by Hetzer, Paul
Reese watched as the boy filled his tray with steaming piles of goop, then spotting the old Marine and smiling while walking his way with the teenaged blonde girl right behind him. They had become quite the pair. Not in a romantic way of course, but more like blood siblings. Unfortunately for the kid, she didn’t look back at him with those lovesick eyes that he had for her. The boy was sporting a serious crush on the pretty young lady. The pair walked over to his table and sat down without asking. For some reason the boy had taken a shine to him and Reese had reluctantly taken him, and by extension, the girl, under his wing. He tried to pass on tidbits of wisdom and advice that he thought would help keep them alive. The boy, and to a lesser extent, the girl, were fresh canvases waiting for the right lines and colors to fill it up and give it the right perspective, so he’d decided he would do what he could to help fill in that canvas.
I’m a fucking artist, he laughed quietly to himself.
“Missed you on the run today, Kyle,” Jeremy said to him after taking a seat. His faithful mutt took a place on the floor next to the table in anticipation of the scraps of food that were usually tossed his way.
“My turn on the rooftop,” Reese muttered. He stared at the hot food that adorned the two trays then over at the dinner line which had shrunk to two people.
“You missed a good run,” Jeremy replied in between bites. To the kid, any run where they didn’t see any crazies was a good run. Reese much preferred making any dent he could in the crazy population.
“I think I’ll grab some grub.” He carefully stubbed out his dwindling cigar, sticking it into his breast pocket and then stood. The pain in his knees told him that there was going to be a change in the weather soon, and by the feel of the air, it wasn’t going to be a nice change either.
Shavers met with all the members of the 29th that evening in the briefing room to discuss the next day’s operation. They were going after a group of crazies nesting about a klick from the armory in the heart of downtown Staunton. McCully was the last to have eyes on them and he estimated their numbers to be around five hundred. If the IED worked as expected, in the coming weeks they would branch out and take on the bigger swarms like the one in the warehouse across from the Kroger.
They had never recovered the disabled Stryker from Statler Boulevard, which put most of the load on the two remaining Strykers, supported by the half dozen armored Humvees that were in the yard. The plan for tomorrow would have the Humvee leaving in the pre-dawn hours with a three person team utilizing night vision gear and driving to a wooded hilltop near the target. The hill overlooked the strip-mall where the store that held the nesting crazies was located. The observing team would contact Gypsy Hill when they spotted the crazies leaving the building. When the area was clear a strike team would rush in utilizing a Stryker and secure the building. Once secure, the IED would be placed in the nesting area and the team would exfiltrate back to the armory while the observation team stayed in place for the duration to watch the results.
It was a simple plan fraught with uncertainty. With uncertainty usually came the unexpected. They talked about contingencies, offered solutions to those contingencies, yet in the end it came down to the basics: react, adapt, and overcome. Shavers gave out the assignments: McQuinn, Ferguson, and Murchison would be the observers in the Humvee while Heinlich, Carroll, Reese, and Pickeral would be on the Stryker team. Shavers would be on comms while McCully and Hernandez would be waiting at the armory in the Ready Stryker loaded for bear.
After he finished with the briefing for the operation, he received the optimistic updates on the supplies of diesel and gas for the vehicles, propane for heating and cooking, and food and ammo supplies. They were sitting pretty for the foreseeable future. Food would always be a concern, especially fresh vegetables. Plans were already in the works to plant gardens around the lake that sat just outside the Armory grounds after the local swarms had been eliminated. Finding seed packets in the few farm stores around the county would be a high priority in the near future. The seed packets would be difficult to locate since the apocalypse had occurred after planting season and most places no longer carried seeds in their floor stock. He was assured though by several of the amateur gardeners in the brigade that some could be found. The meeting finally broke up and everyone cleared the room.
As Jeremy strode down the hallway beside Sarah, Shavers ran to catch up with him.
“Jeremy, a minute.”
“I’ll see you downstairs in a bit,” Sarah said to him with a smile and left the two alone in the hallway.
“What’s up, First Sergeant?”
“Jumper needs to stay behind tomorrow. You won’t need him on this mission.”
Jeremy shrugged. “Okay, I kind of figured that.”
Shavers smiled a relaxed smile. “Have you given anymore thought on staying with us?”
Jeremy shrugged again. He had made several good friends at the armory, including Sarah and Kyle. He still longed for his parents; however, he didn’t want to abandon his new friends either. Plus he was having a blast playing soldier.
“I want to stay, but I need to find my Mom and Pop,” he said finally.
Shavers smiled at him and nodded in understanding. “I’ve been thinking about that. Sergeant Heinlich told me that your parents’ farm is only a couple of hours away. I think we can spare the fuel for a run down there, maybe next week. I’ve wanted to scout the areas south for survivors and crazy activity anyway. Maybe make a couple days’ operation out of it.”
Jeremy’s face lit up. “Really?”
Shavers nodded. “I’ve talked it over with Heinlich and Hernandez and we all agreed it could be a productive run for all of us. There are some risks. Then again, where aren’t there any these days?” Heinlich had suggested the idea of hitting some farm co-ops that were located to the south to find seeds. The sooner they located them the better. If the seeds were subjected to a long, deep freeze it was possible they wouldn’t be viable come springtime.
“Woo-hoo!” Jeremy proclaimed wildly and jumped into the air.
Shavers’ eyes crinkled in amusement as the kid vented his excitement. “I’ll let you know when we have a mission date set.”
Jeremy nodded enthusiastically, then turned and ran off down the stairway after Sarah so he could break the good news to her.
The snow set in that night and blanketed the compound in a thick cover of white. The members of the Stonewall Brigade woke up very early the next morning to a frigid, blowing storm that dumped copious amounts of dense snow from the dark, sullen sky. Visibility outside was reduced to a handful of paces at best.
“As you all can guess, the mission is a no-go this morning due to weather,” the First Sergeant informed them in the lantern and LED-lit mess hall in the pre-dawn hours while the two teams sat around drinking hot coffee and trying to stay warm in the poorly-heated building.
“We’ll assess the weather again this evening and make a decision about tomorrow.” He smiled at everyone in the room before continuing. “So today is going to be a training day. Sergeant Heinlich and I will be conducting room clearing drills and later I want Private McCully to organize weapons training, concentrating on the breakdown, cleaning, and lubing of the M4 weapons system.”
McCully nodded. “No problem First Sergeant. How about we start at 0800 hours right here?”
“Okay,” the First Sergeant replied. “We’ll then meet back here at 1300 hours for the room clearing exercises.” Shavers left then, leaving the tired brigade members sitting quietly and pondering the day ahead.
The creatures sat huddled miserably in large throngs of tightly clustered bodies in the icy-darkness of the dank, foul-smelling building. They shivered, burning energy to create heat for the amassed throng. At the center of the hive, the pregnant females and newborns sat or lay huddled together while the swarm instinctively surrounded and protected them. Also in the center among the females and the young were the alpha males. Not only were they the fastest and strongest, bu
t they were also those who had some sort of thought process that had reactivated in their ravaged minds. It couldn’t quite be called reasoning skills, yet they learned, and retained those lessons and had some modicum of control over the rage that coursed through their bodies whenever some external stimulus induced that response. The rest of the creatures were followers, whose ravaged minds only allowed the minimum of survival mechanisms: eat, sleep, procreate, and kill. They mindlessly followed the alpha males.
The alpha’s turnover was high. Not only were there challenges to their position from others in the swarm, even with their slightly elevated intellect, they were still reckless when the all-consuming madness was upon them. They were sometimes the first to run headlong into any dangers awaiting them on the outside, and usually the first to be killed or maimed. Yet some were changing, garnering even more control of themselves and those that followed them. Some had learned to lead and then stand back and let their brethren attack, thus prolonging their own existence. On some basic level they were learning from each experience as they became less human and more… something else.
Several days ago, some of these males had been able to stealthily stalk the squad of men through the neighborhoods of the town to where they nested. The memory of that place was seared into the smidgen of operating brain cells that they had remaining along with the mad lust to destroy the humans and everything associated with them. Whenever the image of the fenced compound and the hated creatures that inhabited it brightened their normally barren thoughts, they would growl menacingly and grow restless in their insanity.
At some point, the madness would be irresistible and they would be forced by the rage that sent surges of adrenaline coursing through their bodies to seek out and destroy the hated creatures whose very existence tormented their minds like a ragged splinter caught deep within their soulless bodies. One of the alpha males lifted its face to the lofty ceiling and voiced a shrill howl of fury at the dark images of the running men filling its muddled head. The restlessness grew through the gathered masses and the babbling increased to a cacophony of insane pandemonium. After a few minutes, they settled down, the sub-freezing cold air again dictating their behavior.
Instinct was keeping them huddled in survival mode, outweighing the madness in their minds. When the weather warmed, the madness and hunger would again be the controlling factors and they would emerge into the world to vent their rage.
Chapter Eleven
Most of the members of the Washington D.C. street gang lay spread out on the floor and furniture of an old timber-frame farmhouse’s living room in which an aged cast-iron stove radiated comforting heat. Most of the crew lay in a hazy, drug-induced stupor, oblivious to all else around them. Outside, the snow was falling from the dark night sky with flakes the size of cotton balls. Lamar sat sprawled on a faux-leather recliner, a bottle of whisky in one hand and his other caressing the short, nappy hair of a young girl sitting in a drugged daze on the floor beside him. He haughtily surveyed the room full of his underlings.
Ah be King now!
The thought went through his mind for the umpteenth time that night. He had sat in this chair as if on high and had orchestrated all aspects of the evening’s activities. He took another swig from the bottle feeling the elixir slide down his esophagus and coat his stomach with its comforting warmth. Their supplies were running low, especially the food and gas. Three of their vehicles were running on fumes, including the Escalade. They were going to have to bust open some tanks to steal gas from the abandoned cars that dotted the highway if they wanted to make it any further; maybe find a trailer that they could haul gas cans with to keep them running. Now this damn weather was turning to shit on him and he sure as fuck wasn’t going to try driving in it tomorrow.
That fat hog Roshawna lumbered in from another room toting one of the pee-wees behind her.
Dat lizard butt bitch sure like ‘em young.
The young gangster at least had a sloppy smile on his face. The fat woman stepped over the Strawberry, one of the white women who was laid out naked on the floor full of whatever drugs the crew had forced her to take, and kicked her hard in the head with one of her elephantine feet as she stepped over the prone woman.
She hate dem peckerwoods more n me, he thought.
The abused woman lay on the floor glassy-eyed and unmoving while the huge woman dragged the boy over her to a couch and sat him down. The other homies, both men and boys, had already pulled trains on the three white toss-ups, though only two were left now. Lamar smirked. The one brown-haired bitch whose brat Roshawna had killed had thrown herself on a knife that one of the newjacks had been holding on her. Afterwards that wild man Crazy-8 had taken a turn on her corpse, laughing like a madman from the drugs and alcohol he had consumed. When he was done, he had uncaringly tossed her stiffening, naked body off the front porch into the accumulating snow.
Now the last two white toss-up bitches were zooted, along with half of the shorties. The drugs they injected into the two white peckerwoods made them more pliable plus kept them in line and alive for the crew to have their fun with. They would keep them for as long as they lasted or until all of the gang grew bored with them.
Lamar spotted one young pee-wee standing in the hall, pants hanging half off his ass with his pistol shoved nearly into his crack and ready to tumble to the ground. He ought to have Crazy-8 take the newjacks’ pieces so they didn’t do anything stupid while they were tripping.
The other white woman they had captured lay trussed up, naked, and unconscious on top of the table in the kitchen where she had been left after the last train pulled on her. She was the lucky one of the two. Lamar snickered when he glanced at the swelling knot growing on the side of the face of the one on the floor.
Roshawna gon’ stomp that one inta the carpet fore this night over.
He took another long pull from the bottle, feeling like he was sitting in a throne. Maybe the five percenters were right; maybe they were gods.
He wrinkled his nose as a draft from the fiercely blowing storm outside brought a musty old smell to him.
This crib smell like ol’ white people.
Lamar looked around the century old house. Worn slipcovers adorned most of the sparse furniture in the small family room and a handful of family photos hung forlornly on the papered walls. Thankfully the place had the wood stove and plenty of broken up wood piled against the porch. Although it had taken them a long time to get the fire lit in the stove, they had finally figured out how to work it. They hadn’t found much food in the pantry, barely enough to fill their stomachs for tonight, which he knew would not keep all these niggas from bitchin’ and fussin’ about every little thing for very long. Bread and circuses. He had heard that somewhere before. That was how to keep the people in line, give them bread and circuses. With half his crew lifted on the copious drugs and alcohol they had brought along, the two pieces of white meat available to them all, and the three young hoodrats in the crew who were off bumping uglies with three of his homies in the adjacent rooms, well, that took care of the circuses part. With that shitty weather outside, they may be here for a while so the bread could be getting a little thin.
He had picked out the prettiest of the hoodrats for himself and she sat on the floor next to his chair, zonin’ on the cocktail of drugs she had smoked and shot-up. Lamar finally stood up, swaying drunkenly on his feet. He reached down and grabbed the young teenaged girl by the arm and jerked her roughly to her feet, dragging the pretty young black girl behind him past the enormously obese girl who was guiding the hand of the pee-wee sitting next to her where she wanted it to go between her flabby log-like thighs. Lamar and his plaything for the night stumbled into a bedroom he had proclaimed as his own and he closed the door.
It was two days before weather allowed them to leave the farmhouse for the road again, and all of them were hungry, mean, and agitated.
The group descended off of the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley, plodding through the heavy
snow that was gradually changing into a wet mixture of slushy ice. As the temperatures climbed to around the freezing point and the midday sun radiated brightly in the sky, the snow that had fallen the day before began to melt in rivulets of running water. Their footwear was soon soaked and their feet numb from the cold that seeped in with the moisture.
They bypassed the first two exits into Waynesboro since there were no apparent easily-obtainable resources that could be scavenged from what they could see at either of those exits. As they approached the last of the three Waynesboro exits the urban sprawl from the town became evident on both sides of the snow-covered highway. Steven realized that the weather was forcing another short day of travel. They would have to find a place to hole up, preferably a home with a fireplace or woodstove. Most of the upper-middle-class homes in the area would have one or both. They could use the home as a base to scavenge food and supplies from the various stores in the area.
They walked miserably up an off-ramp past a large chain hardware store, becoming more alert for any sign of the Loonies as they entered what was once a bustling hub of humanity. When they reached the top of the ramp they decided to take the overpass across the highway to where they had spotted homes not too far away behind a sprawling storage facility. Kera told the other women to look for chimneys or stovepipes protruding from the top of houses to determine which ones they would try to get in to.