by Dave Lund
“OK boys, now place your hands on top of your heads … good. Now, on your knees, and cross your ankles. If you do what we say, you might live through this ... even you, spic. All we need is your gear and supplies. We have no use for you two, and we don’t want to harm either of you. Once we’re done here, we will drop you off away from this compound—but all of that depends on your cooperation.”
Chivo kept smiling, turning his head slowly from one side to the other, scanning the group. T.D. held a pump shotgun. Both of the women had AR-style rifles, except that Amanda’s rifle hung on a sling, the dog’s leash in her hands. Jeff stood with his hands empty, the obvious leader of this small group. The boy, Danny, stood next to Jeff.
“Danny, fetch their rifles.”
Danny drew a knife and walked behind Bexar and Chivo, where he cut the rifle slings, letting them clatter to the driveway, before walking in front of the two men in tactical gear, picking up the rifles, and laying them on the ground behind Jeff.
“OK boys. Now unfasten your helmets, and slowly place them on the ground in front of you.”
Bexar took a sideways glance at Chivo, who nodded slightly, still smiling. He released the clasp on his helmet and set it in front of his knees on the pavement. Chivo slowly did the same.
Danny came around the two and retrieved their helmets, laying them next to the rifles.
“This won’t take too much longer. Just keep playing along and you both live. Hands straight up above your heads, please.”
T.D.’s gaze remained intense; the worn, pump shotgun was pressed into his shoulder in a stance of familiarity with the weapon. The long, tube barrel was kept pointed towards Chivo and Bexar. After their hands were straight up, Danny approached them both again, pulling the Velcro side panels open, unfastening the tactical carriers that they wore. He pulled each heavy carrier over their heads, taking them one at a time back to the growing pile of gear behind Jeff.
“Secure them, Danny. You boys play nice now, and we might let you live,” he repeated.
Might? Bexar glanced around the yard, looking for an escape, but the fence looked about ten-feet high. There’s no way I can make it to the fence and over before that fucking dog chews my ass or I get shot.
Chivo turned his gaze towards Danny, who walked forward with a pair of handcuffs ready. They looked ridiculously large in his small hands. Bexar glanced at Chivo with a look of concern, which only garnered him another slight nod for a reply. Chivo just smiled the entire time.
Danny slapped the cuffs hard against Bexar’s wrist and pulled his right arm down behind his back, followed by the left. He slapped Bexar’s left wrist into the cuffs, the muffled sound of the ratcheting lock barely heard above the growling dog. Way to go dumbass. That’s going to bruise. And you put my hands in facing each other instead of facing out. Amateur move, buddy. That at least tells me you aren’t trained or weren’t trained very well.
The kid stepped away before double-locking the handcuffs and repeating the process on Chivo. Bexar glanced over and could see that the kid had put the cuffs on wrong with Chivo as well. Too bad I can’t do shit with this opportunity. How did those fucking meth-heads flip their cuffs in the back of my patrol car?
Suddenly, any fear Bexar felt was replaced with rage. Anger burned in the pit of his stomach. How fucking dare these fucktards take my stuff, take my friends’ stuff? Fuck all of them. His pistol was still in the holster on his right hip, but he knew Danny would probably take that away soon as well.
“… four, three, two …” Bexar looked at Chivo in time to hear him yell “NOW” followed by a blinding explosion behind them. Bexar fell forward onto the driveway, but Chivo was standing, the handcuffs hanging from his left wrist, pistol in his hand, moving and shooting, double taps with each minor turn of the pistol. Bexar heard none of this; his ears were ringing in pain. One of the tactical carriers was on fire. By the time that he rolled back up onto his knees, feeling dizzy from the explosion, Chivo had released one of Bexar’s handcuffs, leaned in front of his face, dropped a small plastic handcuff key on the ground, and flashed him a thumbs up. He then quickly jogged to the tactical carrier, ripped his shirt over his head, and beat the carrier with the shirt to put the fire out, leaving it smoking in the silent compound.
Bexar stood, still feeling dizzy, and looked around the driveway. The dog was dead. T.D. was dead; everyone was dead except him and Chivo. Bexar looked at Chivo, who was talking to him, but he still couldn’t hear anything. He shook his head and pointed at his ears. Chivo flashed another thumbs up and pointed to Bexar’s carrier and gear, motioning for him to put it on. Bexar nodded and did what he was told. I’m not sure how in the fuck Chivo pulled that off, but fuck all of them anyway. There was no way they were going to let us live. And even if they did, even if they dropped us off in the city without any gear, what then? We’d still die.
Chivo walked to his gear, pulled his damaged carrier over his head, and fastened it back up the best he could. One of the pouches was a ragged mess, as was much of the Cordura fabric near it, showing the scorched armor plate beneath. Chivo pulled each of the M4 magazines out of the pouches on his carrier, checking each one. Two of them were bent and badly damaged; he dropped them to the ground. Helmet on, Chivo turned to Bexar, patted the top of his own helmet, and pointed to the house. Bexar nodded and followed Chivo towards the house. The ringing in Bexar’s ears was starting to dim, but he still couldn’t hear anything. They didn’t know if there were any others inside the home, but Bexar figured they probably would have come outside or started firing at them by now if there were. Ten minutes later, the house was clear, the other adobe house was clear, and Bexar could hear again. He and Chivo stepped back into the sunlight and walked to the parked bus.
Undead rattled the metal siding fence and gate as they beat against it; their moans could be heard over the noise. Buzzards circled lazily and low overhead, some of them already picking at the German shepherd’s dead form.
“Shit, man. Where did you have that handcuff key? And what the hell was that? A flash bang?”
“I had it taped behind my belt, small and plastic—undetectable. I’ve been carrying something like it for years but have never been in a spot to need it. And yes, that was a flash bang; one I modified at least. Two-minute fuse. When that kid pulled my carrier over my head, I let my hand pull the pin hanging just outside the pouch. Don’t look at me like that, mano. I don’t carry it like that, they’re normally taped down. I set that up while riding in the bus to get here. Like I said, be cool, act cool; act like you trust, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet. My radio’s fucked by the way. Let me see yours.”
Chivo pulled the radio, the push to talk, and the control head out of Bexar’s carrier. He took his own carrier off, pulled out the ruined gear, and replaced it with the working unit. Bexar didn’t care; he didn’t really know how to work it and it saved him weight off his kit, which was nice.
Bexar climbed into the bus and onto the roof to see over the fence. “Holy shit. That’s a bunch of undead.”
“Fuck those corpses, mano. One piece at a time. We’re OK for now. First, we need to figure out our gear, dig through these homes to see what we can scavenge, and then figure out our wheels situation.”
“We do have the bus.”
“Sure, but that old piece of shit might not make it down the block, much less across the mountains.”
CHAPTER 27
March 8, Year 1
Diamond Valley Lake, CA
By the time the full rest cycle for the men on security watch was complete, Aymond estimated it to be close to 9 a.m. The men would have pressed on without the complete rotation, but after what they found at Twentynine Palms, today’s drive towards Camp Pendleton would probably be tough. He needed his men rested more than he needed an extra two hours of time.
After they woke at sunrise, the first-watch-rotated pair was sent on a foot patrol to recon the area and locate a fuel source. They traveled in the general forward directi
on of the convoy, and they found and secured what they were looking for at a construction site approximately two miles to the west. The large fuel bowser stood nearly ten feet in the air on a stand, the construction company’s name painted in large bright letters on the side. The fuel was gravity fed; the padlocked nozzle would be quickly set free upon their arrival with the M-ATVs and the bolt cutters.
“The convoy rolls in two mikes. How copy?”
“Good copy, Chief. Still secure, and no activity.”
A few minutes later, the convoy drove onto the construction site and the trucks each took turns being fueled. The new additions to the team took care of the fueling while the rest of the team held security.
Once full of fuel, the convoy drove west and quickly neared I-215. The tree-lined road to reach the Interstate, flanked on each side by housing developments, was in shambles. Aymond was stunned to see the destruction. Many of the homes were significantly damaged; it looked like a large fire had raged uncontrolled. Abandoned cars, disabled by the EMP, rotted into the pavement on flat tires; some of them involved in collisions. The convoy kept tight, but resorted to rolling around ten mph, driving across the curbed median and onto the sidewalks to avoid groups of shambling dead and choke points where the rotting vehicles made traveling on the road surface impossible.
“Chief, this isn’t looking good.”
Aymond frowned at the radio transmission. “Still better than Fallujah. Keep scanning, keep looking; there might be survivors.”
They bounced across the median again, light work for the armored 4x4’s sophisticated suspension. It took much longer than expected, but the lead M-ATV finally reached the intersection before the bridge over I-215. An eighteen-wheeler lay on its side across the bridge, the cab badly burned, at least a dozen other vehicles mangled in its wake, blocking the northbound feeder road and the bridge.
The truck stopped; Aymond pointed. “Take that gap; drive down the embankment.”
“Aye, Chief.” The driver squeezed between the eighteen-wheeler and another vehicle, nudging the car with the bumper as he pushed the truck through. The sandy grass surface of the manicured bridge embankment paled in comparison to what Aymond’s team had driven through in northern Afghanistan on the last deployment. The M-ATV traversed it with ease. The Interstate below, choked with vehicles, looked nearly impassable.
The sergeant driving the big truck looked at Aymond, who responded, “Do the best you can, stay in the median if you have to.”
The radio crackled in the cab of the truck. “Chief, we have a large group of tangos following. Confirm the ROE?”
“Twenty meters or closer, put them down.”
The Rules of Engagement ... Aymond hadn’t thought to lay out what those should be. He didn’t have a transition, a real chance to plan and brief for this; he simply hadn’t known it was this bad. Zig-zagging back and forth across the median, across the roadway to the center divider and back again, the convoy made slow progress; the rear M-ATV’s 50-cal thumped in short bursts.
There’s no way we can keep this up without getting resupplied, but we have no supply depot. I guess we’ll have Camp Pendleton … if we’re lucky.
The Garage
Erin slowly rolled through the frequencies, hoping to hear more than just static as she went. More than a few times she could have sworn she heard voices in the static, but just as she seemed to hear them, they disappeared into the white noise and she wondered if she had really heard them at all. Still sitting on the roof rack of the Toyota, Erin looked at her mom and Jessie sitting on the floor, except that Jessie was lying on her side and rubbing her belly. She was starting to show, but not too badly yet. The map still sat between them, and her mom took notes on a notepad. They didn’t plan like this when they left the first time, and Erin couldn’t understand why her mom was acting like this now.
“… five, three, seven, nine, thirteen, one …”
“Hey, I found something on the radio!”
Erin turned the volume up and a man’s voice could be heard with a bit of an electronic hum in the background, clearly reading off a random list of numbers.
“What is this shit? It’s really creepy!”
Sarah looked at Jessie, who slowly sat up and kind of shrugged before getting to her feet. “Bexar said something about ‘number stations’ before. I guess this is what he meant.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. Supposedly some sort of way to communicate with secret agents or some bullshit like that. It was one of the conspiracy theories Bexar had. I swear that man was one step away from wearing a goddamned tin foil hat.”
The transmission faded in and out, eventually melting into static.
“Huh, weird.” Erin went back to slowly changing the frequencies on the shortwave.
The SCC
“Clint, what is the cypher? How does it break down?”
“The series actually means nothing. It just announces to any surviving Lazarus operatives that a particular facility is up and operational. In this case, the numbers are all odd and they occur on a specific frequency, but the sequence itself is ordered randomly—that’s a computer-generated recording. In twelve hours a second series goes out that uses a one-time pad.”
“Out of everything you’ve told me, you’ve never fully explained Osiris and Lazarus.”
“OK, Amanda … each of us technically operated under the Office of the Direction of National Intelligence, but in reality, we were our own separate group with a totally black budget. There are twenty-four of us in all. You know Cliff and I and Chuck Johnson, and you know that those aren’t our real names. With our group, we all assumed first names starting with a C, and a last name like Smith, Johnson, or something just as common, even the four women. We all had specific, assigned duties. Cliff was assigned to the Secretary of State, who was near Denver when notice of the attack was given. After Babylon Shield was set in motion, he took control of the SECSTATE and moved her whole security team to the facility under the Denver International Airport. That facility was overrun and lost; all persons there are presumed lost, except for Cliff. Once the SECSTATE died, Cliff’s directive was to operate as a bit of a free agent to help the rest of the Osiris Project. Lazarus is what we were all currently coded as; the name was born from the Lazarus Project, in which we were ‘killed’ in our former lives, and then ‘rose from the dead’ as our current selves, starting from scratch with fresh identities. None of us had any living close family members; it served as a false flag to make our friends think we were dead. I have photos from my own memorial; it was touching.”
Amanda looked at Clint with a bit of surprise and disgust.
“Don’t look at me like that—like you’ve never entertained the thought of how well you were liked by your friends. It gave our friends closure and it gave us closure, and notice that we could never go back. We were eyes forward and mission driven from that point on. Well, these projects have been operating in some fashion and name since 1947. Originally, new members were being brought in one at a time, but early on, it was found that new recruits needed to be initiated together in groups to help with the solitude of being ‘dead’ and starting over. Primary training takes many forms. It starts at The Farm, which you’re probably familiar with, if for no other reason than its reference in popular culture. The Farm members attend a laundry list of Special Forces schools and training, going through the selection process under their initial aliases. Afterwards, those identities are killed off in various training accidents post-graduation, and new ones are assumed. I’ve been through Airborne, Ranger Selection, and the Para-Rescue selection processes and training. Each of my new personal legends came with back stories and rank. Each time, we have to indoctrinate ourselves in that armed branch’s culture, including jargon and lifestyle applicable for our age and rank. As we each grew older, the training cycles changed to schools and selections that would be appropriate for us, so recently it was the State Department’s diplomatic protection training, th
e Secret Service’s driving school, that sort of continued professional extension. Cake-walk training compared to what we had before.”
“All you did was train?”
“No, we rotated in and out of training cycles. Out of our cycles, we operated as trainers at The Farm for the CIA’s clandestine programs until we were complete. There isn’t any way to finish those early schools back to back; it takes too much time and it is just too hard on the body. We needed a month’s downtime in between to recover from injuries and start the process of learning and living our new legends for the upcoming schools.”
“Jesus! How long did this all take?”
“A bit over ten years.”
“And you’re OK with all of this?”
“Absolutely. A very small percentage of our service men and women get to attend even a single Special Forces program; I’ve been through more than a few.”
“What happens after the training?”
“We’re assigned our target. Say we’re assigned someone in the Presidential line of succession. We move to where they are located and shadow their movements, traveling under various commercial and government means.”
“So you lived in Arkansas?”
“Yes.”
“And you followed me around?”
“Yes.”
“Was Chuck with you during all of this?”
“No, Chuck just graduated from the initial process last year and was sent to shadow with me; I was his field training officer.”
She did not look happy; Clint saw it on her face, but there was no other way to conduct the program. She might understand, or she might not.
Amanda took a deep breath before speaking. “So how closely did you follow me?”
“Close enough to know what was in your nightstand drawer and how often you used it.”
Eyes wide, Amanda looked horrified. Her mouth hung open in complete shock.
Clint winked. “Don’t worry. You’re completely vanilla compared to my previous target. You are genuinely a good person; your sweet nature is the reason why I’ve fallen in love with you.”