by Lund, Dave
The Radio Hut
Rifle fire grew in volume, both in rate of fire and loudness before a sudden silence reverberated through the heavy door. Three hard thumps shook the door followed by a man’s voice.
“Anyone still alive in there?”
Before they could answer, the doorknob rattled.
“Yes, God yes, we’re alive!”
“Great, unlock the door.”
Bill unlocked the door, the other airmen stood back, weapons ready. The door swung open to the scene of bright weapon lights shining through the doorway, the shadowed shapes of rifle muzzles punctuating the blinding light.
“Safe your weapons. U.S. Marines, we’re here to help you.”
The command and statement was both comforting and jarring. The airmen lowered their weapons, the lights and rifle muzzles in the doorway moved, and a handful of men entered the radio room. Bill waved, the spark gap radio buzzing and cracking in the background.
“Thank you for coming. How did you get here? Who sent you? Are there more? Is our military back in action? What about the rest of the facility? Where is Jake?”
Aymond stepped forward. “Easy now, guy. We’re here on President Lampton’s orders. I don’t know who Jake is and we’re clearing the rest of the facility…what the fuck is that thing?” he asked as he pointed toward the device buzzing and crackling with radio transmissions.
Bill’s eyes lit up. “Oh, a radio. That’s a spark gap, historic radio technology. The frequency control is rough, noisy, and we can only transmit or receive CW but we’re running on the HF bands, so when the propagation is good, we’re coast to coast. We would be global but only the people who built one following the instructions we transmitted on the shortwave are able to send any transmissions.”
Aymond looked over his shoulder and jerked his head toward Bill; another Marine stepped into the room. “Gonzo, what the shit is this guy yammering about?”
“It’s a radio, Chief, like a stone age caveman radio. Works better than the shit we’ve got right now.”
Bill stepped forward and offered his hand; Gonzo shook it. The airmen introduced themselves and handshakes were had all around—the usual service infighting was gone in the post-apocalyptic world, at least for the moment. After a few minutes of conversation, Bill elected to stay put in the radio shack and Aymond instructed Gonzo to stay with him to learn about the operation. The rest of the Marines peeled out of the room. Bill locked the door behind them before showing the spark gap radio to Gonzo, along with the chart to decipher the transmissions into letters. Bill sat down at the radio and waited for a short break in the transmissions. From the snippets, he was able to understand without writing down the transmissions the frequency was buzzing with speculation about the demise of Groom Lake.
Bill tapped at the radio key. “BREAK BREAK BREAK…GROOM LAKE SECURE…MARINES HERE…MORE TO FOLLOW SOON.” After repeating the message twice more, Bill pushed his chair back away from the desk and turned to Gonzo. “Please tell me that there is a battalion of you all up there.”
“You don’t need a battalion, you have a handful of Marines. Now, we need to get to work. Tell me why the fucking SATCOM isn’t working.”
The Suburban
“This place is a ghost town.” Jason nearly had to yell over the wind noise and noise from the engine.
“The whole fucking country is a ghost town!”
Jason wasn’t joking and neither was Erin, except that Jason hadn’t seen the cities and towns of America ruled by the dead as she had. Erin was surprised at the lack of reanimated corpses. They had seen a few dozen but she would have expected more. A dark stoplight hovered over the intersection; two wrecked cars sat in the middle of the road, crashed into each other. On opposing corners were two gas stations and to their right was, inexplicably, a bright white building built to look like a small castle.
Jason slowed to a stop. “How about a castle for my lovely Erin tonight?”
A rare smile snuck across her lips. “First, we gas in case we have to bugout.”
Jason nodded but wasn’t really sure what her plan was. Back in Cortez, they used a hand-cranked fuel transfer pump from the rancher’s co-op. They seemed to be far away from any agricultural center here in the desert outside of Las Vegas.
“Pull into that one.” Erin pointed at the gas station across the intersection on their right, and Jason drove into the parking lot and paused. Erin climbed out of the Suburban and walked to the side of the convenience store. Next to the building was a patch of now dead grass, what Erin assumed to be the only grass lawn in a 50-mile radius. As she had hoped, a water hose hung from a rack on the side of the building. A few minutes later and after some quick cuts with her knife, a four-foot section of hose was in her hands and she was ready to get to work. She motioned Jason to bring the Suburban close to a Honda parked in front of the dark store. After thumping on the windows a couple of times to make sure nothing would pop up from the floorboards and surprise her, Erin broke a window and unlocked the back door. She pulled up the rear seat and threw it on the ground before knocking the fuel pump assembly loose from the gas tank under the rear seat. The hose was inserted into the open tank; she took a couple of deep breaths before sucking on the hose. Spitting gas out of her mouth, she shoved the other end of the hose into the fuel filler of the still-running Suburban and watched the Honda’s fuel tank, moving that end of the hose around trying to get every last drop of gas she could.
Once that tank was sucked dry, she asked for an update from Jason who answered, “Just over half a tank now.”
“Fuck,” Erin muttered under her breath.
Looking around, her next fuel siphoning victim to be chosen was a beat-up old Pontiac. She broke into the car and with considerable effort pulled the rear seat up only to find sheet metal. Erin walked around the car and didn’t see any flaps for the fuel filler. Quickly becoming pissed off, she stood looking at the car. Jason called out of his open window, “Look behind the license plate on the trunk.”
Erin looked at him and walked to the back of the car. After pulling on the license plate, she flipped it down and discovered the fuel filler cap.
“What the fuck?” Erin again muttered as she shoved the hose down the filler and into the tube. Jason brought the Suburban around and after spitting out more fuel, Erin put the hose in the SUV and let the fuel transfer.
“Nearly full.”
“Nearly is good enough! Fuck this! I’m going inside to find a drink.”
Erin turned and yanked open the door to the dark convenience store. After waiting for a moment, she banged on the door frame to be welcomed with the sound of a corpse crashing through the darkness. She backed away from the door, holding it open with a foot, and waited for the undead threat to come to her. A few moments later, a half-nude corpse of a middle-aged woman with comically large fake breasts shuffled through the doorway. Erin took a side step and shoved the corpse away from her. Jason fired a single blast from his shotgun and the woman’s face disintegrated into a black pus-filled mist as the body fell to the ground. After opening the door again, Erin banged on the door frame and waited. No more reanimates could be heard, so the two of them walked slowly into the dark store. The shelves were mostly bare, picked clean by the people who had come before them. Large blank spots in the cooler were where beer was once stored cold and ready to be consumed, according to the advertisement clings on the glass doors. The smell inside was a mix of spoiled milk and rotting flesh. After weeks and weeks of living this nightmare out in the wilds of the American countryside, Erin was acclimated to the putrid smell. Jason pulled his shirt over his nose and tried not to dry heave as they walked through the store looking for something to drink.
A few two liters of warm cola was all that remained and Erin didn’t care; old room-temperature cola left a better taste than gasoline. Erin took them off the shelf and handed them to Jason, asking him to put th
em in the Suburban for her. He took the armful of plastic bottles and walked outside. Erin rounded the aisle in the store and found what she was looking for. She wasn’t sure what kind they would need so she grabbed a variety pack of condoms from the shelf, ripped open the box, and stuffed the foil-wrapped packaging into her back pocket before stepping back into the desert sun and Jason who waited next to the still-running Suburban.
“Let’s get across the street and turn that damn engine off before we attract every undead corpse in the area.”
They climbed inside the SUV, drove across the street, parked, and broke into the fake castle. The interior was empty of any persons living or undead and much to Jason’s chagrin, the castle apparently used to be a strip club. Two stages with floor-to-ceiling poles were the centerpiece, along with a bar with liquor still on the shelves and VIP booths lining a wall.
In came some of their gear, a couple of MREs, and Erin brought in her big rifle, but much was left hidden in the Suburban parked around the back of the building. They needed the ability to bugout quickly if need be, but didn’t want to leave all their gear in the SUV in case something happened to it.
The small round tables had tea candles in the centerpieces, so by candlelight they each ate an MRE for dinner, their first dinner alone together. Their first night truly alone together. Erin pulled a bottle of tequila off the shelf behind the bar and took a big drink before gagging and coughing then offering the bottle to Jason, who also took a long pull from the bottle. Late into the night, the two sat up passing the bottle back and forth, holding hands and telling stories about themselves, what sort of future they could have together if they lived long enough to have one. Erin’s original plan for the night didn’t work out as she had hoped, but she fell asleep in the arms of the man she loved more than she had ever loved anyone knowing, hoping that she would have many more nights with him before either of them were killed.
The Husky
The Grand Canyon looked as epic as ever. It had been 20 years since Amanda had visited, taking her then young children to the South Rim. As much as she tried not to, her lost family would flash in her mind, not knowing if they had survived or if their bodies were cursed to roam the countryside trapped in a ghostly life after death. The drone of the engine and the cool air that coursed through the narrow cabin made it hard to do much more than stare out of the windows at the peaceful-looking ground beneath them. The aircraft’s radio didn’t work and the intercom didn’t work either. The pilot headsets protected their hearing but offered none of the usual communications ability. Having to shout over the sound of the engine, the wind noise, and to be heard through the hearing protection grew tiresome, so most of the journey was spent in silence, Andrew and Amanda each lost to their own thoughts.
Amanda knew, more so than many others, how perilous being on the ground was. The overland journey she took from Arkansas to Texas and then from Texas to Groom Lake was arduous to say the least. The first trip took much longer than anticipated, but was also immediately after the attack. As the dust had settled post-apocalypse, the Zeds became more dangerous and slightly more manageable, partly due to gaining the experience and instinct to avoid and fight the dead, but also because the dead had settled in a strange migratory pattern. Individual Zeds gravitated toward each other, possibly attracted by the movement and sound, Amanda believed. They were like a nebula of death at the center of the group and as they trudged along, they seemed to have a gravitational pull. More and more dead would congregate and follow the mindless pack, drifting across the landscape. The path of least resistance seemed to be the path of choice, which meant the interstates were plagued by huge swarms of dead passing through, destroying all that stood in their way. A positive effect of such a deadly swarm was that the roadways once clogged with the abandoned non-working vehicles as they sat after the EMP were now often clear of vehicles, obstacles, and debris, pushed aside by the mass of so much death pushing against them.
If we ever get on our feet again, if we can beat back the invasion, we will eventually rid the earth of the reanimated dead. The cleanup will take generations, but at least the roads will be clear to travel.
Amanda realized that Andrew was speaking to her, the voice behind her barging into her inner monologue.
“I’m sorry, I was distracted. What were you saying, Andrew?” Amanda yelled over the noise of the aircraft.
“Um, President Lampton, we’re nearly out of daylight and we need to fuel, but we are near an airstrip that I used recently. There are friendly survivors nearby too.”
“Please call me Amanda, and that sounds great. I trust you to make those choices for us.”
“Awesome.”
Andrew smiled, rolling the trim wheel to ease the Husky into a gentle descent. They were keeping to around 5,000 feet above ground level as they flew over the rugged terrain, high enough to fly efficiently but low enough to keep warmer and still be able to make out the details of the earth below them. They had flown over the Hoover Dam a few hours earlier. Amanda was excited to see the security lights illuminated, and she told Andrew that the dead didn’t matter, just the fact that the hydroelectric dam was still producing power mattered. They had no idea if any survivors were inside the dam and keeping it running or if the systems were running automatically. Amanda hoped that there were survivors, not just for the hope of people, her fellow citizens surviving, but that there may be people trained and experienced in keeping the dam running. One of the biggest voids to fill in the coming months and years was that of knowledge and skill. The equipment at the SSC, especially the portable power generating stations, would help bring communities back into the modern world, if they could repair other damaged systems. She would need electricians, plumbers, and handymen, but she also needed skilled machinists, welders, engineers, blacksmiths…the list continued ad nauseam. The modern world was woven in the fabric of highly specialized and skilled jobs; the concept of a master generalist, a renaissance man, was one lost on what civilization had evolved to become. But those persons, the men and women who had the skills to fight and survive and the skills to rebuild the country, had to exist. If not, she would need people to help her create those individuals from the survivors she had.
What she needed was a library of instructional material and the people to use the vast knowledge sitting stationary in the library stacks to create motion, a momentum of learning, but that wasn’t a problem she would need to surmount today or tomorrow or maybe even next year. After the attack on Groom Lake, she reordered the priorities. The first threat was the invading Chinese and Korean forces; the second threat was ridding the nation of the dead.
As they descended closer to the ground, more details became visible. The wide-open expanses of New Mexico gave way to individual stories of survival and loss played out in every burned-out home, every car and truck abandoned on the roadway. Andrew pointed toward the right at smoke drifting lazily from some of the chimneys of the homes near the airfield. Andrew flew over the town before banking back toward the runways. After an uneventful landing, he taxied to where the fuel tank sat, shut down the engine, and opened the clamshell door. Amanda climbed out, rifle in hand, and scanned the area. Andrew climbed out of the plane and made use of the aircraft tie-downs before walking toward the hangar he and Oreo had slept in before.
Groom Lake
Jessie and Bexar arrived at the remains of the hangar in time to see Chivo appear from the underground facility. He was filthy and sweaty but wore the same smile he always wore as he slowly turned his head back and forth, scanning his surroundings. After he noticed Bexar and Jessie, Chivo waved them over, pointing toward the hulk of the shot-up MRAP.
By the time they joined Chivo, he was already tossing green metal cases of ammo out of the interior of Amanda’s destroyed truck. “Hey, mano, lend a hand. Start taking those to the Marines at the entrance. Mrs. Bexar, you want something to eat? I’ve got nothing but the finest MREs waiting for you.”
>
“Thanks, Chivo, be back in a bit.” Jessie grabbed the handles of two ammo cans and began walking with them, following Bexar toward the emerging Marines. After they dropped the ammo and the following return trips, the MRAP was now empty of any extra ammo. If they needed anymore, they would need to get it from one of the two supply rooms in the facility, the main warehouse on the fifth level, or the secret storage in the secondary facility.
Survivors trickled out of the entrance and gathered around Jessie; the other residents who helped clear the dorms stood to the side. Their faces showed exhaustion but resilience. They were tired but they weren’t going to be beaten. They all looked to Jessie for direction. None of them had been necessarily informed of President Lampton’s directive, but over the previous weeks, they had all grown to see Jessie as one of the leaders.
“I know that all of you followed the bite protocols while below ground, but we are going to have another round of bite inspections before moving to our temporary above-ground housing.”
“Why does it have to be temporary?”
“Good question. I don’t know that it does, we’re just too early in the recovery from the attack and outbreak to know exactly what our future holds here in Groom Lake. Also, as you can see, our partitions have been destroyed. I’m sorry for the lack of modesty but we’re going to have to take care of business out in the open. The sooner we get that done, the sooner everyone can pass out MREs and get in the dorms.”
The original work party took charge of the bite inspections, the other survivors queuing up for their turn to strip and show a bite-free body. Unlike a few hours before, there were no mercy killings for someone who had been bit; all of the survivors were bite free. As the first group finished, they were handed one MRE each from the few cases that Amanda had left in the MRAP and were led across the tarmac on foot toward the dorms. More survivors made their way out of the underground facility while the sun drooped low on the western sky. By nightfall, the Marines, Chivo, and a handful of the survivors who volunteered to help along the way had resurfaced, confident that the facility was now devoid of living Zeds. A final sweep of the facility would be completed in the morning, but for now, the exhausted warriors were standing down for the night.