Char hadn’t decided to tell the boy yet and was not pleased that Terry took that decision away from her, but they had misjudged how much the boy saw.
“I know, but Blackie and Hank are my friends,” Kae said, looking up at Terry and Char.
“And they’ll be back, honey. We need to make sure Adams is warm, has water and food. That way he’ll be able to heal more quickly.”
Kae looked at Terry as if he wanted to ask a question, but decided against it. He sat down and started playing with Adams’ tail. They took food and water from their staged backpacks and provided it to the injured Werewolf. He opened his eyes as they dribbled water into his mouth. A few pieces of jerky later and he changed into human form, surprising Kaeden as the tail in his hands suddenly disappeared.
Terry left the tunnel to find Adams’s clothes. Some of the refugees were sitting down. Others were talking quietly, still shielding their faces from the sun.
One man noticed Terry and shuffled slowly toward him. The man’s neck was horribly scarred from the repeated feedings he’d been subjected to. Terry held out a hand. “I’m Terry. What’s your name?”
“Blevin,” the man finally uttered in a raspy voice.
“Those four are dead. You’re free, Blevin, free to start living,” Terry said, trying to sound encouraging.
“Probably too late for most of us. We were here back then, when the world ended. We brought that convoy into the mountain, joined others who had holed up here. There was almost a thousand of us back then,” the man managed to say after stopping twice because of a racking cough.
Terry saw his opportunity. “We want to take that convoy out of here. Who can help us do that?”
“We’ve been doing maintenance on them since we arrived. They’ll start right up. You could back them out, except for those rocks there, but hell, just use the dozer to clear the way.” Another racking cough.
“I didn’t see a bulldozer,” Terry wondered.
“Down the hill, left turn at the bottom. That’s where the garage is located.”
“What?” Terry’s ears perked up. “You mean there’s more equipment?”
The man looked sideways at Terry, before snorting once, which probably passed for a laugh among the walking dead. “That stuff on the ramp is what wouldn’t fit in the garage.”
***
Pepe looked at Billy. Billy and Felicity looked back. Maria stood to the side watching.
“Do you want the bun or not?” Pepe asked, holding it in front of him.
Billy continued the stare.
Pepe slowly raised the bun to his lips. Billy’s eyes burned. Pepe stayed strong, but the smell of the bun was too much.
He blinked.
“Mine!” Billy called triumphantly, ripping the bun from Pepe’s hand and stuffing half of it into his mouth. He gave the other half to Felicity.
“I thought I had you this time,” Pepe laughed. He turned to the greenhouse. It was winter and the weather was congenial. He’d planted a few things, just in case they were held up, but he had his seed boxes packed full and ready to go. “Only a few more days, and we leave all this behind.”
“Without your help, we wouldn’t have made it this far,” Billy replied, gripping the man’s arm. Tears were running down Maria’s face. “As soon as Terry returns, we go, while the weather is cooler. It’s going to be a long walk, but thanks to everyone, I think we have enough food. Terry and Char said that we might be able to find buffalo on the way. We’re going to need to keep up our strength and for anyone who’s gained extra weight? Well, they’re going to lose it.”
Pepe didn’t have that problem. He and Maria were both thin as most survivors were. Food was rarely in excess, but the previous two years had been kind, despite the increase in heat.
They shook and Billy and Felicity left. Once outside, a big coonhound came running at them. Billy tried to dodge, but Clyde mowed him down. Sue ran up after him.
“You could have called him off in time!” Billy cried as he pushed the dog off and crawled to his feet.
“I know,” Sue said as she slowed and called Clyde to her. He joined her, tail wagging furiously. “Go on, find yourself a rabbit.”
Clyde loped toward the nearest brush, then made a big loop and headed for the field.
“Pepe doesn’t like that dog in his field,” Billy told her.
“At this point, Billy, what does it matter?” Sue asked.
The mayor agreed, but somehow, that statement rubbed him the wrong way. Sometimes, things just mattered.
“You’ve been taking the pulse of the town, so what does it tell you?” Sue asked.
“That they are ready to get on with it. But there will be those who stay behind, because I’m not forcing anyone. If they want to take their chances here, more power to them and I wish them well. I don’t want to drag dead weight. I’m pretty sure the people won’t be able to get their heads wrapped around how much this sucks until day three, when they realize that we only have six more months of exactly that in front of us.”
“Since you put it that way…” Sue shook her head. “Head up, Billy. You need to be the positive and supportive guy. Me? I’m going to change into Were form and run that shit in a week. Then it’s beach chairs and martinis while I wait for the rest of you.”
It was Felicity’s turn to shake her head. “Clyde is going to run that with you? As you said, what does it matter if he can’t keep up?”
“Point to the short girl,” Sue said. “Okay, I’m stuck with you people so you better be walking with a smile and something nice to say!”
“You mean, something like, walking a thousand miles has done wonders for your ass?” Billy asked.
He danced out of the way as Felicity took a swing at him.
“Of course that’s what I meant, Billy, you putz,” Sue said, looking at him. She knew that he said it to get a rise out of Felicity. He had a quick wit, but few people were privileged to see it. He needed that if they were to survive the trip with their marbles intact.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Terry knew about the complex, but it was far larger than he fathomed. They spent the rest of the day going from room to room, disgusted by much of it, but surprised by the advanced hydroponics section that supplied much of the food the refugees were consuming, along with a warehouse of dehydrated meals that was close to empty.
There was much that they could have taken, so Char was the one who told Terry no. He decided that they’d maintain the place as their storehouse.
He didn’t need surface-to-air missiles, but some day he may.
He knew where they were and the code to get in the door.
Blevin wasn’t kidding when he said all they had to do was start them up. The vehicles came to life readily. The ones that were dead were clearly marked. In the garage, Terry ran from one vehicle to the next. He stopped in front of the lone M1A2 Abrams main battle tank.
“Fuck no!” Char shouted at him, her eye aghast.
“But, sweetheart, look at it!” Terry swept his arm in front of it. Pristine, a cap over the barrel. The massive beast loomed over them. “Just look at it.”
“That’s some serious bullshit right there, Terry Henry Walton. A fucking tank? You’re not taking the tank. Put it back in your pants and zip up tightly, because you’re not getting to drive a sixty ton phallic symbol.”
“But…” he stammered. She crossed her arms and tapped one toe. Her lips were white from clenching. “Fine.”
He pouted, but only until he saw the next vehicle—a Special Forces dune buggy. It mounted a fifty caliber machinegun and was a two-seater with a netted area for a small amount of cargo.
“If you want that one, you can have that one, but that is the last toy just for you,” Char said as if she were talking to an infant.
He mumbled to himself as he slid off the Abrams, “Who wants a stinky old tank anyway?” Terry climbed into the driver’s seat of the buggy, caressing the steering wheel before firing up the engine. He looked at the high
-tech no-air tires.
It would make for a rougher ride, but they’d never fail unless the terrain tore them up. Most of the trucks had the same tires. Someone in the service had been prescient regarding the storage time for the vehicles.
Normal tires would have been nearly useless after twenty years of sitting, like with Billy’s car. Those pneumatic tires were on their last leg.
Terry sat behind the wheel, beaming. He reached up and stroked the oiled barrel of the mod deuce fifty cal. Two crates of ammunition were tucked into the cargo area. He noted that a limited load of ammunition was pre-staged with each vehicle that mounted a weapon.
It was better than showing up at a motor pool and filling out a request for a ride.
Terry used a chalk stick to tag a variety of vehicles. Char and Kae simply watched, although the boy seemed to most enjoy the dune buggy that Terry had picked out as their ride, as Char assumed they would be riding with Terry.
There was a semi-tractor to tow one of the two tankers of fuel. “Quick math, how much fuel do we need?” Terry asked Char.
“A lot?” she ventured.
“Think twenty-five hundred miles, four miles a gallon per vehicle, that’s six hundred, twenty-five gallons per truck. The tanker holds eleven thousand, six hundred gallons. That means we can use eighteen vehicles, maybe twenty if we assume at least one will break down, using the two buses down here. That reduces our personnel carrying requirements, so the trucks carry equipment, buses get better gas mileage, two for the price of one…” Terry continued with a stream of consciousness as he worked the calculations in his head.
“Both buses, both dune buggies, the tanker truck and fifteen five-ton trucks. And we should have extra fuel for when we arrive,” Terry said confidently.
“What if each truck carried a couple hundred gallons extra using the barrels we saw next door?” Char asked.
“Son of a glitch!” He raised his eyes to the ceiling, “Terry Henry, you dumbass!”
Terry started running back through his calculations.
“I can’t watch this,” Char said as she took Kae’s small hand and walked out of the garage. The smell of death lingered throughout, despite the powered air handling system.
They’d found that the mountain complex was powered by a geothermal system. With little maintenance, it would have provided energy for an eternity, the amount of time that the people would have suffered.
Char couldn’t get out of there quickly enough.
She wasn’t surprised when she heard the massive turbo diesel driving metal tracks climbing the ramp behind her. Terry was at the controls of the bulldozer wearing a stupid smile.
They hadn’t let anyone know that someone was going to try and bring half the mountain down. Char stopped in the middle of the road and glared at her husband. He ground the dozer to a halt, settled the blade on the pavement, and shut the engine down.
She crooked a finger at him. He rolled his eyes as he climbed down.
“Not used to answering to people, Colonel?” she started pointedly. He pointed to himself and tried to look innocent. “Who the hell were you going to tell before you rammed that thing through the doors and brought half the mountain down on yourself?”
“I was going to do exactly as I’m doing. Stop before going outside and chasing the people to a safe distance. Survey the rock and move it a little at a time, control that slide as much as I can. That’s what I was going to do, but that wasn’t your real question, was it?” He waited until she threw her hands up, shaking her head in ignorance.
“You don’t want me to get hurt,” he said. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at him.
“My husband is very astute,” she conceded.
“And my wife is beautiful and with our child. There’s no fucking way I’m going to kill myself now. Way too much to live for.” Terry looked at her as he usually did, amazed at the wonder of the universe that put her into his life. “If I get stuck, I’ll need you in here to help dig me out. Deal?”
“Deal.” She held out a hand so they could shake on it. He squeezed a little tighter than she did, so she responded, until they were both grimacing as they tried to out-power grip the other. A casual observer never would have suspected that this amounted to foreplay.
Terry let go first and Char beamed in triumph, turning without noticing that he had winked at her. She told him to wait as she walked up the ramp and went outside.
She chased people away from the area in front of the mountain, moving the walking dead away from anywhere a rolling boulder could come at them. When she returned, she circled a finger in the air, signaling Terry to fire it up.
He laughed as the engine coughed to life, sending a cloud of diesel smoke into an air vent in the roof.
Terry rolled forward, taking the greatest care going through the doors. They hadn’t opened the whole way. He didn’t want to twist one of them where they couldn’t get it closed again. His long-term storage plan required that they lock the mountain down before leaving.
The dozer blade impacted the main blockage, but the boulders wouldn’t move. Terry gunned it, to no avail. He backed up and tried to clean the smaller blockage to one side. He found relief, going slowly as a small part of the mountainside moved. He waited for the boulders to finish rolling and the dust to settle, before he backed up and hit it again.
Each time he attacked the fall, more rocks dislodged. It took an hour, which in the big scheme of life wasn’t a long time, before the dozer broke fully into the daylight. Terry continued forward, clearing the road away from Cheyenne Mountain.
Blevin waved to Terry after he parked the dozer to the side.
“What’s your plan, Colonel?” the withered older man asked.
Terry hadn’t told any of the refugees his rank or that they were a military force. Blevin must have been talking with the two people Mark sent to watch over them. Coming out of their shell was a good sign, even if it were only a few of them who did so.
“We plan to take a convoy to North Chicago, where we’re refurbishing a power plant. We have about three hundred and fifty people north of Denver. The convoy will make things much easier, since they were willing to walk the whole way. You’ve been out of the sun for a while, but it’s getting hot out here. The nukes lit the world on fire, at least the middle of it. We call it the Wastelands and it is coming to your doorstep.”
Terry didn’t know if there was a leader among the group. He assumed that he’d take them all along, but as Char had been teaching him, he shouldn’t assume things. Char peeked over his shoulder almost as a reminder.
“We invite you all to join us. I promise you that if we run across any ass-hugging bloodsuckers, we will fight them with every ounce of our strength. The rest of it is up to you.”
“I think that’s the best offer we’ve had in two decades. Let me talk with the others, but you can count me in.” The man smiled through a wreck of broken teeth.
“One thing, Blevin. My people are all too young. They don’t know how to drive. Can you rustle up drivers for about twenty-five vehicles?” Terry asked hopefully.
After he walked away, Char made eye contact. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” she said, smiling and eyes sparkling.
“I can’t help falling in love with you!” he serenaded her.
“Okay, Elvis.” Char rubbed his arm. “Your white whale, TH. A little better than you imagined, huh?”
“Pinch me, I must be dreaming. You, children, Akio, all of it. If the Wastelands has a heaven, I get to live there.”
***
As if Akio had heard his name spoken, he watched the monitors in his command center. The appearance of the people and then the bulldozer outside of what used to be NORAD suggested that Terry Henry Walton had been successful.
Akio keyed his communication device.
Terry answered, “Konnichiwa, Akio-sama.”
“Konnichiwa, Walton-san,” Akio replied. “I take it that you have been successful in dealing with the Forsaken?”
“We have, Akio-sama. It turned out that there were four of them, but they were pretty damned weak. We’ve rescued one hundred, thirty-seven people, but we lost one of our Were folk, the She-Wolf Xandrie,” Terry reported.
“You defeated four Vampires by yourself?” Akio asked politely.
“Charumati and I, yes, but we fought them one at a time,” Terry said.
Akio thought about that. He needed to pay a visit to Terry Henry Walton and find out more about how one enhanced human and one Werewolf could defeat four Forsaken. From what he heard in Terry’s voice, Akio got the impression that they hadn’t been injured either.
“Thank you, Walton-san. Please do not hesitate to call me in the future,” Akio kindly added, modifying his earlier guidance.
***
Three people fit in the small boat. If they added a fourth, they would have been cramped. Ted gave Timmons and Kiwi instructions on what to do, whether to tighten the sail, when the boom would snap from one side to the other as the boat crossed the wind to tack. He would man the rudder and do most of the work since the boat was meant to be operated by one person.
Gerry stood on the shore, well back of the water. Kiwi waved and even blew a kiss. Timmons rolled his eyes while Ted focused on the task at hand.
“Cast off!” he called. Timmons unlooped the mooring line from the rusty cleat bolted to the old dock and threw it aside.
“In the boat!” Ted said. Timmons sighed as he pulled in the wet line.
The lake looked smooth, with slight ripples from a gentle breeze. The water was clear and the boat cut an easy V as it sailed slowly from the small man-made harbor.
Once into the lake, Ted tightened the sail and turned at an angle to the wind to pick up speed. The boat leaned and Kiwi cheered, her knuckles white from the death grip she maintained on the railing.
The boat slid silently through the water, the sail cracking as it tightened and loosened with the slight changes in the wind direction.
It was the little things in life.
Ted had enjoyed sailing ever since he learned it while serving in the Navy. Man and nature working together to go somewhere. He looked at the sky in an impromptu weather check. He didn’t want to get lost and have to beach somewhere, possibly damage the boat.
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