Etna Station

by Mark Tufo

  I nodded.

  “I can’t guarantee that you’ll get to stay; there’s a vetting process. And even if you pass that, we’re not a big enough facility to open up to everyone that’s left. We need people with skills. Engineers, doctors, teachers.”

  “You might as well cut us loose, then, Gunnery Sergeant. Save everyone the trouble.” I sighed.

  “Michael, perhaps you should tell the man about your other talents before you discount us all so quickly,” Deneaux said

  “What are you doing?” I fairly hissed, afraid of what the crone was about to reveal.

  “Michael is…” she started.

  “Deneaux!” I shouted.

  “A former Marine with more combat under his belt than I am willing to bet any of the men under your command, Gunnery Sergeant. Of course, it is imperative to welcome the intellectuals in, but is it also not important that those very same people are protected?”

  “What are you doing, Deneaux?” I asked.

  “Do you want in, Michael, or do you not? It would appear they do not have much need for pothole repairmen.”

  She was right; she was absolutely right. But if my hands were free I think I would have shot her and her smug, self-important self. Well maybe not shot, throat punched would be much more satisfying.

  “How many of you can fight?” he asked.

  Except for the babies, every one of us nodded that we could, including Deneaux, which surprised the hell out of me, as I figured she was going to try and pull the Senator card. She probably still would once they brought us to the base, or in case the Gunnery Sergeant wasn’t looking for any new, old recruits.

  “Most of you don’t look like my traditional troops, but the woman is right. We always need more soldiers,” Tajima said.

  My head bowed of its own volition. I had brought my family here with the hopes that we could be done fighting. Turned out that was their resident criteria.

  The Master Sergeant must have seen my resignation. “It’s not like that, Talbot. If you’re allowed to stay, only a few of you would need to join up. The rest would be allowed to pursue some other useful field, like those aforementioned ones.”

  “He doesn’t do well with authority,” BT said.

  “Yeah, you’re one to talk,” I said to him.

  “Only your authority,” he responded.

  “Let’s go,” Tajima said. “Even if it all goes bad, worst case scenario we cut you loose and you’ll get a meal and some new clothes out of this.”

  “And our weapons?” I asked.

  “You’ll get those back.”

  They placed us all into the back of a large, troop transport truck. The ride was uncomfortable, compounded by the fact that our hands were restrained behind us. Safe to say that BT, Tommy, and myself could have worked our way out of the zip ties easily enough, but we didn’t. That didn’t stop Deneaux, though.

  “Treating me like a common criminal,” she said as she brought her hands to the front and rubbed her wrists.

  “Yeah, there is nothing common about your criminal activities,” I told her. I smiled but she sneered at me.

  We were separated from the rest of the camp, and brought into a holding area, where, true to his word, we were given a hot meal, a place to clean up and some new clothes. Had been there for about three days sleeping on cots without much contact from them, before the interviews began. Thought for sure I’d be one of the first to get questioned; ended up being the last.

  I was brought to the main building, up two flights of ornate steps, down a hallway and finally to a large oak-paneled office. “Ah, Lieutenant Talbot, a pleasure to meet you. I am Colonel Bennington.” A grizzled, gray-haired man in full uniform rolled out from behind his desk. He maneuvered his wheelchair so he could shake my hand.

  “Lieutenant? I think you have me confused with someone else,” I told him.

  “No, I do not. I very rarely get confused. I pulled your service records. Seems you’ve had some trouble both in the civilian and military worlds, but your tour of duty was exemplary. Your group speaks most highly of you, to a person. Everyone says they owe their lives to you. I need that kind of leadership here.”

  “But?” I asked looking around warily.

  “You have a large group, Talbot. Our resources are already stretched thin. We need medical personnel; your daughter has stated that would be something she would like to achieve, along with your niece. Your wife expressed that she would teach, as did your sister. These are all things that will greatly aid our development here, but it will take time until any of them are up to speed and contributing.”

  “So, to pay their dues, you need me in your army? Is that where this is going?” I asked.

  “You and a few others from your group, yes.”

  “And if I were to say no?”

  “Don’t let pride impede what you have traveled across the country to obtain. We have all made necessary sacrifices for the greater good.”

  “You have no idea, Colonel, the amount of sacrifice we all have endured.”

  “I do not doubt it. You haven’t been here long enough to realize what we are trying to accomplish. Is that a fair enough statement?”

  I nodded.

  “You’ll see soon enough, come, join us. Help us to get there. Maybe someday soon we will be able to just accept all people regardless of skills or previous occupation.”

  “Well, since I’m an officer now, does that mean I can drink at the OC?”

  “If we had one, you most assuredly would be welcome.” I shook the Colonel’s hand. “Gunnery Sergeant Tajima has your uniform. He’ll brief you on where and when you need to report for duty.”

  “I am way too old for this shit,” I muttered as I walked out of the Colonel’s office.

  EPILOGUE ONE

  Spent the next three months of my life going through officer boot camp. When they realized I could fight and shoot, I was promoted from a butter bar 2nd lieutenant to a silver bar 1st lieutenant. In that time, Tracy had picked up a history teaching gig, and Nicole was taking her first rounds of exams to become a nurse. She eventually wanted to be a doctor, but it was imperative for her to begin contributing quickly. Travis was allowed to finish his traditional schooling. We were all, in one way or another, beginning to assimilate into this new world we had struggled to place ourselves in. When I was done with my training, I was allowed to requisition personnel for my squad. I snagged Sergeant Tynes, who ended up being entirely too surly for anyone else. Sergeant Winters asked to be on my team, as did Tommy and Gary. My chosen, along with seven other men and women made up my squad; we were part of the Fifty-Second, Marine Corps Exploratory Brigade.

  My squad’s basic mission was to discover and retrieve assets for the camp. This could include, but was not limited to, food, supplies, weaponry, or people. I wasn’t keen on the regimentation of military life, but it was hard to deny the benefits my family was deriving. Travis was dating a girl; Nicole was starting at the hospital next week. Tracy had received four apples as her second-grade students’ favorite teacher. My sister, her baby boy, Ryan, Justin, all of them were in school and had secondary chores like tending gardens, watching pre-schoolers. We had a mission; we were working toward building a strong, vibrant community that could thrive after the end of the world, and we could feel it. I had hopes that my grandson would grow up in a world devoid of zombies. Another added benefit of being here was I saw less and less of Deneaux; she appeared to be working her own magic in setting herself up. Last I had heard, she was being added to the Civilian Board that dealt with, well you get it. Maybe not the absolute power she was striving for, but certainly a stepping stone in the right direction.

  The average Joe here wanted to believe that the people ran the show, but Etna was a militarily-run organization from top to bottom. The board was only created as a sort of liaison. Sure, citizens had input, but at the end of the day, nothing here existed without the iron fist of the military keeping all of the monsters, human and zombie alike, outside th
e gates. Normally, I would not be alright with that as the status quo, but for the time being, I understood the necessity of it.

  I think because of this, when I did run into Deneaux I felt like I always got a heavy dose of thinly veiled contempt wrapped in a heavy cloak of passive aggression. I also think she only pretended to hide it that well to irritate me even more. She just couldn’t stand that in the hierarchy of things, I was many rungs above her station. Honestly, I didn’t give a shit. As long as she stayed away from me and mine, she could feel however she wanted. Although I knew that was a bad stance to take when dealing with Deneaux. It’s never wise to turn one’s back on a pit viper. But at the moment, I felt I had bigger things to worry about.

  “Ah, Lieutenant Talbot. Good to see you,” Colonel Bennington said.

  “You as well, sir,” I told him.

  “I heard your training went well. You ready for your first mission?”

  “I am, sir. I never thought I’d be in a rush to leave the relative safety of camp, but now I’m beginning to get a little stir crazy.”

  “Well, this ought to stretch your legs a bit. Sending your team to Idaho.”

  “Idaho, sir?”

  “Missile silo 272, as a matter of fact.”

  “Please tell me I’m not retrieving a nuke, sir. Sergeant Tynes will kill me.”

  “No, nothing like that. Somehow a group of molecular biologists found their way into the defunct silo and were able to get the communications up. We picked the signal up yesterday. You and your team will parachute within ten clicks of the silo, report back your findings, and secure the scientists. Then we’ll arrange for helo extraction.”

  “Sounds easy enough. Anything else I should know?”

  “Well, I would imagine keep an eye out for zombies.”

  I laughed. “Yes, sir.”

  EPILOGUE TWO OR TALBOTSODE 1

  Okay, I feel like I may have related this story before or possibly I’m dealing with the Mandela Effect, either way here goes, either for the first time or not. Did I ever tell you about that time I almost died? Isn’t that a rich line? I mean, this entire set of journals revolves around me almost dying. Somehow, I’ve avoided that tenacious bastard, but eventually I’ll pick the right door and he’ll be standing there, like in Let’s Make a Deal, or I could just cheat, like I’m sure they did. I used to wonder if maybe Bob from Spokane never really had a chance as he picked door number three, like, maybe all the prizes were on wheels and they just slid the pallet with the forty-seven cans of spicy spam to whichever door he chose, and the new car and home entertainment center to the others. So, yeah, I was playing the shell game with the dark one, and someday he’d figure out there was actually no ball underneath because I had palmed it. Until then, he can go fuck himself. I mean, really, what other choice did I have?

  Let me get back to where I was going with this. I was out in Colorado, and Dennis had come up to visit from Colorado Springs. Not entirely sure why; maybe he knew I was going to try to kill myself and wanted to prevent it, though I almost took him with me. Interest peaked yet? Not as salacious as it sounds, but much more terrifying. I know, I know–stop telling you and let it unfold. So, I’d had my Jeep for a couple of years. I’d taken her off-road more than a few times, plus I had some experience with another Jeep I owned once upon a time. I wasn’t a novice, but I also wasn’t a seasoned veteran. Just enough bravado, stupidity, and booze as to be dangerous. Really, though, isn’t that how most craptastic things start? Plenty of cringe-worthy videos on Youtube start with the line, “Hold my beer.” So, we’re heading out from Denver to the mountains, to Waldorf Pass. Almost sounds like there would be a resort up there. There isn’t.

  After about an hour and a half of normal driving and three beers, (I was pacing myself) we get to the actual trailhead. The first three miles were fairly easy. Sure, there’s a lot of tossing around and some avoidance of bigger boulders and ruts, but for the most part, it is a tree-lined route, beautiful in its own right but for a couple of switchbacks–not overly dangerous. Of course, by now we were officially off-road, and I wasn’t terribly worried about a police cruiser pulling up behind me, maybe a forest ranger, but we were talking the Rocky Mountains; that’s a lot of terrain to cover.

  “Beer me!” I shouted to Dennis over the music playing much too loudly. I’d had to turn it up to mask the squelching of the styrofoam cooler we had brought with us. You know that high pitched squeal from hell I’m talking about. Now pretend that loose lidded cooler was weighted with ice and beer and locked into a paint shaker, because that’s what a Jeep feels like on uneven terrain, and that son of a bitch was letting us know exactly how it felt in the most disruptive and aggravating way possible. I was enjoying nature in the only way men know how, with a burgeoning buzz. It’s almost like we feel that we’ve so tamed the beast of Nature that we can flaunt our arrogance at it. We got up to the top of the first summit, used to be an old silver mine, I believe. There are the ghosts of two structures long since succumbed to the elements.

  It was an incredibly beautiful day. Blue skies for miles. We were looking down over an expansive green field replete with wildflowers and the occasional elk, and just to make it that much more picturesque, there was a deep blue stream cutting a wide ribbon straight through the middle. I’d brought the family up here before; the kids loved the silver slag piles–they are loaded with pyrite, or fool’s gold. We had enough of it at our house we could have opened our own gift shop. I mean, if people wanted to pay for that kind of thing. I wonder if you know where I’m going with this; if you’ve read enough of my journals it should be fairly obvious. Beautiful day, check. Beautiful scenery, check. Drunk? Pull out the rifles, check.

  Had a little Marlin .22 caliber with me. We plinked at some cans and other targets, because obviously beer and guns go well together. At this point in my life, one has to wonder how I had not received multiple Darwin award mentions; maybe I had, just they’d never invited me to the ceremony. We’d shot off a hundred rounds or so, chewed through some jerky, and drank a few more beers when Dennis pointed to some other trails that led off from the plateau we found ourselves on.

  I’d looked upon those trails many times before with my kids and wife. The one to the right looked terrifying, had to be a forty-five-degree angle straight up the side of the mountain. My Jeep was a beast, but I’d done nothing aftermarket to beef her up, and that particular trail looked out of my depth of range, even with beer goggles, which, even as I write this, I’m clapping myself on the back for getting that one right. If I stalled out or maybe she just didn’t have enough torque, or who knows? I run over a big enough rock with enough speed it lifts my front end just enough to fuck up my center of gravity, and we’re flipping end over end down the side of a mountain. Roll bars are designed to deal with that exact scenario, but just because they’re there doesn’t mean you want to test them out. Ever want to use a flotation device on an airplane? Fuck no you didn’t. Or a gas mask during a chemical attack? Again, no. They’re designed to potentially keep you safe, but if whatever shit-fest you find yourself in has gone down, who wants to have to rely on them?

  The other trail, to the left, we couldn’t see much of. The trailhead, as it curved around the base of the mountain, was slightly steeper than the trail that brought us up, and the rocks a little more pronounced, but with the level of liquor I had imbibed, it was more of a challenge than a dare. Not sure of the distinction, but it seems relevant. A challenge you place on yourself; it’s yours to conquer. A dare comes from elsewhere, meaning your pride is at stake. Never had gone up this particular trail with the kids, first off because it took an hour and a half to get to the mountains then another hour and a half to get to the mine, so once you start doing the math and realize I still have to go back home, and well, there is a time-dilation event that happens with kids in any vehicle; all trips stretch on indeterminably. Six regular hours in a car, is somewhere near twenty-four with kids. Weird fucking phenomenon, but that doesn’t make it any less tru
e. Secondly, when I was sober, there was a small, rarely-listened to voice in the back of my head, that said it was mostly untraveled because it was a more technical trail. But I’d drowned out that little fucker after the sixth beer, he couldn’t do much except scream under the fluid, and by that time you can’t distinguish words.

  “Let’s do it,” I said as I got back into the Jeep.

  Dennis grabbed a couple more beers from the cooler and off we went. Started off easy enough, kind of like the introductory screens to a video game, learning the basics, nothing overly challenging. That changed abruptly the farther up the side of the mountain we went. The trail continually got thinner, from something a large Ford truck might be comfortable with to a trail a goat might feel a wee bit claustrophobic on. Had a steep rock mountain to my right and a sheer drop off to my left. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was hanging half a tire off the edge. My liquid courage was rapidly vacating and I was stuck with my white-knuckled hands at ten and two doing my utmost to not look out my driver side window.

  Dennis had yet to pick up on the precariousness of our situation until I navigated the first switch back and his happy ass got to be in the hot seat. I mean, we were both screwed if I went over, but when you can actually look out your window into space like you are on an open-air biplane about to do a barrel roll, well, let me tell you, that begins to pucker the old poop shooter. For a while, he could do nothing but stare out that window. Then he was all eyes front, holding on to the “fuck me” bar that is right above the glove box. It’s basically there to keep you from shaking back and forth and smacking your head into the window or as something to make you feel better when you’re about to wet your pants.

  “You should move over,” he squeaked out without looking over at me. Or maybe he did, lord knows I wasn’t going to swivel my head to see if he had.