by Lund, Dave
There was no way to know for sure. She knew that Clint could evaporate into thin air if he wanted to, his training was too good, his experience too broad for someone like her to breach, but she had a feeling that he would reappear in her life sooner than later and it would be a problem.
A huge fucking problem.
Amanda walked the length of the tunnel to the ramp and door that she had driven through to leave. It was closed and appeared secure; she looked but couldn’t find where she could bar the hatch any further than with the electronic control already in use. She bent her knees and stretched, peering back through the dim passageway. Her mind churned with the possibilities and what the next step would be.
First, radio contact, then Andrew can head back and ferry someone to run one of the MRAPs back to Groom Lake…or maybe Aymond could dispatch a couple of his men and one of their trucks to begin the arduous process of transferring survivors to Texas.
She shook her head. Her plan seemed so clear before, but now it didn’t seem to make sense. If the survivors in Nevada were thriving and the PLA left them alone, what sense would it make to uproot their lives to drag them across the wilds of untamed country ruled by the dead? If the PLA came back, they were sitting ducks, but so was the SSC. No castle is perfect, no fort secure against a dedicated attack.
“Shit.”
Amanda frowned at her runaway thoughts, a little bemused, wondering if past presidents had these sorts of dilemmas.
They didn’t have the dead; no one has ever had the god-dammed dead.
With a shake of her head, Amanda took off in a light jog back toward the beginning of the tunnel. The light jog quickened in pace as she neared the halfway point and continued to get faster until she was in a dead sprint at the end. Slowing, she walked a few paces to her well-worn pull-up bar, the discolored athletic tape still wrapped around the grips. With her rifle and ammo carrier still being worn, Amanda hopped up to the bar and began ripping her body to the bar in perfect form. Six pull-ups later, she dropped to her feet, staring at the door that led back into the facility, sweat rolling down her face as she stood with her hands overhead trying to catch her breath.
Thirty minutes later, Amanda stepped through a billowing cloud of steam that followed her in wisps as she stepped out of the shower and into the barracks where her bunk and footlocker remained.
“Amanda, I think…oh shit, I’m sorry!”
Andrew spun in place to look away, not realizing when he came in looking for Amanda that he would find her nude. Amanda looked up and saw him facing away from her, the back of his ears were flushed red in embarrassment.
“That’s OK, Andrew, what’s up?”
“Uh, Amanda, well, I think we’re ready to run the antenna up on the surface so we can test the radio.”
“Outstanding. Give me five minutes and I’ll meet you in the command center.”
With a “yes, ma’am,” Andrew walked out of the large room, shutting the door behind him. Amanda had to laugh; her modesty had fallen away shortly after Clint and Johnson had whisked her away back in December. She looked down at her body as she stepped into her panties. A lot had changed since that day, most of it for the worse, but she was in the best shape of her life and possibly the fittest president ever in office.
Amanda laughed; she was definitely the fittest woman president the United States had ever seen.
I hope there will be more women to hold this title in the future.… I hope that this title even exists in the future.
Groom Lake “SITREP.”
The Marines stood in a loose circle, each of them looking in seemingly random directions and not at Aymond. It looked like disrespect, but in reality, it was their training and experience. Aymond wasn’t in the middle; he wasn’t distinguished in any way. If everyone was looking at him, then an observer could surmise that he was the leader. If he stood in the middle, the same, and it increased the possibility of Aymond being targeted. Not only those reasons, but it gave the men the chance to monitor the areas around them while they spoke and briefed on what they had found.
“Chief, there is a concrete production facility toward the south. I think they may have used it in the construction of the base.”
“And?”
“And we’ll have to figure out how to run it, but first, we’ll have to figure out how to fix the machinery; we couldn’t get anything to turn on or start.”
“OK, consider that a long-term project, but we have certain urgency with what we have before us. Anything else?”
“Yeah, Chief,” Happy chimed in. “To the west is a storage lot with some heavy machinery, backhoes, and the like.”
“Do those work?”
“I couldn’t get them started, and I don’t know if it is because they are old or because of the EMP.”
“Are they fucked up or just old?”
“No, they appear well-maintained; they just look like they were produced in the fucking Truman era.”
Aymond nodded. “Well, maybe they did run and maybe they will run if they’re old enough to have been built without electronics. Jones, go with Happy and scope it out.”
“Aye, Chief,” Jones replied. Jones and Happy walked toward the hangar to retrieve some tools and one of the vehicles to carry out the order.
“What else?”
Snow spoke next. “We don’t have any HESCO in storage that we can find, but the storeroom has fourteen pallets of sandbags we can fill and place.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic. See about organizing some civilians to make that happen. First priority is the blast door. If we have anything left over, put some emplacements in there and there.” Aymond pointed. “While Jones is fucking with the heavy equipment, start with some fighting holes; get some other civilians to help. Get bags on them and make ‘em right. We’re stuck with this shithole for now; we have to make it work.”
Groom Lake
Chivo rode up front, but for all the dirt and dust still in the wind, he might as well have been sitting in the back staring at the floor. Gonzo drove, which suited Chivo just fine, giving him time to think through the details of the different plans; he was war-gaming through the various scenarios he could think of. The problem with detailed plans is that they tended to fall apart just as the first round gets fired, but having plans made for more nimble responses since, usually, the harder parts and details have been accounted for. This afternoon for Chivo, that meant he had an armored truck that was fast and nimble off the paved road as well as his big sniper rifle.
Gonzo was a professional, not much chit chat and more importantly none of the questions that someone out of the SPECWAR community would be tempted to ask. Warriors in the Special Warfare community didn’t ask each other personal questions, what their hometowns were, or anything else that held any substance to the person behind the tactical gear. The closest those questions came to being asked involved what the person’s favorite beer was or if they chewed Skoal or Copenhagen. Those were the important questions; the rest was just business. Being that they were now months out since the last commercial beer was produced or the last can of dip was sold at a gas station, even those questions went unasked and unanswered. All that was left was business.
The nagging feeling that had bothered Chivo since sprinting into El Paso with a hoard chasing him from Mexico was finally answered. It wasn’t enough that he survived the tour of duty—the tour would never end because it was simply life now. It wasn’t enough that his friends survived—they had to thrive. Some sort of stability to life had to happen and that would only happen if the Chinese and Koreans were stopped. In four months, they had mostly figured out how to scratch out survival amongst the Zeds. They were a constant and felt like a background nuisance more than anything. No, the problem of the new world were the Chinese and Koreans. If they could be stopped, then they could clear out patches of safe zones free of Zeds. Knock down the bad ho
mbres that tend to appear in the voids of society and let the good folks live and survive. After losing his team and Lindsey to the dead along the way, his friends were Bexar and Jessie. They deserved a safe place to raise their child. Chivo thought of Erin and hoped she and Jason survived long enough to return to one of the safe communities that he now felt obligated…destined to create.
The dust storm was beginning to clear. After making the drive to the backside of the mountains, the wind had finally relented, visibility increasing with each minute. A few moments later, Gonzo kept driving off the paved road and onto the dirt road that the Marines said they had driven on to get to Groom Lake from the south. This was all new territory for Chivo. One would think that as a former Special Forces soldier who then worked for the CIA that he would know all the secret places in the United States, but he had never been to Area 51 and knew scantly more than what was in the public consciousness before the attacks.
Chivo and Gonzo continued to ride in silence through the desert. Large bomb craters were scattered in the distance, giving an appearance like what the moon looked like. The crumpled hull of the PLA cargo aircraft that had augured in on takeoff sat in the desert like an ancient ruin, which it would become one until the aluminum had all corroded away. Neither of them mentioned the wreck as they continued their journey in silence.
Groom Lake
This wasn’t the worst dirt road that Bexar had driven down before, but it wasn’t the best either. If his old Wagoneer hadn’t met a violent end in Terlingua, he could have aired down the tires and aired them back up again once they drove back onto pavement. As it were, the FJ felt soft as they drove, so the tires were probably low on it as well. Not really sure what he could do to easily inflate the tires even if he did check them, Bexar decided to worry about it later. For now, the dust storm seemed to have cleared slightly, affording more visibility, not that there was much actually to see. The barren ground was pock-marked with enough craters that it looked like a bad moon landing movie set.
“It looks like they used this area for weapons testing or maybe to fake the Apollo moon landings.”
Jessie gave him a playful angry look. “Really?”
“Oh yeah, everyone on the internet knows the moon landings were faked to cover up the presence of ancient alien ruins that the real moon missions found.”
“Wrap your tin foil tight, lover boy.”
“What’s more likely, moon aliens or zombies? I’m going to say moon aliens because come on, dead walking?”
Bexar looked at Jessie and laughed, who rolled her eyes at him.
Out of reflex, Bexar cursed as he looked forward in time to see a face slap into the windshield, shattering it. Bexar slammed on the brakes, the FJ sliding to a stop on the dirt track. Jessie’s door was already open by the time they came to a stop, stepping out she fired a single round into the skull of the Zed folded across their hood. She took a few steps, grabbed the Zed’s jacket, and pulled the body to the ground. Inside, Bexar’s feet were up on the dash as he kicked out the ruined windshield.
Jessie turned around and faced the direction they were heading. “What the hell is that?”
Bexar stepped out of the FJ and pulled the windshield off the hood, glass fragments falling in a crumpled mess on the desert floor. He looked at Jessie and followed her extended finger to what she was looking at.
“Oh fuck. That’s bad. Get in! We’ve got to get!”
Jessie climbed in just as Bexar spun the tires in reverse to turn around. Sliding to a stop while shifting, the FJ lurched as the tires tried to find traction. Once moving, Bexar kept the needle at nearly 40 mph, which felt much faster as they bounced and shuttered across the uneven dirt road.
Wind whipping through the interior, Bexar shouted over the noise, “Those were flies, the cloud, but it isn’t a cloud, its flies, millions and millions of god-dammed flies. That happens over the bad swarms or herds or whatever the fuck you want to call more Zeds than you’ve ever seen.”
“Shit.”
“Shit is right, babe. Me and Chivo ‘bout fucking died in Utah due to a swarm of Zeds that had a cloud like that.”
“What are we going to do? Go up to the tent, go underground, just go away?”
Bexar shook his head. He wasn’t sure of anything except that it was stupid for the two of them to go fucking sight-seeing. Just because it was the holy grail of conspiracies doesn’t mean that the world they now lived in was any different than the one that had killed their friends, their daughter. They didn’t have enough gear, they didn’t have enough water, enough food, and enough ammo…they had been stupid to be anything but 100 percent ready to bugout immediately if they had to. Bexar would change that, but first, they had to get safe.
Ulm, Montana
For all the high technology that the United States Air Force had, it would have been understandable to have expected a control center that could have been at home as a set piece on a science fiction TV show, but the reality was that most of the technology appeared to have been developed 50 years in the past instead of the future only because it really had been. The control room below ground for a Minuteman III installation had two comfortable chairs that were much like what was used in aircraft. Those were on tracks and could move across a workspace that had two large LCD monitors, but with inputs that consisted of not a keyboard and mouse, but rows of switches and a number pad. Racks of computer equipment and decidedly old-school electronics filled the room, minus the portion above the desk where the dual-locked safe resided and was flanked by numerous large binders that contained all the technical data that the attending Air Force officers would need to start World War III.
Dorsey sat in one of the chairs next to Col. Smith, who had a laptop sitting on the tabletop that pulled out of the desk between the two LCD monitors. Trying to listen, Dorsey’s mind danced around the room, examining the space, which was mostly foreign to him. His eyes were still focused on Smith, a practiced trait of a career officer, but for all the experience Dorsey had, none of it was in missile command. Even still, something just wasn’t right with Smith, not that a single problem could be listed; it was more of a gut feeling that Dorsey had.
I need to get a message out…more importantly, I’ll need the reply and a plan of action.
The briefing that Smith was reading off of appeared to be an official one, at least the PowerPoint presentation was in the correct format; font and size to appear to have come from a high-level staff officer whose entire job was seemingly to be worrying about trivial details as those. The difference today was that instead of sitting in a meeting room or a flight briefing room, they sat below ground. Dorsey was sure that both of them were imposters appearing to be what they really weren’t. The problem was that Dorsey knew what his motive was, but he didn’t know what Smith’s motive was, besides what appeared to be a plan to bypass the systems that prevented unauthorized missile launches. The briefing was complex, enough so that regardless of what plans Smith may have, he wasn’t sure they could even accomplish the changes. The computer systems may be old, but they were tough and they were purposely made to be nearly impossible to bypass.
“Excuse me, Colonel Smith, how many other missile flights are being modified in this manner?”
Clint’s expression still bore the mostly blank face of minor annoyance for the interruption, not the rapid “if, then” plotting of various plans that flipped through his mind in rapid succession trying to play out if he actually needed Dorsey or if he could simply kill him without jeopardizing the success of the mission.
“All of the flights that remain operational and manned.”
“How many is that, sir?”
“One. Now, we must continue. There are a lot more slides to cover before we can get into the technical details.”
These aren’t the technical details? Jesus. Well, at least that means I have a little bit of time before the colonel could have his finger on
the big red button.
Centerville, Texas
The outskirts of town appeared mostly normal. March in this part of Texas meant that the grass was turning green, even though the weather probably had one last good cold snap left in it before the temperatures began climbing steeply into summer. The old truck rattled with wind noise as Ken drove. Highway 7 was mostly smooth and the shoulders weren’t bad for when he had to drive around a wreck or some abandoned vehicles. So far, the few Zeds that he had seen were off the road and there weren’t that many.
On the bench seat next to him was his M1 Garand with wooden stock and iron sights. Ken had other rifles, but the M1 was his favorite rifle of them all. Ken’s time in the jungles of Southeast Asia meant he lugged around an M14 for his first tour and an M16A1 for his second, but the Garand was the rifle he wished he could have taken to war, just like his dad and uncle had while island-hopping their way toward Japan in WWII. It was a battle rifle as God himself intended; sturdy, reliable, and with a round heavy enough to put a man down for good. Not one for much creative thought when it came to weapons meant for fighting, a well-worn 1911 was in a leather holster on his right hip. If it was good enough to carry in every modern conflict that Americans had fought in since WWI, then for Ken it was good enough to carry after the world ended.
Centerville wasn’t a large and busy town before the virus hit, but now it was beginning to look worse for the wear. At the intersection of Highway 7 and Highway 75, the sign for the Leon County Expo Center still stood, but some of the old buildings on the square had burned. Since the attack was the day after Christmas, there weren’t many cars in the parking spots along the street, but in the middle of the intersection stood alone black and white highway patrol car. The trooper was gone, the car was abandoned, but Ken just had to stop to check.
With the clutch pedal in, Ken jiggled the shifter to make sure he was in neutral before setting the parking brake and getting out while the truck idled. The rifle stayed in the truck, but the metal frame of the 1911 felt cool to the touch in his hands. Holding the pistol low, Ken made his way around the hood and found the driver’s door of the patrol car closed but unlocked. The windows were tinted and hard to see in, but he didn’t have to see much to see what happened. The interior of the car was destroyed—torn, bloodied, covered in pus, and stained. A body of a man lay across the center console and the front seats, his hands handcuffed behind his back with a large hole in the back of his skull. Someone had shot this prisoner. Behind the front seats was a rifle and shotgun rack, which was empty.
