by W. J. Lundy
“You lock the door?” Joey whispered.
Brooks looked back at the man and shook his head. “They’d get in anyway. Better to let ’em in than have the fuckers push the barn over.”
Sucking in his upper lip, Joey nodded his approval. Even though the things were at least thirty feet below him, he could still hear their deep sniffs as they tried to detect their prey. Joey looked over at him, and Brooks held a finger to his lips to unnecessarily silence the man. Joey backed away, dropped to his rear, and pressed against a stubby rail on the platform. As he leaned back, the railing creaked and wobbled. Joey’s eyes got big, and he shifted his weight forward, shaking his head. “This is a shitty spot to stay the night,” he whispered.
Brooks frowned and pointed to the barn floor, now filling with wailing infected. “No, down there would have been a shitty place to stay the night.”
A series of distant gunshots changed the pitch of howls and screams of the Primals below. Brooks tried to move so he could see through the barn’s sides to the outpost, the gaps hardly wide enough to gain even a peek. He looked up and saw a square cut high into the gable end of the barn that faced the Three Corners Outpost. Brooks pointed at it, and Joey followed the SEAL’s gloved finger with his eyes then shook his head no. Brooks countered and nodded his head. Then, without arguing, he leaned out, grabbed onto the rough-cut rafters, and pulled himself onto them like a spider monkey.
Brooks didn’t turn back, but he could hear Joey’s muffled cursing as he moved over and under rafters toward the gable vent. He reached out for the final beam near the vent and was relieved to see another square platform was built in front of the opening. Hanging over the square frame was a large steel eyelet, probably used to hang block and tackle to get equipment high into the barn. Brooks reached down and removed his rigger’s belt and used a carabiner clip to attach a loop on the belt to the eyelet. He wrapped the other end around his fist and leaned out of the square vent.
He was a good forty feet off the ground and high enough to see over the treetops. Squinting, he could make out the roofline of the outpost a bit over a mile away. He broke a rule and looked down at the ground. The base of the barn was covered with infected, the things packed in shoulder to shoulder, swarming like an organism of its own. Brooks heard another series of gunshots coming from the outpost, and the mass below reacted. Swirling, the horde curved out and away from the barn, toward the outpost.
From his high vantage point, Brooks thought the mass moved like water headed to a drain. Primals mixed in with creepers, the numbers were uncountable. He heard Joey gasp behind him. Brooks pulled on the belt and moved himself back into the barn. He looked his friend in the eye. “I’ve never seen this many, not since…”
“Since the fall,” Joey said, finishing his thoughts. “Bro, we gotta get the hell out of here.”
Brooks turned his eyes back toward the outpost. “We’re okay up here; it’s them I’m worried about.”
Spencer finished his drink and pushed away the stew bowl. He was in the back corner of a now nearly empty tavern. He looked up to see the tavern boy walking a pair of large men out of the bar, probably leading them to the barracks tent the bartender had told him about. His own men, Billy and Doug, had sparked up a game of cards at a corner table with another trio of men. It was against regulations for them to be drinking and fraternizing with the locals while on a mission, but Spencer didn’t care. He wasn’t here to pursue the Texas scouts as he’d led Wahl to believe. He grinned slyly, scratching a line in his notebook. He didn’t have any intention of doing that. There would be no pre-dawn wake up call for his recon team. In fact, he had no desire to break camp until well after breakfast.
He felt no guilt over it; this wasn’t the US Army, and things didn’t run the way they used to before the fall. Not that he didn’t think it was important to the cause—he knew it was—but he knew that if he did, he and his men would probably end up dead. Another dead recon team didn’t do the New Republic any good. He looked back at the road atlas, tracing his fingers over their current location then moved it back toward the railroad depot. If Wahl did as suggested, something Spencer highly doubted, he would be headed back toward the Monster block to try to find the Texas forward elements. Most likely it wouldn’t work that way, and Wahl would be quickly detected and fired on by the Texas Rangers. Knowing Wahl, he would then retreat if he was lucky enough not to be killed outright.
Spencer grinned, knowing that wasn’t what was about to happen. Wahl was an opportunist and a coward. Wahl would start back toward the block, heading south on the road at first, sticking to the plan until the danger started to well up in his throat. Then he would get to thinking, and his need for self-preservation would override his eagerness to please his superiors. He would stop and think up several scenarios as to why he should head to the depot instead. Once he picked the least cowardly excuse, he would inform the battalion commander that he’d sent his recon elements in pursuit of the Texas scouts, and that he was ready to lead the battalion right to Texas.
He looked at his wristwatch. It was just after 1730, and Wahl would be reaching the depot. He wouldn’t go straight to the Battalion Commander; he’d get dinner first and make sure he had a good spot to sleep. It would be at least 1900 before Wahl checked in with headquarters. By then, the commander would be off duty for the day, and Wahl wouldn’t dare disturb him. Battalion would call him for a regular SITREP at daybreak, and then they would know they’d split up. It would be early morning before Wahl checked in and wouldn’t even attempt to get an update from Spencer until their normal noon check-in time.
He leaned back and turned to look at the radio clipped to the top of his pack. It would be sometime late afternoon before they expected any real news from him. He grinned, folded up his notebook and map, and tucked them into the top of his rucksack. Plenty of time to have another drink and recharge his own batteries.
A series of gunshots echoed from somewhere in the camp. The bar fell quiet. Spencer turned to look at the barmaid’s face—he’d learned earlier that her name was Tracey, and she wasn’t much of a people person. Even so, what looked like a confident woman when he’d met her, now showed fear. She looked toward the back door of the tavern, probably searching for the tavern boy. More gunshots sounded and bells began to ring. He stood and reached for his rifle leaning against the wall behind him. Billy was already moving to his side with Doug close behind. The other men from the card table began running from the tavern through the front entrance.
“Captain, what do we do?” Billy asked.
Spencer ignored the question and crossed the room to the bartender. The gunfire had increased to a steady cadence and was joined by the screams and shouting of men. “What’s going on?” he yelled.
“Steady bells,” she said, listening. She shook her head, her eyes still locked on the door behind her, then sighed when the young boy charged through and bolted the door. “Frank?” she called out.
The boy spun away from the door with saucer eyes; he reached down for a second locking bar and dropped it into place. “Infected at the walls. Mister Seth says he ain’t seen so many of ’em together like this. He ain’t sure if he can stop ’em all.”
“Monster block,” Spencer mumbled.
Tracey turned toward him. “What was that?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.” He turned back to his men, fearing they’d brought the infected here. Whenever a large group traveled any distance, they tended to gather more, like a snowball. With the distance from the block, there could be a thousand of them out there by now. “Grab your rifles, boys; looks like our work followed us home.” Spencer pointed to the tavern boy. “Take me to this Seth.”
Frank hesitated to look to Tracey for an answer. She stepped between the boy and the military officer and shook her head. “No, he isn’t taking you anywhere.” She turned back and grabbed Frank, pushing him behind the bar.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Spencer shouted. Tracey turned back to face
him. Her eyes quickly scanned the tavern; everyone was gone. Only the army officer and his two troopers remained.
“I’m taking Frank and getting the hell out of here. I suggest you do the same,” she said, reaching under the bar and coming up with a nylon bag already stuffed with goods. “If Seth is worried, then you should be as well. The steady bells are only used to draw any infected to the front of the outpost so families can escape or hide, whichever is their preference.”
Gunfire and ringing bells still echoed from outside. Spencer took a step toward her, but before his foot could land, Tracey had dropped the bag and a shotgun was pointed in his direction. “Now, there ain’t no time for discussion. Frank and I are leaving; you boys do whatever it is you need to. Go out that front door and head to the gate. If it’s Seth you want to speak with, you’ll find him there.”
Chapter 24
Two Miles North of the Wall, Michigan Safe Zone
Brad stepped through the gate and into the interior of the camp. It wasn’t what he expected. From the inside, he could see that it wasn’t a ring of single-stacked shipping containers, but instead a larger stack of containers formed into a massive square with an area the size of a football field in the center. He spun, looking in all directions. The high containers had windows and porches cut into them, all facing the central open yard. It reminded him of the connex housing he’d seen in Iraq and Kuwait. He turned and looked at Gyles. “How did you get them all?”
Gyles grinned. “The freeways. Also helped when we found a train with a hundred containers. Most were empty, but the structure was what we were after.”
“How big is it?” Brad asked.
“The wall sections are made up of two high and two wide. It’s fifty boxes wide and fifty boxes long. Each container is twenty-foot long, and nearly ten-foot high. What you’re looking at is a twenty-foot-tall and nearly a thousand-foot-long square. Took us less than a month once we had all the gear in place to move them here. Then another few months to assemble and cut holes and compartments to connect them all together.”
“And you kept this a secret?”
Luke stepped forward, grinning. “Not really a ‘secret.’ People know about this place, but once folks find it they don’t typically ask to leave, and even ones that do don’t have feelings for selling us out. The camp might look safe, but it’s not comfortable. It’s a soldiers’ camp.”
Brad nodded his understanding. He looked at Chelsea and could see her attention was elsewhere. To the back of the large center square were parked vehicles, surrounded by men in packs.
Luke nodded. “We were already prepping to move when you got here. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to head out without you.”
“So, you’ll just abandon this place?” Chelsea asked.
He shook his head. “Of course not; we have a contingent that will stay behind. Those things won’t breach the walls, and even if they do, they would never get inside the container compartments.”
A large steel door slid back from the container wall, revealing an opening that led to the road. Brad looked through and could see that the bus had already been moved. Several men came through the opening, followed by an open-top Jeep. The Jeep pulled off to the side, and a pair of men in faded battle dress uniforms approached Luke. Brad could see that other men in the camp had stopped what they were doing and were gathering around, forming a circle around Luke and the newcomers. “They’re close; stopped a group of them just five miles away,” the man from the Jeep said.
“How many?” Luke asked.
“The reports were spot-on: more than I could count. You all have to leave now, or you won’t get out of the walls.”
Luke pointed a finger over his head and spun it in a lasso motion. “You heard ’em, boys. Mount up.” He pointed at Brad and Chelsea over the shouting of men and the starting of engines. “You two are with me.”
Brad looked to Chelsea and grabbed his rucksack. They walked together, following Luke through the crowd and along the line of vehicles, until they reached a tall black MRAP. The vehicle was scarred and rusted. There were obvious signs of battle, with bullet marks and broken glass in the rear block windows. The sides and front were stenciled in bold white paint: Vines City PD. Over that, in blood-red letters, someone had graffiti-painted The Beast.
Luke walked to the back and tossed a small pack into the already opened rear hatch. Brad looked at the vehicle and back to Luke. “This thing has a story to tell.”
Smiling, Luke dipped his chin. “This thing has kept me alive since the fall. It might look beat up and broken on the outside, but it’s solid.”
Brad tossed in his bag and went to step inside when Luke grabbed his wrist. “Come get shotgun with me. I have Gyles in the turret; Chelsea can hold down the back.”
Chelsea didn’t speak and instead held onto her own bag as she climbed the rear ramp, Gyles following close behind. Luke moved off to the driver’s side as Brad ran up to the passenger’s door. The big door opened with a clunk and Brad pulled himself up into the seat. While the outside had been sanitized to look like a law enforcement vehicle, the inside was still military with the olive-drab appearance and the equipment racks to match. Brad removed his rifle and locked it into a rifle rack next to his right knee then clicked into his harness. He looked back when he heard the rear hatch closing up and saw Gyles sticking his head up into the turret.
Gyles pulled a radio headset over his ears and said, “We good?”
Luke nodded his head and looked at Brad, who shot him a thumbs up.
“Let’s roll,” Luke said into the microphone.
All at once vehicles began an orderly move toward the gate. All were armored in some way, but very few were military. One by one, they broke ranks and formed a single line. A large tow truck with Pop’s Towing written on the back pulled out ahead of them, and Luke followed it. Soon, they were back on the narrow dirt road that cut through the forest. It was dark and headlights were on. Brad could see Primal bodies in the road. Some were fresh, run down by vehicles in the front of the convoy, others were on the shoulder and had probably been there for ages.
“How many we got?” Brad asked.
Luke looked at him. “Twenty-three trucks, buck-twenty men.”
The radio squelched, and Luke pulled off his headset, dropping it on the radio rack. He fumbled with a switch, diverting the sound to a speaker. “Go ahead, this is Groundhog Six.”
“Groundhog?” Brad asked.
Luke laughed. “Cause every day is the fucking same out here.”
The radio squelched, and a metallic voice came from the speaker. “Groundhog Six, this is the Ranch. We’ve got zoms bumping into the walls; you want us to ignore them, or take action?”
Luke paused, looking through the headlights and at the tow truck to their front. They’d just turned onto a two-lane highway. The tow truck’s tail lights were red, and the vehicles were stacking up again.
“We’re at the wall,” Luke said, looking at Brad before reaching for the hand mic. “Ranch, this is Groundhog Six. We are at the wall and ready to move out. Go ahead and make some noise to draw them in and around you, but conserve ammo—use flares if you need to. Be prepared to button up before.”
“Groundhog Six, this is Ranch. Roger that. Ranch out.”
“Good luck, Ranch. Groundhog Six out.”
Before Luke had placed the handset back in its cradle, the vehicles were moving again. Before long, they were rolling through a section just wider than the MRAP. Without looking toward Brad, Luke spoke. “There were hundreds of cutouts like this in the wall; never really meant to be opened but put there just in case people needed to move through it in a hurry. I imagine the designers always figured it would be to let people in, not groups like us running our way out.”
“Were you here when the wall was built?” Brad asked.
“Nah,” Luke grunted. “I was with Gyles when we found this place.”
“A soldier and a Marine? How’d that happen?”
Luk
e laughed. “I was a cop first night of the fall. Gyles’s unit came in to support us.”
“Support?” Brad asked. “Not evacuate?”
“Nope. No place to evacuate to. Had more people than seats, a bunch of families with us, so leaving by foot wasn’t an option. We bundled up in a National Guard Armory, sealed up tight. The place was surrounded by wire fences, secure on all sides. We locked every door and put every man we had on the perimeter with a rifle.
“You know, we had two heavy infantry squads out of Fort Stewart. Two of the army’s best squads with all the latest toys: light machine guns, squad automatic weapons—hell, even had a Chinook with a mini gun. On top of that, a dozen National Guardsmen, and most of my department barricaded inside with them.”
“You were lucky then.”
Luke looked at Brad and slowly shook his head side to side. “We held less than twenty-four hours.”
Brad’s jaw dropped. “I’m sorry.”
“Just one story of many, brother. You know as well as I do there was no standing up to them during the fall. The fight was different then.”
Swallowing and looking back toward the passenger window, Brad said, “That it was.”
“What about you? What’s your story?”
Brad shrugged. “I was over there when it started.”
“Iraq?” Luke said.
Brad shook his head. “Afghanistan.” He reached into a pocket on his left thigh and pulled a crushed water bottle and took a long drink. “We were on patrol. Lost my company, lost my forward operating base, but lived long enough to find a way home.”
“Home from Afghanistan?!” Luke said with shock in his voice. “What, as part of the mass redeployment?”
“No, we were left behind. We kind of made our own way back. We made it to South Carolina then worked are way up through the Virginias. We were living well down that way the past year or so until this shit happened.”