Forsaken World:Coming of Age

by Thomas A. Watson

  “Aw shit,” Ian said, lowering the camera. “Think we should head back?”

  “No, let’s see what they do. We can get there on the buggy long before they can on foot,” he said, studying the group. “Those motorcycles can’t move across the countryside; they are made for the street.”

  Nodding, Ian raised his camera and took pictures as the big man talked to one of the five then in his radio. A man with a shaved head and face talked to the big man then took off running, yelling at others around him and pointing at the approaching stinkers. A group of twenty moved down the road, formed a line across it, and knelt down.

  Each man started pulling out stuff and laying it on the ground beside them, and both Ian and Lance zoomed in to see it was ammo. “Getting ready for a fight,” Lance said as the group opened fire when the stinkers were three hundred yards away. All of them were shooting on full auto, just raking the approaching stinkers. “Yeah, that’s why automatic gunfire is overrated. Against stinkers, it’s almost useless.”

  “Man, they are going through some ammo,” Ian said, flipping the camera to video for a few minutes as he watched the group pour out lead. Several men ran up behind the shooters, dumping metal boxes of ammo at their sides. “There’s no way they have the ammo to keep this up for long.”

  Lance swung back to the big man who they knew was the leader. He was talking in the radio as people ran over to him, talked for a minute, then run off. “Forget ammo; their guns are going to overheat long before they need ammo. Several of those guns are smoking bad.”

  “No, look,” Ian said as Lance swung back to the line to see twenty men kneel behind the shooters and aim down the road. The shooters stopped firing and gathered ammo cans before pulling back behind the new line of shooters. The bald-headed man ran up and down the new line yelling at the men and turned to look at the stinkers moving down the road toward them.

  Unlike the first time, he waited until the stinkers were only a hundred yards away before yelling, and the line opened fire. Lance looked up at the stinkers and saw bullets riddling their bodies, knocking many down, but they would get back up and continue toward the group. Those that couldn’t get up, crawled toward the group.

  The stinkers were still coming around the curve and pouring into the valley. “If these guys were shooting and aiming, they would stand a good chance of wiping this group out,” Lance said as the roar of gunfire continued below them.

  “Dude, with what they have already shot, they could’ve taken that group out,” Ian huffed. “I’m only guessing, but it only looks like a few thousand, and the stinkers are staying on the road for the most part, coming at them. I’ve watched one guy on the firing line who’s using a SAW already shoot four belts. That’s eight hundred rounds for just one man.”

  The first group of shooters knelt behind the line as the big man walked over, yelling at them and the man with the shaved head. Running behind the shooters, Shaved Head yelled at them, and they stopped shooting and pulled behind the new line but didn’t stop. Some ran to bikes as others ran to help carry wounded.

  Two dump trucks came barreling around the curve side by side. Both had huge snow plows mounted on the front, clearing the stinkers off the road. “Talk about backup,” Lance mumbled as the trucks plowed through the stinkers to the group.

  Men piled in the dump trucks, and motorcycles roared to life as the stinkers that could move slowly made their way toward the group. When everyone was loaded, the big man jumped on his motorcycle and yelled into his radio.

  The dump trucks swung off the road, turned around in the fields, and headed back the way they came with the motorcycles lining up behind them. Lance and Ian watched the procession drive back down the valley until it drove around the curve, leaving their sight.

  Any stinker that could walk was turning to follow. Many that couldn’t were crawling after the group. Lance and Ian just watched, seeing several hundred dead stinkers along the roadway. “That shit is going to stink to high hell in a few days,” Ian said, lowering the camera.

  “Well, we aren’t going down there today to do anything about it,” Lance said, putting his binoculars in the buggy. “We might come back in a few days but not now.”

  Agreeing, Ian moved to the buggy, and as they ate, they talked about what they saw, pulled out small notebooks, and made notes. When they were finished, they drove over the ridge and continued scouting.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ian slowed down as Lance reached over and grabbed his arm. “Another one ahead,” Lance said in a low voice. When Ian stopped, Lance stepped out, aiming down the slope at a stinker coming at them. At one time, it had been a young man, but now, it was a very pale, white, young stinker dressed in a suit. Other than the color and the way it moved, it still didn’t look like a zombie to Lance as he raised his rifle to his shoulder.

  Letting the red dot center on the man’s nose, Lance squeezed the trigger and watched the back half of the skull blow out. “That’s thirty-eight we’ve put down in the woods,” Ian said as Lance climbed back in. “It’s been three hours since the firefight, and they are still moving towards it.”

  “We’re on our way back, so let’s just get this over with,” Lance said, ejecting his magazine and replacing the round he shot. “Only one more group of houses to check then we are homeward bound.”

  Happy to hear that, Ian pressed the accelerator and moved through the trees. “Thank you for not insisting we go to Girdler,” he said as Dino came to a stop beside them. They had learned, Dino would let them know when a stinker was near. “He stopped,” Ian said, slowing down.

  Lance looked down the slope and didn’t see anything, but he knew it was only a matter of time. Dino hadn’t been wrong yet. “Ian, when we set up on that hilltop overlooking the valley before Girdler, we counted over two thousand. Before we just gave up on counting them, they were all following the road toward that battle. There was no way in Hell we could’ve made it across the valley. This is a scouting mission, not engagement,” Lance said and got out.

  A shiver ran down Ian’s spine as he remembered the numbers of stinkers, and he looked down the slope and thought he saw something moving between the trees. “I still like the fact that most like the easy route of following the valley floor and road,” Ian said as Lance raised his rifle.

  “Three,” Lance said, aiming down the hill through the trees.

  Ian grabbed the binoculars off the dash, looked down the hill, and spotted them. It was two women and a young girl. Stinkers. He heard Lance’s rifle cough from the suppressed shot, and the little girl’s head exploded.

  “Nice shot,” Ian said as Lance’s rifle coughed again, taking out one of the women. When Lance’s rifle coughed again, Ian watched the woman’s throat explode, but she didn’t drop. “Third miss,” Ian said, pulling up his rifle and aiming at the woman as Lance lowered his.

  Ian sighted on her head and squeezed the trigger, hitting her between the eyes. The woman jerked back and collapsed. “Your turn to drive,” Ian said, walking around the buggy as Lance climbed behind the steering wheel.

  When Ian was in, Lance eased forward with Dino walking beside them. They followed the ridge line they were on, which led them to the northwest. When it became a gradual slope, Lance stopped. “The first groups of houses should be right down there,” he said, grabbing his map.

  “Well, let’s go so we can get home before dark,” Ian said, getting out.

  They moved down and soon saw the houses on both sides of the road that ran up a wide draw. Like they had done with all the houses, they took pictures and looked for any signs of people. “I don’t see any stinkers or bodies, but most of those houses have been breached,” Lance said, glancing around.

  “Yeah, let’s get the buggy and move down to the last ones,” Ian said as he got up.

  After checking the last group, Lance looked over at Ian. “How about we just move along the ridge to the last house then head back for the buggy? I’m getting tired of walking up and down hill.” />
  “Just that much further we will have to walk back,” Ian said with a shrug.

  “We can parallel the slope,” Lance said, moving off, and Ian followed.

  Keeping in the trees, they moved up the draw, and suddenly, Dino stepped in front of Lance. Looking through the trees, Lance didn’t see or smell a stinker, but he knew Dino didn’t like something. “Stinker?” Ian whispered beside him.

  “Don’t see it yet,” Lance whispered back.

  Ian just knelt down to wait on the stinker. Seeing Ian get comfortable, Lance knelt beside him. They waited for ten minutes but didn’t see or hear anything. “No way a stinker is that quiet,” Lance said in a low voice. “It went somewhere else.”

  Ian nodded and stood up, but when they went to move, Dino stepped in front of them. They looked at each other and dropped to the ground. Lance pulled out his thermal sight, clipped it back on his AR, and turned it on. “You see anything?” he asked quietly as Ian looked ahead through his Trijicon scope.

  “Trees and bushes,” Ian said barely loud enough for Lance to hear. “I see where the road ends, and a driveway leads up the draw to the house.”

  “Range?”

  “Three hundred and change.”

  Lance nodded, bringing up his rifle and swinging over the magnifier. Looking down the slope, he caught a hot spot, but it moved behind a tree. Holding on that tree, Lance soon saw a young boy holding a crossbow lean back, looking down the road.

  Slowly, Lance reached over, squeezed Ian’s arm, and pointed behind them. Ian gave him a confused look, and Lance pointed at his rifle then at Ian’s. Ian nodded, and they exchanged weapons slowly.

  Now that he had a scope, Lance looked back down to where he saw the boy. He soon found him leaning back against the tree, seemingly bored. He looked younger than them, and Lance got a good look at his face as the boy looked around then back down at the road. He was just inside the trees where the road ended. Feeling a tap, Lance glanced over, and Ian nodded, pointing back the way they came.

  Slowly, they moved back, easing around trees, and stopped almost at the crest of the ridge. When they tried to move along the ridge to circle around the house, again, Dino stepped in front of them. Lance looked down at Dino then back at Ian. “He really doesn’t want us going there.”

  “I’m going to agree with him,” Ian said, pulling out his drinking tube. “We know survivors are there; let’s just head home.”

  They slowly moved back to the buggy and drove over the ridge. They only had Dino stop once for stinkers. “You notice Dino stops for a stinker but stops us for people,” Ian said, climbing back in after shooting the four stinkers.

  “Love that dog,” Lance grinned and continued home. When they reached the top of their ridge, Lance grabbed his squawk box. “Coming home,” he called over the radio.

  After several seconds’ silence, they started to worry, but then Jennifer’s voice came back. “When you get close, turn on phones, contact west; at least one stinker seen on camera 37.”

  “Shit,” Ian huffed, taking off his backpack and digging out his phone. “How close do we have to get before we get wireless?”

  “Almost to the fence. The antenna is on the front of the cabin,” Lance said, and Ian quit digging.

  “Fuck it, they can guide us to it,” Ian said as he grabbed his AR.

  Driving slow down the draw, Lance chuckled. “Why? We have Dino.” He turned to the west, driving to the head of the draw, and stopped in front of a camera. They got out and waved at the camera.

  “See you,” Jennifer came over the radio. “Last motion detector that went off is two hundred yards to your left.”

  Press-checking his AR and seeing brass, Ian let the bolt slip back, seating the round. “Bet it got caught on those pikes,” he said, moving off.

  “We have that pit over there too,” Lance whispered back.

  “They can climb out of that,” Ian said, scanning ahead. Dino moved in front of him, taking the lead. “Seems Dino knows.”

  It wasn’t long before they smelled it, and a few minutes later, they found it. It was a male stinker that had speared himself on the bamboo they had tied to the waist high barbwire. He seemed indifferent to the bamboo spear that ran through is body but pissed off at the barbwire that wouldn’t let him go forward.

  Ian pulled his Ruger and moved behind the stinker, sending a .22 bullet through his head. “Where do you want to burn this one at?” he asked, holstering his pistol.

  Pointing at a small clearing they had walked through, Lance moved over and helped pull the stinker off the spear. They struggled but pulled the body over to the clearing and soon were walking away from a bluish orange fire.

  When they pulled around to the gate, Jennifer and Allie were waiting, holding the gates open for them. Lance pulled in and waited until they had the gates closed. They jumped in, and both could tell from their faces they had been worried.

  Parking the buggy, Ian got out and plugged it up. “Hope that was all the excitement you had today,” he said, turning around. Jennifer and Allie lunged, wrapping their arms around him.

  “What was that war we heard?” Jennifer cried out.

  Ian hugged them back. “Let’s get inside, and we’ll tell you.”

  As they walked in the house, Lance looked up, seeing the sun getting close to the horizon. “Yeah, we beat you home today,” he said, patting Dino.

  When he walked in, the girls and Jennifer hugged him. “I take it that one stinker is all that happened?” Lance said, hugging them.

  “Yes but we heard a war when we fed the chickens,” Allie said, looking up at him.

  “We saw it,” Lance said, taking off his vest as he moved to the living area. He dropped it to the floor.

  Jennifer watched them take off their dirt-caked clothes and saw they were drenched in sweat. “Lance, Ian, I want you two to shower, and we’ll start on your gear,” she almost commanded. “Food is ready, and then you can tell us what you saw, and we can do the same.”

  Neither of them said a word and stripped to underwear then headed to the bathroom. Carrie looked up at her sister. “Wow,” she said with a grin. “They didn’t even whine.”

  “They’re tired,” Jennifer said, moving to the pile of stuff. “You two start on the clothes, and I’ll start on the gear.”

  Allie grabbed the 3D hunting suits. “I know how to wash these,” she said and ran downstairs.

  Making a mental note to ask Allie about that, Jennifer moved the vest and rifles over to the coffee table. Pulling out one of the cleaning kits under the coffee table, she went to work as Carrie gathered the rest of the clothes.

  Lance stepped out drying his hair but stopped when he looked over the sectional at the girls and Jennifer cleaning their weapons. He grinned and walked over, letting the towel drape around his neck. “Hey, thank you, guys,” he said, stopping at the back of the sectional.

  “We’ll be done in a minute. Why don’t you and Ian go ahead and start eating? That way, you can tell us what you saw while we eat,” Jennifer said, cleaning Ian’s AR.

  As Ian came out of the bathroom, Lance motioned him to the kitchen. “They want us to eat so we can tell them what we saw,” Lance said then stopped, looking at his plate. A large T-bone steak took up almost the whole plate. “Oh yes,” he moaned, sitting down.

  The girls finished cleaning the gear and joined them at the table. They all smiled, seeing the boys savoring the steaks. It took over an hour, but Ian and Lance informed them of everything they had seen. Ian even downloaded the pictures on his tablet, showing them the gang getting attacked by the helicopter.

  When they were done, Jennifer leaned back in her chair. “You know Doug knew about the Devil Lords, right?” she told them, and both looked at her in shock, shaking their heads. “On the computer, he has a file ‘Threats.’ In it, he has a list, and at the very top are the Devil Lords. They have fifty acres west of Pineville that they call a retreat. Their main clubhouse is in Lexington.”

  Ian
looked over at Lance. “How the hell did Uncle Doug find that out?”

  As Lance shrugged, Jennifer flipped open a notebook and continued. “They are listed as terrorists by the government and are avoided even by other biker gangs. The FBI listed their number of members at 1,100 last year. The leader is Ray Butler, aka Boss Hogg.”

  “Boss,” Lance mumbled then shook his head. “Anything else we need to worry about around here that Uncle Doug knew about?”

  Looking down at the notebook, Jennifer nodded. “Three prisons that are close, all the registered sex offenders within ten miles of the cabin, a white supremacist group outside Essie, and a suspected gang that makes meth in Beverly.”

  “You find anything else?” Ian asked, pushing his plate away with only a bone left, which he tossed to Dino.

  “Yes, the group Lance marked that fought the Devil Lords is a survivalist group. They call themselves ‘Dark Dawn.’ They even formed a company, and that’s what owns the land. Doug didn’t list numbers, but he estimates several hundred. He has pictures of their property and the buildings on it. He listed them as ‘Unknown but possible threat.’ Doug says they have lots of weapons, and the BATFE had an open file on them.”

  “Bat Fe,” Allie said, pronouncing the abbreviation.

  Lance laughed. “No, ladybug, it’s not a word; it’s an acronym. BATFE means the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. They are the ones looking at people with guns and stuff.”

  “Dad said they were jack-booted thugs,” Ian said, grabbing his glass.

  “My dad did too, and he worked cases for them in court,” Jennifer said, looking down at the notebook.

  “What else did you find in there?” Lance asked.

  “There are scenarios in there for a hundred different things but not zombies,” she said but didn’t look up.

  “Well, technically, they aren’t zombies,” Lance said, getting up and tossing his bone to Dino.