by Chris Blake
“Lastly, we will have Bravo team, which will be led by Quinton, and will consist of Joey, Jade, Nick, Evan, Nelson, Cody, and Freddie.” Vintago explains to the group.
“The last thing I want to do is assign everyone a rank, to serve as a title. I want to create a chain of command around here, so that we know who is supposed to be leading which aspects of our missions.” Vin tells the group.
Vintago hands the men a copy of the roster they just created, and it shows clearly what job assignments everyone has been assigned to, what ranks the fighters will be, and who is in charge of each team.
After everyone has a look at it, Vintago asks, “Any problems with that setup guys? I know I’m not a military man at all, but my second Logan has more combat experience than all of us combined, and Colonel Bradley will be my personal advisor when it comes to command and control decisions.”
The guys look at the list, and Trevor and his guys clearly have some reluctance towards being in a rank structure with Vintago at the top. Everyone in Bravo team is perfectly fine with letting the only military man in their group lead them. Vintago kept Alpha team consisting of only the four original squad members because they already had unit cohesion and work well together. Additionally, Trevor and his boys just do not seem to play well with others.
After a few moments, everyone tells Vintago they are OK with the new arrangements and want to know what’s next.
Vintago tells them that he wants Alpha team running recon and scouting out the area further, trying to find more survivors, supplies or vehicles. He wants to have Bravo team getting the Church Camp Compound up and running. They will need supplies, and they will require protection. Bravo team is going to provide security, and they will be in charge of keeping the twenty something people safe 24x7.
Vintago also tells the group that tomorrow he wants everyone up at the Hatchery Compound, for drills and training. Commander Logan is going to teach the new guys how to function as a team, how to perform tactical maneuvers, and also allow them some range time with their new M4A1 rifles.
After the plan for tomorrow is laid out, Vintago dismisses everyone and tells the new members to get cleaned up for dinner.
A little while later, the whole group files into the crew quarters kitchens in a long line to be served buffet style by the women of the group. They can’t all fit inside, and most of them have to sit outside on whatever they can find, and some of them go back to the other buildings. Greg sees the problem and decides to devote some manpower to building tables and benches outside for feeding everyone. Since he can hold off building a new crew quarters building, he can focus on other projects to improve their living situation. He is about halfway done with the fence surrounding the compound, so he wants to start other projects soon.
After dinner, Vintago decides to go check on his father. He goes into the bedroom where Ben is staying and sits down next to his bed.
He pats his dad and says, “How are you hanging in there dad?”
His dad lifts his head and looks at his son. He has a look of horror on his face.
“I had a terrible dream about you Vintago, I dreamed that you were falling and falling. Something horrible happened to you, and you were falling.”
Vintago was taken aback by this random message from his father. Most people have dreams about themselves falling, not other people. It was probably just the drugs talking. Christine had given him some narcotics they had recovered to help him with his pain. He had been taking long drug induced naps, and it was beginning to get a little weird.
“It’s probably just the drugs dad. I’ll be fine, and I’ll stay away from anything tall alright?” Vintago tells his father.
“Yes, that’s good. Stay on the ground son.” Ben tells him.
Vintago just pats his father again and walks out of the room. He stops to talk to Christine and talks to her for a minute.
“You need to take it easy on the pills for that guy, he’s talking all kinds of crazy shit.” Vin tells her.
“Well he’s perfectly fine, I can’t control what he dreams about.” she tells him.
Christine tells Vin that his dad will probably be fully healed in a few weeks and be back to himself in a matter of a week or two at most.
Vintago figures that is good news and decides that he will leave her alone. He goes to his bedroom and finds his wife waiting for him, their son already tucked into his bed. Victoria waves Vin over with a funny look on her face.
He walks over to the bed and she lifts the covers off, exposing her naked body. Vintago has a double take and realizes that he’s about to get lucky. He shuts off the lights. Strips naked and joins his wife.
Part Three: War
Chapter Twenty
Declaration of War
February, 2013
In the morning, all is quiet, and nobody is stirring. The new groups of people grabbed a decent amount of supplies and loaded them into one of the trucks last night. Some of Vin’s guys helped them get ferried over to the Church Camp, and get set up. They spent most of the night getting their gear unpacked and cleaning up some of the cabins. At least making them hospitable enough to sleep in one night.
At the Hatchery, Vintago decides it is time to get up and untangles himself from his wife. He enters the kitchen and starts a pot of coffee. A few minutes into the roast, the smell brings out some of the group members like flies on poop. Logan comes out first, grunting and shuffling his feet across the floor like a zombie.
“Be careful I might think you’re Charlie and shoot your ass in the face.” Vin chuckles.
“Don’t shoot!” Logan says with a smile and throws up his arms in surrender.
Vin hands Logan a batch of freshly brewed coffee, and he sniffs at it like a freshly bloomed flower.
“What’s on the agenda today boss.” Logan says and then chuckles, “Or should I say, Commander?”
Vintago just rolls his eyes and responds, “I think we should get everyone together, run some drills, and do some exercises like we said yesterday. That western camp group especially, they haven’t seen much action by the sound of it.”
“Sounds good, I’ll start getting everyone up and get them moving.” Logan tells Vintago.
Before Logan heads out of the crew quarters building he stops and wakes up his son Robby. Robby moans and groans, but gets up when his father tells him too.
With his cup of coffee in hand, he heads over to the office building to wake up the rest of the guys. He steps quietly into the building to avoid waking up the Steeple family and rouses Trevor.
“Wake up Lieutenant.” Logan jokes.
“Ugh, what is this boot camp?” Trevor responds, one eye open.
“Today it is! We’re going to have us a good time.” Logan chuckles.
Logan turns around and leaves the building, expecting Trevor to rouse his men. Logan walks back over to the crew quarters. When he gets inside, Vintago tells him that he radioed Quinton and told him to round up his men and start up the hill for training day. Quinton apparently told Vin that they would be up in twenty minutes.
Exactly nineteen minutes after the radio call, Quinton and his boys arrive in two vehicles. Shortly after Quinton and his men pile out of their vehicle, Trevor and his guys come out of the office building.
“How is it that Quinton can get them all out of bed, dressed, and driven up the hill before Trevor can step outside the damn building?” Vintago says quietly to Logan.
“They’re like a bunch of women, waiting on each other to take turns putting on their makeup in the bathroom” Logan laughs.
Logan makes a joke about it, but he is concerned about this. Trevor and his crew do not seem to have the same loyalty that some of the other survivors have. It’s almost like they stay here because it is convenient and not because they want to. They may need to be cut loose eventually, but right now their experience was needed.
Everyone gathers around Vintago and Logan, waiting for Vin to say something. Vintago misses the signal for a second, and
then realizes that they are all waiting on him.
“How’s everyone doing this morning?” Vin says.
He gets mixed grunts, a couple “greats” and some “fines” in response.
“Today we are going to do some training. We think it would be fantastic if everyone gets to know their team members, and if everyone gets to learn some basic skills. It will also give us an idea of what skills you already have.” Vin tells them.
Vintago waves Logan forward since this is going to be his baby.
Logan takes a step forward and tells the group how he wants to first check everybody's fitness levels with a run down to the highway and back. He explains that if they cannot make it, or need to quit Greg will be riding along in one of the trucks. He tells them that is not a competition or something that they will be judged on. It is simply to see what sort of fighting condition the men are in. Logan and Robby will be joining them as well.
Logan and Vintago generally want to see who has been keeping in shape, who is malnourished, and who will need some work. They need to know these things before sending their new guys out into the field.
After the run, they will be participating in firearms training to get used to the M4 rifles and side arms they will be carrying on missions. Logan also wants to get Alpha team on the SAW and a sharpshooter rifle. He wants Alpha team to be the fire support for Bravo team. The heavy weapons guys, so to speak.
Lastly, Vintago wants to give them some team cohesion practice by letting both Alpha team and Bravo team do some scavenging in the rest of the houses surrounding the hatchery. There are two more unexplored housing areas off the main road into the hatchery, and Vintago wants to know what’s in them.
While the two teams are out on their missions, Vintago wants to sit down with Colonel Bradley and Mitch and get to know them better. Mitch had been riding with Vin, Logan, and Robby, but they had not gotten to know him exceptionally well yet. Today would be their opportunity to get to know each other, and develop the brain trust that would be the command structure for both compounds. It would be the decisions made from the command team that would be carried out. The decisions they made would potentially affect the lives of all of their families, so it was imperative that they thought on the same wavelength.
The guys spend a few more minutes talking and then Vintago dismisses Alpha and Bravo team with Logan to lead them. The guys drop their gear off and change into clothes more suitable for fitness. Not all of them are excited to go running down the hill. Vintago realizes that the run is not going to inspire the men, or make them happy. He is simply doing it to know who can handle the intense fighting, scavenging, scouting, and in the worst case scenario, run like hell on foot.
Logan gets everyone to the edge of the parking lot, and Greg pulls the truck up. Some of the guys roll their eyes, obviously thinking that Logan is going to hop in the truck and follow them. Instead, he just starts jogging down the hill. He stops after ten feet and waves everyone forward.
After a couple looks at each other, they all start jogging to catch up with him. Robby catches up with his father and the two men set the pace for their jog. They start out steadily, not wanting anyone to get to bad of muscle cramps from not having warmed up or stretched. Logan wants to see how they perform unrehearsed and unprepared. The main thing they are trying to figure out is if they can depend on these new recruits to hold their own and be able to keep up if the shit hits the fan. Vintago and Logan don’t want to see their men get split up and killed by Charlie.
The group of men jog down the hill at a decent pace, and as they get past midway to the bottom of the hill Logan starts picking up the pace. Some of the guys start slowing down a little bit, clearly getting tired by the end of the second mile.
Logan yells back to them, “Keep the pace until you can’t go any longer.”
The idea here is to see how long they can keep a decent pace and keep going. He isn’t as interested in their long term persistence. Theoretically, if they were humping it away from Charlie, eventually they would hunker down or find a vehicle.
At this point, Nelson Brooks decides to tap out. He signals Greg to stop, and Greg pulls over. Nelson hops in the back of the truck and lays back. Nelson, being older and out of shape from chain smoking and unhealthy eating habits before the outbreak, is clearly not holding up so well after the outbreak.
The guys keep trundling down the hill, and not too much further down the road Freddie decides to tap out. Freddie, being a computer nerd before the outbreak, did not have much endurance. Whatever he did have he had lost in the past month.
Jade is the next one to give up at mile three. Having ridden a desk most of her adult life, she just did not have it either.
A little while later, just as they reach the highway Nick calls it quits. He made it to the highway which was his personal goal, and he was not trying to impress anyone.
Logan stops everyone at the bottom of the hill and lets them rest for a few minutes. While they are all taking a short break at the bottom of the road, a truck flies up onto the road coming from the resort. It hauls ass across the highway and comes to a stop near Vintago’s men. The window rolls down, and Roger sticks his head out.
His face is covered in fury and anger as he yells, “Where is Vintago.”
Logan steps forward casually and replies, “What do you need Roger, I can see if he can speak with you.”
Roger simply pulls his head back into the truck and floors it up the hill.
Vintago, Mitch, and Colonel Bradley are all sitting around one of the tables in the warehouse. Their informal operational command center was covered in maps and charts. The three men were discussing where to go from here. They had discussed making some supply runs into Heber, a small town about forty miles up the highway from their compounds. They mainly wanted to see the state of this town compared to Payson. Vintago wanted to see if Heber was as deserted as Payson. The group could expand now that the Church Camp was being prepared, and Vintago wanted to get as many new people as he could find. Along with the new people, they would need a ton more supplies.
The guys were also having a terrific time getting to know each other. Colonel Bradley had been telling them some war stories, and had been giving them strategies that Vintago had not even thought about. He was proving his worth to Vintago by simply being a wealth of knowledge. Mitch, on the other hand, coming from law enforcement had provided expert advice to the team about keeping peace and order around the compound. It was not so much an issue now, but if they kept adding on members to their group, there would have to be rules, punishments, and people to enforce them.
In the middle of their discussion, Henry Steeple ran into the building yelling.
“Vintago, Roger from the resort camp is heading up the hill, and he’s not happy!” Henry blurts out.
“What do you mean?” Vintago says.
Henry quickly tells Vintago about the call they received from Logan over the radio. He said that Roger was on his way up, and he was not coming in peace and they needed to get their shit together. He also said that they were driving back to the hatchery in a hurry, but Roger had a lead on them.
Immediately after Henry explains it to them, they hear tires squealing in the parking lot.
“Let’s go see what the hell this is all about.” Vintago says, and then he adds, “Get your side arms ready, just in case things go south. Henry, get your father and the builders to come out as a show of force as well.”
Vintago walks briskly towards the parking lot with Mitch and the Colonel in tow. They all have their holsters unbuckled and the safeties off.
Just as, the three men arrive at the parking lot, Roger steps out of his truck with four other fighters. They are all carrying rifles, and some of them even have Vintago’s M4 rifles.
“Hopefully he doesn’t intend to kill us with my own guns.” Vintago says under his breath so Mitch and the Colonel hear.
Mitch chuckles slightly, but the Colonel is all business.
Roger and h
is men walk up to Vintago, and Vintago extends his hand to shake Roger’s.
Roger just looks at him, and leaves him hanging. Vintago puts his hand down by his side, sensing there is a serious problem.
Roger points his finger at Vintago and yells in his face, “You got three of my men killed, and stole four more of them! You came to me under the pretense of peace and helpfulness and instead you backstabbed me and stole my people!”
Vintago looks at Roger for a few seconds before responding, and then says, “Roger, your people knew what they were getting into before they came into Payson, and I sure as hell didn’t ‘steal’ the other four men.” Then he continues, “The four of them came to my camp asking to be part of our group. They wanted strong leadership, food, and the amenities we have to offer.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you say snake! You came in and stole my people, and now we are seven fighters down, and those four were my best.” Roger screams.
“Well,” Vintago says with a smile, “I’m glad I got your best fighters then.”
The colonel shakes his head at this comment. He likes Vintago, but he was young and inexperienced in the art of peacekeeping.
“Listen here you son of a bitch,” Roger yells at Vintago, “I want my men back, and I want supplies and guns as compensation for the three men you got killed.”
Just then, Logan and some of the men come sliding to a stop behind them. Logan jumps out of the vehicle and assesses the situation. He already has his handgun out in his hand as he stands in the open.
Upon seeing the men approach, cutting off their exit, Roger changes his attitude. He raises his rifle and aims it at Vintago’s head.
Everyone that was able to fit in the truck jumps out and pulls their sidearms aiming them at Roger and his men.
“Whoa boys!” Vintago yells, “Let’s all chill out here.”
Roger escalates the situation further by charging his rifle in an act meant to make himself look more serious. Instead, he ejects a round from his already chambered rifle, which clatters across the pavement. He must have been trying to act out some scene from a movie.