Carlie Simmons (Book 4): The Gathering Darkness

by JT Sawyer

  With all of them huddled around him under the snow-laden branches, Shane pulled out his topographic map and coupled it with the SAT image Duncan provided. “We’ve got an eight-mile hump to the promised land so that should put us there in the late afternoon, given the mountainous terrain and all this fucking cold-weather gear we’re carrying.” He pulled out his compass and laid it out on the map to configure the bearings to their location, after which he adjusted for magnetic declination. The rest of his team did the same and then studied the contour lines on the map.

  “Looks like a good aerobic workout with the elevation gains here, at least until we hit the town of Walla Walla,” said Langdon, a younger man with a paintbrush-like bundle of whiskers under his lower lip.

  “Yeah, you won’t have to do your evening Pilates session tonight,” snipped Jared.

  “Nah, he seems more like a yoga kinda guy to me,” said Kress, a blond-haired, blue-eyed fellow with a thick frame.

  “Fuck you, pretzel boy. Look at those scrawny bean-pole legs; you’d be the one to do yoga.” Langdon puffed out his chest.

  Shane raised his eyes up and sneered. “Everyone’s a bad-ass until they meet a real one.” He glanced at the map one last time before tucking it into his BDU pocket. He ignored the banter from his team. He was used to it, having helped to foster it early on by dishing out the most unsanctimonious comments. Such sarcasm and humor had a way of bleeding off tension in the group and there was no shortage of that in their daily lives.

  “Alright, let’s saddle up. We’ve got some ground to cover. I want Kress providing rear cover. The rest of you keep your eyes on the ridges. The SAT imagery indicates the first two-thirds of our route will be in the timber without any signs of hostiles or lookouts. After that, it’s gonna be fun and games playing zombie tag and dodging bad guys.”

  While walking into the treeline, Shane slowed up his pace, motioning for Amy to continue leading the group into the forest while he hung back to talk with Jared.

  “Hey, dipshit, I know it was you who spiked the spaghetti sauce with fucking habaneros.”

  Jared tried to keep a straight face and just looked down at the leaf-strewn ground. “What you talking about, amigo?”

  “Don’t even try to squirm out of this one. I had security dust for fingerprints and yours showed up.”

  Jared grinned and bit his lower lip. “Damn, so much for the perfect crime.”

  “So it was you, you son of a bitch. I was pretty sure but thought I’d see if you’d spill your beans under a little pressure, you gutless wonder.”

  “Wait, you didn’t dust for prints?”

  “You’re not the only one who’s good at pulling a con. Next time you fuck with me, I’ll have you assigned to the medical clinic changing out bedpans.”

  “Don’t gotta worry about that, no sir.” Jared was silent for a moment, gauging Shane’s attitude. “So besides the heat index being off the charts in the menu, how’d the dinner date go?”

  Shane just gave Jared a sideways glance, revealing his gritted teeth. “So, cleaning bedpans it is then.” He quickened his pace, leaving Jared behind as he trotted up the game trail to the lead.

  “Hey, man, I was just asking, as one friend to another.” Jared caught Amy’s wide eyes up ahead as she shot him a puzzled expression. “Everything’s cool, darlin’. Shane and me, we’re all good. We’re all good.”

  Chapter 19

  “How many of these rotting pus-bags do we need?” said Brimley, a thick-bodied convict who was standing in the woods fifty yards from an eighteen-wheeler whose back door was ajar, its inky interior filled with the sounds of several people screaming for help.

  A bearded man with a shaved head was squatting next to him, his eyes fixed on the stream of undead moving up the cargo ramp into the truck. “I heard one of the crews packed a hundred-fourteen into a semi two days ago. Gotta be some kinda record,” said Butler.

  “Well, shit, we have to set our sights higher then. Maybe if we only tie up one captive inside for bait instead of four that’ll give us space for a few more undead. The colonel said he’d reward the drivers with the biggest payload and the most mutants, though those seem hard to come by anymore.”

  They could hear the screaming intensifying from inside the cavernous mouth of the truck as the horde entered and began feeding. Butler pretended to put his hands over his ears. “Ooh, I hate that initial sound of the bone crunching, don’t you?”

  “Better them than me. Besides, they were just a bunch of dumb ranchers.”

  Brimley looked to the right and started to laugh. “Look at that fat fuck in coveralls bumbling up the ramp. Cornfed bastard—they growed ’em big in these parts.”

  Butler glanced at his watch. “Alright, we give ’em two more minutes to feast and then we mow down the stragglers outside and close the door.”

  “You soundin’ like a smooth operator, my man. How many of these you done?”

  “This is my fifteenth run this month and hopefully my last. Not too many small towns left to round up in anymore. I don’t like having to go this far out to get fresh meat.” He pointed to the rear of the truck. “I can tell you this—once the last row of bolts on the interior wall can’t be seen no more, you’re lookin’ at a hundred freaks inside. I think this is gonna be a record breaker.”

  The ear-splitting screams inside had long subsided and a few creatures were starting to mill near the cusp of the cargo ramp. “Looks like the order’s been filled—let’s wrap this up and get the hell outta here. We gotta meet up with the rest of the convoy on the outskirts of Yakima,” said Butler.

  Brimley grabbed his canister of pepper spray and rushed forward as Butler followed behind. Brimley showered the creatures inside the truck with the red stream while Butler cut down the few outside with his AK. They quickly rolled down the door, slamming the padlock in place, snipping off a few sets of corpulent, greasy fingers that got caught in the middle.

  The walls of the semi-truck pulsed and groaned like a steel python that had just swallowed its prey. Both men ran around the front and hopped inside, their faces beaming. “Fuck yeah, let’s roll,” said Brimley. “I think we scored the jackpot. I can almost taste that reward of fine whiskey sliding down my throat already.”

  “Let’s just wait until we see what Mitchell thinks. Pretty sure he’s gonna be grinning.”

  Brimley’s grin faded and his face grew somber. “I tell ya, I’d hate to be those other boys who showed up last week with an empty rig. Mitchell’s probably still got them strung upside down in the mutants’ cell.”

  Chapter 20

  Carlie motioned her team to halt as they neared a hand-hewn footbridge over a small stream, nineteen miles northwest of Yakima. After their helo insertion at daybreak, they had covered four miles of deer trails familiar to Eliza to get them near the edge of her former mountain encampment.

  “It’s almost a mile from here. This is a little-known route so there shouldn’t be any sentries to worry about but it won’t make for a warm welcome if an entire team of soldiers comes traipsing in.”

  Matias stepped up towards Carlie. “We’ll hold a position here until we hear from you.” He put his hand on his chest and smiled as the two women started to walk away. “And don’t worry about us—we’ll be fine communing with nature.”

  As they passed along a pass between the mountains, Eliza looked up at the treetops while inhaling the fresh scent of conifers. “This place was like a sanctuary for me. At times it was hard to believe there was an outside world.”

  “You knew this lady Darcy well?”

  “She welcomed me in after I freed her and her friends from those convicts. She and her people invited me to stay. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to live up here for good. Darcy’s a cool lady.”

  “Then there’s someone besides me who is lucky to have you for a friend.”

  “Friends—with how bossy you are, I never forget who’s team leader,” Eliza said with a chuckle.

  Round
ing a bend in the faint trail, Eliza stepped on a small sheet of bark that began emitting a shrill sound. She looked down and saw a pressure-plate alarm. Within seconds both women heard movement to their sides as two armed men in ghillie suits closed the distance.

  “Drop your weapons,” yelled a lanky man to their right, his face obscured by foliage and paint.

  Both women did as instructed and raised their hands. As the crew of shooters hovered around them, two more people came walking down the front of the trail. One of them pulled back their leaf-covered headpiece while increasing their pace.

  “I always told the others you’d come back one day,” said a gray-haired woman rushing towards Eliza.

  Carlie instinctively inserted herself between the woman and Eliza. “It’s OK, this is Darcy,” Eliza said, moving around and reaching her arms out to pull the woman into an embrace.

  “Look at you,” said Darcy as she pulled back after a long hug. “I never doubted that you’d make it back to Fort Lewis—just that we’d ever see you back here again.”

  Eliza slapped Darcy on her shoulder. “You’re still feeling like the same iron-woman I remember.” Eliza looked around at the others, nodding at some familiar faces. She looked around at the forest and faint trails then back at Darcy. “I didn’t think this route in would be of concern, being this high up.”

  “There’s been more activity down below lately, especially near Yakima. Lots of thugs passing through the area in large trucks, probably from the south. Oddly enough we rarely have problems with the undead any longer.”

  Eliza glanced at Carlie and then shot a concerned look back at Darcy. “That’s actually why we’re here,” said Eliza. “We’ve got some things we need to talk about—a storm that’s brewing at the prison near the border.”

  “That gutter trash is a ways off from here.”

  Carlie moved up and extended her hand to the others while introducing herself. “Not for very long.”

  Chapter 21

  “Everything is ready, Colonel,” said Jeffers into the radio of his jeep near the main prison entrance. He was standing by a convoy of thirty-seven semi-trucks and eleven assorted cars. Twenty-nine semis were jammed with nearly a hundred zombies each, their presence revealed through a cacophony of scratching and moans. The remaining trucks contained ammunition, weapons, medical supplies, food, and heavily armed troops. Mitchell had emptied all of his five hundred plus men from the prison and surrounding regions for this assault on the dam. The modified fuel truck was parked separately inside the rear warehouse beside an ambulance and a food resupply cargo van.

  “Good—then head out. You know what to do from there. I’ll be in contact with you when things fall into place,” said Mitchell, who was standing beside the fuel truck. “And make certain to reassure our sacrificial lambs standing guard near the prison entrance that we are coming back for them. I need them in place to make it look like we still have some presence here.”

  Mitchell watched the convoy pull out of the front entrance like a giant chrome-and-metal serpent undulating along the road.

  He moved inside the mechanics’ bay and walked to the back of the fuel truck. He climbed under the rear section towards an open hatch with a green glow emanating from inside. Mitchell hoisted himself up and then lowered a hand down to close the hinged concealment lid covered in faux gauges, sealing himself inside. At long last, I will be free of this revolting prison—never to be faced with looking at a cell with bars again. A new home—a real command center to dole out orders for my forthcoming empire.

  Mitchell scooted to the rear section, resting against the cold metal, and looked at Deacon beside him and then around at the eleven armed men sitting in silence. The only noise other than their breathing was from the heavily sedated mutants chained up at the opposite end, their own internal rumblings of constrained hunger echoing along the insulated inner hull. He reached above his shoulders and grabbed two ropes that were attached to welded bolts in the sides of the tanker. He pulled them down and secured them to the climbing harness around his waist. He’d had the welder install these attachments for each man so they wouldn’t be at risk of slamming into the front if they stopped suddenly and, more importantly, to avoid being jarred into the mutants on the bumpy four-hour ride ahead. When he was done, he flipped open a small laptop and checked on the link with the external mini-cam he had placed on the underside of the fuel tanker. This allowed him to see what was happening in a 360-degree view around the hull.

  When he was satisfied, he placed the laptop down and pulled out the remote control device for the mutants’ shock collars then stared into space, reviewing his plans. A few minutes later, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes, running through a quote from General Douglas MacArthur that he always recited before a battle. "The history of the failure of war can almost be summed up in two words: too late. Too late in comprehending the deadly purposes of a potential enemy. Too late in realizing the mortal danger. Too late in preparedness. Too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance. Too late in standing with one's friends."

  When he was done, Mitchell smiled, thinking of the walls of Fort Lewis. Too late for humanity’s holdouts and the last mantle of our omnipotent government. The mighty secretary of defense, Conrad Lavine—your world is about to constrict just as mine did when I was thrown to the wolves. We come for you and your illustrious base.

  Chapter 22

  After Carlie called up the rest of her team, they followed Darcy back to the main camp and filled the entire group in on the growing menace below. Carlie and Eliza both took turns describing the threat and the larger picture of life in the Pacific Northwest along with Pavel’s research for an antidote. She discussed how imperative it was to use their location as a forward staging area for a rear assault and emphasized that she welcomed any help in the resistance. The group’s mood oscillated between silence and gasps as they tried to absorb the information. Some just wanted to retreat further into the mountains while others said they should stay and fight any invaders who ventured into their tiny stronghold. In the end, Carlie knew that it was a difficult decision and that they’d have to discuss it amongst themselves.

  Darcy showed Carlie’s group to her cabin to rest and get some food while she spoke with the rest of her community. After downing a meal of venison stew, Carlie joined Matias on the front porch. He was sitting on a handhewn stool, watching the debate that was ensuing across the camp. She pulled up a bench and sat next to him, draping her arms over the knotty pine railing. Carlie watched the fervent expressions of the faces in the distance as they weighed the pros and cons of joining the resistance effort and protecting their way of life.

  “Not an easy thing to do—contemplate leaving this idyllic setting and facing the horrors of the world again. Not sure I’d want to depart from here myself,” she said.

  “Yeah, I can see how this place would grow on you. But the battle ahead will come to this place eventually.”

  Carlie lowered her head slightly, thinking of all that she and her friends had endured these many months now to be faced with yet another hellish stormfront. “Seems like we never get a break anymore. Life is always about being on the run, even now that we’re living at Lewis. Like we’re always clawing to stay out of the abyss and not knowing if the next day you’ll slip on the toehold you just busted your ass to reach. As if zombies and a global pandemic weren’t enough, we have to contend with a butcher hellbent on killing off our own kind.”

  Matias pulled his eyes from the crowd and looked at her. “We will make it through this. You just have to have faith in life.” He paused and leaned forward. “Did I ever tell you about the time my vehicle convoy was struck by an IED in Afghanistan?”

  “You’ve made a few references but I never wanted to press you for details.”

  “It happened on my third deployment to Afghanistan. Our Humvee was hit so hard by the explosion it was knocked fifty meters off the road. My skull was fractured in four places and I had shrapnel in my ch
est. Most of my unit didn’t make it. I was in ICU for weeks. The docs told me later that I flatlined three times.” He placed his arms on his knees and interlaced his fingers while staring at the clouds. “They told me I shouldn’t have made it at all—they weren’t sure how I survived. I had a lot of time to think about things while I was recuperating and decided that I wasn't going to waste any more time on frivolous bullshit, acting like my life was a rehearsal for something else—that I’d pursue the things that mattered the most: time with family, friends, and work that meant something.”

  Carlie looked at him, marveling at the story but wondering where he was going with this.

  “Don’t wait to decide what the hell’s important and worth the precious sand in your hourglass. That’s the grand takeaway, then and now.”

  “You talking to me or about life in general?”

  “Sometimes I feel like you are so used to looking out for all of us that you haven’t had any time to enjoy even a sliver of happiness in this world. And after we win this battle, we will still have a future of uncertainty ahead of us, Carlie. That’s just not going to ever change. We’re back to wresting a living from our surroundings like our forebears.”