by Damon Hunter
Chapter 1 - Highway 78 - San Marcos, CA
“Son of a bitch is still hanging on,” Freda said as she looked out the back window of Freddy’s Ford Focus.
Freddy kept the pedal down and swerved hard around a burned out shell of a car blocking their way.
“There’s no way they will let us out of quarantine with a goddamn Vampire Rotter on the roof,” Freda’s father Horace said, giving Freddy the evil eye as if he invited the unwanted passenger along. He was riding shotgun, while Freda and the couple who lived next door crowded in the backseat.
“I’m doing the best I can,” Freddy said as he swerved around another pile of twisted and blackened metal blocking the road.
“As usual, it’s not good enough.”
“Dad…” Freda began.
“You seriously going to defend him after what he let happen to your mom? I knew you never should have married him.”
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“To hell it wasn’t.”
“Can you all settle your family disputes after we get clear of the quarantine?” one of the neighbors said.
“Ain’t no dispute,” Horace replied, “evidence is clear, my daughter married an asshole.”
“I guess she takes after her mom,” Freddy said just before he slammed down hard on the brakes.
The vampire rotter, which before becoming infected was a teenage boy, lost his grip and slid off the roof. Freddy mashed down on the gas pedal and drove at it, planning to use the Ford as a weapon, but the vampire rotter jumped out of the way.
Looking in his rear view mirror Freddy was surprised when it waved at him. He decided he must have been seeing things and focused back on winding his way through the increasing amount of burned out wrecks dotting the road out of Oceanside.
“I wonder how all these cars got like that?” Freda asked.
Freda was given the answer a moment later when a missile fired by a drone patrolling the dead zone marking the border to the land of the infected and the land of the uninfected struck Freddy’s Ford.
Everyone in the car was incinerated instantly as they became another burned out wreck along Eastbound Highway 78.
Vampire Rotter Tanner watched the vehicle burn. He turned back so he was facing Oceanside and made a low growling sound. He then sat and waited for something to respond to his call. He wanted something to come help him do what an infected host was compelled to do above all else, spread the disease to each and every living organism.
Chapter 2 - Cam Carson’s Compound - Fallbrook, CA
“Listen to me closely loyal listeners of the Cam Carson Show, this is not a drill. We have already experienced, actually are still experiencing, an attack by weapons of mass destruction on United States soil. Don’t let the freedom hating apologists convince you otherwise. The rot is an engineered virus developed to destabilize our great nation. It gets worse, however, the rot may be the first weapon of mass destruction deployed against us, but it won’t be the last. If you think the use of the chemical warfare we call the rot, sent to our shores by a still unidentified group of freedom haters possibly based in Asian, or possibly using the abandoned noon base set-up for the satanic Martians, was their endgame, think again.”
Since he did want to talk over the man who owned the compound they were patrolling Chase Jr. wished he could turn down the speaker blaring their host’s radio broadcast. It would atleast make it easier to talk to the pretty girl around his age who had recently come into the compound without having to raise his voice like a crazy person. They had dealt with enough crazy lately. He used to like the show, but that was always in small doses, listening the man spew his bullshit twenty four seven got old quick. Real quick.
“I’m jealous. We’ve spent the whole time behind these walls, listening to Carson yammer on. We ain’t seen a bit of action,” Chase Jr. said to the petite young woman with the long dark hair and olive skin as she walked his direction. He knew she had seen quite a bit of action. He had seen some of it on YouTube.
“You want to know what it is like?” Ana asked him.
“Yeah.”
“That your friend?”
“Actually we’re half brothers. I’m Chase Jr. and this is Cletus.”
“Shoot him in the face.”
“What?”
“What part of shoot him in the face did you not understand?”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“You want to know how it feels out there?”
“Yeah.”
“Well then what are you waiting for?”
The man’s half brother looked nervous. He said, “Are you serious?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Ana asked him.
Both young men had their hands on the rifles they were carrying as the patrolled Cam Carson’s compound. Ana had the feeling they were both thinking of firing first.
“I ain’t going to shoot you Cletus,” the first man said.
“I thought you wanted to know what it was like?” Ana asked him.
“Not that bad,” he replied. “Where you going anyway?”
Ana held up the box of pizza she had put together from Cam’s sizeable kitchen, “I was going to bring my friends some food.”
“They were fed,” Cletus told her.
“I saw that gruel you gave them and I saw what you have in the kitchen. They get to have something other than MRE’s.”
“No one is allowed in until Mr. Carson clears them. They were all bit and could still develop the rot.”
“If they were going to turn they would have already,” Ana said as she marched past them.
“You don’t know that,” Chase Jr. said.
Ana ignored him and kept walking along the high wall. The Cam Carson Compound was big and isolated among the groves of trees in the hills outside of Fallbrook. It reminded Ana of Corrigan’s Bunker, if Corrigan had more funds to put together his survivalist outpost. The high walls and remote location made it seem as safe as anywhere on this side of the quarantine. Plenty of men with guns and supplies too. Ana still did not feel very safe though and being reminded of Corrigan’s Bunker was not a good thing for her. Things had gone bad for her there.
It was in Corrigan’s Bunker she did what she told the young militia members patrolling along the wall to do and shot one of her best friends in the face.
The man who met her at the locked door leading to the pen where Bo, Katelin and Jennifer were being held was a bigger, older version of the two militia Ana had just talked to.
He held up a two way radio and said, “I don’t appreciate you telling my boys to shoot each other.”
“You Chase Sr.?” she asked.
“How you know that?”
“Just a feeling.”
“Look miss feelings…”
“It’s Ana.”
“Look Ana, I don’t like you telling my boys to shoot each other.”
Ana looked up and met his eyes as he stared down at her. It was clear he was trying to intimidate her. She didn’t look away as she said, “Are you going to get out of my way?”
“Saying it that way sounds a little bit like a threat little girl.”
Ana smiled at him, “You know we are a lot more alike than you think.”
He looked her over before saying, “How is that?”
“I used to dress up and play war. I was itching to get out and do it for real too.”
“We ain’t playing.”
“I would have told you the same thing before we actually got out there. It was a mistake, one I’m still paying for.”
“That why you told my boys to shoot each other?”
“I only told Chase to shoot Cletus. He looked like he was considering it, so Cletus was thinking about defending himself. But, yeah, that’s why I told them.”
“I think whatever happened to you out there messed with your pretty little head.”
“Probably. You going to move your fat ass or am I going to have to show you just how messed up my head is?”
The man had nearly a foot of height and maybe a hundred pounds on Ana. He was heavily armed with an AR-15 Bushman rifle, two Smith & Wesson forty caliber pistols and a combat knife, but he still moved aside.
“I’m going to be watching,” he told her, “One of them bites you and I’m putting people down.”
“Whatever,” Ana said as she unlocked the door and stepped into the holding area. The man locked it behind her.
The holding area was not much, just a walled off area inside the walls near the west corner of the compound. There was a nest set up high in the corner where a pair of the soldiers from the The Sacred Son’s of America’s True Patriots Militia that kept watch in case any of the three with fresh bites started to show any symptoms of the rot.
Ana recognized the wisdom of keeping them separate until there was no question they were not infected. All it took was one person with the rot to spread the disease. She still didn’t like seeing her friends treated this way.
“You’re not here because you were bit are you?” Bo asked.
“No, just brought you some pizza from the kitchen.”
“Pizza?” Katelin asked as Ana handed her the box.
“Yeah, Cam Carson didn’t want to sit out the apocalypse he has been predicting without his personal chef and a wood fire pizza oven.”
“So while we were eating those nasty ass MRE’s the rest of you were eating homemade gourmet pizza?” Katelin asked.
“Pretty much,” Ana said, “I thought it was bullshit too. That’s why I brought you one. I had the chef make it special.”
“That was nice of him,” Jennifer said as she grabbed a slice.
“It had more to do with me threatening to rip off his testicles and feed them to him than the kindness of his heart, but yeah I guess it was nice.”
“Either way thanks,” Bo said. “Any word on when they will let us join the general population in this prison?”
“No,” Ana told him. She noticed the young men, no older than her, looking down at them and showed them her middle finger. They returned the gesture.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be antagonizing them,” Bo said, “Some of their friends died when Mr. Vance made them go back to the city to get Katelin and Donna. They aren’t happy with us.”
“If I remember right going to get the rest of our party was done in exchange for us coming here,” Ana said. “They could have just gone back and we would have managed without them.”
“They don’t see it that way.”
“Getting rid of that moron Norris will probably assure that they all live a bit longer anyways.”
“Again, you and I saw an idiot who had no business being out there in QZ, but they saw him as a true believer in the cause and their fearless leader,” Bo said, “Try being a little empathetic.”
“Fine,” Ana said. She looked up and smiled and waved at the two men in what was basically a glorified hunting blind.
They started to give her the finger again, but she was an attractive female around their same age, and pretty much all the The Sacred Son’s of America’s True Patriots Militia were men, unless they counted some of the wives of the older members, which they didn’t. They waved back and returned the smile.
“Are my mom and dad still out there eating pizza?” Katelin asked.
“No, they have been granted an audience with Cam Carson himself. Apparently he has something important to tell your dad and Donna didn’t want to be left out of whatever they were deciding.”
“She never did trust his decision making,” Katelin said between large bites of pizza.
“How about Clay and Gavin and what was the name of the guy you picked up? Ben?” Bo asked.
“They are hanging out inside the house. While Donna and Vance take the meeting Clay was keeping an eye on Gavin. Given the way the last couple of days have gone we decided we were not letting Gavin out of out sight. I assume Ben is hanging around somewhere.”
“Is Gavin doing okay?” Bo asked. Gavin was his neighbor. They escaped together and Bo could not help but feel responsible for the orphaned ten year old.
Ana shrugged and said, “Near as I can tell.”
“What do you think Cam Carson is going to tell them?” Jennifer asked.
“No idea. I hope it’s not just the same bullshit he has been spewing all over the radio.”
Chapter 3 - Cam Carson’s Mansion - Fallbrook, CA
“The ongoing efforts by various socialist entities to lower the testosterone of American males may have failed, though I suspect the nefarious plot may have had an impact on our response to the rot. It is difficult to quantify, but I suspect the influx of girly men this country suffered when forces affiliated with communist Yeti’s in Asia who tainted our soda pop with testosterone inhibitors did limit our response. We needed John Wayne to stop the rot and we got Joan. The question is: Have these forces plotting from their hideouts in Mongolian mountains participated and plotted in bring the rot to our shores? More importantly are they in on what is going to happen next? Is it them who plan to step in after the chaos and take this country from us?”
The voice of Cam Carson doing his radio show echoed throughout the mansion behind the walls as Donna and Eric Vance were led by Dolan, the former second in command of the The Sacred Son’s of America’s True Patriots Militia through the house.
“I hope for everybody’s sake he is not just going to be repeating the crap he spews on his radio show,” Vance said to Dolan. Vance did his best to walk without a limp, though he was not sure how well he succeeded at it. He had been ripped up pretty good the night before while escaping from his old friend Corrigan’s place. The events during the next day had not made things any better. He did not, however, want to show any weakness in front of Carson or the militia he had recruited to be his security.
“You’re probably going to be disappointed,” Dolan replied, “Near as I can tell that shit is the only language he cares to speak.”
Vance shook his head, “Then what we are doing here? I could have found a working radio. Hell, he is the only thing on the air right now and I can’t stand it.”
“It’s less about listening him and more hearing what the chinaman has to say.”
“Chinaman?”
“He might be Korean. Honestly I can’t tell one Asian from another.”
“Either way, who is he?”
“I’m not really sure. Norris didn’t like anyone to meet with Carson and the Asian but him. This is all new to me to.”
The three of them stopped at a set of double doors. Dolan knocked.
The sound of Carson’s radio show echoed through the room as they waited by the door.
“How is he going to talk to us if he is still on the air?” Donna asked.
“He’s not planning to interview us or something on the radio, is he?” Vance inquired before Dolan could answer Donna’s question.
The door opened before Dolan could answer either one of them and a rotund balding man with a face for radio stood in front of them. When he spoke it was clear from his big baritone of a voice this was Cam Carson standing in front of them.
“No need to worry,” Carson, who must have been listening by the door, told them, “Doing interviews is not really my thing. I’m a talker, I don’t need someone else to help me fill the airtime.”
Carson motioned for them to come in. They did so and a big man with a shaved head in a tailored black suit, looking more like a professional body guard than a member of the Sacred Sons locked the door behind them. He then stood by another huge individual with the same suit and haircut by the door. Carson did not bother to introduce either of them.
In the middle of the big room was a sizeable table with some plush office chairs surrounding it. Three spots on the table already had drinks in front o
f them. One chair was occupied by an Asian man Vance would have guessed was probably Korean. Unlike Dolan he had been around the world enough to recognize the difference in people from different regions.
“Why don’t we all sit down and let me explain the brass tacks of the situation,” Carson said as he pointed to the chairs.
“Why don’t you go get yourself some dinner?” the Asian man said to Carson, “Let me explain it to them.”
“I can wait,” Carson said.
“You look hungry.”
Carson clearly did not like the idea of being left out. He started to sit down.
The Asian man motioned to the two men who were built like NFL linebackers standing by the door, “They look hungry. Please, I’m not going to tell them anything I haven’t told you already.”
“Then why get rid of me?” Carson asked.
“I am only concerned with the welfare of your personal guard.”
“You need to remember whose house this is,” Carson said, but after a second he turned and looked at his two bodyguards, “You boy’s hungry? Be honest, I’m paying you good money to keep me safe. I want you both at full strength.”
“I can always eat Mr. Carson,” one said.
“A bite to eat would not hurt my feelings Mr. Carson,” the other bodyguard added.
“Fine, you win,” Carson said to the Asian man as he stood up. He stomped out of the room with his two bodyguards right behind him.
Once Carson was gone the Asian looked at Dolan, “Are you in charge now?”
“I guess so.”
“Good, Norris was a fucking racist idiot. I can tolerate one or the other, but both together is too much. Are you a racist idiot Mr. Dolan?”
“I do my best to not be either.”
“Yet you are now the leader of a white supremacist organization.”
“We are more about white pride than supremacy…”
“Please, I thought you said you were not an idiot. Try to prove it by sitting down and being quiet.”
Dolan shut up and sat down.
“Mr. and Mrs. Vance why don’t you sit down as well.”
Vance and Donna sat down. Vance asked, “Who are you?”
“I am an agent of a government I would rather not name at this time.”