by Jack Hunt
“You coming?” I asked Dax.
“Nah, I’m spending the morning with Garrod. He’s going to show me how the communications unit works.”
Garrod Stone was their communications expert. He was one of three that monitored their communications unit day and night. He was rarely seen above ground.
“Riveting stuff,” I replied. Dax wagged his finger at me as he scooped some beans into his mouth.
So the group consisted of me, Danielle, Specs, Eva, three others that I hadn’t been introduced to, and Liam. They all knew we were going to be staying for a few days longer, at least until we had decided if the fortress would become our permanent residence.
Liam didn’t seem too happy about it. He was about six foot, had short spiky hair and everything he wore made him look like the Green Arrow from the old DC Comics that I used to read. He even had a crossbow on his back, and knives attached to the top half of his thighs.
As we moved out into the forest, Liam led the way, occasionally looking back to make sure I wasn’t making a move on Danielle.
“He does know I have a girlfriend, right?”
She nodded. “Ah, don’t worry about him. He acts jealous with anyone who gets a little too close to me.”
That afternoon the overcast sky had turned into a deep blue, the sun was beating down bringing warmth to everything on the forest floor. A band of light bathed my face as we fanned out. The aroma of pine and soil hung in the air. I had learned that four teams went out every day covering the north, east, west, and south areas beyond the fortress. They rarely encountered any Z’s. Those who had wandered into the thick of the forest were usually stuck in some bog, or caught up on tree limbs. In many ways they had the perfect spot in the forest. They had built the fortress in an isolated area that most would never find unless they hacked their way through the dense branches with a machete.
Even if a group did find them, they would have trouble entering. Then of course there was the moat of dead which acted as twofold protection: A few live ones were kept inside, chained down to ward off anyone who thought of heading in their direction. Then of course, the walls were so damn tall, you wouldn’t be able to climb them.
“Do you think you guys would be better off having steel around the walls? I mean it might prevent anyone who attempts to set the place on fire. They might not be able to get through or over but they could burn you guys out.”
Danielle laughed as if I was joking. “No one even knows about this place.”
“Right now they don’t but eventually lunatics are going to show up.”
She looked at me. “Referring to yourselves.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, us of course. But I’m talking about the real mean bastards. They’re out there. Trust me.”
My boot snapped a branch, it echoed, and Liam looked back at me as if I was trying to get us killed.
“You’ve really been through a lot, haven’t you?” she asked.
“You don’t know the half of it. It’s horrendous out there. The virus has spread so fast, the chance of survival has dropped and well, the people, the ones that aren’t dead, they are even worse than dead. At least with the dead you know they just want to bite you. There are others out there that will do far worse.”
I broke another branch. It was hard to move across the forest floor without stepping on old twigs and bleached-out branches that had fallen.
“You want to keep it down? I don’t want to be the one rescuing your ass,” Liam said.
“What’s his problem?” I asked.
Danielle looked at me, then back at him. “He lost all his family when this happened. He rarely relaxes. He’s always fretting that our walls aren’t secure.”
“So I guess me ranting on about it, doesn’t help.”
“Let’s put it this way, you think alike.”
I scoffed.
“So where’s your mother?”
Her chin dropped. “When we first arrived here, there was a lot of work to be done. All of us were chipping in. She ventured further out than she should have and was bitten. By the time we found her she had already turned. It killed my father. Utterly destroyed him. That’s why he’s so adamant about never going near the roads.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But you weren’t far from the road when you found me.”
“I know, I just wanted to see. You know. I hate living each day afraid. Usually we venture out just a little bit further each time. It lets me tackle the fear head-on.”
“I gotcha.”
“What about you?”
I brought her up to speed on where we came from and who had died.
We had been out searching for threats and food for the past hour when Liam finally spotted a deer. Now I was never one for hunting. I didn’t like the idea of people killing animals for food. But real animals were a luxury now. We were used to eating out of tin cans. Most of the time the food was iffy at best.
We all became quiet and lowered to the ground. Liam rose up, aimed, and fired. He got it right in the side of the head. Now it didn’t die immediately, we tracked it for at least another mile before we found its dead body.
“Let’s make this quick,” said a guy by the name of Ray who’d been acting jumpy ever since we came out. It was almost like he was on drugs but it wasn’t that. It was fear. Danielle explained that everyone had to take a turn. There were those who were better suited for being behind the walls. Ray was one of them. Thin, he didn’t look as if he had been living with the others long. His face was gaunt. “We really shouldn’t be out this far, Liam,” Ray said, glancing around nervously.
“Give it a rest, we are fine.”
Liam dropped to his knees and began tying the legs together.
“You going to haul that all the way back?”
He glanced around at me. “Well, we aren’t going to eat it out here, numbnuts.”
I shook my head. The trek had already been long but now he wanted us to carry this extra weight through thick undergrowth. The foliage of the trees was so close together we’d be lucky if we managed to get it even a few feet.
As he was tying I heard a sound off to my right. At first I just thought it was a straggler. A lone Z, but I was wrong. One moan turned into two, then three, and then I noticed them pushing their way through. No doubt the noise of the deer and the smell of blood had attracted them.
“Z’s,” I shouted to Specs. We all immediately were on our guard ready to fight, but that’s when I heard even more to our left. There was a swarm of them heading our way.
“Quick, help me move the animal,” Liam said, trying to drag the beast himself.
“Leave it. We need to go now,” I yelled.
“Screw that, I’m not leaving this. This could feed us for a week.”
I went up to him and grabbed hold of him. “We move now.”
He shoved me back, continuing to pull at it. Another one of the men from the camp started to help him.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said to Danielle, grabbing her hand.
“What about them?”
“They’ve made their choice.”
“No, I can’t.”
“There are too many. If we stay, we’ll die.”
It was too late. The Z’s had moved in on us and now I was unloading round after round. The only consolation was that the undergrowth was so thick, their dumb asses kept tripping over. Shooting in every direction, we retreated back towards where we had come from. As I unloaded on one of them, two Z’s came at Eva. She stumbled back and fell to the ground. Specs went in to help but got his foot caught in the undergrowth. Before I knew it I heard his scream. I twisted around to see a Z had bitten his hand. Eva shoved a knife into its head but it was too late.
“No!” I yelled firing a shot into another Z’s head and then spraying the tops of the heads of a group heading our way.
“Johnny, cut it.” That was all Specs yelled. He knew there was a fifty-fifty chance he could survive. I raced over and I didn’t think twice. I pulled
out my machete. Specs winced as I lifted it and brought it down on his forearm about halfway up. Three strikes and it was severed. His blood-curdling screams filled the air but were lost in the noise of gunfire. The others continued to fire upon the Z’s until we had thinned out the bulk.
Maybe the stupidity of Liam’s actions dawned on him because he left the deer and we moved as fast as we could back into the forest. We’d tied off Specs’s arm with a belt. I had him in a fireman’s lift over my shoulder. I could feel his blood soaking through my clothes. He was completely unconscious. Not a sound was said on the way back. We moved fast. As soon as we were behind the safety of the walls I handed Specs over to their medical team, then charged at Liam.
I gave him an uppercut and knocked him to the ground. It happened so fast others were unable to stop it until he was spitting blood. I had to be pulled off him by two men as I tried to continue the assault. I was livid. I wanted him dead and I truly believe if they hadn’t been there to stop me, I would have done it.
“Stop! What is going on?” Theo yelled, squeezing through the crowd.
“Ask him,” I said, struggling in the grip of two military guys who were built like Spartan warriors. Theo looked down at Liam who was nursing a bruised jaw, a split lip, and one hell of a shiner. Danielle immediately jumped in.
“We were looking for deer, when Z’s came out of nowhere. Specs was bitten.”
“How was I going to know they would move that fast?” Liam said.
“You jeopardized all of us with that stunt you pulled back there. If Specs dies,” I spat. I shook my head at the thought of losing him.
“You are outsiders. We know how to handle things, Liam was right to do what he did,” Ray said coming to Liam’s defense. The kid had no idea. He came up to me and stuck his finger against my chest. “It’s his own fault.”
I swear I saw red right then.
They had to continue to hold me back as I would have knocked him in the jaw too.
“Alright, calm down,” Benjamin immediately stepped in, trying to de-escalate a situation that was teetering on the brink of a full-scale fight.
WAITING GAME
Trouble had overtaken the once peaceful fortress that morning. Specs had been out cold for hours, thankfully they had a good amount of medication and even morphine. They had him in a large hut that doubled a hospital. Since the apocalypse had kicked off they hadn’t had to deal with anything more than a cut or a sprained ankle. Beyond the walls we could hear the sound of Z’s. That was the thing about them. They attracted each other like magnets. It was like their cries were the dinner bell. If they hadn’t seen this kind of suffering yet they would soon come to know the harsh reality of what the world had become. Maybe today they would stay protected behind the walls but for how long? How long really would it take before others would stumble across their abode, then what?
The day had begun awful and it wasn’t getting much better.
Dax had ripped into me about rocking the boat.
“What is that, Dax? Don’t bite the hand that feeds you? Are you siding with them on this?”
“Don’t be an idiot. I’m just saying we have a good thing going here, we don’t want to give them reason to toss us out on our ear.”
I stood up and got up real close to him. “Are you serious? We’re not staying here, Dax. Izzy, Jess, and Ralphie are still out there or have you forgotten that?”
I walked away.
Several of the men on the walls were taking potshots at Z’s that were getting too close until Benjamin told them that it was probably best they didn’t keep shooting at them. It would just attract more. Then another argument ensued about how it didn’t matter as they already had ones in the moat.
That became another sore point among us. We had told them that as much as they thought that was a good idea, it was the reason why more Z’s were showing up. They could hear them moaning through the woods. No doubt it would attract more. Did they really want to blow through all the ammo they had? The longer we stayed with them the clearer it was that they didn’t know what they were doing. Oh, they could quote the preppers handbook but that didn’t mean shit.
Back inside the medic area it was tough to watch Specs lying there with no hand. He wasn’t sweating which was a good sign but there was still a chance we would lose him. I knew eventually this day would come. There was no way that all of us were going to come through this unscathed. This was no fucking fairy tale. The fact that we had managed to get as far as we had was a miracle. Maybe even a fair bit of luck was involved.
I approached Specs. Eva was with him. She hadn’t left his side since we had returned.
“You can take a break if you want.”
“No, I want to be here when he wakes up,” she replied.
I nodded and took a seat across from her. He didn’t look good. He wasn’t moving. His skin was pale from shock but beyond that at least he was out of pain. Or was he? I cringed at the thought of what it must have felt like before he lost consciousness.
The look on that Z’s face as it greedily tucked into his hand sent a shiver down my spine.
“How long have you known Specs?” I asked her.
“About five years. His parents and mine used to attend the same preppers survival camp.”
“So you were close?”
“Yeah,” she nodded, looking at him.
It was odd as he’d never spoken about her. Then again he had always stayed hush-hush about his time at those summer camps. I guess he thought Baja would make a joke about it. Though it wasn’t us that usually wound him up about it. It was other kids in school. We were used to the strangeness of his parents.
“Are your parents around?”
“Yeah, they are here and so is my brother.”
“I’m guessing Specs told you what happened to his family?”
She shook her head just recalling it. “I can’t believe the way this world has gone. I mean, they told us something bad would occur but we didn’t believe it. At one time the only threat we thought could happen was from home invaders busting in our door to rob us. Now we have people wanting to take a chunk out of us.”
“You think everyone here can protect themselves?”
She nodded. “When we were kids, they would teach us how to shoot a gun from a very early age. It was all about surviving. The sooner we learned to protect ourselves, the sooner we could help others.”
“But fighting against real people is different than shooting at a firing range.”
She shrugged.
“Do you know much about the communications area?” I asked.
“They were actually in the process of buying the whole setup when this happened. It was the very last thing they brought in. I don’t know the ins and outs of how it works but I’ve heard them speaking with different people in the country. Military personnel and such,” she said.
That’s what I wanted to hear. I got up and left. I made my way over to the bunker in the ground. Those in the camp stared at me. I couldn’t tell if it was disgust or what? But I wasn’t exactly earning brownie points.
The shaft led down to a steel door with a PIN pad. I tapped in the number we had been given and watched it automatically open. It was one of those extra-chunky doors that you would see in a bank. The smell of oil permeated the place like a mechanic’s garage. As it slowly opened I went down the concrete steps until I came into the communications area. Theo was chatting with another guy and Dax. They were discussing the signal we had heard in Salt Lake City.
“Just the person,” Dax said with a smile, obviously completely forgetting what had just happened. He motioned for me to come closer, then handed a pair of headphones to me.
“Have a listen.”
I placed them over my ears and squinted trying to make out what was being said. It was communication between two military pilots. Most of which I couldn’t make sense of. The only bit I could was something about Salt Lake City.
“I remember the one pilot mentioning a nu
mber on the radio when I was in the helicopter. 24A-UH1. Ring a bell?”
“Uh. No.”
My brother was like a train spotter — except he had a real hard-on for military equipment and jargon. While most kids were getting into all sorts of trouble, he had spent his childhood looking up the names of boats and helicopters, and going over military lingo. Yeah, it was a little odd.
“What are you getting at?” I asked.
“Sounds like the same pilots.”
“So you think they made it?”
“Maybe. Can we speak to these folks?” Dax asked.
“We could but Theo doesn’t want to connect just in case anyone can pinpoint our signal,” Garrod replied.
I removed the headphones and passed them back to him. “Dax, we need to leave.”
He shook his head. The smile vanished and a frown was now in its place.
“No, don’t you get it, this means we have even more reason to stay. They are safe.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I replied.
“It’s too dangerous out there, Johnny, as much as I would like to go…” he trailed off.
“Say it. SAY IT!” I yelled.
“They aren’t family, Johnny.”
My eyes widened. “Did I just hear you say, they are not family? We are all they have, and likewise.”
He took a hold of my shoulders. “Brother, you know what I mean. Look around you. This was what we were looking for. This is our safe zone. We don’t need to go to NORAD. Theo has said that when they can figure out how to get safe communication set up, we’ll get the word out to the others. Get them to meet us.”
I turned around and began heading for the door. “You are off your head. Have them meet us. As if the government is in the business of giving bus rides.”
He came charging over and grabbed me by the arm. “Think logically here. They could be dropped off by helicopter. We have to walk to get to them. It’s just not practical, Johnny.”
I leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what’s not practical. Sitting here thinking this place is safe. It’s not. We are a sitting target for anyone who wants to take this place out.” I looked at Theo while pointing. “And those walls out there, they might stop the dead from getting inside, but it doesn’t mean that someone couldn’t set this whole damn place on fire.”