by Lund, Dave
“Come on, babe, let’s lay down. We have another long day ahead of us. Trust that the security patrols will do their job. Besides, Chivo is down there somewhere.”
Jessie nodded, walking back to the tent, frowning.
“We can’t stay.”
“Well, we can’t leave tonight, but we can go at first light.”
“No, not tonight, Bexar. We should get these people through this, but we should leave after that. This is dangerous.”
“So is being on our own. Where do we go?”
“I don’t know, I’m just sure that staying here is a bad idea. We need to get somewhere safe, somewhere that isn’t on the fucking Chinese hit list, and somewhere we can have this baby.”
“Then we go to Utah.”
“OK.”
After taking care of the necessaries before bed, they closed the tent flap behind them to sparse accommodations. They didn’t have their nice cots or much of their original gear—most of that had been lost or destroyed by the time they left Big Bend—but they still had one of the canvas wall tents and that was a good start. With a little work, they could live in the tent just about anywhere in the U.S. for months or even years. As close as Guillermo and Angel’s compound in Utah was, Bexar was confident that they wouldn’t need the tent for long. He just needed to help speed along the recovery process for the Groom Lake survivors so they could leave soon.
New Ulm, Montana
Dorsey walked along the tall chain-link fence, barbed wire strands running the length of the fence along the top. He wasn’t too concerned with the barbed wire—the reanimated dead didn’t try to climb fences—but they could push against one with enough force to cause it to collapse. Worse still would be any holes or failures in the fence line. He glanced up at the wire draped over the communications tower; it appeared to be unchanged since the last topside inspection. The day he climbed the tower to place the new loop antenna seemed like a lifetime ago even though it was quite recent.
There isn’t a way to send a coded message. I can’t sit and wait for a reply or even wait to hope that Groom Lake could get a message to President Lampton.… I have to trust the others to relay any messages so I can use the radio in secret.
Dorsey stepped back into the topside building, stamping the cold and snow from his feet as he walked through the entryway. He glanced at the entry to the bunker below. It appeared secure, but the problem could be the cameras; he could be observed from the colonel’s position below ground. With a slight smirk, he remembered an old TV show where they used Polaroid photos on a bracket in front of a camera to fool anyone watching. It might work, but even if he wanted to try, he didn’t have a camera or film. No, this was going to be difficult, but he had to figure out how to make it happen. Until a plan was formed, all he could do was stall Smith’s efforts. Hindsight being what it is, Dorsey wished that he hadn’t let Smith into the facility, but wishing for the past didn’t make the future.
CHAPTER 7
April 11, Year 1
Pahrump, NV
The two convenience stores across the intersection from the gentleman’s club castle were their first stops. This time, instead of Jason going alone and in anger, Erin held his hand as they crossed the deserted roadway, her short M4 rifle hung across her chest on the sling, and her left hand held the foregrip. Erin might be in love and her morning may have started happily with her head on Jason’s chest as they woke up, but her eyes scanned the dark interior of the store ahead of them with laser focus. Some reanimated dead continued to writhe under the collapsed awning, but just as the day before, neither of them cared. Dead or alive, trapped is trapped and trapped isn’t a threat. Their scavenging goals for the morning were dead simple: water, fuel, and food.
Now in the parking lot and alongside the exterior of the convenience store, Jason picked up a rock and threw through the shattered glass front with a loud crash into the shelves behind the counter. Jason stood with his shotgun ready, watching the dark shadows move inside the store, Erin standing about an arm’s length away facing the opposite direction, her rifle ready for any threats from the outside.
“Looks like the first contestant is arriving,” Jason said, smirking. The hard thump of his short-barrel 12-gauge tore open the still morning followed by the rhythmic crack-crack of the pump-action being worked, another round jacked into the breach. What was left of the reanimated dead’s diseased body fell to the sidewalk with a wet thump. Jason took a loose shell out of his pocket and held it in his left hand with the pump of the shotgun, his eyes scanning for any more dead to come out of the store. Erin fired a half dozen rounds in a rapid but metered pace. Her breathing never increased, her face remained passive, the only part of her moving with any speed was her eyes, scanning for more threats as she smoothly drove the M4’s barrel from corpse to corpse, center punching each forehead she found in the upright position.
After a moment of waiting, their ears ringing slightly, Jason turned his head toward Erin. “I think we’re clear to go in.” The loose shell in his hand was pushed into the magazine tube under the breech, topping off the shotgun with a full complement of 00-buckshot before he slowly stepped into the darkened interior.
Glass crunching beneath their feet, Erin stopped at the edge of the entrance, using the ICE freezer by the door as a reference and a place for cover. Her job was to protect Jason while he gathered everything on their shopping list. If he called for help, she would go inside, but her place wasn’t that of the doting girlfriend: Erin’s place was that of an alpha-warrior, a position she wasn’t completely comfortable in yet.
Jason focused on his task. A hand truck was found in the storeroom, but the pneumatic tires were flat. Frowning at the flat tires, Jason stepped back into the front of the store and returned a moment later with a can of Fix-A-Flat from the store shelves. After making a huge mess, the small tires were pressurized and Jason began stacking some cases of Gatorade and water on the hand truck. He assumed those few cases were left in place because they were in the back and not on the shelves out front. Regardless, Jason didn’t care and was happy to have them. The meager findings of canned food, soup, and beef jerky joined the stack on the hand truck, as did the remaining two cans of Fix-A-Flat, two jugs of antifreeze, and four quarts of oil. A five-gallon gas can was also found and added to the stack.
The rifle fire outside the store increased in tempo. “You doing OK out there, baby?”
After a few more rounds were fired, he heard Erin call back that she was fine. She didn’t tell him to hurry up, although it was implied. Broken glass crunched beneath the tires of the loaded hand truck as Jason wheeled it to the parking lot.
“Holy shit, Erin!”
Whatever Zeds that had remained after the Chinese rolled through town had decided to all come welcome their newest members to be converted. The problem was that neither Erin nor Jason was ready to join their ranks. Erin calmly took shot after shot, missing very few of their intended targets, but calm wasn’t something Jason could be when confronted with what appeared to be a few hundred approaching dead.
“Yeah, honey, we should probably skip the other store and haul ass.”
Jason didn’t even reply, already pushing his scavenging haul toward the Suburban as quickly as he could without upsetting the load. The beat-up Suburban started with a cloud of dark smoke that didn’t bode well for the mechanical condition of the old SUV, but that was the only wheels that Erin and Jason had for the moment so it would have to do. Erin stood by the open driver’s door while Jason threw everything they had and the newly acquired hand truck into the back, piled on the ammo cases and MREs. The empty gas container would need to be filled later.
“Erin, I’m loaded, it’s time to haul ass!”
“As you wish.”
The truck bounced out of the parking lot, over the curb and sidewalk, and onto the roadway before Jason could get his door all the way closed. Erin drove sou
th, not because she wanted to go that direction, but that was the direction away from the approaching Zeds.
“Did you get a roadmap?”
Jason shook his head. “No, I forgot.”
“Well, shit…that’s OK. We’ll stop at another gas station later. As long as we have each other, we can figure out the rest.”
Erin and Jason held hands as they bounced down the road at a steady 45 miles per hour. They didn’t know the name of the road, just that at some point they would need to take a left and head east to get back on the right track.
SSC
Eerie silence felt louder than possible. Amanda’s own heartbeat and breathing felt so loud as to be heard by someone on the surface of the lake above them. She and Andrew quickly cleared the underground facility the previous evening after landing, but Amanda wasn’t convinced that Clint was gone. She felt like there must be a trap, that he was lurking somewhere nearby and waiting to pounce on her for leaving. She was mostly sure that Clint wouldn’t have tried to follow her to Groom Lake and Amanda was also mostly sure that once she turned up missing that Clint would have known she left for Groom Lake.
The room felt cold as the blood drained from Amanda’s face. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
Andrew wore new clothes and had enjoyed a ridiculously long shower the previous night and that morning after waking up. For some reason lost on Amanda, he didn’t seem concerned about Clint in the least. His feelings were that the guy had left for destinations unknown after Amanda had left.
“The PLA, the Chinese, and Koreans. Aymond said that the PLA forces were in San Diego and that they had their hands full trying to simply get a foothold in the contiguous United States. Why would they divert men and equipment for a sabotage attack on a random facility in the middle of nowhere unless they knew. You know, unless they knew that a mass of survivors were there…unless they knew that I was going to be there.”
“So they had listened to the radio transmissions offering sanctuary and you just happened to arrive as they attacked? So what? Sounds like bad luck to me.”
“No, what if I was supposed to be there? What if I took too long to arrive? What if Clint told them I would be there?”
“I don’t see how…”
“No, listen,” Amanda interrupted Andrew. “This man, Clint, if that’s even his real name, he’s a manipulator. He has no emotion except the role he’s playing and zero remorse. The asshole is a psychopath…he thought I would be killed and that’s why we haven’t found any traps yet. And we won’t find any traps here. Clint didn’t expect me to survive and I’m one of the few people left alive that knows exactly where this facility is, much less how to get in. That is except Bexar and Chivo. No one else left alive has been here.”
“If that is true,” Andrew looked like a parent explaining the Easter Bunny to a child, “then why were they killed or attacked?”
“They were attacked; I think they were supposed to be dead.”
Andrew still looked incredulous.
“Look, Andrew, you don’t have to believe me, but I’m telling you the truth. I think that whoever Clint really was before, he is now a clear and present danger to the United States and he must be stopped…no, he has to die. We will never be safe as long as he is alive. Damnit. I…we, have a lot of work to do, but the very first thing we must do is build a radio and make contact with Groom Lake, then we begin prepping for receiving survivors.”
Groom Lake
The dust was bad and it was only just past breakfast. Wind whipped across the dry lakebed, sandblasting everything and everyone in its path. Near the runways, a work party continued to burn the bodies of their fellow residents turned Zed from the PLA attack. The gruesome task was nearly at a close. Chivo walked from the burn pile back toward the large hangars in which the survivor vehicles were stored. A small windbreak had been fashioned to protect the ruined blast door and entrance underground from the onslaught of the dust storm, but with the rest of that hangar destroyed, Chivo had made the next hangar over the top side command post. A familiar old FJ was parked near the hangar door and inside Chivo found Bexar and Jessie sipping coffee with a few of the newly designated top-side-staff.
Chivo gave Jessie a hug asked with a smile. “Are you supposed to be drinking coffee Momma Bexar?”
Jessie flipped him off and took another sip. “If you’re going to be a dick, you could at least give me a status update on our progress.”
“Yes, ma’am. Aymond and some of his guys have just finished the final sweep of everything below ground that we know of. The other Raiders have been rotating in and out of guard duty. All the Zeds have been neutralized and all the bodies have been brought topside, along with anything destroyed in the process. He even recruited a few civilians to police up all the spent brass and others to set the furniture back the way it should be. We should be able to begin repopulating the facility this afternoon. What do you say about having a welcome home dinner for everyone tonight? It might be just the thing to get morale and mood back on the right track.”
“That’s a wonderful idea. Do you know who to task with that?”
Chivo picked up a yellow pad of paper and flipped through a few pages of neatly written and organized notes. “Danny Cepeda is the highest ranking designated cook that survived.”
Bexar interrupted. “Raiders?”
Jessie interrupted. “Cooks have ranks?”
“Marine Raiders…don’t you know anything about history? And Jessie, how else would I describe our surviving cook?”
“I know plenty, but where is that from?”
Jessie held up her hands. “Awesome, well tell Danny he’s promoted from the French fry fryer to head cook or director of food services or whatever you think we should title him and get him on board. Where is he now?”
“Dorm 7, room 213 is his current berth; he’s probably there as I doubt there is going to be much exploring going on outside today.”
Curiosity had taken hold with some of the survivors over the last bit, some of them using their downtime to walk around the once-secret facilities on the surface. Chivo secretly hoped that one of them would find a UFO.
“Speaking of exploring, Jessie and I are going to drive around the western side of the mountains and see what the deal is with that plane crash.”
“In this weather, mano?”
It was Jessie’s turn to interrupt. “Yeah, we know, but we’re hoping that the mountains block some of this damn windblown dirt. Besides, we’re itching to stretch our legs a little.”
“Why don’t I join you? I can have Aymond—”
“No, that’s OK, buddy; take care of running the tribe. We’ll be back before sunset.”
“Alright, if you’re sure, mano. Be safe out there…at least you two can’t get pregnant again,” Chivo said with a smirk.
Chivo turned to one of the other survivors who was working as a bit of a gofer for the facility reclamation process and asked him to find Danny Cepeda. As the gofer left, Aymond and few of his men walked into the hangar and toward Chivo.
If Aymond liked or disliked Chivo, he didn’t let it show, but they all followed President Lampton’s orders. The presidential directive prior to her departure was that Jessie was director of the facility and Jessie had placed Chivo in charge of operations, so minus using a flow chart, Chivo was the man in charge.
“Chief, I’ve been tasked with an operation and I need to borrow a man.”
Aymond grunted.
“I also need to borrow one of your trucks.”
“What sort of operation?”
Chivo filled in the group with the plan and mission objectives. Aymond’s facial expression didn’t change but he looked at Gonzo who nodded in response, understanding that he was to accompany Chivo on his little operation.
“Thanks, Chief, you have the conn until we return. Also, Jessie left wit
h Bexar on their own operation, and they’ll be back before sunset.”
“Roger that.” Aymond thought the whole situation was strange, but no stranger than standing in a hangar at Area 51 after being attacked by PLA forces and being swarmed by Zeds.
Chivo shrugged into his newly acquired tactical gear from the below-ground stores and walked outside with Gonzo for what was planned to be a quiet day of reconnaissance. Aymond watched them leave and turned to Happy. “Rally the guys, but leave one on fire watch; we need to come up with a plan to fortify our happy little firebase.”
Happy acknowledged the order and left to get the rest of the MSOT together. Aymond stood quietly for a few moments looking around the hangar. They hadn’t found any HESCO or even any sandbags, but there were a lot of things around the facility they could improvise with if they put their minds to it. Aymond smiled. All he needed now was a cigar and a van with a red stripe for his plan to come together.
Crockett, Texas
A handwritten note sat on the table explaining his plan, just in case one of his hunting buddies miraculously arrived; however, Ken really believed that they were either dead and deeply hoped that they were just sheltering in place in their homes. It was nearly four months since the world went to hell and it was now time to venture back out into it. The old truck coughed to life, dirty aluminum Kanz cases in the bed protecting all of the gear and supplies that he was bringing along. Assuming that he would never return, Ken took one last long look at the hunting cabin before shifting into gear and driving along the worn dirt driveway. Amazingly, the GPS still worked. After nearly 10 minutes of going through different options, Ken finally settled on pointing toward Roswell, New Mexico. After turning off the options for highways and tollways, Ken hoped the GPS would be helpful, but he didn’t trust the directions, never had. Ken told himself that it would be helpful to keep him from getting completely lost, but to trust his gut instead of blindly following the device.
