The pretty bartender, removes her hands that were covering her mouth in shock and replies, “That was the sheriff.”
Shitty punchline, I know, but there isn’t a lot that’s truly funny anymore. I was sitting around a campfire with a bunch of carnies and faire folk and people they had taken in. We were swapping stories about our time post-plague. Most of the folks told exactly the same story with little nuances in the details. When my turn came along, I related what had happened. Of course, I left out the minor detail on why the government wants me; they didn’t need to know that. When Dallas related his tale, one of the guys that didn’t look like he belonged with a group of carnival people scoffed and said one word, “Bullshit.”
“Was’ that?”
“I said bullshit. There’s no way you traversed the entire country from west to east, then halfway back again. I’ve been out there, I’ve seen what it’s like.” The guy stood, chucked his coffee in the fire and stormed off.
“Don’t mind him,” Carter told us. “He’s one of our military guys, and as such is skeptical that you were able to make it as far as you did.”
I looked at Carter. “Military guys?” I don’t have to tell you that where there are army guys, the government isn’t far behind.
“Oh yeah, you don’t think we could have done all this without help, do you?” He spread his arms out, indicating his camp.
The camp housed almost two hundred people. Built into the side of a mountain, they had augmented a natural cave system to fit their needs. There were dozens of “rooms,” including a great room where everybody gathered for meetings. The cave was complete with hot and cold running water in the form of an underground stream and geyser. Outside the caves was a fort-like structure the likes of which you may have seen if you watched old movies about cowboys and Indians. It’s what I would think Fort Apache would look like with high wooden walls that were trees jammed into the earth, the tops cut to points. Three towers made of the same wooden poles were at mismatched intervals down the wall, catwalks running between the towers. The whole thing encompassed a motor pool area with several cars and trucks, including two buggy-looking things that I had never seen before. One of the guys called them “Flips.” They were armored and looked really cool. Also in the large area was a huge circus tent under which we now had our fires.
These people had done well for themselves.
Dallas looked at Carter then at the back of the guy who was walking away. “I guess I can see ‘is point.”
A big guy came and sat down in the spot the army dude had just left. It was the guy who had been riding the horse and had saved my ass earlier. He had presided over the inspection of our bodies for bites when they brought is in. Absolutely everyone that came back in the fort remained in a quarantine zone, which was a mini-fort in and of itself, until they were checked out. They had no doctor, but a couple of the military guys had some medic experience.
He told us his name was Michael, and he was the knight that had tried to save his king that I mentioned above. He had a girl with him, and she was the cute bartender. They had been travelling as faire-folk do and hooked up with a carnival out of Florida called Harrod Shows. The plague struck when they were in Mercy’s Bar in Great Falls, and they had escaped out of that hell and into the mountains to the west. They had suffered losses as has everyone, but the biggest loss was their friend and leader, the king.
A group of mix-matched military had stumbled across them, and they had pooled their resources, doing well in the year since the dead had begun walking.
“Of course we still have issues,” Michael told us. He related a story about how when the group was on a run to collect and scavenge, they came across a group of bikers calling themselves the Devil’s Reapers. Apparently the Reapers were not the friendly type, and moreover did not like to share, so naturally a gun battle ensued. The four Reapers were killed, but there must have been more of them because since then on several occasions when the carnies went out on a run they encountered groups of well-armed Reapers who always shot at them on sight. On one such run, the survivors had seen about a hundred and fifty bikes riding down the highway. A few of the carnival group had been lost to zombies, and some more to the Reapers, but for the most part this was a thriving camp.
I figured this was a good place to hole up while Tim was on the mend, and Clara was a better medic than anyone else in camp, so we decided to stay for a few days. I was able to earn my keep by helping fix some broken down stuff, Eleanor helped cook, Clara as stated, helped with the medicine, and Dallas did some repair on the walls.
The lion that had attacked us had been one of two that were released into the wild when the carnies had reached the red and white ranger’s station in Benton Wildlife Refuge. Michael gave a personal apology to all of us, especially Tim, who had to be under lock and key with constant monitoring for the first two days we were in the compound. Michael said they just couldn’t leave the lions to die in the cages, but they obviously couldn’t bring them along. The carnies had met the hodgepodge group of military guys at the ranger’s station as well, which is when they had all decided to throw in their lot together. It had worked out for the most part.
There were questions on who should be in command, and Michael had come up with the idea that all things non-military would be commanded by one of the civvies, and the military ops would be commanded by Captain Berry of MARSOC. MARSOC pretty much means Don’t Fuck With Me. They are Marine Special Operations Command. There were also a few Army Rangers, two Air Force guys, and some Green Berets, who tell me they are Army Special Forces. Twenty-three guys altogether if you include some National Guardsmen. Oh yeah, and Remo.
I asked Remo what he did and he simply replied, “Teacher,” shouldered his rifle and took off. That’s the only word he’s really said to us or anybody else since we got here. I got into a conversation with some of the Rangers about the baddest of the bad in the military, and soon all the other military guys were in on it. It was yet another friendly conversation around the fire with some boasting and bragging and exaggerated facts. Remo was, of course, not present.
So in the midst of hearing about how the Rangers would beat the crap out of the Marines in a game of “Tango Down,” I asked what Remo really did.
“He’s a Marine Scout Instructor,” Dex, one of the MARSOC guys, said.
“Yeah, he told me he was a teacher, but what does it mean?”
Dex looked at me. “It means if you get the option of picking a fight with him or a pack of wolves, you choose the wolves.”
“I disagree,” Berry said and spit in the fire. “Dead quicker with Remo.”
Everybody at the fire nodded in agreement quickly.
Dallas joined in the conversation and we got to talking about how tough truckers are. Everybody was having a good time, and then Dallas mentioned Alcatraz. He had mentioned the prison before, and how there were dozens of people there trying to fortify and make it, but this time he added that there was a group of military there as well.
Every single man and woman sitting around the fire stopped talking and looked at Dallas.
“What?” he asked looking around. “Was’ wrong?”
Captain Berry shifted in his seat. “There’s a group of military on Alcatraz?”
“Yeah, thas’ why I’m here. I’m collectin’ the wife of one of ‘em. Clara’s Commander McInerney’s wife.”
“There’s a Navy Commander there? How many men are with him?”
“I dunno, maybe a hunnert and fifty? The Florida had her own crew and there was a buncha SEALs with ‘em.”
“The Florida? The USS Florida?”
“Yessir. If thas’ the same as the sub, then yeah.”
Then oh man did the questions start flying: Why didn’t you tell us this before? Do they have communications? Are there any other vessels? What was the condition of the sub and the crew?
I felt it best to vacate the premises, and escaped to go see how Tim was doing. Tim was up and speaking to Clara abo
ut his boo-boo. Can you really call a lion bite a boo-boo? If you want to emasculate your buddy who just got attacked by a lion you can. And that shit works.
“How is he?” I asked Clara.
“He’s fine. A bit of a baby, but he’s fine.” She looked right at me. “Thanks to you.”
“Um, yeah. Pretty sure a lion bit me. Have you been attacked by a lion? No? Then I reserve the right to bitch about it.” He pointed to the bandage on his arm. “Lion?”
I smiled in spite of myself, and Clara laughed out loud. “Well, you’ve got me there.”
We chatted for a bit, and an hour later Eleanor brought her endless legs by to see how Tim was doing. An hour after that, Dallas showed up with Captain Berry and the shorter of the two Air Force guys, and it was a party.
We all sat down in folding chairs outside under the tent. It was warm, and I could smell the smoke from several fires. It was great. Then Dallas dropped the bomb.
“Clara, we’s leavin’ tomorrow.”
Everyone looked at him except the Air Force guy, who was looking at Eleanor, and Berry, who was looking at his shoes. “We have a plane,” he said. “It’s a C-17 Globemaster III. It can take a contingent of up to fifty four people who want to go to San Francisco.” He looked up. “It will have to be tomorrow though. The Reapers are close to the airfield, and it’s only a matter of time until they find the plane. The airfield is hidden as well as you can hide an airfield, but the Reapers are branching out from wherever their base is, and they’ll find it eventually. There are also two Black Hawk helicopters, but they can’t make the trip, fuel would be an issue. Then there’s landing. We don’t know where we could land safely.”
“I do,” Dallas piped up. “I know where we can land.”
Everyone was looking at him again, and he shrugged. “I was on my way there in a different plane when we set down ta find a friend, an’ I come up here lookin’ fer Clara. I know where there’s a place t’ land.”
“Is it free of infected?”
“Dunno.”
“Is there a clear runway?”
“Dunno.”
“What do you know?” demanded the Air Force guy.
“I know where the airfield is.”
Captain Berry shook his head. “Alright, stop it. We have a possibility to link with US forces, one of whom is a senior officer, in a secure location,” he pointed to Dallas, “and you need to get to Alcatraz. I will send a squad with you, and we can possibly get some communications going.”
Tim coughed and actually timidly raised his hand. “You will need a communications satellite.”
“We have several, but with no ground crews or codes we can’t access them. We do have access to older HAM radios in the Ranger stations at Blackleaf and Ear Mountain.”
Like I knew where those places were. I looked at Tim, and he looked back at me. Would he keep his NSA-ness a secret, or would he pony up the fact that he had access to spy satellites?
“Um... I have codes.”
Boom.
Berry turned from Dallas. “What? Codes to what?”
“I have access codes to the Sentinel satellites. I will need a transmitter capable of—”
Berry cut him off, “Sentinel? You mean you can access com-sats?”
“Well, they’re not communications satellites per-se, but they can piggy-back any signal, or bounce between if you need. But I still need the transmitter.”
“Let me worry about that.”
He went off on how this camp would be able to communicate and coordinate with a west coast compliment of soldiers and sailors, and how it was of the utmost importance to establish links with them because we might be able to coordinate strikes against the infected and blah, blah, blah.
Did I dare tell these guys that there was a manned destroyer anchored next to my house in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? What would that mean to them? I didn’t even know if the destroyer was still there, or what their intentions were with my Atlantis friends. Shit, what’s a boy to do? In the end I thought about what had happened to me and why. I had been stolen from my friends because I might have some type of cure or vaccine for this plague inside of me. I also remembered thinking that I had to live. Not just to see my friends, but to work on this plague vaccine thing somehow.
Fuck it.
“Captain,” I had interrupted him from his tirade on saving the good old US of A. He looked at me and I sighed. “There’s a destroyer that looked like it was fully manned anchored off of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.” He opened his mouth to ask me a billion questions, but I held up my hand forestalling him. “That rig is my home, and I don’t know anything about the destroyer other than it’s there.”
In the end, it was decided that the Montana group of military guys was going to split up into three squads or groups or platoons or whatever you call a small group of military guys. Berry called them “Fire Teams” and that was awesome.
The news was brought to the attention of the general populace, and honestly I thought everyone would want to go, but only six civilians decided to take the plane ride. Nobody wanted to come with me on my MRAP ride south, which was great as far as I was concerned. Nobody except four military guys and Tim. Clara and Eleanor would go with Dallas, and I found myself sad at the prospect of losing them. I had only known them a few days, but they were all three great people.
Plus Eleanor was shit hot.
I gave her a long, perhaps inappropriate hug when it came time to split up the next morning. Clara’s hug was much more appropriate, and she thanked me and cried a little. I tried to give Dallas a manly handshake, but he enveloped me in a hug that would have made a grizzly jealous.
He put his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye, “Ya saved m’ life, Hoss. I ain’t gon’ forgit that. Y’also got me t’ where I needed t’ be. Won’t forgit that neither. Be safe.”
I still couldn’t friggin’ breath from when he crushed my lungs a moment ago, but I squeaked out a weak good luck, and we parted. I liked that guy. With so many dickheads in this post-apocalyptic nightmare, it was great to meet some nice folks.
Tim and I were sitting in the MRAP, nose pointed toward the gate when our detachment of badasses showed up. We got three MARSOC guys and to my utter surprise; Remo. Each of the Jarheads had a bag of gear and a bag of supplies, but Remo (who was also technically a jarhead, but his jar was made out of awesome) had two bags of gear and no supplies except for a water bladder attached to his tactical vest. I asked him why he wanted to come and he told me that the main force of the Reapers had been seen moving south. Actually, what he said was, “Reapers are south.”
That was four words I had now pried out of him. I would have pressed for more, but honestly I believe that he could have melted my eyeballs with just a look. I really wanted to see a steel cage match with this guy and Lynch. I would have no idea who to bet on, even though I hadn’t seen Remo in action yet. Except Lynch was dead.
They opened the wooden gate and we were off. I saw the two buggy-looking things go left with Dallas and company, and we went right. I surely hope I see them again. We drove for a while, talking back and forth, the occasional pus-bag in the road. We were in central Montana, coming out of the mountains, and there was really no way past either Butte or Helena, two of the larger cities in this godforsaken state. Taking Route 200 south west, it was our plan to turn south on 141, and hook up with Route 1 south. From there we would wing it. As it happens, we never made it to 141.
Lincoln
We passed the turnoff for Hooper State Park at just before ten in the morning. We had gone over a small river, and yes we used a bridge, if you could call it that. The river was called Grosfield Ditch, and that’s pretty much all it was. A small ditch in the ground with a trickle of water running through it. The bridge wasn’t a scary bridge loaded with zombies; it was a two-lane piece of road laid over a concrete culvert.
The streets in Lincoln, the town we were about to pass through in less than a minute, were all numbered
as they had been up by Great Falls. So much for originality. Lincoln hadn’t escaped the plague, as there were a signs and evidence of it everywhere. The abandoned vehicles, broken windows, scattered bones, and burned buildings were a testament to how powerful this epidemic had been. Even a tiny (and I mean tiny) town like Lincoln had succumbed to the evils of the undead.
The growl of the MRAP was like ringing a dinner bell, and soon we found the town’s entire population of zombies. They came at us as with that shambling stagger. Both of them. One was a guy in ragged business suit that was as rotten as you can imagine after a year. The other was a teenage girl, and she was fresh.
Didn’t make a lot of sense. This whole town didn’t make sense. If everybody was dead, where were they? Why didn’t they come out?
“Stop,” Remo said, and that was enough because I couldn’t get my foot to the brake pedal fast enough.
We slowed, and he shouldered a bag of gear. “Pick me up on the other side of town in an hour.”
WTF? Complete sentences?
He popped open the back hatch and was gone from sight before I knew what was happening. Brick, one of the MARSOC guys, shut the hatch and told me to keep going. The two zombies hadn’t seen Remo either and they plodded along after us, reaching.
We drove for a full four minutes before we came over a hill and saw 1st Ave running perpendicular to us. It was a road like all the other roads, with trees on each side and a small structure to the right. The odd thing was that there were an electrical truck with a cherry picker bucket on it, and a tow truck across the road nose to nose. It looked exactly like a roadblock, and before I could even think that, one of the MARSOC guys yelled at me to stop and back up.
I jammed the brakes, and threw the MRAP in reverse. Before I was able to step on the gas, a guy in jeans and a black leather vest stepped through the gap in the vehicles, with a tube on his shoulder. Two guys popped out from behind trees on the left with rifles and ran toward us, and I could tell by Ray-Ban’s (another marine, sitting in the passenger’s seat) expression, that some were coming from the right as well.
The Zombie Theories (Book 2): Conspiracy Theory Page 13