Apocalyptic Empire: The Hatchery Compound

by Chris Blake

  The three men leave the store and load up their new gear in the back of one of their pickups. This stuff is not for the resort crew, and it will not be shared.

  Next, they need to head over to the pawn shop to check that out. Everyone piles back in their vehicles and they cruise a couple miles down the street to the pawn shop. This time, everyone gets out to take a look inside. Who knows what will be left inside a store like this.

  They go inside the shop and find that it has been largely cannibalized. There are some guitars, power tools, and some jewelry left, but none of that is useful. The groups are both looking for firearms. There are a few guns left over, but they are old bolt action military surplus rifles. Vintago and his group pass them up, but the resort crew grabs them and takes them all. Logan grabs one of the acoustic guitars on the way out and smiles at Vin.

  “Been awhile since I’ve played, but it would be nice.” Logan says.

  Vintago just smiles and chuckles at Logan’s choices. Vintago takes a page from Logan’s book and scoops up some Xbox games that were left over. He figures they would be fun for the kids, and secretly he would not mind dissolving his mind into a good game.

  The groups get back to the vehicles and decide to head to a small grocery store across the street. They make the quick trip across the road, and Vin tells the same two men to stay with the vehicles. Everyone else piles inside the building and they find the place a mess, but there are still good things to be looted.

  They form a shopping cart convoy and go down each aisle sweeping everything they can find into the shopping carts, much like Vintago and his father did when they ran into Logan and his family.

  This goes on for about an hour, and at the end of it, the resort group has a pickup full of groceries, and the compound group has the back of the Ford loaded up, and some of the Chevy.

  Satisfied with their spoils, they decide to make the last stop at the gun shop. Before heading out, Logan spots a big rig sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store. He decides to see if he can get some diesel fuel out of it so they can get their fuel truck loaded up. He grabs his siphoning gear and heads over to the big rig. Robby accompanies him and watches his back as he opens the gas tanks on the side of the vehicle. They look to be quite full, so he sends Robby back to the trucks to get more fuel cans. Fifteen minutes later, Logan has twenty five gallons of diesel fuel ready to go. Vintago is satisfied that this will be enough to get the truck back to the hatchery, and they can worry about returns trips later.

  The groups mount up and head over to the gun shop for the last time. Vintago pulls out the key to the vault as he exits his vehicle. He tells the resort crew to wait outside, which they do not like one bit.

  Vintago, on the other hand, does not give a shit. The vault is their property as far as he is concerned. Vin and his team enter the gun shop, head down to the vault, and crack it open. Inside there are probably another fifty rifles that had to be left behind last time. Along with the rifles are at least thirty handguns, and God only knows how much ammunition. They start making trips back and forth to the flatbed truck, loading everything up. An hour goes by, and the resort crew are voicing their complaints, making it well known that they want in on the spoils.

  “Listen,” Vintago finally tells them, “this shit was found by us, and the rifles you are carrying were given to you, by me. I will do what I please with the weapons in here, and if you guys don’t chill out, you may not get anything out of here.”

  This served to upset the fifteen resort members even more, since they had put their asses on the line coming here today.

  Vintago is just testing their loyalty and patience at this point because he has every intention of giving them some guns. He is just not going to give them the cream of the crop.

  Logan and the guys finish looting what they consider relevant, extra magazines, extra holsters, carrying cases, cleaning kits, optical sights, and tactical lights. Then, they tell the resort crew to have at the rest of the store.

  They rush into the gun shop and start picking through everything. There is still plenty of things to be had, but not the nice items. The good stuff is already in Vin’s armory, or in the back of his trucks.

  The guys watch as the resort crew makes trip after trip, and after another hour, they are ready to go, satisfied that they have what they need.

  Over four hours into their excursion, Vintago decides it is time to head back to the gas station and pick up their fuel truck. The truck should be about full by now he figures.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gas Station Showdown

  February, 2013

  They all get in their vehicles one more time and head over to the gas station on the edge of town. Vintago’s truck, being the lead vehicle sees them first.

  There are about twenty five Charlie standing around the fuel truck, gas station, and generator. Clearly drawn by the noise the generator made.

  “Fucking A! I forgot about that shit.” Vintago exclaims.

  Logan didn’t think about it either as he was a firm believer in leaving the truck.

  “Well we can’t just leave the damn thing, we need to clear out those Charlie and get the truck.” Vin says.

  Logan takes a look at the Charlie and runs the math, twenty or so of them, twenty three of us. We have high powered automatic rifles. They have hands and teeth. Not to underestimate hands and teeth, but they should be alright.

  “Yeah let’s take them out and get the truck.” Logan says.

  Vintago has Logan stop the truck about five hundred feet shy of the gas station so that the group of Charlie is not alerted to their presence. Everybody else stops their vehicles and gets out. Vintago explains the plan to them, and Vin’s guys are good to go. The resort team, however, has mixed feelings. Some of them are all for it, and some of them just want to leave the truck and head back. It isn’t their truck after all.

  After a few minutes of indecision, the resort team splits up, and one vehicle takes off with five passengers inside.

  Well, eighteen of us now, Logan thinks.

  The remaining members of the resort group follow Vintago and his guys towards the station. They hold a tight formation as they go. Everyone stands shoulder to shoulder, rifles facing forward.

  Tony has a firm grasp on his SAW, and at about a hundred feet out, the Charlie realize that they are coming. Tony lies down on the ground and pulls out the bi pod for the SAW and gets ready to provide suppressive fire. Well, it used to be called that. Now it was more like defensive fire, to cover a retreat if needs be.

  The rest of the group trudges on, and when the Charlie get within fifty feet, they all start opening up with their rifles. The group of Charlie gets pelted with 5.56mm ammunition and stops them briefly. Quite a few drop right there on the spot, but the rest advance in a wave.

  From behind the station comes another wave of infected, adding to the mix. The guys work their way toward the truck in a flanking maneuver. They are trying to lead the Charlie away from the truck and also keep taking them down. The group of infected keeps trundling onward and away from the truck. All the while being torn up by their rifles.

  It seems like every Charlie they take out gets replaced by one coming from behind the station, or from out of the woods surrounding the station. The guys quickly realize that they may have bitten off more than they can chew. Already committed, however, they wave Nathan forward, and he cruises up in one of the pickup trucks and parks next to the fuel truck. He hops out of the cab and grabs a gas can, quickly filling the truck. Jose stands up in the bed of the truck to cover his ass while he fills the fuel truck.

  The rest of the team keeps picking away at the larger group of Charlie. It’s starting to get a little too close for comfort and the guys start backing up a little too fast. One of the resort crew trips over something and goes down. The Charlie get within feet of him before one of his friends runs over to help him up. Just as, they turn around to flee back to the group, a large female Charlie leaps forward and tears into
the saviors’ neck.

  Logan saw it before it happened, and tried to react, but his shot went wide and the female just ripped out the poor guy’s jugular. With nobody to help the man who tripped, he quickly gets overrun and torn to pieces by Charlie. The group can only look on in horror and empty everything they have trying to save the man.

  Running low on ammo, the group starts retreating towards their vehicles.

  Jose yells to the rest of the group, “Almost done, get ready to get the fuck out of here!”

  As the group starts making their way back towards the vehicles, another pack of Charlie comes out of the woods. This pack is much larger, probably thirty or so strong. Adding to the ones already chasing them, there are now over fifty following after them.

  Behind them, Tony opens up the SAW and starts firing in their general direction. Wanting to know why Tony is shooting towards them, Vintago spins around. There is another pack of Charlie approaching them from behind, it is a smaller group, but they are about to be overrun and surrounded. Vintago and Logan make a quick decision to run directly through the small group, and they wave everyone forward. They start running straight at the small group of Charlie, spraying them with bullets as they go. Vintago’s rifle goes dry, and he is out of spare magazines. He pulls out his Taurus 9mm and starts shooting wildly. The group starts dying off in front of them, and they charge right into the middle of them. Vintago slashes out wildly with his empty rifle using it like a club to knock Charlie out of his way. Logan pulls out a giant combat knife and stabs it into the neck of a particularly large male. The rest of the guys see this and follow the lead, using whatever they have to beat the Charlie group down.

  Eventually, Vintago and his men reach the trucks and do a quick head count. All eight of his men are accounted for, except for Jose and Nathan. He checks their status and Jose is in the front seat of the pickup, and Nathan is behind the wheel of the fuel truck. They both step on it, and head out of the parking lot smashing through bodies as they go.

  The resort team is another story. Only three of them made it back to the vehicles, and the other five are standing on top of an abandoned car shooting at the infected quickly surrounding them.

  Logan, thinking quickly, hops in the big Ford truck and waves Vintago and his son over. They both get in the truck, and Logan slams the pedal to the floor. He hauls ass into what’s left of the small group of Charlie sending them flying every which way, some of them being crushed under the weight of the vehicle. The big cattle guard on the front of the truck does its job and slices through the group.

  He keeps on barreling ahead and up ahead is the much larger group of Charlie and the rest of the Resort crew. Logan screams like a crazy asshole and just rams right into the mass scattering them all over. He tries to stop, but slides right into the car the guys are standing on. One guy falls off the backside, into the group of Charlie, never to be seen again. The other four hop onto the hood of the Ford and literally run and dive into the truck bed with several thuds. Logan throws the truck in reverse as hands slap at the windows, spattering blood everywhere. As he backs up, Logan crushes several Charlie under the trucks monster dually tires. He power slides the truck around in a circle, crushing more Charlie along the way, and slams the gear selector into drive. Peeling out on the face of a female Charlie, he hauls ass out of the group and towards the rest of their convoy. Jose and Nathan are ready and waiting, and the rest of the group pile into whatever vehicles they can get in, and they all step on it. The entire convoy barrels down the highway at breakneck speed trying to get the hell out of Dodge.

  Fortunately, they do not run into any other surprises, and the two groups make it out of town and back towards safety. They ride in silence the rest of the way to the cutoff for the hatchery and the resort. They stop here, and everyone gets out switching to the correct vehicles. Vintago knows that everyone is far to stressed out to haggle over who gets what supplies, so he just lets them have what they collected.

  Before letting them go Vin says, “I’m sorry about your friends back there. That’s a shame what happened. You guys did fantastic though, I want to say that. I also want to say that if any of you so choose, we would be more than happy to have you over at our camp. We need more men like yourselves.”

  Vintago knows it is not the appropriate time to try and enlist the resort’s fighters, especially since they just lost three men, but he has to admit to himself that the seven who did make it are damned good.

  He doesn’t let anyone else know, but this whole day was one gigantic test, a test to see how his men functioned under pressure and combat, and how this new group of survivors functioned. He knew exactly what would happen when he left that generator running because he had already seen it happen once. It made Vintago felt good to know that his team had functioned flawlessly, and hopefully it would increase by seven more within the coming days. It was a shame that the resort crew had lost three men. They may have even been good men, but if they were that good, they would have made it out. Vintago did not want men that were pretty good. He wanted the best men. In this world, only the best would survive, and Vintago intended to have the best.

  The two groups say goodbye to each other, shake hands, and mount up. Vintago and his group head back to the hatchery to unload their supplies and have a mission debriefing. Vintago thought about this on the way back. It would be a way for them to discuss a mission in its entirety and discuss failures and successes, and how to improve next time.

  When the guys arrive, everyone from the compound gathers around. As the guys dismount, there are more than a few sighs of relief. Everyone knows how dangerous it is for them to go out like this. After today, even Vintago knows that. His plan had figured in twenty or thirty Charlie, not seventy. He had no idea there were that many around since they are almost never out roaming around. The mission gave Vin valuable information about how they operate, which he will bring up during the debriefing.

  Vintago walks over and gives his wife a hug and a kiss and does the same to Gray. Logan does the same with his family. Mitch greets his wife in a similar fashion. The four soldiers, they just walk away.

  Vintago takes a look around and sees that the guys have been hard at work putting up the fence and security spotlights. The fence was coming along nicely, and it was already giving Vin a much needed boost in security.

  Vin asks his guys to help unload the supplies and asks Henry Steeple to stop putting up the lights and help out.

  They get all of the guns and ammunition put into the armory first and get the building locked up again. The new additions to their munitions supply makes about half the building covered in ammunition cans while the other half is lined with guns of all shapes and sizes. Their armory was now effectively maxed out. They probably had enough munitions to arm at least two hundred people or more.

  Next, they offload the electronics, putting them all in the crew quarters for Vintago to mess around with later. They also stockpile all of the batteries in the crew quarters to keep them warmer and hopefully increase their life. They do, however, give everyone at the compound a radio, a flashlight, and a battery powered lantern.

  After that they get all of the medical supplies and hand them over to Christine, who has been taking care of Ben all day. She is extremely pleased to have the extra antibiotics and painkillers as Ben has been consuming them like candy. She tells Vin real quick that his dad is doing much better, and she thinks he will make a full recovery. Vin takes this as good news, and continues working.

  Lastly, they take all of the new foodstuffs they scavenged and put it all in the large pantries inside the crew kitchens. Jessica organizes everything and puts it where it needs to be. She also keeps an inventory going on her iPad so that they know exactly what they have. Yet another piece of evidence to prove Vintago’s technology theory. Seeing her inventory the kitchen like that makes Vintago want to do the same with his armory, medical supplies, and everything else. He will have to speak with Logan about that, perhaps it is something Henr
y Steeple could do. He’s good with numbers, Vintago figures.

  Vintago decides to round up his men for their mission debriefing now. He gets everybody together, and they go over to the warehouse. The workbench area has some chairs and tables that they all sit around. Vintago starts the meeting once everyone is sitting down.

  “OK guys, I want this to be fairly informal, but we need to discuss our supply run today and go over the finer points.” Vin begins, “I want to discuss the failures and successes and how we can turn those failures into successes in the future.”

  The men talk back and forth for about an hour going over the details of the mission. Obviously, everyone sees leaving the truck pumping gas with the generator running was the colossal failure. Logan brings up that he did believe that might happen, but figured the Charlie would be less in number and more manageable.

  None of the group expected to see such a large group of Charlie. Everyone has thus far has been on the run, and nobody has had much time to study the enemy. Logan brings this fact up, and they explore scenarios for researching Charlie to try and figure out more information concerning their whereabouts, patterns, and weaknesses.

  The following critical failure they go over is the breakdown in discipline, or lack thereof during their skirmish with the infected. The resort crew are not trained in unit cohesion, and their performance showed. They got three of their guys killed during the skirmish, due to lack of discipline.

  The best solution they can come up with for this issue is tactical training led by Logan and Trevor. Everyone, including Vintago who has no formal training, could use it.

  Lastly, the guys quickly go over the successes of the mission which include over one thousand gallons of gasoline, another month's worth of food rations, the armory being full to its bursting point, and the medical team having plenty of supplies.

  After their mission debriefing, they decide to discuss where to go from here. Vintago mentions that the security needs to be beefed up still, especially now that they know they have neighbors, and Charlie are lurking about.