by David Peters
Travis came running back up to the table using his shirt to carry something. Nearly out of breath he said “Ok, now observe. This doesn’t shoot rocks it shoots grenades.”
“Holy crap, of course!” said Dylan with a widening smile.
“Ya, I didn’t like the idea of leaving two windows uncovered and open so you could throw them out. So I came up with this, watch. You place the grenade here, then attach this chain like so. Now after I crank it up the grenade falls down into this channel. If I pull the trigger the unarmed grenade will fly out this opening. As it clears the end of the rail the pin is pulled. That way you can’t have a primed grenade inside the bus. At the very worst it drops a live grenade outside. No more worries about turning the inside of the bus into the biggest pile of chunky salsa in history.”
Dylan scrunched his face up at the mental image then quickly recovered, “That is a work of art. Let me get another rock, I want to see the range” said Dylan.
Travis gave Dylan a quick rundown on where not to put fingers and how to work the complex crank. Once he had it figured out they spent the next ten minutes experimenting with the device. Dylan had dubbed it the Travis Cannon or T-Cannon for short. If you could move this support here” Dylan pointed, “back to here we could shoot these another fifty yards, maybe more,” observed Dylan, “I want to see both of these mounted on the bus. Talk to Dave about his mini-van, would be nice to have another, or spare parts for these, whatever you see fit.”
“I’m on it dude,” said Travis excitedly, “I mean dude, sir, or sir.”
“Dude is fine Travis,” Dylan said with a laugh and patted the young man on the back. “You did good kid. We are going to need creativity like this in the future.”
John shook his head, “You know, he could have told me what he was doing from the start. Kids these days, I swear.”
John walked next to Dylan for a quick tour of the work being done to the bus “Install is going well. We took your plywood one step up. We had a storage shed that was more or less empty and falling in on itself, so we tore it down and are mounting the corrugated tin to the plywood, not as flammable that way, but if a Sapper smokes himself right on top of it you will still only have maybe ten seconds before it is completely melted off. The corrugations also allow us better water flow control over the bus too.”
Dylan nodded as he walked around and examined the bus. It occurred to him that he really didn’t know exactly what he was looking at, or for. But it did look safe.
John continued “So we put three of the water troughs on the roof and some make shift covers over them. We put controls through the ceiling inside,” John pointed to the crudely painted red handles on the ceiling “so if there is a fire pull the handle closest to the fire until it is out. Once we started putting water in them we found it was too heavy and had to add some extra supports using chain link fence posts. The roof wasn’t designed to carry that much weight.”
Dylan looked at one of the armor plates that had been mounted “I like it. This gives a nice range of fire without the opening being too large. I like the grills over some of the windows, are those barbeque grills?”
“We use what we have available” smiled John. “We are kind of limited on supplies so we have to improvise just about everything we build. I have added a few things to the town list that I think we might need in the future if they become available. For the most part they are just wish list things.”
“This looks great John. I feel much more confident about going into town now,” said Dylan as he patted john on the back. “I’ll be back before dinner, talk to you later.”
Dylan made his way back to Daniel’s cabin to see if Niccole had gotten anywhere with the radio equipment. He briefly caught himself having a feeling akin to hope. “Too early for that,” he said quietly to himself.
--2--
He entered the cabin and found Niccole in a heated argument with someone on the radio.
“Damn it! That is what I am trying to explain to you. You want to stay away from the city centers! Any big city, town, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Most likely no one will be alive there!” Niccole looked up and saw Dylan, sighing she said “I’m trying to get this long hauler on the CB to stay the hell out of Sumter but the guy just won’t listen.”
“Why does he want to go there?” Dylan asked.
“The guy says he is supposed to pick up a trailer. Trailer of what I don’t know. I swear this guy has been asleep for the last two weeks.” Niccole picked up the handset again “Listen, if you go into Sumter you will not come out human. Have you been to other towns, have you been on the planet for the last couple of weeks?”
“You know ma’am, I’m really trying to be nice here. You sound like you might actually be a nice lady but I think you might be kind of a whack job too,” said the nameless voice.
“All right pal, I am going to try this one more time. After that I really don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to you. I want you to ask yourself a few things. Have you seen any other cars in the last few days? Have you stopped to try and get fuel? Have you seen power anywhere? Is any of this striking a chord?” Niccole was getting exasperated. She lowered the microphone down and talked to Dylan again “You know, at first I was really feeling like I wanted to save this guy but at this point I feel like saying, ‘ha ha, almost got you there. See you in Sumter.”
The voice came back through the CB “Well, you do have me there, haven’t seen a car all day and something was burning like mad over the horizon toward Colorado. Come to think of it you are the first voice I have heard.”
“Where are you coming from and how long have you been on the road?” Niccole let the button go and was just talking to Dylan “I really need to understand how it is this guy just dropped onto the planet. Then we can figure out how he managed to drive a truck with an IQ this low.”
“I ain’t going to give details over the CB ma’am.”
“I can promise you no one who cares is listening.”
“Let’s just say as a long hauler I got a few, you know, friends across the country and was staying with one of them.”
“Ok, now we are getting somewhere. Here is what I would really like you to do.” Niccole proceeded to give him directions on how to bypass Sumter and come up the hill to them. “When you reach the bottom of the hill, hit me up again, I will still be here.”
“Roger that crazy lady,” The CB went quiet again.
“That was like pulling teeth,” Niccole said. “I was able to get the antenna on the top of Doc’s house to work but we don’t have enough cable to reach the one we put on the top of the far hill. I added that to the shopping list. We also need a working HAM radio; this one hasn’t seen the light of day in several decades and my old style radio building skills are slightly degraded.”
“We can add that to the list too. Did you make contact with anyone else?” asked Dylan.
“Nothing, scared the crap out of me when the trucker came on. Still need to understand where he was. Even if he was at his girlfriend’s house does she own a TV? He really has no idea about what has happened,” Niccole said curiously.
Dylan brought her up to speed about the wall construction and the bus preparations. He also explained Travis’ grenade launcher.
“So have you set a roll out day? Sounds like you are almost good to go now,” asked Niccole.
“I will want a shakedown ride first, assuming we have a window for it. I would like to head down the hill a ways and try out the gun ports and test the T-Cannon. I don’t want some issue in town to be the first time we actually use those things that might turn us all to mush, to use Travis’ description. Or maybe it was Pico de Gaia, I don’t recall now.”
“Sounds good, I would feel better knowing what issues we didn’t anticipate.”
Dylan watched as Niccole began her cycle through the channels in her search for other survivors. As he watched a very sullen look washed over her face.
She would set a channel then lower the push to talk
, “Anyone on this channel come back. Any listeners respond please.” She released the push to talk and listened for about a minute. “I will be cycling up one channel in 3, 2, and 1.”
She rolled the dial up one channel and began the process again.
After several more tries Niccole put the microphone down and sighed “I can’t help but wonder what happened to my parents. Are they out there? Did they go down with Seattle? Are they at our house? It drives me crazy every time I think about it. We really took our ease of communication for granted.”
“I’m with you there. I really wish I could come up with some sort of answer for you but I can’t. I think it is safe to assume we may never know and that is pretty difficult for me to accept.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier, the note we left was the most we could really do I think. I just hate not knowing.”
“You know I never got on well with your parents. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Lord knows I tried to get along with your dad. It was like talking to a tree.”
“I understand. Believe me I understand. I still don’t know why I feel this sense of loyalty to them. They barely treated me better than a house pet.”
Dylan hugged her and went to find them a snack in the kitchen.
Niccole scanned a few more channels then gave up for the day. She left the radio on and tuned to the emergency frequency on the off chance someone called.
“Not sure if I tell you this enough but we wouldn’t be here without you Coco.”
“Trying to lift my spirits with compliments?”
“Yep. Is it working?”
“Not yet.” She sat back down and put her legs up on the opposing chair. “One minute,” she grabbed a throw pillow then folded her hands behind her head. “All right, you may continue.”
“So,ya. We would like be dead and stuff.”
“You’re trying really hard on this one aren’t you?”
Dylan laughed and gave her a kiss. “You know what I mean. We need each other.”
They went over some of the logistical issues with the antenna, while they put together a lunch for Daniel. Grabbing the ancient metal lunch box Dylan kissed and hugged her and headed back out to see how the wall was going.
Chapter 11
Niccole and Erica had dinner ready when the brothers entered his cabin. Erica was setting out four place settings. There wouldn’t be any visitors tonight.
“That wall is looking great! Looks like something out of an eighteenth century fort. It is awesome in every sense of the word,” Daniel said with a smile. “Unless the Corrupted start driving tanks or sprout wings we have a pretty solid defense.”
“That’s the idea, although we may need to work on a fire plan, massed Sappers could be a problem in the future if they generate the amount of heat you guys are saying. These are big trees but they still burn,” observed Dylan.
“Well isn’t this just a cheery conversation,” Niccole said as she brought the casserole to the table. Erica trailed behind with some steamed vegetables.
“Sorry, guess we need to stop bringing work home with us,” Dylan said with a wink.
They attacked the food with a hunger built by a solid day of hard labor. Dylan smiled as he dug in, “Why is it that food tastes better the harder you work?”
As they laughed and joked their way through dinner the CB crackled to life.
“Hey lady, you still listenin’?” This is that trucker from earlier,” the truckers voice had an edge of strong concern.
Niccole slid her chair back and grabbed the old style pedestal microphone with one hand while pushing the large black push to talk button with the other.
“I’m here, what is your current location?” asked Niccole.
“I’m on the gravel road comin’ up the hill, but ya’ll got a whole circus freak show walkin’ on this road. Creepy ass shit too. What the hell is going on?”
“Shit.” said Dylan as he and Daniel launched out of their chairs. “Erica hit the bell. Let’s get people on the walls!”
Dylan ran out the front door checking his belt for rifle rounds as he ran for the barricade. Erica was ringing the bell as loudly as she could. The town immediately came to life. Doors flew open across the compound. Some were struggling with their weapons for the first time, while others fighting to put on coats as they ran. Every single person had by now been given an assigned place to be. Anyone too young or infirm was to go to the town hall and bolt the doors. It had been decided that it would be easier to defend the defenseless if they were in one location. This also went a long ways to getting people on the wall and not standing in front of their door.
Niccole was standing on the porch. Through her cupped hands she yelled out to Erica, “I will stay on the radio with him. Erica I need you to run messages until he gets here so don’t go far.”
The brothers stood on the wall waiting for the semi truck to drive up the road. It took nearly ten minutes for everyone to get into position.
Off in the distance came the sound of a diesel engine climbing the hill. It took another five minutes after that for the truck to come into view.
As the semi reached the barricade Dylan jumped down and walked out with a large black flashlight and his rifle at the ready. As he got closer to the rig he could see quite a few signs of impacts on the front and sides of the rig. In some places there were still bits of gore and strips of clothing hanging from the damaged truck.
“I need to smell your breath.”
“Under most circumstances I would say you are nuts,” the man said as he stepped down, “but today I have learned a few things and had to unlearn a few others. Whatever it takes to get on the other side of this wall, I’ll do.”
“Could use a breath mint, but you are good. You alone? No one else hiding in the truck?” Dylan asked as he flashed his light around the trailer-less rig. As he thought about their planned trip into town he wondered how generic semi-trailer hook ups were.
“Would have brushed my teeth and hair if I would have known we were having a date,” the trucker said slyly, “but nah, I’m alone.”
“He’s good, open up.” Dylan waved him through and followed in behind him. The rig changed their shopping trip to town dramatically. There had to be a trailer of something in town he could hook up to and liberate. A trailer parked outside of some grocery store or a home improvement place. Even a trailer of fuel would be useful to them.
“There are so many coming up the road. I don’t know how many I ran down. A bunch blew up behind me. Are they zombies or somethin’? They ain’t human.”
“Slow down man,” said Daniel. “How far down the road were they?”
“Not far, but they were moving kinda slow like, could smell them with the windows closed.”
“Daniel, stay at the gate please. I’m hitting the west wall” Dylan yelled over his back as he jogged off to the wall.
On the west defensive wall all was quiet. After nearly ten minutes they still hadn’t heard so much as a tree branch crack in the woods to their front.
Dylan leaned close to someone he didn’t know standing next to him, “I find it hard to believe that these things move this quietly,” he whispered. “If we don’t hear anything in another ten minutes give the signal to turn on the sodium lights.”
Running the full length of the still incomplete wall at intervals of around thirty feet they had installed outward facing floodlights. They would turn night into day out to about one hundred and fifty feet and make it fairly easy to see any movement out past two hundred feet.
Dylan watched as his watch ticked off the minutes. He could feel them out there but he couldn’t hear a sound. The blackness that stretched out in front of him was dead silent. As he looked down at his watch a fourth time he thought he heard the slightest of sounds far out at the tree line. It couldn’t have been more than a cough or a grunt but it carried ominously up the now barren hill side.
“Hey Mayberry, can you hit the lights?”
Off behind them in town the sound
a generator turning over broke the silence. A few seconds later the fire zone in front of the wall was bathed in a bright yellow light. What Dylan saw made his jaw drop. Arranged in a line covering nearly the length of the east wall and walking shoulder width apart was an army of Sappers. With the lights suddenly on, several Hunter cries could be heard from some distance behind the Sappers. With the order given they began to walk faster and much less quietly.
“Give it to ‘em!” shouted Dylan as he brought his rifle to his shoulder. The first Sapper Dylan scored a hit on detonated like a bomb showering those next to him. Those untouched by bullets continued on. One more large group detonated but still the burning and wounded continued their march towards the wall. The gunfire was savage but they had numbers on their side. They simply couldn’t shoot enough of them faster than they were closing the distance to the wall.