Endurance: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Highway Book 2)

by ML Banner

  His navigation was spot on, as he was only a few steps from the big box truck’s opened back.

  Peter’s truck and another box truck pulled behind the parked one just as a man in a giant blue chemical suit hopped out and trotted over to Peter, stopping to face him and his neighbors in the truck’s bed. Jonah’s in that suit.

  Jasper lifted his Garand, wiggling his shoulder to adjust the heavy Thompson machine gun slung to his back, which had moved when he had fallen. He’d brought the Thompson just in case things got ugly.

  Through the peep sight, he focused on Jonah’s head through the visor of the blue suit. He wore a gas mask underneath, but he knew Jonah’s blue eyes and close-cropped hair anywhere.

  Jonah was about to address Lexi.

  He looked angry, like he was trying to settle down before he said something.

  Jasper considered taking the shot, thinking at first that Jonah might try to harm her, but then decided to watch how this played out.

  ~~~

  Lexi

  “So you’re the one who sliced up my innocent boy?” Jonah scowled at Lexi, his voice agitated but muffled and almost unintelligible through his mask and suit.

  “Oh, that boy was your son?” Lexi stood up in the truck bed, forgetting that she was addressing the big, bad Jonah. Anger filled her chest, and with hands on hips, she took a step his way with elbows thrust back. “Did your innocent boy tell you that he was trespassing on my property, and that he took my gun from me when I was coming back from a run, and then threatened me with it? And it was only then that I sliced his arms in self-defense to take back my gun before he shot me. Is that the innocent boy you’re talking about?”

  Travis’s mouth was at first ajar. Then, only his facial muscles—taut from his anxiety—pulled in a vain attempt to hold back a grin. He watched in awe as his sister verbally took down this man dressed like a blue alien. A part of him was glad that for once his sister’s anger wasn’t aimed at him.

  “What do you mean your property?” the blue alien asked. “The property you were on is owned by Stanley Smith, a friend of mine.”

  Lexi looked perplexed, sucker-punched.

  She couldn’t understand how her father could have been friends with this, as Jasper described him, “thug.” And why was he calling him Stanley Smith? Smith was her aunt and uncle’s last name. Their father’s last name—their last name—was Broadmoor. How many more secrets did her father carry with him to his grave?

  The blue man continued his muffled interrogation. “So what’s your relationship with Stanley Smith?”

  “He’s my dead father, and his name was Stanley Broadmoor.”

  Now it was the blue man’s turn to look like he had just been socked in the gut.

  He turned his giant blue head to the driver of their truck, gabbling something Travis couldn’t hear. The driver shrugged and said something back.

  The blue man turned back to them, fumbling with something like a zipper across his chest. “All right, you may be correct.” The zipper didn’t seem to want to go up as he tugged on it. “But I have more important things to do—”

  “You ever wear one of those things?” Frank asked.

  “You some sort of expert?” the blue man protested, now trying to grab the zipper with both hands.

  “He’s an army specialist who served many times in the Middle East. He probably knows more about your blue suit than you do,” Travis blurted in confidence. He could do angry, just like his sister.

  “Okay, little man, then I guess Mr. Army Specialist and your sister get to wear one of these and come with us.”

  ~~~

  Reynolds

  It wasn’t a long sprint.

  After all, the four hundred yards from the farthest building to the gate was usually a warm-up for two men who ran at least ten miles every day. But Reynolds and O’Malley were physically exhausted: after searching every nook and cranny of the base for survivors, but finding only three; after subjecting themselves to a dose of sarin and then atropine, which had to play havoc with their bodies; and finally dealing with a bout of hypoxia because they wore their suits too long. At this point, they could barely stand upright, much less sprint four hundred yards through a minefield of more sarin gas particles, which had no doubt adhered themselves to everything. But they knew they had to.

  They had collected two of the three survivors in the complex, moving them to the building exit closest to the gate. The third soldier, who was supposed to wait for them, was already gone. Maybe she was done waiting and had already run.

  After shedding their protective orange suits, they did what they told the others to do—wrapped blankets around their bodies and clean shirts around their faces. They would make a dash, and once they had passed the gate and any signs of contamination—that is, dead people or animals—they’d shed their outer clothes and find a way to the clinic in Endurance.

  “Are you ready?” Reynolds asked, not because he wanted to know—they were—but to warn them it was time.

  All gave an accepting nod.

  “Let’s go.” Reynolds pushed through the door, holding the arm of the private they’d first found. Reynolds guessed that he looked stronger than he felt. Maybe he should be holding the private’s arm to steady himself. They broke into a running trot. O’Malley held the arm of a corporal who definitely needed the help, and followed directly behind.

  Four of the five survivors of the gas attack on Fort Hasta raced over sidewalk, road, and lawn, around dead bodies of their comrades and dead birds. It felt to all of them like the most surreal and macabre obstacle course they’d ever run. And even though all were ready to fall over, their lives depended on their completing it.

  As they neared the gate, Reynolds almost stopped. The others had been looking at the death around them and not at the gate in front of them.

  All their heads swung forward. At first they were shocked; then they felt a sense of relief. Two hooted their excitement, and he was pretty sure it was O’Malley, covered in a pink blanket, who yelled, “Help us.”

  The world was spinning to Reynolds.

  Although he muttered some words himself, he wouldn’t remember them. The last thing he remembered thinking was, Perhaps we will make it after all.

  Chapter 10

  Stowell, Texas

  Grimes

  Robert Grimes sat hunched over his microphone and peered into the dial of his Kenwood, as if he could mentally push his broadcast to every corner of his crumbling country.

  The microphone was clicked open, awaiting his repetitive words.

  “Repeat. The enemy has begun the systematic gassing of all US military bases with sarin gas, using our own US military drones. If you live near a military base, do not go outside. Tape up your vents, doors, and windows and remain inside for no less than three days. We’ve been getting reports all over the country of mass deaths in and around various US military bases, starting early this morning.

  “Sarin gas is a nasty neurological toxin that can kill you in seconds. However, sarin dissipates outside over time. Our information is that three days is an appropriate amount of time to wait for it to dissipate. But, if you see a drone and you’re near a military base, please seal yourself inside.

  “To everyone with a weapon, if you see a drone, shoot it down even if it has US markings. The enemy has captured many of our US drones and is using them against our US military with sarin gas.

  “We will bring you more information as we receive it from our sources in the field.

  “You are listening to the American Freedom Network, broadcasting reports from the war’s front lines.”

  He clicked off the microphone and then waited before spinning the dial to one of the freebands that had been frequented by the survivalist community prior to the attack. When he found 27.425 USB, he repeated the same message. He’d now broadcast something similar to this message on over a dozen commercial, military, and ham frequencies. He even broadcast on the NOAA emergency weather channel of 162.4
MHZ, abandoned by their local broadcast station when the war started. After broadcasting on each, he waited exactly two minutes before moving on to the next channel, in the event someone would respond.

  After he finished the freeband broadcast, he shut his eyes and let his head fall back. His heavy frame collapsed into his chair. It receptively creaked into a resting position. He couldn’t help but wonder if some of that creaking wasn’t from his tired body.

  A staticky buzz bled through one giant speaker: a lifeless haze of empty frustration, as so few people transmitted now on the freeband or anywhere, for that matter. But he listened anyway, just in case someone answered. It had been more than a day since the last person had reached out on one of these channels.

  He fought a mind-numbing fatigue. His consciousness was tugged at by dark worries, making it hard for him to focus on any one thought. He could so easily go to sleep, which made sense since it had been over a day since he had slept more than a few consecutive minutes. But there was so much to do.

  Grimes often waited at least ten minutes on this frequency because it had the highest potential for broadcasters; the freeband was accessible by common CB radios, which didn’t require a ham radio license to operate versus the nearby 10-meter band, and so many others, which required licenses. Not that broadcasting without a license was anyone’s concern during a time of war. It was simply a numbers game for Grimes. There were millions of CB radio users in the US before the war, but less than 700,000 ham operators. Since most radios were fried from the EMPs, this range offered the best chances of his finding the radio-operator needle in the radio frequency haystack. Besides, a lot of preppers—those most likely to have hardened their units—often frequented this band.

  Yet it had been silent for a long while.

  When he was done waiting, he would return to the thirty-six frequencies he monitored. These were the only frequencies, anywhere, on which he had heard consistent broadcasts since the EMPs. Some of these frequencies were sources for his reports from those on the ground, ranging from the hotspots in the Midwest and East to sometimes catching someone from the US military.

  The military had been noticeably absent since the first attacks. That was mostly explainable because the two EMPs took out the civilian grid, which in turn brought down the power to most military bases, as they were often dependent on it. It was the US military’s Achilles’ heel. Add to this the fact that most everything with solid-state circuitry was fried, in addition to many military vehicles, communications, high-tech weapons systems, and so many other things run by electronics. With the nuclear bomb blasts in DC and at least three other military bases, the enemy seemed to have taken down much of the military’s and therefore the US’s command structure. Now the sarin attacks were finishing off the remainder of the military bases.

  And there didn’t seem to be any help from overseas, at least based on reports Grimes received from the BBC. US forces seemed to be tied up with the Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans, and so were Allied forces. And to make matters more difficult, economies all over the globe were in a free fall. It all meant one thing.

  They were completely on their own.

  And somehow, Grimes and their American Freedom Network—a name coined by Aimes after yesterday’s broadcasts—had assumed the mantle as the central repeater of both emergency and military information across the US. All the information he thought was safe to share was curated into alerts, which he broadcast at least once every two hours on his preselected frequencies.

  It was no wonder he was so exhausted.

  He tried to concentrate on the buzzing haze of his main speaker. But his mind quickly floated to the worry he felt for his son, Porter. It had been more than a day since he’d heard of his and Frank’s defeat at Fort Rucker, then their triumph over Abdul and his army, and finally his plan to come home to Stowell, minus Frank, but with a new friend from Fort Rucker, a Lieutenant Wallace. But that was a long time ago. He glanced at his wall clock, an old Mickey Mouse. And as hard as he tried, he couldn’t calculate the number of hours it had been.

  All he knew was that they should have been home by now.

  Frank only made it worse. He hadn’t heard back from Frank since he ran off to save his goddaughter from what he thought was a sarin attack at their house in Florida. Then it was Frank’s godson, Travis. Now he was silent.

  He couldn’t stand the waiting!

  “Is there anyone there?” boomed his speaker. It was unbelievably clear, like the person broadcasting was next door.

  Grimes’s chair sprang forward, practically catapulting him out of it. He punched his microphone. “Please state your name and the purpose of your transmission.”

  “Ahh, I’m Corporal Ben Sparks, sir. I was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, but my entire base has been wiped out. I heard your broadcast and wanted to thank you, sir, and … I don’t know, see if I could help.”

  “How did you survive the gas, Corporal?” Grimes wondered out loud.

  “I was on patrol outside the base when the drone flew overhead. I called in and they were all dying, sir. I heard them screaming and choking. Someone yelled that they were being gassed and to close ourselves inside where we were until we were told otherwise, or take ourselves outside the perimeter of the base. I drove as fast as I could.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I don’t know, by a pond southwest of the shooting ranges.”

  Grimes thought quickly of when he was in Fort Benning many years ago and tried to come up with some way of testing this young man to make sure he was who he said he was. This was an open frequency that he broadcast on often. “Corporal, think of how many weeks your Basic was and go down that many kilocycles from where you are right now. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If I don’t hear from you in one minute, I’m switching the channels again. Go there now and ask for Lieutenant G.”

  Aimes burst through the door of the studio, which had once been his bedroom. He was out of breath.

  Grimes held up a forefinger and then twisted the dial to 27.325, ten kilocycles below the previous frequency, representing the ten weeks of Basic. Hopefully, the enemy didn’t know this offhand.

  “I really need to interrupt, sir,” Aimes said. His body was in constant motion as he shifted from one foot to the other.

  “Twenty more seconds,” Grimes said, watching the second hand of his Mickey clock.

  “Lieutenant G? Is there a Lieutenant G there? This is Corporal Sparks. Are you there?”

  “Hello, Corporal. It’s 15:46 your time. At 16:00 call me at 27.10 MHz. If you don’t hear from me, call at 17:00. Until then, stay in your truck. You got that, Corporal?”

  “Got that, sir. Out.”

  “Okay,” Grimes said to his nervous friend. “Why in the hell are you so worked up?”

  “They found Paul … or everything but his head.”

  “What? Who did this?” Grimes asked, hoping he had dozed off and was having a nightmare. He was very much awake now.

  “Don’t know. Paul didn’t call in at his appointed time, so we sent John—he has lookout on I-10 West—out to check on him. His body was by a cell tower he used as his lookout. It looks like he was shot, then pushed off the tower, then beheaded.”

  “What the hell did they—whoever this was—do with his head?” Grimes gawked at his friend. Aimes was usually in prime physical shape. But now, Grimes felt like he was looking at a mirror image of himself: Aimes looked worn out.

  “Don’t know.” Aimes paused. His face grew grimmer. “The news is worse.”

  “Okay, hit me.”

  “Winnie is in flames.”

  Grimes considered this new grave piece of information. “So you think that …”

  Aimes finished his conclusion, “Whoever killed and beheaded Paul probably destroyed Winnie, just two miles north of us. And that means—”

  Grimes interrupted, “They, whomever they are, should be arriving in Stowell any second now.”<
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  Chapter 11

  Hasta Army Base, Florida

  Lexi

  “Oh God. There’s so many.”

  Lexi’s gloved hand squeezed Frank’s hand harder, and he squeezed back. He didn’t need to say anything.

  Her eyes burned as she struggled to see through two layers of protective plastic, already coated in a fine mist from her breathing. Before her and everywhere she cast her gaze lay the tortured forms of what once were living, breathing soldiers in the US Army.

  In only a few short days, she’d already become way too accustomed to seeing the dead, often not even glancing at a corpse by the side of the road any more than she used to glance at a discarded beer can. But it also seemed that each day her eyes were assaulted by a sight more horrific than the previous day’s. This time it was the mass death on a secret Army base only a few miles from their new home.

  Her gaze was drawn to their faces. All seemed to have been grasping at their throats—some had claw marks, mouths opened wide searching for oxygen but finding only more poison. Each had tortured eyes that were seared in place for all eternity.

  “Why didn’t we end up like them?” she whimpered through her respirator.

  Lexi felt like she was on the verge of a full-on panic attack, even though the suit’s radio deepened her voice and made it sound less terrified than she was. All she could think of was that a little piece of plastic separated them from this horrible death. She tried to settle herself down.

  “I believe a drone sprayed sarin gas directly over this base. The spray didn’t reach us, but some of the birds flying in our direction got some of the sarin on them and fell on your property before they died.”

  “Glad Travis isn’t here,” she huffed.

  “Keep the chatter down,” Jonah bellowed through his comm.

  Jonah’s voice was already deep, and through the suit’s radio and respirator, it came from Darth Vader in the flesh. It seemed even more menacing to her because it was real, unlike the fantasy that Travis said he loved. She glanced at Jonah and then the three other men following them; two carried rifles, and one a handheld radio wrapped up in a giant ziplock.