by Dave Lund
Apollo glanced at Lindsey. Instead of a face flushed with embarrassment, she gave him a sly smile as he walked off.
“Sorry to break up fun time in fantasy land, mano, but we’re on mission; you need to get your shit squared.”
“You’re right. But this isn’t like any mission we’ve ever run together over the past fifteen years. Besides, what’s wrong with being friendly?”
“Nothing. Just remember your prayers.”
Apollo bowed his head. “Dear Lord, please don’t let me fuck up.”
“Exactly.”
Thirty minutes passed as Apollo and Chivo checked the load out in the Land Rover, checking equipment off the list each of them held. Lindsey joined them, M4 clean and reassembled, magazine inserted into the rifle and weapon on safe.
Chivo, satisfied with the inspection, unfolded a sleeping pad and lay down, pulling a poncho liner over his head. He quickly fell asleep. Apollo was always amazed at how quickly Chivo could fall asleep. The three had decided earlier that since the time was very short and the facility secure, they could all three sleep at the same time. Apollo walked to where Lindsey sat, laying out her sleeping pad.
“Lindsey, we only have a quick hour to sleep. Bag out while you can.”
“How far do we need to travel today?”
“Chivo thinks it will be about three hours to reach the AO, Area of Operation, for the rescue attempt.”
Apollo turned to walk around to the other side of the Land Rover.
“Please don’t leave me alone. Why don’t you lay down here next to me?”
Apollo looked over his shoulder to where Chivo lay sleeping and then back at Lindsey.
“OK, let me get my bed roll.”
Apollo returned to find Lindsey lying on her sleep pad and laid his head a few feet away from her, pulling a poncho liner over himself. Lindsey stood and pushed her sleeping pad next to Apollo’s and lay down again, draping her arm over his chest and resting her head on his shoulder.
“This is better,” Lindsey said with another smile.
The Window
Bexar limped up the Oak Spring Trail to where it rejoined The Window Trail. He felt the intoxication of the whiskey fading, the strenuous hike on an injured leg having a strong sobering effect, and his mind was fuzzy from the Vicodin even though it helped take the edge off the pain. His thoughts were just out of reach. Bexar looked up the trail and towards the eastern horizon. The glowing approach of sunrise was his enemy. His only chance to get near the cabins to lay an ambush would be to get past the cabins on the Pinnacles Trail before fading into the woods, but to do that, he needed to get to the trail before daylight. The trail passed very close to the camping area, the hotels, the parking areas, and the cabins to give visitors easy access to the system of trails in The Basin. However, Bexar’s immediate problem was that the rest of the morning’s hike was all uphill.
The camping area passed on Bexar’s left and he approached the back of The Basin Convenience Store before taking a fork in the trail to his right and passing behind the hotels. The rusty metal sign said the trail’s name was Laguna Meadows, and as many times as Bexar had been in the park, he didn’t recognize that name. He’d always thought it to be a part of The Window Trail from the cabins.
The sky was turning light gray as Bexar passed his old cabin. He smelled cigarette smoke, heard someone snoring loudly, and heard someone else coughing. Bexar could only hope they didn’t notice him passing just below the back porch of the cabin. The trail widened out to a small rock-covered road that went to the large water tanks the entire Basin used. They were one of the sets of tanks at which Bexar had installed solar panels. Taking cover a few feet off the trail, Bexar stopped for a moment to catch his breath, drink some water, and listen to the surroundings while gathering his thoughts. The big green tanks loomed like dark shadows in the early morning light. Bexar jerked in excitement, realizing he could shut off the water supply to the cabins. He scanned the area around him to see if anyone had noticed and limped up the trail as quickly as he could.
Reaching the fenced area around the water tanks, Bexar opened the gate; the lock and chain had been removed the first time he visited the tank weeks ago. Sheltered under a lean-to with a metal roof were the main valves for the tanks. One controlled the water intake from a tank down near The Window; the other controlled the output to provide The Basin hotels, cabins, and restaurant with water. Using a large piece of angle iron lying next to the tank as a level, Bexar pushed hard against the valve. Slowly, it rotated closed. He had no idea how much water was in the pipes and how long that water would last before water stopped flowing out of the faucets, but he hoped it would be soon.
Closing the gate behind him, Bexar limped into the clump of trees and brush near the tanks, took cover, and waited.
CHAPTER 41
The Basin
February 17, Year 1
The water wasn’t hot, but it flowed from the showerhead, which was more than Russell had enjoyed since the world stopped. He stood with his arms against the shower wall, water running over his head and down his back. Two naked women rubbed soapy washcloths on his body. He may not have hot water, but he was the king of the new world and now he didn’t even have to bathe himself. Russell thought that was a fair trade.
The best part of the women bathing him was the last part. Both of them would spend extra time “cleaning” his dick. They had just started when the water cut off.
“What the fuck?”
Russell looked at the water knobs and turned them both off and on again with no result.
“God dammit.” Russell pushed one of the women out of his way and stepped out of the shower. The back of her head bounced off the sink basin with a thud and she collapsed on the floor, a small trickle of blood starting to drip down her face. Russell stepped over his new bitch, whom he had found untied when he returned to the cabin the night before. This time her hands were tied tighter and also tied to the bed frame. One of her eyes looked like it was swollen shut, but Russell didn’t care. He thought it was the start of teaching his new bitch her place. He pulled on his dirty jeans and a sweatshirt and, lighting a cigarette, stepped out of the cabin into the cold morning air.
“Buzzer, get over here!”
A prospect opened the door to a beat-up van with no windshield that was sitting in the middle of the parking area and jogged to Russell. “Buzzer’s dead, President Russell.”
“Shit, right. OK, you get someone to go with you and figure out why the fuck the water stopped.”
The prospect turned and jogged back towards the other cabins behind him to find the only other prospect left besides himself.
Pyote, Texas
Apollo’s eyes snapped open. Lindsey’s arm was still on his chest and her head on his shoulder. Careful not to disturb her, he raised his free arm to look at his watch. 0500. Shit, it’s time to get wheels up. At least he’d woken up before Chivo found them. He didn’t know why he cared that Chivo cared. Chivo wasn’t the team leader; there was no team leader. Hell, before being sheep dipped out of the Army, they both held the same rank. He and Lindsey were grown-ass people and it shouldn’t matter. Apollo slowly extracted himself from under Lindsey’s embrace, pulled the poncho liner off him, and began packing up his bedroll. He stuffed it in the Land Rover before shaking Chivo’s shoulder. Waking his buddy resulted in a pistol being pointed at him while Chivo’s eyes focused and his brain caught up with his surroundings. As quickly as the pistol had appeared, it disappeared back into his holster. After a quick breakfast of MREs, the unlikely trio was in the heavily laden Land Rover driving towards the ramp and the surface.
Chivo leaned out the driver’s window and punched in the same sequence of numbers. The roof above the ramp raised with a muffled hiss as the hydraulics pushed the small concrete building up. After Chivo drove to the surface and onto the dark desert floor, Apollo exited the SUV and closed the entrance behind them. They weren’t sure if they would need to stop back again to resupply, and
it wouldn’t do to have their bountiful supply cache looted or filled with undead.
The sky began to take a flat gray color as sunrise crept over the eastern horizon. Apollo had a notebook road atlas that had been found in the cache site. He flipped through the pages and compared the handwritten directions they had. “OK, back out to the frontage road, head east about two clicks to FM 1927, and turn south.”
Chivo followed the directions and made the turn. The open expanse of the west Texas desert lay before them, and all they saw in the dim morning light was miles and miles of nothing dotted with pumper jacks. The six five-gallon cans of diesel fuel strapped to the roof from the supply cache and the refilled fuel tank of the Land Rover gave Chivo more confidence that they could reach wherever they needed to drive without too much concern with fuel economy. So, he took the opportunity with the open road to push the accelerator a little further towards the floor than he had yesterday. The desert blurred by beside them; they saw no cars, no people, nothing on the small Texas FM road. The morning grew lighter as they turned onto FM 1776 and continued south towards the AO, Big Bend National Park.
The sun continued its march into the sky and, without warning, the Land Rover approached the frontage road for I-10. Chivo stopped the SUV and over the sound of the engine they could hear it. All three of them climbed out of the Land Rover and onto the roof rack. Apollo raised a pair of field glasses and looked south towards I-10. An unfathomable mass of walking corpses was trudging eastbound on the highway. Cars groaned as they were pushed out of the way by the pressure of the sea of dead bodies. Like pebbles pushed to the beach by the rising tide, the cars slid to the side of the mob and onto the shoulder of the highway. Some of the zombies stumbled out into the low brush of the desert trees next to the highway, but most continued their mindless journey eastward like rats following the Pied Piper. Apollo scanned left and right with the field glasses.
“I don’t see an end or a beginning. I couldn’t even begin to guess how many there are.”
“Un Chingo. I don’t want to know; I don’t want to wait to find out. How does the bridge look?”
Their road, thankfully, was not I-10, and it crossed over the Interstate instead of under it.
“Looks clear.”
“Then we better get moving before those dead bodies figure out we’re up here.”
They climbed back into the Land Rover and quickly drove south. The far side of the bridge was clear, and now, on Highway 67 in the open desert, Chivo pushed the speedometer above seventy miles per hour, quickly leaving the horde of undead behind them. He had no desire to be anywhere near that many walking corpses, nor did the others.
CHAPTER 42
The Basin
February 17, Year 1
Bexar heard the grumbling voices and the heavy boots kicking rocks on the trail before he could see them. His rifle and go-bag lay hidden in the brush behind a nearby tree. Bexar gripped his heavy CM Forge knife in his hands and knelt in the shadows behind a tree near the gate to the water tanks, the green blanket poncho further breaking up his outline.
“I don’t fucking know. All I know is that none of the cabins have water and these tanks might be the problem and I’m trying to get back on Russell’s good side after that botched pharmacy raid.”
“Seriously, what the fuck did you do with that?”
“I didn’t do anything. The other assholes used too much C4 and blew the fuck out of the Walmart.”
“It doesn’t matter. We need water to get started cooking down all that gear or we’re going to be in serious trouble when everyone runs out of the shit.”
“No shit, brother.”
The two bikers passed a few feet from Bexar; their cuts only had a curved patch on the back that labeled them as prospects, not full members of the club. He didn’t care. They were part of the bike gang, and therefore, they would die.
Bexar’s heart raced. He had used his knife to dispatch zombies, but he hadn’t killed a living person with a knife before. His mind flashed with a series of memories of horrific stabbing deaths that he’d worked as a patrol officer in what felt like a lifetime ago. His right hand squeezed the knife handle; Bexar took a deep breath and as quietly as he could stepped out from the bushes. The two prospects stopped at the gate to open it. Bexar took three fast steps and plunged the knife deep into the side temple of the biker on the right. Bexar’s knife stuck and was pulled out of his hand as the dead man fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. The second biker turned to face his dead buddy and stood with his mouth open, frozen in place from the surprise. Bexar’s right hand fell to his pocket and his old Emerson folding knife opened in a flash. Bexar took a step forward and jammed the full length of the blade into the base of the biker’s neck. This time Bexar was ready for the pull on the knife and kept a tight grip on the handle. The biker’s hands grasped his own neck; a sickening gurgle rattled from his mouth and the severed artery in his neck sprayed Bexar in blood as the biker fell to the ground.
Reaching down, Bexar put his boot on the side of the first biker’s face and pressed down while pulling his heavy knife out of the skull with a wet sucking sound. He cleaned the blood and small pieces of brain matter off his knives using one of the biker’s shirts before putting the knives away. Bexar searched the dead bodies and found more meth, some marijuana, and a glass pipe for the meth, and each of them had a pistol stuck inside his motorcycle vest. Bexar had no use for the drugs, but the pistols were each made safe and put in his go-bag. He then dragged the dead bodies to the other side of the tree line, shouldered his go-bag, slung his rifle, and walked through the trees to the back of the southernmost cabins. The back roofline nearly reached the face of the hill, so Bexar was able to easily and quietly climb onto the back side of the cabin’s roof. He took off his green wool blanket poncho and lay on the roof, covering himself with the poncho. The shingles were very cold against his body and Bexar hoped that the rising sun would help warm him up some more. Using the green blanket for warmth and as a blind, Bexar raised the cheap pair of binoculars he’d taken from the Terlingua store and surveyed the scene before him.
The cabins were the same, and Malachi’s Scout sat in the parking lot further down the mountain by the motels and the store. A very beat-up white van with no glass in any of the windows sat in the middle of the parking area for the cabins. A man with long hair smoking a cigarette walked out of view and back into Bexar’s old cabin, slamming the door shut. As much as Bexar wanted to bust into the biker camp like Chuck Norris in Delta Force, he knew better and decided to wait and observe. If he could figure out where Jessie was and pick off the bikers one by one in secret, he might actually succeed.
Marathon, Texas
Chivo stopped the Land Rover on the west side of town. The three of them stood on the roof rack of the SUV again; Apollo once again had his field glasses to his face, surveying the scene ahead of them.
“Looks like there are a couple of dozen walkers milling about in the street.”
Chivo had the laminated map square out of the notebook and in his hand. “I don’t really see a better way around the town. I think we would be better off driving through on the main road and dodge the walkers as we get near them.”
The three of them stood quietly, each trying to think of alternate plans. Lindsey broke the silence. “Well, if we’re going to do it, let’s quit waiting around and go do it.”
Apollo and Chivo looked at Lindsey with surprise and approval. It had only been a few days, but the woman in front of them was quickly changing to adapt to their new world.
They climbed back into the Land Rover, and Chivo drove them into town at a steady forty miles per hour, but slowed to thirty as they began nearing the first group of undead. Instead of trying to shoot clear a path, both of the side windows were closed and Chivo turned the steering wheel sharply left and right to dodge each new corpse in the town’s welcoming committee. As quickly as they entered, they were leaving Marathon and turning south on Highway 385, the zombies behind t
hem left reaching for the vehicle as it vanished into the distance. Back into the open desert, Chivo pushed the gas pedal and brought the SUV up to a steady seventy miles per hour again.
A bit over half an hour later, Chivo slowed to pass by the white guard shack where the park staff took money to enter the park. The ranger station and the guard shack appeared to be deserted, but they didn’t stop to find out. Apollo dug out another laminated map and flipped through the pages before stopping on a topographical map of a mountainous area and tracing his finger along little gray lines, squinting to read the text next to them.
“According to Cliff, we need to check this area labeled the Chisos Basin. When the road T’s, take a right, go about ten clicks and take a left.”
A few minutes later, Chivo turned the Land Rover left and followed a sign with an arrow for the direction of the Chisos Basin.
“Pull over or drive past?” Chivo jerked his chin toward the road ahead.
Apollo squinted and looked ahead at the quickly approaching black speck in the distance.
“Drive past. We’ll see what he does.”
Chivo nodded and the black speck quickly grew in size until it roared by, traveling the opposite direction. It turned out to be a man on a motorcycle wearing blue jeans, black leather, and a vest with a bunch of patches sewn on it. Lindsey turned in her seat to look above all the gear and through the small piece of the back glass at the biker. Both Apollo and Chivo watched their side-view mirrors. The biker skidded to a stop before turning around and riding up on the Land Rover at a high rate of speed.
Apollo already had his seatbelt off and his pistol out, and he held it below the window where the rider wouldn’t be able to see it. The biker caught up to the Land Rover and pulled alongside the driver’s side. The rider reached under his vest with his left hand and drew a pistol, pointing it at Chivo. He yelled, “Pull over!”