by Lund, Dave
“Fucking thing has run flats.… I hate these assholes.”
Erin fired again. A breath later, one of the men who was standing and directing the others fell to the ground, lifeless, a pink mist hanging in the air where his head used to be. Others raised their rifles toward Erin and Jason, although Erin was fairly sure that they were out of range and wanted to kill a few more of them.
“They see us. We’ve got to haul ass!”
Erin ignored Jason and fired again, punching a hole in the side of the aircraft, more out of anger than knowing what was behind it.
Jason climbed off the roof of the Suburban; Erin fired again and joined him. The windows were shattered, the windshield ruined from the concussion of the heavy rifle. After Jason kicked out the windshield and side windows so he could see, Erin climbed into the passenger seat. He turned and drove south, accelerating quickly. Glancing at Erin, he saw a tear roll down her cheek. Jason held her hand, intertwining their fingers. Erin slid across the bench seat closer to him, curled her feet up on the bench, and laid her head on his shoulder, crying into his shirt as the wind and the dust swirled through the cabin. Not entirely sure how to get to where they were going, Jason knew that it would be better to get lost and have to figure it out later than waiting for the Chinese and North Korean forces they just harassed to come visit them.
Groom Lake
“Aymond.”
Aymond heard the soft whisper but couldn’t see where the voice was coming from.
“Goat?”
Chivo smirked, although no one could see him. “Yeah, Master-Guns, the goat. There are three of us and we’re going to come around to join you.”
His eyes squinted in annoyance, but there wasn’t much he could do. “OK, come on then.”
Chivo waved Jessie and Bexar up and the three of them joined the Marines as they sat in a defensive position. Two of the men knelt in the middle, loading magazines out of ammo cans.
“What’s the matter, goat? Things get too difficult?”
The annoyance and sarcasm in Aymond’s voice was thick. Chivo had dealt with this sort of situation before, although never in a secret underground base overrun by the dead.
“No, mano, we heard your rifle fire and thought it better to team up for safety. We wouldn’t want any friendly fire casualties; there are too few friendlies left as it is.”
Aymond didn’t respond.
“Besides, Master-Guns, this here is Jessie and she knows the layout. She and the people here set the security plan for this sort of situation.”
Aymond looked at her, then Bexar and back to Chivo. Nothing about this situation was what he wanted, but nothing about the new world they lived in was what he wanted either. Adapt and overcome.
“Fine, let’s get you guys topside and we can continue clearing out all the Zeds.”
Jessie glanced at Chivo then back at Aymond. “Zeds?”
“Zeds, the dead that won’t die; Zulu, Z as in zombie,” Gonzo said with a sigh.
Chivo smiled. “Zeds, I like that…I agree, let’s get Bexar and his pregnant wife topside and safe then I’ll help you guys finish this job.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Master Sergeant Arturo Rodriguez, 1st SFOD Detachment Delta, formerly and more recently, I was with the agency. I’d slap a challenge coin down for you but I don’t see where you could buy me some cocktillios.”
Aymond looked incredulous. People make wild claims and for Chivo to say he was formerly with Delta Force and then a CIA paramilitary operator wouldn’t be uncharacteristic of someone who was full of shit, but there wasn’t any way he could prove the claim one way or another.
Snow slid over next to Aymond and Chivo. “I thought you looked familiar. You said your name was Smith.”
“Have you ever met a spook named anything besides Smith? That was in the Herat Province, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was and I met a couple of Johnsons too.”
“So has your mom.”
Bexar wanted to laugh but didn’t quite understand what was going on; a few of the Marines grinned silently at the joke.
Snow gave Chivo a fist bump. “Chief, I’ll vouch for him.”
Aymond shrugged. He had to trust his teammate, but adding more unknown people into the mix wasn’t ever a great idea during an operation. “What about your friend and his pregnant wife?”
“He’s good, ex-cop, but he actually knows stuff.”
Aymond’s face didn’t change, just a general look of annoyance remained as everyone stood silently. A single shot broke the silence.
“We should get moving, Chief; the natives are getting sporty.”
“Right, Kirk. Chivo, why don’t you have your friends go topside and we’ll wrap this up.”
Chivo turned around to face Bexar. “Hey, mano, this isn’t worth the argument. You and Jessie head up top, your fight down here is on hold anyways since we found Erin’s mom already. Stick around up there though and we’ll figure out the next step in a few.”
Bexar opened his mouth to speak but before he could, Jessie squeezed his arm and spoke for them. “OK, Chivo, be safe. Come on, babe, I’ll lead the way.”
Jessie turned and began silently sliding down the hallway toward the stairwell, her rifle ready. Bexar glanced at Chivo with a slight grin and followed his wife. He hated being shrugged off by people, but he trusted Chivo and his judgment. Besides, he didn’t want Jessie down here in this fight in the first place, so in a roundabout way, he got what he wanted in the end.
As Bexar and Jessie left, the Marines and Chivo had a quick pow-wow to get on the same page before returning to their task.
The Radio Hut
Bill took the keyer and tapped a fast-repeating break message; he needed the band open to himself. Eventually, the frequency fell silent, the other stations waiting for Bill’s message.
Groom Lake under attack…overrun…need help…trapped…invasion force…send help send help send help.
After repeating the message, some of the other radio operators on the frequency began transmitting on top of each other asking questions. Across the country, some survivors lost hope; if the last known stronghold of America could be shut down, what hope would they have trying to scratch out a life in the mist of so much death and destruction? Anger burned bitterly in other survivors. Anger at the first attack that destroyed civilization, anger at the Chinese, the Koreans, the dead. Months of frustration, weeks of fear, days and days of dread trying to live long enough that they might outpace this horrible new life fell with a crash of a thousand glasses. For all the survivors who cowered in fear, two more stood with faces red, nostrils flared, longing for the chance to see their tormentors and kill them.
“Think that will work, Bill?”
Bill shrugged at the airman’s question, the locked door rattling with the bangs of the dead. “God I hope so.”
The spark gap radio buzzed and popped with multiple stations transmitting on top of each other, the smell of ionized air from the current filling the room. Bill ignored all the transmission fragments he could understand, most of them questions about his transmission. He looked defeated.
“Even if it doesn’t work, we should keep working. What else can we do but sit and wait for death? If we’re going to die, we might as well try to go down with pride in our last mission.”
“I know you’re right,” another hard wet thump against the door rattled the wall, “but fuck this is scary.”
On The Surface
Amanda began walking toward Bexar and Jessie who had just exited the facility into the ruined hangar. Dirt and sand covered the concrete floor and the sun was low in the western sky.
“What are we going to do tonight, sleep in the FJ?”
“I still have a tent and I put it up near here.”
“Really? One of the wall t
ents? That’s amazing.”
Amanda reached them. “How is it down there, Bexar?”
“Uh, pretty fucked really.”
Jessie was a little surprised at the candor with the president. Amanda wasn’t fazed.
“Think there are any survivors?”
Jessie answered first. “Yes, ma’am, I do. I’m not sure how many survived but it’s worth fighting for.”
“What about you, Jessie? Are you going to make it?”
“I’m beginning to remember all the bad things about being pregnant, but I have no choice. We have no choice but to make it. The hard part is what to do after she’s born.”
Amanda’s eyes lit up. “You know it’s a girl? They have an ultrasound here?”
“Oh no, I don’t know, just sort of feels like it might be a girl.”
“I understand.” Amanda gave Jessie a hug.
Bexar left them to chat and walked toward the radar truck. He saw it earlier but didn’t really know what it did. One of the Marines was near it, crawling around one of the big armored trucks that his group had arrived in. His leg hurt. It had only been a couple of months since he was shot in Terlingua and although the wound had healed fairly well and somehow didn’t get infected again, it still ached and hurt. The fresh scar looked terrible.
The Marine stopped working for a moment and watched Bexar walk toward him. “Hey, guy.”
“Howdy there. What’s wrong with your truck? The name is Bexar.” Bexar held out his hand.
Jones shook his hand. “Bear? How did you get that nickname? Terrance Jones, everyone just calls me Jones.”
“It’s actually my real name; spelled with an ‘X’ like the county in Texas.”
“Huh. Well, nothing is wrong yet, nothing major at least, but if I don’t keep up with some TLC on the M-ATVs here, then we won’t have much truck left for longer.”
“What’s that thing?” Bexar pointed at the radar truck.
“Chinese truck. We took it from the PLA in San Diego. Uses the radar dome like a weapon; it zaps the Zeds.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, no shit. Sucks while driving though; the fucking Zeds fall under the wheels. Everything is labeled in fucking Chinese, sucks. At least it runs on diesel so we don’t have to fuck around with the shitty gas.”
Bexar nodded. Gasoline was something that worried him. All the gas remaining was already months old and only getting older. They wouldn’t have too much longer before it would be too old to burn and would only screw up anything they tried to run on it. Especially with the ethanol in most gas. Guillermo had a large cache of treated fuel at their compound in St. George and that gas has the chance of lasting for close to another year, but not much else would. That’s why he, Malachi, and Jack had opted to not store gas at the cache site; too much work for too little of a return. The plan was to live there for the long haul. Fuck, I miss those guys.
“Come over here, little grizzly, and you can see the Zed-killing Chinese truck, but don’t walk in front of the dome; we’re not really sure how it would affect someone who is still living and I’m not too excited to find out yet.”
Dusk was upon them by the time that Jessie walked to where Bexar and Jones were. They had crawled around the radar truck and now Bexar was standing on a wheel, bent over the engine of one of the M-ATVs helping Jones. Andrew and Oreo were walking back toward the hangar after visiting the wrecked C-130 out on the lake bed.
“Bexar, honey, it’s time to stop for the night.”
It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness from the hard LED light he was using under the hood. “Yeah, sorry.”
Bexar climbed down. Jones bid a good night and got back to work as the couple walked away.
“What is Lampton going to do?”
“She’s going to sleep in her shot-up truck tonight; it’s just you and me.”
Jessie gave Bexar a gentle kiss on the cheek and smiled as they climbed in the FJ and drove toward the tent hidden up the hill.
CHAPTER 4
April 9, Year 1
Groom Lake
The tent shook, dust and dirt filtering in from under the door flaps, the roof of the tent beginning to glow with the rising sun. The previous night, Jessie found all the ammo and cases of MREs that she had cached in the tent were missing, most likely taken by Erin and Jason. Jessie was upset for a moment before guilt filled her body with sadness. Jessie had lost her best friend but Erin had lost her mother in the attack and she couldn’t blame Erin for grabbing supplies to make a break for it. Bexar wasn’t upset, which was odd to Jessie; this was the sort of thing that would have driven him mad before society collapsed. The unjustness of theft and the righteous need to be the sheepdog was central to his being—it was part of what defined the man she fell in love with years before. The last few months had changed him. All of them had all changed.Wrapped in surplus wool green Army blankets, they laid still, watching the tent shake, not wanting to get up, and not wanting to let each other go. The time they were separated felt like years and not weeks, so they stayed in the makeshift bed, holding each other tightly, shivering against the cold morning wind. The afternoons were warm, but the nights and mornings were still cold and felt even colder from the wind whipping through the mountains and across the open dry lake bed.
Jessie nuzzled her face into her husband’s chest while he slowly ran his fingers through her hair. A gentle kiss was followed by another, the gentle caressing snuggle quickly changing to excited petting. Jessie unbuttoned Bexar’s pants and pulled them to his knees before quickly removing her pants to climb on top of her excited husband, pulling a blanket over them both.
A few minutes later, Jessie lay with her head on Bexar’s chest, still trying to catch her breath. They had no idea what time it was and didn’t care; it had been so long since they had been together, since they could love each other and feel comfort in their embrace, that neither wanted to move, to get up and end their moment. Eventually, a side-effect of her pregnancy won out and Jessie got up to find a place to pee outside the tent.
Bexar dressed and followed her outside. “Nauseous?”
Jessie nodded, rubbing a hand across her growing belly. “We should head down the hill and see how Chivo and the Marines are doing.”
The Hangar
Bexar and Jessie drove up in time to see the small yellow aircraft lumber into the sky after a short takeoff roll. The pilot’s dog sat by the Marines, some of whom were eating breakfast, others sleeping, and a couple of them standing security watch. Chivo was one of those who were asleep on the concrete floor, using an ammo can for a pillow. After pulling to a stop and climbing out of the FJ, one of the Marines standing guard walked up to them and introduced himself as Happy. The pilot’s dog trotted over with his tail wagging as well.
Jessie wasted no time to get down to business. “How far have you cleared and how many survivors have you located?”
Happy glanced over his shoulder at Aymond, who was asleep, and back at Jessie. “We’ve found 42 survivors. They opted to stay sheltered in place with some talk of beginning cleanup. We’ve also cleared down to the fifth level; the warehouse is a fucking mess, full of Zeds. That’s where we stopped for a chance to get topside to re-arm and rest.”
Bexar looked concerned. “What about the undead that were left in the warehouse? Can they get back up to the survivors?”
Happy shook his head. “No, it would seem that the Zeds have problems climbing stairs. Besides, we secured the doors and access points we could find for anything coming up from below.”
“Where is President Lampton?”
“She flew out with that other guy just now. They’re going back to Texas to some other facility she called the SSC.”
Bexar nodded. He knew the facility and still had a rough idea as to where it was located. “Outside of Ennis, near Dallas, it was a big atom-smasher
project from the ‘90s that was actually a cover story to build an underground facility like this one.”
Happy shrugged. “Seems like they had a few of them. Surely one of them has a UFO.”
A rare smile crept onto Bexar’s face. “Maybe. Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t see any when I was there a while back. What about this place? It is Area 51 after all. Find any aliens yet?”
“Roger that. Nothing here either…yet. The president left a directive for you, ma’am.”
Happy retrieved a folded piece of paper from a pocket and handed it to Jessie, who quickly read it. She turned to Bexar. “She made me the director of the Groom Lake facility by presidential order.”
Bexar appeared concerned. “Are you sure you want that? Are you sure you want to stay? We can bugout…” he said, his thoughts drifting to Guillermo and his friends in Utah.
Jessie ignored her husband for a moment. “What about you guys? What are Lampton’s orders for your group of Marines?”
“We’re to secure this facility then go to the SSC. She spoke with Chief for a bit before leaving and there is more in the works, but we expect to move out this afternoon.”
Jessie shook her head slowly, frowning, before turning to Bexar. “We have to stay, at least long enough to get the survivors safe and the facility secured again. We can—”
The muffled sound of rifle fire coming from the entrance interrupted Jessie, who turned to face the ruined blast door. The Marines who had been sleeping were now standing and adjusting their gear. Chivo was awake and standing near the opening, the rest of the Marines gathering to form up and re-enter the facility.Aymond glanced at his team and Chivo looked back toward Jessie and Bexar with a shrug before joining his team at the entrance. A moment later they were gone, disappearing into the depths of the underground facility, leaving Jessie and Bexar standing in the hangar with the pilot’s dog and Jones, who waved them over to the radar truck.
“Good morning, you two.” Jones handed them each an MRE from the stash that Lampton had left in the ruined MRAP. Bexar eagerly cut his open, ripping into the entire pouch before a puzzled look crept across his face. He glanced at the pouch and read that the offensive smelling meal was lemon pepper tuna and began eating without using the chemical heater. The color in Jessie’s face drained. She dropped the MRE and stepped around the side of the truck, vomiting what little was in her stomach. Jones looked at Bexar who shrugged and ate quickly. Besides the hunger, he wanted to finish the meal before Jessie came back. Jessie returned and Jones handed her a canteen of water with a smile. Bexar handed her the pack of crackers from his MRE, although wisely not the thick cheese spread.