Claudia worked her chair back away from the table and stood.
“Melvin, would you mind helping me with the dishes?”
“Certainly,” Melvin said and stood. The other men started to stand as well, but Claudia stopped them.
“You gentlemen just sit and relax. Melvin and I will take care of everything.”
Once they’d gotten the dishes into the kitchen, Claudia scraped any scraps onto one dish and then began hand-washing the rest.
“True mentioned you were a medic back when you were a soldier,” Claudia said.
“I had training as a medic,” Melvin replied.
Claudia nodded in the darkening room. Melvin saw a couple of candles and lit them. Claudia thanked him. Her face scrunched up in thought for a moment before speaking.
“There is something you and your men need to know.”
“What’s that?” Melvin asked.
“There is a group of people who live about fifty miles from here near Mark Twain Lake. Are you familiar with it?” she asked.
“I’ve seen it on the map,” Melvin said. “Tell me about them.”
“I’m not sure how many there are of them. Maybe twenty, maybe fifty. They’re led by a rather distasteful man who calls himself the Professor. They come around on occasion and demand payment of this and that. Food mostly.”
“Is that the reason for the excess crops you’re growing?” Melvin asked.
Claudia nodded. “We have agreed to grow corn for them, for their cattle and horses. And Tussey makes weapons for them.”
“Do they give anything in return?”
Claudia shook her head.
“Well, that’s not right,” Melvin said.
“The Professor fancies himself as a king or something. If you men stick around this area for long, you’ll likely encounter his people. My advice is to kill them as soon as you see them.”
Melvin had been drying the utensils but stopped and stared at Claudia in surprise. She stared back.
“Melvin, the four of you have been exceptionally kind to us, but I’m not fooled. You’re tough as nails and hardened killers. Last winter, the Professor’s men dropped by one day and took everything we had to eat. We almost starved to death. You’d be doing us a tremendous favor if you killed every one of them.”
“Miss Claudia, we don’t actively go out looking for people to kill. We’ll kill zeds, and if we’re threatened, we’ll fight, but we’re not cold-blooded murderers.”
Claudia nodded in seeming understanding. “You all are good men, I can tell, but if you encounter the Professor or his people, don’t let your guard down with them.”
“I certainly appreciate the advice. If we do come across them, perhaps I can persuade them to leave you guys alone. You know, you can always come back to Mount Weather with us.”
Claudia smiled sadly. “My health has not been so good lately. I have a lot of pain deep in my guts and sometimes I can’t hold down a meal.”
Melvin nodded. “I saw you wincing earlier.”
“I was a nurse, once upon a time. Don’t know if I mentioned that, but I was. A hospice nurse. I took care of people who were dying. At first, I thought I had something like a kidney stone, maybe an appendicitis, but I’m afraid it’s more serious than that. Lately, when I take my morning visit to the outhouse, the pain is incredible and there’s been blood in my stool.”
“We have a doctor back at Mount Weather. You should come with us,” Melvin said.
“I thought you said you were a medic?” Claudia said. “Well then, you should already know it’s too late.”
Melvin hung his head. “You’re right.”
“It wouldn’t matter anyway,” she said. “I’ve made my peace with God. I’ve lived here since I was twenty and I’m seventy-something now. No, Melvin, I’m not traveling eight or nine hundred miles just to die in some strange place.”
“I guess I understand. Is there anything I can do for you?” Melvin asked.
Claudia drained the dishwater and dried her hands on her apron before speaking.
“If I can talk Tussey into it, will you take her and Natty back to Mount Weather?”
“Certainly,” Melvin answered.
Claudia smiled. “Good. In the meantime, there is a loom sitting in a barn on the other side of town. I’d be grateful if you’d load it up and bring it back here.”
“You got it,” Melvin said. “We’ll do it first thing in the morning.” He paused a moment. “I have some Fentanyl patches in my kit. They’re expired, but I believe they’ve still got a little bit of potency left in them. Would you like them for the pain?”
“I’d be most appreciative,” Claudia said. “Thank you.”
“I imagine you’ve run into a lot of health issues in your travels.”
“I have,” Melvin said. “Broken bones, traumatic injury, cholera, rat-bite fever, pellagra, you name it.”
“Were you able to treat them?”
“Some, not all,” Melvin said. “The people who had pellagra, I guess those were the most senseless.”
“Let me guess, all they did was eat corn,” Claudia surmised.
“Yep. When I ran into them, they were nothing but skin and bone and distended bellies. Plus, they’d become delusional. I’ll be honest, I didn’t waste any medicine on them.”
“I understand,” Claudia said and after a moment took her apron off and hung it on a brass coat hook. “I believe I’ll try to get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning. Maybe we’ll have some fresh eggs waiting for us.”
Chapter 47 – Holston
Team Joker was parked on University Boulevard at the entrance to Holston Army Ammunition Plant. The big red sign said as much. It was faded and the paint was peeling, but it was still readable. The guard shack and gated entrance was also a clue, even though the guard shack was unoccupied.
“We can’t see them all from here, but there’s something like four hundred individual buildings on the property,” Trader Joe said.
“You mentioned there were people who were living here,” Joker said.
“Did I? I don’t recall saying that, but yeah, I believe there were. A couple of our people came up here one day and were shot at. We never did figure out who they were. And before you ask, the answer is no. We never got anything out of this place.”
Joker stared out of the windshield. The place appeared abandoned. The grass was overgrown, there were no gardens, no tire tracks, no horse tracks, nothing. He retrieved the three-ring binder and went to the page with the satellite photo printouts. Orienting the map to their present position, he tapped and area with his index finger.
“We’re going to drive directly to this group of magazines, pick one, and blow it. If we’re successful in blowing the door and not killing ourselves, and if the magazine still has explosive materiel, we’ll load up. If we don’t encounter any zeds or hostiles, we’ll try another one.”
“That’s an awful lot of ifs,” Trader Joe said and tapped at a different set of buildings. “It was mostly guesswork, but we believed people were living in the administration buildings. If they’re still there, I have no doubt they’ll come investigate any kind of explosion and may not bother asking questions.”
“It’s a chance we’ll have to take,” Joker said.
“Highly risky,” Trader Joe said. “Look, why don’t we do this: why don’t we recon the area? Drive around, take some pictures, and then head back home? If we encounter anyone, we’ll say hello, glad to meet you, come visit us sometime, and get the hell out of here.”
“We have a mission,” Joker said. “Marines complete their mission. Always.”
“But we aren’t Marines,” Little Joe declared. “You are, we aren’t.”
“I am, and this SUV is,” Joker countered. “We’re going to complete the mission. If you guys don’t want to, get out now and find your own way home.”
Little Joe started to fire back with an angry retort, but his father held up a hand. “We’re not going to abandoned
you. I was merely offering alternative solutions. You know this is risky, perhaps too risky. Think of it like this—we gather good Intel on this place which lays the groundwork for a future mission to retrieve this explosive materiel, if it even still exists.”
Joker took a moment to quell his growing anger before responding.
“Alright, it goes something like this. Do y’all remember the meeting where the president told everyone about those satellite photos?”
“Which photos?” Little Joe asked.
“The ones from the northwest coast,” Joker said.
“The ones showing a fleet of ships landing on the west coast,” Trader Joe said. “Where was it? Washington?”
“Yeah, I believe so,” Joker answered. “There’s lots of unanswered questions. Why did they come here? What are they doing? What are their intentions? Do they have fuel? Like I said, a lot of unanswered questions.”
Trader Joe started nodding in understanding. “The most prudent course of action is to assume they have hostile intent and prepare accordingly.”
Little Joe interrupted. “Wait. Who are they? Are they Russians?”
“It’s possible,” Joker said. “Or it could be the Chinese. We won’t know until we make contact.”
“Well, that leads to my next question. They’re like two thousand miles away.”
“Yes. When they were first spotted. That was several months ago. We don’t know if they stayed put or if they are traveling east. Plus, we have no idea if something similar has happened on the east coast, or if we have a hostile force coming up from the coast.”
Little Joe frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that. It makes sense, I guess. So, what’re they going to do with the explosives?”
“We’re going to make antipersonnel mines, and possibly mortar rounds,” Joker said.
Trader Joe’s face brightened. “Oh, yeah. That will help our defensive works tremendously.”
“Yeah. If we get enough, we can make enough mines for Weather, Detrick, and Hook,” Joker said.
“Who knows how to make them?” Little Joe asked.
“Zach says he can,” Joker said. “And I don’t doubt it.”
Little Joe chuckled. Joker glanced over at Trader Joe, who seemed to be deep in thought. He wondered what the man was thinking about and asked him.
“Oh, I was thinking of the possible applications for the explosives,” he said and changed the subject. “Okay, about Holston. Back when it was up and running, they had surveillance cameras everywhere, and probably a lot of motion sensors.” He pointed at the sign. “There’s one camera, right there. If there are people still there, they may have it up and running.”
“It’s possible,” Joker conceded.
Trader Joe nodded. “If you don’t mind me saying so, Gunnery Sergeant, you’re a Marine, and therefore you’re a bit gruff. Nothing wrong with that, it’s your nature. But with that in mind, if we encounter people, I would suggest letting me do most of the talking. I’m a natural-born salesman, if I say so myself.”
“He is,” Little Joe agreed.
“We’ll see,” Joker said.
Trader Joe grunted. “Gunny, if there are people here, we don’t want to make enemies of them.”
Joker thought a long minute. He then tapped on the printout. “Alright, we’ll head up to the admin buildings. We’ll do a drive-by and see if we make contact. If we do, you can do the talking.”
The site was crisscrossed with roads. Little Joe had the digital camera and took pictures of every building they drove past. After thirty minutes, Joker came to a stop in front of a cluster of what appeared to be administrative offices and killed the engine. All the buildings they had driven by appeared bereft of humans. They saw nobody standing around, nobody staring at them from behind a window, no signs whatsoever of human activity.
“It appears the whole place is abandoned,” Trader Joe surmised. “Pity. I was hoping there were people here whom we could convince to restart manufacturing.”
“Yeah, it certainly would have got everyone back home excited,” Joker said. He looked at his watch. “We’re burning fuel and daylight. Let’s get started on one or two of those storage magazines.”
They found one with twelve-foot-tall concrete walls on three sides. The opposite side of the walls had earthen berms. Joker parked on the safe side of one of the walls.
“If those walls aren’t an indicator there’s explosives in that building, I don’t know what is,” he remarked.
Father and son agreed, and the three men exited their vehicle. They walked up to the thick, steel entry door and watched as Joker inspected it.
“Do you think it has that MX stuff?” Little Joe asked.
“IMX-101,” Joker replied.
“Yeah, that’s what I meant. What’s so special about it anyway?”
“It has the same power as TNT, but it’s not as sensitive,” Joker said.
Little Joe frowned. “That doesn’t make much sense. Either it goes bang or it doesn’t.”
Joker turned to him, started to give a two-word smart assed retort, but opted to try another tact.
“Think of it this way. Back in the day when you were in high school and you were dating that ugly acne-faced girl, y’all went to a movie. It was one of those action movies where the good guys were all Navy Seal, tenth-degree ninja-dick black belts, and master snipers who could nail head shots from three miles away. They rig some explosives on the bad guy’s hideout and move into position. Then, one of them shoots at the explosive charge and everything blows up six or seven times, right?”
“Um, okay?” Little Joe responded.
“Alright, with IMX-101 that doesn’t happen. It won’t blow up if it is struck by a bullet. It requires a specific type of charge for it to go bang.”
Little Joe stared at Joker several seconds before responding. “Oh.”
Joker walked up to the door and gave it a closeup inspection. At one point, he rapped the heavy steel door with his knuckles in several spots before finally speaking. “I’m pretty sure I can use the Semtex to blow this door open and if there’s that MX stuff in there, it won’t explode and blow us to hell and back.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” Trader Joe asked.
“Then we go home and tell them our mission was a failure,” Joker said.
“I thought Marines didn’t fail missions,” Little Joe said.
Joker fixed him with a hard stare. “That’s correct, so I better get this door open.”
He did not wait for a response and walked back to the SUV. Returning a couple of minutes later, he was carrying an olive drab-colored canvas bag. They watched curiously as Joker prepared and fixed charges on the door. He rechecked his work, wired up each individual charge, and then walked with the spool back to their SUV.
Joker took a knee and hooked up the detonator to the two wires. He then pulled out a couple of earplugs, inserted them, and glanced up at the men with a smirk.
“Fire in the hole.”
The two Joes barely had time to put their hands over their ears before the charges were detonated. Despite the safety wall, the men felt the concussion. So much so that the elder Joe found himself shaking off the mild effect of vertigo. Joker was up on his feet quickly.
“C’mon!” he shouted and ran toward the breached magazine doorway.
They rounded the wall and were immediately surrounded by thick, steel gray smoke. Joker did not stop. Although he was coughing, he waved the smoke out of his face the best he could and approached the door. He could not see much, due to the smoke, so he held out one of his hands and continued stepping forward.
In his rush, he didn’t think things through and promptly tripped over the remains of the door, which was now lying on the ground. Joker fell on top of it and unfortunately it was dirty. And hot. Excruciatingly hot. Joker had used his hands to break his fall and they hit directly on the hot metal. He yelped in pain as he rolled off as quickly as he could.
“Damn, that hurt,” he growled and i
nspected his hands. He had a few cuts and one spot on his left palm was already blistering up. Trader Joe waved at the smoke and inspected closely.
“We’ll clean it up in a minute,” he said. “First, let’s see if we got lucky or we wasted that Semtex.”
Chapter 48 – The Professor
“They’ll need more than just a little help with chores,” Liam remarked.
They had spent three days in Louisiana before saying their goodbyes and moving on. They helped Big Tussey with all manner of chores, including scavenging and killing off small pockets of zeds.
“I don’t know where they come from,” Tussey had remarked. “Every time I think I’ve got them all killed off, new ones pop up.”
Melvin attempted to explain how the zeds were mutating, but all it did was confuse her. Liam continued with his line of thought.
“They should come live at Mount Weather.”
Melvin shook his head. “I already asked. Claudia most likely has cancer and is dying. She doesn’t want to die in some faraway place. Big Tussey isn’t going to leave her side. At least, not until Claudia dies.” Melvin thought a minute. “It would actually be good if we could convince some people to live in Louisiana. It’s a good location.”
“It’d make a good outpost,” True said. “I tried to get Tussey to learn how to use that radio, but I don’t think that’s possible.”
“It’s you, True,” Melvin said.
True stared at him. “What’s that?”
“She gets weak in the knees whenever you’re around,” Melvin said. “Hell, every time I turned around, she was staring at your crotch.”
The brothers burst out in laughter. Their laughter died when True stopped the truck and pointed toward something in front of them.
“There’s some people down there on horses,” he said. “I bet it’s those people from Mark Twain Lake.”
“Yeah, I’d say you’re right,” Melvin said. “Let’s see what they have in mind.”
The men were well-armed. The O’Malley brothers had their FN Blackout rifles with suppressors and Beretta 9mm handguns holstered on their hips. True had a customized Remington 870 Express model shotgun and a Beretta 9mm, also holstered, but it was concealed in the small of his back. Melvin had an M4 assault rifle and his handgun was a Glock model 21. Melvin had a thigh rig holster, which he’d taken off a young man who had tried to kill him in Kentucky.
Zombie Rules (Book 7): The Fifteens Page 29