The Plague Years (Book 1): Hell is Empty and All the Devils Are Here

by Rounds, Mark

  When they got on State Route 240, they noted a lot of stalled cars. It appeared that people had driven them until they were completely out of gas and then abandoned them. There was no other traffic.

  They got on I-182 and looked toward the bridge. It was completely blocked using several cars and pickups. There was one lane that was not filled with a cluster of abandoned vehicles. There, someone and laid out Stop Sticks to control traffic. There were several armed men and women lounging around the vehicles, at this distance, almost a hundred yards, it was hard to tell if they were infected or not.

  Chad keyed the radio.

  “Everybody hold up,” said Chad. Once he got the car stopped, he got out and looked the road block over through his binoculars. Dave got out with Heather and together with Chris, Amber and Mary looked over the roadblock.

  “Six will get you ten that they are infected,” said Chris after he handed the binoculars over to Amber.

  “Yeah,” said Amber after a moment. “I think I can see some lesions and the one young lady in shorts and a tank top has a very prominent bite mark.

  “What should we do?” asked Chad.

  “Those Stop Sticks will flatten any tires if we try and run the roadblock,” said Chris. “We’ll get maybe two or three blocks and the tires will be flat. No blowouts, just a slow release of the air.”

  “Couldn’t we just see what they want?” asked Mary.

  “If they weren’t infected, I would say sure,” said Dave after a minute. “But we are close enough to downtown that I would worry about them being in contact with Macklin’s crowd. I vote for driving down the road to the Vernita Bridge. It’s out in the Hanford Reach and pretty isolated. I think we have been in enough gun fights.”

  Everyone agreed so they got back on 240 and headed around the outskirts of Richland out into the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The drive lasted three quarters of an hour to cover the thirty-eight miles to the bridge. Along the way, Chad passed his old office. There were no cars in the lot now. It seemed to be another lifetime since he had worked there and now, after twenty-three years, he was leaving.

  June 2nd, Monday, 8:05 am PDT.

  The three vehicles in the Strickland,s convoy had stopped out a hundred yards away from the rest stop overlooking the Vernita Bridge. There were five campers and a couple of fifth wheel trailers in the rest stop and it was clear they had active security.

  Looking out over the bridge, it was clear that short of a bull dozer, no one was crossing that bridge for a long time. A semi-truck trailer tanker unit had jackknifed in an apparent attempt to avoid an SUV that had attempted to ram it. The contents of the tanker had ignited and all that was left were the charred, tangled and somewhat melted remains of the two vehicles.

  “What now?” asked Chad.

  “Let’s motor on over to those folks at the rest stop,” said Dave after looking over group of campers. “It could prove useful.”

  “We just skirted a passable bridge to avoid a firefight,” said Chad. “Now you want to go poke around this one even when it’s blocked?”

  “Look closely at the red flag near the fifth wheel trailer with the blue stripes,” said Dave passing the binoculars to Chad. “That looks like a Marine Corps flag to me. I believe I’ll go over there and trade on the old school tie.”

  Dave reached in the cab of his truck and grabbed his old booney hat with all of his Marine Corps rank on the hat band and put it on his head.

  “Now why don’t you watch me through the scope of the .338,” said Dave. “It will give me some street credibility with this guy.

  Then Dave waved Chris over.

  “Why don’t you point your rifle out toward that bit of bush over there,” said Dave as he indicated some sage brush on a little rise.

  “Is there a good reason for this?” asked Chris as he aimed his AR-15 in the appropriate direction.

  “Because that is where I would place a sniper if I were he,” said Dave with a wink. “Everybody else, stay armed but be kind of loose and comfy about it. I think this will go alright.”

  Dave walked toward the group of campers with his hands in plain sight but packing his .44 in a shoulder holster.

  “That’s about close enough,” said gray haired gentleman sitting on a lawn chair with a Remington 870 pump shotgun across his lap as Dave stopped about fifty feet away. “What can we do for you?”

  “I would like to ask a couple of questions about the road is all,” said Dave. Then he pointed at the Marine Corps flag. “When did you serve?”

  “Well, I put twenty-seven years in the Corps, starting when I was an FNG at Khe Sanh in 68, “said old Marine. “I retired out of the Iron Horse 2nd Tank Battalion as the Sergeant Major.”

  “Oorah Marine,” said Dave with a smile. “For a while, I commanded the Force Recon Company out of Camp Pendleton and some other places. I busted my hip after our Humvee rolled over an IED and was medically retired.”

  “Shit happens, Marine,” said the old Gunny nodding. “I’d offer you a cup of coffee but the person whose duty it was to make coffee this morning is a squid and you can actually see the bottom of the cup.”

  “I would accept even Navy coffee,” said Dave.

  “You guys must really be on short rations,” said the Gunny. “Bring your friends in, and tell the guy with the AR-15 that the sniper is on the other side.”

  After they brought the vehicles in and introductions were complete, Dave sat down next to the Gunny with a cup of coffee.

  “You are right, who made this panther piss?”

  “Chief Renee Epstein, late of the United States Navy, She retired from Bethesda as a Chief Pharmacist’s Mate and, I am privileged to say, is my wife,” said the Gunny with a smile. “It’s our second marriage each. Both of us had married young and divorced in the service. We met up at an American Legion dance after we had retired if you can fathom it.”

  “Hi Chief,” said Dave to the trim, fifty something woman with graying red hair who brought out the full pot of coffee.

  “Craig here won’t touch coffee unless it is a health risk,” said Renee. “I have tried to reform the old beast but beware, he is a crusty an old Leatherneck as you will ever find. I never did catch your name Marine?”

  “Major David Tippet, retired,” said Dave easily. “Until the plague happened, I was quietly teaching history at a community college.”

  “We are members of WASH-PAN Chapter 39 of the Escapees RV club,” said Renee. “We owned a home for a while when we first got married but we have itchy feet. We live in our RV full time now, going wherever the whim takes us, though often we go south to Arizona in the winter.”

  “A bunch of us formed a ‘BOF’ for veterans,” said Craig.

  “A ‘BOF’?” asked Mary who was interested. She had seen these folks come through the vineyard she worked at and was fascinated by the lifestyle.

  “’BOF’ means Birds of a Feather,” said Renee sitting down next to Mary. “It’s like a special interest group in the club. They just used it as a place to gab on line mostly until the world went crazy.”

  “Some of us out of the BOF got together and started looking for a place to wait this out,” said Craig. “All of us are retired military or veterans and our families. While we still had internet, we decided to meet up here.”

  “This is our usual starting place for our wine trips,” said Renee.

  “I thought you guys looked familiar,” said Mary with a smile. “Your group comes through every May.”

  “That’s right, and you are the nice lady at Bookwalter’s who accommodates us,” said Renee.

  “Actually, it’s usually Heather who does my dirty work,” said Mary pointing at Heather who was currently shepherding her youngest to the rest room.

  “There wouldn’t be a Captain Chad Strickland among your group, would there?” asked Craig innocently.

  “Not many folks know I am a captain,” said Chad as he sat down and accepted a cup of coffee.

  “Well, I have been a
sked to inquire as to your wellbeing and to tell you that Colonel Antonopoulos sends his regards,” said Craig. “By way of authentication, he says that for lunch back when you were enlisted, you routinely brought tuna, creamed cheese, and dill pickle sandwiches for lunch and washed them down with Mountain Dew.”

  “He still eats them,” said Mary with a smile.

  There was a stunned silence until Chad broke the ice.

  “So you are in communication with Colonel Antonopoulos?” asked Chad tentatively.

  “Sometimes,” said Craig. “He said to ask you if you remembered what his first name was and ask if you remember your deployment to Guam?”

  “Well, his first name is Andrianos,” said Chad cautiously. “Most of his friends call him Andy and we never deployed to Guam. I spent most of my time in the service in an office with no windows at Hurlbert.”

  “You’re the guy alright,” said Craig. “I work for Colonel Antonopoulos in a manner of speaking.”

  ”How is that?” asked Chad.

  “There aren’t many C-17’s flying right now,” said Craig. “Colonel Antonopoulos has taken over unconventional side of the intelligence shop.”

  “He’d be good at it,” said Chad.

  “He has some information for you,” said Craig. “First off, if you haven’t figured it out, Colonel Antonopoulos says to stay clear of Fort Lewis unless you are completely out of options. They have been penetrated, there is evidence that NSA has also been penetrated and that they are feeding your adversaries intel. Finally, he has reason to believe there are likely sleeper cells at the base. He can’t guarantee your safety.”

  “It’s about what I expected given his conversations with us,” said Chad.

  “He has some other news about Macklin.” Said Craig. “He is apparently ‘wanted for questioning’ in regards to a bombing attempt.”

  “He is in the Tri-Cities or was as of yesterday,” said Dave. “We chatted with one of his minions. So how is it you are in contact with Fort Lewis if NSA is penetrated? And we were told there was a POL shortage and electronic media was compromised.”

  “POL is not a problem right now,” said Craig. “They have a quality assurance problem getting things like gasoline, but diesel, JP-4, and the like are flowing. We get motorcycle couriers back and forth through the exclusion zone pretty regularly to some pre-arranged document drops. They have also been using light aircraft and General Buckley’s jet to do message delivery. Because of how they are being watched, they don’t dare land and so they just drop small packages with messages and sometimes key supplies like medicine. We have a couple of diabetics in our group and it has been a Godsend. There are some plans for setting supply drops for cells like ours for food, fuel, and such, but they are just plans.”

  “Exclusion zone?” asked Dave.

  “There is an approximately twenty mile dead zone around the base with only a few pockets of survivors,” said Craig. “There are still large populations of infected in that area. Some are pretty far gone and merely violent and unpredictable, others are in reasonable condition and functioning rationally if violently. It’s confusing as it seems, some are controlled like the one you folks are dealing with and others are just plain nuts. Getting through it is tough. Lone motorcycle riders going fast can get through quickly but any larger groups draw too much attention.”

  “Well, I am glad they are still fighting the good fight,” said Chad with resignation, “If you would, inform the Colonel that we are headed for Moscow, ID. I have a brother there and hopefully we can stay out of the limelight.”

  “Right, he didn’t know or didn’t tell me where he thought you might head,” said Craig, “but he would like to make you an offer. He is desperate to set up cells that can give him reliable intel on what is happening. Wherever you end up, get word to us here or, if we have to move, leave a message in the toilet paper dispenser in the woman’s room. It’s been out for quite a while. Right now, there is little they can offer but big things are happening at Fort Lewis, it won’t be long before they can provide useful help. If you agree, take these.”

  Craig handed Chad a sealed, tabbed note book.

  “What’s this?” asked Chad.

  “It’s a code book and authentication passwords that change daily based on the date,” said Craig. “That way, we won’t have to rely upon your dietary habits. It also includes a duress signal that only you will know. Get that word or phrase into any communication, and they will do what they can for you. The goal is to build a force to do extractions, but that is in the future.”

  “Small beginnings,” said Dave.

  “I’ll have to clear it with the rest of our party,” said Chad, “but I think we are in. One last thing though, we still need to get across the Columbia.”

  “Well, the next bridge that would take your vehicles is up at Vantage,” said Craig. “If this was before the Plague, I would say just get back on State Route 24, go into Yakima, get on I-82, take it up to I-90 and that will take you to Vantage and the I-90 bridge across the Columbia. However the Yakima tribe has become very … isolationist. They banished any members who became infected very aggressively and are largely unscathed. They are armed to the teeth and shoot first and ask questions later. Attempts to communicate with them have been terminated with prejudice so I would go back down this entry road a few hundred yards and take the Priest Rapids Road along the Columbia. It turns to gravel for a while after the Priest Rapids Dam but take it slow and you will be alright. There are quite a few fishermen and such that have camped out down there so don’t be moving at night, they will likely shoot if they get scared.”

  “I appreciate the information,” said Chad. “Give us a little time and we will be out of your hair.”

  “Take all the time you need. Macklin’s gang has visited us twice,” said Craig with a smile, “and we let one guy go back last time with a note pinned to his shirt that said don’t come looking again. They haven’t.”

  Chapter 24

  June 2nd, Monday, 12:36 pm PDT.

  Macklin was furious. That nitwit Kevin had sent that kid called the Rugrat into the Strickland’s neighborhood and the punk had been caught and probably interrogated. Then that big wart on the face of humanity had Macklin dragged out of bed to hear the kid’s ‘confession’.

  Macklin knew that he had better get out there quickly because they now knew about the MRAP. They could have rigged some fiendish countermeasure or could be gone completely. However, getting enough of these Slash heads to move and be semi-coherent took all morning. They were rolling now, but only God knew what awaited them.

  The first thing they saw as they approached the neighborhood was the disconcertingly large pile of bodies, no doubt left as a warning to them. His normally loud and obnoxious confederates were quiet as they approached.

  “Hey Macklin,” shouted Kevin from one of the ports on the side of the MRAP, “all these houses have signs in front of them. You suppose they are for sale?”

  As Kevin laughed at his own joke, Macklin worried. He had been made to look the fool before trying to get at these people.

  They drove around the pile and up to the front of the Strickland’s residence. Macklin grabbed the mike for the PA system before Kevin could get to it.

  “Strickland, you know who this is,” said Macklin into the PA which amplified his voice to a painful level. “I am done messing around. Send out the girl and we will leave even though nothing would give me more pleasure than to kill you all. Mess with me one little bit, and that is exactly what I’ll do.”

  One of the outriders on his Harley walked up to the sign that was posted in the front yard of the Strickland’s house and indeed, every other house in the neighborhood.

  “Hey Macklin,” shouted the biker, “this sign says they left. It also says to leave the house alone as it is booby trapped.”

  “Bring the damned sign here,” said Macklin through the open window of the MRAP, “so I can read it for myself.”

  The biker grabbed the
sign. There was resistance so he pulled harder. As the sign finally came up there was a small crack followed by a much larger explosion that hurled the hapless biker back against the MRAP. The explosive device was pretty low energy but the remains of Dave’s snow tire wheel had focused the blast like a primitive claymore mine and imbedded in the device’s outer shell were approximately a hundred roofing nails which killed the biker before he hit the side of the MRAP. Three nails also hit Macklin as he shouted through the window, none of which were fatal. It did cause him to slump in his seat and so he was spared the blast that came from Mary’s newly tilled flower garden.

  Embedded in the newly tilled earth were four two foot PVC pipes that were six inches in diameter. They were horizontally laid with a slight up angle. The bottom foot contained a primitive black powder explosive. The next four inches had some cotton wadding and finally, a coffee can loaded with homemade napalm and a chemical igniter. As an added touch, Dave had added ground rust flakes and powdered aluminum. These last additives were the ingredients in thermite and as such, the flame burned very hot for the first few seconds.

  The last few inches of the pipe were loosely packed with earth and rock to camouflage the opening. The name for these devices was fougasse or foo gas as the Americans called it in World War II. This weapon had been used in several conflicts as was taught in the improvised explosives course at Quantico that Dave had attended.

  The same electrical charge that triggered the claymore also triggered the homemade fougasse mines. As the MRAP had not parked exactly where Dave had thought it would, the first mine’s projectile flew past the front of the MRAP and hit Heather’s Camry which was parked across the street, setting it aflame.

  The next three impacted the MRAP and burst, covering the vehicle with flaming jellied gasoline. The gunner for the machine gun was covered and even in his drug addled state began screaming because of the high temperature burns he was receiving.

  Two of the outriding bikers were also splattered with the burning napalm and began screaming and rolling on the ground, trying to extinguish the flames. The rest of the outriders, remembering what had happened previously at this address, took off for safer places, heading both directions along the street.