by Lund, Dave
“That’s a good sign.”
The front of the hood popped loose with a pull of the lever. Standing at the front of the truck, Chivo unlatched the hood and held it open, the chrome top of a large circular air cleaner reflecting their faces. Bexar popped the rotor off the distributor with the blade of his knife and smiled.
“There you go, Chivo, carburetor, no fuel rails, points, and no electronics. We have seriously cool wheels for once.”
Distributor snapped back together, Chivo closed the hood and held his hand out towards the driver’s door. “After you, Lee Majors.”
Bexar snorted. “I didn’t know they dubbed that old show into Spanish.”
“Shit man, I’ve never been with less than an ocho or nueve, so fine.”
The truck roared to life with a couple pumps of the gas pedal and a turn of the key. The deep rumble of the V-8 vibrated the truck.
Chivo leaned in to look at the dash. “How’s the gas?”
“Three-quarters … wait.” Bexar pushed the button to select the left-hand tank, which showed full. “I forgot about that, these things had the saddle tanks.”
“Hell yeah! First we get our bags from the other truck, then we get the hell out of here. Fuck this town; we’ll put together our fuel needs on the outskirts of this shithole. I’ve had enough of it.”
“My thoughts exactly, brother.”
Chivo stared at the tank selector switch. “Doesn’t that have circuit boards in it or behind it or something?”
Bexar looked at the dash and the switches. “Yeah, probably.”
“You’re the end of the world super prepper, why does it still work after the EMP?”
“I have no idea and right now I really give zero fucks about that.”
Bexar glanced to make sure the button for two-wheel drive was pushed, pulled the selector to Drive, and pushed on the gas, gravel spitting out from under the back tires as the truck bounced over the curb and into the street.
US-191, Utah
Cliff kept a steady pace of fifty mph as the old truck lumbered and rattled along the edges of the smaller towns before reaching Moab. Moab was a different story. Small gaggles of undead filtered past his windows; abandoned cars, many of them large SUVs and 4x4s, littered the roadway, causing him to slow as he drove through the middle of town. There just wasn’t an easy route to miss the town and stay on schedule.
The sight of death and destruction in a town, undead trapped in hotel rooms and cars, bodies lying in the open, blood smeared along the cars and fronts of business had become unremarkable. Sweeping his head side to side in a controlled and trained manner, Cliff scanned for other threats, more important threats. He watched for any survivors that might have an ambush in mind, or ill intent. At this point his previous quest to rally survivors had long passed; specifically when his C-130 was brought to a violent end from an RPG. It passed with the church full of bodies. It passed when he decoded the message from Clint. Serious issues were at hand, more serious than just survival; this was a continued attack, a renewed attack, and this could be the prelude to invasion of the United States.
The Colorado River looked like it always had. The sign for Arches National Park flew by his window as he gently accelerated the truck back to his highway speed, and for a moment he considered walking away, disappearing and just wandering out into the wilderness he loved. It wouldn’t be hard to survive, scavenging as he drove to and fro finding the perfect secluded place to live out the rest of his days like a fur trapping mountain man of old. But his training was too engrained, his mission too valuable to simply walk away. No, first he had to verify what Clint believed and, if true, shut everything down. Every piece of it would have to come apart.
Cliff looked at his watch and to his right at the sun; he would arrive today. If the facility was still up by some chance, then his task would be easy. If it was overrun then it might take him a couple of days to get his mission done.
The turn onto I-70 was anticlimactic. However, with interstate roads come rest stops, and on the eastbound side of the road was a rest area. Cliff had no need to rest, he could rest after taking care of the problems in Granite Mountain, but this would be a good place to top off fuel before getting closer to any of the larger towns.
The sign implied that it would not be legal to cross the median on the improved surface, but then again he probably wasn’t supposed to drive the wrong way on the Interstate either. Passingly taking note of the quirks of the new world, Cliff drove through the cross over, continuing against the flow of traffic, had there been any, and driving into the rest area through the exit ramp.
A dozen cars sat in the rest area; Cliff stopped in the middle of the parking area, away from the closest vehicles, and stepped out of his truck. Rifle slung across his chest, he raised it slightly as he approached the first four-door rental car near the restrooms, ignoring the big Ford diesel truck, which was of no use for his gasoline needs. Cliff punched the flash suppressor on the end of his rifle against the glass a few times before it broke. After pushing the broken glass out of the way, he unlocked the door, pulled the bottom of the rear seat out of the car, and tossed it on the asphalt next to the car. A couple of quick taps and the fuel pump in the center of the fuel tank unscrewed to be tossed into the floorboard.
Ten minutes later the truck’s fuel tank was full, the fuel cans were topped back off, and Cliff was about to leave when the sound of rocks dragging across the pavement resonated in his ears. From around the back of a large RV staggered a woman. Dried blood on her bare chest matched the blood on her skirt and the dark, rotting dead skin of her face and body. Cliff shook his head slightly before firing a single round, brain matter exploding out of the back of her skull as she slumped to the ground. A pool of blackish-purple pus spread slowly from beneath her head.
Moans echoed from the only building in the rest area, the restrooms, as one after another the dead shambled out. Cliff sighed, climbed into the truck, which started with a loud backfire, and drove away from the two dozen undead futilely stumbling after.
Each little town along the drive was the same as the last. They represented little hope, and Cliff gave them little care; he mostly disregarded anything but the mission. The only challenge presented was to remember that he had to take US-6 instead of following the signs to Salt Lake City. Just sounded like a bad idea to go anywhere near the towns leading up to Salt Lake and then have to skirt the city itself to get to the mountain. Glancing to the bed of the truck and the fuel cans therein, he calculated he could drive straight to the mountain without having to syphon any more gas. There was treated gas in large tanks on site, and he could top off with as much as he could carry when he arrived, or before he left.
The mountains were gorgeous, and every time Cliff looked up to admire them he would inevitably have to swerve around another abandoned vehicle or a corpse or something that had the potential of ending his journey. A single lapse of concentration had caused him to crash the old VW bus and that nearly killed him. So methodically he drove, forcing his focus to stay on the road, on his mission, continually scanning for any threats along the way. The discipline wasn’t hard to keep, his training at The Farm had made sure of that. Besides, this was a simple drive in the mountains compared to what he had been through before. He hit the tiny town of Duchesne, which looked like all the rest, and after about a dozen blocks and left turns he was out of the town and back into the mountains.
Herber City gave more cause for concern; it was one of the larger cities he’d driven into so far that morning, and the Walmart parking lot was overrun with the dead.
What is it with Walmart and the dead. It’s like everyone in town went to there to die … they went to Walmart because they weren’t prepared, found it overrun with people, someone was killed, and then it spread like wildfire. Classified documents from the USAMRIID predicted it would be this bad, but no one wanted to believe them. The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases … seems like they could have come up with a
shorter name or a better acronym … too bad no one in the administration believed their report.
Driving north through the middle of town, Cliff was amazed to see that everything else looked fairly normal and clean, just deserted as if everyone had walked out of town together. Cars had been pushed out of the roadway, and he saw what appeared to be chimney smoke rising from homes of survivors well beyond the strip centers and stores on the highway. All the traffic lights were dark, and Cliff continued through town at a steady pace before breaking free of civilization on the north end of town.
After turning onto I-80 and heading west, the signs and his atlas showed he was quickly approaching Salt Lake City, which was exactly where he did not want to go. At least the Interstate would keep him to the eastern edge of town and it would only be for a short distance. He snacked on a cold can of stew as he drove.
Interstate 215 was practically choked with abandoned vehicles, but the number of undead on the road and in Cliff’s way was light. He wove through the vehicles, the divided freeway making it harder to get around some of the vehicles and a few wrecks, but slowly one by one, Cliff passed through and continued towards his turnoff for 190 and then 210. On the Interstate, large developed tracks of homes were visible. Once again some chimneys showed smoke rising in stark defiance to the ruin of the outside world.
I knew that if there would be anyone who could weather the storm of the end of the world it would be the Latter Day Saints, some of the more practical preppers in the entire country.
Just a few short miles was all it took for Cliff to get some distance from the thick suburban sprawl and closer to his destination. The small yellow sign showing the address and an unmarked drive to his left announced his arrival. The yellow metal gate stood closed and locked with a chain. Cliff set the parking brake, left the truck’s engine running, and walked up to the gate. The chain had two padlocks, and one took a key. The other, a specially made combination lock designed to outwardly look like a standard hardened combination lock, was what Cliff needed. Flipping the padlock over and removing the rubber weather protector from the bottom, he quickly rolled each of the number dials into the correct position. Seven in all instead of the usual four; once set, two quick tugs on the lock was all it needed to open. Cliff swung the metal pipe gates open, hanging the chain on one. The fiberglass pole entry gate beyond the metal gate wasn’t something he had a key for or even needed a key for; retrieving the truck, Cliff drove into the post, the fiberglass shattering away from the attachment. Once through, like a cattle rancher, Cliff stepped out of the truck and closed the metal gate behind him. This time he used a shorter section of chain, locking his padlock as the only lock that could now open the gate. He had business to attend to and he didn’t need anyone else coming in to “help.”
Cortez, CO
“Dude, that fire is really going now, you’re like some sort of evil Mr. Wizard!”
Chivo looked through the back glass of the truck, the flames almost visible above the buildings and homes between them, the morning sky filling with a thick dark plume of smoke.
“Mano, that’s a beacon for the dead and for the living. The quicker we get our shit and bug out, the better off we’ll be.”
Bexar stopped the new truck next to the destroyed old truck that they’d wrecked out on Main Street. Their bags and Chivo’s big sniper rifle were quickly moved from one truck bed to the next, and soon a left turn and west was their new direction. West towards the highway, west towards where the bus ambush had occurred just a few days before, west towards the road they needed to reach Groom Lake.
“Wasn’t there a parts store near where the bus was destroyed?”
“My bell was rung. You had to pull me out of the bus; I don’t remember much besides the fight and Cliff roaring in as a one man QRF.”
“I still don’t get it. We came up here to rescue him, he then rescues us from an ambush, we destroy the cult and then he fucks us. I mean, I used to jack up gang bangers who made more sense.”
“People don’t matter to him, it’s just the mission. If you’re for his mission then you’re on his team; if you falter away from that mission or stray from what he thinks is the process, then you’re now against him. His type have no friends, no family, no personal connection, no emotion … they’re just machines. Any emotion they may have once had is trained out of them. Even the guys I used to be in The Unit with weren’t like that. They had passion and a love for each other. Those bonds mattered, you fought for your brothers. The warrior’s code exists and Cliff lives outside of it. He’s ronin.”
“Say what now?”
“Ronin: a samurai with no master. His thought process, his means, his actions, they’re all with no regard to a code, no honor, no brotherhood, only singular devotion to his task at the time. He could be on a mission to help a group of people defeat a group of rebels one moment and re-tasked to help the rebels defeat the first people the next. If his commanding officer said he had to switch for the sake of the mission, then he would switch without a thought or a second’s remorse.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“It is, and there’s a whole group of guys like him. Cliff isn’t his real name; whatever identity he had in his life was wiped clean, same with Clint. That person was killed, and any evidence that he existed is only a whisper of fog in a forest, fleeting and gone. It’s fucking spooky, man.”
Bexar followed Main Street as it wrapped to the left and onto the highway, before stopping in the parking lot of an auto parts store; the charred remains of their bus sat in the road, and the building’s exterior was pockmarked from all the rifle fire.
“What’s up with the parts store. Looking for some sweet mud flaps or maybe some flame decals for the hood?”
“No Chivo, we’re going to start this journey right. We’re going to get tire plugs, fix-a-flat, oil, fan belts, hell, we’ll even get some window cleaner, anything we can think of that we could use to make sure we get to Groom Lake.”
Bexar shut off the truck, climbed out, and looked at the VIN plate on the front of the dash. Counting the digits, he stopped on the year location, but it took a couple of moments to remember what the designator meant.
“1979, so that’ll make things a little easier.”
Chivo walked through the gaping hole in the front of the business, his boots crunching on the broken glass. He pointed at Bexar and then to the right, and Bexar nodded.
Bexar followed the inside front wall towards the right corner of the store, clearing the aisles as he went. Chivo mirrored him on the left side of the store, both with rifles up and weapon lights on, beams of light cutting through the darkness. The store looked intact, which struck Bexar as weird; if he had been one of the survivors or a part of the cult he would have picked this store clean by now. A few moments passed before the back of the store was checked and they were confident that they were alone.
“Chivo, grab a cart, get a case of 10W-30, a name brand synthetic. Get all the fix-a-flat they have on the shelf, WD-40, and anything else that catches your eye.”
Chivo nodded, and Bexar went behind the parts counter. The computer terminals were dark, the keys covered with years of grime and grease. Kneeling, he scanned a lower shelf before pulling out a well-worn catalogue and opening it on the counter. The catalogue listed the numbers for each of the parts he might need to and could fix while on the road. Bexar jotted notes on a notepad before walking through the parts shelves in the back.
Next to the door was a stack of shopping handbaskets. Chivo had an idea. He put the entire stack into the cart and pushed the exit door, finding it unlocked. In the parking lot, Chivo placed like items in the baskets and put the baskets in the bed of the truck to keep the items from rolling around.
Two trips later, Chivo was done and leaning against the truck. Bexar walked out pushing two carts, one full of things like fan belts, radiator hose, oil hose, a fuel pump, a set of sockets and wrenches, the other cart stacked full with a half-dozen red plastic gas cans.
Chivo helped load the bed of the truck, which was quickly getting full, and smiled while holding up his prized find for the day, a hand-cranked fuel transfer pump with a five-foot-length of tubing on each end.
“No more spitting gas out of your mouth, mano, this is primo.”
“Awesome, and next door we go to put it to use,” Bexar said, pointing at the used car lot fifty yards to the north.
“You load your loot, I’m going to walk over and start ripping out seats and fuel pumps to get ready.”
After Bexar climbed into the truck, he couldn’t help but laugh. On the center of the dash was a plastic Jesus with about a dozen tree-shaped air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. He was still laughing when he pulled up alongside Chivo in the used car lot.
Chivo smiled. “The Jesus is for me so I don’t care if it rains or freezes, and the forest of air freshener is for you, ‘cause you smell like ass. I would have done more but apparently in Colorado the taste in vehicle accessories isn’t as varied as it is down on the border.”
Taking turns cranking the fuel transfer pump while the other held security, soon they had the fuel in the truck topped off and all six gas cans were full. The sun stood angrily overhead, their adventures in shopping excursion having taken up most of the morning. Both men were sweating heavily as they climbed back in the truck. Bexar steered across the lawn in front of the dealership, and the truck bounded off the curb and north on the highway. Chivo reached over and tried to turn on the radio, which didn’t work.
“Hey mano, can’t fault a guy for trying. Next thing I know you’re going to be telling me some bullshit story about how you arrested a guy driving a truck like this once.”
“This truck, no, but the felony forest is usually a solid clue.”
Chivo looked over quizzically, and Bexar’s reply was to point at the air fresheners. “There’s a rule of thumb: three or more cheap tree-shaped air fresheners and they probably have a suspended license; you start getting into a whole damn forest like this and I promise you nine times out of ten they’ve got dope in the car.”
