Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile

by J. L. Bourne

  1400

  So much for making ten miles today. I am going to take the diplomatic approach with a five-hundred-pound LGB (laser-guided bomb). I decided this after I observed them attach a living person to the grain mill wheel to further entice the undead to move forward. Stick and carrot. I plan to find a place to hole up for tonight, then observe their daybreak routine and execute preemptive attack. It seems as if they are trying to keep a one-to-one ratio of living to dead on the wheel. They are tied so close to the dead that I thought I could make out one of the ghouls actually touching the back of the living person in front of it with its bony fingertips as they made their rotation in perpetual circles.

  Part of me wants to drop high ordnance on them right now, but if I don’t find a place to hole up for the night, I will become even more ill or could succumb to undead attack in my sack here on the high ridge ground. I’ll take out the one in the guard shack first with my rifle. He’s the only threat to me at this range, from what I can see, and one person is not worth the bomb. After taking out the guard, I’ll lase the structure that I deem hostile and try not to cause collateral damage to the wheel containing the assumed friendlies and scattered undead. It’s only a plan at this point. At one point today I witnessed a flash on the opposite ridge but could not spot movement with my binocs.

  Another morbid but beneficial aspect of all this is that I can test the functionality of the Reaper flying overhead on an actual target worthy of an LGB. If all goes well I can take out the bad guys without getting within four-hundred yards of the structure. It’s raining and I continue to feel ill and continue to refill my water and drink it to the point of wanting to puke. I have no choice, as there are probably no sterile IVs or saline within a hundred miles not guarded by a thousand undead. No call today, but I did attempt to trickle charge the SATphone with the solar charger while I continued to observe the compound below.

  2000

  Left some gear at my hiding spot near the mill and found a hiding place for the night in an abandoned unlocked car sitting on a hill. It was a stick eighties Volkswagen Bug. I picked this vehicle because it was off on a side road at the top of a hill. I got inside and checked for keys—there were none. I released the emergency brake and the car quickly started to roll. I only let it go for two feet before I put the brake back on. I could safely sleep inside the vehicle and if I were attacked by the undead in the night I could simply release the brake and roll down the hill. If the car were not a V Bug, I’d attempt to hotwire. The decade is right for the job, but I don’t know where the essential parts are located, as the engine is in the trunk. Last time I did this it was Detroit steel. Wish I had that Buick Regal right now. Sleeping with one hand on the e-brake tonight.

  20 OCT

  0800

  Up early this morning planning the attack and analyzing Reaper documentation. Double-checked the beacon and double-checked the Reaper coverage times. Would have attacked at night if I had the coverage. I slept relatively well with no unwanted interruption besides the local wildlife. An old owl kept me awake for a bit. What I would give to be able to fly right now like that wise old owl.

  Change of plans: If I shoot the man in the shack and then the Reaper doesn’t work as advertised, I could be a dead man. I wish I could remember how many inches a 5.56 round dropped at five-hundred yards from a sixteen-inch M-4 barrel.

  The Reaper should be on station already or shortly. I tested the laser and heard the beeps resonate. Batteries check good. Aimpoint checks good too—1× magnification will do no good so I’ll need to get to about four-hundred yards to increase my chance of a hit on the guard. No way his AK-47 is more accurate at that range, so I’ll take the chance. Found an old Chevrolet station wagon (bonus cool points for the wood paneling) not far from the V Bug. Checking my surroundings, I popped the hood to check the belts and hoses. Some were cracked but overall serviceable. No keys but I could work with this. Using the same technique I had used months before I should be able to get this old battle horse running all the way to Wally World. I had the phone and charger with me, but I had left the fuel treatment at my observation area just below the ridge line. I needed to scavenge some wire. Disconnecting the battery using my knife I pulled it out of the car and carried it to a clearing just out of sight of any foot traffic. I unfolded the charger so that the cells would get full exposure to the sun. The instructions to charge the phone were to only expose one cell. This was a big battery. The solar cell unit had no name brand markings, which I thought was odd.

  I covered the battery with a plastic shopping bag scavenged from the back of the wagon, leaving only the unfolded charger exposed to the elements and the partly cloudy morning sky. I’m taking off in a few “mikes” to do more reconnaissance and possibly bring the pain down if need be.

  Sniper

  1200

  Enemy structure is leveled and on fire. I arrived on site this morning at 0850 hrs and prepped for my incursion inside five hundred yards to the target. The manpower situation was the same as was observed yesterday. I saw the fat female slice the back of one of the living slaves tied to the wheel, probably in an effort to entice the thing behind him and turn the wheel faster. The wheel only had one living being. Looked to be a middle-aged man. There were scratch marks on his back from the fingernails of the creature behind him. There was no doubt in my mind that the man was already dying from infection at this point. I carefully watched the wheel to confirm that he was the only living creature walking in a circle.

  At about 0930 hrs I lased a spot of ground between the wheel and the living quarters of the people that were running this place. After approximately six seconds I got a steady tone on the device. I kept the device true on target as the LGB impacted . . .

  I was flat on the ground but the blast still blew my hair back and popped my ears. The structure shattered into oblivion and the grain wheel flew into the air like a Frisbee at least a hundred feet from where it originally stood. Obviously the infected male was now dead. The blast blew the guard shack over like an old outhouse, leaving the guard dazed and confused. He eventually got to his feet and started running around shooting in all directions.

  After wasting five rounds I eventually brought him down to the ground. I have been waiting here for any sign of movement for thirty minutes now. It’s probably best to let anything alive bleed out. I’m about to go scout the area for survivors and make sure everything that is dead stays dead. In a slight hurry, since the blast was loud and pretty difficult to miss no matter what your heartbeat status.

  1350

  As I walked to the only structure that didn’t get destroyed or heavily damaged I noticed bodies on fire that still walked. Bringing the M-4 up to my shoulder I waited until within fifty yards before taking them out. Killing seven in all, I approached the building and unlatched the door. The structure was slightly damaged and leaned a little to one side. Jerking the door open, I felt a swift wind of flies blowing past my head. It was at this moment that the SATphone went off while fifteen ghouls started to flow out the door. I sprinted back the way I came with the things in tow. Right hand held the M-4 and the left hand on the phone . . .

  Shooting as best I could, I tried to fight and read the screen. I suppose this was the end-of-the-world version of driving down the freeway with a cell phone and coffee while you shave.

  All I saw on the other end was: “SITREP: Unidentified male closing your posit. Armed. Reaper LGB battle assessment: Thermal indicates only two living bipeds in area. Project Hurricane Ex . . .”

  The rest was garbled.

  I danced with the ghouls for a good bit and had to change magazines and run in circles like an idiot to keep them a safe distance away. That’s when it happened: I put the red dot on the forehead of one of those things and its head exploded before I pulled the trigger. Then a shot rang out. As I watched the creature in front fall, I didn’t notice the one behind. It was almost close enough to put its teeth around my neck. In the corner of my eye I caught its head explode and dec
ayed pieces of bone hit me in the shoulder as the shot rang out in delay once again. There was only one left, so I waited and kept my distance, trying to find some cover.

  I hid behind a moldy hay bale and watched another head explode, then another. The report came less than a second after the head was impacted, not totally destroying the head, but taking a good-sized piece off. I reached for my binocs and scanned the area all around. Nothing. No sign of the shooter. I crawled until I couldn’t stand it anymore and ran as fast as I could to my gear cache up on the ridge.

  To my surprise I did not get shot in the back of the head on the way up. The smell of smoke and bad beef jerky was in the air, making me even more nausated than I already was from being down with a cold. I sat up on the ridge line scanning all around the valley floor and surrounding areas. After about forty-five minutes of this I caught a glint of something. I could barely make out the outline of a torso at least five to six hundred yards away on the opposite side of the valley. The person was holding a small reflective mirror or piece of glass of some sort. Then he started walking and I could see that the man was wearing some serious camouflage on his legs and was carrying the top part of the ensemble in the hand opposite his rifle. Every now and again he’d signal, then check my area with binoculars and signal again to indicate spotting me.

  After a few minutes of this, I decided that if the man had wanted to kill me he would have done so already. I kept my gear hidden and walked down to the valley floor with only my M-4 and sidearm. At two hundred yards we dispensed with the binoculars and closed the gap. At pistol range we stopped and squared off. He was wearing a light burlap ghillie suit and had dark skin and dark black hair and a beard. The man put his weapon and signal mirror down on the ground in front of him and stepped back a few paces. My pistol was tucked in my pants behind my back so I felt safe enough to lay the M-4 down and step back.

  He yelled over to me in a heavy Middle Eastern accent and said: “My name is Saien; I mean you no harm. I have been tracking you for days.”

  I noticed that the weapon in front of the man was an AR-type sniper rifle.

  I asked him why he had been following.

  “I’m trying to get to San Antonio and you were going in the same direction.”

  I informed Saien that under no circumstances was I headed to San Antonio for at least a few hundred years. He frowned at this but understood as he replied: “Are you sure?”

  I said that I was and that I had escaped the city in January right before they dropped the nuke. He began to reason his way out of that by stating that he had heard that some of the cities listed were not destroyed. I had to flat-out tell him that I saw the blast from the airport tower I was hiding in at a safe distance east of the city.

  “Have you seen the special ones? The ones that move faster?”

  “I saw one of them for sure. On a ship in the Gulf of Mexico. They are lethal and need to be avoided.”

  “I agree, my friend. From my apartment one hundred miles south of Chicago I witnessed them do things that I did not imagine were possible. Later down the road as I was leaving Chicago, I saw them open unlocked car doors and even sprint . . . but not far or long. They came out of Chicago, I’m certain. I saw the blast out my window last January. Two weeks later they came south. They chilled me—is that the right word?”

  I chanced a half smile and told him that it was, I supposed.

  “I saw those things go door to door, or so it seemed. One of them even rang the doorbell and turned the knob. More dead birds fell from the sky around the time they arrived. The dead were dumb animals, to be sure, but some memory remained. Do you know why?”

  I responded with one word . . .

  Radiation.

  “I heard the same on the AM radio from someone in Canada working from an AM relay. I observed one of them standing at a door for a month before it moved. It just stood there barely moving, almost sleeping . . . until a raccoon happened upon the porch. The thing fell on top of it and devoured the animal, leaving nothing.”

  I asked the man what he wanted in San Antonio, and he replied that he had many brothers there. I saw him reach behind and touch a blanket that was strapped to his back. He saw that I had noticed and withdrew his hand. As I stared at him, his response was: “Allah has left this place. Many days since the fall of man I have questioned my belief and lost him. I no longer believe.”

  In my heart I felt that Saien was genuine and did not wish to harm me, at least today. It was another level of surreal, talking to a living human besides myself.

  I inquired, “Do you have more gear?”

  “Of course I do, it’s hidden, just like your gear is hidden in the hill behind you.”

  He then said: “Sir, I have tracked and watched you before you found this foul place . . . I do not understand how you placed the explosives on the buildings. I never saw you infiltrate. Did you go at night?”

  “I brought the explosives in early this morning.”

  It technically was not a lie. Trust is to be earned over time, never given.

  My turn to ask the pointed questions, and I inquired where he learned to make head shots from a thousand yards.

  “Afghanistan.”

  “Fair enough. What brought you here?”

  “I was a freedom fighter, or I thought that I was. I came to Illinois to help my brothers. Before I could do this, the dead began their dance.”

  I decided to probe no further, as it was a good trade for discussing the origin of the explosion or any detail regarding Remote Six.

  I suggested that we check out the rubble for anything of use and he agreed. We walked over to the building where Saien had saved my ass from the creatures. Some of those things were hanging on meat hooks with random limbs missing. A large cooking pot (like a witch’s caldron) was in the center of the room. This was fucked up to the fifth power, but it appeared these people were eating the dead. The creatures gazed at us and snapped their jaws. I saw nothing of use in this building, so Saien and I set the place on fire and went to gather our gear.

  I asked if he had any wire, as I needed it to secure transportation. Confused, he replied that he did not, but he was sure that we could find some in the abandoned cars. He was right, but something about leaning under the hood scared me to death. I thought of the monster with the hatchet that nearly cleaved me up the middle. We gathered our gear and made for the solar charger. Walking with Saien had reinforced the need for diligence. He seemed to stop every ten steps, listen, and sweep the distance out front with his scope. This is probably the reason he is still alive. I noticed that Saien had an oversized M-16. I asked where he got it. As he handed it over so that I could check it out, he told me that he liberated it from an abandoned FEMA camp tower on his way south from Chicago. Upon closer inspection, I noticed the rifle was chambered in .308 with a bull barrel, an SR-25. The scope had a small holo sight mounted on it. He told me that the glass was no good at much less than a hundred yards. The holo sight was for the closer encounters. The weapon was extremely heavy compared to my M-4. The ground where we are standing is a long way from Chicago, and I can’t even fathom how he made the journey. I’ve almost been killed ten times since I crashed less than a hundred miles from here.

  We walked and listened all the way back to the area where the wagon sat in derelict condition, as it had for months. I enjoyed the light movement without my gear and strained at the weight of my pack as we returned. Saien and I quickly split up the duties. He disconnected the battery as I went hunting for wire. Here was the problem. We could not add the fuel treatment without first knowing if there was gas in the tank. It would be a waste of the solution. We had to connect the battery and get power to the dash, then check the manual to calculate how much fuel was in the tank so that I can put the proper mixture inside. Too much public math.

  I left our base of operations just as Saien was lugging the battery back to the wagon. I had a multitool and my suppressed pistol. I made for the V Bug to cut her guts out so that I cou
ld start making time south. The explosions and gunshots worried me. Since January, I’ve never seen noise fail to draw the attentions of those creatures in some way. There was always cause and effect. Approaching the Bug I observed one of them on the road facing the other direction beyond the car. The day was cloudy and it looked like I was in for a nagging drizzle. Miserable morale sapping weather.

  The creature stood there in the center of the road facing away from me. I arrived at the V Bug just as a loud clap of thunder rang out. The creature stirred and looked about, as if looking for the thing that had created the noise. Foolish thing.

  I popped the trunk to get at the wiring around the engine compartment. I used more thunder to disguise my work as I cut enough wire to perform the wagon’s starter bypass. It felt like I looked up every five seconds to make sure the creature was still unaware of my presence. It started to walk up the main highway to where Saien and the wagon were. Yanking the last bit of wire from the Bug and stuffing it in my pocket, I drew the pistol and started walking quickly to intercept the creature. I was on a side road off the highway. I then heard Saien scream out, “My friend, you need to hurry!”

  The creature broke into a trot in the direction of Saien. I had to run to catch the creature. It was moving faster than any of them I had seen. Not sprinting pace, but fast enough to chill me, as Saien would say. It was now that I found out how difficult it was to sprint and shoot accurately with a pistol. The creature kept a stiff-legged pseudo-jog going until the suppressed round I fired hit the thing in the shoulder, knocking it down. I took advantage of this and kept up the chase so I could close the gap and get the head shot. Despite the shattered shoulder, the thing was on its feet as quickly as any sacked quarterback would be. It snarled and started a stiff-legged jog in my direction. I aimed my weapon and emptied three rounds into its head before it fell to the ground twitching.