by J. L. Bourne
Day By Day Armageddon: Grey Fox
Day By Day Armageddon: Grey Fox
Midpoint
A PERMUTED PRESS book
Published at Smashwords
eBook ISBN: 978-1-61868-159-1
Day by Day Armageddon: Grey Fox copyright © 2013
by J.L. Bourne
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Travis Franklin.
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.
Author's Note
Time is a very fluid thing. No one really has a grasp on it other than maybe how to measure it. As the maestro of the Day by Day Armageddon universe, I have the latitude of being in control of that time. I can adjust the slider either direction, moving the timeline back and forth along the continuum. This is one of the perks of creation, the benefit in constructing something (albeit small) from nothing. Sort of makes you wonder what the maestro of the universe is up to, no? You have again stumbled upon a ticket with service through the apocalyptic wastes, but this time the train is a little bit older, a little more beat up, and maybe a little wiser.
Keep your doors locked.
-J.L. Bourne
Alabama, 2013
This old Glock has been by my side since the early days. The days that make me wish I were younger again, faster. I’ll bet that if I were to take every round I’ve ever shot through this old pistol in defense of my life and add it up, it would be more than all the ammunition that exists today. Well, I’ll limit that claim to what used to be the United States I suppose. I’ve personally witnessed men die ten steps from me because they were shooting steel-framed guns that relied on maintenance to keep them reliable. The undead don’t give a goddamn if you’re carrying a three-gold-piece custom 1911; they’ll bite your face off when the gun fails and not care how much gold you paid. This old half-a-gold-piece Glock has never been cleaned in the nearly thirty years since it dropped from the sky. It has never let me down; even as the undead closed in all around to finish me off, on more than one occasion I might add.
Lots of people talk about safety and how we’re safer today than we were back then. The truth of the matter is that they’re right, but only half so. You see, government scientists figured out a way to “turn off” the anomaly in one place on the planet. I’m not a scientist, and I really don’t care about the particulars of how it works. I’m too old to learn something new like that, and if I could, I’d have to make room in my head. That might involve me forgetting how to survive out here. Don’t wanna do that.
The bottom line is that what was left of the government back then used some technology that I don’t want to get into too far, but maybe just a little. Some scientist and military folks got together and detonated an airburst payload high over Florida. The delivery missile was borrowed from the Chinese government (long story). The warhead was classified Top Secret—can’t say why. After it detonated, the damnedest thing happened. Within an hour, every undead creature within the blast radius fell to the ground, never to move again. The effect is persistent, or it seems to be. Anytime one of those things walks into the inclusion zone, it deactivates. Just like if you were to turn off a light switch. Been that way for about twenty-five years now I guess.
Back when they first detonated the device over central and southern Florida, they sent an aircraft up to survey the area. The explosion from the deactivator, as some call it, drew lots of those things to the area. The aircraft brought back digital shots of the northern inclusion border that showed piles of deactivated bodies, with more spilling over the forming wall. We had to send burn squads to the north and south inclusion zone borders pretty often to keep destroying the bodies that piled up there.
Even now, if you travel from the inclusion zone to the badlands, you’ll cross hundreds of yards of charred ash, bones, and teeth before your feet touch anything green. Be ready though, as it’s game on when you put the safe zone to your back. Those vile demons are just as lethal today as they were back then, especially the radiated ones.
Whenever things get bad, I write things down. Whenever things are going okay, I don’t. Things are bad.
If you’re old enough, you remember reading about North Korea, the Hermit Kingdom. Back before all this happened and you were on the capital streets of Pyongyang, you’d notice that everything there was old. They had draconian import restrictions; they couldn’t often import newer cars, medical technology, or other modern items of convenience. In many ways, Florida today is much like North Korea then. The undead embargo our imports. There are only a handful of functioning MRI machines, and only one place that can manufacture insulin. Only one hospital equipped to perform heart surgery. Only two LASIK machines capable of safely performing the procedure. This is pretty important because acquiring things like eyeglasses has become a very dangerous profession. It’s funny though, because most young people born inside the inclusion zone don’t wear glasses. All your mothers were right about sitting too close to the TV I suppose.
I’m not what you’d call a spring chicken, but I’m still getting around. I survive. In the nearly twenty-five years since the airburst, bringing the inclusion zone virtual wall online, I’ve been into the badlands (and back again) over forty times. Do I enjoy going out there? I’d backhand your face and deny it if you asked me, but those few that really know me have claimed otherwise—what’s left of them.
I have some advantages. Age and experience have shown me the best routes through the wall, into the exclusion zone; routes that the young bucks don’t think about, or are too impatient to attempt. The best ways are by boat, up the west coast of Florida, into the zone. The inclusion zone inside the virtual wall has been picked clean. Twenty-five years without the threat of the undead does that. What would have been the advantage in braving the maelstrom of the exclusion zone when you were safe looting a drugstore or food-distribution warehouse inside the wall?
After the zone was looted dry, some folks ventured out. Not far, just over the wall into northern Florida. That lasted awhile until the easy stuff was gone. Quite a few entrepreneurs got their asses bit, meeting their end just a few miles north of the wall. Whatever this wall is, it’s our best ally against those creatures. Of course, anything worth getting now is hours inside the badlands, far away from the safety of the wall and its nanomachines.
From the Florida Keys up to Orlando is man’s embassy, our oasis from relentless assault.
I live in the Keys on the southern border of the inclusion zone. My sailboat, the Solitude, gets me where I need to go. Sometimes I find myself in places I have no business poking around, and I blame that on the Solitude as well. She has her own mind; her sails sometimes fill with warm wind and before I know it, I’m looking at shorelines that a living man hasn’t seen in decades. Most of the time dead men look back at me and my boat, reaching for the sail as if they could pick it out of the water like a paper boat floating down a flooded gutter.
Everyone always asks me the best place to go to find useful things. The answer is simple: the deeper into the exclusion zone you go, the more interesting things you find. That’s mostly true but, like an old fisherman, I am keeping a few exclusive spots to myself. No, not for personal gain or even greed. It’s true that my spots yield the best supplies, but it’s also damn dangerous for the inexperienced; they are places that no sane person would dare set foot, or even drop anchor.
Tomorrow, I make sail for the
Mississippi coastline, on the fringe of the New Orleans fallout zone. You see, about thirty years ago, the United States government thought it a good idea to drop nuclear weapons on some of the major cities to kill the undead; turn the tables so to speak. True, the detonation probably killed quite a few of those bastards, but the radioactive fallout had unexpected and very adverse second-order effects.
The intense radiation enhanced them. Brain function, speed, and decomposition rates were greatly altered by the nuclear blasts. After thirty years of recorded data, the radiated undead are still as lethal as the day they absorbed the atomic energy; the nonradiated only a margin lesser so. The only thing that neutralizes the anomaly on the molecular level is the inclusion zone. Whatever they detonated over Florida on that warm summer day decades ago is the only equalizer.
I’ve examined all available Farmers’ Almanacs from pre-anomaly. This is the only way to predict weather conditions for the trip into the badlands.
My boat is packed. I’m ready to do this.
It’s still dark.
This old automatic Rolex GMT keeps pretty good time, despite needing to be sent to Europe for a tune-up. The tritium in the hands and numbers is barely visible until I slip on some old night-vision goggles (NODs, or night-observation devices) to see what’s ahead of the boat. The Solitude is cutting through the water pretty good this early morning. Just a faint light in the east now, rising over the Florida peninsula. The stars are beginning to fade there, the light from them ages old; from before man or maybe dinosaur ruled the earth. My old LORAN navigation receiver is picking up strong signals from the inclusion zone. The LORAN enables my sailboat autopilot and navigation to function, allowing me to catch some naps in between long legs of the trip. Some brave soul figured out how to get LORAN up and active for navigation after the GPS satellites burned back into the atmosphere long ago. LORAN is old and fickle, but she works, and you don’t need a team of technicians and two dozen satellites to make it so.
Like myself, the Solitude is showing her age. The hull patches and other minor repairs tell stories like my scars, but she’s still the most seaworthy boat in the harbor. I make sure of that. Even when I get a high-priority list from the mayor, I still find time to pick up repair supplies for Solitude before running back to her and getting the hell out of dodge and back to the inclusion zone.
This is my last run. I must admit that I’ve said that before, but I really don’t think I’ll say it again. Venus is starting to get some friendly competition from the rising sun now. I can barely make out the Florida coastline as I make best speed northwest to Mississippi. The list from the mayor (a dear old friend) isn’t much different from the other lists I’ve been given dozens of times before, but this time it’s personal. This is why I was made a liar when I said on the last run that it was, in fact, my last. Priorities change when people you care about need something. Yes, usually folks need glasses, or insulin, but how likely is it that I could find some usable insulin thirty years post-pandemic? Zero is the answer. This is why we make our own insulin in the inclusion zone, but from time to time I’m sent out to acquire the equipment needed to manufacture more of it. No easy task, but I’ve never been the single point of failure.
BOLO list:
Pacemaker, any and all
Amino acid sequencing machine (large item)
Radiation suits (no shit)
Solar panels (warehoused if possible)
Glass beakers/containers (assorted volumes and shapes)
Copper wire (genny)
Rare earth magnets (genny)
That’s the short “be on the lookout” list. I usually end up finding only a few things on the BOLO, and a whole lot of other random shit that people didn’t know they needed until I show up with it strapped to the deck of my boat.
The wind is picking up now, and there is nothing on my charts for a hundred miles. The sails and the autopilot are set. I’m going to spend a little time belowdecks to go over my maps and make sure my weapons are ready for the incursion.
***
I’ve caught up on some shut-eye but was jostled up by my Furuno radar CPA alarm. I hit my head on the shelf above my bed and ran to check the screen. Furuno said that there was an object in front of me about two miles out. More often than not, the watchman mode of radar gives false readings. I’d still rather it be wrong and wake me up than not warn me of a giant supertanker that was tossed into the Gulf sometime during the past thirty hurricane seasons. The sun was high in the sky when I opened the cabin doors to the deck. My eyes adjusted as the sails cast long shadows across the midship and passing sea.
I was making about seven knots. My solar panels on the aft end were soaking up the sun, providing my battery banks some charge to handle the Furuno, LORAN, and autopilot—all essential for “single handing” my way across the Gulf of Mexico. I grabbed my ratty old Steiner binoculars and took a look to the horizon along the bearing of three three zero.
I could barely make out the mast through the binos. The sails appeared faded and torn as they trailed and flapped in the distant wind. I didn’t think I’d hit the boat, but I’d probably get close enough to get a good view of it on my port side as I passed.
I made way belowdecks to grab my carbine. I should have checked it first before taking my nooner. The old M4 has been with me since the early days. It’s been rebarreled twice, gone through a few gas tubes and bolt carrier assemblies, but she’s reliable. I guess about the only thing that is all original on it is the lower receiver, except the hammer spring. My suppressor wore out a decade ago in the exclusion zone, not far from where I’m headed. Some ingenious bastard in the zone figured out that old Caterpillar tractor oil filters make pretty decent sound suppressors (silencers), so he made an adapter that screws on the barrel of a rifle and accepts oil filter threads on the opposite end. Looks pretty fucking silly with a coffee can–sized cylinder hanging off your gun, but silence comes at a premium. Make too much noise and you’re done. They’ll come for you and pick your bones clean; leave you writhing there forever if they didn’t kill your brain while they were eating you alive. Think about it.
I grabbed my carbine from the bulkhead, detached the oil filter suppressor, and racked a round into the chamber. The old red dot sight still functioned. There were lithium batteries out there that still had charges on them if they were stored in cool places. A boat arrived from Halifax last winter with a good haul of batteries. I paid the captain fifty rounds of .22 Long Rifle for ten of them after fluking the charges to make sure they were good. There was no telling what that Halifax sailor had to endure to get those supplies. The Canadian bitter cold would have slowed the creatures, but still; it’s damn dangerous work. I should know.
By the time I got back on deck, I could clearly see the boat at my eleven o’clock. Even from this distance I observed that it leaned to starboard. I did a press check on my carbine to make sure I saw brass. I’m a forgetful son of a bitch these days. She looked like a thirty-five footer; maybe a Catalina. I was starting to make out details.
She had a couple solar panels on the back end. This immediately turned this situation into a salvage operation. As I neared her stern, I slacked the mainsheet and cast the headsail, stopping the Solitude. My boat began to turn around into the wind. I was only about thirty feet from the stern when I saw her name—Liquid Asset.
I slung my grappling line, trying not to damage any of my own rigging as I tossed it over. The grapple took purchase on the fantail handrail and I hauled my boat closer to the derelict vessel. The thump of the grappling hook on the aft boat deck would have caused a stir belowdecks if any creatures were aboard, or at least in the aft part of the boat. I was fairly sure she was abandoned. I hauled her in and tied off. There was old blood on the decks, rigging, and what was left of the lower sails. According to my charts, we were still inside the inclusion zone, but not far. I’ve observed that the wall is a little less stable over water. Sometimes the wall fluctuates over the water, forming a variable oblong sp
heroid, providing more protection—sometimes the opposite. The sea state was good enough to leave the vessels tied together so I decided to go ahead and board her.
I took out my old Spyderco folding knife and began to salvage the lines, cutting away damaged sails and anything else I might trip over during the salvage. I wouldn’t want to trip and hit my head out here. The stop was costing me some valuable underway time as it was. I was still about forty hours from the Mississippi coast at seven knots. When I began to cut the mainsail from the mast, I saw a small black flag underneath. Untangling it from the tattered main, I could see that it was only an old black T-shirt. Still, it was a black flag to a mariner in these times. It meant that death was aboard. Avoid.
I decided it was a good time to check the cabin doors. I went back aft and down the steps. With the butt of my rifle I tapped on the sun-bleached wood. No response. I put my gloves on, turned the small handle, and gave it a shove. Only the top half of the door opened and I was immediately hit with the odor of old flesh.
Flashlights wasted a lot of batteries and my NODs would white out from the bright sunlight, so I used an old Zippo to light the small candle I keep melted to the right side of the rail of my carbine in front of a small signal mirror. It wasn’t the three hundred lumens of old, but you can make candles from animal fat. It’s a good measure more difficult to make batteries and LED lights. I stepped slowly down into the cabin; my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Mayhem. A decomposed corpse lay half out of the head, its skull split in half from a fire ax. At least they didn’t waste the bullet. This meant that someone killed that corpse and made it off this boat. Judging by all the blood up top, they didn’t make it far.
