by James Cook
“How did you…why…” Sarah said, moving her hands around in a vague gesture.
“Who the hell built this place?” Tom asked.
“I hired a company that used to build things like this all over the world. Cost me a pretty penny, but it was worth every dime.” Gabe replied.
“But why? Why have it built to begin with?” Sarah asked.
Gabriel stared at her for a moment, his expression darkening. He scowled, then turned and slowly climbed back up the ladder without a word. A few seconds later, I heard his footsteps crunching against the hard gravel as he walked back toward the cabin. Sarah looked at me in confusion.
“I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?” She asked.
“No, it’s not you. Gabe is…well, he’s had a rough life.” I finished, lamely.
“He looks it.” Tom said.
“He’s smart though.” Brian piped up. “He knows a lot about trees, and electronics.”
I laughed. “Gabe knows a lot about a lot of things. Come on, I’ll show you guys around.”
I spent a few minutes explaining what the various areas of the shelter contained, and showed them the small living area at the other end of the bunker. It consisted of a tiny bedroom, a kitchenette, and a small sitting area. There used to be a couch, but we moved it and assembled a single bed in its place. It was where I slept when we had to go underground to stay warm. I also showed them the computer that controlled the lights and the security system. We left the security system disabled most of the time because running it burned up too much power. We hardly ever used the overhead lights for the same reason.
Tom was amazed at the arsenal of weapons we had collected. He tried to calculate how many rounds of ammunition there were, but he gave it up after a minute or two. There were too many.
“What are you going to do with all this stuff when you leave?” He asked.
I shrugged. “We’ll take as much food as we can carry, some purified water, and a few of the guns. Spare ammo too. We’ll also have to take all the gasoline, I’m afraid. That MUV under the carport up there still works. We should have enough fuel to get us clear of the Appalachian Range past the foothills. After that, we’ll be going on foot. Most of this stuff will have to stay behind.”
“You mean…we can keep it?” Sarah asked.
I smiled at her. “Most of it, yeah.”
She stared at me for a moment, and then walked over and hugged me. I laughed and hugged her back.
“Thank you. Thank you so much.” She said.
“You can thank me by making good use of this stuff, and by taking care of my Grandpa’s cabin.”
Tom and Brian came over and put their arms around her. I could not even imagine what those three went through to get there, crossing hundreds of miles of rough mountain country on foot. Through the dark days after the Outbreak, the cabin and the bunker beneath it had given me a strong sense of security, and a safe place that I could call home. Out on the road, I knew that there would be no safety. The only security I could expect to find would be what I bought with my wits and with my rifle. It was a harsh reality, but I had come to terms with it. Colorado held out hope for Gabe and I. Hope that we could return to some semblance of society, and have a chance at starting our lives over again. It was a slim hope, but we intended to pursue it.
*****
We did not carry our canoe down to the river and leave for Marion for another two weeks. The delay made me a little nervous about our timetable. I wanted to get on the road to Colorado before old man winter showed up and tried to kill us again. Gabriel insisted on staying for a little while and giving Tom and Brian some basic combat training. I knew that there would be no use in arguing with the big guy on this one, so I agreed to help. Gabe and Sarah handled the firearms portion of their training, and I taught them basic hand-to-hand combat. I was an avid martial artist before the Outbreak, and regular sparring matches with Gabriel had kept my Jiu Jitsu and Krav Maga skills sharp.
Sarah did a nice job of adapting the skills she learned at the FBI academy in Quantico to address the threats her family was likely to face in a land without rule of law. She actually taught me a thing or two, especially when it came to handgun marksmanship and close-quarter combat tactics. A few sparring matches, a black eye, several bruised ribs, and a couple of stitches under my left cheekbone demonstrated that I had very little to teach her about hand-to-hand fighting. Anyone who says ‘you hit like a girl’, and means it as an insult, has clearly never caught a right cross from a woman like Sarah Glover. Gabe gave me a bit of grief about it while he stitched up the gash Sarah’s elbow opened up on my face. I suggested that if he thought he could do better, maybe he should challenge her to a sparring match himself. That shut him up.
The only discipline that I really had anything to offer the former FBI agent was in knife fighting. At that, much like anything else she endeavored, she proved to be a quick study. I liked her sense of humor and her tough, gritty spirit. An easy camaraderie formed quickly between the two of us. I’m sure that Tom noticed our growing friendship, but he didn’t seem to mind. My dad used to tell me that if you trust a woman, jealousy should never enter the picture. Tom proved my father right by living that ideal. Any idiot with half a brain could see that Sarah was fully devoted to her husband, and he to her.
Training progressed into techniques to use against the undead, many of them I learned through hard experience. If you have to grab them, take them by the throat. If you can control the head, you can control the whole body. Never let them get close enough to grab you if you can help it. If they do, trip them. Once you take them down, they have a hard time getting back up. That gives you a chance to put something sharp and pointy in their brain case, and end the fight. The infected are impervious to pain, being that they are already dead, so conventional fighting tactics are mostly useless against them. Never try to take them down head on. Circle around to one side or the other and knock them off balance, or plant something in their skull from an angle at which they cannot reach you. Tripping them up with a long pole is usually pretty effective, and if all else fails, a good old fashioned kick to the chest will usually knock them down on their ass if you launch it hard enough.
Working with Brian was a unique experience, to say the least. His parents insisted that Gabe and I train him. They didn’t want parental sentiment to get in the way of teaching him what he needed to learn. The boy was small for his age, but also intelligent and courageous. He had his mother’s fiery spirit, and what he lacked in physical ability, he more than made up for with aggression and sheer determination. He learned to fire every gun that we handed him, and never complained about recoil even when a gun would damn near knock him over. I had him experiment with a few different weapons to find something that he could shoot easily and accurately. We settled on an MP5, which is a sub-machine gun that fires nine-millimeter pistol ammunition. Gabe and I set up a few targets in the field at the bottom of the eastern edge of the mountain near a small lake. The ground there was flat, and it made for a good training area. I loaded the little rifle and handed it to Brian.
“This here is the safety.” I said, pointing to it. “This is the magazine release. When the chamber locks open, that means you’re out of ammo. Press the mag release, pull this out, and slap in a new one. Make sure it’s seated, then smack this thing to chamber a round. When you hear it snap into place, you’re ready to rock and roll. Any questions?”
Brian looked up at me and shook his head. There was no boyish glee in his eyes, only the serious gaze of a human being determined to learn and to survive. It made me proud and sad all at the same time. No face that young should ever have to look so serious and mean it. I glanced up at Tom and Sarah and gave them what I hoped was a reassuring smile. Brian raised the weapon up to his shoulder and took a few seconds to practice lining up the sights.
“This thing sets up pretty nice.” He said. “I don’t really have to do much to sight it in, its right there as soon as I bring it up.”
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“Put a few rounds through it before you start getting attached.” Gabriel said, motioning toward the targets. “Go ahead whenever you’re ready.”
Brian spent a few more seconds getting used to the feel of the weapon, then released the safety and sighted in on one of the targets. Crack. A fraction of a second later, I heard a metallic ping.
“Hit.” Gabe said.
He was looking downrange at the targets through a spotting scope. Each target was a round disc of steel roughly ten inches in diameter mounted on sticks driven into the ground. From fifty yards away, they looked like big dots. That would be a tough shot to make even with good optics. The kid was just using iron sights. Impressive. He aimed at the next target and pulled the trigger. Another crack, and another ping.
“Hit.” Gabe said again.
I glanced at him in irritation. “You know, we can hear it when he hits the target.”
Gabe frowned at me, but stopped calling hits for the rest of the exercise.
Brian fired a few more rounds and hit most of his shots. Gabe had him practice standing up, kneeling, sitting, and prone, the four basic firing positions. Brian hit the targets consistently, so to keep things interesting, Gabe had him practice run-and-shoot tactics, doing long wind sprints and firing while he was out of breath. He did not hit every shot, but he hit enough to impress the hell out of me. Tom was practically bursting with pride, while Sarah looked on in mute satisfaction.
Once Gabe felt confident in Brian’s marksmanship, we packed up our stuff and began marching up the hill back toward the cabin. The training session had taken a couple of hours, and my stomach was starting to protest the lack of raw material inside of it. Tom and I were discussing what we were going to make everyone for lunch when the dead showed up and ruined the festive mood.
Six of them broke the tree line in front of us. They must have been dead for a long time; exposure to the elements had disintegrated their clothes and peeled away almost all of their skin. Their general shape, and the fact that they walked on two legs, were the only indicators that these things had ever been human. Of course, it was just my shitty luck that every single one of them had their throats torn out, which meant we did not hear them approaching. That didn’t give us much time to react. I pulled my pistol and blasted the two nearest to me. Sarah stepped backward from the grasping arms of a revenant, executed a combat roll to one side, popped up, and buckled its knee about ninety degrees the wrong direction with a hard stomp. By the time it hit the ground she had already drawn her pistol. At the same moment that she blew the walker’s brains out, Tom crushed a ghoul’s skull with two-handed swing from his hatchet. I opened my mouth to warn him about the one at his back, but Brian beat me to it.
“Dad, get down!” He shouted.
Tom complied immediately, trusting his son’s aim. The boy sighted in over his father’s back with the MP5 and pulled the trigger twice. Both rounds took his target through the forehead, staggering it backward before it dropped like a sack of bricks. Through the whole exchange, Gabe’s expression barely changed. He drew his Falcata and split the last infected’s head like a ripe melon before booting it down the hill with a powerful kick.
“Everybody alright?” I asked.
We all took a moment to check each other. No bites, no scratches, everyone was fine.
“Damn, they came out of nowhere.” Sarah said, letting out a nervous laugh.
Tom managed a smile as he put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “I’ve said it before, sweetheart, but it bears repeating. Remind me never to piss you off.”
Sarah laughed and hugged him back.
“As for you little fella’,” Gabe said, reaching down and patting Brian on the back, “I think you just earned your sergeant’s stripes.”
The kid looked up at the big man and smiled. His mom came over and gave him a hug.
“Thank you Brian, you were very brave.”
“Hey, I helped.” Tom said in mock indignation.
As bright as the moment was, the lizard part of my brain that had kept me alive so far was shouting at me to get everyone moving. All the commotion might have called more infected to our location.
“We should head back to the cabin. There might be more of them coming.” I said.
“Agreed.” Gabe said. “Alright everybody, keep your eyes open. I don’t want to get blindsided again.”
We were all a little on edge as we trudged the rest of the way up the mountain. The tension only dissipated when we locked the front gate behind us.
“Can I ask you a question?” Tom said as we marched toward the cabin.
“Sure.” I replied.
“Where did you get the materials to make that fence?” He motioned back toward it. “I mean, this place is pretty far from anywhere you could have scavenged those supplies. You must have had a hard time getting everything up here.”
“Actually, the fence posts were already in place before the Outbreak. The rails were sitting on a pallet behind the shed.”
Tom stopped and stared at me. Sarah and Brian stopped to look as well. Gabe kept walking, and I frowned at his back as he stomped away.
“Something about all this doesn’t add up.” Tom said. “The solar panels, the bunker, the fence, it’s like you guys knew the Outbreak was coming before it happened.”
I turned and looked at Tom for a long moment. “I didn’t, but I knew something like it was possible. Gabriel…well, he knew about the Phage for a long time before the Outbreak.”
“The what?” Sarah asked.
“Sorry, that’s what Gabe and I call it, the disease that caused all this. Its official title with the CDC was the Reanimation Bacteriophage, or just Phage for short.”
Tom gaped, dumbfounded. After a few seconds, he shook his head and continued.
“Okay, putting that aside for the moment, you’re telling me Gabe knew the Outbreak was going to happen? How?”
I sighed, and adjusted my rifle sling. “It’s a long story. Let’s go inside, I need some caffeine if we’re going to have this conversation.”
We went back in the cabin and stowed our weapons. I got a fire going in the stove and set some water to boil in the kettle. Once I had a cup of Earl Grey in my hand, I sat down at the little kitchen table with Tom and Sarah while Gabe brooded in his recliner, running the blade of his big Bowie knife over an oiled whetstone. A deep breath cleared my head, and then I launched into it. I told them about how I met Gabriel several years ago when he bought the cabin from me. We soon became close friends, and three years later, he finally told me about the work he did with Aegis Incorporated, a private security firm with powerful allies at the Pentagon. His job was to eradicate the carriers of infectious diseases dangerous enough to threaten the entire world. It was ugly, awful, brutal work, but at the time, it was necessary. Gabe joined the conversation long enough to tell them about the missions where his team was sent to fight the undead, the elaborate cover-ups, and his suspicions about the government’s involvement. He also told them how he didn’t warn me about the Phage until the day of the Outbreak, but he made sure I knew enough to be prepared if it happened. On his advice, I had two survival bunkers built; one at my old home in Charlotte and the other at my vacation house in nearby Morganton. We finished the perimeter fence, moved everything from my survival shelter in Morganton to the one beneath us, and got to work clearing the surrounding countryside of infected. Ever since then we had focused on simply staying alive from one day to the next. Last year, just before Christmas, we made the decision to venture west to Colorado, and what remains of the United States.
When I finished, I was staring at three stricken, disbelieving faces. Tom got up from the table and stood next to Gabriel. Gabe didn’t bother looking up. He tested the edge of his knife with his thumb, frowned, and ran the knife over the stone again.
“Is all of this true?” Tom asked.
“Of course it is.” Gabe rumbled. “You think we would lie about something like that?”
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�Why didn’t you say anything? We’ve been here two weeks.” Tom demanded.
Gabe looked up at him, a dangerous glare in his eyes. “You didn’t ask.”
Tom shook his head and came back over to the table. He sat down and clasped his hands in front of him.
“I’ve been hoping that help was coming, you know? I keep expecting to see a helicopter on the horizon, or the Army to come along in tanks and kill all of the infected. We’ve been in the mountains all this time, waiting for some sign that civilization was coming back.”
I shook my head, feeling a black wave of weariness wash over me. “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, Tom. No one is coming to help us. We’re on our own.”
I stepped over to my recliner and slumped down into it. A few quiet minutes passed.
“Mom, I’m hungry.” Brian said, ending the silence. I smiled. At least the kid had his priorities straight.
“Okay honey, let’s make something to eat.” Sarah replied.
Brian and his mother put together a meal of canned vegetables and venison. Gabe stopped sharpening his knife to stare at the wood stove, his scarred face dark and pensive.
“We should get the canoe and head over to Marion tomorrow.” He said.
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll pack tonight. We can head out first thing in the morning.”
“You two need us to do anything while you’re gone?” Sarah asked from the kitchen table.
Gabriel chewed on a strip of dried meat and thought about it for a moment. “I want you to study Eric’s notes. He’s made maps of supply caches, and places with things we haven’t needed to scavenge yet. You need to know where all the resources are around here. Where the best places to hunt and fish are, and where you can find wild edibles.”
Sarah nodded. We finished the rest of the meal in silence. The mood in the cabin became stifling, so I spent a couple of hours outside chopping firewood to pass the time. Swinging a splitting maul is good exercise, and I figured it would save Tom the trouble while I was gone for the next couple of days. Besides, the night was growing colder, and I am a firm supporter of the old adage, ‘he who chops the wood warms himself twice’.