Storm Orphans

by Matt Handle

  For a split second, he pictured the creature Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies. The Afflicted facing him was bald, nearly naked, and just as scrawny and gray as that famous villain. This one, however, had brilliant blue eyes and it stared at Sawyer with a hunger that was unmistakable. It scrambled forward, reaching out to grab Sawyer, but before its ragged fingernails could dig into his flesh, Sawyer pointed his gun at the skeletal thing’s face and pulled the trigger. The upper half of the monster’s head exploded in a bloom of brains and blood, the mess splattering the side of the Humvee as the creature fell off the truck and flopped lifelessly onto the pavement behind them, the machine gun it had been clutching now clattering on the pavement.

  Sawyer slipped back into his seat clumsily, the vehicle rapidly losing speed as Angel took her foot off the pedal and he got situated again in the driver’s seat. Seconds later, he was back in control and their dead attacker was lost in the rearview mirror. Tyler looked shaken and Jenny was curled into a ball, trembling, but all four of them were unscathed.

  “Anyone hurt?” Sawyer asked as he glanced at each of his friends.

  Angel sighed heavily, but shook her head no. Tyler didn’t sound very sure of himself, but he said he was fine too. Jenny, on the other hand, just curled herself into an even tighter ball and refused to acknowledge the question.

  “Let’s keep it together,” Sawyer tried to say calmly. “There’s an air force base close to here. If we’re lucky, we might be able to replace the machine gun and replenish our ammo.”

  Tyler’s face brightened. “What about a helicopter?” he asked.

  “You know how to fly one?” Sawyer countered.

  Tyler’s face crumpled. “I thought maybe you did since you were a soldier and all.”

  Sawyer shook his head. “We did the dirty work on the ground,” he replied. “All my flight time was strictly as a passenger.”

  Moody Air Force Base was a good 16 miles out of their way and before they were even five miles off Interstate 75, Sawyer knew it was a wasted side trip. The azaleas and kudzu had given way to charred buildings and black soot. Fire had ravaged half the city, leaving it in burnt ruins. By the time they reached the outskirts of the massive base, they could see that the surrounding fields had been turned into vast spans of ash. Once they passed the long deserted security posts, the blackened skeletons of the planes and their hangars could be seen outlined against the gray evening skies.

  There wasn’t a single sign of life as they drove around the remains of the base. It was as abandoned as SOUTHCOM had been, but here there wasn’t even so much as a dead body within sight. It was utterly deserted. Sawyer thought he might be able to find remains if they stopped and looked hard enough, but what was the point? Moody and anything it might have had of value was gone.

  No one said a word as they each observed the somber scene passing by their windows, but as Sawyer completed the loop around the perimeter and headed back toward the highway, he tried to keep them positive.

  “There’s one more base just an hour south of the city in Macon,” he told them. “Maybe we’ll have better luck there.”

  Angel looked at Sawyer doubtfully. “After our adventures at SOUTHCOM and what we just found here, are you sure a third military base is the answer?” she asked.

  Sawyer shrugged. “That’s where we find the big guns. What do you want me to say?”

  Chapter 12

  The next three hours were spent driving up an almost empty highway, the wrecked cars few and far between, the pavement cracked but easily drivable with the Humvee’s heavy-duty suspension. The sky was overcast, but they didn’t see any more rain and soon enough, they were nearing Macon.

  Robins Air Force Base was huge. As they approached the main entrance, they could see that the lawn that surrounded the set of buildings and parking lots was a riot of knee-high weeds and wild flowers, but the buildings themselves were still intact and other than some ivy growing up some of the walls, they looked relatively unscathed from this distance.

  The chain-link security gate that blocked the entrance from the main road was closed but as expected, no one manned the guard station in front of it. The only movement they could discern was from the birds that flocked in the surrounding low trees and bushes. Several of them sat along the top of the six-foot fence as well, their beady eyes locked on the strangers that had pulled up in the scratched and mud-splattered military vehicle. They seemed interested in these new arrivals to their home, chirping and squawking loudly as soon as Sawyer drove the Humvee up to the gates. He left it idling as he and his companions looked out the windshield and windows, scanning for any sign of trouble.

  “See anything?” Sawyer asked as he gazed intently at their surroundings, left to right and then back again.

  “I see some crows over there on the fence that look like they haven’t had a good meal in awhile, but nothing besides that,” Tyler replied.

  Angel shook her head. “Looks deserted, but then so did SOUTHCOM,” she answered warily.

  Jenny was turned around in her seat looking back the way they came and just whispered “Nothing but dust,” but kept looking all the same.

  Sawyer checked his gun only to see the same two lonely bullets he already knew he was down to. He’d used everything else in the battle at the fertilizer plant. He grimaced and then looked at Angel.

  “I’m going to check the guard station,” he stated. “You guys hold tight. Any sign of trouble, we book it out of here. We haven’t got the ammo to put up much of a fight.”

  Sawyer stepped out of the vehicle and crossed the three lanes between the Humvee and the small building where security would have normally been stationed. The building’s windows were too filthy to see through, but the door stood wide open. When he stepped inside, the first thing he noticed was the paper sign that had been tacked to the inside wall above a long-dead computer monitor.

  The paper was yellowed by a combination of age and pollen but it was still legible. Scrawled on it in what looked like black Sharpie were the words: Minefield beyond the gate. And then below that in all caps: DO NOT ENTER.

  I guess nothing’s ever easy, is it, he thought to himself.

  Sawyer looked at the paper for a minute longer, then rifled through the shallow drawer of the built-in desk below it. It was empty other than a couple of paperclips, an old log book, and a broken rubber band.

  He flipped through the log book only to see that no one had logged anything in years. It didn’t surprise him. The dust and grime that covered the windows and the monitor had told him that before he’d even opened the drawer. Returning the book and closing the drawer, he walked back outside and rejoined his friends in the Humvee.

  “We’ve got a problem,” he told them.

  They waited expectantly for Sawyer to continue, none of them saying a word.

  “There may or may not be anyone or anything left in there, but at some point, they turned the road and probably the yard around it into a minefield,” he explained.

  “How do you know this?” Angel asked.

  “They left a warning in the guardhouse,” Sawyer replied.

  “Maybe they were bluffing?” Jenny offered.

  Tyler smirked and said, “Bluffing who? Afflicted don’t read.”

  Jenny scowled at him, but didn’t say anything else, realizing Tyler had a point.

  “What do you want to do?” Angel asked Sawyer.

  Sawyer sat thinking for a minute, staring at the crows on the fence as they stared right back at him. As an idea occurred to him, a small smile crossed his face.

  “I want to head back down the road to that last gas station we passed,” he said. “The one with the old pickup sitting in the lot.”

  “And then what?” Tyler questioned.

  Sawyer said simply, “We’re going to steal it.”

  Sawyer Bell hadn’t had the easiest of childhoods. Being the only son of a single white mother in Alabama who’d gotten pregnant by a black father who was doing 20 to life
in Holman Correctional before Sawyer saw his third birthday, Sawyer had taken his share of licks. Some of the meaner white kids in school had taken to calling his mother “nigger-lover” and most of the black kids wouldn’t hang out with him because he was too light-skinned. The few friends he did make were what most would label as trouble, but Sawyer learned early to appreciate what he had. What he and his friends didn’t have, was a lot of money. His mother cleaned houses for a living and food stamps were a way of life.

  Sawyer had stolen his first car when he was only 16. An older kid, a thuggish boy with red hair and freckles named Jason, had shown him how. A well-placed bash of the window with a crowbar, another knock at the underside of the steering column, and then a few seconds of playing around with the wiring inside, and the car was yours.

  He’d only stolen two other cars between that first one and the day he left Alabama for basic training at age 18, but Sawyer was pretty certain it was a skill that once learned, was never forgotten. He’d stolen the first three for cash. This one, he was stealing to use as a guinea pig.

  They pulled into the gas station five minutes after they left the guardhouse. Sawyer had chosen the old pickup precisely because of its age. He wasn’t sure if he could boost something with newer locks and electronics, but the pickup could easily have been driving up and down the road back in his Alabama youth. He just hoped the ancient truck would still start.

  The first thing Sawyer did was find an old nearly bristleless broom that was lying in the dirt behind the station. Then he added a cinder block that was sitting near the cracked and faded sign that at one time advertised the place’s price on diesel and unleaded. Last, he found a broken piece of pipe that was rusting near the edge of the parking lot, but looked like it might have once been part of the station’s restroom plumbing. His friends watched from inside the Humvee as Sawyer stalked over to the passenger side of the pickup, raised the slender piece of iron above his head, and then smashed in the window with a single well-placed blow.

  Once inside the truck, Sawyer put his newfound items in the flatbed and spent the next ten minutes trying to get it started. He worked up a good sweat, but when the engine finally turned over, a plume of thick, black smoke belched from the exhaust pipe and the old truck rumbled like it was ready to roll.

  Angel took this as her cue and moved over to the driver’s seat of the Humvee, pulling out behind Sawyer as he angled the pickup onto the road and started back toward the base.

  Both vehicles arrived back at the guard station minutes later, the crows still sitting on the fence watching with lazy interest. With engines idling, Sawyer walked over to the gate and checked the padlock that kept the chain-link fence from swinging open to accommodate them. For all he knew, it hadn’t been unlocked for years, sitting out here through rain and sun, but it held as true as the day it had last been clicked shut. He sighed softly and drew his gun. After taking two steps back, he fired his next to last bullet, putting a neat hole in the middle of the lock. The crows took wing at the sound, squawking out in surprise before flying a short distance away and settling down again atop the roof of the nearest building inside the base.

  Sawyer yanked the destroyed padlock off the gate and pulled it open. Angel looked at him expectantly until he told her to sit tight. He walked to the back of the pickup and retrieved both the broom and the cinder block from where he’d left them. First he jammed the broom between the spokes of the truck’s steering wheel and the floor, holding the wheel in place so the truck wouldn’t deviate from the path he’d aligned it on. Then he laid the cinder block in the floorboard, leaning it against the gas pedal. As the engine revved, Sawyer yanked the gear shift into drive and stepped back quickly from the truck as it lurched forward and through the open gate.

  The truck got about 30 yards past the fence and then it exploded in a fireball that turned it into a rolling briquette. The mine it hit sent the truck’s hood at least 20 feet into the air when it exploded and all four tires spun off in different directions, three of them engulfed in flames.

  Sawyer let out a low whistle and as he turned to take a look at his companions. From their place inside the Humvee, he saw all three of them sat mouths agape, stunned by the force of the explosion they’d just witnessed.

  “Now you know why we needed the pickup,” he said loudly enough to be heard over the crackle and pop of the bonfire the truck had become. “I was hoping the road might be clear, but no such luck.”

  Sawyer started back toward his friends and had almost reached the driver’s door of the Humvee when all four of them heard the first howls from inside the base. His companions’ eyes went wide as they looked past him at the building and as he turned to look back in that direction, he understood why. Dozens of zombies were hurtling out of a set of double doors, awoken by the explosion and now racing toward Sawyer and his friends.

  There was no way they could stand and fight. They didn’t have the ammo or the time to plan a defense. Sawyer sprinted the final steps to the Humvee and shoved Angel aside as he jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed the vehicle into reverse. Angel was still getting herself settled into the passenger seat when Sawyer yanked them around in a 180 degree spin so they were facing back the way they’d come.

  “Hold on!” he growled as he floored it, speeding away from the base as fast as the Humvee would take them and leaving the bounding zombies in their dust. Before they’d gone more than a hundred yards down the road, a second explosion sounded behind them, making each of them jump in their seat.

  “Did I say this was a bad idea?” Angel asked rhetorically.

  Sawyer smiled and said, “It could have been worse. Just think if we hadn’t sent in the pickup truck first.”

  “Not funny,” Angel replied.

  “So where are we going to get some more bullets?” Tyler asked. “I think we just ran out of military bases.”

  “We’ll drive through some of the streets in Macon,” Sawyer answered. “There’s got to be some pawn shops and gun stores around here someplace. This is the south we’re talking about. We just need to find one that hasn’t already been ransacked.”

  The task wound up being harder than Sawyer thought. Macon was just as deserted as every other town they’d passed through, but the first two pawn shops they’d found had been emptied of anything useful. There was all the cheap jewelry, old cameras, and powerless laptops you could want, but not a single working gun, clip, or box of ammunition. As the foursome left the second shop empty-handed and started toward the next intersection, Angel pointed out a broken Walmart Supercenter sign that towered over the strip mall across the street.

  “Worth a shot, right?” she asked.

  “Wally World always reminded me of a zombie apocalypse even before the plague,” Tyler quipped from the backseat.

  Jenny and Angel both giggled and even Sawyer showed a hint of a smile.

  “This place is big,” Sawyer said as they pulled into the weed-strewn parking lot and stopped the Humvee in the fire lane just in front of the entrance. The former double glass doors lay in thousands of glinting pieces all around the metal framework.

  “We need to stick together and watch each other’s backs,” Sawyer stated. “No wandering off.”

  Angel, Tyler, and Jenny all nodded their heads.

  “Chances are good this place has been raided too and for all we know, it might not be empty,” Sawyer continued. “We go straight to the hunting section. It’s probably in the back right corner of the store. No diversions. We grab all the guns and ammo we can carry. If we have room, we add a couple flashlights and some batteries. If we strike out on those but don’t find any trouble, we swing by the grocery section on the way out. Got it?”

  “What if we do run into trouble?” Jenny asked as she stroked Luna’s furry head. “I’m all out of bullets.”

  “Me too,” Tyler chimed in.

  Angel ran her thumb over the grip of her pistol. “I’m down to two.”

  Sawyer shook his head. “And I’v
e just got one in the chamber so we’re in no position for a firefight. If there’s one of them in there, I’ll take care of him. More than that, run back here as fast as you can.”

  Sawyer started across the broken threshold with Angel right behind. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Tyler and Jenny hesitate, looking at each other as if to build up their courage.

  “Stay close,” he told them. “With any luck, we’ll be in and out with what we’re looking for within 10 minutes.”

  The four of them made their way through the dimly lit department store while hardly making a sound. The power was out, but enough sunshine filtered through the dirty skylights set in the ceiling to allow them to see their way around. The place was a mess. Many of the shelves were empty. Angel glanced at a few of the racks in the Juniors section as they walked past it, but heeded Sawyer’s warning and didn’t stop. Other racks had been knocked over, the clothes lying in heaps on the floor. Shopping carts were overturned and blocking a couple of the aisles, forcing them to detour down other paths.

  When they arrived in the hunting section, they saw that it was as picked over as the rest of the store. The glass cases had been shattered, the guns inside long gone and the ammunition with it.

  “Damnit,” Sawyer growled as he plucked an empty box of .33 caliber bullets from the floor and looked at it before tossing it back to the ground.

  Tyler called softly, “Sawyer, over here!”

  Sawyer joined the boy in the next aisle, Angel and Jenny just a few steps behind him. At Tyler’s feet was the mauled and partially decayed corpse of what had once been a heavy-set Walmart employee. The body was propped up against one of the shelving units, its stomach torn open below the bloody and ragged blue vest. Most of the entrails were missing. As soon as she saw it, Jenny turned away, gasping in revulsion. Angel followed her, putting her arms around her for comfort. Tyler pointed toward the dead man’s open hand where it laid palm upward on the floor. In the corpse’s hand was a key on a short chain.