by Chris Blake
Logan stays behind with a slightly puzzled look, not quite sure what he means. What army only has two people? He decides to shake it off and go to bed. After the past few weeks, he could sleep forever or so he felt.
Chapter Twelve
Army of Two
February, 2013
It is mid-morning before the Black family begins to rise in their bedroom. The rest of the group saves them some breakfast but start going through their daily chores. Everyone figures they deserve to relax after what they have been through.
Logan, always the Navy man is the first one to rise. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes and cleans himself up in the bathroom. A cold shower always worked best for him.
After cleaning himself up, he goes into the kitchen where only Cindy, Victoria, and Grayson remain. Everyone else is outside working on projects.
“Good morning.” Logan says.
“Did you sleep well?” Cindy asks.
“Like a baby!” Logan exclaims.
“That’s good. We left you some breakfast here.” Cindy waves towards the powdered egg scramble they made for breakfast.
“Where’s everyone else at?” Logan inquires.
“They disappear outside all day, just about every day, we don’t usually pay attention to it. We make sure everything in the house is taken care of, and they do what they do.” Victoria replies with a wave of her hand dismissing the idea of outside work.
Logan nods his head, skips breakfast and heads outside in search of the men, particularly Vintago. The statement he made before bed still sticks in the back of Logan’s mind.
After talking a walk around the hatchery and taking in all the sights, he runs into Jessica. She is feeding the fish in the big pond with some of the extra fish food from the warehouse building.
“Hey Jessica, have you seen the guys?” Logan asks her.
“Yeah, they are probably walking around down by the highway. They go there a lot.” she replies and points to the road leading down to the highway.
He starts walking down the road, and she calls out to him, “It’s about three miles to the bottom, why don’t you take one of the quads down there.”
Logan thanks her for the advice and walks over to the warehouse where the last four wheeler is located. He finds it, hops on, and turns the key to start the ignition. He speeds across the hatchery and down the road. He takes the turns in the road a little too fast, almost like he is having fun. Before he realizes it, the highway is coming up, and he starts to slow down, not wanting to go too far away from the hatchery, and not knowing what lies on the highway.
Sure enough as he gets to the edge of the highway, there rests the other four wheeler. Vintago, on the other hand, is nowhere to be found.
Logan hops off his quad and starts looking around for him. He walks out to the highway and finds him looking through the trunk of a broken down car a little ways down the road.
“What are you doing out here?” Logan yells down to him.
Vintago turns around and brings his HK rifle up to his shoulder and points it at Logan.
“Whoa buddy, it’s just me!” Logan throws his hands into the air.
Seeing that it is just Logan, Vin drops his rifle back into the sling and shakes his head, waving for Logan to come over.
Logan sprints over to where Vintago is looting.
“You’ve got to be more quiet man, there are Charlie all over the highway.” Vin tells him.
“What do you mean?” Logan asks.
“Infected, we call them Charlie.” Vintago catches himself and explains the name.
“Oh ok, gotcha. Gotta keep an eye out for Charlie eh.” Logan says in a deep mocking voice.
“Yeah I come down here to look for anything I can find, but I run into them all the time.” Vin says.
“I think it’s because the highway is the path of least resistance. On both sides you have a cliff wall or a drop off, so they just follow the highway through the mountains.” Vin explains to Logan.
“Makes sense to me. Have you found anything good today?” Logan asks.
“Not really, but I was just going through this luggage here and check this out!” Vintago holds up a stringy see through women's lingerie collection.
“I think I’m going to give this to my old lady!” Vin laughs out loud.
“Don’t tell her I found it in the trunk of a car with a dead chick inside!” Vin tells Logan with a serious face.
Logan takes a look into the car, and inside is a blonde bombshell with double D’s and the body to go with it. Well, at least that is what he imagined she looked like before she took a bullet to the head and rotted for over a month.
“Well I don’t think she will need them again.” Logan chuckles.
Changing the subject, Logan says, “So what‘s with this ‘army’ you are talking about.”
“I was waiting for you to bring that up.” Vin replies coolly.
Vintago explains to Logan that he wants to make the hatchery an outpost and build himself an army of trained survivors to start taking back the smaller towns. He tells Logan that they have food, water, and electricity, but what they need is strong fighters. He needs more men like Logan to help him achieve these goals.
“We can live a long time up in the hatchery without needing to go into town much, but you’ve seen my dad, and my father in law, they aren’t fighters. Every time I go into town I am risking my ass, and I need some backup.” Vintago says.
“If we run into another group of Charlie and we have to stand and fight, we are totally fucked. We need to level the playing field a little and add more lead down range.” Vin says with vigor.
Slowly, Logan understands what he is trying to accomplish. He is not just trying to survive. The man before him wants to try and rebuild civilization. This is something that Logan has never stopped to think about, his life since the outbreak has only been about surviving the day and protecting his family.
“I understand what you are trying to do Vintago, and I want you to know, anything you need I will do if I can.” Logan says proudly.
Vintago sees the look in Logan’s eyes, and at that moment, he knows that Logan will be his most valuable soldier.
The two of them shake hands one more time, almost sealing some agreement, or some pledge.
“Come on, let's get out of here and go find my dad and Greg. I think they went fishing over on the creek.” Vintago says.
“Why don’t they just go fishing in the big pond by the hatchery?” Logan asks with a laugh.
“They like going fishing for fun, not to throw an empty hook in the water and catch a fish.” Vin replies as he shrugs his shoulders.
Just as, Vintago is about to turn around and head off back to the quads, a hand reaches out from under the car he was looking in and grabs his ankle.
Vintago cries out for help. Logan spins around and sees an infected man grabbing Vin.
Logan didn’t carry a gun with him since he did not plan on coming over here. He looks around and finds a sign post lying on the ground. Vintago is crawling backwards with the infected man trying to pull him back under the car. He’s scrambling to get his gun out of his holster. From out of nowhere, Logan leaps over Vin’s head and crushes the skull of the infected man with the sign post. He lifts it over his head one more time and brings it down violently all the way to the man’s neck. The hand grabbing Vin does not let go, however, and Vin reaches down to pry it loose.
Vin finally gets loose and scrambles away from the car.
“Holy shit!” Vin exclaims.
“Yeah no kidding!” Logan yells back.
Then the two men look at each other and simultaneously, they both burst into laughter. An onlooker might think that the incident had caused them to go crazy. For these two men, however, the idea of death was exhilarating. Neither one of them was entirely rational though, so crazy did fit perfectly.
After their ordeal, Vin and Logan cruise back up the road and decide to go back to the hatchery instead of interruptin
g the fishing session. They get back to the hatchery and all the women, and children are up now and stirring around the crew quarters.
The two men walk in the kitchen and declare that they are going to go back into town to both get more supplies, and to look for more survivors.
The women all look concerned and look back and forth at each other.
“You just went into town.” Victoria pipes up.
“Yes and we saved this families’ lives, and we got much needed fuel. Now we are going to go back and raid the gun shop again and also the pawn shop.” Vin tells the women.
“You never know, we might run into someone else that needs help, and we can help them.” Logan says.
The women give the men looks, but it is already decided. The guys have to do these little missions in order to achieve the ultimate goal. Vintago wants to add more people to the group, and if they are going to do that they need more food and guns.
The guys take their rifles and some extra ammo this time and load up in the Outlander. Robby sprints outside and volunteers to come along.
Logan immediately tells him “No way in hell.” and shoos him away.
“Dad, come on, I’m sixteen, and you need all the help you can get.” Robby says.
Vintago looks at Logan and nods his head in agreement.
“Can you shoot well Robby?” Vin asks him.
“My dad was a Seal, are you seriously asking me that question?” Robby says with a shit eating grin.
Reluctantly, Logan agrees to let him come, but tells him he has to ask his mother first. Robby comes back out five minutes later with a huge grin on his face. Apparently, Christine said that if Logan was going to keep an eye on him he could go.
Vintago grabs an extra AR-15 from their stockpiles and hands it to Robby.
“You know how to shoot one of these right?” Vintago asks but already knows the answer.
“Of course, I do Vin!” Robby replies.
Logan also hands him the S&W .38 Special and tells him to hang on to it.
The boys all pile into the car and head down the road, once again heading into Payson. What they will find this time, only God knows.
Chapter Thirteen
Abundance
February, 2013
The drive into Payson passes by like all the other drives into Payson. The guys make small talk and try to keep their minds off immersing themselves in the chaos of Payson again. It has only been a full day since Logan and Robby were saved from the town, and now they were going back. Neither one of them liked the idea of it, but Logan knows that it is necessary to get all the supplies they can get.
Vintago pulls up to the border of town and stops the car.
“Ok guys, so we need to hit the gun store and the pawn shop, see if we see anyone else, and get out of here.” Vin explains the plan one more time.
Logan and Robby both nod their heads in understanding. Vintago gets rolling again and heads into town. He takes a left on the highway and heads towards the gun shop. They arrive at the gun shop and all three exit the Outlander. They have their rifles out and at the ready. Logan and Vintago enter the gun shop first and take a look around while Robby watches the door.
The scene inside the gun shop is exactly what Vintago expected. It’s all but picked clean. All of the semi-automatic rifles like their ARs and AKs are all gone. The only things left are hunting shotguns, some bolt action rifles, and two SKS rifles. Not being totally picky, the guys take everything they can and start loading up the Outlander while Robby stands guard.
The grab all of the ammunition they can get their hands on, which is not a whole lot. They find a few hundred rounds of ammo for the guns they already have, and a fair amount of ammo for the new guns they found. Logan looks at the fifteen or so rifles and shotguns they collected and frowns. He knows that they are going to need more than this to make a dent. The bolt action guns were not exactly ideal either. They may have been OK during World War II, but this was the apocalypse and they needed better technology.
Vintago walks into the manager’s office of the small gun shop and starts rummaging around the office. He pushes some things around and finds a small metal door. Outside the metal door are scratches, like something tried to get inside. Probably Charlie, and lots of them, Vintago assumes.
He turns the knob on the door, and surprisingly, it opens to a small chamber. Vintago is immediately overcome by the smell of death. Inside the chamber is a man holding a pistol that apparently blew the top of his head off. He sits next to a gigantic door in the ground that looks like a bank vault.
“Logan! Get in here!” Vintago yells.
Logan comes running into the room and back pedals a bit at the smell.
“Whew that’s some nasty shit right there” he says.
“Check this out” Vin begins, “I think it’s a big gun vault.”
Logan takes a look at the door and nods his head, “We need to get into that vault, there could be extra munitions in there.”
Vintago tries to crank over the large wheel of the vault with no success.
“Well the good news is it’s still locked. The bad news is that it’s still locked.” Vin laughs.
In a gesture of genuine interest Vin walks over to the dead man and rummages through his pockets. He pulls out a giant key.
“Logan, this guy must have been the owner!” Vin exclaims.
The poor guy must have barricaded himself in with his vault as the infected trapped him in here. Realizing the futility of the situation, he took his own life, rather than stand and fight.
Vintago quickly tries the key on the massive vault and sure enough it disengages something. Vin turns the large wheel and the vault unlocks itself.
Logan reaches over to help Vin lift the heavy steel door, and what they find is a stairway, leading down into the ground.
They climb down the steps and turn on their flashlights. What they find below looks like a military armory. There are hundreds of rifles, fully automatic machine guns, grenade launchers, hand grenades, explosives, and all sorts of illegal shit.
“This guy was preparing for a damn zombie invasion!” Vin laughs, “Looks like he missed the party though.”
“I think we are going to need a bigger vehicle.” Logan tells Vin.
“Why don’t you and Robby go find us a truck we can use, and I’ll work on getting some of this shit out of here.” Vin says.
Logan turns around and heads up the stairs and finds his son waiting for him. Logan leads the way out of the gun shop and starts looking around for a decent pickup they can use. Logan and Robby walk across the street to a small shopping center and scout around. Tucked away behind one of the stores is just the truck they need. It’s one of those big Ford F350 trucks with the dualies in back. Logan approaches the vehicle and finds that it is all clear. He pops the fuel door and sticks a piece of string in the gas tank and finds that it has more than enough fuel to make it back to the hatchery.
“This day keeps getting better and better” Logan tells his son.
They pop open the door to the truck and look around hoping to find the keys. After a couple minutes of searching, no luck.
“Well, on to plan B.” Logan tells Robby as he rips open the steering wheel column.
Logan quickly pulls out a multitool from his pocket and gets to work hot wiring the vehicle. A little trick he learned in the Seals. His son looks on in amazement, watching his father do something that a month ago would totally be illegal, but now was just a matter of survival.
After about a minute, the truck springs to life, and its engine begins rumbling. Robby hops in the passenger side and rolls down the window sticking the barrel of his rifle out. Logan hops in the driver seat and throws the truck in gear. They drive over to the gun store and put the ass end of the truck near the door where Vintago is already located piling weapons into his Outlander. Vin has the seats folded down, and the entire back half of the vehicle is almost full.
“Help me pile as many rifles as we can in th
e Outlander, we will put the ammunition and the rest in your new ride.” Vintago says, admiring their choice of pickup.
The two men and Robby quickly make trip after trip to the vault, passing the dead man. It takes about two hours, and at the end of it, all three of them are sweating profusely. The Outlander is jam packed with rifles, and a few of the machine guns, which Logan called “SAWs” or squad automatic weapons. The poor Outlander is nearly sitting on the ground from all the weight. The Ford, on the other hand, is piled to the top of the bed with large ammunition cans, and it seems to barely feel the weight. The guys load the back half of the dual cab with as many rifles and shotguns as they can fit. The rest of the equipment they throw on top of the ammunition cans and cover it all with a few camouflage tarps that were also in the bunker.
The guys finish loading up as much gear as they can fit and seal both the vault door and the steel door leading to the vault room. Vintago attaches the key ring to a chain around his neck and drops it down his shirt. He is keeping this key close, and next time they are in town, he will finish raiding the gun shop vault.
On the seat up front with Vintago is an assortment of explosives and hand grenades. Vintago hops in the front seat and turns over the Outlander as he flinches a bit, like the entire car will explode.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.” Vintago yells out his window.
Logan and Robby jump in the Ford and Logan reaches over to hotwire the truck again. He gets it started again and they get rolling.
Vintago wanted to stop for some extra food supplies, but since they are pretty much full with ammunition and guns, he decides to head towards the hatchery.
On the road out of town, he sees a group of four men walking down the road. They look as though they have been through hell, but it is clear as day to both Logan and Vintago that they are soldiers. All four men are carrying M4A1 rifles and are wearing tattered ACUs. Upon hearing the trucks approaching they spin around and raise their rifles at Vintago and his band. Logan immediately stops his truck and tells Robby to bail out, and Logan hops out and aims his rifle at the men. Vintago stops right next to them and does the same.