Winchester Undead (Book 5): Winchester [Storm]

by Dave Lund

  The airport would have been Clint’s choice – large, open areas, hangers with possible Avgas or gasoline to be found – except that her new ride didn’t run on gasoline, it needed diesel, and Amanda wasn’t sure that being in a metal building/hangar would be the safest choice for the night with the taunting storm approaching. She had no meteorological schooling on any professional level outside of what she’d read as the SecAg and what life experience had given her growing up in Arkansas. Spring storms were nothing new; lightning was nothing new, but Amanda knew for sure that an approaching storm with emerald-green clouds meant she would probably get some hail fairly soon and maybe see some tornados in the area. As awesome as the big armored MRAP was, tornado proof it was not, although she assumed that it would handle hail just as well if not better than it was supposed to handle small arms fire.

  Driving forward, Amanda passed another intersecting small highway and a rather large BBQ joint on the side of the road. This was the heart of Texas cattle country; she assumed that the BBQ had probably been good back when such things still existed. Vague memories of eating BBQ in small shack restaurants while on official visits to Texas felt like a previous life; the smell of smoked brisket seemed to be a ghost of a whiff on the air. She was feeling more discouraged than she’d felt that morning, as fat rain drops started to hit the windshield hard. Muffled by the heavy armor, the sudden impact snapped Amanda out of her daydream and back to the reality she was in, driving slowly on US-67. On her left and right, every structure she saw seemed to be made of a metal building, as if the townspeople expected a tornado to rip the town off the face of Texas and they wanted to have an easy time rebuilding.

  The sky turned ominously dark overhead, blotting out the remaining sunlight and requiring her to switch on her headlights and bright auxiliary lights. Amanda rolled through the stop sign, turning left onto Highway 377. The wind gusted, rocking the heavy truck, the trees around her moving back and forth in protest to the increasing wind strength. Dust and debris gusted across the road, and the rainfall increased, falling with hard angry drops and defeating the windshield wipers in their attempt to keep up. Amanda kept driving, slowly. Lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the road ahead with the ghostly figures of people walking onto the road. Amanda blinked fast, trying to reset her limited vision from the assault of light, the macabre vision imprinted on the back of her mind. Squinting, she tried to see past the edge of the heavy rain that seemed to stop her headlights just past the front bumper. Another streak of lightning, and the hard clap of thunder vibrated through the armor plating almost immediately. The silhouette of an obese man shown in relief against the rain just as the headlights flashed against his mangled face and a split second before she heard the dull thud of his body being slapped to the ground by the heavy front bumper.

  Another flash of lightning provided a snapshot of the growing horde of reanimated dead straggling out of the neighborhood on Amanda’s left. Steering to the right-hand side of the road, Amanda drove over a highway sign while trying to dodge the next body, but it bounced under the truck and under the left side tires. Sweating, she wasn’t sure what she could do except stop, wait, and hope for the best or speed up and do the same. Not one for inaction, Amanda stomped the accelerator to the floor and the big diesel roared, the turbo screaming as the heavy beast of a truck rocked and began to gain momentum.

  Bodies bounced off the truck to the left, some falling under the truck, some being caught under the tires, but Amanda had no other options that she could see. If this truck failed, she would find another; if nothing else, she would walk. This was just like the arduous journey to the SSC in the first place, except now her mission was clearer in her mind. She had her own choices, she had her own mission, and no one would lord over her any longer.

  Hail hit and bounced off the hood, the windshield, and the roof. The rain kept getting heavier and heavier. Another streak of lightning, and the dark Wal-Mart sign flashed by on her right side, along with an image of hundreds of dead swarming in the parking lot like a frightened herd stampeding on the prairie. Calm washed over her body as she realized that the storm was her ally. The lightning, the hail, the thunder, it confused the dead; they paid no attention to the truck passing by. The businesses and buildings tapered off, and the storm continued to rage, but as Amanda drove past the other side of town the amount of dead she saw went from much too many to nearly none, leaving only the occasional abandoned car or truck on the highway to cause her problems now.

  Free from most of the danger from the dead and now trying to get back to finding shelter from the storm, she slowed down. With the next flash of lightning, Amanda saw some sort of church on the right. The wide concrete driveway bore a sign with the name of the Catholic church, but Amanda only saw “Catholic” and assumed the rest. The parking lot was empty, but the gate on the entrance of the drive was open, so entry was fair game for any who passed.

  Amanda pulled to the edge of the V-shaped parking lot furthest away from the building, careful to stay on the concrete. She didn’t want to chance getting the heavy truck stuck in the mud the storm was surely making. After switching off the wipers and the lights, Amanda turned the switch next to the steering wheel to the OFF position. The truck hissed and groaned as it shut off, but the vibration and the noise were soon replaced by the sound of rain and small hail bouncing off the armored glass and roof. Lightning flashed in a jarred rhythm with seemingly no end. She climbed over the center console to the back area, where instead of troops, gear and supplies occupied the spaces and the seats. Amanda moved a few of the boxes, retrieved an MRE and tore into the sealed package anxiously. It was nearly impossible to see anything but the flashing sky from where she sat, but eventually the hail ceased, the rain turned from squall to steady, and the thunder rolled away with the light show that had brought it. Her first day on the road found her in central Texas, alone and exhausted. Amanda was thankful that she was full, dry, and more comfortable than she had been on her first journey after the attack. Confidence in herself and her plan grew as she drifted into a light sleep.

  Groom Lake, NV

  The lights flickered on and off, staying on for what felt like only seconds and off for what felt like hours. In reality, the lights were cycling off and on every few minutes. Erin was the first to notice that the cycle was rhythmic, as if deliberate, like a child playing with a light switch. As a team they moved as quickly as they dared, forming a three-man active-shooter response team, just as Bexar had taught Jessie, and Jessie had taught both Sarah and Erin. The small handful of Groom Lake survivors who had attended the training courses thus far were taught the movements too; Jessie hoped that they would find some of those few individuals so they could add to their beleaguered team of tactical women.

  With purpose, but not rushing to the detriment of their safety, the trio made their way up decks to where the main “towns” were housed. Each had rightly sheltered in place, keeping the doors locked. The safety protocol that Jake enforced, which had been in place before Jessie and her girls had arrived, appeared to be working. At each of the doors, Erin and Sarah would take a defensive position in the hall while Jessie knocked on the door. An easy and quick passphrase exchange would result in the door opening. Jessie would ask the number accounted for and the number missing and remind the “town” of the lockdown procedure while she made quick notes on the notebook she carried in her pocket.

  Once lockdown started, those sheltered in place were supposed to light the emergency lighting in their bunk rooms, if needed, and begin a systematic strip search of everyone to look for any bites or other signs of injury that could be infected with Yama. Two of the towns had completed the procedure; three hadn’t, but promised to begin immediately. The goal was to lock down the facility and prevent an outbreak from killing everyone. If one town was killed then at least the rest of the facility would survive. It was also left up to the town to put down any infected in their midst. The needs of the many outwe
ighed the needs of the soon-to-be-dead.

  Sarah and Jessie formed the front of the formation as it moved up the hallway. Sarah walked backwards, her rifle hanging on the sling, her pistol out and held with one hand, her free hand holding onto Jessie’s belt, giving movement, direction, and speed through feel like the hard leash of a service dog. Their weapon lights shone in the darkness and stayed on when the lights came on, as the lights went off just as suddenly and any moment of blindness could result in their death by a stealthy corpse, reanimated and waiting silently as they passed. The dozen bodies on the ground that they had to step over or around so far all had dark holes in their skulls and bite marks on their arms and necks. Some had no bite marks at all that they could see. Jessie realized that an outbreak would be a perfect opportunity to kill someone without cause or consequence, just for a grudge or past slight. Only a handful of reanimated corpses had appeared in their path with just a couple more towns to check before the “time-out” portion of the lockdown could begin. Another failsafe was that, once swept, the facility would remain in lockdown for another twelve hours until the all-clear could be sounded.

  Those cycles were supposed to be announced over the PA system, but with the power cycling in and out, it seemed unlikely that this would be very organized. It might be the end of the facility if something couldn’t be done to stop the system madness.

  After a quick and hushed conversation, the three of them were left with only the cafeteria, Jake’s offices, and the radio shack to clear, at least of the known facility. Jessie felt confident that they had only begun to unlock the bare surface of secrets to be found here. Sarah and Jessie threw the double doors open. The three-man formation they’d used to move through the confined space of the hallways no longer needed for a large area like the cafeteria, all three of them entered and closed the doors behind them. They would have to clear the hallway again before they left, but that would help prevent someone, dead or alive, from sneaking up on them through the open doors.

  Beams of light from the powerful weapon lights they each had pierced the darkness, as they methodically swept the room, moving slowly and purposefully along the walls, away from the fatal funnel of the doorway and staying away from the open center where cover could elude them. The tactics were meant for police officers responding to an active shooter in a school or a building, and seemed a little strange for the risen dead, but they couldn’t be sure that there wasn’t a shooter lying in wait for them. Tables and chairs were scattered and knocked over. Blood smears on the walls and floor gave off a warning; the lack of any bodies on the floor gave an even stronger one. Jessie bumped an unopened can of Rip-It on the floor. She stopped and paused for a moment. Erin, a few yards behind her, did the same. Momentarily, Sarah, who was across the room, detected that the other lights had stopped moving and stopped as well, sweeping her light across the cafeteria and askew tables. Jessie held the can in front of her weapon light to show Sarah, then threw it into the dark opening of the center serving line.

  The loud crash of large serving trays and plastic plates was the result, which was followed immediately by a handful of gurgling moans and more crashing as reanimated survivors of Groom Lake straggled out to meet their end. Erin put each person down one by one until she saw a hand with a red knit mitten appear from the darkness. Waiting, a wry smile stretched across her lips as she saw her favorite of the Groom Lake residents appear. Brit looked bad. It was obvious she had been dead longer than the rest. One gentle squeeze of the trigger and Erin sent the back of Brit’s skull and brain matter across the white tile floor, Brit’s reanimated body crumpling in place. Jessie wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard a faint “fuck you” just as Erin’s rifle coughed the last shot.

  The rest of the cafeteria was cleared. They found Major Wright outside his office near the radio shack, his throat torn from his neck and blood soaking his uniform as he staggered toward the women down the hall. Jessie put the major down. Jake was locked in his office, as he was supposed to be. Bill and the airmen were found in the radio shack, all the radios unplugged due to the surges of the power switching on and off. All told, nearly three dozen people were dead due to Brit’s arrogance and incompetence. Something that Jake felt responsible for after setting everything in motion by entertaining Brit’s grudge against Jessie, Sarah, and Erin.

  Bill had a quick conversation with Jake followed by Jessie before he led the way to the server farm deep in the bedrock. One by one, they disconnected he network switches from anything that did not appear to be an internal intranet-only connection. This was a drastic measure, one that Bill hadn’t wanted to attempt because no one knew what would happen. The facility could be rendered completely dead, nothing could happen, or the madness might be stopped; no one knew for sure.

  Once disconnected, the servers were hard-powered with fingers crossed that they would reboot without issue or concern, since neither Jake nor Bill had anyway to log in as a user with any amount of privilege to fix any issues. Slowly the servers appeared to reboot, but there was no way to tell for sure for a few more minutes. After all the activity settled in the server rooms, Bill, Jessie, Sarah, and Erin left for the radio shack. They would either need to start the evacuation process to the top side, retrieving as much gear as they could while establishing safe areas on the surface, or cleanup would begin in the facility. Jessie had no idea what time it was on the surface or what time it was at all, but she knew that it would take them a long time to accomplish a full evacuation. People might die if they moved too fast, and people might die if they moved too slowly.

  Eventually, the facility lights came back on, the air system’s faint hiss returned, and the lights stayed on, though each of them expected the lights to fail at any moment. Growing more anxious with each passing minute, by the time that Jake announced the all clear they no longer expected the lights to go out. They grew to hope the lights wouldn’t.

  Exhausted, Jessie, Sarah, and Erin retired to the bunkroom to clean weapons, top off magazines, shower, and sleep. Persons assigned to the cleaning crew were tasked to move the bodies to the service elevator and to the main hanger for disposal by burning by the yet-to -be-formed burn crew. Bill, tired but excitedly awake from the events, returned to the radio shack and began transmitting in the blind on the electronic radio he’d modified to receive and transmit on the correct frequencies to match the radios that might be built if anyone took the shortwave transmissions seriously. The remaining airmen started up the shortwave broadcasts again, along with the other radio equipment.

  Bill still used the old Races call sign, his own personal HAM geek humor for the end of the world, but he wasn’t sure if anyone was left that would get it. Headphones on, a blank legal pad of paper and a pen sat at the ready while Bill leaned back in the large desk chair with his eyes closed. Faint and scratchy, the first dah and dit of a weak transmission took Bill a second to realize what he heard, but he shot up, pen in hand, and began writing out the letters of the slow transmission.

  Waving eagerly, the airmen gathered around Bill to see what the excitement was all about. All the external speakers turned off on all the other radios, Bill set his headphones on the table and turned up his own speaker. The faint scratched transmission of other survivors came across slowly. Bill quickly wrote a note on another sheet of paper and handed it to an airman, who left immediately, note in hand. At the end of the transmission, Bill took an excited breath. It was the same sense of excitement that he’d had the first time he’d made contact with another HAM radio operator on the other side of the world, or like the first time he’d made contact with an astronaut on the space station. Bill’s heart raced, and he had to concentrate not to key in the reply too fast. The survivor on the other end of the radio didn’t seem like a seasoned CW operator, but there were only a few HAMS before the end of the world.

  Back and forth the short messages were sent. Bill also resisted the urge to use the shorthand that was common amongst other HAM rad
io operators for fear of confusing the person on the other end. By the time Jake arrived in the radio shack, Bill had a short conversation written down. It was only a page long, but it told an incredible story.

  Lost Bridge Village, AR

  Bob’s heavy eyes snapped wide open at the buzzing sound of the received transmission. Instead of the usual dit and dah of a modern CW transmission, the buzzing spark-gap receiver took a little getting used to. Just before he could begin to key a response, a faint transmission responded. Now very awake, heart pounding, Bob wrote down the conversation that ensued from the back and forth transmission. One side was the operator in Groom Lake; the other side was an operator who claimed to be in Montana. Bob had no reason to believe otherwise; this was a momentous day, a momentous week. Not only had Andrew swooped down from the sky to open their small world to the idea of other survivors all across the country, but after building the radio, another group of survivors in another state far away were also alive and transmitting. Bob’s heart raced, and he wished he could tell Warren, or Andrew, or anyone, but everyone was long gone, the sun setting hours ago.