I'm Tired of Zombies | Book 2 | Full Scale War

by Murphy, James W.

  “Don’t get too comfortable, you two,” Ruth said. “We’ll be setting the table in a minute.”

  “Listen to her,” Dave said quietly. “Sounds like a drill sergeant or something.”

  “Nope, she hasn’t even touched on that yet and you don’t want her to,” I told him.

  “How’s your side?” Dave asked me.

  “Stings some, but it’ll do. I’ll have Ruth put some fresh dressings on it in the morning before we leave. I’ll be okay.”

  Dave looked at me with a serious look and said, “You know, an inch to the right and you’d a been hit in the liver. That would not have been good.”

  I looked back at Ruth and Julia and nodded. “I wouldn’t have made it then.”

  He gave me another serious look and said, “Were you taking a risk when you got hit?”

  “Dave, I don’t really know when I got this,” I said pointing to my side. I think it was when that guy in the turret of the hummer to the north cut loose at Ruth and me. I was behind the concrete wall of bunker four when I felt a tug on my right. It may have been then, and no, I wasn’t taking any more risks than the rest of you.”

  “You do take risks sometimes, you know,” Dave said in a reserved tone.

  “Me!” I responded pointing at him. “You need to some serious looking in a mirror, friend.”

  “Dinner’s up, boys,” Ruth called. Dave and I smiled at each other, got up and went to the table. We prayed together and thanked the Lord for the meal, safely returning home from Fort Collins and for safety going to Cheyenne. I asked that He hold back the snow for twenty-four hours if He would. Dinner was delicious.

  After we’d cleaned and dried the dishes, the four of us got toddied up and throwing two logs on the fire, sat in the front room chatting. An hour later I woke Dave up and said, “Let’s hit the sack.”

  Morning broke with partly cloudy skies, less humidity, and a mild wind from the northwest. Stars dotted the early morning sky and the quarter moon was to the west. It was just past four A.M. and Dave and I had made one more look and review of our supplies and equipment. All we would add would be thermoses of coffee.

  Julia was up and began preparing us a big breakfast with steak and eggs, toast, and jam, and of course, the coffee. As I got back inside, Ruth was coming down the stairs, yawning. I had already started the fire and the great room was beginning to warm nicely.

  “You boys ready for your little outing?” Ruth asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered, giving her a kiss. “How’s your arm?”

  “Its fine; your side?” she asked.

  “I’m okay. You can do your nurse thing on it before we leave,” I said with a grin.

  “Be happy to soldier,” she said, yawning again.

  Julia called breakfast up and we sat together, prayed, and ate. The meal was great, the elk steaks done perfectly. Dave said he and Julia would do KP so Ruth and I could go up to clean and redress my wounds.

  When all was said and done, we went back downstairs, and Dave was ready to leave. It was close to five when we said our goodbyes and with thermoses and mugs in hand, got into our trucks and pulled out. The ladies, of course, had packed us some real food and snacks for the trip and put those in with us.

  Dave and I had planned for no more than three days out. That should give us plenty of time to find the right storage areas and get what we wanted. We agreed with Julia and Ruth that they would come looking for us on the morning of the fifth day if we hadn’t shown.

  It was Tuesday, and the sun crested the eastern horizon as we topped the pass on I-80. We’d decided to go into Cheyenne off Happy Jack Road, as that would shave more than twenty miles off the road trip, both ways. We hadn’t been on Happy Jack in some time and wanted to see what it was like. We turned off I-80, heading east on the highway. I loved this road, as it was one of the most beautiful and scenic in Wyoming. I guess it was fortunate for us the state had repaved the road the year before the outbreak.

  For the most part, the road was still clear and fairly smooth. We had a few bumpy places in the valleys, and in one low spot, we could see where water had run over the road, probably during the spring runoff. We saw elk, moose, mule deer, Bald Eagles, and wild turkeys. The turkeys we would love to see again on the way back, if so, we would use the shotguns on a few for future use.

  We had topped the highest point on Happy Jack, and I looked down into the valley where the recreation area and reservoir were and wondered how the dam was holding up. Then I thought of the other two reservoirs and their dams, wondering the same thing. When they finally did go, it would be a mess for Cheyenne. I remembered how the bridge was up near Rob Roy Reservoir and wondered about that dam, too. If it went, then Foxpark, Wyoming, would disappear.

  The trip to Cheyenne took almost two hours. We went by the food distribution center and it had burned out. That was a bummer because we had planned to stop there and get case-lots of canned goods.

  We drove up to the southwest fence-line of the military instillation and stopped. We got out of our trucks and looked around. “What do you think?” Dave asked.

  “I know the bunkers are almost due north of here so if we turn down that road over there, we can drive closer, park, then we’ll be just this side of the complex. It’ll be thirty or forty yards away from the trucks. If necessary, I think we can cut the fence so we can get the trucks and trailers through, load up and get outta here.”

  “Okay, I’m going to take a leak then follow you,” Dave said.

  I relieved myself, climbed into the truck and set out with Dave on my tail. It was less than a half mile when I stopped. We watched the area for signs of life or Zs, and not seeing anything I got out, grabbed the bolt cutters, and cut a line down the fencing so Dave and I could pull through with the trucks. I figured if anyone were still alive on the base, me cutting the fence would bring the forces out. After I’d cut, I pulled the fencing back to the next pole, leaving an eight-foot space for us to drive through. Dave went through first then me.

  The complex was rectangular and held six rows, each with seven bunkers and all doors facing to the southeast. We had to cut through another fence and this time both of us waited to see if anyone alerted. I made a point of cutting several wires that ran through the chain link fencing, knowing it would sound alarms somewhere. Sadly, no one came, and after a five-minute wait, we went inside.

  We drove down the first line of bunkers and saw radioactive warning labels on all of them. Since we didn’t want to mess with anything nuclear, we continued. The next line was the same. The third did not have any nuclear warning labels so I stopped at the first one. Dave pulled up to the second and we went to work.

  Both of us had spray lubricants and we sprayed the hinges liberally. The lock was almost identical to the ones that were at the NG base in Colorado and took some persuasion to open. We were successful. The bunker I’d opened held crates of things I didn’t recognize. I thought they may be missile parts or something and left them alone.

  By five o’clock, I’d opened four bunkers and had yet to find anything useful. Dave had already moved to the next line and was working on the lock when I pulled up. “Hey, want to quit for the night and get some food?”

  “Not really. I haven’t found a thing; you?”

  “No not yet. I’ll start on the next one,” I said and pulled forward.

  I started on the lock after spraying the hinges and I heard Dave give a yelp. I dropped my tools and grabbed my M4, hit the BAD switch loading the weapon and ran to the bunker where Dave had been. I slowed as I came up as the door was open and I didn’t see anyone, nor Dave. I brought my rifle up, stopped to listen, and heard Dave inside saying to himself, “This is great.”

  My shoulders drooped, knowing he was okay and had probably found something useful. I looked in the door and asked, “What’d you find?”

  “Ammunition and lots of it; come on in,” he said.

  I pulled my flashlight and went inside. Row upon row of ammunition boxes ha
d been stacked on pallets. The cans were stacked six deep and five across, one-hundred fifty cans per pallet. The first one I looked at held .556 caliber ammunition, each can with eight-hundred, forty rounds on ten-round stripper clips. That meant this pallet alone held over 125,000 rounds! The four of us could shoot for years before we ran out.

  Dave looked at me with a huge smile and said, “There are twenty pallets of .556 and twenty of .308. The .308 is belted. Dude, this is Christmas.”

  Forty pallets with 126,000 rounds each of .556 is…over two point five million rounds. “Dave, you realize there are over two point five million rounds of .556 in here alone?” I asked him.

  “We’ll never run out,” he said, beaming. “And this is just the first one we found, brother.”

  I figured we could each take a pallet of cans, one with .556 and the other with .308. The .308 cans held six-hundred, forty rounds each so one pallet would have 96,000 rounds. That would last us a long while. Twenty pallets held almost two million rounds.

  Dave came over to me and we looked at each other, stunned. “I hope we find one loaded with grenades and those forty-millimeter grenades for those thumpers. Man, we’ve really hit the jackpot. Come on, let’s start loading while we still have some daylight.” He took two cans and left the bunker. I grabbed two and followed. We would load the truck bed first, then the trailers.

  Dave got up in the bed of his truck and I went back and forth carrying cans out to him. We’d put fifty cans in, and I told him his truck was beginning to sag so we stopped and moved to the trailer. We decided we would put five cans across and down to the axel. That much ammo would last us for a long time.

  The sun had finally dropped below the western horizon, so we stopped work, made dinner, and laid out our sleeping mats and bags. We would sleep in the bunker tonight, closing the door, leaving it open a crack for air. We braced the door open with a can of ammo and stacked more cans on the inside to keep it closed. If something or someone tried to get in, the cans falling over would wake us.

  We were tired. Lugging heavy cans of ammunition was taxing. Tomorrow we would finish up and possibly head home. We ate mostly in silence. Dave said he wished we’d brought a bottle of scotch and I told him we would go shopping at that liquor store again before we left. We decided to unhook one truck and drive over there tomorrow afternoon. We would stop in that clinic again and get more medical supplies.

  I woke to the sound and smell of bacon cooking. I was confused. After a moment, however, I remembered where I was. Nevertheless, I couldn’t figure out the bacon smell. I sat up and Dave had the little single-burner propane stove going, with a cast-iron skillet on top with sizzling bacon cooking.

  “Where did you get bacon?” I asked unbelievably.

  “Julia’s fault,” he answered. “She packed a cooler in my truck with bacon, eggs and a few steaks for us. We’re having steak tonight with our scotch, by the way.”

  I got up, shook the cobwebs out and went outside to relieve myself. It was already daylight and I was surprised I’d slept as well as I did. That was a rarity. I climbed the bunker’s slope and standing on top, looked in all directions. Way off to the east I could see smoke rising. Another fire - I wondered what had caused this one. I wished I’d brought my binos up with me when Dave came up with his.

  Together we looked around and I concentrated on the rising smoke. “I think that is near the place where Ruth and I stayed the first night together. That was a long time ago.”

  “Together?” Dave said with a grin.

  “No, idiot, she was upstairs, and I was in a basement bedroom. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

  “Just ragging you, brother. What do you think caused that?”

  “No telling. For sure, that’s a housing area and may be the one where we stayed. There were several in that area.” I swung the binos over towards the refinery, wondering if we would be able to find fuel there and said as much.

  Dave said it would be worth a look and we decided to finish loading and unhook a truck and go ‘shopping’ that afternoon. We ate breakfast, which was surprisingly good, and began packing ammo out to the trailers. We finished at nine o’clock and thought we had more than enough weight to haul.

  We opened the rest of the bunkers on the line we were working and found two that held all kinds of grenades. The last held the Christmas present of presents. I opened the door and inside found rack upon rack of OD green synthetic cases that held AT4, eighty-four millimeter, unguided, single-shot recoilless weapons, otherwise known as M136 Light Antitank Weapons – LAWS. I opened the first case and it held two of the beasts. I took both, moved the case aside, opened another and taking those two, walked out of the bunker.

  Dave was standing by my truck and his eyes popped out when he saw me come out with four tubes. “What are those things?”

  “LAWS,” I said with a smile. “These are just what the doctor ordered. These are prescriptions for destruction, brother. Come on, I’m going to give you some OJT.”

  We hiked back to the western edge of the complex, as across the road were a few houses that had cars and trucks parked near them. ‘Targets of opportunity’ I called them when we’d climbed the last bunker’s sloping side.

  I went through the procedure with Dave, showing him how to open and prepare the rocket for firing, and how to aim the weapon. He was all smiles to say the least. We put in our earplugs and I told him to step aside, and lifting the weapon I’d prepared, took aim at a Ford product, and fired the missile. The truck disintegrated. Dave was whooping and hollering, jumping up and down.

  He stopped, looked at me and asked, “My turn?”

  I handed him a tube and he prepared it to fire. He looked at me and I elegantly swept my hand to the west and said, “Let ‘er rip.”

  He took aim at a car and fired. The missile went into the engine compartment and blew the back completely off the car. It flipped several times, going end over end, spraying gasoline all over the area. The fire probably wouldn’t burn too long but caught some of the surrounding grass.

  Dave looked at me and had a huge smile on his face, saying, “How many of these did you find?”

  “Must be a couple a hundred in there,” I answered. “Christmas, yes?”

  “Absolutely!” he yelled. We decided firing two was enough and we each put one in the cabs of our trucks. We went inside the bunker and took eight crates, placing four on the ends of the two trailers.

  The ammunition amounted to 126,000 rounds of .556 and 96,000 rounds of .308. We had eight cases of grenades, four each of the Mark 68s and 67s, and now had eighteen M136, LAW rockets. If our vehicles caught fire, I’d head for another county. We would need to bring the girls over for the next load. With all four trucks loaded, we would have enough ammunition and explosives to last…forever. In addition, we still had two more rows of bunkers to open. Thank the Lord for the United States military.

  We unhooked my truck and left the complex, going back to Happy Jack Road and entering town. We made our way to Yellowstone Road, stopped at the liquor store and back inside the locked room, took the last four cases of good scotch and two of bourbon. Dave threw in two cases of rum as the ladies enjoyed rum with lime juice added.

  Next was the clinic, where Dave cleaned my wounds, redressed, and bandaged my side. We took all the medical supplies we felt we needed, as they didn’t weigh too much.

  Back in the truck, we discussed our options and decided to go over to the refinery and see if we could scavenge some fuel. I knew there was a gas station across the street from the depot and went there first. Dave stood watch in the back of my truck while I refueled.

  When the truck was full, Dave said, “I’ll be right back,” and ran across the street to the refinery. He looked at several tanker trucks and on one, he pumped fist up and down and yelled, “YES!”

  I looked at him with my M4 up and he yelled at me, “Jackpot, this one is full of fuel. I say we take it. You know how to hotwire?”

  Well, no, I did not. He o
n the other hand, had some experience as a law officer and tried. There was no power to the lights, so we figured the battery was dead. I pulled my truck up and we hooked up to the big rig and let if charge for a bit. Dave tried the lights again and they came on, so he dove under the dash and began pulling wires. I saw him pump the gas pedal several times and he threw some switches on the dash then tied two wires together. The thing actually coughed several times attempting to start.

  He undid the wires, pumped the fuel pedal again several times and put the wires together again. I couldn’t believe it, but the thing started, billowing streams of black diesel smoke out of the stacks. I unhooked the jumper cables and Dave sat in the driver’s seat smiling. I shook my head and backed my truck up.

  The big rig’s tires were almost flat, so Dave slowly drove it over to the gas station. I had already stated the emergency generator to pump fuel, so restarted it and turned on the compressor so we could get air. It took over an hour to fill eighteen tires to the right air pressure, and with the load of fuel it had, those tires needed to be full.

  Dave filled the fuel truck’s tanks with diesel fuel. He was about to climb into the cab when I asked, “Hey, brother, how are we going to do this?”

  “Do what,” he said, stopping.

  “There are two of us and now three trucks. How will we do this without having to make another trip?”

  He looked at me and undid the wires, shutting the truck’s engine down. He sat on the seat and started to think. I sat cross-legged on the ground and we thought out the problem together, deciding to get as much chain as we could find – we would tow Dave’s truck with the big rig by chaining the two together.

  I moved a little and leaned back against the diesel pump to think this through. The bullet struck the pump just above my head. I dropped to the ground, flat. Dave dove out of the truck, landing on his stomach. He had his M4 on a lanyard and pulled it around, as had I. The next round hit the truck cab. The third hit the pump again.

  “I saw the flash over at the warehouse to the left, about four hundred yards. These won’t reach. Can you get to my truck and get either the fifty or the .308?”