by Lund, Dave
In simpler times, such a maneuver would have landed Amanda in prison, never mind the personal repercussions of destroying a person in such a manner, but these weren’t simpler times and that Zed was no longer a person. It was a diseased body set forth to destroy her. This wasn’t personal, it wasn’t even just business, it was the new reality; it was war, and the winners or losers wouldn’t be defined by conquest. They would be defined by living or a fate worse than death.
Amanda paused and took a long drink from her Camelbak. The air conditioning in the cab worked fairly well, but this was still hot and dusty work in an armored cocoon that amplified all the sun’s heat. She felt like an ant under a magnifying glass. She could try to prop open the door, but then what would the point be of being in an armored vehicle. She was by herself, she was trying to save what was left of the country, and the last thing she needed was to be killed for her own laziness.
Bouncing back into the dirt field across from the entrance, Amanda had the idea that since she had the time and the machinery, the HESCO barriers alone may not be enough. She stopped and let the heavy diesel engine idle while studying the terrain.
Behind us is the lake, which serves as a bit of a barrier, but not enough. I need to put HESCO along the shoreline and wall off the main area. If I leave the secret escape hatches unprotected, then they might not know about them and they could be used to our advantage, or to flee if need be. But Clint probably told them about the hatches; they probably know all the secrets of this facility. The damn Koreans and Chinese probably know more about it than I do. Fuck. So walls within walls, surrounded by what? Dig out tank traps like on the old war movies?
Amanda sat quietly and closed her eyes. She was in too far over her head, and she had no idea how to build a fortified position. She was never in the military; she hadn’t even paid too close of attention to most of the old war movies her ex-husband used to watch.
A hard crack on the outside of the cab brought her attention back to focus instantly.
“Shit.”
Another hard crack against the cab. This time, she saw the impact of the round on the armored glass windshield, Amanda raised the bucket to block the cab while scanning the area from where the shot would have come. After another round struck the bucket, Amanda drove and turned the loader to go through the zig-zag of HESCO containers into the front gate of the park and toward the main lift and entrance. Her first thought was to leave the loader topside, but she didn’t want whoever was shooting at her to damage or destroy the loader. No, she needed to distract and outflank the attacker. Amanda realized she was assuming that there was only one person out there, which could be an assumption that was dead wrong. She needed to get safe and then figure out what the hell was going on.
Dew, Texas
Some days,10 miles might as well mean trying to drive an old truck all the way to the moon and back, but the afternoon found Ken’s luck had turned for the better, even if he had spent hours making sure he wasn’t being followed. Although truth be told, his morning hadn’t been all too bad. It had been a long time, decades really, since Ken had been shot at, but the old familiar feeling of elation, the rush of escaping death, was familiar and intoxicating.
The shiny new convenience store across the street had burned to the ground. Ken wasn’t sure how or why, but there were at least a dozen charred bodies scattered in the parking lot and in the road. The only way he figured that the bodies could be arranged like they were that they were reanimated dead that caught fire. The old abandoned gas station across the street still stood as well as it had before everything happened, which suited Ken just fine. The truck was fairly hidden behind the overgrowth trying to reclaim the structure as a part of nature and the awning over the pumps gave him an elevated position to recon I-45. He wasn’t sure if the huge mass of Zeds had passed through completely; there were some stragglers shuffling along the access road in the same direction, but those would be easy to evade. The bridge over the interstate appeared to still be standing, which was good, but he wasn’t going to chance a crossing if the stampeding herd of Zeds was going past. The others on the spark gap radio had told of bridges collapsing and buildings being demolished by Zeds when in high numbers. It all seemed as if they were like fishing stories and the size of the fish that was caught and released, but seeing what he saw on I-45 this morning made him a believer.
Ken slid to the edge of the awning and climbed down the aluminum ladder. He found the ladder leaned against the house next door. No one was home and now Ken owned a ladder, which he hadn’t thought to have prepped at the deer lease. He could have climbed up his truck and probably reached up onto the awning, but getting down would be difficult. Even something as simple as an ankle sprain could result in his death. With no medical care and no help, he was on his own.
The ladder went in the bed of the truck; quick work with some 550 cord and it was lashed down well enough to stay put. Ken started the truck and drove toward I-45 and the overpass on Texas 179.The interstate wasn’t clear—there was still a seemingly endless number of Zeds shambling past—but there weren’t as many as he saw a few hours earlier and the bridge was still intact. Swerving left and right, Ken dodged the Zeds on the roadway and drove across the bridge. The truck stop was still standing, but the windows were all broken out and one of the awnings over the fuel pumps was pushed over. A handful of big rigs sat in the parking lot, but there wasn’t much movement from the building or from the semi-trucks. What may have still remained in the truck stop didn’t interest Ken; it felt risky to attempt any scavenging so close to the interstate when he didn’t need any supplies just yet. No, Ken scanned the road ahead for any movement or signs of trouble and drove on.
Groom Lake
Bill lay on the cot in the radio hut, his intent to nap a few hours, but he was too stressed and worried to do more than close his eyes and hope for his mind to slow down. They now had two spark gap radios popping and buzzing in the room, which smelled like ionized air. The door was open and an office fan blew fresh air into the room, but the room still stunk. Two airmen, or now former airmen with beards and not in uniform, manned the radios; a civilian volunteer manned the shortwave broadcast loops. The transmission of information had been disrupted with the attack and then completely stopped with the coup attempt, but now they were back in business under Aymond’s orders.
With his eyes closed, Bill listened to the crackling pop of the radios, transposing the Morse code in his head as he heard the received transmissions. Never in his life had Bill been this proficient at Morse, but he never had to be. This was the current normal, and the current normal reminded him a lot of an ARRL Field Day, except that Field Day was in June and was a fun event where ham radio operators all met up to run exercises, hold contests, conduct testing for new licenses or operators upgrading their current license. Those weekends usually found him resting on a cot in some community center room with the sound of radios in the background. Not much had changed, except that now all the emergency drills were real and nothing anyone had planned would still work. The transmissions he could hear were between two other survivors; one was in Northern California and another was in Ohio. The pinboard map of survivors on the wall was full of pins; there were so many survivors that they nearly couldn’t keep up. The radios had pileups often, people transmitting on top of others, sometimes unknowingly, perhaps sometimes on purpose. Some of that could be attributed to the propagation of the signal, where a transmitting station didn’t know another station was transmitting because the radio signals were skipping over them off the ionosphere, but Bill thought that most of it was simply due to the number of people who have built radios. This was a good thing, but also a bad thing.
The good was that there were many more survivors than first thought and they were coordinating each other for assistance. Some simple trade routes had been established, as well as some safe zones. At least that is what they were calling the areas in which survivors had set h
ard perimeter walls and cleared out the Zeds. After the outbreaks in the facility and the PLA attack, Bill wasn’t sure that there was such thing as a safe zone.
The bad was that Bill was waiting for priority transmissions from Dorsey in Montana, President Lampton in Texas, and Chivo or Andrew on the status of their mission. Before the collapse of society, no ham radio operator had priority over transmissions or frequency use, unless during a declared emergency. They most definitely had a declared emergency, but he couldn’t claim the airwaves for himself, nor could anyone enforce it. He created this monster and now like Dr. Frankenstein, he no longer had any real control over it. Bill sighed. He would let it go, and he had to let it go for the good of the other survivors. He needed a better way for the president to communicate.
His thoughts returned to the idea that even back in the 1960s Strategic Air Command had overcome these same hurdles, except that had a lot of assets in place. There was a command and control aircraft aloft 24 hours a day, every single day of the year, that could transmit launch commands and other important information to the ICBM facilities across the country. Each of the ICMB control centers had High-Frequency radios, antennas, hardened antennas, including an Ultra-High radio antenna that looked like a little concrete and metal cone on the surface that could survive a very close nuclear detonation. Bill’s eyes snapped open and he sat up with a start.
Hardened HF antennas.
Years ago, he had toured the Atlas II museum outside of Tucson Arizona and was intrigued by the radio antenna redundancy. The facility had antennas for High-Frequency radios that were mounted on masts located underground. The masts would rise through a hatch at the flip of a switch. If Groom Lake had a hardened and protected HF antenna mast, then so should SSC, and Dorsey most definitely had one at a Minuteman III ICBM control center. The spark gap radios would be wrecking the HF radio spectrum, but perhaps he could find some frequency ranges that weren’t being overrun with the broad transmissions from the crude radios and that would still have good propagation. Bill put on his glasses and began his search.
On The Surface
“What is your plan to move them?”
Gonzo expected Aymond would ask that question first and was ready. “Simple. We drag them with the Cat,” he said, referencing the old Caterpillar that Jones had working. The heavy diesel motor could be heard in the near distance as earth-work walls and fighting positions were being made.
“Make it happen, and gentlemen.” Aymond paused as he turned to walk back to the main hangar. “Figure out how to stack them.”
Happy and Gonzo watched Aymond walk off. “How are we going to do that without a crane?”
“We’ll figure something out, but first we have to figure out how many CONEX containers they had exactly, and what is in them, if anything. Then we have to get them empty and get them moved while figuring out how large of a wall we can make.”
“Roger that.”
They went to work, using a shotgun to breach the heavy locks and opening each large metal shipping container one by one. The corrugated metal shipping containers were quite familiar to the Marines. They have been used by the U.S. military since the Korean War and they have had temporary shelters and walls made of them before, but they weren’t the ones who usually put them together, arriving in theater or to training with all of them already in place. As an engineering challenge, it wasn’t insurmountable, but before the attack in December, they would have had specialized equipment or even rotor wing support to lift and move the containers while out in the wilds.
These containers were going to be the inner ring around the entrance to the underground facility, basically replacing the hangar that has been significantly damaged. If they could fill them with dirt and build up the backside with a dirt berm, then they would have good fighting positions if the outer earthen walls were overrun.
The first CONEX they opened was empty; the second was full of weapons crates. Gonzo and Happy pulled one of the crates out, both smiling and hoping that the contents matched the markings on the crate. Happy opened the crate and were greeted by the site of a familiar weapon system.
“ADMS variant. You know what that means.”
“Fucking PLA radar trucks are toast. Shit, I wish we had these back in Cali.”
The Stinger missile system was well known to many, but the Air Defense Missile Suppression wasn’t. It could home in on the radar transmissions that air defense missile installations used. It could hard-kill a radar.
“Think it would work. We don’t know what frequencies the fucking Koreans and Chinese use and I’m not too excited to test it on our only radar truck.”
“Who cares. We keep these, train up some folks on them, and when the time comes, give it a spin. If it works, great, if it doesn’t, then they’ll still blow some shit up. Besides, we could put down any of their strategic lift aircraft. We haven’t seen any fighters or close air support aircraft, only the heavy lift shit.”
“I say we close up this container, mark it, and drag it full to the hangar. Easier than humping each one of these fuckers one by one.”
Gonzo gave Happy a fist bump and continued to the next container.
South of Twin Falls, Idaho
Andrew setup for a left-hand pattern, turned for the downwind, and overflew the center of the airport. He would not have done that before the attack, and the thought of an actual pattern made him smirk. There was no other traffic that he could see. Flying a pattern for landing gave him a chance to scope out the airport and what was or wasn’t moving. They had enough AvGas to fly a few more hundred miles, nearly all the way to Great Falls, as long as nothing happened and the winds were favorable, but Andrew hadn’t survived this long flying all around the country by cutting things close, and it would be dark soon.
Two Cessna Caravans sat on the ramp at tie downs; those were good bush planes and could land many of the same places he could land his Husky, as long as there was enough room. He could carry a lot more gear and people, but they had Pratt and Whitney turboprop engines. On the upside, the PT6 series of engines were some of the most proven and reliable turboprop fan turners ever made; on the downside, he would have to find Jet-A or the military equivalent for fuel. No longer would he be able to top off with a few gallons of unleaded gasoline if there wasn’t any aviation fuel available. The other is the fuel burn. The Husky practically sipped fuel and flew like a camel compared to a Caravan. Andrew made a note on his aeronautical chart in pencil. Before he and Chivo flew out in the morning, he wanted to see if one of them would start.
Andrew turned base and absent-mindedly scanned the runways, the taxiways, and between the hangars. There were some Zeds turning to shuffle along following his flight path, but they were mostly between the hangars and not an immediate threat for landing.
Around southern Great Falls, I could land on a road with a Caravan. Nearly empty, I bet the landing could be done in less than 1,000 feet. I bet I could take off in about the same.
Andrew really didn’t know. He rode in a Caravan years before with a pilot friend in Montana at the Lost Prairie skydiving boogie, but that plane had been loaded with sweaty skydivers doing their own brand of crazy. The rollout was surprisingly long as they bumped along at the high field altitude and where they were flying to would have a high field elevation.
But I could have Oreo with me even when playing tactical taxi driver.
Flaps down, Andrew gently pulled power as he slipped against a quartering headwind before setting down with a slight bounce. He opened the window as they taxied toward the fuel pumps, remembering that it was still April and now he was back in the part of the country that had cool temperatures and winter that seemed to last from August to June.
“Looks like we have some company coming up, Chivo.”
“Yeah, mano. Once you shut down, I’ll get out and take care of our friendly welcoming committee. Where are we?”
“
Outside of Twin Falls, Idaho.”
The flight had been mostly quiet. Shouting over the engine and wind noise was annoying and Chivo, being the experienced war-fighter he was, slept for long stretches of the flight.
“I thought we would cover more ground than that. We could have driven this far in a day.”
“Headwinds and mountains. Things go slower for us with those two obstacles to overcome; you’re not in a Herc or flying commercial.”
Chivo flashed a smile at Andrew; there was a fine line between helping motivate someone and simply bitching. All bitching ever did was kill motivation and he couldn’t do that. Chivo needed to get north, kill Clint, and figure out what the hell was going on, then haul ass to Utah to catch up with Bexar and Jessie. He worried about them, even though he knew they were tough and capable. Tough and capable, but Chivo had saved Bexar’s life more than once in the past few months. Another smile crept across his face. Bexar is a shit magnet. He means well and is talented and trained, but pandemonium and havoc follow his wake.
Zeds were beginning to approach. Chivo walked toward the first of them, raised his rifle, and fired once. Chivo was moving before the first Zed’s body had fallen to the tarmac, walking at a brisk pace. He was leading the dead away from Andrew and the aircraft while killing each of the Zeds one headshot at a time. Contrary to what the action movies from the ‘80s would lead someone to believe, headshots are difficult, even more so when everything is moving, but even Chivo had to smile at what he saw unfold in front of his eyes like a movie. He was the star of the show and the camera followed his movements, but each step, the step after that, and the step after that had already played out on the screen in Chivo’s mind with a wake of destroyed Zeds following. The process of putting down small numbers of the dead had become so commonplace that Chivo was having difficulty focusing on the task; instead, he watched the movie like a disinterested teenager, but still amazed at how the constant target practice had improved his shooting skills.
