by Dave Lund
In this part of the country, the airports were often roughly an “A” shape with long runways from being leftover auxiliary airports for military pilot training, so they weren’t too hard to spot from the moderate altitude that he tried to keep.
Andrew located one of the big A-shaped airfields. It had old-looking surfaces with a big “X” on each end of the runways signifying that the runway was out of service, so the dark black tarmac of the primary runway was the obvious choice.
Taxiing near the fuel pumps, Andrew could see that the sign on the FBO said “Winslow.” Flipping through the pages of the big spiral-bound atlas, Andrew saw that he was nearing Flagstaff, Arizona. The sun was well past being directly overhead, nearly halfway down the sky toward the horizon. Andrew decided that Winslow was a wonderful place to sleep but decided to fuel his plane first today, unlike the day before.
Today, the roadway scene on I-40 was weird, something like Andrew hadn’t yet seen. All the cars were pushed off the roadway, and signs were knocked down. It looked as if a giant bulldozer had come through and destroyed all that was in its path. Andrew’s mind flashed back to a favorite childhood movie, remembering that to stop the Nothing, he would have to name the princess.
“Of course, it couldn’t be that simple, Oreo.”
Oreo cocked his head, as dogs do.
After the fuel tanks were topped off, Andrew eschewed the couple of hangars available on the airport and taxied to the far south end on the unused runway. After walking Oreo for his much-needed break, they sat under the shade of the wings and ate a light dinner while watching the desert sunset. Then they both climbed back into the Husky and secured the door and windows to sleep in the plane. Andrew felt better being as far away from I-40 as he could be after seeing the destruction that day.
Groom Lake, NV
The day was one of hard work; Jessie was exhausted and nauseated, and the memories of her first pregnancy, carrying Keeley, began to come back: the hardships, the sickness, the pain, and the constant need to urinate. As those experiences returned with this pregnancy, she felt a sense of wonderment as to how her mind could forget all the bad parts of pregnancy when she held her little girl in her arms for the first time. Tears streamed down her cheeks, streaking through the dirt and soot from the horrible fire they had to tend, but the day was done. Soon she could shower, send these clothes to the laundry service, and then attempt to eat and sleep. Her back hurt, and she was beginning to really show the pregnancy, which meant that the others in the work party kept taking her shovel away. She wanted to help, but for all the work she attempted, Jessie spent most of her time sitting on the roof rack of the FJ with her rifle in hand watching for threats.
The new facility policy, one that she, Sarah, and Erin had helped Jake write, meant that even though not a single undead menace had appeared for the day, each and every one of them would still have to submit to a complete strip search for bite marks.
After parking the FJ back in the hangar, Jessie walked over to the women’s line. She thought it strange that for a work party of their number, the vast majority of the volunteers were women. Just like public restrooms before the end of the world, the women’s line was a half-dozen women deep and taking longer than it probably should. Safely hidden from the men behind the row of partitions, they all stood in the nude, waiting, holding their clothes in one arm, their rifles slung across their nude breasts, but none of them felt embarrassed or all that uncomfortable. It would seem that the new world order had given rise to the end of modesty.
“Fuck this,” was all Jessie heard; by the time she turned to look, Erin had walked away from the back of the women’s line and headed left toward the men’s line.
The men’s line had a single man currently being searched; neither he nor Jason, who was conducting the search, noticed her waiting for her turn. Soon the man headed to the exit area where he could dress, once again in private and still separated from the women’s dressing area.
Jason’s face flushed red at the sight of Erin standing in front of him completely nude, clothes tucked under her left arm and holding her rifle in her right hand. He stared at the floor. “Um, Erin, uh...you aren’t supposed to be here.”
“The women’s line was taking too long, and I want to go shower and eat, so here I am.”
“I can’t do this. I have to check everywhere. I can’t...you can’t. It’s not right...uh, I...”
Erin cut him off, “Just check me! Man the fuck up about it!”
The tension between the two of them was more than this situation; a growing history between them exponentially increased Jason’s awkwardness.
“I heard you were the hero of Cortez, so what is your problem with this?”
“My, it, this...no, it isn’t this. You know what it is.”
“I do, and what’s your deal?”
“I...we can’t.”
“But I know you love me, so why’s it such a problem?”
Jason frowned. “I’m nineteen, I’m, you...we...Erin, you’re too young.”
“I won’t be too young forever. Now inspect me for zombie bites so we can all go inside.”
Radio Hut, Groom Lake, NV
“Whoa, what the fuck was that?” The airman ripped the headphones from his head and pushed back in his chair. Bill sat at his spark-gap radio, waiting to see if anyone else would transmit; so far he’d had contact with seven different groups or people from all across the United States. It was the best news that they’d had in weeks. People were alive and fighting to survive, but something had to be done quickly or none of them, including him, would survive.
“What was it, Jeremy?”
“Some sort of broadband wave of noise; it’s hard to describe.”
“Did you get a sound grab of it?”
“Yeah.”
“Play it over the external speaker so I can hear it.”
Jeremy did as instructed, and the room filled with five seconds of loud broadband sound, like some sound effect from a sci-fi movie.
“That sounds like an encrypted transmission.”
Jeremy shook his head. “Doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard. The digitally encrypted stuff pixelates from the digital encoding.”
Bill nodded. “Sure, but this wasn’t digital. It was probably made using an old analog trick. Long before you were born and after WWII, agents had recordings, like actual records, not tapes or CDs obviously, that they carried. The record was of random radio-wave spectrum noise from space emitted by the suns and stars, completely random. Copies of that record were kept and sent out to agents in the field. With some basic work that the radio transmission recorded, it was phased with the record, and the agent receiving it would have to reverse the process. Damn near impossible to break, unless the Soviets got their vodka-soaked hands on one of the recordings. Some of the hardest encryption to crack, securing open air transmissions from interception, amazing technology really.”
“Did they ever?”
“I think so, but I’m no secret squirrel like you, gents. I’m just an old man who likes playing with radios.”
The other airmen laughed.
“Jeremy, play it again, please.”
SSC, Ennis, TX
Clint sat at the computer terminal. The one-time cipher wasn’t too terribly difficult to remember, but the thumb drive he had carried for six months had to be used with a computer. The thumb drive held more than just text documents or music, although both were present in case someone got suspicious, but no one had ever suspected, none of his teammates, not his boss, not his agency, and his reward would be coming soon.
The radio signal received earlier was encoded and encrypted. Password-protected secret memory sectors on the thumb drive were devoted to radio signals. First, Clint had to run the program from the thumb drive, and then in the program he could apply the MP3 that the jump drive carried. Once those two things w
ere lined up, the message would be easy to read.
A few minutes later, Clint had the message decoded.
Nevada go dark disconnected. Enemy present on West Coast. New mission. Destroy San Diego and enemy.
Although Clint tried to practice, his Korean was rusty and quite subpar for what he needed. However, even if he didn’t understand the message correctly, the message was sent simply enough so he knew that the righteous invaders were suffering losses.
The interface of the software only allowed so many characters, so Clint found himself writing poorly and shortly as if he was on Twitter, hashtag-doubleagent.
Targetto Nevada, five days.
Five days was longer than it would have taken Clint to reach Groom Lake, but he assumed that Amanda wouldn’t have much of a chance in the wild rangeland of the dead, except that Clint had helped to teach her how to survive. With the message encoded, Clint could now wait for his communist brothers and sister to arrive. He would hand over the entire northwestern ICBM field and the best the government had to offer at the SSC.
Radio Hut, Groom Lake, NV
Bill insisted that the radio remain open to scan all the amateur radio bands, which was hard for the changes between the high-frequency frequencies and the seventy-centimeter frequencies. Without warning, a similar sound as before erupted from the studio speakers.
“What the fuck do you think that is?”
“I don’t know what they’re saying Jeremy, but it’s the same kind of transmission. What’s the transmission power like?”
“Damn, Bill, it’s like ten times as strong.”
“So we can assume that either the first was a weak radio or it was a radio that was very far away. The second was a strong radio or one that was much closer than the other. I’d bet money that the first was far away, and the second was much closer.”
“Like how far or how close?”
“That I don’t know, Mike, but on those frequency ranges it could be China or it could be somewhere else on the continent; the other could have been from next door or a few states over.”
“So it was a strong signal, so what.”
“So what? So it sounded like a message broadcast on an open channel that was encrypted by adding some type of random noise that can only be decoded by another who has the same random noise sample.”
“Who the hell would be sending encrypted signals?”
“The Chinese, the Koreans...I doubt it would be a random survivor community or we would have probably heard it before now.”
“Why now?”
“No idea. I’m going to get Jake. This could mean nothing or it could mean something. With the cyber-attack on the facility, I’m leaning toward it means something, and that something isn’t good.”
Saint George, UT
Bexar sat hunched in the back seat of the tiny VW that Chivo drove. Frank sat next to Chivo, his hands and feet free. Frank had begun to believe that Chivo was his newfound best friend. Bexar held his pistol in his hand, the muzzle against the back of Frank’s seat, where it would be harder to miss his target than holding it against his head and much easier to conceal. The last thing they needed was for Frank to understand his precarious situation in remaining amongst the living.
Chivo had explained his plan to Bexar before they left; it wasn’t a grandiose plan, just simple and effective. They had no reason to believe that Frank was a strong enough person to lie effectively. After witnessing Chivo’s enhanced interrogation techniques, Bexar was sure that he would have quickly given in after helping and watching the process. It was not for the faint of heart.
The undead were a bit sparser in the area; they weren’t headed for the Interstate, just down the drive, south on Old Dump Road for a few hundred yards, where they turned into a loose industrial park. After turning onto Red Rock Road, Chivo deftly misshifted and caused the car to lurch and die.
“Shit, mano, looks like we have to walk from here. These old fucking cars. I bet the gas is already bad. Fucking ethanol goes bad in a couple of months, and it’s been over three.”
Frank was a bit wide-eyed. “Um, yeah, well, we’re less than a half-mile away if we walk straight there.”
Chivo climbed out of the car. Frank joined him, and Bexar holstered his pistol as he climbed out on the driver’s side so Frank wouldn’t see him do it. Chivo and Bexar retrieved their rifles from the back seat, the car being too small to climb out holding one without getting caught up on everything. The car sat next to the worn caliche drive of a trucking company.
“You guys just going to leave the car here?”
Bexar looked at Chivo. “What do you think? Frank’s got a point.”
“Hey, mano, you two head up. I’ll catch up in a minute. I’ll try to get it started. If it’s dead for good, I’ll leave it and join you in a few.”
Frank nodded, Bexar gave thumbs up, and they began walking down Red Rock Road before climbing down a retaining wall and taking the direct route to the hideaway. Once out of sight, Chivo turned south and began sprinting through the trucking company’s lot and up the hill on the far end. The top of the hill was a ridge and was flattened, the trucking company using it for storage. He only had a few hundred yards to go, but he had to get there fast, much faster than it would take Bexar and Frank to make the short walk.
Bexar stopped and tied his boot, asking Frank to watch for any approaching dead. A few shambled by in the distance, aimlessly, but none of them appeared close enough to be a threat. Frank stood nervously, shifting from side to side while Bexar was knelt down. When Bexar had silently counted to thirty, slowly tying his boot as he did, he stood and continued the walk. The hardest part of the walk wasn’t slowing the pace down. Bexar exaggerated his limp, explaining that his leg had been broken and describing the truck crash. The hardest part of the walk was resisting the urge to look over his shoulder. It would have been pointless. Bexar knew that even if he did look, there was no way he would have been able to see Chivo anyway.
“We’re almost there. Once we’re safe in the fence line, you can sit and rest for a while.”
“Thanks, Frank.” Bexar paused. “So why the shop and not the house?”
“We watched everyone for a few days and knew the shop was just a shop, the food was all stored somewhere in the home. We needed the food.”
“Why not just ask for it?”
“What if they said no?”
“What if they had said yes, Frank. Then some good people would still be amongst the living.”
“Why chance it?”
This parking lot was paved. There were numerous semi-trucks and trailers parked and abandoned, all of them appearing to have been opened and rummaged through. Ahead of them was the storage lot; the tight compound had a u-shape of storage buildings on the north side, a central building, a short fence, and another building on the south side. It was tight, secure, and secluded. If not for the two men standing on the roof of the outer ring of storage buildings, Bexar might not have noticed that it was occupied. Walking out of the parking lot onto the road, Frank stopped and waved to the two men standing guard. Bexar recognized the rifle that one man carried as some sort of AR-15; the other man carried an RPG. The only real experience Bexar had with that was from watching classic action movies from the 1980s, news reports from the wars in the Middle East, and the man he’d killed the night of the attack on the compound. Luckily, when he was still a cop, in his part of Texas most of the turds were armed with ghetto blasters, not explosive rocket-propelled weapons of war.
“We thought you were dead, Frank.”
“I did too, Dan.”
“Where are the others?”
“They did die.”
“You know the rules about outsiders; you just signed this man’s death warrant by bringing him here.”
“No, you don’t understand...”
The RPG carrier’s head explode
d in a red mist and his body crumpling to the ground, interrupting Frank. Dan, the man with the rifle, turned his head, trying to comprehend what had just happened. His head vanished in a spray of red, blood spewing from his neck as he fell off the roof to the ground below. Frank, shocked and frozen in place, didn’t see Bexar unholster his pistol. A single shot to the side of his head, and Frank fell to the ground. The heavy sound of Chivo’s 50-caliber rifle echoed off the buildings.
So far Chivo’s plan was following the script. Bexar ran as quickly as he could to crouch against the outer wall of the storage units. He stayed still and waited. If Chivo was four for four, then the remaining member would appear quickly. Against the north wall, Bexar was in Chivo’s view and the most out of view for the remaining member of Frank’s group. One last heavy rifle shot echoed through the area, and Bexar knew they were in the clear, assuming that Frank hadn’t lied about the number of people in his group.
Bexar stood and swung his rifle over his back on the sling before taking a few steps back to gain some running room, as much as he could run. A few quick steps and Bexar leapt, using his good leg, his hands grasping the rooftop. Bexar pulled himself up and flopped onto the roof. It wasn’t as graceful as he had hoped, but he’d accomplished his goal. While lying prone, he pulled himself to the inside edge of the roof, took out his pistol, and scanned the small courtyard. There was no movement, and no other people appeared. Three bodies lay near him, motionless, thick pools of blood congealing on the roof, some dripping off the edge to the dusty ground below. Each of them was missing the most important piece of anatomy required to reanimate. Bexar wasn’t worried about them rising to attack him. His focus was toward any new threats that might appear. Soon the sound of the VW reached his ears as it backfired back to life, the sound of the obnoxious muffler growing closer. It shut off, and Chivo soon joined Bexar on the roof.