by Dave Lund
After taxiing to the fuel tank and filling the Husky’s fuel bladders, he relocked the fuel tank and taxied back to the tie downs to secure the plane. He figured at the least he was going to be remaining in Milan until the afternoon; worst case he might have to spend another night in the hangar. He was close, closer than before and wanted to get closer still to his destination. Not a dusty metal hangar in nowhere New Mexico, but in a real honest-to-God secret underground base that had food, showers, bed, people, and safety. Not that Andrew wanted to stay there forever, but the chance to relax for a couple weeks in what qualified as a five-star resort in the new world was a titillating thought.
Sitting on the tarmac under the shade of the Husky’s wing, Andrew flipped through the atlas, ruler in hand. A straight line was roughly five hundred miles and would go right over the Grand Canyon, which was something that Andrew had wanted to see since he was a child. If the winds aloft were in his favor, there was no reason he couldn’t make the flight to Groom Lake without refueling, but again, with no way to know, he wasn’t about to take that gamble. The Grand Canyon was about the halfway point and could be an interesting stop. He knew that operators in the area offered aerial tours of the Grand Canyon, so there had to be landing strips somewhere nearby, but only the larger airports were shown on the atlas.
Jay and Roy returned, three others in tow, each carrying bags. One of the bags was given to Andrew; it contained a loaf of bread and three sealed mason jars with soup in them. Two cans of dog food were also in the canvas bag.
They didn’t offer a can opener, but Andrew had an old P51 opener in his bag for just such an occasion. Oreo waited patiently, drool dripping to the tarmac as Andrew slowly made his way around the opening of the can. Once the top was open, without a proper dish, he simply upended the can onto the tarmac. Oreo didn’t mind and quickly ate the gravy-covered processed meat that he had missed for much of the time after the attack. After feeding Oreo, Andrew held the loaf of bread in his hands, a real loaf of bread. Some other survivor groups, the ones that were well-stocked preppers, had the means to make bread, but it had been weeks since he’d had any. Tempted to bite right into the middle of the loaf, Andrew contained himself and tore off a chunk, the chewy meat of the loaf tasting like a piece of heaven, the thick crust tough and crunchy.
Yup, better than Oprah rich...much better.
Andrew sat, enjoying one of the jars of soup and the bread while watching the group build the radio and hang the antenna’s wire from the beacon’s tower. Finishing the bread, Andrew took Oreo and went to nap under the plane, both with full stomachs, until some yelling woke him up.
After a moment, he realized that it wasn’t really yelling, but happily excited people. Andrew correctly guessed that the radio worked, and the group had made contact or were listening to another conversation, writing out the letters of each tapped-out word buzzing on and off in the spark-gap radio. Standing slowly, Andrew walked to the group sitting around a folding table in the hangar, wondering if they were excited enough that they might give him another loaf of bread.
“So it works?”
“Damn straight it works, son! This is amazing, just simply amazing!”
“Bob said it was ancient technology, what the original wireless telegraph operators used, long before voice communications.”
“Andrew, we don’t care. It works, and we made contact. Now we’re listening to another group out of...where are they out of, Susanne?”
“Michigan.”
“Wow, out of Michigan, and they’re talking to your friends in Nevada. Area 51, I never thought we had aliens there, but I knew we had something. Thank God for that something.”
Andrew looked at the sky; the sun was well-past overhead and endlessly marching toward the western horizon. They would be delayed another day, but if they could fly out at first light in the morning, they could stop off at the Grand Canyon, refuel, and land on the dry lakebed of Groom Lake before sunset.
“Jay, you guys wouldn’t happen to have any charts or sections you would like to donate? I’m flying off of a road atlas, IFR all the way; I follow roads.”
“Son, we’ve got a whole stack of charts. You can take the lot or pull the ones you want, and you can always come back for the rest if you need them!”
Jay handed him his keys again, pulling up the key to the FBO with a short explanation of where they were stored. Sporty’s Pilot Supply it was not, but it was better than he had, so it was the best that could be found.
Smiling, Andrew left the group to find the sectional charts, while their attention stayed unwaveringly on the radio. If they had all thirty-eight, he would take all of them. It was worth the room and worth the weight to be able to know altitudes, where towers were, actually plan a flight instead of bumming around the slow routes of the Interstate system hoping to find somewhere to land for the night. With obstacles, elevations, and altitudes marked, he could even fly at night.
That’s it, I’m going to take a quick nap, plot the course, and fly out. If I do it right, I should arrive just after sunrise. Groom Lake is marked on the sectional. All I need is sunlight to land.
Outside of Hurricane, UT
Amanda felt exhausted, the long drive taking its toll on her, but as tired as she felt, she was strangely energized. She still had half a tank of fuel left after siphoning more fuel a few hours prior and, according to the signs, she would be coming out of the highway in the middle of nowhere soon. Following Highway 59, in Hurricane she would take Highway 9 for a bit and, unfortunately, end up on I-15, but not for long before she turned off. The Interstates were not her friends, but not since the night of the huge storm and dodging zombies by lightning flashes had she had much issue on the small highways. Surprisingly, this trip was a longer journey than her trek from Little Rock to the SSC, but it was going much smoother and much quicker than before.
Highway 59 descended into the town, and two turns later Amanda was on Highway 9 driving west through the middle of town. Scanning for signs of survivors or any signs, and excited to see more, she continued on, tired, the MRAP swerving back and forth on the roadway some as she stared out of the side windows. The hard thunk of something hitting the front bumper brought her attention forward again.
Outside her windshield stood nearly a virtual wall of meandering death, hundreds if not thousands of the reanimated dead milling about in the roadway. Amanda slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel right, taking the first side street she saw. At first glance, the streets appeared to be in a grid pattern, and Amanda hoped she was right. In the side-view mirror she saw dead shambling in a slow, methodical pursuit, so she turned left, paralleling the highway, slowing and swerving back and forth. There were less of the dead on this street, but more and more followed the movement and the sound of the heavy diesel engine. More dead streamed out from around buildings and homes, blocking her path once again. Turning left, she drove the truck through a chain-link fence, bouncing across a rock-filled field between her and Highway 9.
Back on the highway, Amanda pointed west, slowing down to nearly a crawl, the truck practically driving with the engine at idle as the heavy steel bumper pushed bodies out of the way or under the truck. Frowning, Amanda scanned the gauges; everything from the oil pressure to the air pressure was where it was supposed to be. Feathering the accelerator pedal until the truck slowly sped up, she glanced at the speedometer which showed a brisk five miles per hour; she continued pushing through the middle of the rioting pack of dead with persistence. If something happened and she got stuck, if the truck failed, if any number of things happened, she would live out the rest of her life surrounded by death in a large armored truck.
Saint George, UT
They were getting a later start than they wanted. Originally planning on leaving first thing in the morning, Chivo went outside again after breakfast to find Stan in the middle of an oil change on the Beetle. Trying to be gracious, Chivo agreed that i
t was probably a good idea, but Bexar was visibly annoyed. The morning slipped by as more things happened. They agreed to stay for lunch, but would leave immediately thereafter, Bexar nearly shaking from the anticipation and anxiety of wanting to get on the road to get to Jessie.
A far cry from Bexar’s beloved Wagoneer with its full-length roof rack, the homemade wooden rack did well to hold their provisions, most of which didn’t fit in the interior of the car or under the hood of the trunk. Expecting to arrive in a single day’s drive, most of what they carried in the way of gear were weapons of war, including Chivo’s favorite rifle to reach out and touch someone from a distance. The rifle and case being much too long to even attempt fitting in the car, it sat tied down on the roof rack like a canoe of death. Four MREs and a gallon of water each was all they decided to bring in the way of provisions, choosing to fill the spaces with the weaponry purloined from Frank’s group.
Shortly after lunch, they were finally on their way, the loud exhaust announcing their departure to anyone dead or alive that happened to be in the area. Remembering how bad things were just before they turned onto the I-15 frontage road, the windows were only rolled down a little way, even without air conditioning, both of them ready to roll them up quickly at the first undead they encountered.
The tires were old, but they would have to work; the car was loud and slow but was keeping a steady pace as they made a right turn onto Saint George Boulevard, the wide four-lane road that cut through town to Highway 18. The palm trees, an apparent favorite of landscapers in the area, looked withered and sickly, and the median was full of weeds. The close-standing businesses and office spaces did not look much better.
“Amazing, isn’t it, how fast everything went to shit?” Bexar nearly yelled over the loud muffler.
Chivo nodded, deftly swerving around a small cluster of dead walking in the middle of the roadway. Flat-topped mountains loomed in the distance, and Bexar silently wondered how their little car would do trying to climb up the hillsides. For all the dead that had been seen on the Interstate and surrounding area recently, the heart of town seemed nearly abandoned by the dead, eerily devoid of lingering hordes veiled in thick black curtains of flies.
Twenty minutes after turning north on Highway 18, the vagabond pair of travelers were free of civilization’s ruins and once again on the open highway, winding slowly through the desolate desert country side. Small clusters of homes and ranches dotted the distance along the roadside, which left Bexar questioning what someone could do to be a successful rancher in the uninhabited barrens of this region of Utah.
Passing a subdivision, the reanimated dead that they had missed leaving Saint George were found slowly streaming out from around the sides of the houses and toward the highway. Unlike their drive into Saint George, this time they cleared the growing herd of death before the roadway was blocked and a serious problem occurred.
Groom Lake, NV
They had resorted to yelling, the overweight quartermaster trying to protect the cache of supplies that they weren’t even finished inventorying yet. Jessie wanted free rein to outfit, arm, and supply every single survivor that lived in the vast underground facility with as much ammo, weaponry, and equipment that they would possibly need to stand their ground against whatever may come. She was done playing the game in piecemeal. It was time to jump feet first into the water and face all that could be with all they had.
“No, even if Jake was standing here ordering me to give you free rein, I would not do it. It isn’t fair for the group, it isn’t right, and a woman like you doesn’t have the first clue how to defend your own home much less a community like we have here!”
Frustrated, Jessie gave the quartermaster a one-fingered salute. Erin, who was with her, stepped close to the overweight man. Her right hand holding a knife, she pressed it against the crotch of the man’s jeans, left hand gently brushing the side of his face and simply whispered, “You fuck with us and I’ll cut off your dick and shove it down your throat. You don’t even have a clue how to defend your pathetic little cock much less all this gear you’re hoarding. Walk away and never come back. If I so much as see you in the hallway, you’ll have to sit down to piss the rest of your life.”
Blood drained from the man’s face. He gasped for air, unable to speak, raising his hands in the air as a sign of surrender. Erin felt her right hand get warm and wet. Looking down, she saw that the man had wet himself. “That’s just sad, a grown-ass man scared of little ol’ me. Run along now, little boy, go on.”
The man took two timid steps backwards, away from Erin and the knife she had against his now wet jeans. before he left in a stumbling sprint toward the door.
“Jesus, Erin, remind me not to piss you off.”
“I don’t think you ever could, Jessie,” Erin said with a faint smile.
Ignoring the metal desk piled haphazardly with stacks of papers against the computer, covered in crumbs, and generally disgusting, the pair set out into the dark reaches of the storage area with small notebooks in their hands, donning headlamps to read the box and crate contents, making short notes as they walked, discussing what they thought they would need. Erin wanted more ammo for her 50-caliber rifle and a good spotting scope. Jessie just wanted something, a lot of something, she just wasn’t sure what. All the survivors in the underground facility had pistols; they were required to carry them at all times, but the pistols were of all different makes and calibers, a mix of mostly what they’d all brought with them. Rifles were another story. Some had AR-variant-style rifles, some had hunting rifles, a few had some sort of variant of the AK-47, and fewer still, like Jason, had some type of shotgun; although not a rifle, it was at the least a long gun of some sort.
Erin pointed at a large section of wooden crates. “Jessie, I think we should outfit the group with as many of these M-16s as we can, all that don’t have some sort of AR. Then at least the magazines and ammo are interchangeable.”
“That’s a good idea; we had group-standard weapons for the same reasons with our prepper group.”
The pair kept walking, reading what they could on the highest shelves of the racking. It felt like they were in a tactical Costco, but instead of five-gallon jugs of ketchup, they had boxes with five thousand rounds of 5.56.
“How did your prepper group start?”
Jessie had waited for these questions to come from Erin for some time, but even expecting and rehearsing the answers to herself time and time again, she got choked up when trying to begin. “My Bexar, we met while I was finishing college. He was working all sorts of odd jobs, and we knew we were in love from the beginning. He grew up with Malachi and Jack, true lifelong friends. They could go months without seeing each other because of life and kids, but when they got together, conversations would seemingly pick up where they had left off, like no time had passed. The jokes, everything. Jake married first, but he and Sandra had dated for years and years. I think even before they went to college. Malachi married last, but he loved that little east Texas girl. For a time she worked in the prison system before she’d had enough of the bullshit that came with it and left. They moved to north Texas, we were in central Texas, and Jack’s family was between Dallas and Fort Worth. We all camped together when we had the chance, meeting at random state parks and even out to Big Bend on one occasion, but it was Jack who started us on the idea of prepping. Things got a little out of hand after that, but as crazy as they got with it all, I supported it, Sandra supported it, and I think Amber, Malachi’s wife, supported it, although I had the impression she was just mostly playing along. Each of them was good at many varied tasks, but each had their strong points. My Bexar, especially from the training associated with being in law enforcement, was the group’s tactics and weapons guy. Malachi was communications and planning; he was a bit OCD about all of that. Jack was good with food storage. Really the three families had the perfect plan.”
“If it was perfect, what
happened?”
“The fucking dead happened. Bexar heard about the attack from the police dispatcher before it happened and was able to get a group text out to Malachi and Jack before the EMPs hit. He didn’t include me on the text because he’s forgetful like that, and he abandoned his post and duties to escape home. His motorcycle – he was a motorcycle cop – died near the neighborhood because the EMPs hit. He ran home, we loaded up, and bugged out.”
“How did your vehicles still work?”
“We had an old Jeep Wagoneer. God, I hated that thing, but Bexar had it since high school and would probably have divorced me before selling that fucking thing. Anyways, we all had older rigs with no electronics in them for an EMP to kill off. We all left our homes to bugout to a central Texas location where we had all of our supplies. It took us a few days each, but we all got there...sort of. Amber had been shot, died, and turned, biting Malachi. He died that night and was found reanimated the next day. Losing Malachi and Amber was the first big blow to the group.”
“Why didn’t you stay with your supplies?”
“The goddamn dead! We were still too close to Dallas; the night horizon glowed orange with the huge fires ripping through the city, and out of those fires came the first wave of dead. We threw all we had on the roof racks and bugged out again. We decided to head to Big Bend National Park, and eventually we made it there.”
“Where?”
“You know on Texas where the Rio Grande goes down then back up before going down again to the Gulf of Mexico?”
“Yeah.”
“Well most of that is a national park. Now that place was the good life! It was surprisingly mostly deserted, not too many dead to clear out...between some solar panels and some ingenuity, we had power to our cabins in the Basin, the mountain area, and we even had running water as it was spring fed. There were javelina and mule tail deer to shoot and eat. Jack even got an ice cream freezer from the store in the park to work on solar power so we could preserve the meat.”
