by Lundy, W. J.
The radio squawked. “You got twenty-four hours, boss, and I’m coming to get you.”
Gyles grinned and went to respond, but the speaker turned to straight static and clicks. The sign of the constant jamming. The radios were still shit. They’d made their last positive radio check, and as the range stretched, they would be on their own. The radios still wouldn’t work outside of a few hundred meters.
There were plenty of rumors in the air about it; some said it was due to a nuclear reactor melting down somewhere out West and spilling radiation into the atmosphere. Others said it was because all the radio stations in the country suddenly went hot mic’d after the fall. Each idea was more insane than the next. But Gyles and several others suspected the truth—somewhere someone was jamming them because they wanted people to lock up tight and die, vulnerable and alone. Why that was, he didn’t know.
He pushed back in the seat and dropped a pair of dark glasses over his eyes. In the shotgun seat of the Humvee, he propped up his rifle between his knees and focused on distant structures as they rode down the narrow city streets. The sun was shining bright, garbage littered the road, and the houses looked like any other in every small town across the USA. Nobody in sight, not a dog, not a curtain moving behind a closed window. Street after street, it was like they were on the darkest side of the moon, with no life to be seen.
There was something about the sunlight and the heat of the day that kept the Primals hidden. The things had become nocturnal, only hunting when they were in direct contact. The things knew to stay inside and out of sight; if they popped out, they would be easy targets for the soldiers’ rifles. If one was spotted, it would attack, but for the most part, they went dormant during the day. But at night was a different story… at night the things were vicious and just as rabid as they were during the first days of the infection.
He turned his head, searching the troop compartment and scanning his troops’ faces. Mega, his loyal machine gunner, was over his left shoulder in the turret, rock steady with the M240. Gyles wouldn’t want anyone else covering them from above. Culver, cool and collected as always, was in the back right seat, intently watching the side streets. One of the new recruits, Kenny Johansen, drove. Alvarez insisted that if they went, they take Johansen with them. He was some sort of self-proclaimed expert on the local neighborhoods. Looking at him, he didn’t seem like much, but Gyles wasn’t one to knock Alverez in his evaluation of soldiers.
Kenny was the boot to Reaper Platoon, but he wasn’t a rookie. The man had done his time in uniform. He’d been out of the Army nearly eight years, and those years seemed to have ridden the man a bit rough. With the shortage of fighting men, the Colonel was taking anyone with military experience out of the survivors’ block. With the conditions in the camp, it didn’t take much coercing to get Kenny back into uniform… or at least some part of one; some bits of the uniform were harder to come by than others. He wore denim workpants with his uniform top and full body armor with all the plates scrapped out. His kit, for the most part, was in a Marine camo pattern. He’d slapped a strip of duct tape over the Marine name tape and drawn a series of smiley faces in its place.
Even dressed out and looking like a Hollywood version of a military contractor, the man still didn’t think of himself as a soldier. He continued to tell the other troops of Reaper Platoon that he was just a scout. Sure, he would come along and help them out in case they got into trouble, but if something better came up, he couldn’t make any promises. He laughed, comparing himself to the Kit Carson scouts that guided the horse soldiers in the Old West.
Gyles really didn’t care what the man thought of himself if he followed orders and pointed his rifle in the right places at the right times. What title he used—scout, contractor, or vagabond—didn’t matter much, and three weeks into the apocalypse, Gyles wasn’t too concerned with blue jeans instead of camouflage trousers either. Gyles pushed back into his seat again and, without looking at his driver, said, “So tell me, Kenny, what makes you so highly recommended on this road trip? You a super-secret black ops ninja from way back when?”
The man laughed as he fished into a vest pocket and slapped on a pair of scratched aviator glasses. “Uber,” Kenny answered in a Texas drawl so thick, it almost seemed put on.
“Uber what?” Gyles asked.
Kenny shrugged and slowed the Hummer as he navigated a turn. “Uber. You know, like the car lift service—taxis. This was my area. I know the neighborhoods, I know the people. I know where all the party girls live in this town.”
“You’re from here then?”
“Nah.” The man shook his head. “From Odessa, Texas, originally. I’m only out here because I was stationed up at Fort Lee for a minute with the Army. I met a girl that was from Middleburg after my last tour in the Sandbox. Ended up settling down with her when I left the Army.”
“Middleburg, that town northwest of here?” Gyles said, remembering the name from the tactical maps in one of his many briefings.
“Yup.” He shrugged. “Might as well be a thousand miles now, though, with the roads blocked the way they are. And then you never know when you’ll hit one of the bands of infected.”
Gyles looked out the window as the driver slowed and maneuvered along the shoulder to pass another patch of disabled vehicles. He knew what the man was saying. The infected had started to bunch up, moving in thick lines that, so far, had appeared random. It was impossible to predict when you might run into one, or when one might find you. Even in the bright sunlight, you could make a wrong turn and hit a tight pack of them just standing there.
A chance encounter during the day could be just as dangerous as at night. The Colonel’s intel team did the best they could to track them, but there were still only so many eyes in the sky. Currently, a thick band was glued to the camp to their south, and from drone reports, there were more large groups scattered around the area.
He looked back at the driver. “It’s not that far—Middleburg, I mean. If you think she is still there, we could try for it sometime. I could set it up. The area needs scouting, anyhow.”
The man shook his head and laughed. “Nope, she ain’t there no more. She was into more soldiers than just me. She liked to party and didn’t care for me once I started school and had to get a job just to get by. She lost interest in me shortly after I left the Army. I was out hustling to pay the bills. Seems I was more exciting as a deployed Joe, sending money home. When I became just another run-of-the-mill civilian with a shit job, life got boring for her.”
“I’m sorry,” Gyles said shrugging.
“Nothing to be sorry about; she was a grade-A whore. I lucked out having her run off when she did. Sure, she left me with a load of debt and a mortgage I still can’t afford, but it still beats the alternative.”
“What the hell could be worse than that?” Gyles asked.
“Shit, seriously? Hell, we might have had kids together.” The man shook his head and wiped at his forehead. “Could you imagine being a father in the middle of all of this?” The man stopped and caught himself. “Hey, my bad, Sergeant. I mean, I don’t even know… you don’t have kids, do you?”
“It’s okay, Kenny. Seems we are a bunch of bachelors in the truck today. I mean, I got a wife out there someplace. Well, had. She kind of took off and left me when I was deployed. Came home to an empty apartment and Dear John letter.” Gyles shook his head and shifted the focus of the conversation back to Kenny. “So, your ex… do you know where she is at then?”
The man shrugged. “Last I heard, she was living up near Fort Meade, shacked up with some staff sergeant. No hard feelings, though. I wish her the all best—S.T.D.s, crabs, herpes, gonorrhea, all of ’em,” he said, causing Gyles to laugh and breaking the tension.
Culver leaned forward between the seats. “So, wait a damn minute. You’re telling me you’re from Texas, but you’re living in Virginia because you met a girl that now lives in Maryland with some Jody?” Culver laughed. “Now isn’t that some of the
stupidest shit.”
Kenny laughed with them. “It is what it is, bro. I left the Army and busted my ass working my way through school. Got some silly literature degree that couldn’t pay the bills, so I started driving folks around. The money wasn’t bad, but it kept me busy at night, and nighttime is when Cindy liked to run and hunt for cock.”
“But Maryland,” Culver said. “How’d your lady get way up there?”
“I told you. She met the guy when he worked up in DC. Some intel geek, I think. When it came time for him to rotate, she went with him.” He shook his head. “Seriously, fellas, it was a couple years ago. I am not one bit concerned about her.”
“Was she hot at least?” Mega yelled down from the turret.
Gyles laughed and leaned back, shaking his head. “You don’t have to answer that, Kenny. Mega is an animal. He wouldn’t know hot if it set him on fire.”
“Nah, she wasn’t hot at all,” Kenny laughed. “Kind of gross, even. But she did stuff, crazy stuff, so it sorta evened out.”
Gyles could hear Mega’s booming laugh echoing from outside the vehicle’s armor. He put a hand up. “Okay, boys, we all had a good laugh at Kenny’s expense. Let’s get back on the job.” He rolled his shoulders and investigated a dark alley as they slowly passed. “Kenny, you know where this church is?”
The Humvee slowed and rounded a corner, now moving west. Kenny nudged it along the shoulder of the road and stopped. He let the vehicle idle as he pointed a finger ahead and to the left of them. “At the intersection, we’ll turn left, and you’ll see a church on the right. If it’s in this town then that’s got to be it.”
“You know the place?” Gyles asked.
“Not really. I drove past it a lot, but never had a reason to stop other than dropping off a regular grandma on Sunday morning. Mrs. Nelson. A good old gal… always weak on the tips though.” He paused to think, his eyes focused on the road ahead. “You know what—the place is gated. High walls all the way around. It would be a good spot to hole up. I wasn’t so sure before, if this would be the spot the note was talking about… but, yeah, thinking on it, I guess I wouldn’t be surprised to find survivors in there.”
Gyles nodded then brought up a pair of small scout binoculars and checked the roadway through the optics. The path ahead was narrow and cars were parked on the sides of the street, tall trees blanketing them in shade. The intersection was open. It appeared as if someone had recently cleared it by force. More cars were moved onto the sidewalks as if they’d been pushed there.
“Okay, take us up slow,” Gyles said just above a whisper, his body growing tense and his free hand gripping the rifle.
The Humvee clunked back into gear and rolled forward slowly. As they neared the intersection, Gyles could see around the corner and to a tall, granite wall that ran parallel to a sidewalk. Set behind the wall was the church structure, tall and built of heavy stone that complemented the wall. Kenny let the vehicle continue its slow roll and turned north at the intersection, putting the wall just outside Gyles’s window to the right.
Suddenly, Mega dropped into the vehicle and the hatch clunked closed behind him. “Shut it down!” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Kill the engine.”
Kenny hit the brake. The vehicle stopped hard.
“Shut it down; kill the engine now!” Mega repeated the order.
Gyles pointed at his driver. “Do it. Turn it off, Kenny.”
As soon as the engine was silenced, Gyles heard the low moan of the infected. It was dull and far away, but he could tell from the echoes there were a lot of them. They were heavily massed somewhere close by.
“Did you see them?” Gyles asked, not looking back.
Mega crouched into the vehicle, unbuckling his gunner’s harness and crammed forward between the seats. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, his head slowly shaking side to side. “I saw something, and I heard it. They are up there.”
“What did you see?” Kenny asked.
Mega shot a hand and pointed directly ahead. “Out there. Look! In the shadows of the trees,” the man bellowed.
Just as Gyles looked to the front, he saw a blur of movement—two figures running across the intersection. “Where are they going?” He knew if the things were moving in the daylight, there were survivors close by.
“That’s the direction of the church’s street gate,” Kenny whispered. “You want me to keep going?”
“No,” Gyles said, his head turned to focus on the wall. “If they don’t see us, let’s keep it that way. Can you get us closer to the wall without hitting it? I want to go over and have a look inside then meet you all back here.”
“Hell no, Sergeant, not alone,” Mega said. “I’ll go with you.”
Gyles shook his head. “I’m not going with your big, non-whispering ass. I’ll take Culver, if you insist. You stay here with the vehicle, be ready to roll in a hurry if things get nutty.” Gyles reached into a shelf below the military radio mounted between the front seats and retrieved a pair of civilian Motorola radios. He passed one to Kenny then clipped the other to his shirt collar. He looked back at Culver, who was checking the magazine carrier on his chest. “You ready?”
“Do I have a choice?” said the soldier from Illinois.
Gyles smiled. “You always have a choice, you just might not like the consequences of making a bad one.”
Culver grinned back and dipped his chin. “In that case, let’s do this.”
Looking back to the driver, Gyles instructed Kenny to get them onto the sidewalk and as close to the wall as he could without hitting it. When there, Culver opened the gunner’s hatch and climbed out onto the roof of the Humvee. Gyles moved out just behind him. Now next to the wall, they found the top edge just above their heads. The sounds of the infected were louder out of the protection of the armored vehicle. The sergeant slung his rifle over his back and reached out, grabbing the top of the wall with his gloved hands.
“Careful, Sarge. I heard sometimes folks embed broken glass into the tops of walls like this.”
Gyles snatched his hands back and looked at his gloves then shook his head as he reached back for the wall. “We aren’t in Iraq, Culver… or even worse, Chicago.” He laughed. “I doubt these good Christian folks have the wall booby trapped.”
Culver shrugged. “Just saying.”
“Well, say less and give me a boost.”
Culver did as instructed and linked his hands together; Gyles stepped into his grip and was lifted to the top of the wall. Gyles swung an arm over, once again thinking about the glass comment as he straddled the wall like a horse. He held his breath and looked down to the other side. Surprisingly, the level of the ground was higher on the far side; it was less than a four-foot drop. He dug his boots into the wall and pulled Culver up beside him. Then without wanting to stay exposed, they both dropped to the inside of the wall. Culver turned out, unslinging his rifle and aiming it toward the back of the church as Gyles did the same, looking to the front.
They sat silently listening, only hearing the moaning infected to their front. Gyles moved out a bit from the wall and knelt low in grass that hadn’t been cut for weeks. They were on a long, narrow strip of lawn that ran between the church and the wall. The sanctuary was to their right, and the only windows he could see were stained glass mounted high on the structure. A cobblestone sidewalk ran along the building toward what Gyles assumed would be the main gate. He turned back and could see that the sidewalk continued and looped around the back of the church.
He reached out, tapped Culver on the shoulder, and whispered, “Lead us out. I want to get inside and see if we can find a back door.”
Culver didn’t look back. Keeping his eyes on his sector, he rose silently and stepped off in a crouch, patrolling forward. He moved over the sidewalk and edged close to the church structure. Gyles let him gain separation then stepped off to follow, pausing only to occasionally look behind him. He shadowed the man along the wall until they reached the corner, then held up.
“You think it’s on?” Culver whispered.
“I could have sworn I saw it move.”
Culver’s brow tightened and he squinted as he looked at the camera, which was currently angled down at them. “You sure?”
Gyles shook his head and pointed to the camera, waving at it. He flashed a thumbs up and a smile before waving again, getting no response. “I don’t know, I thought it moved.” Gyles stared at the camera for a moment longer before nodding to Culver. “Screw it, let’s go.”
The point man stepped off again then moved out from the wall as he rounded the corner, his rifle barrel slicing the viewable area. As the young soldier moved, Gyles quickly positioned himself to cover his exposed side until they were both safely tucked back in against the next wall. With new terrain to their front, Culver only moved far enough to conceal them in a shadow then took a knee as Gyles pressed up behind him, facing their back trail. The sounds of the moaning still reached them, but it was noticeably quieter inside the walls and on the far side of the church.
Gyles surveyed the area in the back of the church. There were several covered openings, small porches that led up to heavy wooden doors. Windows placed high in the walls were covered with stained glass and decorative wrought iron guards. Farther to the back of the church grounds and out of the normal view of guests, the ornate designs were gone. The grass and cobblestone were replaced with fresh black asphalt that seemed to cover every space between the back of the church and the wall that still surrounded them. Far to the end, in the opposite corner, was a long carriage house built of stone that matched the church.
Three separate garage doors were evenly spaced in the building. Next to that was a large green dumpster and another utility shed covered in vinyl siding. Gyles watched as Culver raised his rifle and steadied it on the distant dumpster.