He walked down the hall noting the looks he got from the men in military uniforms who walked past him. Kyler was acutely aware he was wearing camo pants with a black hoodie opened up to a superman t-shirt. He had weapons hanging off him at different angles. Most of the men who walked by him looked neat and proper in their uniforms. Kyler kept waiting for someone to stop him and ask why he was there.
He was happy to see the chief when he walked into the conference room. They’d parted ways once they’d gotten to the island since Presley was entitled to bunk in the chief’s quarters. This was the first time he’d seen him since then. He’d been starting to wonder if he’d done something to piss him off. A few other men were seated in the plastic chairs scattered around the long table in the room. A smartly dressed officer sat at the end of the table sporting a laptop he was busy taking notes on. Kyler supposed that coordinating an operation as complex as the settlements required a lot of computer time.
Presley nodded at Kyler and pulled out the chair next to him. He gestured for Kyler to come around and take a seat. Kyler did, awkwardly shifting his M-16 around to try and sit down before realizing he should just take it off and lean it against the wall behind him. Chief Presley watching him the whole time with an exasperated look on his face. Once Kyler was finally sitting down, he realized everyone in the room was staring at him. The man with the sharply creased uniform looked up from his laptop and cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention.
“This the kid you were telling us about chief?” He asked.
“Yes sir.”
“Your name is Kyler, right?” The officer asked after glancing down briefly at his laptop.
“That’s right sir.” Kyler responded. He was wondering what was going on. He’d assumed he’d been called in as part of the chief’s team being sent out to the settlements to achieve some special objectives. He hadn’t expected anyone to be talking to him directly. Especially not anyone who was important. The officer looked at him for a few more seconds before checking his notes again.
“This is your first time out to the island?” The officer asked looking at Kyler who nodded in the affirmative. The officer then glanced at the chief who confirmed. “Can you tell me what you’ve figured out so far on your visit? Also, would you mind telling us what you’ve observed while you’ve been with the patrols in relation to the island and our mission?”
“Yes sir.” Kyler took a second to gather his thoughts. He was also trying to remember what he was supposed to know and what he wasn’t supposed to know to keep the chief from getting into trouble. “Construction on this island was started right after the infections became widespread. The Seabees who built the place were under orders to design it to allow a long-term command center for the central east coast. They had to ensure the place had adequate storage space for food as well as barracks for people. It was built to avoid the infected from noticing it by sound or light. It serves now to secure people who can’t survive on their own as well as to be the central hub for the settlements and the rebuilding of the country.”
“You sound like you’re reading from the brochure.” The officer said with a slight smile. “What powers the island?”
“The sub, sir.” Kyler answered. He’d skipped over that part not knowing if he was supposed to know that fact or not.
“How would you go about taking this island if you were an enemy?”
“I’d cutoff the barge delivering supplies and surround the land around the island with Zombies. You could pull them in with loud noises. Noises like dropping mortars on the island.” Kyler replied without hesitation. He’d already put some thought into this. Mostly along the lines of making sure he had an escape plan if things went to hell. To come up with an escape plan you first had to figure out what it would mean for the place to go to hell.
The officer quizzed him for another hour. He asked him questions about the settlements and about the weaknesses Kyler had spotted there. He asked for Kyler’s best guess on why someone had shot up that one settlement they’d been sent to. He asked him what he thought about the scavenging methodology and how they were hiding the supplies in different locations. Through it all no one else said a word. Everyone in the room listened closely to Kyler as he answered each of the questions as honestly and thoughtfully as he knew how. Finally, the officer stopped tapping in notes and rapid firing questions at him. He looked around the room and each person nodded.
“Here’s the deal. The US is breaking up into separate zones. We’ve been trying to run this as a military operation in our zone. We started off trying to help as many people as we could while fighting off the infected. We made mistakes and we lost a lot of people. The zone to our south seems to have more men than we do. We’re pretty sure they’re the ones who’ve been attacking the settlements. I don’t know how you define good guys and bad guys but to me they seem like the bad guys. Between the unprovoked settlement attacks and what we’ve heard about them doing to the people in the south I’m ok with calling them the bad guys at this point. Make sense so far?”
“Yes sir.” Kyler said. He had a bad feeling about where this was all leading.
“We need to know what’s going on down there. We’ve sent recon and we’ve sent spies. The recon returned with some statistics and numbers and other data we could crunch but weren’t able to really get in and learn a lot about the command structure. We like the idea of sending someone who’s obviously too young to have been active duty but still knows how to handle themselves. We’re asking you if you’d be willing to go down south and try to get into one of their units to gather as much info as you can. Once you had enough intel, we’d make contact to get it off of you or pull you out if needed.”
“You don’t have to do this.” The chief said loudly. “We should be fighting Zombies and saving people. Not going off on half-ass spy missions.”
“Agreed chief. However, the people to the south have made it their business to attack us without provocation. If Kyler decides to go, we’ll need to swear him in and give him a crash course in spy work 101, so we need an answer pretty soon. Kyler, you answered our questions in a way that shows us you have the ability to pull this off. It’s dangerous though. These guys will slit you open if they find out you’re a spy. You could pretty easily die just from the trip to get there. You can have a day or two to think about it if you need to. If you don’t want to go, then we’ll keep you in the chiefs roving patrol detail which is also extremely important.”
“I’ll do it.” Kyler said. He ignored the hard kick to his shin from the chief.
“Ok then. We’ll get the training lined up. Report back here after dinner and we’ll have your orders ready for you. Good luck and thank you.”
Chapter 9: No Such Thing as Too Much Ammo
“Guys. You flew all the way here to collect your kids, right? All you have to do now is put your weapons to the side and you can be hugging on them in less than ten minutes.” Amos was smiling and holding his arms out as he talked. Off in the distance a Zombie screeched. With all the noise they’d made smashing the car into the guard rail Randy wouldn’t be surprised if a whole herd of the monsters didn’t show up pretty soon.
“I just don’t understand why you didn’t just ask us to pull over instead of rolling out the stop stick things. We could’ve been killed when the car went sideways like that.” Randy said. The smile faded from Amos. He began walking backwards away from them.
“The Zombies will be here soon with all the noise we had to make to get you to stop. We claim this land and you flew in with weapons and now you’re asking why we stopped you when you continued to run from my men? Drop your weapons and come out from behind the car. We’ll transport you to see your children. Or, stand there and we’ll shoot you down and I’ll have to go tell your kids their mommy and daddy died because they were stupid.”
The Zombie screeches were getting closer. Amos was all the way back to where he’d parked his Range Rover. He was reaching into the SUV to grab his pistol. Randy noti
ced that he didn’t holster the pistol. Rather he kept it in his hand ready to go.
“How do we know you won’t just shoot us as soon as we put down our weapons?” Randy yelled. He was trying to stall while racking his brain for a way out of this mess.
“You don’t. I can tell you if you don’t put your weapons down that we will shoot though. Either way you’re going to die. You put your weapons down and at least you have a chance.” Amos yelled back.
“Let’s do it.” Kelly said. “He’s right. There’s no way out of this except giving up and hoping he’s telling the truth. He knew about Caitlyn and Myriah. I say we just give up and pray he really knows where our kids are.”
“The handcuffs at the border.” Tony said. It was the first thing he’d said during the standoff. He was referring to the other guys they’d run into from an outfit similar to this one who’d been posted on the highway to stop anyone coming through. They’d acted friendly enough as well, but they’d had a ton of handcuffs and other restrains ready to go in their guard house.
“I’m getting a real bad vibe off this guy.” Randy said. “I don’t trust him at all.”
“I think if we put down our weapons, we’ll be getting yelled at to squeal like a pig within about ten minutes. I don’t know though. Your kids, your call.” Tony said out of the corner of his mouth while keeping his rifle aimed at the man in the truck off to their left.
The Mexican standoff continued. Kelly wanted to throw her gun on the ground and go beg to be taken to her children, but she forced herself to trust her instincts. Even more so, she was leaning heavily on Randy to make the right decision. She knew she wouldn’t be able to think clearly where her children were concerned. She knew if the wrong decisions got made now, they’d never see the girls again. They were too close to blow it all. The tense confrontation went on for a minute that felt like forever. It was interrupted by Gordon slowly standing up on the other side of the car.
He was wiping the blood and glass off his face with his sleeve and trying to see what was going on. He was rocking back and forth. He put one hand on the roof of the car to maintain his balance while he worked on his face with the other sleeve. Pretty much everyone’s focus shifted to the man awkwardly standing there unaware of what was going on. Gordon reached back in the car and came out with a bottle of water that he poured over his face. That seemed to finally do the trick. He looked around at the pickup trucks with all the men pointing guns at them then spun around and saw Randy, Kelly and Tony on the other side of the car with weapons up and ready.
“Look. All I really want is the pilot who flew the plane here. Which one of you did that? We can make a trade. I’ll give you your children back if you hand over the pilot. I can tell you right now the life of a pilot in our area is a pretty laid-back life with lots of perks. You’ve got a minute to figure it out then I’m going to finish losing my patience.
A long, loud screech interrupted everyone. A group of three Zombies were running down the road towards them at full speed. The Zombies were a good hundred yards out. Typically, most groups would’ve waited for the Zombies to get closer and taken them out with bows or hand weapons to keep it quiet. Otherwise, you were just asking for more Zombies. In this case Amos gave a quick command and shots rang out from the militia on one of the trucks. The three Zombies were peppered with bullets before tumbling to the asphalt.
“What’s going on?” Gordon said. His voice was trembling with fear and he sounded like he might puke at any second. Probably because of the concussion.
“Those jerkoffs say they’ve got the kids, but we don’t think we believe them. They want us to put our weapons down and go with them or trade them the pilot for the kids. Before you say anything, they don’t even know who the pilot is and we’re not planning on telling them. Either Zombies are going to show up in a few minutes and kill us all or they’re going to open fire and wipe us out here shortly.” Tony paused and looked quickly over at Randy and Kelly. “That about cover it?” He asked.
More screeches splintered the air filling the void of silence existing between the two sides of the Mexican standoff happening on the toll road. They were coming from all around now. Judging by the volume of the screams a lot of Zombies would be arriving within a few minutes. Amos had his men holding steady. They’d be able to jump in their trucks and drive off leaving Randy and crew high and dry when the Zombies showed up.
“Hand over the pilot. Last time I’m going to ask.” Amos said. He’d raised his voice to mimic the guy from the game show about making a deal. All the humor left his voice as he barked his next order loud enough for everyone to hear. “Men! Fire on my command! Ready!”
“Wait!” Gordon screamed. “I’m the pilot. I’ll fly whatever you want me to just return their kids and let them go.”
Amos held his hand up to keep his men from shooting. It was getting hard to hear with all the screeching in the air. A couple of the militia had turned their weapons from covering them to taking shots at the Zombies who were getting danger close. Amos waved again for Gordon to join him. They watched as Gordon jogged over. Amos patted him down then had him get in the passenger seat of the Range Rover. Amos climbed in beside him.
Then the Range Rover drove off down the road. The pickups did as well. The last truck to leave left them a parting gift.
“Get down!” Tony yelled. The grenade went off a few seconds later shattering the windows of the little red car and peppering the sides with shrapnel. The noise from the grenade was echoed by the increased volume of the horde of Zombies moving towards them up the road and out of the woods.
They jumped back to their feet. Kelly was bleeding from the shoulder where a piece of shrapnel had tagged her pretty hard. Randy yelled for Tony to figure out a plan while he ripped gauze out of one of the many pockets on the utility pants he had on and tied it around Kelly’s shoulder. He thought he’d done a pretty crappy job but under the circumstances it was going to have to do. Ten seconds later Randy was looking down the road at the Zombies streaming towards them. The pickup trucks were nowhere to be seen.
“Follow me!” Tony yelled. He ran around the car and towards the concrete guardrail on the far side of the road. He stopped about halfway there to empty his magazine into the oncoming Zombies before slapping in another one and yelling for Randy and Kelly to start running and shooting.
Randy got the idea and started shooting at the oncoming Zombies. They were all shooting now as they walked across the street towards the concrete barriers designed to keep cars from going off the steep hill on that side of the road. They settled into a rhythm with Randy and Tony blasting away at every Zombie they could see coming while Kelly held her fire for the ones that made it through the crucible to get close enough to be a danger to them.
Tony pulled out two grenade looking things, ripped the pins out of them and threw them over the side of the embankment. Thick green smoke started pouring up a few seconds later. They kept shooting. The gun smoke getting so thick it was almost providing the same amount of cover as the green smoke pouring up from the smoke grenades Tony had used.
“Go!” Tony yelled. Randy nudged Kelly to get over the barrier. She awkwardly moved over the barrier. Her arm in severe pain from the grenade fragment buried in it. On the other side of the barrier she put her M-16 back into her good shoulder. She tried to ignore the waves of pain so she could stay focused on covering Tony and Randy so they could join her on this side of the barrier.
Randy came over the barrier next. Tony was halfway across when a tall Zombie came out of the smoke and grabbed him around the waist. Randy stuck the barrel of his M-16 in the Zombies chest and just started pumping bullets into the gore covered Zombie until it fell over backwards. Tony jumped over the barricade and rolled to his feet. A solid wave of Zombies cresting over the barricade as Tony, Randy and Kelly all started running full speed through the green smoke down the steep hill. The green smoke screen only took a few seconds for them to run through.
On the other side of
the screen they could see a subdivision that looked like it was made up mostly of long rows of townhouses. Running up the hill towards them were more Zombies. Tony took the lead running straight for the Zombies. He’d gone full auto on his rifle and was carving a hole through the Zombies coming up the hill for them to charge through. Kelly and Randy caught on to what he was doing and joined in. They had to keep moving forward at a dead run or the Zombies coming through the smoke behind them were going to catch up.
Struggling to keep his feet moving fast enough to keep him from taking a tumble down the grass and dirt covered hill Randy tried to fire as accurately as he could. He knew it wasn’t very accurate but as bunched together as the Zombies were, he didn’t really need a ton of accuracy to hit them. He was lining up a shot at a fat, hairy beast of a Zombie when he ran out of ammunition. There was no time to reload or switch weapons. He dodged around the outstretched arms of the Zombie and kept running.
Looking to his left he saw Kelly had pulled a little bit ahead of him. She still evidently had ammunition left. Instead of just wildly firing into the knots of Zombies coming up the hill she was waiting until she was a few feet from any Zombie in her way. When there was a Zombie right in front of her she was just pointing the gun at them and pulling the trigger. Even if the Zombies didn’t go down it at least knocked them off balance enough where they weren’t able to grab her as she ran by them. Up ahead Tony was using his rifle like a club as he fought his way down the hillside. The screeching all around them was reaching epic proportions.
Zombies! (Book 3): Violence Solves Everything Page 9
