by Dave Lund
“Damn, that was close.” He dabbed at the blood with his shirt sleeve. “We’ve got to get to Maypearl and hope the others make it safely. I’m not sure we can do this on our own, and we really can’t keep traveling much longer.”
CHAPTER 11
Denver International Airport (DIA), Colorado
Ever since they’d started building the airport, so many conspiracy theorists had made so many different claims about it that most of America had written off the conspiracies as crazy, but Cliff was amazed at how right some had been. The simple fact was, the facility actually existed.
Some theorized that the facility was the size of a ten-story building but built underground. Others claimed that “the grays” were housed in the facility: the little gray aliens that made contact in New Mexico in 1947 after their craft had malfunctioned.
Some said it was “the greens,” a race of shapeshifting reptilian aliens, and even that the Bush family were a part of that race of otherworldly people. From there the claims grew even wilder, but what really set off the first round of theories was one of the murals painted in the airport right before it first opened. The infamous “Children of the World Dream of Peace” mural had an imperialistic-looking soldier with a sword, machine gun, and gas mask; to the conspiracy theorists this alluded to what really lay beneath DIA, except that it wasn’t a New World Order launching pad with aliens, it was simply a facility to replace the Greenbrier bunker in West Virginia that had been exposed by the media in 1992. Regardless, Cliff still found it ironic that he was currently one hundred feet below the Great Hall at DIA, on the run, and hiding in the super-secret facility from a super-secret government experiment that had gone wrong.
Cliff crawled through a service corridor between the isolated interior walls of the facility and the cut-rock face underground. This was not the fight that Cliff had trained for when he had been recruited as a college athlete in ROTC at St. Olaf University. After graduating with a degree in Business Administration and a minor in German Studies, Cliff was whisked away to the secret training facility in Virginia known simply as “The Farm.”
After two years of intense training that rivaled what Tier-1 military special forces operators endured, Cliff then spent another two years learning specific spy tradecraft to operate sans diplomatic cover in foreign lands. Cliff was a seasoned tactical operator, but he was primarily a spy who had spent the last two years undercover as a Canadian-based clothing manufacturer in mainland China.
During his two years in China, Cliff had been trying to gather information about a possible secret Chinese facility that housed ancient artifacts from Tibet. The intelligence that his department had received was that the Chinese military had taken possession of an ancient technology, possibly alien in origin, from the Soviet Union during the collapse of the communist government. The Soviet Union had stolen the technology from Nazi Germany in 1945, who had found the artifacts during the Himmler and Hess expeditions to Tibet. The Nazi plan for a super-human army had hinged on the mythology surrounding the Tibetan artifacts, which to Himmler were sacred to his occult beliefs.
The artifacts contained spores that could bring dead primates back to life, but nothing over twenty pounds. They weren’t sure if this was due to the actual weight of the monkey, or the species of monkey. During the fall of Nazi Germany, the Russians had learned about the expedition and the experiments on the Jews, and feared that Hitler had gone through treatments so as to be unkillable. Therefore, when the Russians found Hitler’s bunker, they had taken him alive and kept him imprisoned for five years outside of Leningrad. Eventually, the Soviets realized that the Nazi scientists had not been able to solve the weight barrier.
Regardless, not wanting to take chances, they had shot Hitler in the head and burned his body before dumping his ashes into the sea. For the next forty years, the Soviets decoded the spores, learning that they contained a complex virus, but they too were unable to successfully pass the weight barrier. They did discover that other mammals were not affected by the virus, only primates.
In the thirty years since, the Chinese had gotten it right and solved the weight barrier. This much Cliff had been able to learn, but the location of the facility was still a mystery, although he had begun to believe it may be in the caves and caverns of North Korea.
Having confirmed the existence of the virus, Cliff’s organization had arranged for a group of scientists contracted with the Defense Intelligence Agency to work on this new threat. Cliff had been able to secure a reanimated dead chimpanzee for the group, who believed they were only about six months away from being able to counteract the ancient virus that had been modified to reanimate the dead. If there was any chance for the future, it lay with this group of scientists at their facility in Groom Lake, Nevada. Cliff hoped they were still safe. He needed to get to them, but first he had to get out of Denver, and to do that, he had to make it out of the damned airport.
CHAPTER 12
Maypearl, Texas
Jack drove across a small section of grass before getting to the dirt road leading to the Royal Rangers campground. The camp was built at a Soil Conversation Service Site Reservoir, which was a decent-sized lake that stocked fish. The water could be made to drink with a little filtration and chlorine treatment, and there were plenty of wooded areas that gave limited trapping for food. However, the most important part of the site was the group’s cache.
Their original idea for the cache was to have some sealed containers buried far away from the parade grounds the campers used to hold their church services, but they were afraid that some camper might dig up the cache by accident. They had ultimately decided on buying two large blue plastic water containers, nearly six feet tall and six feet in diameter, but instead of holding water, they modified them to form a single tank.
The modified tank had a top section that slid upwards, but would sit flush on the ground to prevent showing a seam. The bottom of the tank was buried, and created a watertight enclosure for the group’s supplies. By the end of that three-day long weekend trip, Jack, Malachi, and Bexar had built, filled, and buried their modified tank.
Bexar had a friend at the City’s road and sign department make a sign that looked official and read: “Property of the U.S. Government Water Conservation Program. Report Problems (888) 895-5553.” That phone number went to a call service voicemail that simply asked the caller to leave a message describing the problem. Malachi had found the number; he wasn’t sure who owned the phone number or the voicemail, but it didn’t matter since the chances of someone calling the number due to a single sign on a secluded property in Maypearl, Texas was pretty remote.
Jack was glad there hadn’t been a Royal Rangers camping trip this week, since it may have been hard to explain why they were there; then again, would the campers have stayed on site two days into The End Of The World As We Know It, or would they have fled for their homes. In reality, he figured most of them would probably still be here, albeit undead.
After about ten minutes of slow driving, Jack stopped his FJ by the blue tank. It looked just like they had left it, and he hoped the cache was still intact. Will stayed in the FJ and Sandra held watch with the AR while Jack opened the tank. First, he had to dig out the seam that was just below the surface of the ground, revealing the combination padlock. After entering the combination, Jack slid the lip of his Hi-Lift jack under the hook of the latch and began cranking. It took about a minute to raise the top section of the tank on its tracks, and it took both he and Sandra to push the top over on the hinged track to fully open the tank.
Jack jumped into the tank and inspected the cache—everything looked like it should. Unfolding the step stool left in the tank, he began lifting out his family’s cached items, followed by the group’s items. The personal items of the other families would stay in the tank in case Jack had to leave before the others arrived.
Malone, Texas, FM 308
Farm-to-Market Road 308—Bexar wondered how many signs the Texas Department of Transp
ortation had to replace each year because someone stole it, or fired a bunch of .308 holes in it. Malone was a ghost town, and Bexar couldn’t tell if it was because anyone left had hunkered down, or if they had fled to some other location, or if they were all infected. Either way, he really didn’t care since it was still better than what they had encountered in Hubbard.
Wary of another ambush, undead or otherwise, Bexar lay on the roof of his Jeep with the binoculars for nearly an hour for reconnaissance after reaching the outskirts of the town. Not seeing any activity, they moved ahead, keeping the Jeep’s speed at around fifty miles per hour, weapons drawn and ready to go. For safety, they had Keeley lay on the floorboards again covered by his Kevlar vest; Jessie was ready to go with the AR. Malone flew by the windshield, and quickly the Reed family arrived in Mertens, Texas. Ahead of them stood a small group of grain silos, all of which were on fire. Several people stood by the silos, watching them burn.
Bexar slowed by the edge of the group. “Hey buddy, is everyone okay? You shouldn’t be near those things if they’re burning; they’ve been known to explode.” The man turned, but instead of answering, moaned and lurched towards Bexar and his Jeep.
“Ah SHIT!” Bexar pulled the 1911 up from his lap, fired once into the face of the dangerously close undead, and let the clutch out on the Jeep too fast, stalling the engine. The loud report of the .45 had caused the other undead to turn and begin towards the stalled Jeep. Jessie opened the passenger door, stood in the door frame, and began taking shots over the windshield with the AR as best she could. Bexar pushed in the clutch, turning the ignition key back and forth to engage the starter while pumping the gas pedal. The motor roared to life, and Bexar took one more shot at an undead through his open window.
“GET IN!” he shouted.
Jessie sat back in the passenger seat, and hadn’t even closed her door when Bexar began pulling forward as fast as he could. Two miles down the road, he pulled the spare pistol magazine from his belt and switched the magazine in the well of the pistol. Being down two rounds in an eight-round magazine wasn’t a way to stay, so another tactical reload was in order.
CHAPTER 13
Lake Ray Hubbard, Texas
The scariest part about driving on a highway that crosses a lake and is semi-clogged with cars disabled by an EMP is not that there’s nowhere else to go and you might get stuck. No, the scariest part is that you might get stuck and eaten by a zombie. Malachi was overwhelmed by the constant stress of the past two days, and found himself driving on autopilot as he crept the Scout and trailer through the disabled vehicles. On his right, towards the heart of DFW, numerous large fires were burning out of control. To his left there wasn’t much to see, just the cold winter sky and the lake. Where did all the people from those abandoned vehicles go? thought Malachi. What happened to all the people?
As he neared the end of the bridge, he came upon a smoldering fire in the opposite lane. A semi-truck hauling a trailer full of hogs had run into the K-barrier and overturned. Dead hogs scattered the roadway around the truck, many of them savaged with large chunks of flesh missing from their throats, necks, and bodies.
As they inched forward past the front of the wrecked semi-truck, they could see a massive pile-up behind the truck, with at least thirty cars involved in the horrific accident. In his detached state, Malachi observed that major traffic accidents were practically a given after an EMP, because most cars now on the road had power brakes and power steering, all of which would fail when the motor stopped.
Movement on the other side of the barricade brought Malachi back to the present. Someone in the cab of a lifted F-250 quad-cab pickup truck was waving at them. As he drove closer and began to slow, it became apparent that the person wasn’t waving at them, the person was dead and clawing at the window trying to get to them.
“Damn,” he muttered, “where there’s one there’s two and two there’s more.”
“What?” said Amber, still staring open-mouthed at the carnage on the highway.
“Something Bexar used to say about State Troopers on the highway. If you see one, there’s another nearby. If you see two, there’s going to be a lot more. There’s a zombie in that truck and those pigs were eaten by something. I think we might have trouble.”
Slowing for a moment to plan a route through the wreckage on his side of the highway, Malachi saw more undead than he could count coming towards the center barrier, and towards his intended escape route. Glancing in the side mirror of his Scout, he saw about another dozen undead shambling towards the back of his trailer.
“Fuck! Okay Amber, looks like we’re trapped. I’m going to charge ahead and hope to clear the horde.”
Malachi downshifted and let out the clutch. The K-barrier wall was between his truck and the approaching zombie horde to his front; as long as he kept moving he could outpace the zombies coming from the rear. If he’d bought an older-bodied Scout with the flip-forward windshield, Amber could have engaged the undead to the front as he drove, but he hadn’t, so he could only press on and hope for the best. As he gained speed, the lumbering undead on the other side of the highway began tumbling over the concrete divider. Even though they weren’t very coordinated, they were persistent, and they all got back up and continued their chase.
Malachi cleared the last wreck. Taking advantage of the section of open road, he pushed the old six-cylinder motor with everything he had. Changing gears as they passed the last of the undead falling over the barrier, he knew he couldn’t stop or all would be lost.
Looking back, Amber said, “I wonder how long they’ll keep following us?”
“I don’t know Amber, but I’ll let someone else figure that one out. FIDO, let’s just go to 635.”
“Say what?” said Amber.
“FIDO—Fuck It, Drive On. I say we go for broke and push on to 635, take the loop and see how I-45 looks. The bottom end of the city isn’t as populated; we might get lucky and have a clear run to the cache.”
For the first time that morning, Malachi was able to cruise at fifty miles per hour, slowing only to dodge an occasional stalled vehicle. He realized he hadn’t seen any other moving vehicles on the road since this morning, and a dark feeling of isolation descended on the cab of the Scout as hope began to wane.
CHAPTER 14
Denver International Airport, Colorado
After two hours of feeling his way in the pitch-black darkness of the unfinished spaces between the rock face and the “exterior” walls of the underground complex, Cliff had finally found what he was looking for: one of the thirteen escape passages. He wasn’t exactly sure where this vertical shaft led, but he was sure it went to the ground level and freedom from the super-secret-base-turned-undead-tomb. Cliff hoped it wasn’t the one passage that led to an opening near the symbolic Masonic cornerstone in the Great Hall—the conspiracy theorists had gotten that one right, even if there weren’t any aliens.
Two hundred and twenty-one rungs later and Cliff was at the hatch, spinning the latch handle to release the door. Once the latch was engaged in the open position, the hatch pushed open with a hiss of hydraulic pistons and locked. Although Cliff was never really sure how deep the facility was beneath ground level, he calculated that if the rungs were twelve inches apart, he had started the climb twenty-two stories below the surface.
He had spent the climb with his FNP90 slung across his back and out of the way so it wouldn’t catch on the rungs of the ladder, but now the hatch was open to the outside world and since he wasn’t sure what awaited him, the rifle came back around to the front of his body. Leaning back against the wall of the shaft, Cliff checked the face of his Suunto Core watch and saw it was nearly 1500 hours local time. It occurred to him that his electronic watch had survived the EMP event because he had been in a shielded facility.
Reaching into the cargo pocket of his battered TAD operator pants, he pulled out a pair of Oakley sunglasses and put them on before entering the harsh afternoon sunlight. Easing upwards, Cliff poin
ted the barrel of his rifle towards the threat of the unknown and scanned the grounds before climbing all the way out of the rescue shaft. Looking through his ACOG, Cliff could see the white and blue tail of the most famous 747 in the world; he also saw that the aircraft lay broken across the ground, parts of it still burning. A pack of undead milled about near the aircraft, and Cliff assumed that the Commander-in-Chief was dead, but it was still his duty to go check.
LBJ Freeway, south of Dallas, Texas
Malachi was surprised to have found the I-635 relatively clear of vehicles and had made good time getting to the I-20. His plan was to try to make it to the I-45 and if that was clear, to push on to the I-35 to get a straight shot at Maypearl. If their luck held, they would be at the cache site in less than two hours. Malachi held his hand to the horizon. “Looks like we have about three hours of daylight left. If we can keep this pace up, we should make it to the group site in about two hours.”
“What if we don’t make it before dark?” asked Amber.
“We’ll have to find another safe place to spend the night out in Indian country,” he replied.
He knew Amber was worried; she did not want to spend another night outside of their group site. If the others were already there, they had safety in numbers. Regardless, they had still gained a little safety getting away from Dallas and all the undead people.
Cache Site near Maypearl, Texas
Jack passed Sandra the last of their personal survival stores and some of the group’s provisions out of the bottom of the tank, but left Malachi and Bexar’s stores in place. The last piece of gear he passed up was in a large, off-brand Pelican-style case. This was Jack and Sandra’s Sunforger heavy canvas wall tent, made from material purchased from Panther Primitives. Malachi and Bexar had purchased similar tents; the group had fallen in love with the tents when they had been a part of the Royal Rangers frontiersman reenactment group, Frontiersman Camping Fellowship. The tents were well-made, and were cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Not only that, they could run a wood-burning stove in the tent to heat and to cook on. Instead of the traditional wooden frame, the group had all opted for the galvanized steel poles that were much more lightweight, and took less time to set up than the wooden poles. They had even taken the time to dye the bright white canvas earth tone colors so they didn’t stand out.