back of the house.
“Mary, it’s time to go, Princess.”
Mary stood, checked her rifle, and walked to the front door, Oreo plodding along beside her with his tail wagging. Outside the sky was already glowing with the mix of yellow, red, and blue of the setting sun. Nightfall was quickly approaching. Warren and Will knew what all the rest of the survivors knew: the night belonged to the dead. You can’t see them, and they can’t see you, but they can hear you, and they seemed to have a supernatural ability to triangulate sounds to find you from surprising distances.
Saint George, UT
The firepit glowed, the wood popping and hissing. Chivo’s big 50-caliber rifle lay propped up against his chair while he sipped on John’s homebrew, a reward for such a successful day. Thanks to the horses, he and Angel were able to redirect the pursuing dead away from their path back to the compound. After testing the rifle, with Bexar sitting at the spotting scope to call out shot placements on targets, Chivo declared the optic sound and the rifle to be in proper working order. The only disappointment was the loss of one of the gear bags, but for such a bad wreck, overall the outcome was quite positive. Guillermo and the others not sitting watch duty finally left them alone after wanting to hear every detail of the day’s action. Chivo didn’t consider it a day of action at all, but when compared to living in a well-prepped fenced-off compound, he guessed it seem like an adventurous story.
“Like a slug-bug?”
“Yeah, but Baja style, off-road tires and cut-off fenders and such.”
“Does it run?”
“Hell if I know, mano. I just saw it today, and we had to make up some shit to keep the dead from following us home like some lost fucking puppy.”
“So what next?”
“Next, you get healed up and fast. While you’re healing, I’m going to take care of Guillermo and Angel’s problematic associates, and then we check the VW and bug out quick like.”
“Wow, bug out? Really?”
Chivo smirked. “What, mano, like you wouldn’t make that joke if you had the chance.”
Bexar said nothing and raised his pint glass as acknowledgement.
CHAPTER 5
SSC, Ennis, TX
April 3, Year 1
Amanda dressed in the dark, putting on utility pants and a T-shirt, the typical uniform of the day at the SSC. Clint appeared to be sleeping in his bunk across the room. She looked at her dark bunk, the white sheets and wool blankets. They had shared a bed, pushing two of the bunks together. After shrugging into the smaller tactical carrier she used day-to-day and slinging her rifle over her shoulder, she looked across the room into the shadows and at the dark form of Clint’s body.
I should kill him. If I killed him now, then he couldn’t stop me...no.
Frowning, Amanda walked out of the bunkroom as quietly as she could. As angry as she was with Clint, she wouldn’t kill him. The ugly honest truth pulsing through her thoughts was that she wasn’t all that angry at Clint. She was angry at herself for acting so foolish.
That was the last time. Never again. I have a country to salvage...if there is one left.
Each quiet step through the corridors emboldened her mood, made her more confident that her choice was the only right choice and that she could succeed, would succeed. A few minutes later, she stood next to her MRAP. After she unplugged the block heater, Amanda shrugged out of her smaller tactical carrier and put the fatigue jacket on over her T-shirt. Then the heavier armor carrier that she left stashed in the truck went over that. The steam from her breath hung in the cold underground tunnel; each breath sounded thunderous, her heartbeat thumping so loudly in her ears that Amanda worried it would wake Clint. Shaking her head, Amanda climbed into the heavy MRAP and looked at the few cases of MREs, stacks of ammo in green metal cans, and water in the plastic jerry cans that she had cached since first forming her plan.
“Well, shit, here goes nothing.”
Switches turned to the on/run selection, a push of a button, and the starter groaned to push the turbo diesel before it coughed to life, thunderously rattling in the tunnel.
Dear God, that’s loud. He has to know now. He’s going to...
Amanda took a deep breath and rapped her knuckles against the driver’s side window, which didn’t make a sound. Heavily armored and powerful, as long as she didn’t tip the truck over or seriously damage a tire, she thought she would be fine.
After pushing Drive, Amanda drove through the tunnel toward the exit, and her journey began with no sign of Clint.
SSC Command Center
Clint sipped the instant coffee, which had grown cold over the last two hours. A few keystrokes later, the closed-circuit monitor turned from greens and black hues to color, the lights in the bunkroom now illuminated. Amanda’s bunk showed empty covers left askew. On his bunk, a pile of pillows lay under the covers. On another monitor, the MRAP drove slowly through the tunnel to the far north exit. He was fairly sure that Amanda didn’t know where she was going to emerge on the surface, but Clint knew the exact spot and wished he still had overhead imagery so he could see what Amanda did when she didn’t recognize the remnants of the old road. Parts of the steel bridges were still in the lake, which he was sure the fish loved, but the road was gone. Two turns and the country roads would run into the highway. Clint pulled a road atlas out of the bag next to him, trying to remember which highway it was.
Finding the lake and Highway 287, he traced the route he believed Amanda would take to get to Groom Lake and shook his head. Amanda had no idea how perilous the route was. If she was smart enough to stay off the Interstates, she might have a chance. With a small ruler, he traced the route to scale and made some notes.
The direct route takes some twenty-two hours of driving. She will have to refuel at least every three hundred miles, and if she stays off I-40, it could take an extra five hours...probably five days there and then five days back, plus layover—except there would be no return trip.
Clint flipped the pages in the big spiral bound atlas and traced another route, making notes.
Sixteen hours. No return, two days of driving, another day to enter and complete the objective.
A few clicks of the computer mouse and the daily planner calendar for his username appeared on the screen. Clint counted the days off, trying to fit his plan just perfectly.
