Apocalyptic Empire: The Hatchery Compound

by Chris Blake

  “Let's gear up and head back down there, I want to meet our neighbors.” Vin says.

  The guys gather their M4s and sidearms, and they mount up in the two pickup trucks and head down the hill.

  Vintago is hoping that the show of force on their keep the people submissive, and will keep in their minds that they are outgunned, even if they are not outmanned.

  The two trucks roll down the hill, cross the highway, and enter the resort perimeter. The resort group, clearly on the alert now, meets them with mixed feelings. There are about twenty of them, all holding an assortment of weapons. Some have hunting rifles or shotguns. Others have handguns, and only a couple have decent semi-automatic rifles.

  Logan sizes the group up immediately, and calculates the odds if things do not end well. His group of eight men with superior firepower more than likely could take the group out, but there would be heavy casualties, and they may not make it out alive.

  Logan expresses as much to Vintago, and Vin nods, trusting the advice of his second in command.

  Vintago’s group stops thirty feet short of the neighboring group, and they dismount their vehicles. They let their rifles lay slack in their slings, just like Vintago is doing.

  The resort group does a double take at seeing the well-armed men step out of their vehicles with military style rifles and holstered sidearms. Vintago can see that his show of force has the right effect. Vintago signals for his men to hold by the trucks and approaches the group by himself.

  He says to them at about fifteen feet away, “Hello, my name is Vintago Hawkins. Which of you is the leader of this group?”

  A middle aged man steps free from the ranks of his group and says “I guess that would be me. The name’s Roger Wilson.”

  The two men step forward and shake hands, sizing each other up as they do it.

  After a moment of awkward silence, Vintago speaks up, “So how long have you guys been calling this place home?”

  Roger tells Vintago that they have been here since before the outbreak and have made this place their home. He says that the original group of employees and guests numbered about twenty people, but they picked up some stragglers along the way and now there are forty eight of them.

  “What about you guys?” Roger asks Vin.

  “We have some more guys back at our compound, this is just my main recon group.” Vin replies, stretching the truth, not wanting to play all his cards yet.

  Roger accepts Vintago’s answer and continues, “Where did you guys come from exactly? We haven’t seen anyone in this area in weeks.”

  Vintago takes a minute to think about his response and says, completely dodging the question “We are just down the road from here. My guys were out patrolling the area and ran into you.”

  “Hmm, well it’s good to know that there are other good people around these parts too.” Roger says, with a little hesitancy to his voice.

  “Yes, it is good to know. Perhaps we should sit down someplace and discuss how we could help each other out.” Vintago replies.

  Roger figures that would be a good idea, and leads Vintago and his group into their main building, what used to be the lobby of the resort. Inside it looks like a tornado has swept through. There are boxes of supplies both empty and full, equipment, trash, and all sorts of other junk.

  Roger leads Vintago over to a small table and chair and offers him a seat. The two men sit down and discuss what their situations are. Roger tells Vintago that he is critically low on just about everything, guns, ammunition, food, and clean water. They have to boil all of their water since the well running the resort has been without power for weeks. They had a backup generator, but it ran out of fuel a long while back. Roger tells Vintago that they have a decent group of fighters, and the rest are women or children.

  Roger also explains to Vintago how they desperately need someone with medical experience, because they have a few people who are sick or wounded.

  Vintago tells Roger that the main thing he is lacking is fighters. He needs to have more rifles at the ready to be able to gather more supplies quickly and efficiently. He tells Roger that maybe they can work something out where the resort boys tag along with his team and they can split the spoils. Roger says that he will run that by his guys, but it sounds like an excellent idea.

  At the end of their discussion, they shake hands and Vintago leaves with his men. Roger promises to speak with his group and ask for every able bodied man or woman to accompany Vintago on supply runs.

  On the way back to the hatchery, Logan speaks with Vintago, “They look like a bunch of rag tag civilians Vin, do you want to throw them out there as backup for our guys?”

  “No, I don’t, but I need more men and vehicles on our supply runs to efficiently stockpile. If we are going to keep feeding just the twenty something people we have, we need to have a massive stockpile of food, not to mention everything else. Don’t even discount that we need more fuel soon, more medical supplies, and we need to start considering building some more buildings for housing people. All of that takes manpower and time to get. The more people we have, the faster it goes.” Vintago explains to Logan.

  Logan ponders on that for a couple minutes and agrees with Vintago. Their team of eight fighters is not enough to man all the vehicles they already have.

  “We will need to be careful how we approach this situation. While I do want to use their men, I do not want to be feeding their people and dealing with their problems.” Vin says.

  “I made the agreement with them that if they helped us make supply runs we would share some of the supplies.” Vin says, “I did not, however, explain what share we would give them.”

  “The other thing we might want to consider is recruiting their good people and bringing them over to our side of the fence.” Logan says.

  Vintago never thought of that, simply dangle the carrot in front of their faces and more than likely, they would abandon the resort group all together. Though, this could be viewed as a hostile action and could cause them to attack Vintago’s compound. That would have to be handled deftly.

  “Let’s just head back tomorrow and see what they are thinking first, maybe take a few rifles with us and see how his group does.” Vintago says.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dry Run

  February, 2013

  The next morning Vintago and his group of fighters rally at the trucks again. They bring with them a dozen M4A1 rifles, extra magazines, and a box of 5.56mm ammunition. Vintago gets in the lead vehicle with Logan driving, and they head down the road towards the highway. Logan brings the truck to a stop at the highway, looking both ways before crossing. Some old habits die hard.

  They make their way across the highway, and as they arrive Roger and his band of survivors come out of the resort lobby building. Roger waves to Vintago and his group.

  Vintago steps out of the truck and shakes hands with Roger. He asks Roger if they have made a decision, and Roger informs him that fifteen members of his group would like to volunteer.

  “Sounds good to me Roger. I only brought twelve rifles, so they will have to be distributed evenly.” Vintago says and pulls out an M4 from the back of the truck.

  “My guys all use the same rifle when running operations for ease of use, and ammo swapping capabilities.” Vintago explains.

  “Can you guys all step down here real quick and show me your skill with one of these rifles. We just want to make sure everyone knows how to use one.” Vin tells the group.

  Logan grabs a box of ear plugs and lets everyone put them in since they are the cheap disposable kind. The guys looted them from the gun shop, and they are invaluable for range sessions.

  Logan also runs over to a tree about twenty meters out and uses his knife to mark it with a big X.

  The first man from Roger’s group steps forward and holds out his hand for the M4. Vintago explains only to fire about three or four rounds, just to show proficiency with the weapon. He slaps in a magazine, charges the rifle, aims
carefully, and fires all five rounds remarkably quickly. All five rounds strike the tree with no problem.

  Vintago and Logan both give the man a strange look, which the man answers “I know my way around quite a few guns, and this one is one of my favorites.”

  Vin lets the other fourteen people take turns firing at the tree. Some of them are not too bad, and some of them are even pretty excellent. It would seem that the old saying, only the strong survive, is mostly true. Sometimes, just having enough of the strong in your group will save you too, Vintago figures.

  Figuring that they proved themselves, Vintago accepts them and tells the group they will be back within the hour, and that they are going to have their first dry run. Vin wants to go into town again for fuel, food, and medical supplies. He asks if they have any working vehicles and learns that they have two working pickup trucks, and three small cars, but all of them are low on fuel.

  Vin tells them that he will bring some fuel down to at least get them into town and then they can fuel up all of their vehicles. He also says he will bring them three extra rifles, and one handgun each and to leave their personal weapons behind. The group all nod in agreement and go back inside to get their gear together.

  Vintago and his team mount up and head back to the compound. After they arrive, they tell their families, and everyone else what they plan on doing, and they get mixed reviews. Ultimately, everyone knows what must be done, so nobody complains a whole lot.

  Vintago has Logan get the vehicles together. They are going to take the flatbed truck, the two pickups, and Vin wants to break out the fish hatchery’s fish transport truck. The truck has a twelve hundred gallon tank on the back of it, and it is powered by a burly diesel engine. Vin wants to fill the truck up with at least a few hundred gallons of fuel and let it be their fuel reservoir. The only problem is that they do not have any diesel, and the truck is sitting on a quarter of a tank. Hopefully the gas station Vin and Ben went to originally has some diesel fuel also, or they may not make it back with the fuel they need for their generator.

  He makes the decision to drain twenty gallons of fuel from their generator tank to fuel up the cars of their neighbors.

  After grabbing the fuel, Vintago has the guys load up three more rifles and a handgun for each member of their assisting force. The guys pile into their respective vehicles. Everyone waves goodbye to each other, and they start the trucks to head down the hill once again.

  When they get back to the resort, the group of fighters are standing around waiting. Vintago’s guys give them the rifles, handguns, and a few boxes of ammunition for the handguns. They are all highly thankful for the gifts, and more than one of them asks where they got such nice rifles. Nobody gives them an answer.

  After the resort group refuels their vehicles, they are ready to go. The new convoy, consisting of nine vehicles rumbles down the highway. They enter Payson shortly after, and Vintago leads them to the old gas station where him and his father went the first time they needed fuel.

  All nine vehicles pile into the small gas station and park. Both groups get out of their vehicles and stand by waiting for Vintago.

  Vin gets out and signals for Logan to follow him. They go around back, and Vin shows Logan the generator. They crank over the generator, and it spurs into action. The fuel gauge on the generator’s gas tank hovers just above E.

  Logan and Vin tell the group to get the vehicles fueled up in a hurry. Vin goes inside and turns on the switches for all the pumps.

  They have both sides of the pump going for the fuel truck, and the other pumps are being used by the other vehicles. The new group of fighters are ecstatic about getting full tanks of gas. They obviously didn’t think of this idea on their own.

  Thirty minutes go by, and the vehicles are all full of fuel, except for the fuel truck. The gauge on the tank of the fuel truck shows about a quarter full. The fuel tank on that actual truck itself reads about an eighth of a tank left. They need to get this thing some diesel before leaving, but the diesel pump is on the other side of the lot. Vin decides to go and get some diesel from the pump and feed both the generator and their fuel truck. He grabs a few five gallon containers and walks over to the pump. Vin walks to the front of the pump and grabs the handle. He selects diesel fuel and tries the pump handle. Nothing happens.

  “Great.” Vin says out loud.

  He tries it a couple more times, trying to figure out why it is not working. The damn pump must be broken.

  “Logan, we may have a problem.” Vin yells.

  Logan sprints over to see what the issue is, and Vin shows him.

  “This is the only diesel pump they have?” Logan asks, already knowing the answer.

  Vintago just nods, trying to figure out a solution to their problem. The generator needs diesel to run, and the fuel truck needs diesel to run. The way Vin sees it they have two options, either they can use the fuel from the truck to run the generator and leave the station pumping gas into the fuel tank, or they can limp the truck back to the hatchery and leave it there until they find more diesel fuel.

  Vintago explains both scenarios to Logan and asks what he thinks they should do.

  “I don’t think there is anybody around to mess with the truck if we leave it fueling up and take the keys. I say we use the trucks’ gas to fill up the generator and let it keep on pumping gas into the back of it.” Logan says, “Besides we have plenty of other shit we can be doing besides sitting here.”

  Vintago ponders on this for a few minutes and figures that this is a decent enough plan and decides to do just that. They siphon the rest of the diesel out of the fuel truck and take it behind the gas station to fill up the generator. Vintago figures that the generator should have enough fuel to run for another few hours now.

  They get all of the vehicles rounded up with everyone loaded in them, and they decide to start looking for the list of items that are needed by both parties. They need medical supplies first and foremost. They also need to find an electronics store for more radios, batteries, flashlights, and a few other items. Additionally, Vintago wants to hit the pawn shop since they did not make it last run, to see if they have any firearms left. He also wants to hit the gun shop one more time, clean out the rest of the vault, and anything else they can find. Even though, their armory is pretty well stocked, he wants to make sure they have it all.

  Vintago explains the plan to the resort group and his own men, and the two groups head in a convoy pattern to a small Walgreens pharmacy on the corner of the highway and a cross street. Everyone parks their vehicles and gets out. Vintago asks two of the resort crew to watch the vehicles and cover their asses and everyone else files into the store.

  Vin immediately heads back to the pharmacy section of the store and goes behind the counter. The place has been pretty ransacked, and pill bottles lay all over the floor and counters. The drugs are the first things people go for it would seem. They scavenge around and find what they need, some antibiotics in several flavors, powerful pain killers, and a few other items Christine asked for.

  Next, they raid the over the counter aisles. Vintago scoops up every bottle of aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen he can find. These little pills would be invaluable to fight off headaches, muscle aches, and who knows what else. The simple things that the American society always could take a pill to relieve. He grabs bottles of allergy medicine as well, mostly thinking of himself. The constant dirt and pine tree surroundings was playing hell on his allergies. If a little pill every day could alleviate that, he would be damned if he would give that up.

  They also collect every bandage, wrap, tape, and other first aid supplies. By the time, they are done they have a couple shopping carts full with medicine and first aid supplies. After that, they head over to the real creature comforts section of the store and grab toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, soaps, and all the little things people miss being in the middle of nowhere without being able to run to the store. They also gather all the feminine products they can for t
he women, to make their lives easier. Vin also thinks to get a ton of condoms as well, thinking that nobody needs to get pregnant right now, but it might promote a little normalcy in the married couples’ lives.

  After they are done getting the items from their list here, they pack everything up in one of the vehicles, and everyone mounts up. They take a quick drive, less than a quarter mile north, and they find the Radioshack they need to visit.

  Vin tells everyone to sit with the vehicles as they would not need ten people for this stop. Logan, Vin, and Robby enter the store by themselves. They know what’s on the list and they go about getting the items. Vintago grabs a small handcart and fills it to the brink with every type battery he can find. They raided all the batteries at the Walgreens to, but there just are not enough batteries these days. Next, he fills another hand cart with flashlights of every size, shape and color. He finds some small lanterns as well and grabs those. Every light source they can get their hands on the better.

  Meanwhile, Logan is getting his hands on all of their shortwave radios, headsets, and accessories. They need a better way to communicate, and the radios will go a long way towards that goal.

  Robby picks up all of the stores GPS devices. They want to have a GPS installed on each vehicle so that they can strategically start marking off routes, places they have scavenged, and other notable landmarks. Then, they plan to sync all the devices together each night using the computers at the compound.

  Lastly, Vintago grabs a few tablets, laptops, and printers. He wants to digitally enhance the way that they plot out their missions. He figures the best way he knows how to do that is with computers. The tablets will be an excellent way to get his people on the same page. Most people in this situation they are in would think that these electronics were worthless and that they should just operate using stone age technology. Vintago, on the other hand, thinks that as long as they work and they are reliable, technology is a tool to be leveraged efficiently.