by Dave Lund
Aymond scanned the flightline across the acres of concrete and desert. “There’s a whole bunch of Zeds on that side, Snow. Keep us over here as long as you can.” This didn’t look good to Aymond.
Snow didn’t speak, but he felt the same disappointment, that this base was like the others that they had visited. He drove to the north end of the runways and across the taxiways to the long ramp leading to where the PJs’ helicopters should be tied down. On the tarmac were numerous Zeds who had been killed; they lay motionless, baked by the sun and completely untouched by the buzzards or other wildlife.
“Well someone’s been here, Chief, and they were fucking pipe hitters!”
“Let’s hope they’re still here.”
The convoy drove to the edge of the ramp where the PJ facility stood, windows dark. Aymond keyed the radio. “Set a defensive position, and use the radar truck. Chuck, Davis, Gonzo, and Hammer, sweep the two buildings fast, but keep your asses from getting bit.”
No one responded verbally, but the flurry of activity was enough to know that the message was received and well understood. The M-ATVs parked in a loose V-formation with the radar truck at the tip, the inside of the protective V being toward the buildings. Jones had the radar truck’s dome up and on before the armored war wagons had even turned their motors off. All they could do was standby, hoping that the search team found some friendlies.
Snyder, Texas
The second night away in her MRAP-turned-motorhome was much less eventful than the first. There were no tornados, no driving rain, no dead lit by lightning’s flash. The morning had been looking up until now. The fuel gauge meant that Amanda wasn’t comfortable moving on until she could top off the heavy truck; the semi-tanker parked at the truck stop was the first choice. What was contained in the still-shiny aluminum tanker trailer was anyone’s guess. Amanda wasn’t willing to chance accidently putting gasoline or cooking oil or who knows what else into the fuel tank of her rig. She assumed that the placards and numbers on the rig explained what the load was, but Amanda had no knowledge of them and no idea where to find the information in this post-Internet era.
She knew the big saddle-tanks on the semi-truck held diesel fuel and many gallons of it. The trusty length of rubber hose could be her pipeline to success. Across the large parking lot from her chosen truck stop was a squat three-story hotel; no large semi-trucks in the parking lot there, although there was a propane delivery truck with a large tank on the back parked next to the building. None of this mattered, as teeming through the parking lot were the dead, dozens of them converging on the rattling exhaust of her diesel engine. They were beginning to slap against the armored hull. Amanda wasn’t worried about her safety yet, and she could slowly drive through the massing swarm, nudging the bodies out of her way and hopefully away from her tires. A spare tire was on the truck, but she had no idea how to get it down or how to jack up the truck, so the spare might as well have been a birthday cake for all the good it would do if she got a flat tire.
She did not have a surplus of fuel, and she had no outside help; the one thing she had at the moment was time. Time to think through the problem piece by piece. If the dead would act like her dogs and chase something she threw, life would be a lot easier. She could throw a stick, the dead would trace the stick in the air as it flew, and follow obediently. After all, they acted like moths to the flame.
Flame...fire!
Familiar as Amanda was with her M4, the big M2 machine gun on the turret was something she had only fired once, the day of the library raid. The hotel and the propane tanker truck loomed large in her windshield. From the highway, she estimated the truck to be about six hundred feet away, and that guess would have to do because there was no way she was going to get outside to pace it off.
If I do nothing, I have to drive off and find other fuel. Worst case I blow everything up, and I have to drive off and find other fuel. Amanda shrugged to herself, ignoring the fact that the worst case would be her vehicle being disabled. She opened the roof hatch and climbed up the sling into the turret. Walking herself through a mental checklist, she pulled the charging handle hard to the rear and let go, switched the safety, moved the big rifle in the mount a little to get the muzzle pointed in the propane truck’s general direction, and pushed the make-it-loud button. The air ripped open from the assault of automatic weapons fire. Windows shattered, and pieces of the hotel’s façade broke away and fell in chunks. An obese person, long dead, shambled out of his hotel room, falling through the broken window to the parking lot three stories below and into a crumpled heap.
Amanda quickly pushed on the handles, arcing a rain of steel toward the propane truck, squinting in anticipation and ducking behind the armored glass of the turret. The large holes walked up the cab of the truck and the 50-caliber rounds pierced the heavy tank like a laser. Immediately, the propane tank ruptured, venting the pressurized propane—and nothing happened. Instead, every pair of milky-white eyes stared at her as the dead shambled toward the enormous eruption of sound of the M2 ripping the air apart.
“Fuck, that always worked in the damn movies...I need fuel. Fuck!”
She climbed back into the interior of the MRAP, and the roof hatch thunked closed. After dogging the latch and sitting in the driver’s seat, Amanda drove across the worn grass median and next to the semi-truck. The side of the MRAP rubbed against the semi-truck, knocking both trucks’ side mirrors off. Amanda could get the driver’s door open, but it wouldn’t open far enough for her to get out. Angry at the dead, angry that a propane truck wouldn’t blow up like she’d thought it would, and angry at herself for believing that it would in the first place, Amanda slammed her door closed. After unlatching the roof hatch, Amanda grabbed her hose and climbed out onto the roof again.
Standing on the roof, she could see the situation that she’d created, and it wasn’t good, not good at all. More dead streamed from behind the hotel, from across the street, from the fields, and from the highway. Wrapping the hose around her shoulders, Amanda climbed down the side of her armored truck into the small gap between it and the semi. As luck would have it, she’d been able to stop with the fuel filler cap on her tank quite close to the filler cap on the tank of the semi. With no gap between the trucks the dead didn’t appear to be able to get to her, so Amanda got to work. She unscrewed her cap and let it hang on the safety chain; she went to unscrew the cap of the semi’s saddle tank and found it locked, needing a key to release it. She banged on the driver’s door window of the semi and got no response. Trying the door, she found it too was locked.
“Fucking hell.”
Angry, Amanda drew her pistol and fired twice into the thin glass of the semi’s door window, breaking the glass. After pushing the shattered safety glass window out of the way and unlocking the truck from the inside, she opened the door and squeezed inside. The cab of the truck was disgusting, some unknown goo was in the driver’s seat, and the interior smelled worse than it looked, which was saying something. Coughing, Amanda tried the cubby holes and storage areas around the driver’s door before finding a single silver key on a cheap truck-stop keychain. Outside the truck, she tried the key in the gas cap and was happy to find it worked.
With the cap now off, one end of the hose went into the semi’s fuel tank; she took a few breaths, wrapped her lips around the hose, and pulled with all she had. Spitting fuel out of her mouth, she cursed as diesel splashed on her pants and boots before she got the end of the hose in her tank. Now she waited.
Tucumcari Municipal Airport, NM
Andrew walked across the tarmac. His home for the previous night had been in one of the short rows of hangers. It had felt like a real home for all the time he’d spent in his hanger over the years. Oreo plodded along next to him, happy, alert, and ready, just like always. The two big tanks of aviation fuel for the field had Jet-A and Avgas. The Jet-A was of no use to him, but the Avgas was exactly what he needed for the Husk
y. For a field in the middle of BFE New Mexico, one of the runways was surprisingly long, and the fuel-delivery system was much more complex than it needed to be, which also meant that the system depended on electric pumps...electric pumps that no longer worked. Although if the tanks worked like the others he had used before, Andrew’s guess was that he might still be able to fuel from the tank. The short grip of a pair of bolt cutters stuck out of the top of his backpack, and, after the short walk from the hanger, he and Oreo stood inspecting the fuel tanks.
The tanks were idiot-marked with big bold letters labeling which tank held which fuel. For all the problems of filling a diesel truck with gasoline, fueling a turbine aircraft with Avgas was more annoying and more problematic. Pilots never being ones to trust a guy on the flight line, they liked big markings that they could see from the cockpit to help them feel safe in the knowledge that the correct fuel tank was being used. The filling connection and the output hose were of no use; the output would flow too fast and dump fuel all over everything, not exactly Andrew’s first choice. The two vents on top of the tank didn’t seem promising either, but small tank access in the middle of the tank on the top was their best bet. This wasn’t exactly a gamble; this exact sequence had played out with similar tanks all across the United States during the past few weeks. After cutting the two locks off the cap, an adjustable crescent wrench made quick work of the cap’s bolts, and Andrew was able to peer down the small hole into the tank; it smelled like Avgas and not Jet-A, and he could see tiny rays of sunlight shimmering off the fuel surface.
“We’re in business, buddy.”
Andrew climbed down to where Oreo sat dutifully waiting; the pair walked back to the hanger, started the Husky, and taxied off the tarmac, across the dusty desert ground, and right up next to the tank. After shutting off the engine, Andrew climbed out, loosened the fuel caps, and began siphoning fuel, filling the aircraft’s bladders and his small gas can.
“I bet we only have six more months of flying before the fuel all goes bad. Thank God there’s no damn ethanol in aviation fuel or we’d be going up shit creek already!”
Oreo yawned; he had heard the same thing repeated at every fuel stop. After sumping his tanks for water, Andrew walked the aircraft for a fast preflight check, climbed in, and taxied back onto the tarmac. The windsock hung limp. With no wind, there was no need to taxi to take off into the wind. Andrew conducted his run-up and magneto checks on the flightline in front of the small airfield’s FBO. Once the engine reached a reasonable operating temperature and the final checks were complete, Andrew pushed power and began his take-off roll, bounding across the flightline and taxiway, eschewing the runways all together. Before the fall of society, such foolhardy actions would have left him with some explaining to do to an agency known far and wide for their complete lack of a sense of humor, but now Andrew simply didn’t care.
Rolling out toward the west, he flew over the small town of Tucumcari, New Mexico. Keeping his altitude low, Andrew scanned the town with his binoculars for any signs of survivors. An entire section of the town appeared to be ruined by fire; the main drag appeared to be owned by the dead. Andrew didn’t see any signs of survivors. If there were any down there, they were alone and on their own. Only desert stretched across the landscape in every direction that he could see. After retrieving the road atlas from his bag and scratching Oreo between the ears, Andrew flipped pages until he found what he needed, making pencil marks and notes along the route and of what the town held. I-40 snaked westward, and he followed it, taking a straighter and faster route overhead than the roadway below could give.
“We should be over Albuquerque in a bit!” Andrew yelled over the engine and wind noise to his K-9 companion. Smiling, Andrew let the yellow aircraft gain altitude and airspeed.
Saint George, UT
To say he felt sore was an understatement; Bexar had a headache and felt hungover. The skin on his arms hurt. Looking in the mirror on the dresser, he saw the burns and scratches. Black soot was still smeared on his face. His leg ached, but he could walk on it, sort of, limping a bit because the leg was tender. Folded neatly on the dresser were more pairs of underwear, socks, a T-shirt, and thick brown work pants with cargo pockets; the tag indicated that some place called Duluth Trading made them. Bexar stared at himself in the mirror, at the injuries, the scars, cuts, and bruises he’d earned since December.
“What is it with me and getting fucking blown up?”
His reflection had no answer. Moving slower than usual, Bexar bent over to put on his new pants and proceeded to get dressed. The pants were a little long and a bit loose, but beggars couldn’t be choosers in the brave new world of the dead. The T-shirt fit well. A worn pair of work boots sat on the ground. A belt was on the dresser, along with his pistol, rifle, magazines, and his beloved custom CM Forge knife. The tactical gear was gone, the carrier, mag pouches, all of it. The holster for the pistol wasn’t the same one he’d had before, but it fit the weapon and seemed to function.
Bexar press checked the pistol; it was still loaded, as was his rifle. His rifle was filthy and needed to be cleaned. The spare magazines went into the cargo pockets on his pants for now; perhaps Angel had some spare mag pouches, or maybe Jennifer could whip up something with her badass seamstress skills.
In the living room, he found Guillermo and Chivo standing close and speaking in hushed tones. Chivo looked up and waved him over.
“One chair, a cheese cloth or light dish towel, or worse case a T-shirt, a bucket, a hose, and my man Bexar here is all I need to gather the intel that we need to rectify this problem.”
Guillermo’s eyes were puffy. He was filthy, covered in dirt and soaked in sweat, and he looked exhausted and emotionally defeated, giving only a weak smile for a greeting to Bexar.
“OK. I’ll tell the others to stay away.”
“Good. Let them know that they don’t want to be a part of this.”
Guillermo looked up from the floor and at Bexar again. “But I do.”
Chivo put his hand on Guillermo’s shoulder. “Are you sure?”
“They...” tears rolled down his cheeks, streaking through the dirt, “they did this to us, and I want retribution.”
“Retribution will come. Today is only about making sure we can get it.”
Guillermo nodded and walked out of the room.
“What happened?”
Chivo looked at Bexar. “You don’t remember last night?”
“I remember the shop exploded and burned.”
“You pulled Heath out of the shop after it exploded. You don’t remember that?”
“Vaguely, like a bad dream.”
“Mixing adventures with morphine will do that. Heath died, but you did the right thing.”
Bexar’s expression didn’t change, “Anyone else?”
“Yeah, mano, Gary and Coach got it too.”
Bexar shook his head. “So tell me how we’re going to fix this.”
“We have a prisoner; you and I are going to interview him in an hour or so.”
“Bad cop, bad cop again?”
“Something like that, buddy.”
Groom Lake, NV
A general assembly, the first full assembly since the Groom Lake survivors had met to see Amanda Lampton sworn in as President, sat noisily in the assembly hall. Some of the residents hadn’t been here for the swearing-in ceremony, arriving after the surprise and missing the festivities. The celebration had been vibrant and happy with so many people releasing the fear and anger of the previous months. The only thing that Jake found missing was an open bar, the facility being poorly stocked on spirits, wine, or beer, but some people told him that they were glad about that because this was the longest they had been sober, and they felt like they had new lives. Jake wasn’t one to disagree and decided against the previous plans of trying to distill some liquor out of the stored grains.
Jessie, Sarah, and Erin stood in the back of the hall, along with Jason and a handful of the shooters who had completed the first, and thus far only, Alien’s Home Tactical Training Academy, as one of the participants had named the basic tactical shooting course.
Jake took the stage to a round of applause. “Thank you, thank all of you. Every single day we live is a day we are winners, winning the war against the onslaught of the dead and the Yama Strain. All of you here today were instrumental in the containment of the outbreak. If it hadn’t been for your quick action and adherence to the lockdown rules we have in place, I am confident that more of us would have been taken by Yama.”
The crowd applauded for themselves, Jake smiling at the interruption, happy for the positive outlook the residents had.
“We live and learn, just as all of us have done since the attack on December 26th of this past year. We have learned what caused the outbreak, and we have a theory as to why the lights and systems were turning on and off. First the outbreak: Brit Sanchez was aboveground without good reason. She was attacked by a reanimate and was bitten. She failed to follow the rules of safety and further failed by concealing a bite wound from all of us. Her selfishness killed our fellow residents. Her selfishness also resulted in the death of our military commander, Major Jeffery Wright.”
An audible gasp was heard, and whispering began immediately. Jake held up his hands.
“This won’t happen again. We have a future plan to prevent another outbreak, but before we get to that, we need to talk about the systems. This facility is more complex than we had realized. I know all of you are surprised to hear that a secret underground base at Area 51 is a complex and advanced place, but you’ll have to believe me.”