So the advance teams’ main priorities were to scout the terrain and search for survivors (or enemies), but the grim, implicitly understood secondary objective was to find out if zombies still prowled the Wild and to eliminate them if possible. Small groups they could probably handle, but if the small teams were to happen upon a horde of zombies…
Abby shook her head to dispel these thoughts. She’d faced a horde only twice before, and that was plenty for a lifetime. Hopefully those things had all died out, but did they even die naturally? No one knew.
She turned her attention now to the weapons she’d be taking along. She’d been issued a short-barreled M4 carbine from the armory along with six magazines, as well as a Glock 19 handgun with four magazines. Though they were probably cleaned already before they were issued to her, she spent an hour wiping down and lubing up all the different parts of the firearms.
Abby suited up to test if she’d distributed the weight of her load properly. They’d want to rest the horses along the way occasionally and do some walking of their own on their cross-country trip, so she had to ensure her load wouldn’t bear her down. She strapped a drop-leg holster around her thigh, the kind that Zach used to carry, and she locked the loaded handgun into this along with one spare mag. She put on a tactical molly-weave belt, which carried three extra mags for her rifle on her left and a medical pouch and her tomahawk on her right. Next was her ruck, which carried the rest of her gear, and finally a pair of black tactical gloves with Kevlar knuckles. Back when she was a DAS agent, Abby learned that, as strong as she was, she still couldn’t match the natural strength of the men around her. So she always wore these gloves to help even the odds a bit and give her punches an extra ‘oomph’ should she find herself in a fight.
Cinching down the shoulder straps of her ruck, Abby grabbed her rifle and walked about her living room a bit, bending this way and that, hopping and crouching. Everything felt pretty good, and Abby nodded her head once, affirming to herself that she’d done a good job packing. She dropped her ruck, disarmed herself, then changed out of her tactical clothes into loose pajama pants and a T-shirt.
In the morning they’d be setting out shortly after dawn. Some of the guys, Hiamovi included, were going out for a last drink before the mission, but Abby chose to stay home and turn in early, preferring a last good night’s sleep to a drink.
But that early bedtime would have to be delayed for at least a minute as a knock sounded at Abby’s door. Puzzled, Abby padded across the living room and pulled open the door.
“Hiamovi?” she said. “I thought you were with the guys.”
“I was,” Hiamovi replied. “But I decided I’d rather have a little alone time with you instead. We won’t be getting any more of that any time soon, after all.”
“Good point,” Abby replied, “but I’m actually about to turn in for the night so I don’t know how entertaining of a hostess I’ll be.”
“But I come bearing gifts,” said Hiamovi, and he held up two green bottles of beer.
Abby smirked and said, “Fine. Another half hour won’t kill me, I suppose.”
She took one of the bottles from Hiamovi and gestured for him to come in, closing and locking the door behind him.
“All set for tomorrow?” Hiamovi asked. He pointed with his beer bottle towards Abby’s gear along the far wall.
“Yup. Everything feels good, and I’m only bringing the essentials.”
“So that’s essential?”
Hiamovi pointed towards the tomahawk on Abby’s pack and smiled.
“Well, it was either that or buy a new knife,” Abby replied.
“Come on, can’t give me any more credit than that?” Hiamovi joked.
“Alright, it’s definitely useful and was pretty well made, I suppose.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
They clinked their bottles together and sat down on Abby’s couch. Hiamovi grabbed the TV remote and pressed the power button, then tuned into a sports channel where a basketball game was being played.
“So besides the physical aspect, you all set for tomorrow?” Hiamovi asked after a short silence.
“Yeah,” Abby replied. “Don’t forget this is hardly my first rodeo.”
“I know, yeah. I guess it’s easy to forget sometimes that someone as young as you has your kind of history.”
“Hey, you’re barely older than me, pal.”
“Yeah but I signed up for a lot of what I’ve done. You just got dealt one bad hand after another.”
“True,” was all Abby had to say about that.
“You know, it’s really amazing to see how far you’ve come, how much you’ve changed,” continued Hiamovi.
“Thanks,” said Abby. “It certainly wasn’t easy getting to this point.”
“I can imagine not.”
Abby wasn’t sure in which direction the conversation was headed from there, so she said nothing as they both turned their attention to the game on TV.
“I actually feel better than when I was getting ready to go undercover in the DAS,” she finally said.
“Oh yeah?” asked Hiamovi.
“Yeah, that was a lot scarier. I was crazy nervous in the week leading up to that.”
“I wouldn’t know, I didn’t exactly see much of you those last couple weeks.”
Abby laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“What?”
“Are you saying you don’t remember what we did quite a few times that week? You saw all of me.”
“Well, yeah. I-I mean…” Hiamovi stammered. “I mean, of course I remember that.”
“Good. I’d be slightly offended if you didn’t.”
“How could I forget?”
“I would hope you couldn’t. It was pretty good, wasn’t it?”
“Absolutely yes,” Hiamovi said, nodding his head.
“It’s kinda funny, actually. Everything right now does feel pretty similar to that time. We hadn’t seen each other in a while until a few weeks ago, and a dangerous, almost suicidal mission is just over the horizon. Just like last time.”
“Yeah. I hadn’t thought about that but you’re right. Very similar circumstances.”
“I guess the only difference between then and now is that we haven’t had sex this time.”
“I suppose so, yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Silence followed, and both Abby and Hiamovi realized suddenly that they were almost on top of each other on the couch, smiling as rosy memories passed before their eyes.
Hiamovi cleared his throat and scooted away from Abby a bit. He took a drink of his beer and set the bottle down on the coffee table, and Abby followed suit.
“So,” Hiamovi began to say, hoping to steer the conversation away from the slightly uncomfortable topic of their past romantic encounters. But he never got that chance.
Abby pounced on him, leaning into Hiamovi and kissing him passionately. He kissed her back as they began to pull at each other’s clothes.
“Wait. Wait a second,” Hiamovi gasped out between breaths, pulling his lips away from Abby’s. “Are you sure about this? I thought you wanted— ”
“Just shut up and kiss me,” Abby interrupted as she pushed him back down. She pulled her shirt off over her head and helped Hiamovi do the same. The pants followed a minute later, and before long Hiamovi carried Abby down the hallway and into her bedroom.
They never finished those two beers, and they had to be thrown away mostly untouched the next morning.
Chapter Seven
The crisp air of a February morning bit at Abby’s ears as she retrieved her black beanie from her ruck and pulled it down over her head, making sure to cover her ears. Her horse Reese sauntered along next to the large, Appaloosa stallion that carried Jax. They rode up in front of the group, with the rest of the team fanned out behind them across the Utah plains, keeping a good bit of space between each person.
For about the thirtieth time since the sun rose that morning, Abby cast a glan
ce over her shoulder, looking at Hiamovi. He was behind her and to the left, riding a black horse he named Beauregard, a slightly silly and rather antiquated name for which he offered no explanation whatsoever, much to Abby’s chagrin.
“You know that when you’re upfront you don’t have to watch the rear, right?” Jax asked without looking at Abby. “The boys in the back have our six covered pretty well.”
“Oh. Yeah, I know,” Abby replied.
“Something back there caught your eye, then?”
“No,” Abby said. “I’m just…looking.”
Jax looked over at Abby now, the faintest trace of a smile creasing his face. “I heard you stayed at home last night, and that Hiamovi left the going away party early.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Abby said, looking away to her right.
Jax chuckled and shook his head. “No, I get it. ‘Bout to head out on a dangerous road for a very long time with a whole group of guys. No telling when you’d get another opportunity to— ”
“You know, I just remembered something I gotta tell Hiamovi,” Abby interrupted, and she brought her horse to a stop to allow Hiamovi to come up beside her, then cantered alongside him.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I thought we should have a word about last night,” Abby replied quietly.
“What about it?”
“Look, I’m just gonna be honest. That was purely physical, okay? I’m only human, I have urges like everyone else and last night may well have been our last chance ever to have sex. So that’s what that was.”
“Meaningless sex, that’s all that was?”
“That’s all it was.”
Hiamovi grinned. “I don’t believe you.”
Abby feigned a look of offense. While the sex had indeed been somewhat of a physical urging, it was in fact far from meaningless for her. “I’m not sure why you wouldn’t. This isn’t…we’re not together or anything. I mean, how could we be? We’re out here now.”
“No, we’re not together. Yet.”
“No, there wasn’t a ‘yet’ there.”
“I heard one.”
“Oh you did? Was that before or after I said quite clearly ‘we’re not together or anything’?”
“It was somewhere in between those words. See, it’s the words you didn’t say that made the biggest impression.”
“Ugh, why are you such a romantic?”
She gave Reese a nudge with her knees, prompting him to go faster as she caught up to Jax and then matched his pace.
“Finishing some pillow talk?” he asked when Abby returned.
“Oh shut up,” she replied.
***
The land between the capital city and the Rocky Mountains was something of a grey area. It was not technically part of what was called ‘The Wild’, as the zombies had never been known to go past the Rockies, but it was sparsely populated. Very few people stopped there in the mass migration westward, and most of the original residents had largely been displaced by looters and gangs early on in The Crisis. It was a bit of a lawless wild between civilization and The Wild, with a capital ‘W’.
So it was that their first contact with another human did not come until the team was up in the Rocky Mountains, approaching what was once a very affluent area. Abby had begun to see some familiar landmarks, and she explained to the group who they may encounter in short order, a man she remembered with no small measure of disgust.
“The man’s a sociopath, and he may be holding women captive,” she explained.
“May be?” Hiamovi asked.
“The two women I met both said they stayed because they wanted to, but I don’t know. Maybe they really did like it there, or maybe they just didn’t see any other option. He told me I had to have sex with him whenever he demanded it if I wanted to stay, and I suppose that was the same deal he offered those other women, too.”
“Seriously? Weren’t you like fifteen then?” asked Kurtis.
“Yeah, but he didn’t care. He actually seemed pretty excited about my age.”
“Sick fuck,” said Hiamovi.
Abby shot Hiamovi a disapproving glare. She didn’t like that word, and she didn’t like him using it either. And so, in a slight return to her former habit, she’d chastise Hiamovi if ever he used an especially bad four-letter word.
“Is he dangerous?” asked Jax.
“He’s certainly capable of being dangerous,” Abby replied. “I didn’t see it for myself, but he claimed to have an entire armory somewhere in his house. He might also have some kind of surveillance or warning system around his property. He saw me coming out in the middle of the night in the snow. We’ll have to approach with caution.”
“I agree,” said Jax. “Nate, Yuri! Take Abby and ride ahead. Abby, when you see this asshole’s house, let ‘em know. Nate and Yuri, you know what to do.”
“Roger that, Gunny,” said Yuri. He and Nate quickened their pace, and Abby urged Reese forward with her knees to pull alongside the two Raiders.
They rode at a decent clip for a while to get far ahead of the rest of the group. After nearly an hour they reached a neighborhood that Abby was sure included the house for which she was looking, so Yuri and Nate took her farther up an incline, hoping she could spot the house from afar.
Abby scanned the land to her east, looking through a heavy pair of binoculars that belonged to Yuri. Several once opulent homes passed across her magnified field of vision, their rich trappings and bizarre architecture now dilapidated as Nature reclaimed her dominion. She saw dirty, muck-filled pools, grass that obscured first floor windows, and even a couple of coyotes.
“Gonna have to watch out for those coyotes,” Abby said, still peering through the binoculars.
“Yes, certainly,” replied Yuri in a disinterested tone. He was busy penciling in marks on a map of the area.
“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you something, Abby,” said Nate.
“Hm?’ said Abby.
“Well, I’m just curious, but how true are the stories? I mean, the zombies. I heard some of them could flip a bus over or even outrun a car. That can’t be true…right?”
“I never saw anything like that,” Abby said, pulling the binoculars away from her face and looking at Nate. “But I wouldn’t doubt those stories are true, or at least only slightly exaggerated. They’re creatures unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. One of them is scary, a horde… ”
Abby let her voice trail off and returned her attention to the binoculars as Nate digested her answer. He looked to Yuri, who remained intently focused on his map.
“Do you think we’ll be— ”
“There! There it is!” Abby interrupted.
Nate took the binoculars from Abby as she described the house. “The white two-story house there with the black front door, it’s got floor-to-ceiling windows all covered up. Looks to be about 500 meters away.”
“Okay. Okay, yeah I see it,” Nate said. He handed the binoculars to Yuri.
“Hm. Closer to 450 meters, I’d say. Easy target from here,” said Yuri as he put the binoculars away.
“We’ll wait here, you go back and rejoin the others.”
“Got it.”
Abby gathered her things and remounted Reese, clicking her tongue to get him to walk. Speed was no longer necessary, so she allowed him to take a slow pace.
Now that she was alone for the moment, unpleasant thoughts and memories bombarded Abby. She thought about the last time she’d been here, as a cold, starving, and lonely little girl on a precipice. She had not seen it on their journey yet, but she knew she was not far from that little house where she almost ended it all. And that wasn’t even the last time she made such an attempt.
“But you’re not that girl anymore,” she said aloud to herself. “And you’re not the girl that came after, either. You’re making changes, and you’re getting better.”
Before long, Abby reunited with the rest of the team, and she told Jax that Nate and Yuri were in place.
“They’ve got eyes on the house from the west, so we should probably approach from the north or south,” she said.
“I agree,” Jax said, nodding his head. “Listen up, boys and girl. This is a ‘hearts and minds’ deal. We’re gonna talk to this guy, tell him what’s happening, see if he needs help, and we’re also gonna see about these women he’s keeping, if they’re still around. Don’t engage unless you’re forced to.”
Abby turned and saw the disappointed expressions of Chad and Max, and she shook her head. They’d learn eventually, and they might not like the price of that lesson.
The sun was well into its westward descent by the time Abby and the team reached their objective. Abby pointed it out from a distance and also pointed out the elevated location which hid Nate and Yuri. Jax keyed his radio in and said, “Yuri, this is Jax. Radio check.”
“Lima Charlie,” came Yuri’s reply, which meant ‘loud and clear’.
“Alright, keep us safe but don’t shoot too quickly. We’re not out here with body bags. Jax out.”
Abby continued leading the group up the gradual slope until turning north to approach their target. Everyone had a hand on their guns, but did not lift them up or otherwise act in a menacing manner, according to the plan.
Once they came within one hundred feet of the target, the front door was flung open and an older man crashed out onto the doorstep, wearing what looked like a large metal backpack and, to everyone’s shock, carrying a hand-held, six-barreled minigun.
“What do you want? Who are you?” the man shouted. His massive weapon was not yet pointed up at the group on his property, but it was facing their general direction.
The Marines all pulled their horses to a halt immediately. “Whoa, hang on,” Abby insisted as some of them looked like they were about to open fire.
“We’re United States Marines!” Jax yelled. “We’re looking for survivors out here, to let you know that— ”
His Name Was Zach | Book 3 | Their Names Were Many Page 5