Crash Landing: Survival in a Dystopian World (BONES BOOK ONE 1)

by Jim Rudnick

  They passed a couple of cars. One looked almost brand new, Javor thought, and yet Bixby didn’t bother with any of them. He trotted ahead to the bottom of the ramp where it curved slowly to the north and then out along the two lanes ahead of them. A half hour later found them going through an intersection with the charred remains of gas stations on all four corners.

  Wayne grunted. “If all four of these made money, that’d be a surprise,” he said.

  Sue nodded. “No way that all four did—some were probably supported by the head office, I’d gather. Was the way back then, each had to face off against the others or else customers would think less of a brand. Least that’s what I was told,” she said as they all walked along the middle of the road going into town just ahead.

  Not a lot of car hulks, Javor noted. Nor trucks either for that matter. As they slowly walked along, he kept one eye on Bixby who ambled ahead of them, but he also tried to look down the side streets too.

  On one, there was a huge group of twisted cars and trucks—like someone had tossed them all into a pile that was fifty feet tall. He stopped and pointed.

  Sue nodded. “See further a bit—on the left-hand side? See that crater there? Must have been a power substation, which got a direct Boathi hit. Destroyed the building and the power grid attached to same, I’d think, and moved the whole parking lot up into the air to come down like you see it. Seen lotsa these kind of piles—this one’s pretty small too. You’ll see what I mean when we get to the Adair Dam area …” she finished off as they continued to walk into the small town ahead.

  At one time, people had parked in what they once called angle parking when they visited what was once called downtown or the town core. Javor knew that from Gallipedia, and as they drew closer it was easy to see hulk after destroyed hulk of cars, pickups, and even some motorcycles. All were badly burned up and stripped of items, which was normal. When there was no manufacturing to make a new set of wiper blades, you took a set off another car. That’s if you could siphon gas to run your own—and then after a few more years, as things broke, the skill to keep something on the road became harder to find.

  Means, he thought, that after eight years, there’s nothing on the road anymore. Well, at least as far as I’ve seen …

  Ahead, Sue stopped and pointed down the side street to the left. “Let’s take this one down to the old army barracks. Should be space there to camp out in, and good fencing as I remember from years ago on my first trip by here,” she said and turned.

  Bixby hastened to get ahead of her, and Javor moved up to take point with her, and Bruce and Wayne followed close behind.

  As they walked, the number of houses on the quiet side street slowly decreased. Empty lots appeared and overgrown grass strips lined the cracked and disheveled street scape. One of the few remaining houses had been boarded up. There were sheets of plywood over all the doors and windows, and the front door had an iron gate in front of it.

  “Seems like whoever lived there tried to stay,” Javor said, and Sue nodded but could add no more.

  As they left the few houses behind, the street became less like a town street. The sidewalks disappeared, the white line down the street center disappeared, and the undergrowth was taller than they were. After about a half mile more, on the right side of the street, the undergrowth suddenly disappeared too as there was now tarmac behind a tall frost fence that stretched away from them to their right and ahead of them for hundreds of yards to the abandoned army base.

  Sue nodded and they moved toward what looked like an access point through the frost wire fencing and a guard shack too. At the doorway to same, she walked straight through, ignoring the skeletons that were piled in one corner. Bixby skirted them too, gingerly walked through the shack with them, and then ran ahead onto the army base road.

  They all stood for a moment looking out at the buildings ahead: two- and three-story brick buildings that weren’t in too bad shape. Some had some broken windows but most looked at least halfway decent, Javor thought.

  An old well-overgrown set of railway tracks ran right in front of them, leading off somewhere to the left.

  Sue pointed at the building ahead. “This is admin—just offices. We need to go right here, around the tan building, and then back down that road to get to the barracks where we can rest and take it easy. Been there last time, and it’s safe to rest there,” she said and walked ahead of the group toward the tan building.

  At the edge of same, she stopped and then looked across the base road to a side building that was much larger than any they’d seen so far. Big enough to be an aircraft hangar, a wall along this side was marked Motor Pool. The doors of the double doorway ahead swung in the breeze. It looked like someone had driven a truck right through them from the inside, as the top hinges of the doors were completely missing.

  She pulled out her rifle immediately and took off the safety. The rest of the group grew more cautious and looked around slowly.

  Bixby, however, just trotted down the base road toward the doors, and even though Javor whistled to him to return, he didn’t pause but went in the open doors. Javor charged toward the same doors, and all of them were soon there at the doorway.

  Inside, lying on the floor of the building about fifty feet away, Bixby was sitting in a pile of cardboard boxes and chewing something. In fact, as they all entered and spread out safely, Javor could see that those cardboard boxes were food boxes. Processed retail grocery store boxes. Boxes that couldn’t have been made since eight years ago. Boxes that shouldn’t exist today.

  Around them stretching off for at least another hundred yards or so, there were all kinds of trucks parked in neat orderly rows—probably more than a hundred of them, Javor thought. Some were definitely army trucks, the dull green and camo tops easy to identify. Others were retail delivery trucks with smiling customers grinning from the side. Some advertised some kind of cookie, two thin black rings around a white icing center. Others had families in their cars, snacking on some kind of a chip. Besides these trucks were a couple of large eighteen-wheelers, Javor thought they were called, with plain tarps protecting whatever cargo they carried or had carried.

  Interspersed with the trucks were huge dollies on casters with big bins to carry something, and they all walked slowly toward the trucks.

  A few, they noticed as they glanced in, carried more of those retail food packs. Javor picked up a couple and noted that one said it was the best soup for a cold, and the other more rectangular box offered up that it held oat bran granola. Both were in perfect order. Both were filled with something, and as he tossed the soup box back into the bin, he opened up the granola bar box. Inside were eight foil-wrapped bars. He took one, and with his teeth, he tore a side off. Smiling at Sue who was trying to preach caution, he took a bite.

  Granola, yes.

  Still fit to eat, yes.

  Good tasting—well, as good as granola ever was—yes.

  He looked down at the box and searched for a best before date, and yes, there it was.

  Best before more than eight years ago—yet here it was still edible.

  And not decayed and rotting.

  Sue said it first.

  “This is plenty odd—but I suspect we’ve just discovered where that Interstate Tribe of women do their shopping,” she said, and then she wandered off to look around further.

  Javor called for Bixby, finished another bite of the granola bar, and tossed the rest to his dog. Bixby caught it deftly in his mouth and then spit it out on the floor of the hangar. He bent down to sniff it one more time and then moved away.

  “Guess the dog don’t like granola,” Javor said to himself with a grin, and he soon caught up with Sue.

  In front of the first line of trucks to their left, there were huge doors—interior doors it looked like—that lead somewhere else, but each was closed and didn’t appear like it could be forced open either.

  They searched for a way in and didn’t find a single way to gain access to what lay be
hind that wall of sealed doors. Bruce had just completed a lap around the whole of the interior of the hangar, and he got back a bit out of breath.

  “Sue, nothing else at all. Trucks on the hangar floor, those sealed doors, and dollies haphazardly around the floor. Not a thing else,” he said, and they all looked at each other, stymied.

  “Some did have their keys hanging from the ignition switches, I saw,” he added.

  “Take anything that you figure you’d eat,” Sue said “and let’s find some bunks—I’m done with today.”

  After some digging, Javor grabbed a box of crackers shaped like animals, and he smiled at that.

  Moving back to the open doors, he stopped and took a look.

  “Someone sawed the locking mechanism, then drove outta here, I’d guess” he said, as he saw fresh saw marks on the locking arm.

  “Good to know, but as far as the Regime told me last time—my only time here I should add—this place is deserted—Walkerville is deserted.

  They all fell into the same group as they went out of the building and then turned once again to their right to go down the base side road and toward the rows of single-story barracks coming up on their left. Sue led the way past the first and second barracks and went right to the third one. Bixby didn’t like something, Javor thought, as he was walking stiff-legged on the walkway between the rows of barracks buildings and growled occasionally.

  “Let’s be cautious here,” Javor said, “Bixby isn’t happy …”

  “Third one is lucky,” Sue said, “as that’s the one I was in before.” She trotted up the few stairs to the doorway and threw back the screen door at the same time as the inner door opened up and zombie hands stretched out for her just inches away …

  She stuck her gun into the doorway and pulled the trigger twice. As she fell backward off the stoop, Bruce’s gun sounded from behind them, and more and more zombies fell, clogging the doorway.

  Javor leaned forward to Sue’s arm, and he helped drag her off the stoop to the left, while Wayne and Bruce fired continuously into the barracks interior.

  “Lots of them,” Bruce yelled, as Sue got back up to her feet and retreated with the rest of the group as they poured volley after volley into the third barracks building.

  From across the walkway to their right, zombies poured out of the barracks that lay there as well as from the two barracks they’d passed over initially.

  Sue said, “Back to the hangar—we’d have only one doorway for them to get to us.”

  Retreating slowly, firing and reloading, they made it to the hangar, and Javor noted Bixby was ahead of them once more.

  #####

  Moving quickly, faster than a zombie, was always possible, the group knew, and they quickly ran back to the Motor Pool building. Bruce moved past the other three who stood in the doorway ready to fight right there and pushed a big dolly with a half-full bin of food items into the opening. Wayne nodded and helped. In one minute, the entire open doorway was a mass of dollies jammed together, stopping any access.

  “Could still crawl over, one by one,” Sue said, “but that’d take brainpower a dumb zombie doesn’t have.”

  She helped Wayne drag a smaller dolly up to sit by the others. They quickly flipped it over and then climbed on top, which gave them a height advantage as they could now see the stumbling slow zombies appear and turn toward the Motor Pool.

  Each seemed to be unable to understand what it was they faced, Javor noted, as they simply walked up to the dollies and then stopped. Not one tried to push the dollies out of their way—or what would have been even better, drag them outward and away from the doorway.

  As more and more arrived, Sue said, “About thirty or so” and even that large a group couldn’t muster how to get into the building.

  “Thinking we’re good here,” Wayne said as he put the safety back onto his rifle and smiled.

  And he appeared to be right, Javor noted, and only then did he turn to bark “No” to Bixby who’d been howling behind them.

  Seeing the trucks behind him again made him wonder why they were here. And why they had been left behind.

  “If you were going to move a whole bunch of food into some kind of storage, you’d need trucks, right?” he asked no one.

  Sue nodded and Bruce said, “Right.”

  “So when the time comes to get those items outta storage, you’d need trucks again, right?”

  That got him an answering nod from Sue.

  “And while we did see gas stations just downtown, I’d say that a real army type, attention to detail type, would make sure that their trucks are gassed and ready to go. Right?” he asked as he began to walk over to a truck that was close.

  “Right again, Javor—are you thinking that these things will start? Oh—and you do know that we’ve all,” Sue said as she looked at both Wayne and Bruce, “have never ever even driven a truck before too, right?” she said dryly.

  “But I have—ain’t hard,” he answered as he opened up the truck with the cookie advertisement on its side and hoisted himself up the two external steps into the cab and into the left-hand driver’s seat leaving the door open.

  Steering wheel type of vehicle, he noted, and he’d used that kind before, but the stick was so much easier. Dash had gauges and some kind of display unit that was a black unpowered screen now. It had no rear mirror, but two big unbroken side mirrors showed the sides of the truck all the way back to the next row of army trucks. Down on the driver’s side of the floorboards were the two pedals he knew he’d need—gas and brake. Don’t know which is which yet, but good to see he’d had a bit of experience with this kind of truck.

  Keys. Trucks needed keys or security thumbprint readers or AI that was up and running.

  He said, “AI, new driver help, please,” and waited.

  Nothing. If AI was up and running, he’d not gotten an answer, as there must be something else he needed to add.

  He looked at the steering column and yes—there was a place to insert a key. Least must be the place, he thought. Now all he needed to do was to find the key. The full bench seat beside him held nothing. He leaned way over to his right and saw that the truck had a special compartment. He grabbed the lift handle and it popped open. No keys. There were papers about some kind of service that the truck had had before the bombs had fallen, but nothing more.

  He sighed. He’d have to check each of them. He remembered Bruce had said he’d found some with keys, as he straightened up and looked up. Above the driver’s and passenger’s side of the windshield were some kind of flaps with paperwork jammed in behind them. He brushed down the one on the driver’s side,and from behind them, a set of keys fell into his lap.

  “Bingo!” he said to himself and smiled. “Need to remember that keys are often tucked away up there.”

  He looked at the key ring—three keys. One was much bigger and he thought that it would be for the rear locking cargo area.

  But the other two were the same key, and he smiled as he inserted it slowly into the key socket on the steering column and gave it a hard twist the only way it’d go.

  Vroom! Vroom!

  The truck started on the first turn and ran loud and rough, but he could still see Sue and the others jumping up and down.

  They had a truck that they could use!

  The trip ahead to Arlington just got much shorter.

  He played with the pedal on the left and nothing happened, but the one on the right increased the flow of fuel as the truck engine revved as he did that, and eventually the rough idle quieted down.

  Fuel. Trucks need fuel that they carry themselves.

  He studied the dash display one more time, and in the bottom left-hand corner, he found a gauge that read Fuel Gauge on the top, and below it a red line was centered over the letter F.

  F is for full, he hoped. But no way to tell how much fuel that was nor how far it’d get them.

  He turned the truck off.

  Sue clapped him on the back as he got down,
and he smiled and then stopped the congratulations. Even Wayne standing over near the doorway on the overturned dolly doing his watchman role smiled and gave him a thumbs up!

  “Wait,” he said, “wait … we’ll need to take a truck that has full fuel and somehow make sure of that,” he said.

  Bruce nodded. “A couple of them army trucks—back over there,” he said as he pointed well away from where they were standing, “had like rows and rows of what looked like some kind of containers—red ones, I think,” he said.

  Bruce and Javor trotted over to take a look-see. At one of those army trucks, there were at least fifty of those red plastic containers. Javor opened one up and took a smell.

  “Gas. They’re all full of gas, so we need to take some of these with us,” he said and then had a sudden thought as he turned to Sue.

  “Moving across Bones in a truck is going to cause us some real attention. Do we want to identify ourselves as army—by taking one of their trucks, or maybe we just move the gas cans into a food truck and folks might think we have cookies?”

  Not knowing what the politics of this kind of statement would mean on Bones was an issue, and as he stood and scratched Bixby’s ear, Sue and Bruce talked it out.

  They’d take a non-army vehicle, loaded with gas was their decision.

  He smiled and began to walk the rows of food trucks. One had an advertisement for something called Nutty Spread with a picture of a couple of kids spreading dark goop on bread. When he reached that smaller truck, he looked inside and smiled.

  “Keys in the ignition, bench seat up front, crew cab behind, and the back is empty. Let me just check that she starts,” he said, and on the third twist of the key, the engine fired right up. As he studied the dash, he saw that the word FULL appeared on the display in this truck, and that was a good start. Meanwhile, Sue and Bruce had carried more than two dozen of those red fuel cans over and jammed them in the back.

  “Not much room for more—at least where they won’t roll around, I mean, ‘cause we got them all braced up with some of the truck’s cargo itself,” Bruce said.