I couldn’t hear what Pops was saying to the trio even though the cameras did have microphones. The next thing I saw was the thieves limping to the truck, taking our copper wire out and stacking the coils neatly on the construction pad. Finally, I saw their tail lights as they started up their vehicle and headed down our winding driveway to the valley below. Nope, not a lot of things scared my Pops.
My recollections were interrupted when Pops spoke again.
“This thing, this Rage, it could become the very thing that survivalists like us have long feared. Even though we were only doing it for fun, we always knew that some emergency event might force us to rely upon our preparations. Until we know for sure that the government has a handle on this disease and that the danger has passed, these people will be staying here. They can take the available rooms in the mansion, and we will assign each of them a secondary room in the emergency bunker below.”
I gave him another accepting nod. I trusted Pops with no reservation. His intelligence was unmistakable. “Okay. How many are coming?”
“For right now, fifteen. We might squeeze more in if things get any worse but don’t worry too much son, I doubt it will ever come to that.”
✽✽✽
Two months later it came to that.
The first cases showed up in Los Angeles on the very day the new people arrived. A week later San Francisco closed down all of the bridges leading into the city. They were too late. Packs of snarling, murderous afflicted roamed the streets seeking out and attacking anyone who was not infected. The news reports grew more alarming, and some stations ceased their broadcasts altogether. The comparisons of the infected to zombies were inevitable, even though those mythical creatures were dead and the Rage victims were alive. Also, while one could only stop the movie and television monsters by destroying their brain, Ragers could be taken down the same way as any living person although they were much less sensitive to shock as were uninfected human beings.
We sat in the living room watching the latest reports, and I felt an icicle stab me in the stomach. The scene on display was taking place in Fresno. It was always the same; the afflicted gathered in packs seeming to recognize their own, then roamed the city together, chasing down uninfected people and tearing them apart. Some in the news media made a point of emphasizing that, even though the infected would bite their victims, they did not eat them, a fact which provided comfort to no one.
We were located just on the outskirts of the city of Clovis which was a suburb of Fresno. There was nothing to stop the Rage from spreading there; then we could be next.
When the excrement hit the oscillator, and it became evident that the mysterious disease was afflicting millions of people and turning them into crazed and mindless creatures, Pops opened our home/stronghold to several people:
Dr. Kent Johnson was a dentist and dental surgeon from Austin, TX. He arrived with his beautiful wife, Toni and equally beautiful daughter, Pepper. Pops had me shake Dr. Johnson’s hand, but my attention was focused squarely on Pepper. My obvious distraction was recognized resulting in blushing by both of us. Like her mother, Pepper had long black hair, flawless white skin and a personality that tilted toward finding the humor in most situations. Her parents were a professional team with Toni acting as Kent’s assistant. Kent was a tall, gaunt but pleasant-looking man who wore a sparse goatee. His subdued personality stood in direct contrast to that of his fun-loving wife and daughter. They arrived with a U-Haul truck packed to the roof with additional medical and dental supplies.
Dr. Alawan Tashnizi was an emergency room physician who worked in the San Francisco Bay Area. He arrived alone, and I assumed his family would be following him shortly. Dr. Tashnizi was a naturalized U.S. Citizen who emigrated from Iran. He was short, maybe five feet, five inches. He reminded me of a rodent with his dark features and protruding overbite. I felt an immediate dislike for the man when I shook his hand. His smile was forced and insincere, and his hand was moist. Like the Johnsons, Tashnizi brought along a rented panel van full of additional medicines and instruments.
Major Robert Morrison, U.S. Army (Retired). The Major brought along his wife, Emma and two sons aged ten and twelve. Emma did not retire from the army, but she’d spent fourteen years as an enlisted person before deciding to stay home and raise their children. Major Morrison was tall, at least six three, and had an athletic build. Emma was also in apparent good health. Their sons, Tommy and Andy, were forces to be reckoned with, both of them exuding energy and a tendency to cause their mother to apologize for their behavior frequently. I liked them right off the bat.
Jaime and Myrna Corazon were both registered nurses and Lawful Permanent Resident immigrants from the Philippines. Both of the Corazons were small in stature and a bit shy. I couldn’t get a read on their actual personalities in our first meeting, but they seemed pleasant enough.
Gunnery Sergeant Buford (Buck) Connely, USMC (Retired). Big, muscular and confident, Buck looks a person directly in the eye and says what he thinks. Diplomacy is not one of his strong suits. He stands three inches shorter than Major Morrison but carries more muscle on his shorter frame. His buzz cut greying hair and no-nonsense demeanor made me think of the typical Hollywood Marine Sergeant. The ex-Marine, along with Major Morrison, spent a lot of hours teaching me the tricks of his trade.
Gayle Teller, Electronic Engineer, and Connely’s girlfriend. As direct as her boyfriend but much easier on the eyes. Gayle was a pretty woman, maybe in her early forties with a slim build, blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. She made herself immediately useful by upgrading our computer and surveillance systems with specialty items she brought with her.
Jimmy and Marie Bronson. He was a thirty-year-old mechanic who had spent four years in the marines. Marie was a police officer in Jacksonville, Florida. Jimmy taught me self-defense and shooting techniques whenever we had free time, and he became a friend very quickly.
All of these people were members of Pops’ survivalist clubs. He had carefully chosen each of them for their particular skills. They had all taken temporary leave from their jobs to join us on our hilltop. None of us were sure what was going to happen to the world with the news reports getting worse every day. These special individuals were with us so they could add their skills to the advantages that Dragon’s Lair and its massive stock of supplies offered.
The reports on the world situation seemed to agree that the Rage affliction originated somewhere in the Middle East which led many to speculate that it was a terror weapon that got out of hand. The very first reports of people exhibiting wildly aggressive behavior were tracked down to Iran and Iraq. Tehran and Baghdad were both quickly overwhelmed with the afflicted and the condition spread with alarming speed. Maps on the news channels showed splotches in red where the Rage had washed over entire countries in a matter of weeks. It reached Europe three months after the media reported the first cases. The lack of any real borders there easily overcame the attempts to prevent its spread to other nations. In an age where anyone could hop a plane and be in another country in a matter of hours, it was no surprise when it started showing up everywhere, including the United States.
The first American cases were in New York. That was probably the worst possible location to contain a highly infectious disease. The dense population and widespread use of public transportation virtually guaranteed a quick distribution of the sickness.
After welcoming our new friends into Dragon’s Lair and getting everyone settled into their rooms, we all gathered around an 80-inch flat screen each evening to watch the latest news reports. What we saw was not encouraging.
Chapter 3
I was standing night watch along with Jimmy Bronson. The presence of the former marine always made me feel safer as we patrolled the perimeter of our compound. There was roughly a two-acre parcel on the hilltop around which Pops had built a ten-foot wall. It was a pretty wall, but its aesthetics concealed the fact that it was designed to be a severe and formidable barrier to anyone we wanted
to keep out.
“If we have to be on night watch, at least it’s a comfortable temperature.” Jimmy carried an M4 rifle slung over his back, the barrel pointing down. “For once the smog ain’t so bad. I can actually see the lights from Fresno.”
I looked out to the west. The lights of the big city were still on despite the recent developments. People had been advised to barricade themselves in their homes until help came, but I doubted the local government’s ability to do anything. When the outbreaks first began in Los Angeles, the Governor called in all of the police and fire department personnel from the largest cities to contain the situation. None had returned. Now, with Fresno and Clovis both besieged by roving packs of mindless murderers, there was no government help available. We all knew we were on our own.
The sounds of shots were heard coming from Clovis below us. Jimmy raised a pair of sophisticated night vision binoculars to his eyes. I did the same. The landscape displayed in the glasses was green but bright as daylight. The gunshots below looked like fireflies dancing around in our devices. The fact that the state government had screwed us by taking our police away did not mean the people were left entirely unprotected. The Central Valley of California was an island of conservatism in the liberal state, and many people in the Fresno/Clovis area owned firearms. My enhanced binoculars revealed several armed groups moving through the streets. The sounds of gunfire had become commonplace over the last two weeks. Even full-auto rifle fire was not uncommon. Many people had long ago purchased bootleg components that could be used to convert semi-automatic rifles to fully automatic. The Rage emergency had prompted those people to disassemble their weapons and drop in the illegal parts.
Now they used those modified weapons to hunt and kill the packs of the afflicted.
“They’re getting pretty close,” I observed.
“Yep. Looks like the crazies are maybe halfway down Shaw Avenue.”
I focused my binoculars on one collection of citizens who appeared to be lying in wait for a group of afflicted that was moving in from a side street.
“Yep. Shaw and Willow, I think. That’s a little too close.”
I could feel the smile in Jimmy's voice when he spoke. “Yeah, but I think your Clovis boys are fixing to surprise them.”
The group of afflicted was about thirty or forty strong. One of the symptoms of Rage was the constant howling and growling. Being near a pack of them sounded much like when a person walked into a kennel and set all the dogs to barking. It was eerie.
I watched as the pack reached the intersection and turned onto Shaw Avenue. Shaw was one of the busiest streets in the small town of Clovis. The wide lane between the stores seemed attractive to the mob, and they turned east toward our location.
I saw the sparks from the guns before hearing their reports. There were only about ten or twelve uninfected but their weapons made up for the difference in numbers. We could hear the rattle of at least two full-auto rifles.
Instead of fleeing the deadly barrage, the infected pack rushed forward directly into the path of destruction. The sight of others in their horde falling dead or dying around them did not affect the ones that had, thus far, escaped harm. They continued to push forward, moving ever faster as they neared their intended prey. The grainy, green display provided by the night vision binoculars did not reveal much detail, but the expressions of anger and hatred on the faces of the afflicted was discernable.
I watched on in horror as two of the afflicted reached one of the ambushers. Both of the sickened were males, and one had taken a bullet to the ribcage, but the injury did not appear to be slowing him down. Their victim, a young woman who seemed to be barely out of her teens, was bowled over. I could see her desperately trying to keep one attacker’s teeth from her face as the other afflicted attacked her thigh. She kicked out and caught the mindless fiend right in his jaw. I could almost hear the clacking of teeth from my distant vantage point. Before the other afflicted could ravage her face, a young male walked up and casually placed a handgun against his temple. There was a flash, then a burst of fluid from the opposite temple (colorless in my night vision). The girl’s attacker fell limp upon her. Another Clovis man ran up and helped the first rescuer in pulling the dead afflicted man off of the shaken young woman.
“Damn! That was a close one. Did you see that little girl almost buy it?”
I lowered my binoculars and looked at Jimmy. He wore a slight grin, but I could tell he was worried. Things were getting worse instead of better, and the mobs of the infected were getting closer.
“I did,” I answered. “And from here it looks like the uninfected are largely outnumbered by the sick. This isn’t good, Jimmy. You’re an ex-marine. How long do you think the people down there can keep the streets safe without government help?”
He finally lowered his binoculars. He fished in his breast pocket for a pack of cigarettes and lit one with a plastic lighter. I waited as he took his first drag, then exhaled a long stream of smoke through his nostrils.
“Boy, that’s a good question with no easy answers.” He took another pull on the cigarette. “I don’t think most people know the real problem with this type of thing. I mean, no one could know much about it because it has never happened before. But I do know some things for certain.” He gave another peek through the binoculars before continuing. “A lot of people think a rifle and a box of shells is going to solve all of their problems in an emergency.” He pointed down the hill. “Incidents like we just saw? Those are going to eat up ammunition like crazy. Some people don’t realize that a rifle without sufficient ammunition is just a stick. Very few people have put away ammunition in sufficient quantities to wage a long war of attrition, and that’s what this is.”
I pondered his words and deliberately stopped myself from shivering. And it wasn’t cold out. “Well, there are plenty of stores down there with large stashes of bullets, aren’t there?”
He finished his smoke and flicked the butt over the wall. “Sure. But how many people will be competing for those resources? And of the ones who can exploit them, how many are concerned about protecting the streets instead of just hunkering down and lying low? Protecting themselves and their families?”
His words were chilling. It brought the reality into focus for me as I was still clinging to the hope that all of this was going to go away soon. I thought about our subterranean warehouse with its massive stores of ammunition in several calibers. I was thankful for Pops’ forethought, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit…guilty.
Dragon’s Lair was entirely self-sufficient. We had enough food, ammo, power, water and anything else we would need to last us for a long time. That was good. But, I wondered how much effect we could have on the efforts of our embattled neighbors below. If we loaded up one of our pickups with a few crates of .556 ammunition and maybe some .308 we could sneak down the hill at night and meet up with one of the vigilante teams who was trying to keep it all together. We could also throw in a few boxes of .38 Special and 9 millimeter for the people who only had handguns. That extra ammo might be the difference between success and failure in their efforts. After all, we would benefit from their accomplishment.
I resolved to talk to Pops about it the next day.
Chapter 4
“Marcus, I’m out!”
Marcus Tanner looked over at his brother, George. The elder Tanner was ten feet away, standing in the alcove of a shuttered Japanese restaurant. His Ruger 10/22 rifle barrel was still smoking.
The brothers had ventured out for their third night of trying to thin out the packs of afflicted who were growing more plentiful and dangerous in recent days. The men had successfully taken out several groups of ten or twelve on previous nights but tonight was proving to be different. The bands of infected and mindless victims of the Rage had grown as more and more people succumbed to the sickness. The brothers had already been forced to hide earlier when a horde of forty or more moved past them on Fourth Street in the small downtown area of Clovis.
Marcus had previously cautioned his brother about counting on the .22 Long Rifle weapon. The Ruger rifle was extremely reliable, but the afflicted were proving themselves to be highly resistant to the shock value of gunshot wounds, and the twenty-twos were small bullets. Marcus had armed himself with a Ruger Mini-14. The .556 bullet that it fired carried much more punch. The round was the same one used by our military forces in their M4s.
The two young men had been trying to sneak their way back to their home on the south side of Shaw Avenue after seeing the size of the afflicted packs roaming this night. They had gotten back to Ashlan Avenue before a band of a hundred or more infected noticed them. The presence of the two uninfected men had been heralded by screams, groans, wails, and snarls as the sickened and senseless pack rushed towards them with intentions of tearing them apart.
Marcus and George fled into a strip mall with a line of stores at their backs and the pack in front of them. With no escape options available, the brothers began shooting. There was an encouraging result as several of their attackers fell immediately. Unfortunately, most of those quickly stood back up and continued their charge. The .22LR wounds might eventually prove fatal once the bleeding took its toll on their victims; the problem was that the brothers needed them dead now. The .556 barked much louder than George’s weapon, and each report resulted in a Rage victim falling and staying down. The infected had been a block away when they began their attack and had now covered half that distance.
Marcus looked wide-eyed at his brother. “How much ammo did you bring?”
George was slapping and patting at his pockets, searching furiously for a loaded magazine. “I don’t know thirty or forty rounds. It was every mag I had.”
There was no time for arguing with the pack closing in. Marcus reached to his side and drew the Smith and Wesson M&P nine millimeter pistol and tossed it over to his brother, followed by three loaded magazines. “Take your time and make your shots count.”
Virgil's War- The Diseased World Page 2