by Dave Lund
Back at the camp, Jessie was digging into the cooler for the last of the cheese sticks for the kids’ after-nap snack, when Sandra called to her, “Come here Jess, I’m getting the BBC again!”
Jessie trotted over to Sandra and hushed the children so they could listen.
“… encounter an infected person, they will die from the infection and reanimate shortly after death. Current reports have death from an infected bite coming as quickly as fifteen minutes, and as long as four hours. Prior to death, the newly infected experience high fever and hallucinations. After succumbing to the infection, the dead reanimate anywhere from almost immediately to ten minutes later. Children are reported to reanimate quicker. Persons who die without being bitten by an infected are also reanimating. Thus far, authorities have not found anyone who is immune to the Yama Strain. Upon death, immediate trauma to the person’s brain and/or brain stem will prevent reanimation. Persons who have already reanimated will not stop until the brain and/or brain stem is destroyed. Further reports …”
“Damnit, lost the signal again.”
Sandra and Jessie heard a low whistle come from the tree line. Pistols up towards the sound, Bexar and Jack walked slowly into the open. Sandra and Jessie told their husbands about the BBC broadcast, and in turn, Bexar outlined their plan to relocate.
Denver International Airport, Colorado
Cliff made his way along the runway and taxiways back towards the terminals. He didn’t plan on going into the terminals, but he had to get past them to get to the large parking lots. In the darkened windows of the terminal he could see a lot of movement. He paused to look up at the glass and saw an undead child, a little girl, pressed against the glass, clawing with her dead hands to get to the living prey. The little girl was followed by an undead adult, then another and another, until, in the blink of an eye, the entire glass wall of the terminal was full of undead, hungry for Cliff.
In hindsight, Cliff realized he really should have walked out on the runway towards the other side of the airport, away from the terminal, but a lot of good that lesson did him now. He broke into a light jog in an attempt to gain some distance from the growing mob of undead. He wasn’t sure how strong the glass was, but however strong it may be, he was sure it would eventually give way.
Rounding a baggage cart on the jog, Cliff ran chest first into a reanimated line worker still wearing his cold weather gear, orange vest, and ear protection. Cliff palm-heel struck the undead man in the chest as he was trained to do, his reaction instinctual from training, but it didn’t work against someone who felt no pain, no surprise, and was not alive.
Too close to bring his rifle up, Cliff’s hand fell to the Safariland holster on his right thigh. Pushing the hood forward and depressing the ALS button automatically, he brought his Sig Sauer pistol up and was only able to fire a single shot before the undead had pushed him backwards. It was enough; the reanimated line worker’s skull exploded out from the blast, covering Cliff with brain matter, blood, and pieces of bone.
Cliff’s ears were ringing. He hadn’t thought about his pistol not being suppressed, which made him wonder how many other workers were on the flight line in the working level of the airport. The answer was not long in coming, as a chorus of moans erupted from the darkness under the terminal.
“Well, shit on me,” muttered Cliff while holstering his Sig. He was only a few thousand feet from the fence line, and almost a mile to the little bit of safety the fence offered from the hordes of undead coming up from the depths of the airport. He knew he didn’t have to run fast, he just couldn’t stop running. With a deep sigh, Cliff started his run for the fence, running for his life.
CHAPTER 23
Denver International Airport, Colorado
Like a running back making a dash for the sideline to gain speed and distance from a defender, Cliff ran at an angle, away from the terminal and towards the fence line. Former flight line workers, now part of the legion of undead, continued to spill out of the dark underbelly of the airport’s terminal at an alarming rate. Their speed wasn’t an issue, as they lumbered forward at roughly the speed of an elderly power-walker at the mall; the problem was the sheer number of them.
Cliff didn’t have the ammo or the time to put every one of those things down for good. He knew he had to make the fence to get more time to escape. Getting closer to the fence, he broke right, towards a large gate chained closed with a padlock.
Unlike in the movies, shooting a lock off a chain is fairly hard. If he was on a mission that would require breaching, he would use his modified Remington 870 shotgun, but Cliff only had his pistol and rifle.
As he reached the gate, the nearest threat was closing in from about forty yards away. Cliff took an angle to the padlock and quickly put six rounds into the top of the lock with his rifle. It broke open just in time for him to spin around and put down the four closest threats with head shots.
Now with a little more time, he was able to twist the lock, breaking it loose, and pull the chain out of the gate. He pushed the gate open and stepped through. Retrieving a pair of flex cuffs from his back pocket, he then secured the gate. It wouldn’t hold the approaching horde forever, but it should slow them down, or at least he hoped it would.
Taking a moment to catch his breath, Cliff scanned the large parking lots before him. There was some movement, but nothing that looked like it was alive or undead. Instead of using typical movements from cover-to-cover close to the vehicles, he gave the parked cars a wide berth as he proceeded down the aisles.
The threat he faced didn’t lay in wait to ambush you at a choke point, no, they grabbed you if they could and would bite to kill. The added space didn’t give him any cover from a gunman, but it gave Cliff the reaction time he needed from a surprise undead reaching for a kill.
He needed a vehicle that would run well, but old enough that it wouldn’t have been affected by the EMP. The Colorado concrete field was full of a seemingly endless supply of new Subarus and Toyotas. Walking at a fast pace across the ends of the aisles, he saw a vehicle outline that gave him some hope. The roofline was unmistakable, and happened to be a type of vehicle he had experience with.
Walking to the vehicle, Cliff found an old Volkswagen bus, an air-cooled, Type 2 VW Transporter. The van was a bay-window, and should have originally had a 1600cc motor from the factory in Wolfsburg, Germany. It looked to be in good shape, so the owner either maintained it well, or had spent time and money making it right.
Lifting the rear deck lid to look at the motor, Cliff found a clean engine bay with an upright motor that sported dual Weber carburetors. It looked like he’d found another VW fan who had built up a nice van. The old-style vent windows on the passenger side made for easy entry, and in less than ten minutes Cliff had hotwired the van. The old VDO gauge on the dash indicated that there was three-quarters of a tank of gas left, which he hoped was accurate; regardless, he would have to stop for gas a few times to make the long drive to Nevada.
CHAPTER 24
December 29th
Cache Site near Maypearl, Texas
Jack sat through the last night watch, stoking the fire’s coals to start a kettle for coffee. The rest of the group would be waking up soon. He hoped today would start better than the day before. Yesterday Jack and Bexar had had to kill their longtime friend. He knew that Malachi had already technically been dead, but it still hurt to have to put your friend down. Still, he hoped someone would do the same for him if he ended up like that.
The last four hours sitting and listening in the dark winter night gave Jack plenty of time to think of a plan with a schedule to leave, and how to make it happen. Clearly, they would need to use the bulk of Malachi’s gear and cached items, although they would leave some of the duplicates here at the cache site due to weight and room constraints in their caravan of vehicles. Between their three vehicles and the supplies they carried, Jack calculated they had right about ninety gallons of gasoline. Guessing that each of the trucks could average abo
ut fifteen miles per gallon if they kept their speed around fifty miles per hour on the open road, and that it was about six hundred miles from Maypearl to Big Bend, they only had half the amount of gasoline they needed to make the trip.
They would have to scavenge gas en route, unless they only took two of the trucks. Then they could make the trip with barely enough gas, but they would lose a lot of their newly gained supplies in the trade. They would also need to restock their gas stores before getting into the park because there were only two gas stations in the park, assuming that they hadn’t already been drained dry. Besides losing the ability to carry more gear, if they took two trucks and one failed, they would be in a lot of trouble. No, he thought, better to take all three trucks.
Dawn was beginning to break over the horizon when Bexar walked up to the fire pit, stamping his feet to try to warm up. “Jessie’s still sleeping and has Keeley in her sleeping bag to keep her warm. We really should have bought the wood stoves for the tents; that would have made for easy cooking and a comfortable tent at night.”
“Yeah Bexar, if it wasn’t for the dead walking, we could have bartered for something over the summer, or bought it with our silver coins, but we missed the planning meeting for the end of the world—who would’ve guessed zombies?” Jack replied sarcastically. “Well, I’ve been thinking about our trip, and before we do anything else, we have to decide if we’re taking all three trucks or just our two.”
Bexar thought for a moment. “I’d say we at least try to start with all of them, then at least we have a backup, and could bring more of our gear.”
“I agree,” replied Jack, “but gas supplies are going to be a bitch. Also, I think we should bring as much of Malachi’s gear as we can even though I’m figuring the trip to be roughly six hundred miles, and we only have enough gas to get about halfway there. How are we going to siphon more fuel, don’t modern cars have a screen or something to prevent that?”
“Yeah they do,” said Bexar, “but it isn’t too big of a deal. With a truck we can get under and puncture the tank to drain it into our cans. With a car you just pull the back seat bottom out, the fuel pump access is there and easy to get off. It’s popular with drug runners who pack gas tanks with dope.”
“Really? Guess I didn’t realize that, makes sense though. That’d be pretty funny if we found a car full of dope while trying to source gas,” Jack laughed.
Bexar and Jack spent the next three hours laying out all their gear, packing and sorting it for the trip. Jack would lead the convoy in his FJ, Sandra and Jessie and the kids would be in the middle driving the Wagoneer, and Bexar would be in the Scout in the rear position. Like a diplomatic escort, the wives and children would be in the protected position of the convoy.
The sun was low in the western sky when the group finally thought to check the GPS unit Malachi had packed in a Faraday box in the cache. Yesterday it wouldn’t turn on and they initially thought it hadn’t survived, but while planning the route it occurred to them to try plugging it into one of the trucks to see if the batteries were merely empty.
Jack retrieved the Garmin GPS, plugged it into the cigarette lighter on his dash, and the device turned on. After booting and calibrating it, Jack entered their destination as the main Ranger’s Station in Big Bend National Park. The calculated route showed a drive time of eleven hours.
“Dude, it works, I can’t believe it. Also, it says the time is 4:30 p.m., so it’s nice to know what time it is again.”
“Good job, Jack. I think it’s too late to leave today, but we should plan for first light tomorrow or the next day.”
Outside of Denver, Colorado
Cliff was happy with how well the VW’s owner had rebuilt the van. The motor sounded great, and even the steering was tight. He drove the van through the airport exit and turned onto E-470 to try to stay away from the heart of Denver, driving on the wrong side of the highway because of the blocked traffic.
A plane had crashed onto the highway near I-75, and part of the road was completely impassable. As much as he would have enjoyed driving to Longmont to get a beer from the Left Hand Brewery, it just wasn’t going to happen. Nearing I-25, it looked like much of Denver was burning; he guessed a lot of the fires had started when all the commercial aircraft began falling out of the sky. They weren’t shielded from an EMP like Air Force One had been.
The traveling was slow going, taking Cliff the better part of the day to make the trip around the outside of the city and onto Colorado State Highway 128. He had come across many undead, but had yet to see another living person. He was convinced that if anyone else was still alive in Denver, they weren’t long for this world. The Yama Strain had definitely taken hold.
Soon the sun would be low against the mountains to the west, so Cliff needed to find shelter. He needed food and water, but more so he really needed more gas. The upgraded motor the van’s owner had installed worked great, pushing the old German steel over the mountains, but the added power came with a hefty fuel price. For almost the past three days, Cliff had been running on no sleep and little more than a couple of protein PowerBars and some water. To his right was a sign for Wal-Mart, but he hadn’t been too excited about going to Wal-Mart before the dead had started walking, much less now that it was probably full of undead. Finally he saw a sign for Walgreens. He hoped it would have less people than a big-box store, and that there would be some food and water left on the shelves.
Cliff circled the parking lot to check for any signs of undead before backing onto the sidewalk in front of the main doors. Exiting the van, he left the motor running; he was sure it would attract the undead, but at least he wouldn’t be left trying to get the van started while under attack.
Although the storefront windows faced the waning afternoon sun, the interior of the store was surprisingly dark. Cliff pushed the momentary switch on the Surefire light on his FN; it helped but things weren’t as good as they could have been. The reanimated cashier stood near her post, a large piece of flesh missing from her left shoulder. As she moaned and reached for Cliff, he quickly dispatched her with a suppressed round to the forehead. The sound of the rifle, even though suppressed, brought forth a chorus of moans from the darkened back of the store.
Patience is a virtue, he thought, and was rewarded by the sound of shuffling feet coming towards him. There weren’t any real surprises, and by the time the last moan had been silenced, a dozen bodies lay near the cash register, released from their fate as a walking corpse.
Grabbing a shopping cart, Cliff held his pistol in one hand while dragging the cart behind him with the other. Every can of soup and chili on the shelf went in the cart, as did the beef jerky and protein bars. Opening the cooler, he was greeted by the horrid smell of rotting meat and sour milk. The bottles of Gatorade and water went in the cart, but then a cold, gray hand shot out through the drink racks, grabbing him by the wrist and trying to pull him into the cooler.
“Fuck!” He shot three times before the undead’s grip went slack. After taking a few moments to catch his breath from the scare, Cliff loaded the van with his new supplies and left.
Making an illegal U-turn, he pointed the van towards the Rocky Mountain Municipal Airport. If he was lucky he might find a hangar to park the van in and take shelter. If he was lucky, he might find some cars to siphon gas from in the morning, but worst case scenario, he thought the van might run on Avgas, or aviation fuel.
CHAPTER 25
Broomfield, Colorado
Reaching the Rocky Mountain Municipal Airport in Broomfield, Cliff continued out onto the ramp to see where the smaller General Aviation aircraft were parked. Parked on the ramp to his left were a handful of small aircraft. That there weren’t many wasn’t too surprising since it was the dead of winter, but at least it gave him a direction to drive.
He was thankful that this airport was much smaller than DIA, but it was still larger than most small municipal airports around the U.S. From what he could see, there weren’t any undead out in
the field or on the runway, which made sense since most pilots wouldn’t have been at the airport in the middle of the Colorado winter when the attack came. Luckily, the airport also had a fence wrapping around most of the perimeter, so there was a little protection gained from that.
A few moments later he located the old T-style hangars with sliding doors. He didn’t want to use a hangar with a door that rose upwards, because although he could hand-crank the door up, it would take forever, and could put him in a bad position if he was trying to leave in a hurry. Faded blue paint and a padlock were all that kept him from gaining access to the second hangar from the end. Removing this padlock would be quieter than the last; he’d had the time to make a shim for the lock.
Emptying a Dr. Pepper soda can he had taken from Walgreens, Cliff took out his SOG multipliers and began cutting the can. Making a modified “T” shape with a point, he bent it slightly; now it would only take a little effort to shift the Master Lock padlock open.
In short order Cliff had opened the faded blue doors and found an old Beechcraft Bonanza sitting in the hangar. Further investigation of the hangar found it clear of persons, dead or otherwise, and a pull bar, which he used to pull the plane out of the hangar, letting it roll towards the tie-downs. It was a nice, well-maintained airplane, but he really didn’t care where it ended up or if it was damaged in the process, he just needed it out of the way.
Once the hangar was emptied of its aircraft, Cliff backed his procured VW van into the hangar and turned off the motor. It was time to close up shop and scavenge for the supplies he needed out of the airport.