by JE Gurley
When Vince had not returned by dawn, she asked Elliot to make the journey to a RV sales center outside Yuma to obtain a few campers for the overflow crowd. Trailers would provide a more permanent solution, but the long trek to Tucson or Marana would be too dangerous. RVs could provide their own heat and help alleviate the congestion in the dining hall with their small, but well-equipped kitchens. Elliot and a half dozen others he selected to accompany him loaded the bus with car batteries, extra fuel and anything else they felt they might need to bring life to the year-long-idled RVs and set out on the journey. Now, the newcomers far outnumbered the original residents. Throughout the long day, she soothed ruffled feathers and consoled people uprooted from their homes, one ear listening for the return of either Vince or Elliot. She was overjoyed when Elliot and his group returned safely before nightfall with two forty-foot-long Winnebago RVs and a Holiday Rambler longer than the school bus. Each could comfortably sleep five or six people, greatly reducing the overcrowding.
“This should help,” Elliot announced after jumping down out of one of the Winnebagos.
She nodded her agreement, unable to trust her voice. She was too worried about Vince and her husband.
Seeing her disheartened expression, he asked, “Vince hasn’t returned yet? I’ll head out as soon as we set up the RVs.”
“No,” she replied. “Tomorrow.”
He searched her face for signs of doubt. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. If … if Mace is alive, he’ll try to reach us. He might cut across the desert. You’d never find him.”
Elliot nodded. “Tomorrow then. I’ll send someone in the bus and I’ll take the ATV into the desert. Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”
As she was thinking about the possibility of Mace alone in the desert trying to reach her, a sudden convulsion shot through her abdomen. She screamed in pain, grabbing onto the side of the bus to keep from falling.
“The baby,” she gasped.
To his credit, Elliot did not hesitate. He picked her up and rushed her to the lab, yelling for Erin. He kicked open the door and laid her on one of the cots the researchers sometimes used when someone slept over during long tests. Her insides felt as if someone were pummeling her with karate kicks. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists until her nails drew blood. The uncertainty of the length of her pregnancy concerned her. If she was eight months along as she had thought, problems might arise. If she was nine months pregnant, as Erin now believed, then she was simply experiencing the first pangs of childbirth. She tried to smile at the thought, but another spasm swept through her abdomen, almost bending her double in agony. She felt liquid run from between her legs. Oh, God. My water broke.
Erin rushed in, took one look at Renda, and yelled to Elliot, “Get Suzanne. Tell her the baby’s coming.” She came and took Renda’s hand in hers, patting it gently. “It’s alright. It’s just amniotic fluid. There's no blood.”
Renda wanted to feel reassured, but fear was clasping her with its icy grip. “It hurts,” she hissed between clenched lips.
“I can administer a local anesthetic,” Erin said.
Renda quickly rejected the idea. “I can handle it.” Then she groaned as another contraction hit her. It lasted over a minute.
“Six minutes apart,” Erin noted aloud. She smiled down at Renda. “You’re going to be a mother.”
A mother, she thought. If only she knew where the father was.
Tucson, Arizona
If Mace had been aware of Renda’s imminent childbirth, no power on earth could have stopped him from being by her side. However, Captain Lacey’s distrust of him made him a virtual prisoner. His incarceration was subtle. Lacey was intelligent enough not to wish to aggravate the already uneasy truce between his soldiers and the railroad snipes, but Mace noticed the two armed guards who, although they kept a respectable distance, did not allow him out of their sight. He was sure that Lacey intended for him to be aware of the guards to judge his reaction, so he paid them no heed.
He joined the railroad men for a meal in the farmhouse. Though abandoned by its previous owners, they had locked up tight when they left keeping the contents and décor in pristine condition. Except for a good dusting, the railroad workers had done very little when they moved in. The buff and red flowered rattan sofa and chairs and the heavy gold linen curtains were a bit whimsical and Floridian for his taste.
The cook, a grizzled old man named Sinclair, ladled a large portion of beef stew onto Mace’s plate, along with two piping hot dinner rolls. He tasted the stew and smiled. He had expected stew from a can, but a lot of love had gone into the meal and it showed in the flavor.
Sinclair noticed his smile and grinned back with yellow-stained teeth. His speech, somewhat nasal and high-pitched, placed him from somewhere in the Northeast, Vermont or Connecticut. “The meat’s canned, but the vegetables are fresh grown in a greenhouse in Phoenix. If you’re wondering about the peculiar taste, it’s bourbon. The army won’t let us drink, so I add a little culinary pick-me-up for the boys.” He shivered. “Keeps the chill out. I baked the rolls this morning. Nothing like fresh bread to make any meal a feast.”
One of the men laughed. “Sinclair here couldn’t hit a spike with a sauce pan, but he can cook like the Devil himself.”
Sinclair growled at the man. “I was a better snipe at ten than you are now. My best days might be behind me, but I once…”
“Built a railroad through the Amazon,” the man finished for him, “we know.”
“Well, I did, and with poison darts stinging my backside from irate natives.”
“They must have tasted your cooking.”
“I like it,” Mace interjected to stop the good-natured bickering.
“You’re a gentleman and a man of obvious good taste,” Sinclair said. He noticed Mace’s nearly empty plate and smiled broadly. “I’ll fetch seconds.”
“You’ve made new friend,” Soweta told him. The big Zulu was sitting beside Mace working on his second helping as well.
“I don’t think Captain Lacey wants to be friends.”
Soweta frowned. “Captain Lacey is … stopien najwyzszy – most cautious. He seeks advancement in rank and fears to make a mistake.”
“Does he trust you?”
Soweta considered the question for a moment. “He knows we will do our job, but we are not military, therefore we are outsiders. No, I do not think he trusts us.” He stared at Mace, leaned closer and said softly, “The bus of which he spoke – you know those people?”
Mace wondered if he could trust Soweta; then decided he would have to. He nodded. “Some are my friends. I must get to them.”
“That might be difficult. The captain will watch you closely, at least for a while. You must show him you can be trusted. Then, I will help you leave.”
“Why would you help me?”
“I am a stranger in this land. These men are all the family I have. A man must have family.”
Mace thought of Renda. “It’s all we have.”
“Yes.” He regarded Mace for a moment, and then as he chewed his bread, whispered, “In two days a train will leave San Diego for Phoenix. On it will be over four-hundred munies. I know this because it will be necessary for us to reroute the train near Maricopa.”
“Why do you tell me this?”
“You strike me as a man who cares about such things. Besides, it would be a good time for you to disappear.”
Mace took a sip of his iced tea. “This train, I don’t know what I could do about it.”
Soweta shrugged. “Perhaps nothing. Still, it would be good if these people did not reach Phoenix.”
“Why don’t you do something?”
“I am a railroad man. This country, my adopted homeland, will need railroads to rebuild. I will not destroy them.”
“You think I will?”
“I think you are a man of conviction who gets things done.” He shrugged again. “Perhaps I was wrong.” He stood to leave. “I must inspect the
supplies for tomorrow,” he said loudly.
Mace watched him leave, wondering if Soweta’s information was correct. If so, the lives of four hundred people had just been placed in his hands, but what could he do about it. He leaned back in his seat to think.
Sinclair came up to him. “More?”
Mace waved his hand in the air. “Enough. I’m bursting.”
“I’ll take more,” Phillips called from across the table.
Sinclair sneered at him, said, “Get it yourself,” and stalked off.
Now he had two reasons to make it back to Agua Caliente safely – Renda and to plan a way to free four hundred munies. If only he knew how.
“That’s Mace’s truck alright,” Vince said. His heart had grown heavy when he spotted the smashed Tahoe beside the tracks where the train had dragged it. He stopped the jeep and walked slowly to the wreckage afraid of what he might find inside. From the strong odor of decay, he knew someone had not survived the crash. He fanned the flashlight over the crushed Tahoe and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw only one body inside. The crushed body was too mangled to identify the face, but he did recognize the plaid shirt – Garza’s. Whatever had happened, Mace had escaped the wreck.
“He’s not here,” he called to Amanda.
“Zombies,” Cy said, pointing to several bodies beside the track.
Vince followed footprints running alongside the tracks until they vanished. “If these are Mace’s, he must have hopped the train. But if it was moving slow enough for him, why didn’t the zombies follow him?”
Amanda held up a shell casing and inspected it. “Here’s why. These are from an M16.”
Vince knew an M16 might mean military, especially on a train. They had lost him. “He could be anywhere.”
“He’s not dead,” Cy said.
“No, probably not, but I don’t know where to start looking.”
Cy’s eyes strayed along the tracks. “We could follow the tracks,” he suggested, “maybe we’ll find him.”
“He could be in Phoenix.”
Cy stared at him. “So we go back and tell Renda he’s gone?” he challenged.
“Hell no! I’d rather face an army as face Renda. We need more ammunition. We can find that at Davis-Monthan. We also might pick up something heavier than your shotgun.”
Cy laid the Remington 870 across his arms. “I like my shotgun.”
“It’s good enough for zombies, but we’re going up against men. We’ll need more firepower.” He looked at the night sky. “It’ll be daylight in a couple of hours. We need to move fast. Last time I was at the base, it was overrun with zombies. Let’s hope they moved on.”
The absence of zombies perplexed Vince. According to the Tucson survivors, they had surrounded the warehouse for months. Now, they were gone, the area deserted. Why had they suddenly vanished? Had they completed the task they had set out to do and left, or were they hiding and watching? The thought of so many unseen eyes watching him sent a shiver through Vince.
“Come on,” he said and walked back to the jeep.
On his first visit to Davis-Monthan at the beginning of the zombie plague, while he still wore the Air Force uniform he had been so proud of, Vince had fought his way off the base through a horde of the bloodthirsty creatures. Now, as he sat at the security gate looking in, he could detect no sign of movement. The night was eerily quiet. He welcomed the far off call of a coyote seeking its companions.
“The armory is on this side of the field. We go in fast and quiet. Pick up any weapons you see lying around. We might need them.”
He pressed the accelerator and the jeep leaped as it took off. He ignored the skeletons still clothed in the tattered rags of military uniforms littering the street and the sidewalks and concentrated on any movement in the shadows. Although, they now roamed all hours of the day, the pre-dawn hours still belonged to the zombies, their hunting time. The armory looked deserted but he took no chances. One of the loading bay doors stood open. He drove straight through the wide door and slammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt on the concrete. They swept the interior with their flashlights but saw only stacks of crates. He wrenched an Air Force M4-A1 from the hands of a skeleton wearing the blue beret of the security forces, checked it for ammo, and slung it over his shoulder.
“Look for crates marked M4-A1 carbines and boxes of 5.56x45mm ammo.”
Amanda and Cy raced down aisles searching the labels on crates with their flashlights. Vince went to a storage area separated from the warehouse by a chain link fence. The gate was locked. Picking up a length of two-inch pipe, he jammed it between the gate and the fence post and levered it back and forth until the lock broke. Inside, he used the pipe to pry of the lid from a wooden crate marked ‘M-249, machinegun, light.’ There, nestled in a cradle, sat an M-249 light machine gun, a high velocity, rapid-fire weapon that also used 5.56-caliber ammunition. He removed it from its cradle and placed it in the back of the jeep beside the crate of M4-A1’s and two cases of ammunition Amanda and Cy had located. He saw that Amanda also carried a box of M67 hand grenades and a second box containing G60 flash-bang stun grenades.
“Trying to start a war?” he asked as she tossed them in beside the other weapons.
She smiled. “No, end one.”
He leaned over and kissed her on the tip of her nose, ignoring Cy’s look of disgust.
“So where do we go now,” Cy asked.
“We take your suggestion and follow the tracks.”
Cy looked stunned, and then smiled at him. “All right!”
They returned to the wrecked Tahoe and followed the tracks as closely as they could. When the tracks reached I-10, he paralleled them using the frontage roads so that they had a better view around them. They stopped once just long enough to inspect a train sitting idle on a siding near a warehouse but quickly decided it had not moved in months. Vince knew the odds of finding Mace were not in their favor. If the military had him, he could be a prisoner unable to signal them even if he saw them.
Amanda was the first one to spot the Hi-Rail crane and small flatcar near a well-lit farmhouse on the edge of the city. He killed the engine and turned off the lights.
“Do you think it’s them?” Cy asked.
“Maybe.”
“Do we go in after him?”
After a few seconds, Vince replied, “No. it’s too dangerous. We don’t know where he is. We watch and wait. When we spot him, then we can move in.”
They left the jeep beside the road amid several other rusting vehicles and took up a position near the Hi-Rail crane overlooking the farmhouse. The open ground between the farmhouse and the tracks offered a perfect killing ground if it came down to a fight. He set up the machinegun at the edge of an irrigation ditch. Amanda and Cy took positions about fifty yards to each side, Amanda behind an overturned Ford Bronco and Cy in another ditch. In the near freezing darkness, they waited for dawn.
19
Northern Arizona
On the third day after leaving Salt Lake City, the two separate columns met south of Page, Arizona on the Navajo Indian Reservation. The reunion was a grand affair but short-lived. So far, no one had spotted them except for a few curious onlookers, but Colonel Schumer suspected that would not last long. General Hershimer in Phoenix knew they were coming even if he was not aware of exactly when. They would not catch him unawares. After getting the convoy moving again, he ordered his five helicopters to fly only in short hops to avoid radar, investigating the column’s path and searching for ambushes against the slow moving convoy of trucks, jeeps, cars and armored vehicles.
They had stopped only once on that first night outside St. George to sleep. Since then, rotating drivers, they had kept the convoy rolling with only short stops for refueling that also allowed the passengers to stretch weary muscles. Lack of sleep and boredom was taking its toll on them, but Schumer pushed his volunteers hard, but no harder than he pushed himself. He was not eager to confront General Hershimer’s army, but he was impatie
nt to reach his destination – Phoenix.
Twenty-five tanks, four howitzers, sixteen armored Humvees, and thirty-five trucks filled with over fifteen hundred men and women passed through the outskirts of Flagstaff in the early morning hours. The thunder of vehicles was enormous, but no zombies appeared to investigate the furor. Snowflakes fluttered around the vehicles, the leading edge of a storm moving south out of Utah. Schumer hoped they reached Phoenix before the storm hit, but prayed the inclement weather and low-lying cloud cover would keep search craft to a minimum. He rolled down the window and pulled his coat tighter in the unheated cab of the truck in which he was riding, the second vehicle. Leading the convoy was a five-ton truck on whose front end was mounted a heavy grader blade pushing cars and trucks from the column’s path.
Bahati rode in one of the vehicles in the middle of the convoy. She had insisted on riding with him, but he knew that her nearness might affect his decisions. He wanted to keep her safe if possible knowing that no place was safe from an air attack. She had nursed him back to health and for that, he owed her much, but what he felt for her was not simple gratitude. He had been alone for most of his life, too busy for love or for a life outside the army. She had shown him that it was never too late for love. Now, once again facing possible death, he knew he must have her, not as a lover but as his wife. She loved him and he loved her. In a world gone to hell, a small slice of heaven was worth the risk. If they survived Phoenix.
He didn’t know if it was a sixth sense or if he actually heard the jets off in the distance through the low-lying cloud cover, but he called the convoy to a halt just south of Camp Verde.