Wanderer (Book 2): Hunters

by Lincoln, James

  He did so and stepped on the gas, the Jeep lurched backward.

  “Easy,” Charlie said.

  He slowed a little. The powerful diesel engine had no problem pulling the derelict car up onto the guard rail.

  “Stop,” Charlie said.

  The Jeep stopped and the car teetered on the edge of the guard rail. California ran to the front of the car and removed the hook from the bumper he then joined Charlie and Johnny at the rear of the car. Together they pushed the car the rest of the way over the guard rail and the car fell to the ground, clearing a small path.

  They all cheered. I nodded at Charlie in approval.

  Three more cars were moved the same way. It wasn’t exactly the most stealth way to clear the way, but it was the quickest.

  As we got further across the bridge the cars would fall silently for a while and then hit the water with a violent splash.

  We had made it about three-quarters across the bridge, making better time than I thought we would, when a big lifted truck stood in our way.

  Charlie wrapped the cable around the front axle. I opened the door and put the truck in neutral. Some cars along the path would not go into neutral and it made it tougher to move them. This big guy would have extremely difficult had that been the case.

  I gave Declan a thumbs up and he put the Jeep in reverse. Even with its powerful engine the Jeep had trouble moving the truck. The tires began to smoke, and it would jump back and forth as the truck slowly moved.

  “Charlie, California, with me,” I said heading for the other side of the truck. “Johnny, you watch that cable. If it starts to break, you call it off.”

  “Yes, sir,” Johnny said.

  I’m not sure what good it would do, but we helped push the truck up to the guard rail. Once the tires hit the guard rail the truck quickly went up and onto the top of the rail.

  I yelled for Declan to stop. He did, but the weight of the truck was too much and it went over, wench still attached.

  The falling truck immediately pulled the Jeep quickly toward the guardrail, with Johnny directly in its path. I ran and tackled Johnny out of the way just as the Jeep slammed into the guardrail.

  The truck pulled the cable out of the winch so fast it was starting to smoke. Both Charlie and California pulled out the rifles and shot at the cable trying to sever it before it pulled the Jeep and Declan over with the truck. The bullets finally broke the cable and a few seconds later we heard the truck hit the water.

  We all stood in silence for a moment trying to take in what had just happened and how close we had come to being in worse shape.

  Declan had a small gash on his forehead where he had hit the Jeep. It was bleeding, but he wouldn’t need stitches or anything. The Jeep was banged up, but it would survive.

  Charlie had started pulling what was left of the cable out of the winch.

  “How much do we have left?” I asked.

  “About twenty-five feet,” Charlie said.

  “Do we have any replacement hooks?” I asked California.

  “No. We could maybe jerry rig it with other supplies in the back, but it makes me nervous.”

  “What other choice do we have? We’ll just have to be careful and go around larger vehicles, even if it takes us longer.”

  Even with a shorter cable and moving slower for safety reasons, it didn’t take us too much longer to get the rest of the way across the bridge. The sun was just starting to set. Charlie was spooling the cable back into the winch after we moved the last car.

  “Captain,” Declan said. “I suggest we find a place to stay for the night. Going into the city at night is not smart.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “Where do you suggest?”

  “Coit Tower isn’t too far from here.” He pointed to a large white tower on the horizon. “It’ll give us a good vantage point of the city as well.”

  “Then let’s get moving.”

  Coit Tower was a 210-foot concrete tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood’s Pioneer Park. It was built in 1933 and except for some burn marks it had survived the fire.

  Declan parked the Jeep in some bushes just outside the parking lot and covered it with some camouflaged netting. If someone was patrolling the area, they would pass right by it.

  At the top of the tower we had a three hundred sixty-degree view of the city. The smokestack we had been following was nowhere in sight. They had probably settled for the night as well. Even if you were feared by everyone, it was still dangerous to travel at night.

  California volunteered to take the first lookout watch while we all slept.

  The night passed without incident, until dawn came.

  Chapter 4

  I had taken the second watch, so I was able to catch up on some sleep afterward. Johnny woke me up about thirty minutes after dawn. I was having a nightmare about that day at the hospital so I’m glad he did wake me; I just wish it was on better circumstances.

  “We’ve got company,” he said.

  I was still half asleep, but I noticed the feathers scattered about us right away. They hadn’t quite covered the ground like they had yesterday, but they soon would.

  Johnny brought me to the lookout portion of the tower. Normally you could look out over the south end of the city. The ruins of Candlestick Park were all that remained. I took out my binoculars and pointed them south.

  “Just below the ridge,” Johnny said, pointing.

  I scanned the top of the ridge first and swept east to west looking for our visitors. I honestly expected a small caravan of Scavengers, or maybe a few dozen infected, nothing on the scale of what was heading for us.

  I noticed the black cloud above them at first, the birds. They were feeding off of the rotting flesh of the infected. Eating the infected flesh didn’t infect the birds directly, or so we thought, but it did change them. Their behaviors changed. They became more aggressive and their feathers began to slowly fall out, eventually resulting in an inability to fly.

  The infected horde had filled the deserted streets from curb to curb. Their rotting flesh and tattered clothes baking in the rising sun. Hundreds, thousands of them, more than what we saw in the clearing. They were miles from us, and it would take them hours to reach us, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

  “Everyone up,” I said. “We need to move. Now.”

  Waking them was not my favorite thing to do, especially out here on the road, everyone was on edge. Slowly they all rose to their feet.

  “What is it, Captain?” Charlie asked.

  “Infected,” I said.

  “How many?”

  “Hundreds, maybe thousands.”

  “How far?” California asked.

  “Couple of miles. Tops.” I said.

  “That doesn’t leave us much time,” Johnny said. “What do we do?”

  “We get the fuck out of here,” Charlie said condescendingly.

  “Well shouldn’t we stay and fight them? Isn’t that our job?”

  “Use your brain, numb nuts. There’s thousands of them.”

  I cut Charlie off. “We don’t have that kind of ammunition to fight them off.”

  “We’re also on a peninsula,” California said.

  “What does that mean?” Johnny asked.

  “It means we’re surrounded by water,” Declan said gesturing to the surrounding area. “Nowhere to run.”

  “Try to keep up, will you?” Charlie said to Johnny.

  I glared at Charlie. “We can argue about this later,” I said. “We need to leave.”

  Everyone shut up for the moment so we could descend the tower.

  Once we were back on ground level Charlie and Johnny uncovered the Jeep of its netted camouflage.

  Traveling through the city was a walk in the park compared to crossing the bridge. Despite the horde of infected on our tails we drove slow through the rubble and debris of the city streets. Even though the Jeep was equipped with airless tires if we were to hit some sharp object buried unde
rneath the rubble it could sever the tire and we would be shit out of luck. In all of our infinite wisdom we opted for more fuel instead of spare tires.

  We headed south toward the burned-out portion of the city. One building stood out from all the rest. It was clean. All of its windows were still intact and tinted. Axiom International was written across the top in red signage, the A being just a red triangle.

  “What do you think it is, Captain?” California asked.

  I stared suspiciously at the building I had seen that name somewhere before. “Above our pay grade,” I said.

  “But we don’t get paid.”

  “I know.”

  We kept on.

  As we drove through the city Declan was extremely quiet, in shock from seeing his hometown destroyed. It never occurred to me that he hadn’t seen it since he had left.

  We approached a large mass in the middle of an intersection. As we got closer, I could see it was a trolley that was lying on its side, perpendicular to the tracks. A rotting dismembered hand still gripped the brake. It was anyone’s guess whether the hand belonged to an infected person or a human.

  We crested a hill just beyond the trolley and I saw something at the bottom, a car pinned under a power line pole. As we got closer, I told Declan to stop the Jeep. He did so and to our surprise it wasn’t any old car. It was a Humvee. An original one the military would use and not one of those H2’s. I looked back up at the derailed trolley, no doubt the two were connected.

  The survivalist inside of me told me not to pass up the opportunity to salvage what we could from the Humvee. You never know what you might find.

  “Johnny, you and Charlie grab your tools and take whatever you can off that thing,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” said Johnny. Charlie followed the order without saying anything. The rest of us got out of the Jeep.

  “California, you keep watch.”

  “Sir,” he said.

  California and Declan each took a corner of the intersection. I gave Declan a few moments to himself before I approached him.

  “You holding up okay?” I asked him.

  He cleared his throat then answered, “uh, yeah.” He was a little choked up and I could tell he might be on the edge of a break down.

  “Good. I need you to be right here and now. I need to be able to count on you.”

  “Yes, sir. You can. I just,” he paused. “I just always thought I would be able to come back someday. But now,” he paused again to reflect the city. “I just don’t know.”

  “We’ve all lost our homes, Declan.”

  “I know, but this is, I don’t know. It’s just hard to take in.” He kicked a pile of rubble that was pinned underneath a trolley car that was flipped on its side. Some pieces of debris fell away revealing the rubble to actually be remnants of a car. Some of the yellow paint was still visible.

  “Remember we’re all in the same boat here,” I said. “We were all trying to move on. We’ve all lost someone, some of us just recently”

  “I know,” he said kneeling down to investigate what was left of the car. He dusted off a portion of the metal revealing the symbol of the car. “I’ve always wanted a Ferrari.”

  “The next one we find is yours.”

  “Let’s roll,” Charlie shouted at everyone.

  There was a loud thud as Johnny loaded his tools into the back of the Jeep. Declan started to walk away, but I grabbed his shoulder to stop him. I gave him a look that said, remember what we talked about. He nodded to me and we both walked back to the Jeep.

  “What’d you get?” I asked Charlie.

  “Not much,” he said. “Couple of spare parts that might come in handy. Who knows?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. The radiator is shot, pistons are blown, basically, the whole engine is useless. Front shocks are worn down. The truck has seen a lot. My guess is that it clipped that trolley over there, which crushed whatever is underneath it.”

  “Ferrari.”

  “Ouch. Before it crashed into here. We could take the rear axle, but we don’t have that kind of time. The drive shaft severed off on impact, which ruined the transmission.

  “All right. Good job. Let’s get out of here.”

  Johnny shut the door to the cargo area then got inside. The rest of them followed. I heard the diesel motor start up before I got in.

  Declan led us the rest of the way along State Route 101 to San Francisco International Airport. What wasn’t destroyed by the fire had been destroyed by other means. Windows and doors of buildings had been broken and kicked in. Cars had been flipped over, torched, and turned into barricades. Trash and debris littered the streets. As we passed through the city, I had to dig to find the asphalt.

  Declan pulled up to the entrance of SFO. We approached a bend in the entrance road that placed us perpendicular to the airport terminal.

  “Pull over here,” I said.

  He did so. I then pulled out my binoculars.

  “What are we doing?” Declan asked.

  “Since we’re here, I thought we could try and find you a plane.”

  “Oh,” he said unenthusiastically.

  “You got this, California?” I asked, ignoring Declan.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied. He stepped out of the Jeep and headed to the rear of it. He popped the locking latch and opened the rear door retrieving his long-scoped rifle. He unfolded the bipod legs on the rifle barrel and laid down in the grass next to the Jeep, bringing his eye up to the scope.

  I always liked to make sure I knew what we were getting ourselves into before entering any kind of hostile zone. And since traveling into a big city was new to us, this was one such hostile zone.

  California scanned the perimeter of the terminal looking for infected bodies, scavengers, or any other threats.

  I scoped the area myself with the binoculars. Nothing too interesting in the terminal or out front. A few taxicabs. One bus. All the windows were gone, just like the rest of the buildings we had seen. I came to the edge of the terminal and that’s when I saw her.

  She stumbled out from behind the terminal. Slow and bow legged like most of the other ones we’d seen. Her skin was very grey and pulled tight against her bones, cracking in some spots. She must be an older one, maybe one of the first to be infected. The virus makes the body deteriorate, but this was one of the worst I had seen.

  “California, two o’clock,” I said.

  “Roger that,” he responded shifting his position a little to the right. “Two hundred yards.” He turned the dial on his scope, it clicked as he did so. “Ready.”

  “Aim well,” I told him.

  California pulled the trigger and through the binoculars I saw her head explode a fraction of a second before I heard the crack of the rifle.

  “Target down,” he said.

  We took a few more moments to scan the rest of the area. When we were satisfied that there were no more visible threats California got up and got back in the Jeep, keeping his rifle with him. There would be no point in putting in away again since we would be getting out as soon as we got to the terminal.

  “Nice shot,” Charlie said holding up a clenched fist.

  “Thanks,” California returned the gesture and the two hit their knuckles together.

  “Let’s go,” I said, and Declan punched the Jeep into gear, and we were off.

  The southeast side of the runway was completely underwater. It’s amazing what happens to the infrastructure when it’s ignored for years.

  From the backside of the terminal we could see no visible aircraft on the tarmac except for the tail section of some jumbo jet sticking up out of the water like the Titanic’s final moments.

  Declan stopped the Jeep in front of a long row of aircraft hangars.

  “What are we doing, Captain?” Declan asked.

  “You and Charlie take the left side,” I said, ignoring Johnny and surveying the row of hangars. “California and I will take the right. Rendezvous back here in ten.” />
  “Yes, sir,” Declan and Charlie said in tandem as they filed out of the Jeep to start their search.

  “Eyes and ears open,” I shouted to them as they got out.

  Charlie leaned back in and said, “Aren’t they always?” Then he leaned back out to rejoin Declan.

  “What about me, Cap?” asked Johnny.

  “You stay here,” I told him. “Try and get someone on the horn. Tell them our position and we need assistance.”

  “Roger that.”

  There were six hangars down each side. These weren’t the big hangars that housed the 747’s, but they were still fairly large. We made quick work of the first four. Nothing much occupied them; a golf cart in one, a tractor in another, a destroyed Cessna in the fourth. The fifth was empty.

  “What are we doing here, Captain?” asked California.

  “Looking for a plane, for fuel,” I answered.

  “What are we really doing?”

  “Our jobs.”

  “You think this is a waste of time?”

  “Why would this be a waste of time?”

  “I don’t know, maybe we weren’t meant to survive this. This apocalypse I mean.”

  “As long as I am still alive, I will do my best to make sure that you and anyone else, survives. If there is anyone here, we need to get them out before the horde following us arrives.”

  Declan and Charlie were already searching their last hangar when we came to ours. California and I tried to pull the doors open, but they were chained together from the inside. We looked at each other.

  “That’s interesting,” I said.

  “Very,” said California.

  I pulled the doors open as far as the chain would allow, exposing the lock in the process. Without skipping a beat California un-shouldered his rifle and aimed at the lock, fired one shot, and the chain fell to the floor. We jerked the doors open the rest of the way and aimed our weapons inside.

  My heart sank at what we found inside. A school bus sat in the back corner. There was a thin layer of dust covering every flat surface. There were tents strewn about the place. Some supply boxes were against the wall to my left. I could tell without looking through them that they were empty. One of the tents toward the front of the hangar had a small rectangular shaped tear in the side. I could see the decaying foot of its occupant. I knew the rest of the tents were occupied with people and most likely the bus as well.