Bryce turned around, and he could hear Cindy and Greg both still on the phone. Greg was talking to his son, Donny. Greg and Donny had an extremely difficult relationship and had not spoken much in the past few years. Now, Greg pleaded with his son to leave the valley and come up north to be with his family. By the sound of it, Greg was not going to get his way. He told Donny to think of his mother, sister, and nephew. In the end, he told his son that he loved him, hung up the phone, and cried quietly to himself.
Cindy, on the other hand, talked to her mother, who lived in Chicago. She told her mom to get on the next flight to Phoenix, and if that did not work to get in her car and drive out. Cindy told her mom that she could be here in a couple days if she drove it. Victoria’s grandma was not a person who let her feathers get ruffled easily, but the idea of driving for two days did not appeal to her at all.
Eventually, Cindy wrapped up her phone call, as well. Both Cindy and Greg dragged their feet on their way back to the Outlander and got in quietly.
Bryce got in the driver’s seat and asked the question, “So, are either of them coming?”
“Donny isn’t coming; he wouldn’t listen to his wife when she said that they should come up here, and he wants to be a good sheep and go to Tucson,” Greg said.
“My mom isn’t going to come either, she says it will be too hard on her body to make that long of a drive, and she looked, and all the flights have been grounded,” Cindy added.
Bryce didn’t respond, because he knew that no words would be able to heal these wounds. He also knew that both Donny and Victoria’s grandma were ultimately doomed. Bryce knew that being stuck in a major city like Chicago during an outbreak of this magnitude was a death sentence. Additionally, Bryce couldn’t understand why Donny wasn’t going to come up north with them, because Donny might have had a chance had he chosen to prepare himself at all.
Bryce and the Roberts took the short drive up to the top of the canyon and everyone piled out. Bryce headed into the forest instead of heading into the hatchery. He walked far enough into the forest where nobody could hear or see him, and collapsed on the ground. For a few minutes, he cried quietly to himself and then wiped the snot from his face.
“I can’t believe she’s actually gone,” he said to no one in particular.
He and his mother had shared a pretty decent relationship. He had no ill words to speak of her, and she had none of him. Knowing that she was gone forever made him curl up and die internally. It seemed like every time he turned a corner in the past few days, someone he knew had died or he had ended up killing someone else.
He wondered what kind of fucked-up world this was turning into.
Bryce collected himself, cleaned up his face a little bit and trekked back into the hatchery grounds. Victoria stood outside the crew quarters building with a sad look on her face. She couldn’t know for sure; of course, but more than likely she would never see her brother or grandmother again.
Bryce approached his wife cautiously. He was not very good at processing his own feelings, and was even less capable at helping others with theirs.
Figuring now was as good of a time as any, he explained to Victoria what had happened to his mother. She immediately lost whatever semblance of control she had previously. It was one thing to know that your family members might not come back, but it was another matter entirely to know for sure.
A few minutes went by while Bryce simply held his wife, and she regained her composure to some degree. Cindy and Greg came outside after they heard their daughter crying, and Bryce explained the situation to them. Everyone stood around, and took in the sounds of the forest, and nobody spoke at all.
After a little while, Bryce informed everyone that his father was on his way right now. He hoped to lift their spirits just a little bit. Benjamin was never their best friend, as he tended to be hard to get along with, much like Bryce, but after they heard that he was coming, it did lighten the mood a little.
Inside the house, Jessica could see that everyone had started to recover from their emotional slump, so she asked if they would like to wind down for bed, because it was more than dark now.
They all got ready for bed using the crew quarters’ bathrooms, which Jessica was more than happy to provide access to.
Bryce, his family, and the Roberts family headed back to their tent village after they had gotten cleaned up. When everyone was settled in, Bryce told everyone to get a good night’s sleep, because life was going to become more complicated. Bryce, however, decided to stay up and wait for his dad to come in. He would probably arrive at the hatchery sometime in the next thirty minutes, so Bryce wanted to make sure he came in without any problems. If a reasonable amount of time passed and Bryce hadn’t heard anything, he decided he would go down to the highway and call his father.
Bryce set up his post on the front porch of the crew quarter building. He had a small porch light to illuminate the hatchery, and he could see the parking lot from there. He kicked his feet up on the railing that surrounded the porch, and he waited.
Chapter Twenty
Hatchery Compound, Mogollon Rim, Arizona
Fairly late into the night, Bryce saw headlights come up the road toward the Hatchery. He knew it was definitely his father, but his level of alertness rose just in case it wasn’t.
When the car stopped in the parking lot, Bryce could see that it was a silver Mercedes. Then, he knew for sure that it was his father.
Bryce walked down the path toward the parking lot to greet Benjamin and to tell him to keep quiet, mainly because everyone was sleeping in tents, and secondly because voices carried far too well across the canyon.
Benjamin got out of the car and saw Bryce holding his AK-74 rifle and gave his son an approving nod. Bryce saw his father eye the rifle, so he showed it off.
Benjamin stepped forward to give his son a hug. It was an awkward thing for both of them, not just because Bryce had a rifle in between them, but also because neither man could remember the last time they hugged.
It seemed right given the circumstances, though. Benjamin had lost a wife, and Bryce, a mother. The two men held their strange hug for a little too long for their comfort and finally separated. Neither one of them said anything about their loss, not a single word.
Bryce and his father had a very strange relationship. Growing up, Bryce had no problems with his father, but he just wasn’t there, both physically and emotionally. It had spilled over into adulthood for Bryce in the form of emotional disconnection. Bryce had a hard time communicating on an emotional level with just about everyone in his life. It caused him to have a hard time connecting with people, and also gave him a harder outward appearance. People sometimes thought he came across way too strong. Most of all, it made for a difficult relationship with his wife; but in the end, she knew that he loved her, so they made it work.
“Come on, I’ll show you around,” Bryce told his father.
Benjamin nodded, and the two walked silently around the hatchery. It was illuminated all night long by a series of what were essentially streetlights.
He showed his father the entire complex, and both men walked in relative silence. When the tour was complete, they were both cold.
“Well as you saw we are sleeping in tents right now,” Bryce told his father.
“I thought you said you had running water, electricity and warm food,” Benjamin said with a puzzled look.
“We do, over there in the crew quarters, we just can’t stay in there yet,” Bryce replied.
“Why not, are there people in there already?” Benjamin asked.
“There is one woman; Jessica, but she is waiting for her friends to come back,” Bryce said, even though he was pretty sure they would not be back.
“Well, I don’t have a tent or anything, where am I going to sleep?” Benjamin asked again.
Bryce explained to his father how he planned on running back into Payson in the morning to get some additional supplies. The Roberts had forgotten more than a
few things, and so did he and his wife.
“We can pick up whatever you need at Walmart when we head into town,” Bryce told his father.
“Sounds good to me. We better get a decent air mattress, because my ass is not sleeping on the ground,” his father replied with a grin.
Bryce chuckled, but knew that it was true for everyone. He, his wife and the Roberts were sleeping on air mattresses as well, because they made it more hospitable than sleeping on the cold hard ground.
“For tonight I can clear out the back of the Outlander and fold the seats up, you can crash in there,” Bryce told his father.
“Sounds better than sleeping under the stars, freezing my ass off,” Benjamin replied.
Bryce and his father cleaned out some of the stuff in the back of the Outlander and got the temporary bed set up. He grabbed a few blankets for his father and said good night.
Bryce walked back to his own tent and unzipped the flap. His wife and son were in a deep sleep, and his son was snoring softly.
Next to them, Greg was not snoring softly, and Bryce could hear it, ten feet away.
Bryce just shook his head and settled in for the night.
***
In the morning the birds chirped, and Bryce saw the sun poke through his tent. He got up and put his boots on quietly to avoid waking up his son.
He told Victoria that he was going to look around the hatchery grounds a little bit more and see what he could find, and he headed out of his tent and across the grounds.
His father crawled out of the back of the Outlander as Bryce got up, and Benjamin met him in the middle of the hatchery.
“What are you doing up at the butt crack of dawn?” Bryce asked his father.
“I had to pee, what are you doing?” his father replied.
“I’m going to explore around here a little bit, and see what there is to see. You want to take a walk?” Bryce asked.
His father nodded, grabbed a warmer jacket, and after he relieved himself on a tree on the outskirts of the compound, they started to walk down the road. Bryce played scenarios over and over in his mind about how he could protect their little compound if he needed to. Being off in the middle of nowhere only worked for so long, eventually someone would find them, be it infected or otherwise.
Luckily, the road that led into the hatchery was cut right out of the side of the canyon. On one side there was a rock wall about twenty feet tall, and on the other side was a vertical drop into the stream below the road. Bryce figured that if they could just block off the road, it would keep anyone from coming up that way, then the only way to get to the hatchery after that would require the intruders to be on foot on top of the ridge. He climbed up on top of the ridge to see how far out it went, and it looked like it went on forever. Unfortunately, there was no way to guard against that other than a fence or wall of some sort.
Together, father and son walked back to the hatchery and started to poke around in the buildings spread around the compound. The main storage building had a small Bobcat backhoe, a big truck with a tank on the back, used for carrying water and fish, an oversized flatbed truck, and two large hunting four wheelers. There were all sorts of tanks, hoses, and a variety of things neither Benjamin nor Bryce understood. There were also hundreds of pounds of fish food ranging in all sorts of sizes. Additionally, there was a maintenance area with a workbench and mechanic’s tools.
After they perused the warehouse, they checked the office building. Inside the offices there were all the items found in a typical office environment, cubicles with desks, computers, monitors, printers, and an assortment of office supplies. Bryce doubted there would be anything of much use in this building, other than the small kitchen in the back that was fairly well stocked with snacks and drinks found in a typical office setting.
Next, the two men checked the visitor center. They explored the building, disregarding all of the useless information about trout and how they were grown. In a back room, they found all sorts of knick-knacks and an assortment of random junk to sell to tourists.
Lastly, they found a small shed that Bryce did not catch on his initial scouting session. Inside the shed were power tools of all kinds, including; chainsaws, drills, nail guns, and more. There was also a whole rack of shovels, rakes and all sorts of other tools.
Bryce made a quick mental checklist of the area and summed all it up in his mind. He came up with what he thought was a reasonable assessment; while it would be easy to defend the main road, the rest of the property was left wide open with positively no way to defend it. The only solution would be to encompass the entire property in a giant fence of some sort. Where they would get that much fencing or material, Bryce had no idea. It would have to be a problem for another day.
Benjamin and his son started to slowly walk back to the crew quarters when he said, “How are you holding up, son?”
“I’m doing okay, Dad,” Bryce answered, but they both knew it was a lie.
“You know, you’ve sure held it together well through all of this. I wish I was as strong as you,” his father said with a small quiver in his voice.
“I just process things differently than everyone else, that’s all,” Bryce replied.
“Yeah, you don’t process things at all. That’s not exactly healthy,” Benjamin said with a worried look. “Listen, I cried all last night thinking about your mother.”
“I know, Dad, we just have to stay strong and hang in there. Somebody will get a grip on this thing, and it will all turn out okay,” Bryce said out loud, but he didn’t believe it himself.
They both stopped went silent and walked solemnly back to the crew quarters.
As they neared the crew quarters, Jessica came out to let everyone know that she had made up a batch of scrambled eggs and bacon.
When she saw Benjamin, she said, “Oh, when did you get in?”
“Jessica, this is my father, Benjamin Sloan, he came in late last night” Bryce replied.
“Nice to meet you,” Benjamin stepped forward to shake her hand.
With that introduction out of the way, everyone in the compound piled into the crew quarters kitchen and they were served an outstanding breakfast by Jessica.
They finished up their breakfast, and Bryce told the group that he was going to go into town and get some supplies and that he would like Victoria and Benjamin to come with him. They both nodded their heads, and the decision was made.
The guys helped Jessica and their wives clean up the kitchen before they piled out into the common area of the compound.
Before leaving, they emptied what was left in the Outlander into the other four cars, mostly Benjamin’s car since it was totally empty. Bryce grabbed his rifle and the duffel bag of weapons from his Corolla. He dropped the duffel bag onto the tailgate of the Outlander and unzipped it. It was the first time he had looked in the bag, and what he found inside made him much happier.
Inside were three AR-15s, two AK-47s, and an assortment of Glocks, Kimber 1911s, and other hand guns. There were also a couple dozen extra magazines for all of the guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Now Bryce knew why the bag was so damn heavy: He had carried a small arsenal.
Benjamin and Victoria both looked at Bryce and wondered what he wanted to do with all of the firearms.
Bryce answered with a brief explanation of what happened with the armed robbers yesterday, and suddenly for Benjamin it was all clear. They might need to defend themselves going into Payson.
Bryce handed his father an AR-15 with a loaded magazine and instructed him on how to charge the rifle, take off the safety, remove the magazine, and load another. He then did the exact same thing for his wife. Lastly, he grabbed the remaining AR-15 for himself and grabbed a few extra magazines. He took out two of the Glock .45s, and handed them to both Victoria and Benjamin. They both gladly accepted, because both of them had more experience with handguns than with rifles.
With the munitions distributed, Bryce took the rest inside the crew quarters and gave
them to Jessica, Greg and Cindy. He told them to keep an eye on the road in case anyone strange came up the road, he said goodbye to his son and in-laws, and then he walked out the door.
Chapter Twenty-One
Payson, Arizona
They all gathered at the Outlander, checked their weapons, and made the half-hour drive into Payson with no problems. In the center of town where the two highways converged, they stopped at the stoplight. What they saw was absolutely insane, there were hundreds of people who cruised through the town, or stopped at the small grocery store, gas station, or they ran in and out of the shops, which lined the main road.
Bryce and his two companions were wide-eyed at the chaos, which had overrun the small town. It looked as if there were more people out on the streets than the entire population of Payson.
Undeterred, Bryce turned right onto the highway and headed toward the Walmart. When they turned into the parking lot of the Walmart, they suddenly understood the scope of the chaos. People ran around with shopping carts that spilled over with merchandise, as they bumped into each other and cursed at each other. From the outside it looked as though the horde of people wandered in and out of the building like enraged fire ants.
Bryce, Benjamin, and Victoria decided it was best to leave the rifles in the car, but all three men brought their handguns concealed in holsters.
The three of them each grabbed an abandoned shopping cart and entered the store. They headed over to the grocery aisles first, but found most of the shelves were already empty. The place had been picked clean in most areas. They looked at the list that Cindy, Victoria, and Jessica had prepared, and would not be able to get everything due to shortages, so they picked out what they could and moved on after filling up an entire shopping cart full of food items.
Next, they moved to the back of the store toward the camping and sporting goods. The camping equipment had not been picked through as much as the rest of the store. People must have decided to stay in their homes instead of taking a camping trip like Bryce and his family.
The Extinction Pandemic: A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Hatchery Compound Book 1) Page 9