by Lund, Dave
Aymond walked up. “Chivo, SITREP.”
“Chief, Situation Report is that they had a coup led by a man named Trent, decided to kill Jessie and Bexar.”
Aymond’s facial expression didn’t change. “According to some of the others, Trent is down hard. Hammer center-punched his face.”
“Good,” Bexar replied.
There was still shouting in the crowd a few dozen yards away. Aymond helped Jessie to her feet while Chivo helped Bexar. Both were unsteady as they stood, red marks across their necks from the ropes.“Bill! Bill! We made contact! Bill!”
Bill turned and saw one of his radiomen, Brian, waving his arms frantically, the Marines not letting him out of the crowd or past them. Aymond looked at Bill and issued a quick command via radio and Brian was let past.
“Bill, we made contact, she made contact, the President.” Brian held out a piece of paper, which Bill took and read quickly before handing it to Jessie.
“I don’t get it, who is Clint?”
Chivo took the paper from Jessie and read the single line quickly.
Andrew coming 4 Chivo, kill Clint, stop launch.
Chivo looked up. “What launch, Bill?”
“Early this morning, we received a message from Montana that a Colonel Smith was sent on presidential orders to rewire a Minutemen III ICBM to be launched. I don’t know who Clint is unless President Lampton knows him.”
“Yeah, she knows him, I know him, and he isn’t a colonel. He’s a fucking secret squirrel like Cliff, same organization supposedly, but something is wrong with them. Cliff tried to kill us in Colorado then saved Bexar and I in Utah. Clint had been with the president at the SSC…rewire an ICBM, that sounds crazy. I didn’t think you could do that.”
Aymond shook his head. “It sounds like the plot of some damn bad late-night TV movie.”
“It does, but the original message was very short. I think the guy meant that the launch controls were being rewired, not the missile.”
“That still doesn’t make any sense, Bill; those systems are really complex and robust.”
“I assume they are, I have no idea, but if this Clint is some sort of secret agent, maybe he knows something we don’t know, but what we’re not asking is what the missile would then be aimed at.”
Bexar’s eyebrows arched. “How long will it take Andrew to get here from Dallas?”
Chivo answered first. “He could get here as early as tonight after dark, but I’m going to bet that it’ll be tomorrow. So that means we have this afternoon to figure out what to do with this goat fuck before I go TDY so Bexar and Jessie are safe.”
“Don’t bother, we’re bugging out. Fucking Trent and his cronies caught us as we were sneaking out with packs full of supplies. And once we get those supplies, Bexar and I are leaving.” Jessie’s face was dirty, dried blood and dirt crusted on the corners of her mouth and under her nose. Her cold gaze cut through whoever she looked at.
“You were just going to pop smoke like that, mano?”
“I didn’t want to, but I didn’t know where you were or when you would be back.” Bexar pulled a folded and now blood-stained piece of paper out of his pocket. “I was going to leave you this note.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Guillermo and Angel’s compound, until at least after the baby is born.”
Chivo smiled at Jessie. “Well, Mrs. Bexar, with the recent developments, I think that’s a good idea. Where did they take the packs from you?”
Jessie described the location, the packs, and the rest of their missing gear. Brian went in search for the missing packs and weapons; Kirk followed along at Aymond’s request to assist and give protection if needed. Chivo took a green notepad of waterproof paper out of his pocket, wrote a short note, and handed it to Bexar.
“Put that in your pocket. If you end up back in Texas, you might need it—plan B.”
Bexar looked at the paper and saw a short series of directions and instructions with a long code. He folded it and put it in his pocket.
“Hey, mano, leave word if you move. I’ll be there to visit your new baby in a few months if I don’t see you sooner, but I need to get below ground and put together what I’m going to need to go after Clint.”
Chivo hugged Bexar and then kissed Jessie on the cheek before jogging off back toward where he left his ruck and .50-caliber rifle.
Aymond turned. “We’ll keep you secure until you leave, but what about this mess?”
Jessie shook her head. “You have the fucking conch, Piggy,” and raised a middle finger toward the survivors who had been part of the lynch mob and were now milling about on the surface.
Twenty minutes later, Brian and Kirk reappeared with two bulky packs, Bexar and Jessie’s rifles, pistols, and the rest of their gear. The couple re-armed, the gear stowed in the FJ that still sat in the hangar, and they drove off across the ramp and away from the dwindling crowd.
Aymond turned and looked at the survivors who were still milling around on the concrete ramp. “Well shit.”
After a moment, he keyed his radio. “Hammer, good shooting; Jones and Davis, take the truck and get the bulldozer running. Kirk and I are going to go below decks and try to sort this shit out.”
Aymond turned to Bill. “Get a message to the president. Inform her that we’ve stopped an uprising. I’m in charge and Chivo is ready.”
Nevada
“Desert, town, or mountains?”
“Either town or mountains, baby, but not desert.” Erin didn’t have to yell at Jason over the wind noise because they were stopped at a stop sign intersection for two small highways. Surprisingly, the highway junction sign was still standing. The normal route to Las Vegas was out; the PLA soldiers and huge mass of Zeds took care of that.
Erin looked over her shoulder to see if they still had chasing Zeds. There were a few, but she couldn’t see if the swarm was following or if the PLA was following. Jason turned right and accelerated. If he had turned left, they would have continued back the way they had come and back to the turnoff for Groom Lake. They needed to get east and they needed to get south so to get to Erin’s chosen destination, so a right turn east it was.
They drove in silence for the next 20 minutes, holding each other’s hand, Erin slid over to sit next to Jason. They passed a couple of abandoned buildings on the highway. One had a sign proclaiming “Cactus Springs Saloon,” but with the sun still off the horizon and a known good location for shelter in reach, Jason decided to keep driving for a while longer to see if they found anything better. Something with supplies to raid would be ideal.
A serious fence appeared along the road to the north, with runways and a copse of government buildings. There were more fences within the fence line, tanks, and a control tower. Inside one of the inside fenced areas were a line of trucks that looked like the one that President Lampton had driven up in: big, armored, and painted in desert colors. Jason squinted against the wind of their destroyed beater of a Suburban and decided that was where he and Erin would spend the night and one of those trucks would be their new ride.
Jason turned and drove across the median of Highway 95 and up the drive to what appeared to be the main gate for the government airbase. The sign declared it to be the Creech Air Force Base and that they were in Indian Springs, Nevada. Really, Jason didn’t care, but it’s nearly impossible to see a sign and actually not read it.
The steel bar gates were shut. Jason stopped the Suburban in front of the entry gate and climbed out, Erin joining him. On top of the gates, on top of the brick walls next to the gates and along the entire perimeter fence, were three strands of barbered wire wrapped by concertina razor wire.
“Shit.” Jason shook his head.
“No, it’s fine, babe. Pull the Suburban between the gates across from the guard shack.”
Erin pointed and watched as Jason turned
and moved the big SUV broadside to the section of steel bar fence between the gates. The guard shack sat behind the fence, behind the barbed wire and beyond the razor wire. After handing her M4 to Jason, Erin climbed onto the hood and stepped onto the roof of the Suburban; Erin took a couple quick steps and jumped as hard as she could.
Her feet cleared the razor wire and she landed hard on the toccata tile roof of the small guard shack, slid off the side, and fell to the ground. Jason began to get out, following her over the fence, when Erin pulled herself to her feet and held up a hand. She limped to the control box behind the fence and rattled the padlock on the black box.“I need your shotgun.”
Jason unslung his short 12 gauge and passed it between the steel bars of the gate to Erin. Erin flipped the safety and fired once at nearly point-blank range. The padlock fell, destroyed by the 00-buckshot barrage. She flipped open the box and released the clutch brake for the gate. The gate now slid open with ease. Once Jason drove the Suburban past the gate, Erin pushed it closed, secured the clutch brake, and shut the box. Just because they got in didn’t mean that they should leave the gate open for everybody.
Ulm, Montana
A thick 3-ring binder sat open on the slide-out desk of the launch control cockpit. Steve wasn’t sure if the seat for one of the officers in charge of launching a nuclear war was called a cockpit, but to his fighter-joke mind, it would only be so. To his left was a wall of electronic equipment mounted in an enclosed rack, handles sticking out on each of the boxy modules. Currently, the electronic module on the top row far left position was out. This was their first “hard wire” adjustment. To say it was “hard wire” would be wrong; the modules were mostly printed circuit boards with microprocessors and transistors. The piece looked nearly modern, but not quite current technology, like the motherboard from the old 386 computer Steve had purchased new in college.
However it appeared, the colonel had a small stack of 8” floppy disks, seriously old-school storage media that predated the 5 ½” and 3.5” floppies. Steve had only seen them in photographs. The 3-ring binder had exceptionally simple-to-follow instructions, but the wording was a little off, like the text had been machine-translated from a foreign language instead of originally being written in English.
In all the years that Steve Dorsey had been a professional military officer in the United States Air Force, he had never learned the technical details of how the Minutemen missile system really worked. He had no reason to and even if had wanted to, there was no way that Dorsey would have been given access to the documentation to learn even the basics. Yet here he was with Colonel Smith, whom Steve did not trust, and the monumental task of rewiring and then reprogramming a system designed specifically to prevent such a thing from occurring.
Dorsey flipped to the next page in the 3-ring binder, read the page, and returned to the first step. Screwdriver in hand, he stood next to the bank of equipment and began unscrewing the faceplate to the module that he located in the second position from the left on the third row from the top. The inside of the module was covered in thick dust bunnies that were held in place by the tangled web of cables and wiring over the circuit board. Steve shook his head and tried not to smile. Damnit, this is going to be a pain in the ass, but a pain in the ass that will take a large amount of time. The more time I can waste, the more likely that I’ll get a message back.
The FJ
The cloud of dust trailing the FJ from the dirt road was like a giant red arrow in the sky pointed down at their vehicle, but so far the Zeds didn’t appear to notice such things. Bexar hadn’t seen any show any signs of intelligence like that. Not that it mattered now; they were back on the paved road, the same small highway that Bexar and Jessie had used to get to Groom Lake, although that had been two separate times and trips. The route that Bexar decided to follow was the same route that he and Chivo had taken to get to Groom Lake if only because he was familiar with it and he knew how to get to Guillermo’s place via this route. A few minutes after riding on the smoother paved highway, Jessie was asleep. The adrenaline of their morning had long faded and the exhaustion of the ordeal took hold. A road sign indicated they were nearing Crystal Springs.
Bexar’s eyes snapped open as he took a sharp breath, his heart racing upon the realization that he had been asleep at the wheel. As quickly startled as Bexar had been, the exhaustion began to lie heavily on his shoulders. This was not going to be the quick few hours long day trip that he had planned. If they were going to make it, Bexar would have to find a place to stop for a rest. If they had already driven through Crystal Springs, he didn’t know, but at the T-intersection where the FJ idled, a sign across the highway advertised Alien Fresh Jerky. A large mural was on display behind it, along with a portable building that may not have looked much better before the end of the world.
After gently shaking Jessie awake, the FJ idled in the gravel parking lot while they cleared the building.
“This place is weird.”
“Think about it. These guys are awesome. Where else are you going to find your alien souvenirs for visiting the famously secret Area 51?” Bexar held up a bumper sticker that had “I BELIEVE” printed on it next to a cartoon of a flying saucer. “I’m going to put this on the FJ.”
Bexar turned and walked out. Jessie shook her head and began filling a shopping bag with what was left of the beef jerky selection when the sound of a single gunshot thumped through the thin walls.
“Shit.” Jessie dropped the bag and ran outside.
The store was really just a manufactured building set in place on blocks off the desert floor, so the front door was a few feet off the ground with a handful of steps off the front landing. Jessie stepped into thin air where the ground would have been if she hadn’t been at the top of the stairs. Bexar lay on his back near the FJ, one Zed already put down, dark pus-filled blood and brain matter soaking into the dusty lot. Another Zed had Bexar pinned to the ground while its rotted face and head stretched against Bexar’s outstretched arms, blackened teeth gnashing and snapping while its hands clawed at Bexar’s shirt and body. Bexar’s pistol lay a few feet away in the sand near the other Zed.
Jessie took those details in as she fell down the stairs, hitting the ground hard. Her foot rolled to the inside with a hard pop and before she had even stopped falling, Jessie knew she had really hurt herself as pain shot through her leg and took her breath away. Unable to breathe, unable to yelp or cry, Jessie saw stars when she ended up on her back, motionless. She wasn’t motionless for long. Rolling on her stomach, Jessie lay a little crooked from the growing baby bump. Jessie fired two rounds from her rifle, the first hit the Zed in the shoulder, the second catching the back of its skull. Its head erupted in a surreal fountain of dark brain matter, which showered Bexar with bits of skull and pus.
Bexar pushed the body off of him and lay on the ground gasping, trying to catch his breath. Jessie rolled onto her side and clutched her left foot and ankle. She yelped in pain with each ragged breath while poking her ankle, which was already swelling rapidly.
“All of this because of your stupid fucking bumper sticker! I hate this place, I hate this world, I hate everything that has happened!”
After retrieving his pistol, Bexar checked himself for bites. He couldn’t find any, but he was slick with sweat and dark, ugly smelling blood. He helped Jessie up and mostly carried her back into the small shop.
“Do you think you broke it?”
Jessie shook her head no.
“Good, well at least we’ve got that. I’ll get the med kit. I don’t know if Jack kept any instant ice packs, but we’ll figure something out and get your ankle wrapped. Bexar helped Jessie stand on her right leg while he pushed all the stuff off the top of a folding table to give Jessie room to lie down. A handful of T-shirts were used for a pillow and to elevate her left foot.
“I’ll be right back.”
Bexar walked outside and scanned the ar
ea more carefully this time before ripping off his own shirt and throwing it on the ground. It was covered in dirt, pus, blood, and sweat; if he needed another shirt, he would have a touristy souvenir. A few moments later, Bexar had Jack’s medical bag and was back inside the store with Jessie. There was a single instant ice pack in the kit, which he handed Jessie while getting the ACE bandages out of their packaging. Jessie followed the instructions and broke the inside container, mixing the chemicals that created rapidly forming “ice.” After prepping the bandages, Bexar unlaced Jessie’s boot and pulled it off as gently as he could, with only one gasping yelp from his wife. He enjoyed making her scream, but not like this.
Her ankle was bad, already turning colors and already really swollen. Bexar wrapped the ankle as best he could before applying the ice pack and wrapping that in place with more bandages. After kissing his wife on the forehead, Bexar pulled Jessie’s pistol out of her holster and placed it in her hands.
“I need your help to check for bites. I don’t know if that last one got me or not. Make it quick if you have to…I love you.”
After stripping nude, Bexar stood a few feet away from Jessie as he looked carefully at each arm and hand, and what he could see of his shoulders, chest, and stomach. Slowly, he turned in place, raising his arms away from his side; Jessie’s hands shook while she held her pistol and watched, inspecting her husband’s battered and bruised body.
“I don’t know if I can do it if you’re bit, baby,” Jessie said.
The last few months have been incredibly hard, harder than anyone could have imagined, and their bodies were proof of that. Tears streamed down Jessie’s cheeks. Except that it is going to get much harder. How am I going to raise this child? What will I tell her?
Buffalo, Texas
Usually, the drive from Centerville to Buffalo was a trivial matter, and the reality of Ken’s situation was that the drive turned out to be no big deal. Upon arriving in Buffalo, Ken realized that the big deal was being in a town so close to the interstate. Sure, he was on Highway 75, but I-45 followed set off a few miles to the west and that had been a problem last night. It was still a problem this morning too. With all the Zed activity the previous afternoon, sleeping in his truck seemed like a safe bet, especially with how he had his truck parked. The previous afternoon, Ken had backed the truck into an open storage unit at one of those tiny mini-storage places. After checking that he could operate the latch from the inside, Ken had turned off his truck and lowered the roll-up door. This morning, he woke up to the sound of dead hands and bodies slapping against the metal door. The Zeds shook it so hard it nearly seemed like the door would cave in, but now he was safe in his truck, in a metal building with the only exit blocked. Dejected, Ken sat in the driver’s seat trying to decide if he could roll up the door and get into the truck fast enough that he wouldn’t be trapped or bitten. He knew that it would be impossible. With a heavy sigh, Ken opened his door and squeezed out to look and think.
