Pete pushed the door open.
It was gloomy inside, though not dark, and there was enough light to see the tools. Neat rows of picks, shovels, levers, spades, rakes, and spanners dominated one half of the pair of cabins. On one wall hung hard hats, on the other was a shelving unit with neat steel boxes of pins and bolts. Whoever had been responsible for these stores had also used the cabin as an office. One they’d made comfortable. A sink had been bolted to one wall, a small kettle and coffee pot on the metal worktop next to it. A rug covered the floor beneath the table, with another beneath the trio of folding chairs.
But what struck Pete most, and what had hit him the moment he’d entered the cabin, was the smell of decay. What had hit him second was the sight of the bodies. There were four in total. Two sat in the chairs, two lay on the rug. Two men, two women, all in military fatigues and body armour. All had been shot multiple times.
Rufus gave a soulful whine.
Olivia stepped forward, letting the door swing shut, cutting out the principal source of light. But the sudden gloom made it easier to see the light piercing through the bullet holes in the wall behind the table. Dozens of them. Pete turned around to check behind, but no, there were none in the opposite wall.
“They were shot from here,” he said, his voice sombrely quiet. “From the doorway.”
“They’re not zombies,” Olivia said, taking a step forward. “Or were they?”
“Bitten, maybe, but not turned,” Pete said.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said, taking another step forward. She knelt. “No, this woman wasn’t shot in the head. So… if she was infected, she’d have turned, yes? Or no?”
“I’m not sure,” Pete said. “Maybe she was like us, immune.”
“Maybe,” Olivia said. “Wait, hang on.” She leaned forward, gently rolling the dead woman onto her back. “I know her.”
“You do?”
“And so do you,” Olivia said. “Come here. Have a look.”
Reluctantly, he did. “No, I don’t think so.”
“What about the others, do you recognise them?” she asked.
“Well, there’s no way anyone would recognise him,” Pete said, indicating the man who’d taken at least two bullets to the back of his head. He swallowed hard, turning away from the gory mess, looking instead at the man on the floor, then the woman slumped in the chair. “I… no. I don’t think so.”
“They were in Wawa,” Olivia said. “With Trowbridge. These are the U.S. Marines the general gave Trowbridge as a protection detail.”
“Are you sure?”
“She reminded me a little of a cheerleader in high school,” Olivia said, indicating the dead Marine at her feet. “I don’t think it’s her.” She reached down to find the Marine’s dog tags. “Ramirez. No. It’s not her.”
“Their weapons are missing,” Pete said. “Taken after they were shot, I guess. If it was before, if they were prisoners, they’d be tied up, right?”
“Maybe,” Olivia said, looking around. “I don’t think they knew they were in danger. Those two on the floor, I guess they were sitting and had time to stand, but death had to have been unexpected.”
“Kempton,” Pete said. “It has to be. Or her people. She… somehow, she persuaded Trowbridge to come here, where she knew she had people waiting, people who then killed the Marines.”
“Could be,” Olivia said. “So where’s Trowbridge? Where are the other bodies? Or were the Marines sent here alone?”
“We’re not going to find the answers standing here, are we?” Pete said. “So I guess the question is whether we want to look for them outside, or just keep driving?”
Near the door, where he’d stayed since entering, Rufus gave a now familiar, low growl. Outside came a soft squelch. A shadow moved across the window.
Olivia raised her rifle, then paused. She pointed to Pete’s belt, at the suppressed pistol.
Pete nodded what he thought was understanding: a zombie was outside, and they needed to kill it quietly. But they also needed to preserve ammunition. He reached for the nearest tool, a spade, carefully lifting it from the rack.
Olivia shook her head.
Pete raised the spade, holding it at head-height in front of the door.
Again, Olivia shook her head, but holding her rifle with one hand, she reached for the door handle with the other. Giving a pronounced nod of her head, exaggeratedly mouthing the words, she counted to three, and pulled the door open.
Pete saw the eyes first, the gun second, and froze. The figure on the other side of the door was alive. Wearing a ski mask and body armour over hunting gear. She stood in the muddy track, two metres from the cabin, feet pointing towards the railroad, as had been the machine pistol in her hands, until the door had opened. Now it pivoted with her as she turned towards them.
Rufus bounded forward, charging at the woman. She stepped sideways, but not fast enough. Not faster than Olivia’s bullet which slammed into her cheek, and up into her brain.
“It was her or you,” Olivia whispered. “I just hope—”
But before she could finish, another shot sounded. And then a barrage of gunfire returned, all coming from the direction of the TAPV.
“Think later, act now,” Olivia said.
Their boots kicked up a rain of mud as they sprinted towards the gunfire. Only when they were close enough to hear bullets ricochet off the stack of un-placed rails ahead of them did they slow. And only when they’d reached the stack did Pete think to check behind them. But no one was there, and their frantic dash had provided ample opportunity to be mown down.
“They’re between us and your sister,” Olivia said as another bullet smacked into the stack of steel. “It’s Corrie’s bullets hitting these tracks. We’re in exactly the wrong place.” She peered around the corner, crouching, then standing, then ducked back into cover. “There are two of them. But if we shoot, we might hit Corrie, and if we leave cover, she might hit us.”
Pete looked around and behind, and saw inspiration. “Got it,” he said. “I’ll get them to move.”
“How?” Olivia asked.
But Pete was already running. Rufus bounded along at his side, but then veered leftward, disappearing behind a pair of cabins stacked one on top of the other. A metal staircase provided access to the topmost cabin, and would provide a perfect vantage point, but Pete knew he wasn’t a good enough shot to play sniper. He ducked behind a small excavator with a broken pneumatic arm.
He’d been hoping the vehicle might work, that the sound of it might provide enough of a distraction, but the cover had been removed from the control box, and the wires hung loose from where someone else had abandoned a futile repair. Instead, he unslung his rifle.
In Whitney, he’d spent an hour practicing, expending the one hundred bullets Judge Benton felt could be spared. His skill level still tended to shooting-towards rather than shooting-at, but that was all he’d need. From behind the excavator, he could see both of the enemy. Two men. Crouched at either end of a long pile of concrete sleepers. One had a machine pistol, the other a rifle. Possibly automatic, though he was firing single shots. Why were they waiting?
Pete aimed the barrel at the back of the man with the machine pistol.
They were waiting for the woman with the machine pistol who Olivia had shot to sneak around the back of the TAPV. That was it.
He breathed out.
Who were they? The thought made him pause. But only for a heartbeat. They were the people shooting at his sister. He fired.
From the way the man jerked and spun, the bullets had hit. From the way he pivoted, spraying bullets from his machine pistol, Pete had hit his bulletproof vest.
Pete ducked back behind the excavator, counted to three, and was about to spin around and fire another shot when Rufus barked. Pete looked left and right for the dog, but couldn’t see him. Then Pete looked up, and into the barrel of a gun.
The man stood at the top of the stairs above Pete, on the landing just
by the door to the upper-storey cabin. Pete had been right, it was the perfect place for a sniper. This one had been waiting until Pete saw him. Then he smiled.
Rufus barked again. Pete caught the flash of fur as the dog bounded up the steps. The sniper half turned, and so was caught off balance as Rufus charged into him. Dog and sniper hit the thin rail around the landing’s edge. Momentum caused Rufus to bounce back and skitter down the metal stairs, while it caused the sniper to trip, topple, fall, landing heavily in the mud with a dull crack of breaking bone. But that didn’t slow him.
The sniper threw himself sideways, scything his leg out, knocking Pete down. Pete lost hold of the rifle. When he scrabbled upright, the weapon was out of reach. The sniper grinned. His face was streaked in mud, his left arm hung limp, but his right reached for a long knife at his belt. The wickedly curved blade was no one’s standard issue, and met no government’s regulations. It wasn’t a hunter’s tool, nor even an assassin’s blade. It was a killer’s toy, and from the way the blade danced, this killer had played the game often.
“I’m waiting,” the man said.
Pete glanced at the rifle, but he wouldn’t reach it in time. He reached for his belt, drawing his own knife.
The killer’s grin grew wider until, again, a dart of fur bounded out of the shadows. This time the killer caught sight of the dog, managing to step sideways as Rufus skidded across the mud.
Pete, taking advantage of the distraction, dived forward, stabbing the knife forward. The killer sensed the movement, turning again, this time into the blade.
The knife slid into the man’s throat as if it were paper, lodging even as the man’s eyes went wide. The killer dropped his own blade as he reached his one working hand up to clutch the wound, already pouring blood. Pete stepped back, and again, as the killer stepped after him, but the dying man only managed three paces before collapsing to his knees, then the mud, pulsing blood onto the already disturbed ground.
Rufus yipped, bringing Pete back to himself, to the moment, and the still real danger, only then realising the gunfire had ceased. He grabbed his fallen rifle and looked towards the TAPV, and saw the other two shooters were dead.
“Four of them?” Pete asked, picking his way across the bullet-flecked mud, towards Olivia and Corrie, standing near one of the corpses by the stacked railroad sleepers.
“Four?” Olivia asked. “What happened to you?”
Pete looked at the blood. “It’s not mine. I guess I’m asking… actually, I don’t really know what I’m asking.”
“It happened after I’d finished refuelling,” Corrie said. “I heard a shot, turned around, saw them, and took cover. They fired first.”
“The first shot was me,” Olivia said. “A woman in a ski mask, outside a cabin where we found the bodies of the dead Marines that the general sent to guard Trowbridge.”
Corrie blinked, slowly processing the news. “The Marines?”
“Murdered,” Pete said. “Shot. Not infected.”
“Probably,” Olivia clarified.
Corrie knelt and pulled the ski mask from the face of the dead man at her feet. “Do you recognise him?”
“No,” Pete said.
“No,” Olivia said. “Should I?”
“I don’t know,” Corrie said. “I don’t recognise him, but I wonder…” She checked his left arm, then his right, pulling back the sleeve with a hiss of resigned triumph. “A branch with three leaves.”
“What does that mean?” Olivia asked.
“The cartel,” Pete said. “Like in Australia. The people who were after Kempton down there. Right?” he added, hoping that Corrie would tell him he was wrong.
“Right,” Corrie said. “We can be grateful they were only gangsters and not trained soldiers.”
“The cartel are here?” Olivia asked.
Corrie stood. “The Marines are here, and they’re dead? What about Trowbridge?”
“We didn’t see any other bodies,” Olivia said. “Just those four Marines.”
“Then the cartel have Trowbridge,” Corrie said. “Maybe the CIA people, too. Unless they’re dead.”
“And Kempton,” Pete said.
“And her,” Corrie said.
“It was Winters giving the orders, not Trowbridge,” Olivia said. “Not that it matters.”
“They were trying not to hit the TAPV,” Corrie said. “I think they wanted to steal it, so they could drive out of here.”
“Meaning they’re alone and without transport?” Olivia asked.
“I think so,” Corrie said.
“But you want to make sure?” Olivia asked.
“Not really,” Corrie said. “I’d like to just drive away and never look back, but when we get wherever we’re going, unless Trowbridge is there, they’ll send people to look for him. Even now. Even after a nuclear apocalypse. They will send a team to find the president. We should confirm he’s not here.”
“By looking in the other cabins for bodies?” Pete asked.
“Those cartel people weren’t staying in these cabins,” Olivia said. “Where those trees are cleared, there, to the north, does that lead to where the actual observatory was being built?”
“Probably,” Corrie said. “And it’s the right direction for the gangsters to have come from.” She glanced up at the cranes. “And if there were more here, if there were sentries up there, they’d have made their move.”
“And so would the zombies,” Olivia said. “One hour, no more. One hour, whether we find anything or anyone, and then we go.”
But Pete knew, now they’d begun, they’d keep searching until they were certain there was nothing to be found.
With rainwater filling the deep ruts left by the construction machines, and slippery mud coating everything else, they soon left the unpaved track and ventured into the trees, finding easier going between the towering pines. From the red and orange paint ringing the trunks, many had been marked for logging, but to them, at least, the apocalypse had brought a stay of execution. The paint gave an indication of the vast scale of Kempton’s ambition for the observatory, though it was, and forevermore would be, no more than a circular kilometre of mostly cleared forest.
Ninety percent of the perimeter was marked by a low fence, sturdy enough to keep out a curious deer, though not a determined bear. However, close to the rolling gate, a hundred metres of fencing had been entirely removed.
Parked neatly near the gate was a row of saw-and-claw harvesters, while inside the fence were more cabins, of a similar style to those by the train tracks. The blue and gold painted huts were clustered together seemingly at random, but around one, a solitary cabin near the centre of the site, Pete saw the missing fencing.
“Are those people?” he asked. “Can you see where I mean, that cabin in the middle with the fencing around it?”
“They’re zombies,” Corrie said. “Dressed in blue and gold. It’s the same kind of gear we found aboard Kempton’s jet.”
“That’s what happened to them?” Olivia asked, leaning around the tree she was sheltering behind. “Kempton’s people are zombies. But they built a smaller defensive perimeter around that cabin? That doesn’t make sense. Not if those cartel people were living here. Why didn’t they kill the zombies?”
“Because they’re keeping someone prisoner,” Pete said. “The zombies are the jailers. Ten bucks says Trowbridge is inside. And another ten says he’s dead.”
“But we’ll have to check, won’t we?” Olivia said. “Damn it. Why couldn’t the general have taken that message from us in Wawa and told us to get lost? Those cabins look similar to the huts by the railroad. A bullet would go straight through. If I go get the TAPV and… and yes, drive it through the perimeter-gap where they removed the fence, then down that sort-of-avenue by the tree-harvesters, I can stop right next to the fence. That’ll get the zombies away from the cabin. Corrie, you can shoot them. Pete, you can rescue our illustrious president, if he’s still alive. And if he doesn’t give you a seat on his
cabinet for it, then we’ll let him walk back to civilisation.”
“I’ll settle for a cold beer and a hot bath,” Pete said.
“Times three,” Corrie said.
With Rufus following Olivia, Pete and Corrie jogged in the other direction, through the trees, down the slope, and to the gap in the fence ringing the construction site. Up close, the facility was larger than he’d first assumed, though the fence was no higher. That was something, he thought. If Kempton had been prepping for the undead, she’d have built a taller fence.
Inside, blue ropes divided the mud that was intended to become road and the mud that was scheduled to be excavated for foundations, though with occasional yellow ropes ringing circles of ground-hugging yellow-petal flowers. He wished he knew their name. Above all, he wished they hadn’t been there. Someone in the construction crew must have planted them. Perhaps rescuing them from the ground levelled for the train tracks. Their wages, after taking such meticulous care over the plants, had been to become one of the undead now guarding the fenced cabin.
More ropes branched left and right, marking temporary avenues. But though, on foot, the site seemed larger than it had on first sight, they soon reached the near-centre, and the cabin ringed by fencing. He and Corrie took shelter opposite the fence, behind the corner of a long cabin where four of the prefabs had been joined together, end to end.
“Seven,” Corrie whispered. “Seven zombies. Definitely zombies.”
Pete nodded. He could hear them beating against the solitary cabin. Whoever had dismantled the outer fence and rebuilt it here had realised that it wasn’t tall enough to hold the undead. They’d built it to double-height, with the upper ring wired to the lower, the entire edifice held in place by an odd mix of poles and props, some metal, some timber, and all surely whatever had been close to hand. Though haphazard, it was sturdy enough to keep the undead inside.
Pete rolled back around the corner, leaning against the wall of the cabin. “There’s definitely someone inside the cabin,” he whispered.
Surviving The Evacuation | Life Goes On (Book 2): No More News Page 33
