by Dave Lund
The flames danced across the lunar landscape of the desert night.
Movement caught his eye; spinning quickly toward the movement, Bexar raised his rifle. Three people outside the fence were running toward the gate. The tip of the red triangle in the optic tracked just ahead of the leader. Two smooth pulls on the trigger, and the first person fell; the second person tripped over the body. Bexar drove the rifle to the person at the rear, who stopped and turned to run away. Another two shots and the rounds pierced his back, blood erupting out of his chest where the rounds exited, the man crumpling to the ground in mid-stride. The remaining person of the assaulting force stood, arms raised. An odd-looking tube was slung across his body; it looked vaguely familiar to Bexar, but he wasn’t sure why. Anger pierced the air between them. A fraction of a second passed, but for Bexar it felt like ten minutes. Through the reticle all he saw were the eyes and the hatred they held. A single squeeze of the trigger and the back of the attacker’s skull exploded in a shower of bone and brain matter. Bexar scanned left and right. Nothing else moved; no other threats arrived.
A WINLOCK PRESS BOOK
ISBN: 978-1-68261-207-1
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-208-8
WINCHESTER: STORM
Winchester Undead Book Five
© 2016 by Dave Lund
All Rights Reserved
Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services
Cover art by Dave Lund of www.f8industries.net
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER WINLOCK BOOKS YOU’LL LOVE
CHAPTER 1
April 1, Year 1
Andrew banked the bright yellow Aviat Husky left and deftly held the aircraft in a lazy orbit above the scraggly lake in the Ozarks. Bentonville, Arkansas, as far as he could tell, belonged to the dead. Which is too bad, Andrew thought as he glanced at the twin-needled fuel gauge. Avgas was hard to come by, but regular unleaded gas with an octane booster seemed to be working fine. He reached into the back seat and felt in his bag for the big spiral bound Hema road atlas. It wasn’t good airmanship using a road atlas to fly his way cross country; certain hazards definitely applied, such as tall towers now unlit. It was true IFR flying for a country pilot like himself...I Follow Roads. When disorientated Andrew would push his bush plane down, skimming the rooftops of the cars on the largest highways he could find, looking for highway signs and road signs to help him figure out his location.
With the wings level, Andrew held the aircraft impossibly slow in the crisp air above the lake. If his altimeter was still correct, he was roughly seven thousand feet above sea level, and with his uncalibrated eyeball he would call it closer to five thousand feet above the lake. Oreo nudged his hand as he dug for the atlas; a quick scratch between his best friend’s ears and the atlas came out of the bag. Squinting, he read the small print naming the lake Beaver Lake.
The atlas didn’t name the little community below him, nor did it show a little airplane to indicate an airport, but the black tarmac stood out from the brown trees and roof tops. Smoke billowed softly from a few of the chimneys, blowing lazily south. Replacing the atlas in the bag by Oreo, he dug around and found his binoculars. The runway numbers were easily seen without them, thirty-one and thirteen; chimney smoke trailing south. The choice was easy to land toward the north. What grabbed Andrew’s attention wasn’t the smoke or the runway; it was a small boat a few hundred yards off the shore to the east of the runway. Banking the aircraft over and again starting a lazy orbit, Andrew peered through the binoculars at the man in the boat, who was pulling in a floating jug line and looked up at the circling aircraft and waved.
“That’s a good sign, Oreo. He’s waving at us.”
Oreo nudged Andrew on the shoulder with his snout, which was responded to with another scratch between the ears. The engine sputtered, Andrew reached for the fuel selector and cycled the tanks, smoothly adjusting the throttle and pushing the light aircraft’s nose forward. A few more coughs and the spinning propeller outside of his windscreen slowed and jerked to a stop, a white tip of one of the propeller blades staring at him in defiance.
“Well, shit. Like it or not buddy, this is where we land.”
Andrew’s bush-plane-turned-glider edged through the air, nearly silent, the passing wind the only noise in the cockpit. With no radio to listen to, no other pilots to broadcast, no mayday call to claim his ownership of the small landing strip, and no other airplanes to jockey for position, all he had to do was land safely.
“Crunch this one in, and this community better be friendlier than that one in Tennessee.”
Oreo whimpered and looked out of the window. Sitting straight in the seat behind Andrew, his eyes were open and bright, ears perked up. With more flight hours as the dog-second-in-command than most people pilots log in a lifetime, Oreo showed blazing awareness to their tense situation.
Andrew cut across the middle of the field from the east, banked, and made a sweeping left turn to put the big tundra tires on the tarmac and let the aircraft roll to a stop to save wear on the brakes. The engine off from fuel starvation long before putting the tires on the ground, Andrew turned off the ignition to save the battery and flipped open the clam-shell window and door, and stuck wheel chocks under one tire while turning a three-sixty, scanning for any threats...living or dead.
CHAPTER 2
Saint George, UT
April 1, Year 1
Chivo lay near the cliff’s edge, a wool blanket pulled over him to break his form up if he were seen from a distance. This was nothing like the ghillie suit he would have preferred to have, but it was better than nothing. Since the night more than a week ago when Doc was killed, the group hadn’t had another run in with the other survivors’ splinter group, which was the good news. The bad news was that his hand still ached, and Bexar was still in a cast. With a pencil and a notebook, Chivo took his time to plot all the dirt roads between the compound and where their truck lay in burned ruin. He was just too far to see the truck with any sort of detail; the truck was roughly a mile and a half away. He could see its rough shape, and he could tell that it had burned, but he couldn’t tell if the debris around it included his rifle case. South of the compound lay the Interstate. After his previous experience with that section of road, Chivo wanted nothing to do with it until he absolutely had to go back there. The enormous horde of dead had thinned out over the past few days, still not as bad as the night of the attack or the day they’d wrecked the truck, but still enough of the reanimated corpses that it would be suicide to go down there.
The past two days Chivo had lain near the cliff’s edge at different times during the day, using the different angles of the day’s li
ght to better observe and take notes. His first duty, though, was a range card for his M4 on the approach to the compound from the west, up the driveway or over the rocky ground. His distances and elevations were set. With the shorter distances of fire to protect the compound, he was confident in his ability to quickly respond to another attack. His self-imposed duty now was to map a way to the truck that, with Angel’s help, he could reach the truck via horseback or on foot if need be. The big Barrett 50-caliber rifle would be a huge asset for counter-insurgency operations against the splinter survivor group, assuming the rifle survived.
Chivo, relating the current situation more along his original missions in Northern Afghanistan, thought of the survivor groups as tribes. The list of people in the friendly tribe read only twelve names when they were pulled off the Interstate and out of the clutches of death. The list, now one person short after Doc was killed, still had promise and had some along for the ride. Chivo’s focus wandered through his internal lists, moving each piece into a plan to stabilize the tribes and get out of dodge sooner than later.
Angel, some tactical skills, skilled with horses and designer of the compound and Guillermo, friendly registered nurse and now the defacto group medic since Doc died are the tribal leaders, the first family. John is the beer guy and the quartermaster of dry foods. Brian is the group armorer with general tactical knowledge. Heath takes care of the systems in the compound. Marylyn and Frances, another couple, are both in charge of long-term food storage, meal planning, and inventory. Coach, no real name known, heads security. Stan is the group’s mechanic and general handyman. Gary has no real skills that I’ve seen, but his ability to tell a story is incredible. His daily journal might be of interest to a future historian, if there are any left to care. Jennifer is a bit of a mad-scientist seamstress. She’s the one who modified Bexar’s pants for the cast and Doc. Doc is dead. If this tribe is going to barter with the other tribe, they need to barter skills, not goods, if at all possible. Jennifer and Stan are the most valuable for that task. Surely every other tribe in the region needs something repaired, something sewn, and something patched.
He and Bexar had wasted enough time sitting in Utah, so close to Groom Lake and reuniting Bexar with his wife, Jessie, but even as anxious as Bexar was to get moving, he needed to be out of the cast on his leg first. Luckily, he was starting to put a little weight on his leg and cast, if only for short periods, but it was a start.
Rifle, insurgents, vehicle, and leave.
Simple plan, only three parts and a drive, but Chivo knew that even the simplest of plans often didn’t survive first contact with the enemy.
Yuma, AZ
Aymond sat in the back of the hardened ordinance storage structure. Near the covered aircraft storage and flight line, just a year ago the air would have been full of Marine Aviators ripping across the desert sky, but now all they had was silence and the soft hum of the Chinese radar truck. The remaining men of his Marines Special Operations Team, or MSOT, had settled into the new routine of their new temporary home. Enterprising as they were, they’d found a cache of HESCO barriers and a front-end loader that Jones was able to get running. A little over a week ago, they’d left San Diego in a rush and in ruins, hopefully slowing the Chinese invasion, but Aymond doubted it. He needed more than the eight of them who remained alive to fight off an invasion; he needed more Marines or anyone who could carry a rifle really.
I need patriots, minutemen ready to fill the gap between the Chinese and the dead.
Walking into the hard mid-day sun, Aymond squinted from the contrast. Even in April, the air was already warm, and, as much fun as he’d had while temporarily stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station Yuma when he was a young Marine, he really didn’t want to stick around for the triple-digit temperatures of summer. HESCO formed a protective U-shaped wall around the north, west, and south sides of the group of hardened bunkers. A chain-link fence with barbed wire surrounded them, but chain-link wouldn’t stop the Zeds, and chain-link would give them no protection if the PLA somehow showed up.
Hammer and Gonzo were on a recon patrol in one of the M-ATVs with Kirk. Jones manned the radar truck, marker-smudged tape placed over the Chinese labels with what the switches did, as best as the men could figure out. Aymond monitored the radio, ready to shake loose Davis, Snow, and Chuck from their sleep cycle if Hammer and his merry band of raiders ran into trouble. The second M-ATV sat at the ready, loaded for the war they would bring as the Quick Reaction Force. Happy stood on the top of the HESCO near the radar truck and east-facing entrance, binoculars to his eyes as he scanned the housing complexes in the distance.
The early patrols found signs of survivors having been on base at some point, improvised positions, obvious signs of battle, but so far no other living person had been found.
“Anything yet?”
“Nothing but Zeds, Chief, although I’m fairly sure this is where they come to check the accuracy of carpenter levels.”
Beaver Lake, AR
“I know he waved, but keep cool. Like sirens luring sailors, we can’t trust until we verify.”
Oreo nudged Andrew’s hand.
“Yeah, I agree.”
Andrew pulled one of the bags out of the small cargo hold, a backpack that looked like something a high school kid would have stuffed in a locker, shouldered the bag, and jogged to the broken split-rail fence line and to the metal building off the end of the runway. Panting from jogging uphill, he noticed his breath hung in the cool air. Each of the four roll-up garage doors was locked in place. The regular door on the side of the building was locked too. Oreo whimpered softly. Andrew looked at his dog and then in the direction he was looking.
“Come on,” Andrew tersely whispered as he ran to the back of the building and into the tree line. He took the backpack off and lay still in the shadows among the trees. Oreo lay on the ground next to him, sniffing the air, ears forward toward the road going down the hill, and he tilted his head as dogs do when trying to decipher something unexpected. A house on their left appeared vacant and closed; another house directly across the road, partially hidden by the trees did not. Taking in his surroundings, Andrew saw faint smoke rising from the chimney. His heart was beating behind his ears, straining to listen to any sound outside his own body, but the more he attempted to listen the less he could hear.
Oreo’s tail swept back and forth before he sat up and suddenly ran out of the trees toward the house. Tail wagging, he stopped across the road where the driveway met and sat eagerly. A little girl, who appeared to be no older than ten, walked from behind the trees and overgrown brush. A pistol that seemed impossibly large for her small body tugged at her belt, and in her hands she held a rifle that appeared to be a Ruger 10/22 with a camouflaged stock colored in bright pink.
At sight of her, Oreo stretched and waited like an eager puppy. The girl looked at Oreo and smiled and said something Andrew couldn’t hear, but Oreo trotted to her and sat in front of her to enjoy a happy scratch behind his ears. The girl knelt and looked at the tag on his collar, “Oreo is your name? Did you fly that plane here, or who are you here with?”
The girl scanned the wood line, squinting with the look of a seasoned hunter. Andrew took a deep breath, stood, and walked around the side of the building into view. The girl reacted immediately and raised her rifle. Oreo trotted off toward Andrew who stood a few hundred feet away with his hands out and away from his body.
“Mister, don’t you move uh inch.”
“My name is Andrew, and I won’t, and this is Oreo, who you just met.”
“What’cha doin’ here?”
“Ran out of gas, and it’s sort of hard to pull to the side of the road when you’re five thousand feet up.”
The girl didn’t say anything; she glanced over her shoulder at a much older man who walked up the driveway.
“Gran’pa, this man says he ran out of gas.”
T
he man nodded and squinted, examining Andrew. “Where you from there, mister?”
“You don’t have to call me mister, mister. The whole world calls me Andrew.”
“What?”
“The old country song, you know? Well, sorry, no, my name is Andrew. This is Oreo. We’re from Florida.”
“Wha’cha flying around for?”
“Just searching, looking for others.”
“We’ve had some problems with others, Andrew.”
“Yeah, well, so have I.”
“Come on up here so we don’t have to holler at one’nuther. We don’t wanna be attract’n those damn things.”
Andrew walked slowly toward the man and the girl with his hands open and away from his side, her rifle still trained on him. The last thing he wanted to do was spook someone and get shot at...again. Andrew stopped in the middle of the road, about twenty feet from the girl and the man. Oreo never stopped wagging his tail as he walked to the girl and nudged her in the leg to get another ear scratch.
“Where ya head’n?”
“Truth be told, I’m not really sure. I’m just wandering here and there hoping to find something, someone who can fix this mess. I guess I’m looking for help, the military, the government, someone or anyone who can tell me that they are on top of it, and we’ll all be OK.”
“Son, I’m afraid that just ain’t gonna be the case ... why don’t you lower your rifle, princess. My name’s Warren, and this little one is my granddaughter, Mary.”
Andrew smiled and nodded at each in greeting. Mary, now with a hand free, finally acknowledged Oreo’s insistence and petted him. Warren glanced at Oreo and then stared at the plane. “We ain’t got no hundred low lead for your plane.”