by Sean Davies
Charlotte saluted for a moment before relaxing and giving Julia a massive hug. Over Julia’s shoulder she saw that thunder-faced Eleanor was living up to her namesake; she was absolutely fuming. “What about Dean though?” Charlotte asked. He was older, and more mature; if any one of them was officer material then it was surely him.
“I’m making him 2nd Lieutenant,” Julia grimaced. “He might not like being under you, but we all feel that you’ve got a better mentality for taking the reins at this point.”
Charlotte was truly surprised by the Commander’s opinion.
“You’re more capable of thinking outside of the box,” Julia elaborated, replying to her adopted daughter’s thoughts. “This mission isn’t going to be easy, and I—we feel that it is in good hands.”
“I won’t let you down, Julia... Commander Jameson,” Charlotte promised with another salute.
Jameson smiled proudly. “I know you won’t, honey. Right, I’m going to tell Dean now.” She mouthed ‘wish me luck’ before saluting and moving over to the trucks.
Thunder closed in as soon as her mum was out of the way. “So, the favourite child gets a promotion...”
“You think it should be yours?” Charlotte asked abruptly; Eleanor grated on her too easily.
“No,” Eleanor shrugged, “but I think it should be someone else’s.”
“Wow.” Charlotte raised her eyebrows comically. “Isn’t that a surprise?”
Eleanor face turned red and scrunched her face up in anger. “Shut up.”
“You started it,” Charlotte smirked.
“Whatever,” Thunder snapped back.
They stood together in silence for a moment, watching as Dean received word of his promotion and the fact that he was to be Charlotte’s subordinate. Dean stood rigid and to attention the whole time, every bit the soldier, but his face was stern and unreadable which in itself was a sign that he was hiding his inner disappointment.
“Don’t you think it’s funny...?” Eleanor began.
Charlotte sighed; every time Thunder started a sentence with those words, it meant she was going to dig up some conspiracy theory. Most of the time it was about what had happened to her father, as she was still obsessed with the idea that her mother was hiding something about his death, but the rest of the time it was about the world’s speedy reaction to the outbreak.
“Those trucks,” Eleanor continued, “they’re very high-tech and versatile. Sealed environments with air filters so they’re very good for supply runs into infected areas...”
“And?” Charlotte groaned.
“They were all manufactured before the infection had become a serious issue,” Eleanor said meaningfully, like she was proving a massive point.
“All the governments of the world had dropped their petty squabbles and were working together to prep for the worst-case scenario, therefore... trucks,” Charlotte recited, pointing at the big, sleek black vehicles. “You were just too young to remember.”
“Don’t give me that. It’s all too much of a coincidence,” Eleanor continued. “It’s like they were waiting for it to happen.”
“What about the need for bug lamps?” Charlotte challenged. “They weren’t ready for the bugs, were they?”
The experts at the time had known that insects helped to spread the virus, but they hadn’t known that they too would mutate and start attacking the uninfected, sometimes in swarms of biblical proportions. Bug lamps had been a simple but effective solution, and in the years that had passed since their initial utilisation the Clean Zones had fashioned their own bigger and more versatile versions to attract the nasty little critters.
The supply trucks had four silver cylinders, one on each corner of the exterior passenger section, which rotated to reveal very bright neon-blue electrical filaments that were irresistible to any nearby flying pests, and recently smaller versions of the design had been worked into the soldier’s combat armour, thanks to the hard work of Jinx and Jake.
“That’s, like, one thing,” Eleanor scoffed. “One thing out of dozens that they were prepared for!”
“Who cares, anyway?” Charlotte rolled her eyes, completely fed up. “Ready or not, it doesn’t change anything.”
“It proves that they lied then, and that they still lie now,” Eleanor fumed.
Charlotte knew that when she said ‘they’, she really meant ‘mum’. “You spend too much time with those crackpots in the archives, that’s the problem,” she replied, trying to steer off topic.
“Beats spending time with those losers on their computer games. What a waste of fucking electric,” Thunder hissed before walking off to see Dean, as Commander Jameson had just left him and gone to brief Captain Roberts.
The gamers—or ‘the stoners’ as they were known behind closed doors—were some of the only people who thought Charlotte’s condition was cool and not some awful affliction that made her an outcast by default. They also traded their luxury rations, like chocolate and soft drinks, for any intact PC or console components, games, and peripherals that she stumbled across in the field. Eleanor had a similar deal with the conspiracy theorist bookworms in the Archives; she found them books, records, and data about the world that was, and they made sure that she was well rewarded. The normal troops often hunted down booze, movies, and porn; everyone on scavenging missions had some sort of trade deal set up for themselves—everyone except Dean of course, who was too straight-laced and honourable to veer off mission even for a heartbeat.
Charlotte lit up another cigarette and waited for the two ‘should-be’ lovers to come to her first. It wasn’t long at all before Dean was walking away from a disappointed looking Eleanor and saluting his new superior.
“Congratulations on your promotion... Lieutenant,” he said strangely, like he couldn’t decide whether to be happy for her or resentful.
“Drop it, Dean,” Charlotte said awkwardly, feeling slightly embarrassed.
“What? You’ve been promoted above me. It’s only proper to congrat—”
“It should’ve been you,” Charlotte interrupted. “We both know it, so just drop it. I don’t want you treating me any differently.”
“I’ll try...” Dean said, looking shocked. “I’m surprised you’re not happier about the news.”
Charlotte was indeed pleased but couldn’t help but doubt her own leadership capabilities. “I’m just a bit nervous, I guess—I wasn’t expecting it at all.”
Dean seemed to relax a bit upon realising that Charlotte wasn’t going to brag about her new rank. He went to put his arm around her but hesitated at the last second and tapped her shoulder playfully instead. “Well, if you need any help or advice from your new righthand-man, I’ll be right by your side...”
Charlotte chuckled clumsily to cut him off, knowing he was planning on steering the conversation towards their personal ‘situation’ from countless past experiences.
“How’s our little thunder-face doing? It looks like she could use you ‘by her side’,” Charlotte commented, attempting to derail Dean’s latest advances before they could begin in earnest.
Dean blushed slightly and fidgeted on the spot. “She’s... fine, but I think we should concentrate on the mission. The Commander wants to brief us with the old Captain before she sees us off.”
“Yes,” Charlotte replied, amused by Dean’s reaction, “let’s just focus on the mission.”
They met with old Captain Roberts, Commander Jameson, and her entourage, at the front of the lead truck. Captain Roberts had been leading supply missions since the beginning, but his age was undeniably starting to show; the elderly didn’t do well in highly-infected areas, and Colchester was guaranteed to be a challenge for even the younger members of the Clean Zone’s forces.
Captain Roberts scratched his short greying hair before saluting Dean and Charlotte. “Congratulations, you two—the Commander has made a fine decision. Our missions wouldn’t have been nearly as successful without your kind backing us up.”
�
��Thank you, Captain,” Charlotte said, saluting in return.
“Yes, thank you, sir,” Dean echoed.
“You should take this…” Roberts said, brandishing a small black book and passing it to Charlotte. “It’s all the military override codes as they were at the time of the outbreak. Since you’re going in further, it makes sense for you to have them.”
Charlotte took the book and stashed it carefully in one of the small compartments on her belt.
“Now, I want to go over this one more time before you depart—it’s an especially dangerous mission and you need to be crystal clear on everything,” Commander Jameson said, pulling out a small handheld tablet.
Charlotte nodded cheerfully. “Better to be safe than sorry.”
“Exactly,” Jameson smiled, as she tapped on the screen and brought up an old map before handing it over to Dean and Charlotte. The areas of interest had been highlighted for them in red circles. “The convoy will head straight to CZ-10; there, Captain Roberts and a few personnel will load up with fresh food supplies before returning, and the three remaining trucks will head along the road into Colchester. Try to keep a low profile, as the last Intel on the area was dire to say the least—we wouldn’t even dare to push this far unless we absolutely needed to. Load up on any clean food, water, and fuel that you might come across, but remember that the main objective is the barracks. Between the local clusters of Clean Zones, we’ve exhausted all of the local caches of ammunition, and unless we push our scavenging operations further afield our reserves will dry out.”
“Couldn’t we switch to homemade ammo?” Dean suggested.
“We have been looking into it, and so have the other Zones,” Julia Jameson replied, “but with all of the other projects and maintenance on the go it has admittedly taken a backseat. It will undoubtably come to it in the end, but it definitely won’t be as effective as the military-grade rounds. If the records are correct, and it hasn’t already been cleaned out, the Colchester Barracks should have enough ordnance to allow us to fight our way to other caches in heavily-infected areas, thus solving our offensive and defensive problems for the near future. Hopefully by then we’ll be self-sufficient in the guns and ammo department.”
“When you say ordnance...?” Charlotte asked eagerly.
“Everything from incendiary rounds to thermobaric weaponry,” Commander Jameson concluded, “If the data is correct.”
Charlotte grinned appreciatively; alien plants liked fire as much as regular ones.
“Take whatever route is safest,” Jameson continued. “We are very unsure about how the landscape has developed since we had to give up our helicopters, so use your heads and get home safe—and remember that you don’t have to fight your way out of everything.”
“We’ll be back before you know it, safe and sound,” Charlotte assured her confidently.
The Commander gave Charlotte a very informal hug before leaving. “Make sure of it.”
“Right, let’s load up,” Dean said enthusiastically. “I mean, if that’s okay with you, ma’am?” he added quickly to Charlotte.
“Of course it is,” she replied, already regretting the impromptu promotion. “And please, just—call me by my name.”
Dean nodded, and he waited for Charlotte so that he could walk the short distance to the rear truck by her side. They arrived just in time to witness an uncomfortable goodbye between Eleanor and Julia Jameson, along with the arrival of the normal soldiers.
The ‘Normies’, as Charlotte, Dean and Thunder liked to refer to them as, were mostly men and women over the age of thirty, dressed in well-kept black armour. Their helmets had four red circular visor cameras that could display different readouts, and they housed inbuilt air filters which allowed them to survive in all but the most infected of areas (although, whilst still in the Clean Zone, most of the Normies carried them under their arms). Their armour and its functions, including the personal bug lamp cylinders, were powered by energy cells that could be recharged in the trucks. Both the suits and their cells were priceless and well-preserved; they were the pinnacle of pre-outbreak technology, and not even Jinx and Jake could replicate the parts with the resources they had at hand. Therefore, the continued usage of the hi-tech armour relied upon the careful care of its owners, as well as salvaging parts from other suits they found in the untamed outside world. The Normies were all armed with a machete and a sidearm each, and either a black assault rifle or combat shotgun.
Heavier armaments and explosives were kept in the trucks, packaged carefully in lockers and under-floor hatches, along with a liberal number of flamethrowers and fuel. Luckily for the survivors, the trucks were highly reinforced and the vast majority of infected were incapable of wielding arms, so they didn’t have to worry about their vehicles going up in flames.
Charlotte, Dean, and Thunder clambered into the spacious rear section of their truck with five other soldiers, and they sat down on the benches, four soldiers on either side facing each other. Another three soldiers got into the front of the truck, one to drive and two as passengers. The Normies had already been briefed on Dean’s and Charlotte’s promotions and congratulated them professionally—all except one out-of-place volunteer, whom Eleanor aimed her trademark scowl at in response. He was a middle-aged man with scruffy black hair and a stubble-encrusted square jaw, and he was wearing worn armour marked with a green ‘V’.
The volunteer was looking solemnly at his very basic headgear that could’ve doubled as a bike helmet. “Why don’t I get a cool one like yours?” he asked no one in particular.
“You’ve got to earn it,” Dean replied, causing the others to snigger.
“How do I do that?” the man asked, ignoring the other soldiers’ amusement.
“Survive,” Charlotte said gravely.
“Well, if a little girl like you is okay, then I’ll do just fine,” the volunteer said with a sneer.
“That little girl is your superior!” Dean barked sharply.
“And so is he, for the record,” Charlotte added, jabbing her thumb out towards Dean.
“Seriously?!” The volunteer was dumbfounded. “I thought that was just a joke...”
Lucille ‘Dead-Strike’, a veteran of many missions with scrappy shoulder-length red hair and thick deliberately smeared eye shadow, leaned in towards the rookie. “It’s no joke, pal, and as it stands each one of these three are worth a hundred of you,” she informed him seriously, whilst tapping her finger in the direction of Dean, Charlotte, and Thunder.
“They may be freaks,” a muscular black man called James ‘The Demolisher’ said with a massive grin, “but they’re what keep our missions running smooth. Listen to what they say, follow their orders, and if you’re lucky you won’t end up as something’s meal.”
The volunteer grumbled a sullen acknowledgement.
“What’s your name, anyway?” Charlotte asked kindly. “What did you do?”
“I’m Will,” he replied, picking up his mood slightly. “Will Scott. I was in the water screening facility as a manual worker. I got bored of lugging containers, so thought I’d sign up and see some real action.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Thunder remarked playfully.
“Just don’t do anything reckless, and follow our lead,” Dean added plainly; volunteers on their first few missions tended to be rather trigger-happy.
Will nodded. “Okay... sir.”
“Water screening facilities…” Thunder muttered in Charlotte’s general direction. “Another thing conveniently set up during the chaos, hmm?”
“It’s going to be a long journey,” Charlotte grumbled, as she caught Dean looking over her curvaceous figure with the subtlety of a bull in a china shop.
The trucks rumbled out of Clean Zone 14, through the gates that closed firmly behind them, and along the dusty road surrounded by dry blackened soil. They passed by the fortified walls of Clean Zone 15—their neighbouring settlement in the cluster—honking their horns as they went, and finally reached
the shared outer perimeter walls of CZ-Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteen. The convoy came to a stop as someone in the lead truck hopped out and activated the timed switch, before jogging back and re-entering his vehicle. The thick metal doors slid open and the convoy plodded through before they closed again. The deliberately charred soil ended several yards away from the wall, where it was replaced by the tangle of mutated multi-coloured grass, vegetation, and eventually trees and fungi that dwarfed their natural predecessors in comparison. Plants and mushrooms sprung out from shallow graves and piled bodies, displaying bright, vibrantly-coloured fruits and mushrooms. The convoy had officially left the old world and ventured onwards to the new…