Deadfall: Survivors

by Richard Flunker

  When we first walked in, you could tell right away that something was wrong. Tague gathered me up quick, and took us up to the computer room and clicked away at a file. I listened to the recording, and realized why everyone was on edge. It was a new conversation between our two mysterious gentlemen in Asheville. The first one, the one that had been at the university, had really specific instructions for the second one, instructions that revealed some very clear fears we had about their intentions. They were clearly searching for our house, or as they called it, a Government Ark. They also had another name for it; Datila.

  They were desperately seeking our house, in search of specific data that was supposedly stored there. Tague mentioned that he tried hunting down through the files here, but that without knowing exactly what they were looking for, he had no parameters to search. What he did say was that, as we somewhat already knew, there were vast amounts of storage in hard drives, not just in the computer room, but in some buried NAS drives somewhere else in the house. Something in there, something my father had allowed someone else to store there, was somehow very valuable to this group.

  The discussion that evening quickly turned to what we might have to do. The option of simply sitting and waiting was probably out of the question, despite the fact that we had the advantage of them simply not knowing where it was. And yet, if this group was fully intent on finding us, specifically this house, our sanctuary, it fell within the realm of possibilities that they eventually would. We probably were in no position to oppose any kind of attack on our house, whatever advantages we thought we might have, guns or otherwise. It simply wasn’t who we were.

  The biggest problem was that we simply didn’t know enough about this group or what they wanted. It felt like a huge military conspiracy deal, and we weren’t in any kind of movie. We were teachers, lawyers and regular people, still alive after getting our lives ripped apart. We certainly felt out of place, as well as overwhelmed with the uncertainty of it all. So Evan, of course, came up with possibly the best idea, even if it was somewhat insane, and the main reason it took me thirteen days to finally write all of this up.

  We had to capture one of these men and interrogate him.

  Yes, like I mentioned, insane. First of all, we had no idea where in Asheville they were. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack, except that in our case, the haystack was actually thousands of walking dead. A needle in a zombiestack. So while we were trying to find someone whose location we had no inkling of, we would have to be dodging through what was probably a rather larger ocean of zombies. In my experience, it was one thing to avoid the few random zombies out in the country, it was entirely another to go willingly into a larger city. Charlotte clearly had shown us this.

  To add to that, was the fact that we had clearly observed the stream of zombies slowly flowing north along the interstate. It was, of course, unlikely they were holding Zombie-con in Asheville, but the city was kind of a highway bottleneck, and regardless of their destination (did they even have one?), that traffic was sure to be turned into a jam in Asheville. Not the best combination for living human beings. One does not simply walk into Zombiedor.

  Of course, even if we could somehow find one of these guys, and if there were really only two, but then we would have to deal with what, to all of us now frightened civilians, sounded like trained professionals. We could, of course, have been completely wrong; they could have been guys like us, former plumbers, cable guys and high school students, but there was something to the way they talked, and for that matter, the sheer audacity of simply searching within a large city itself, that screamed “I'm a Delta Commando.” Even Evan, with his almighty knowledge of guns, really only got that from hunting deer in Harnett and Johnston counties.

  Ok, so we find this guy, take him down without killing him, and then what? Is one of us here going to actually torture the guy? It’s possible that we might just find whatever information we need on him, but something told me that was not going to be the case. So, we subdue the professional soldier type guy, and suddenly he is going to sing?

  I mention all of these things because this was the state we were in that night. We knew, 99.99% sure, that we had to do this, but somehow also knew, with almost the same degree of certainty, that it was a horrible idea, and that this just had “all go wrong” written all over it. We were nervous, afraid, and clueless. We had to go up and over, out of the trench, and across no man’s land, knowing the fate that awaited us, but knowing we simply had to do it.

  We spent the entire next day getting our gear ready. Dawn and Chris would stay behind, although my chivalrous, stupid self wanted Heather to stay behind as well, she wouldn’t hear of it. We packed up as much food as we could, maybe even talked about driving the truck up to the house to stock if full. We had no idea how long we would be out and gone, just what it would take to find this guy. Aaron had suggested to simply make ourselves be found by these guys, without giving who we were away, but while a somewhat good idea, there just was this thought of these guys taking no prisoners creeping up in our minds, that we turned that idea down.

  Tague, on the other hand, after spending what seemed like most of that morning, disappeared downstairs somewhere, emerged with his plan, which would at least solve the first of our problems. He held a couple of what looked like walkie talkies, but with a small screen on each. He mentioned how he had noticed these when looking at a list of items that had been stored here. They were radio locators, and using three or more of these, as long as you knew the single frequency, you could triangulate where the signal came from. The closer we were, the more precise we could make it.

  According to Tague, the group had been communicating every other night, on exactly the same frequency. They were due to communicate again on the following evening, at which point we could see if these locators actually did what we hoped they would.

  Now things felt better. At that moment, Aaron and I decided to head down the mountain to get the truck and bring it up, not as much for the extra food, but for the flexibility it would lend us. It might make it easier to a) take a subdued human being back or, b) beat a hasty retreat if things got quickly out of hand. So, while the rest of them stayed back and packed up, Aaron and I packed up a quick pack, and took off early that afternoon to head down the mountain to that community center house we had left the truck parked at. Wait, no, was it a fire station next to it? Well, we were going there.

  We made it nearly down the mountain that day, but had to make a camp for the night because we were still a few hours away, and we simply weren’t comfortable with hiking in the dark, even with flashlights. It left too much to chance. I showed him my technique of tying my hammock high up off the ground between two trees, climbing up and being relatively safe for the evening. He didn’t take to that, instead, sleeping on the ground, but covering himself up with a large amount of brush and cover, effectively hiding himself from plain view. I hadn’t seen any indication that zombies could see in the dark any better, or had any kind of heat vision. As far as I was aware, they were just dead people, with the same abilities as people, just an added appetite for flesh.

  The whole hike down was very quiet. We didn’t have much to say to each other, and were just really worried about getting to the truck and getting back. That night was the same. Quiet night in the woods makes for great sleeping, as long as you're not worried about the undead and impending suicide missions.

  He did, at one point, ask, “Is Heather ok?”

  My instant reply had nearly been “Breast”. Thankfully, I had just said “Yes.”

  We had to drive around once we got to the truck, to find a gas station that had diesel in a tank. We eventually settled for siphoning the diesel out of a semi we found parked. It had more than enough to completely fill up the truck’s tank. On our way back, Aaron nearly ran over a zombie, formerly an elderly woman, it seemed. As much as running one a zombie over would have felt wonderful, hitting a person does about the same to a vehicle as a deer can, that i
s, completely wreck it. None of us were mechanics, and we needed our vehicle working. It really did scare the shit out of us though. I remember him telling me he was just going to drive slower.

  When we got there, at some point after noon that second day, we found the rest of the group, sans the two that were going to remain behind, ready to go. In fact, they had been ready to go since the previous night, and were now just waiting. We very quickly packed up our gear into the truck, and then began further waiting. We were all anxious and nervous, and at least I was a tad terrified. Once everything was ready, there was nothing else to do, except wait for that evening, and for Tague’s idea to hopefully work.

  Well, of course, it did. Once the radios came to life, and the two men began talking on their radios, we turned on three of the locators, and set them to the exact frequency and channel that the two men were using, and nearly instantly, the three devices lit up and started giving out a reading that, thankfully, Tague was able to interpret. He jotted down whatever numbers were being displayed, and then input them into a program he had up on one of the computers, and two small circles showed up on the map, one in the northern part of Asheville, and one in the further south part of the city. They were wide circles, covering a large area. The plan therefore, was to head to the southern one, who we had deduced was the man that was actively searching for the house. We would study the area a bit and find a good place to hole up and wait for the second night from now, where we would hopefully be able to triangulate the location even closer.

  That night, the dinner was eaten without a word being spoken. That was the tone for the night, too, as even Heather and I barely said anything.

  We headed off that third day, down the Blue Ridge Parkway, towards Asheville. For a brief moment there, those first thirty minutes or so, it was like a good old calm drive through the mountains. There were no zombies up here, and it truly felt like we just weren’t in that horrible world. You could sense everyone relaxing for a moment. That changed quickly when you head around the first corner where you can see down into Asheville. Now, Asheville isn’t your large metropolis, with huge buildings everywhere, but it was clear that this was a city, and even more so because of the enormous plume of smoke, black smoke, that was rising up from somewhere north of us, in the city. My guess was somewhere near I-40. That sight snapped us all back into reality.

  The southern search area was centered on Lake Julian, and the area of Asheville south of where the Blue Ridge Parkway cuts through the city. There were lots of residential houses there, as well as plenty of smaller commercial areas. We could easily find several locations there that we might both hide, granted that the same held true for our target. It could be a place for our target to hide (feel so soldierly by saying target). There was a high and middle school in that area, as well as some hotels along I-26, and some larger commercial buildings, REI, a YMCA and some movie theaters. We parked the truck on the western side of I-26, and moved out to scout out the interstate and see if crossing it with the truck was feasible, or if doing so would bring down the zombiestack on us.

  Thankfully, the overpass was clear, and Evan brought up the truck and we crossed over, not a dead person in sight. We passed over to our left, and parked the truck rather randomly in the parking lot of the YMCA, to hopefully not draw attention to it. Up to this point, we had not run into any zombies, and I was feeling a little too nervous about this. I much preferred seeing some of them walking around; it helped me feel comfortable knowing where they were. Instead, all I could think of was that the inside of that gym, well, that they were all going to be in there.

  And yet, it all went smoothly, again. We went inside, and only had to deal with two of the creatures, which Evan took out rather willingly. And that was it. It was a bit disconcerting that this was going way too easy. I mentioned, laughingly, that maybe we’d just find this guy sleeping in a room in here, sleeping so heavily that we could just take him there.

  Then we played the waiting game, yet again. For the rest of that day, we scouted out the YMCA, trying to find anything useful in this building. This wasn’t your typical YMCA. It was located in one of the really fancy places of the town, a really sleek shopping center, next to the REI. At one point in time, this place was super clean. Of course, now it was overgrown, and the lawns weren’t the nice trim green I remembered from a year ago. Garbage littered the ground, but it was old, flattened, sunned and discolored. There were a few cars still parked out in front, but near the entrance of the shopping area, a white van had been tipped over, blocking the entrance. Not sure what had happened there. We had just driven around it.

  We avoided being close to the windows and as the sun went down, we retired deep into the building to avoid spilling any light out. Not only did we want to avoid any zombies, but if that guy was anywhere nearby, we probably didn’t want to give ourselves away. We ate quietly, and found some cots and couches to sleep on. We moved them all into a room, barricaded the door and slept the night, splitting watches.

  I was drinking water the next morning, really early, the sun just barely rising back behind me somewhere, just starting to reach the tips of the mountains to my west. I was on the second story, by a window at what I think was an office of some sort for the Y, and I could barely just see the mountains. I remember thinking, and I wrote this down at the time, I’d much rather be there.

  What really had my attention there was a group of zombies. Down in front of us was one of those traffic circles, and beyond that, towards the west, was one of those nice downtown type avenues, with parking in the middle. Hard to describe I guess. It was really nice at one point. Now, it just had a bunch of cars that hadn’t been used in quite some time, BUT, were not empty. I had noticed that in at least three of the cars, possibly more, there were zombies on the inside. I couldn’t tell, but it almost seemed as if some were still in their seatbelts. Some were moving, and others were just sitting there, only moving once every few minutes. They had most likely been there for many months, maybe even since the beginning, and I just stood there, sipping on my water, wondering just how they had managed to die while sitting there, still strapped in.

  “It’s brutally easy to die” was the thought I had.

  Heather and I ducked out sometime later that morning, and snuck over to the REI store located just next to us. It was hopeful thinking, and, as I had assumed, we didn’t find anything useful. These were the kind of stores that were ransacked almost from the get go. I'm sure the guns had been the first to go, but that good old desire to “run to the hills” when all hell breaks loose, probably had a vast majority of people looting their hiking and camping gear to see if they could run away into the mountains. I wonder just how many died without food, from hypothermia or from injuries up there in the mountains.

  The place was a mess, but what stuck out to me was a pile of bodies towards the back of the store. We couldn’t tell if they had been zombies, although they had all had their heads crushed, shot or smashed. Just something about the way the pile was there, just made me think that maybe they had been normal living humans before being shot. Made me wonder what kind of massacres occurred when people panicked and fought for their own survival. I can’t say what made me think that. I might be completely wrong, and they were already zombies. I can only hope that most people aren’t that horrible, but, from what I have seen and from stories such as Heather’s, it just seems like when it came down to it, people could be completely evil, if needed.

  We all waited nervously that night for the communication between the two we were now hunting and we jumped when that radio cracked into life with their first transmission. Immediately, Tague had his locators running, and I could tell from his eyes that something was up. He didn’t have his computer program, but instead, had a paper map with him. After figuring out the numbers (coordinates somehow?), he figured it out on the map and again looked at us, with wide eyes. He took one of the locators and changed something on it, and got a different reading from the device and looked at me.
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  “Eight hundred feet southwest”.

  He had whispered it as if someone would be able to hear us.

  My guess was the hotel that we had talked about earlier. Hotels were easy places to survive against zombies; you could ignore rooms with them, or silently lock yourself in a room without them and be relatively safe. For us though, it would be a difficult task to find this guy out if he was in that hotel. We would have to go almost room to room, or, somehow put ourselves somewhere on the outside of the hotel to be able to see if he was there, and maybe get him when he came out of it. It would put us in a bad position outside of the hotel, and it also might make us more vulnerable to being discovered by this guy. We would have to place ourselves in different stores around the hotel and stay in touch by radio.

  Of course, as usually happens, whatever I thought might happen certainly didn’t. Here’s how that morning went.

  We got up extra early, divvied up the guns, and did our best to sneak out of the YMCA. I mentioned to keep away from the cars with the zombies locked in them, as they might make noise and maybe draw more of them nearby. We paired up and then split up to head down to the hotel and get into our positions. Heather and I watched Aaron and Lucy head towards the movie theater, and Tague and Evan went to Barnes and Nobles across from the hotel. After watching them off, Heather and I went towards a small baby clothing shop. We had hoped that in these three spots, we could see anyone coming in or out.

  But he had other ideas. Heather and I nearly ran into the man, dressed in the most unmilitary of clothing; jeans and a t-shirt, just coming around the corner where our little shop was. It had appeared that he was also on the move, but we had figured it wrong. Instead of emerging from the hotel, he came around a completely different corner than we were expecting. For a brief moment, the three of us just stood there looking at each other. He then reached down, grabbed his radio and began to talk into it.