Approximately three thousand years later the trail widened out into an open field with a bunch of vehicles scattered around it. There were quite a few large SUVs with aftermarket updates like fences welded around their windows. It was a pretty rough looking job but with no working YouTube around to teach welding it was the best they’d been able to do. Considering it was the apocalypse though and roughly welded fences were a desirable feature the resale values might have actually gone up.
The SUV Kelly and the kids were directed towards was a white Chevy Suburban. The interior was loaded with all of the latest features. It had chrome and leather everywhere. Kelly sat in the middle row helping get the kids settled in. She was wondering if this model had the fancy camera system that would let them watch Zombies get squished as they ran over them. Talking about a creative use of the parking assistant.
Randy was outside with the rest of the men helping get the batteries hooked up. It was always fun messing around with electricity in the middle of a raging cyclone. Looking out her window Kelly watched as the hoods were slammed shut one by one. Bryan climbed in the driver’s seat of the one they were in and started it up.
“You guys all good?” He asked turning around and smiling at Kelly and the kids. All the girls smiled back at him.
“We’re good. Everything going good out there?” Kelly asked.
“Yes ma’am. Your husband will be joining you momentarily. One of my men will be jumping in to drive you guys. Just a couple of things to take care of really quick and we’ll be out of here.” Bryan said before hopping out of the truck.
Caitlyn had been digging through all of the seats searching for something. Smiling triumphantly, she held up a leather case filled with DVDs. Still grinning she asked her mom to figure out how to get the overhead video unit to work so they could watch a movie.
While Kelly was doing that, she kept an eye on Randy. He was talking to Frank over by another one of the SUVs that’d been cranked up and was ready to go. Both of them glanced over to where she was in their SUV. She waved at them before pretending to stop paying attention. She watched out of the corner of her eye as Randy walked over to the man that he’d seen pick up the pistol. The man who’d pointed a weapon at his family and struck his wife. The man Frank had forbidden to carry a weapon on pain of death.
Randy got right up in the tall guys face as Frank asked him a question. Looking agitated the man held up one of his hands and took a few steps back arguing with them. Kelly watched as the man she’d known for years as a mild-mannered computer programmer stared down the macho soldier. The soldier swung a big fist at Randy who ducked the poorly aimed haymaker then rammed the butt of his rifle into the man’s stomach. The guy sank to the ground reaching into his pocket for the pistol. He had it halfway out when Bryan shot him in the face.
Bryan bent down and retrieved the pistol off the ground and tucked it into his own waistband after verifying there was a bullet in the chamber. The group casually dispersed to the three different SUVs they’d cranked up to get going. It was only then that Kelly realized the execution hadn’t taken place at a random time. Frank must’ve held off until they were in a position to safely shoot the man without having to worry about attracting the mob of infected around them. He’d also been useful in dragging a dolly up the flooded trail.
“What are you guys watching?” Randy asked leaning back and trying to see the video screen from the passenger seat.
“World War Z part three.” Caitlyn joked. It was a running gag between them. The end of the world had halted production on a lot of movies they’d been looking forward to watching together. That one of course being particularly ironic.
“I love you.” Kelly whispered leaning forward to kiss Randy. He’d done what needed to be done and she’d acknowledged it. The kiss was a thank you and forgiveness all wrapped in one. She leaned back into her seat to see if she liked the remake of the Willy Wonka movie as much as she’d loved the original.
Chapter 15: Dead Serious Small Talk
Krantz was camped out in the war room. He sat at the conference table with a laptop and a notepad in front of him. He’d been there for about fifteen hours straight when Forrest finally reported in. Tom looked up from his laptop when the video screen on the wall started flashing that they had an incoming call. He reached over to the sleek looking tablet in the middle of the table and pressed the green answer icon that appeared.
Forrest stared at them from the inside of a communication closet outside the Franklin Municipal airport in Virginia. He looked comically surprised that the video call had actually worked.
“Commander Forrest reporting in as ordered sir.” Forrest stuttered out allowing his training to carry him through the awkwardness.
“Good to see you made it. Any issues?” Krantz asked. He looked like he barely believed the video conference was working either. Tom was the only one there not stationed at the hub who actually understood the technology. He really knew this was quite a feat for it to be working. Jenkins was virtually beaming since the bulk of the planning to make sure the communications systems would work had been up to him and his team. It helped that they were in a special hub designed to allow for communications up and down the east coast in the event of a nuclear war. Billions in taxpayer dollars had been spent over the years laying down the infrastructure to enable communications in case of a cataclysmic event. No one had specifically been worried about Zombies being that event. The fear of a worldwide pandemic had been very real though.
“The airport had a small group defending it. We took them out, but they were probably able to get a message out before we did. They were connected into a hard-wired phone system. The airport’s nice and clean. I’d love to be able to use it as our forward rally point but now that it’s been compromised, we may need to fall back to option two. We have a couple of days to figure that out before our forces start showing up anyway.” Forrest reported.
“Outstanding work. Any casualties?” Krantz asked.
“No sir. Everyone’s still standing. One of my guys is missing a finger now but that’s it.” Forrest answered.
“Hope it wasn’t his trigger finger.” Krantz joked dryly. “Just to let you know we’re taking a lot of hits along the coast but not much activity inland as of now. We’re wondering if they’ve pulled all their people back to the Naval base at this point. Any intel you can provide around that will be very useful. Stay safe and let us know once you’re built up enough to strike.”
“Yes sir. Will do sir.” Forrest responded before killing the connection.
“We have anybody else reaching out today?” Krantz asked Tom.
“Nothing until the call with Sam.” Tom said glancing down quickly at the itinerary on his laptop to confirm.
Krantz left to go hit the base gym and grab a nap before that call. It felt so weird to be doing ordinary things like going to the gym for a workout and scheduling conference calls. For the last couple of years his workouts had literally been running for his life. He’d been dropped into plenty of hot zones where him and his guards had to immediately start running after exiting the aircraft or risk getting eaten by howling infected.
He’d just gotten started on the treadmill when the phone on the wall rang. He got off the treadmill and grabbed the handset. He listened to Jenkins on the other end for a minute then sighed and went to put his uniform back on. Sam had moved the time of their call up to now and was waiting for him on video back in the conference room.
“Hey Sam.” Krantz said walking briskly into the room. Once he was seated and everything was good Tom left the room and sat down at a desk outside the closed door in case he was needed. His other job was to tell everyone the boss was in a confidential meeting and not to be disturbed.
“Good evening field commander. I needed to get an update from you a little sooner. I hope that’s ok.” Sam said. Krantz noticed she looked a little frazzled.
“Absolutely ma’am. We actually just got off a call with Forrest. He’s gotten setu
p in Virginia near the main base. We’re waiting for him to collect enough of a force to start making moves. He’s either going to secure the airport or look for somewhere else nearby. Otherwise, not much more to report. We’re being hit hard near the coast but inland we’re doing ok. A lot of infected moving around which is slowing us down but we’re getting it done.”
“Excellent. All the feedback we’re getting here is that the troops moving through North Carolina are getting slowed down by the infected. They’re also starting to hit some of the roadblocks the settlement people left for them. You may want to send out a general warning to check for trip wires and only send small parties over a bridge at a time. Might be best to just avoid bridges honestly. They’re pretty much all wired. Snipers are moving in as well. The settlement people are sending in guerilla warfare types to slow us down.” Sam informed him.
“I’ll get that information out to the field right away.” Krantz said busily taking notes. “Knowing that’s going to save some lives.”
“You prepped for the meeting with the Senator on Thursday?” Sam asked.
“Yes ma’am. Is there anything in particular I should be ready to answer for him?” Krantz asked.
“No. Just making sure you remembered. There’s a lot going on.” Sam said then signed off.
Feeling like something had been off with the last bit of that call Krantz waved Tom back into the room. He wasn’t able to shake the feeling that something had been off. Sam had never ended a call so abruptly and she’d never called unannounced like that before either. She’d also never bothered to remind him about upcoming calls with the Senator unless there was something different about them.
“Are you able to see where the video call comes in from when Sam calls?” He asked Tom.
“No sir. I can see what IP address the call’s coming from but we’re not using DNS or anything still. Not enough endpoints.” Tom answered.
“Ok nerd. What are you able to tell me that actually makes sense to normal people?”
“I think the IP address that came in this time was different from the other times we’ve talked to them.” Tom fussed around with the console in the middle of the table then showed a list of numbers with decimal points in weird places to Krantz.
“That’s wonderful. What does it mean?” Krantz asked. He fought down the urge to hurt Tom. Tom experiencing a little bit of pain right now would definitely make him happy. Not a lot of pain. Something like hitting him in the finger with a hammer.
“The numbers aren’t the same. Think of them like phone numbers. Except they’re the numbers you use for calling from video devices. Does that make sense?” Tom asked.
Krantz nodded as he absently spun the fancy little tablet around to look at it himself. Now that he was thinking of the numbers as if they were phone numbers the obvious discrepancy stood out immediately. Every call with Sam had come from one phone number or address in the past while this newest one was a new phone number. Scrolling upwards he didn’t see where the new number had ever appeared before.
“Is it easy to tell where the addresses go back to? Like an actual address to match up to the computer address?” Krantz asked.
“No sir. Not unless you have some documentation or something it’s not really easy. I can check and see?” Tom said questioningly.
“Don’t do anything that’d be noticed. If you’re able to find something that could be useful though. It’s more of a curiosity thing really.” Krantz said dismissively. He got up to head back to the gym. Tom headed over towards his computer terminal. He did enjoy a challenge.
Chapter 16: Squirrel Kabob
Kyler really wished waking up in a pile of insect infested pine straw in mind shattering pain wasn’t such a common occurrence for him. It felt like a dragon had a talon in his shoulder and was wiggling his shoulder bone around. It hurt. Based on the position of the sun it appeared to be early afternoon. Of course, he couldn’t really see the sun through the trees and pine straw so who the hell really knew? If his arm didn’t hurt so bad, he could whip out his phone and actually see what time it was. He’d snagged himself a really nice Rolex from a looted jewelry store but couldn’t figure out how to take out the links on the band, so it was basically garbage. He needed to grab a cheap one the next time they walked past a gas station.
He missed Siri. Without any connectivity to the ‘cloud’ Siri had died. He’d always thought she lived inside his phone, but it turned out she was more of a cloud girl. It’d taken mankind centuries to dig itself out of the dirt and only a few years for them to burrow right back into it. Siri’s demise was just one small effect the apocalypse had on the things that everyone had taken for granted for so long. Eventually the cars would all rust, the pills would all be gone, and the buildings would all collapse. They’d be riding around on horses shooting at each other with bows and arrows. Assuming the Zombies didn’t eat all the horses.
Thanks to Americans love for guns and the politicians love for pork it was going to take a while to run out of modern weapons and ammunition. The more advanced weaponry would go away first. It was scary knowing that there were nuclear weapons sitting in silos all over the world ready to launch. Hopefully the guy who carried the Presidents briefcase with the launch codes around was able to find a nice safe place to die. If he was wandering around as a Zombie and someone got their hands on that briefcase that could add a whole new level of suck to the apocalypse.
Speaking of things that suck. Peeking through the pine needles Ritz had shoveled on top of him Kyler watched as an infected woman trounced into view. She didn’t seem particularly interested in looking around. She trudged right past their location without even glancing over at the oddly shaped piles of pine needles. She was wearing the remains of a red and black striped sweater. With her face hideously deformed by the virus she could easily have passed for Freddy Krueger. She just needed to find herself one of those brown hats. She’d also need to invest in some pants.
Two more Zombies traipsed by their hiding spot while Kyler was awake. With all the activity it wasn’t like he felt safe closing his eyes and taking a nap. He couldn’t see Ritz but assumed the consummate soldier was doing what all good soldiers did when given an opportunity to sleep. He was taking it. The area around the exploded bunker must’ve finally bored the Zombies enough that when one of them started walking north the rest decided to tag along. As long as none of them were actually on the hunt they should be fine. The ones walking by looked like they were just walking to be walking.
Protected from a painful death by less than an inch of pine straw that’d been kicked over him in the dark by an exhausted Ritz he watched as the parade of the insane continued. If a single Zombie happened to stumble over one of them, they were dead. It was the night before all over again except this time he didn’t have a dead body to hide behind. Afraid to move he lay in pain as the group passing by gradually thinned out. When no more passed them for about thirty minutes, he risked moving his head to look around. Not seeing any more of them anywhere he grabbed a couple of pills out of his upper pocket and slammed them into his mouth.
He quickly swallowed the pills hoping they didn’t choke him since he had nothing to wash them down with. Once that was done, he pulled some more pine straw over his body to cover back up. Then he sat there waiting for the magical pills to kick in. He thought he’d taken one antibiotic and one pain killer, but he really wasn’t sure now which pocket he’d put which pills in. If he ever got a chance to write a survival book about the apocalypse, he knew what he’d put in it. The first chapter would basically be about drugging yourself and sitting in discomfort for days on end. That seemed to be the most important skill. It’d gotten him through a lot more scrapes than his weapons had.
“It’s dark enough. Let’s go.”
Kyler almost jumped out of his skin hearing the voice in his ear and feeling the hands on his shoulders. Ritz was careful to make sure he stood back a good distance from Kyler in case he started swinging cutlery around again. Consc
iously controlling his breathing Kyler hoisted himself out of the pine straw. His shoulder was pulsating with pain, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t walk. They bore slightly to the northwest since the Zombies they’d been watching all day had been veering more easterly.
They walked until they couldn’t walk anymore then built themselves another pine straw penthouse. This time if there were any Zombies walking by during the day Kyler had no clue. He slept the entire day away. He didn’t realize it, but his fever soared during the day before gradually dropping back down to normal. The strong antibiotics doing the trick of gradually getting him well again.
Two more days of walking and they were both beginning to wonder how big this forest really was. They weren’t making great time with Kyler wounded and Ritz loaded down with all their gear, but it was starting to feel a lot like the Groundhog Day movie every time they woke up. The sight of a steep incline up ahead got them both excited. As a general rule of thumb anything different was bad in an apocalypse. However, after staring at pinecones and squirrels for the last few days Kyler and Ritz were ready for a change.
Zombies! (Book 7): Still Standing Page 13