by David Achord
“She doesn’t want me to go, but I told her it was my duty,” Jorge said.
I gave him a small knowing smile. He confided to me once that he liked going on away missions.
“I like scavenging,” he once told me. “It’s like treasure hunting.”
I agreed with that sentiment also. I loved poking around abandoned places and finding neat stuff.
“Are we still leaving at eight?” he asked.
“Yes indeed.”
“Alright. I’m going to make a pot of tea.”
“That sounds wonderful,” I said. “Make it the black blend. Strong. I need the caffeine.”
Tea was our replacement for coffee. Except for the little freeze-dried packages found in MREs, we had finally run out. To make matters worse, we could not find coffee beans anywhere. However, the green thumbs around here had no problem cultivating tea. They had an entire greenhouse dedicated to growing different varieties, and ginseng grew in abundance in the countryside. So, all of us coffee drinkers had to settle for tea. Once, a few years ago, I came close to dying of thirst, so I didn’t complain.
Our muster formation was promptly at eight in the parking lot in front of the motor pool. Our vehicles were all lined up, gassed up, and ready to go. They consisted of a mixture of four-wheel-drive trucks, Humvees, and two armored vehicles known as Strykers. We had all of them running on diesel and all had been modified, except for the Strykers, which needed no modifications, but there were several jerry cans of fuel strapped to them.
It goes without saying fuel is a precious commodity these days. We had diesel, but regular gasoline was virtually nonexistent now. Years before, the EPA mandated cleaner fuel. The oil companies began adding ethyl alcohol, derivatives of methyl alcohol, and oxygenate additives. While this helped create cleaner-burning gasoline, the additives evaporated quickly. The result was, the shelf life of gas was only about a year, and we were into the eighth year of this shit.
Diesel lasted a little longer, but not by much. The bottom line; we had no fuel and the only working vehicle was Melvin’s biofuel truck and some electric cars. The trouble with the electric cars was that they were designed for city use. They weren’t built for today’s rough roads. Plus, the only power ports were here and Fort Detrick, so we only used them for short distance travel.
Then, Roscoe and Johnny G arrived with their tanker of fresh diesel. It was like a Godsend, and it allowed us to resume our scouting and scavenging missions.
It was two hundred miles to Pittsburgh. Once we got there, we were more than likely going to do a lot of driving around, searching and scavenging, and then a two-hundred-mile ride back home. Therefore, each vehicle had several jerry cans full of diesel.
I stood in the back of the formation of people while my friend, Captain Justin Smithson, gave the mission briefing and watched. Justin repeated the purpose of the mission and then described how we were going to travel along I-68, which we had cleared earlier last summer, and then venture into Pittsburgh along I-79.
It was risky. The big cities were still filled with zeds, but we’d been seeing stuff on the satellites. Garret and Grace would work the satellites at night, searching for glimmers of artificial lighting. Lights did not automatically activate anymore, so when nighttime lighting was spotted, we’d try to investigate.
Due to the shortage of fuel, the distances we traveled were limited. Three years ago, it was decided to concentrate in our own backyard, so to speak, until we got matters firmly in our control. When the weather permitted, we’d go on expeditions, looking for survivors, scavenging for resources, and killing zeds.
It’s been hard work, but we’d gone on multiple scouting and scavenging missions within the hundred-mile radius. Now, thanks to the group of survivors in Marcus Hook, we had the fuel to venture out further. The reason to visit Pittsburgh came about due to Garret discovering artificial lighting from a satellite fly-over.
There were twenty-four of us in five vehicles. Everyone knew everyone, which included everyone’s strengths as well as flaws. We were a tight-knit group. It wasn’t always that way, but with a lot of hard work and training, we’d become adept at scavenging, fighting zeds, fighting marauders, you name it.
But, our primary mission, like the one we were on today, was to find survivors who had not turned to a life of raping and murdering. These people who had lived through the worst of the worst were of the toughest mettle, the kind of people we needed to rebuild America. Hence the reason to burn over four-hundred-miles-worth of precious fuel. Whoever was out there in Pittsburgh was worthy of it.
Justin reiterated our radio procedures and code words before assigning teams and giving the command to load up. I was riding in the Stryker, which was the designated command vehicle. Joker, Justin, and Bob Duckworth were with me.
“Remind me again where this supposed sign of life was spotted, specifically?” Bob asked me as we exited the main gate.
“An area known as Mount Oliver,” I said.
He gestured at my laptop. “Do we have any satellite intel?” he asked.
I nodded and opened it up. I’d had it on sleep mode, so the screen lit up instantly. A couple of clicks and I handed it over. The pictures did not show a great deal, only some artificial lighting in the neighborhood we were heading to. I sat silently and watched him as he scrolled through the photographs and the map.
Bob was a handsome man in his fifties, with a fit body he developed with a personal trainer, back before. He was a smart and charismatic man, and married to a woman named Angela. She was a pretty woman, ten years younger than Bob. She was a friendly yet reserved woman.
“Have you ever been to Pittsburgh, Zach?” he asked.
“Nope.” In fact, I’d never been outside of Tennessee until I went to Mount Weather.
“I’ve only visited a couple of times. Once to a political fundraiser and once to a Steeler’s football game. I don’t have any unpleasant memories of the city, but then again, I was limited in what I saw and experienced.”
I looked around as we rode. The neighborhoods I could see all seemed old. Years of neglect had taken its toll, not unlike any other suburban neighborhood these days. A lot of buildings had both old and fresh graffiti. I reached for the microphone.
“All Teams, this is Team One-Bravo, give me any sighting of zeds.”
“Team Two, negative zed count, over.”
“Team Three, negative zed count, over.”
“Team Four, we saw three zeds off in a field, west of I-79. They appeared to be huddling together under a tree, but not doing anything. Perhaps they were playing stump poker, over.”
Joker chuckled. I probably would have laughed as well, but I was concerned. A city the size of Pittsburgh, and we’d only seen three infected. It seemed odd.
We exited the interstate and started moving along the secondary roads. There was nothing new, but I saw a lot of old structures, older houses built close together, and a lot of old graffiti.
“This is interesting,” Joker commented. He was referring to all the numerous side streets that were blocked off by derelict cars. “It’s like we’re being funneled.”
I noticed the same thing. “I don’t like it.”
Justin didn’t like it either. “All stop,” he quickly ordered. Joker brought the armored vehicle to a stop.
Justin got on the radio and called Jeremiah, the rear vehicle. “Team Five, Team One-Actual. Anything?” he asked.
“Negative contact,” he replied.
“Alright, we’re getting bottled up. Back it out to that last big intersection.”
“Roger that,” Jeremiah said.
We had wide intervals between each vehicle, which allowed each to turn around without much issue.
“Take us back to Phase Line Blue,” Justin said to Jeremiah, whose Stryker was now leading the procession. We started moving back to Saw Mill Run Boulevard, but we’d only gotten a half a block when Jeremiah spoke calmly on the radio.
“Contact dead ahead. Looks like
about a hundred zeds, coming at us down the street.”
I’d wondered where they’d been. Pittsburgh was not a small town, and even though it’s been eight years, I knew all of them had not died off.
The problem was we were on a narrow road and could only put the vehicles two abreast. Although the people in the first two vehicles had killed several of them, there were other zeds that had gotten through and had surrounded the next two vehicles. There was little we could do without risking shooting our team members. Justin was on the radio, keeping everyone calm.
“Alright now, remember your sectors of fire and be mindful of your crossfire. They can’t get to us as long as we’re in our vehicles. First Sergeant, let’s move out.”
“Ah, small problem up here,” Jeremiah replied. “Team Four has a couple of zeds caught in their undercarriage. They’re temporarily stuck.”
Justin held the microphone to his chest a moment as he shook his head. “We’ve discussed this at every training meeting,” he muttered. After a couple of more invectives under his breath, he brought the mike back up to his mouth.
“Alright, everyone, stay in your vehicles. Make absolutely certain of what’s behind your target before you shoot. We can pick them off, it’s just going to take a little patience. Team Four, start rocking your van, but don’t break anything.”
Gunfire soon dropped to nothing, with only a sporadic shot every couple of minutes. From our end, we could not see anything and could only provide rear security while listening to an occasional gunshot. We were there for twenty minutes and there were still a substantial number of zeds when the radio crackled.
“Ah, all Teams, this is Team Five, SITREP follows.”
“A SITREP?” Joker asked.
He knew what a SITREP meant; it was military jargon for a situation report. He, along with the rest of us, were wondering what the first sergeant was about to tell us. Justin was probably as confused as I was. We listened intently as Jeremiah spoke.
“We’ve got zeds dropping from headshots, only we ain’t the ones shooting, and we ain’t hearing anything.”
“Silenced weapons?” Justin asked.
“That’s affirmative,” he replied. “So far, they’re only killing zeds.”
Justin turned to me. “We either have some new best friends, or somebody is killing the zeds only to get to us.”
The radio crackled to life again. “All zeds are down,” Jeremiah said. “We have two armed men approaching on bicycles.”
“Alright, Joker, maintain rear security,” Justin ordered. “I’ve got to get out of this can and see what the hell is going on.”
I got out with Justin, along with Bob, and the three of us walked up to Jeremiah’s Stryker. He had also exited his Stryker and was talking to two men. Both were similar in appearance, each of them six feet tall, full, thick beards, long dark scraggly hair, and hazel eyes. They were both muscular and looked like at one time they spent lots of time pumping iron. Their facial features were so alike I guessed them to be brothers. Both were dressed in some rough-looking black tactical clothing, along with tac-vests. They were also armed with what appeared to be Glocks in thigh holsters and were cradling assault rifles that looked like AR-15s, but were heavily modified. The two things that jumped out were the scopes and suppressors.
“Thanks for the assist. I’m Captain Justin Smithson.”
“Liam and Logan O’Malley,” one of them said while pointing his thumb, first at himself and then at the other. “You people owe us some ammunition.”
The other one, Logan, gestured at the corpses. “Forty-seven rounds of three hundred blackout,” he said. “Now, my big brother here will claim he had the most kills, but he would be mistaken. I clearly had twenty-four kills and he only had twenty-three.”
“Au contraire monsieur fuck-face,” the other man said. He pronounced monsieur as mon-sewer. “We both know who the superior marksman is. Why are you blatantly attempting to mislead these people and steal my glory?”
This quickly became an argument between the two of them in which they seemed to have totally forgotten we were even there.
“You men are Pittsburgh natives, I take it?” I asked, interrupting their argument. They both immediately stopped and refocused on us.
“Yes, we are,” Liam said. “In fact, we were once members of the Pittsburgh Police Department. The SWAT team, to be specific. I, of course, was a far superior officer than my dimwitted brother, but everyone has a cross to bear.”
The other brother, Logan, gave Liam a disgusted look. “You keep lying to these people.” He turned and looked at us. “He doesn’t know the difference between a habeas corpus and a penis delecti. By the way, we still need that ammo.”
The other brother, Liam, I think, cleared his throat. “If my idiot brother is through bullshitting, we can have a nice long discussion about why you’re here, but we might want to relocate. The gunfire will draw additional unwanted attention.”
With all of us helping, we got Team Four’s van untangled and free. The two brothers motioned for us to follow them on their bicycles. I thought it would be too slow, but those guys could really move. They made several turns, cut through a park, and eventually, they signaled us to stop on Brownsville Road near a golf course.
“Alright, a couple of you come with us, the rest should probably keep guard,” Logan said, and then led us through an overgrown backyard of a shitty-looking house and we emerged in the back of a church. The back door led down into a basement. It was clean, but looked more like a storage room rather than living quarters.
“We had more people at one time, but there is a street gang that we’ve been at war with for a couple of years now,” Liam said. He motioned around. “We’re the only two left. Everyone else is either dead or they moved away.”
“Are you losing?” Justin asked.
Liam’s expression turned cold. “At one time, there were over five hundred of them. Now, there are probably only a dozen left. What do you think?”
“There’s no fuel left around here, and they’ve eaten up everything,” Logan said. “They had the numbers on their side, but they’re undisciplined and stupid. Even so, we’ve been talking lately about how futile this is. We were scouting around when we heard you people’s gunfire.”
“Unfortunately for you guys, you fell right into our trap,” Liam said.
“You mean how we were being funneled by the abandoned cars?”
“Yeah, back when the fuel was still good, we’d trap the gangbangers this way. They call themselves the D-I Boys. We just call them dicks. They’d come riding around, looking for someone to rape or kill, so we set up several side roads where they’d become bottlenecked and we’d kill them.”
“Were they always around?” I asked.
Liam shrugged. “Back in the day, they were a local street gang that held a piece of turf over near Frankstown Avenue, which is a little north of here, across the river. After it went bad, they somehow managed to get the other gangs to form up with them and virtually took over Pittsburgh.”
“Did you say you two were once on the Pittsburgh SWAT team?” I asked.
“That we were,” Liam said. “We loved our job, but when everyone started getting sick, Pittsburgh descended into total chaos within a week. It wasn’t long before it was every man for himself. A group of fellow officers took over one of the zone stations. It was a living hell, but I don’t have to tell you guys that.”
“So, in addition to the zeds, you had this gang to contend with?” Bob asked.
“There were several gangs at first,” Logan said. “But they were constantly at war with each other before the D-I Boys got what was left of them to align together. At some point, we crossed paths with them. They’ve killed a few of us, we’ve killed a bunch of them.”
“So, what’s next for the O’Malley brothers?” Bob asked with a politician’s smile.
“What else is there?” Logan asked. “Food and water are always a day-to-day challenge, we have a reloading stat
ion.” He pointed over to a rectangular wooden bench for emphasis. “But still, it’s not an unlimited resource. Things aren’t easy. Say, you never said where exactly you people come from?”
“Virginia,” Bob said.
“That’s quite a drive. What brings you to our fair city?” he asked. “And, oh, by the way, how in the hell do you people have good gas?”
Bob glanced over at us. Justin and I exchanged a glance. I gave a casual tap on the chin with my finger. Justin nodded in agreement. Bob smiled and turned his attention back to the O’Malley brothers.
“Have you ever heard of a place called Mount Weather?” he asked.
This was the beginning of his recruitment pitch, and his oratory skills were superb. He painted a picture with his words that were so enticing I sometimes found myself wondering if I were living in a different Mount Weather than the one he described. Liam and Logan listened attentively. When Bob had finished, he ended by looking at the two men with a hopeful expression.
“You men are made of strong stuff, that’s obvious,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Let me ask you two something. What do you foresee in your future? If you two survive this war against this gang, do you plan on continuing to live here?”
Liam and Logan looked at each other. “Honestly, we haven’t planned that far ahead,” Liam said.
“There’s not much left for us here,” Logan added. “We’ve convinced ourselves we need to kill all of them, but, I mean, we’ve been fighting with them for years now, and I don’t even see the point anymore. I’d like to find a nice location for us, but…”
Logan didn’t finish his sentence. The two brothers looked at each other somberly. I got the impression they’d had this discussion between themselves many times. Bob sensed it as well and matched their somber expressions.