Apocalyptic Empire: The Hatchery Compound

by Chris Blake

  Vintago nods his head. This was part of his plan. He just wasn’t sure how to accomplish that.

  “How do you propose we do that Logan, the compound covers quite a bit of space. It would take thousands of feet of fencing to enclose it all.” Vintago tells him, hoping he has more insight.

  “I think between the two trucks here, and our new Ford we should be able to get enough chain link fencing and posts to encompass the entire compound. It might take us a couple weeks to put it all up, but it will keep out the Charlie.” Logan explains.

  “Another thing we could do would be to put up battery/solar floodlights all around the compound so that at night, we will know if there is movement.” Logan continues.

  Vintago never thought of the floodlights, but he thinks that is an excellent idea. The chain link fence idea would also be awesome. It may not stop intruders, but it would stop infected from reaching their compound. Plus, it would be something that Greg could work on, and that would help him out.

  Vintago says, “The other thing we need to do is have more firearms training. I think you need to teach everyone how you shoot like that Logan. I want to have everyone in the group carrying a firearm. I don’t want anyone getting caught unarmed.”

  “That’s just Seal training, and years of practice bud, but I might be able to hand out some pointers.” Logan says with a grin.

  “Alright, so first things first, Greg, Dad, get a bunch of those Glocks out of the armory and give them to the women, I want them to carry a holstered 9mm as well.” Vintago says.

  “Next, let’s get our shit together boys because we’re heading back into town. This time, we’re going to stop in at the Home Depot.” Vintago grins.

  With that, the group disperses and they begin to carry out their job roles. Greg and Ben fill up a bucket with Glocks, extra magazines, and boxes of 9mm ammunition and go into the crew quarters to distribute them. The women are not too happy about the new rules concerning firearms, because of the children. In the end, the women choose to arm themselves, mainly because the children are not exactly gun shy and they need to be protected.

  After that’s been handled, Logan, Robby, Vin, and the soldiers start loading up the vehicles. They get the large flatbed truck, the pickup truck from the hatchery, their Ford F-350, and Vintago pulls around in the Outlander. They get all the vehicles fueled up and ready to go. They grab an ammunition can for each vehicle. Vintago decided while everyone was getting ready that, for ammunition swapping purposes, they should all carry M4 rifles when going on their little excursions. He leaves it up to each man to decide to bring a secondary rifle. Vintago keeps his HK rifle, and swaps out his AK for an M4A1, and throws it in the Outlander. Vintago and Ben pile into the Outlander and lead the way as a command and control vehicle. Logan and Robby follow behind in the Ford. Next come Trevor and Tony in the flatbed truck. Lastly, in the rear follows Jose and Nathan in the smaller Chevy Silverado.

  They leave Greg with all of the women and children because they think it is smart to leave someone behind to protect them. Just in case a group of Charlie wanders into the compound. They also tell them to stay inside the crew quarters building and not to roam around.

  The convoy makes its way down the windy road to the highway and start rolling towards Payson. Along the way, the group is conversing on their walkie talkies, talking about random shit. The whole group is a little tense about going back into Payson again. Vintago does not particularly like going into town three times in a week, but he knows that they need certain things. Unfortunately, the town is the only place to get most of these items.

  Shortly before, they enter town Vintago tells everyone to stop and hold up. He wants Tony to man the M249 in the back of the flatbed truck. He wants to have heavy fire if the shit gets real. He also tells everyone else to get their weapons ready, especially the passengers.

  They all chamber a round in their rifles and place them in various areas, in their vehicles. The convoy is using the term riding “shotgun” to the fullest potential.

  After everyone gears up, and Tony hops into the back of the truck and straps himself to the cab for stability, they are ready to go again.

  They make the short trip through town to the Home Depot without any problems. Tony aims a fairly pissed off look at Vintago for making him eat bugs the whole way for nothing. Vintago just shrugs his shoulders. Better to be safe, than sorry.

  They pull up to Home Depot, park out front, and everyone dismounts their vehicles. They leave poor Tony in the back of the flatbed to guard the vehicles with the machine gun. He takes the opportunity to clean the bugs out of his teeth while everyone laughs at him.

  Everyone else, however, files into Home Depot, to try and find what they need. The military men all check their sectors looking for Charlie, or any possible threats. Ben and Vintago stroll in more casually. Neither man has ever been exposed to this setting, nor do they have any formal training.

  The group makes their way over to the fencing section of the store and they find what they are looking for, big spools of chain link fence.

  Before leaving the hatchery, they did a quick guesstimate of how much footage they would need to enclose the compound. They figured it would be safe to say that they would need about 2500 feet of fence to surround the entire compound. The chain link fence at Home Depot comes in sections of fifty feet. They count off all the spools here and can only find thirty two.

  “Well, this could be a problem.” Vintago says.

  “Let’s just get everything we can and worry about the rest later. This should be enough to surround all of the essential buildings. We don’t need to enclose the parking lot and the outlying areas right away. We can always add extra layers later.” Logan explains with a level head.

  Vintago is good with that plan, and they start loading up the hefty sections of fencing. They also grab all the couplings, and hundreds of the poles needed to anchor the fence. Ben also hunts down a small cement mixer to help create the cement faster. It takes the men several hours to load all of the fencing materials, concrete, and the mixer into their vehicles. By the end of it, they are all exhausted and ready to get back to the hatchery.

  Before rolling out, Logan stops in the lighting section of the store and grabs every automatic flood lamp he can get his hands on. He finds battery operated ones, solar operated ones, and some that need to be hooked into electrical. Satisfied that these will work well, he throws them in the back of the Outlander.

  The guys all pile into their respective vehicles. Tony has to sit on top of the spools of fencing to keep manning his gun, which he shows a good amount of protest in doing so.

  Vintago leads the way out of the parking lot in the Outlander and starts heading towards the hatchery.

  As the convoy rolls through the streets of Payson, they hear screaming and gunshots erupting in the distance. Logan speaks over the radio and asks Vin if he wants to check it out. Maybe it is a group of survivors trying to get away from some Charlie. They need all the people that can get right now, so Vintago decides to check it out. Besides, Vin is feeling fairly secure with eight armed men and four vehicles.

  They adjust their course towards the noise and pick up the pace. The loaded down trucks have a hard time keeping up with the smaller Outlander. Vintago quickly takes too much of a lead, not entirely paying attention to his group of vehicles behind him.

  As Vintago rounds, a corner, he sees a group of people running towards him, shooting behind them at a pickup truck loaded full of armed men. The armed men are shooting back at them.

  “What the fuck?” Vintago asks his father.

  “Are those guys nuts? Those are regular people, not Charlie.” Ben says back.

  Vintago decides to haul ass up to the truck and head them off. He puts the pedal to the floor and starts flying towards them, playing chicken. He slams into his horn, to let the fleeing people know he is coming, and they jump out of the way just in the nick of time. Just before, the truck would crash into the Outlander. Vintago cr
anks the steering wheel to the left narrowly missing them. Clearly, they intended to ram him directly in front. He brakes hard and slides the little SUV sideways. The pickup truck also slams on their brakes and stops.

  The men immediately hop out of the back of the truck and start shooting at Vintago and Ben, peppering the side of the Outlander with bullet holes.

  “Get down Dad!” Vintago yells and leaps out of the vehicle. He runs around to the rear of the vehicle and returns fire. He takes out one of the men with his first shot, catching the guy right in the chest. He fires over and over, dropping another one of the men, before ducking back behind the Outlander as shots are returned. Vintago lies down on the ground behind the tire of his vehicle and looks under towards the enemy. They are advancing on his position, and fast. Vintago shoots four or five rounds from underneath his vehicle, and nails one of them in the leg, causing him to crash into the pavement. Vin fires one more round and sprays his head all over his buddy behind him. The last two men open up on Vintago and shots ring out, puncturing the tire Vin is behind, and peppering the side of his vehicle once more.

  The sound of gunfire intensifies as the men get closer and closer. Vintago is unable to move and huddles behind the axle. Not in fear, but to keep himself from getting killed. The sound continues to intensify, almost like it is never ending. Vintago realizes that this just might be the end. He cannot safely return fire without getting shot, and there are too many of them to run.

  Then, Vin hears various new firearms being fired. Vin peeks out from his hiding place, for just a split second, and watches as the two men get sliced in two by several rounds striking them at once. They must have been hit ten or fifteen times all within a few seconds.

  Suddenly, the shooting stops and Vintago can hear Logan call out “All clear.”

  “Vin are you OK!” Logan yells out.

  Vin pokes his head out and sees his friends standing in the street next to their vehicles. He gets up and walks out from behind the vehicle and waves to the guys, indicating that he is fine.

  “Thanks for showing up guys!” Vin yells.

  “Better late than never.” Corporal Trevor laughs.

  Vintago walks around to check the tire on the Outlander and finds that the tire is flat, and the vehicle is sitting on the rim. Adding to that, the whole side of Vintago’s Outlander looks like Swiss cheese.

  “Hopefully nothing is too badly damaged,” he tells himself.

  As Vintago looks towards the front of the vehicle, he sees liquid dripping from the passenger door. He walks up closer to the liquid and sees that it is red. Vintago’s throat seizes up. He hasn’t heard Ben move one bit during the entire exchange. Vin pokes his head over the passenger door and finds his father crumpled up under the dashboard clutching his stomach.

  “Shit, Dad are you hit!” Vintago says, even though he can see the blood all over the inside of his vehicle.

  Logan sprints over to the vehicle hearing this and assesses the situation.

  “Trevor grab the first aid kit from the Ford and get it over here now!” Logan yells.

  Trevor does as he is told and hauls ass with the med kit. They open the door slowly and slide Ben out of the vehicle and onto the ground. Logan opens his shirt and finds that there is a bullet hole entering Ben’s stomach. He rolls him over gently and finds no exit wound.

  “Listen guys, the bullet is still inside his stomach, we need to get it out of there, but this is not the place. Right now we need to stabilize him and get him back to the compound, where Christine can take it from there.” Logan explains to the group.

  Vintago is just looking at the men lying in the street that did this to his father. He is clearly losing his mind in the moment. Then, one of the men moves, ever so slightly. Nobody checked to see if they were still alive during all of the commotion.

  Vintago gets up slowly and walks towards the man lying in the road. He walks right up to the man, and finds that he is not a man at all. He is just some punk teenager, who probably used to be some skateboarder or druggie. Now he is part of this little rag tag thug group. Vintago has positively no remorse as he pulls out his Taurus .45 and aims it at the boys head. He pulls the trigger three times, exploding the boy’s brains all over the asphalt.

  The sudden gunshots cause everyone to spin around weapons at the ready. They see Vintago standing over the boy's body, holding his gun with a smoking barrel. On his face is a sick and sadistic smile.

  “That’s revenge mother fucker.” Vin says to mostly headless boy.

  At that point, everyone in his group knew that Vintago was no longer a civilized man, he was a cold blooded killer.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Triage

  February, 2013

  The remaining men in the group patch up Ben’s wound as best they can and load him into the back of the Ford. Since the Outlander has a flat tire, Logan, Robby and Vintago are going to haul ass back to the hatchery in the Ford. Vintago leaves Corporal Trevor in charge of getting the tire changed on the Outlander and getting all of the vehicles back to the compound.

  In their hurry to leave, the thing Vintago did not tell Trevor to do was make a decision about the people they saved from the band of thugs. The group of survivors was seven strong. There are three men, all armed with shitty weapons, two women, and two children, both older probably in their teens.

  The oldest man came up to Trevor shortly after Vintago and Logan had hauled ass towards the hatchery. The man looked like he had to be in his sixties.

  “Thank you so much for saving us from these idiots.” the older gentleman says to Trevor.

  “No problem sir, that’s our job now, I guess.” Trevor says hesitantly.

  He wasn’t exactly sure what the hell his job was anymore. A little over a month ago he was a reservist working a normal job like everyone else. When the shit hit the fan, he was called in for active duty to defend Tucson. Everyone else stationed at Fort Huachuca was called into action. A month ago he was on Uncle Sam’s payroll. Then, that all fell apart, and he was not under anyone’s supervision. Now, it seems that he had walked into the hands of a crazy civilian, and he was carrying out his missions. It did not bother Trevor much. He only cared about what was best for his three remaining squad members, and Vintago provided what they needed. For the time being, he would be part of Vintago’s mock “army.” Being part of that charade meant that he had to at least pretend to give a shit about this group of survivors.

  The old man waved his party over, and they all looked happy to be alive.

  “Do you guys have an army base or something we could hitch a ride to and get the hell out of town?” one of the younger men asked Trevor.

  Not quite sure how Vintago would want him to proceed from here, Trevor just nods his head and waves them over to the vehicles.

  Ten minutes later, Jose has the tire changed on the Outlander, and he hops in and starts it up. Trevor tells Nathan to hop into the pickup truck and has Anthony get on the M249 in the bed of the flatbed with all of the survivors.

  They get their slightly smaller convoy rolling and head out of town and back towards the hatchery. The trucks have to take it considerably slower on the way up the hill due to them being extremely overloaded.

  Forty five minutes later after the trucks chugged up the hill, they make it back to the hatchery and park the vehicles outside the warehouse building.

  Trevor tells the survivors to stay put and has Tony stand by them, not necessarily because he is worried about them, but just in case. He heads into the crew quarters, to find Logan since Vintago will most likely be occupied with his father, and just as he gets to the door, Logan walks outside.

  “Are these people the ones we just saved?” Logan asks Trevor.

  Logan thinks to himself, “What sort of stupid ass question is that?”

  Instead he replies, “Yes sir, they needed a safe place, and I figured this was as good as any. Seeing as how Vintago likes taking in stragglers, I figured he wouldn’t mind.”

 
; Logan was not exactly sure how Vin would react, but he hoped he did not mind. Logan believed in Vin’s cause, and trusted the man, but he was also seeing a side of him that he did not much like.

  Logan walks over to the survivors and sticks out his hand to introduce himself, “My name’s Logan Black. Nice to meet you all. Welcome to our home.”

  The older man reaches out and shakes Logan’s hand.

  “My name’s Harry Steeple, and this is my family.” says the old man.

  He introduces his family. Firstly, his oldest son Henry and his wife, Missy. Next, he introduces Henry's two children Emily who is sixteen, and Riley, who is thirteen. Lastly, his son Mitch and his wife Gloria are introduced.

  They all shake hands with Logan, thinking that Logan is the leader here. Harry presumes as much and asks the question.

  “So are you the leader of the group?” he asks.

  “Not exactly. Vintago the guy who saved you, he is the de facto leader around here.” Logan tells the Steeple family, “Vintago brought us all here, this was his hideaway when the shit hit the fan.”

  Harry accepts the knowledge Logan has given him with a nod and continues, “So where do we go from here?”

  Logan thinks quietly to himself for a second, not exactly sure where to go from here as he had never initiated anyone into their group.

  “Well if you don’t mind, I am going to have you guys hang out outside while I check with Vin and see what he thinks we should do.” Logan says. “Trevor, please show the Steeple family around the compound while I discuss it with Vintago.” Logan says to the Corporal.

  With that, Logan walks briskly back to the crew quarters and finds Vintago hovering near his father. Christine was able to safely remove the bullet from Ben’s stomach, and they had managed to stop the bleeding. No main arteries or organs were hit. Ben got lucky Logan figured most belly wounds did not go as well, especially in older men. Christine was able to give him some antibiotics that Jessica rummaged up from their medical supplies, but there were not many left. That was a little concerning for everyone. He would need to keep a strong dose of antibiotics onboard to keep infection at bay.