by David Achord
“Nothing,” he said after a minute of scanning.
“Alright, get on the radio to Captain Smithson,” I said. “But, be sure to wait your turn. We’re the second to the last team.”
Sammy got on the radio and relayed the information. Other teams did the same, and then Justin gave the order to dismount. We did so and formed another perimeter of people around the vehicles.
“Get a drone up!” Justin shouted.
Kirby and Erin wasted no time. In fact, I think they’d already anticipated Justin’s command and had a drone airborne within a minute.
As I watched the drone go airborne, my line of sight went to a series of utility poles. They were bare of wires. I made a mental note of it; if we were going to put people here, we had a lot of line work to do to restore power. As I shifted my focus back to the horizon, I caught sight of movement across an empty field from Coffey Avenue.
“Shit,” I exclaimed under my breath and then spoke up. “Contact, nine o’clock!”
There was a large group of them, easily over a hundred. Two hundred, maybe. I hurriedly stuck my ear plugs in as I heard Justin ordering everyone back to their vehicles and to hold their fire until they got to within fifty yards.
I did not fire for the first minute. Instead, I watched and was pleased to see everyone had adhered to their training and were killing with controlled accuracy. We were mowing them down, and yet they continued coming toward us at a full run. I caught Fred looking at me out of the corner of his eye. I got the message and began shooting.
When the shooting was done, Justin gave the all clear and we exited our vehicles.
“Teams, give me an up!” he shouted. Each team replied in succession indicating nobody had been injured or killed. The drone confirmed there were no other hordes lurking nearby, but we still had two teams act as cover while the rest of us carefully inspected the zeds to ensure they were indeed dead. I deviated from the SOP and walked among the dead zeds, looking them over.
“How many?”
I looked up. It was Bob. He pointed around. “You’re the quick counter, how many?”
“Two hundred and eleven,” I answered and pointed. “Most of them are old school, but a few of them look fresh.”
“Old school?” Bob asked.
“The ones who’ve been infected for a while.” I pointed. “When their skin is blackened from the healed decomposition and it’s all leathery looking, they’ve been infected for over a year. Old school.”
“Ah,” Bob replied in understanding.
“Holy hell,” Flash muttered. He had walked up and stood there looking over the carnage. “Man, they stink. It don’t ever get any better.” He hocked up some phlegm and spit.
“Yep,” I said.
“You know, I saw one of them turn around and run back down the road,” Flash said. “I’ve never seen any of them do that before.”
I glanced at Fred. “They’re thinking again, to a small extent. Fight or flight, it’s a primordial instinct.”
“Damn,” Flash said. “It won’t be too long before they’re back on Facebook.”
I fought hard to hide a grin as Fred gave him a withering look.
Once we had cleared the area, we spent the rest of the day loading up equipment and vehicle parts. One of the nice things was that there were multiple buildings full of all kinds of goodies, including over a hundred unused tires that were the proper size for the MRAPS. We also found three MRAPS that looked virtually unused. The tires were flat, but that was no problem; we brought spares, and we knew the fuel lines would have to be flushed out before they could run properly, but that’s why we brought the tow trucks.
When it was fifteen hundred hours, I walked over to Justin, who was in the middle of a conversation with the two Pittsburgh cops. The three of them stopped talking and the brothers fixed me with stares as I walked up.
“We need to make a decision on whether to stay the night or head back. The sun’s been out all day, so a lot of ice has undoubtedly melted, but we’re still looking at two hours of nighttime driving, and that means black ice.”
Justin pointed at our vehicles. “Every one of them is crammed full. We can’t haul anything else if we tried.”
I glanced over at Fred, who gave one of his subtle nods.
It was decided. Unfortunately for us, there were others who felt otherwise.
Chapter 29 – Contact
I heard the bullet whiz by and strike the building behind me followed by the crack of a gunshot.
“Sniper!” I yelled. Everyone took cover. Joke ran and jumped in the Stryker before a second gunshot rang out.
“Contact!” he yelled out of the open hatch. “One o’clock, three subjects, about five hundred meters. They’re crouching by a car. I see two long guns.”
“Do you have a clear target?” Justin yelled back.
“Aye, sir!” Joker yelled.
“Light ‘em up!”
Joker responded by firing the M2 machine gun in four, three-round bursts. A moment later, he stuck his head out of the hatch.
“Dead,” he said simply.
“Give us a scan, Sergeant,” Justin directed. “The rest of you, hold your positions.”
Everyone had found cover after the first gunshot and stayed in place while Joker slowly rotated the turret, utilizing the Stryker’s optics to find any additional threats. He worked it slowly, methodically, pausing once or twice to inspect something. The turret rotated around three complete times before Joker stuck his head out of the hatch.
“All clear,” he said.
“Alright, everyone, mount up,” Justin ordered. Everyone complied without comment. Once everyone was inside their vehicles, Justin got on the radio.
“All teams, follow me to phase line Sunset.”
Once we arrived at phase line Sunset, which was at the intersection of Sunset Pike and Cumberland Highway, Justin directed everyone to stop and standby. He jumped out of the Stryker and ran back to our semi.
“Let’s go look over who was trying to kill us,” he said.
I looked at Fred, who nodded.
“Come on,” he said to Sammy and then looked at Bob. “Stay with the semi and don’t let anyone steal it.”
Bob didn’t like being relegated to wait in the truck, but Justin didn’t care. We waited for Justin to jog down to Kirby and tell him to send an update to Mount Weather then he hustled back to us. The three of us jogged over and jumped into the Stryker. The three attackers, what was left of them, were lying on the side of Coffee Avenue beside an abandoned car.
“Alright, don’t tell Kelly or Janet, but you need to see this,” I said to Sammy.
While Joker manned the fifty, the rest of us got out and walked over to the bodies. The kinetic energy of the fifty caliber bullets all but obliterated them. One of them had attempted to hide behind the abandoned car, but it didn’t work. Joker simply fired through the car.
“Wow,” Sammy muttered.
“They made some tactical errors,” I said. “Do you know what they were?”
“Um, they shouldn’t have messed with us,” Sammy said.
“Sure, but why not?”
“Um…”
“If they had performed a proper recon, they would have seen we were heavily armed, including an armored vehicle with an M2 heavy machine gun mounted on it.”
“But, they waited until we were dismounted,” Sammy contended.
“That they did, but how would you describe the sniper’s accuracy?” I asked.
“It sucked.”
Flash, who had joined us, chuckled. “Lucky for us,” he said.
Fred had walked over to the mutilated body that used to be the sniper, crouched, and looked it over. He then picked up the rifle and inspected it thoughtfully, before standing.
“The stock is damaged, but the rest seems intact,” he said. “I believe I can fix it.” He then pointed. “This sniper was a young lady.”
“How can you tell?” Flash asked.
Fred ignore
d him and picked up two other weapons; a semiautomatic handgun and a Ruger Mini-14. Once he collected them, he walked back to the Stryker and got in. It was his way of saying it was time to leave. Justin seemed to agree.
“Alright, I was kind of hoping to be able to identify them, or maybe they’d have a radio with them, but they don’t. Let’s get on the road.”
We had identified shady areas of the roadways, which is where the black ice was hiding, so we were making good time heading back, until after the sun went down. We slowed our speed considerably then.
“Fred?” Sammy asked. Fred looked over at him. “How did you know that sniper was a young woman? I mean, her body was unrecognizable.”
“Her lower torso was mostly intact,” Fred replied. “First, she was wearing small women’s shoes, and if you looked carefully, you would have seen her groin area. She was definitely a lady.”
“I’m not sure I’d call her a lady,” Bob said. “After all, she was trying to kill us.”
“But, she was a terrible shot,” Sammy said. “I can shoot better than that.”
“Perhaps she hit everything she was shooting at,” Fred said.
I looked at him sharply before focusing back on the road. Could it be true? Were those three people simply trying to scare us off? If that was what they were attempting, it was stupid and it cost them their lives. I often thought the apocalypse was a sort of a manifestation of Darwinian evolution in that it quickly killed off stupid people.
“I wonder if they had any people. You know, perhaps they were part of a larger group,” Bob mused.
“If there are, and we come into contact with them, I doubt they’ll understand our rationale for killing their friends,” I said.
“Nope,” Fred added.
“So, what do we do?” Sammy asked.
“What can you do?” I countered. “Should we have allowed those people to continue shooting at us? This is the way of the world now, Sammy. You have to make split-second decisions. It might not always be the correct decision, but when you’re out here, all of your decisions must have the underlying principle of survival. Self-survival and the survival of your people.”
“Um, okay,” Sammy said.
“Let me make it short and simple. Someone was shooting at us, we perceived our lives were in jeopardy, and we reacted accordingly.” I looked over at him pointedly. “Better to err on the side of caution.”
Sammy nodded.
We rode south on I-81 in silence for a few miles. Fred and Bob crashed out in the sleeper while Sammy rode in front with me. At one point, he sighed. Rounding a slight bend in the interstate, our headlights washed over some abandoned cars on both sides.
“Let’s play a game,” I said and pointed.
“Look at the arrangement of those abandoned cars.”
He looked out the window, wondering what I was talking about. “Do you see how they act as impediments? The cars are keeping us from spreading out, or even veering off of the interstate if we need to.”
“We should clear all of them out,” he said.
“Yeah, but in the meantime, I’m going to throw a hypothetical scenario at you. What if, it’s only you driving down the road? You haven’t been down this road before. As you travel along, you come upon some derelict cars all stacked together, blocking off the roadway. What do you do?”
“I stop immediately,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because it might be an ambush.”
“Good, but now you’re stopped and you’re stationary, which means what?”
“I’m an easy target,” he said.
“Yep. So, what do you do?” I asked.
“Find an escape route. Back up and get out of there.”
“Good,” I said. “Now, I’m going to change it up a little. You’re in a town scavenging. You’re going to one of the roads and there is what appears to be an old multi-car pileup ahead of you, but you can see an opening. As you slow and wind your way through the opening, a woman suddenly steps out from behind a car, right in front of you. She’s holding what appears to be a baby swaddled in a blanket. There is only one proper course of action. What do you do?”
“Slam on my brakes,” he said.
“No,” I responded harshly, causing Sammy to flinch. “Never slam on your brakes. Don’t you see? It’s an ambush.”
“You mean, I should run her over?” he asked nervously.
“Hell-fucking-yes,” I growled. “As soon as you stop, that little fake baby doll she’s holding will be dropped and she’ll be pointing a gun at you, and her friends will suddenly be surrounding you. If you’re lucky, they’ll only take your vehicle and everything in it.”
I found myself reliving the memory of that time when I encountered the exact situation outside of a small community known as College Grove. I was driving my little Ford Ranger truck. The woman had been hiding behind a derelict car and stepped right in front of me. I instantly stomped on the gas. My little truck did not have a great deal of power. Nevertheless, the woman had no time to jump out of the way. I still remembered the front of my truck striking her with a painful thump and then watched as she went airborne. I remembered the look of horror on her face microseconds before it smacked and shattered my windshield.
“What is it, Zach?” Sammy asked.
I looked over at him and realized I was gripping the steering wheel tightly. “What?”
“Is something wrong?” he pressed.
“Oh, no. Why do you ask?”
“You kind of zoned out for a minute,” he said.
“Oh, sorry, bud. I was just thinking.”
“Did that happen to you once?” he tentatively asked.
I glanced over at him. “Sammy, you’re a good man. You know right from wrong and you know the value of honor and integrity, but understand this; if you have to kill someone to save your own life or the life of someone you love, you do it and you don’t apologize for it. Ever.”
I took a deep breath. “This is a hard world, and you’ve got to be a hard man sometimes.”
“Yes, sir,” he said quietly.
We drove up to the front gate at 2200 hours and lined up at the decontamination station. We weren’t sure the procedure was needed anymore, but since we had it in place and operational, we took no chances. We’d disassembled a car wash, one of those types that sprayed water only, no brushes, and reassembled it twenty yards from the main gate. It was heated, so there was no fear of freezing pipes.
We ran each vehicle through it. We had no chemicals anymore, but we substituted with scalding hot water. Each vehicle went through and then drove directly to the warehouse. Two of our bean counters, Lois and Norman Marnix, emerged from the main building with their computer tablets, whereupon they immediately began taking inventory as we unloaded the equipment. It took a couple of hours to unload and neatly stack everything. There wasn’t any complaining, but it was obvious everyone was fatigued. Justin took pity.
“Alright, everyone. Let’s head to the armory. If we have a hundred percent accountability, you’ll be dismissed for the evening. We’ll clean them up tomorrow.”
There were some murmurs of appreciation at that statement. Even though Justin had let everyone off of the hook, I helped him check in weapons.
“We picked up some good stuff,” I said as I helped him check in the weapons.
“Yes, we did. It was a successful mission, all things considered.”
“Fred seems to think the girl wasn’t trying to kill anyone, she was trying to scare us off,” I said as I checked a serial number and put it in the appropriate slot on the rack.
Justin looked at me briefly in puzzlement. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
“I know. If he’s right, those people had no type of proper training. Makes you wonder how they managed to stay alive so long.”
When the last person turned their weapon in, we locked up the armory and made our way to our suites.
“See you in the morning,” I said.
“You too, brother.”
Chapter 30 – Marcus Hook
February’s weather stayed cold but dry, which allowed us to travel. I kissed Kelly and my kids before heading to the motor pool. We were going to be traveling in a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which was pulling a trailer. Ensign Lawrence Boner was going to be driving another Cherokee, both of which had 3-liter turbo-diesels in them. Riley and Little Joe rode with him, and the rest of them rode with me.
“Alright, has everyone gone to the restroom?” I asked while pointedly looking at Little Joe’s children. “Once we get going, we’re not stopping.”
Nobody decided they better go, so I directed them to load up.
Two days ago, we sat down with Trader Joe and his family and discussed Marcus Hook.
“It was a relatively small township south of Philadelphia back before,” I told them. “Mostly comprised of industry. The positives of it; they have a good operation set up. They have power and fuel, and the people who live there are a tight-knit, friendly group. They were all working class people, back before. Not a single politician among them,” I said and winked at Bob, who smiled graciously.
“What are the negatives?” Joe asked.
“I’ll be honest, the accommodations are a little on the spartan side. A lack of manpower is the main reason,” I said. “On occasion, the zeds wander out of Philadelphia, and because the entire area is industry, there were a few factories that were not shut down properly and there’ve been ongoing problems with explosions, but that was mostly during the first year.” I thought a moment. “There is a nuclear power plant nearby, but Roscoe said it was shut down properly and isn’t a threat. Oh, I almost forgot, during the summer, they make treks to Atlantic City and frolic on the boardwalk. It’s only eighty miles away.”
“I bet it’s filthy,” Little Joe grumbled.
I remained quiet. I actually did not know what kind of shape Atlantic City was in. I’d never been there, but Melvin had. He said there was a brothel and a race track there. Somebody asked him what the women looked like. Melvin’s response was, if you take all of the women at Mount Weather under the age of forty, found the ugliest one, she’d be a homecoming queen compared to those whores. I figured Boner wouldn’t care and he’d go visit at the first opportunity.