Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile (33 page)

After I hit the beach I could see the horde approaching the bridge. The tank crash, the gunshots and the truck noises obviously
had had a hand in making them crazy. Saien had parked the truck and was making for the buggy to get it across. There was no time. Whistling loudly, I signaled him to fall back and cover me. The buggy would be an acceptable combat loss.

Taking cover behind a deadfall on the bank, I surveyed the bridge. Carefully picking a spot between support pillars on the undead side, I lased the target. Forcing my body to stop trembling from the cold water, I held the dot on the bridge as the tone increased in frequency until it was steady. Four seconds later a five-hundred-pound bomb rocked the bridge, collapsing a section of it forever. I was sitting there surveying the damage when I was startled by a corpse hitting the rocks ten feet behind me, a half-second before I heard Saien’s shot. Saien waved and signaled me to come toward him up the bank.

The river seemed to be full of bodies as I ran up the bank to the truck. Through my binocs I witnessed numerous joggers on the opposite bank, many with severe radiation burns to their exterior, verified by Geiger.

15 Nov

0730

Today marks the first contact with Hotel 23 personnel in over forty five days. A week has passed since our departure from the bridge, and we are currently sitting northwest of Houston, Texas. We started monitoring the CB radio at night after noticing that there was less static present. Last night Saien and I found a telephone company utility building surrounded by a high chain-link fence. After picking the padlock (with a tire tool) we spent the night inside the perimeter sleeping in the truck, listening to the fading static. At about 0100 hrs we heard the signal key but no voice. We instantly keyed back with a distress response. There was no intelligible reply for an hour but we kept transmitting.

The signal faded in at about 0215 with: “. . . this is Gator Two on search and rescue in Sunny Side Texas over . . .”

I replied with the Dragonfly call sign and was greeted by Corporal Ramirez, United States Marine Corps.

“Sir, good to hear your voice. We picked up your distress signal on the ninth and departed the following day in the direction of the coordinates you relayed. Movement has been slow due to the large groups of those things we have encountered and road wreckage. What’s your position?”

After I gave my position to Ramirez he gave me instructions to sit tight while he planned a route for the two-vehicle convoy to meet. I asked for an update over the radio of the situation at Hotel 23. The corporal replied by telling me that it was not a good idea to give the update over the radio and that there were some things happening that he needed to tell me about in person.

After some radio silence, Corporal Ramirez came back up on the CB.

“Sir, time for payback. I get to save an officer’s ass, just like before the world went to shit. The rally point I recommend is San Felipe, not far from your position. I propose we meet at the north end of town at the 1458 before the bridge. There is a field three hundred meters southeast of the bridge. The town is small and there should be a minimal hostile footprint.”

I consulted my maps and agreed to the rally point, in a nonjoking manner, on the radio.

1200

We rallied to Corporal Ramirez at 1000 hrs. After a short firefight with a dozen or so of those things, we set up a small perimeter and debriefed for a bit in the safety provided by the LAV. While the gunner manned the crew-served weapon, Ramirez told me of the oddities going on back home. From the armored vehicle, he took out a small binder of written reports and a few photographs. I recognized John’s handwriting. Ramirez stated that a few weeks back an aircraft started appearing in the skies above Hotel 23. I immediately identified the aircraft as a Global Hawk UAV. The picture was marked as having been taken with a handheld digital camera with an 18-200mm lens and I could just make out something large mounted under the fuselage. The picture was not clear enough for me to identify the payload, and I didn’t remember the Global Hawk being weaponized.

We continued to generally debrief and I introduced all the Marines to Saien and told them the stories of how he had saved my life more than once since we had met. The Marines seemed to be very friendly toward Saien, but he was visibly nervous around them for reasons that I could not waste time trying to discover. I also warned the Marines that there was an undead mass unlike any they had ever seen about eighty miles northeast of where we were now. We had destroyed a section of the bridge and tried to line cars up in roadblocks behind us along the roads we traveled when possible. This would slow them down but not stop them. I told them of the C-130 drop plane, dead drops and the unusual
equipment that I had attained from a group known only cryptically as Remote Six.

This prompted everyone into action, and we decided to roadblock the 1458 bridge with abandoned cars before we did anything else. Using the LAV, we put four cars into position and smashed them together. This would slow any oncoming mass of undead and increase the gap between us. This bridge was too close to Hotel 23 to destroy, as it may prove logistically valuable in the future. I saw a billboard a few hundred yards away, threw Saien my binocs and asked him to climb the board and check out the area. One of the Marines went with him for backup.

I asked everyone to pull back from the bridge a few hundred yards south. After Saien returned he told me of a dust cloud at the very edge of his visibility to the north. We decided that this could mean the mass of undead or it could simply be weather. We were roughly fifteen miles from Eagle Lake Airfield, according to the map in the LAV. Incidentally, we were also close to Interstate 10. Before nightfall we’ll attempt to cross the I-10 threshold and head south a few more miles to add a safety buffer from the interstate.

2100

It had been seven months since I had been on foot in this area of Eagle Lake. Not much has changed. The moon illuminated the road and abandoned cars and airport tower and also the more frightening things in the dark. Earlier today when we caught sight of the I-10 overpass in the distance, we sped up, weaving to avoid the wrecks. The LAV was moving at 60mph in front of us and we were keeping up. As we roared under the overpass I heard a thump hit the truck and looked back. One of those creatures had walked off the overpass, hit the closed tailgate of the truck and tumbled behind into the ditch. As I kept driving more of them fell from the overpass. Some got to their feet and some didn’t.

After we put I-10 far behind us, things got a little easier. We stayed on county road 3013 until we were on the outskirts of Eagle Lake, very near the airfield. I consulted the notes I had on the area and we decided to convoy into the airfield complex, set up a perimeter for a couple of hours and then plan the rest of the short
trip back home. Upon arrival at the airfield and exploration of the hangar, I saw the dark smudges of the remains of the creatures I had killed months ago still under a blue tarp in the corner. The summer heat had really done a number on the remains. Using my flashlight, I could see the deformed copper-jacketed bullets that I had fired sitting in the rotting liquid goo of the dead.

I was reminded by my journal that I should also be watchful for any living human enemies that may be present in this area. I remembered the large crosses I had discovered, months ago, on my last trip en route to this area, with creatures crucified upon them. We sat under the illumination of a red-filtered M-4 light and planned our route home.

16 Nov

0430

We’ve traveled to Hotel 23 from Eagle Lake under cover of darkness. The place looks dramatically different, with the concrete barrier complete around the perimeter. The civilians and military have succeeded in working together and salvaged enough of the concrete highway barriers to form a formidable wall. I doubt that even the tank I sent to the bottom of the river could get through this wall without getting stuck. More to follow after I have fully debriefed John and especially Tara.

17 Nov

0500

My sleep schedule is ruined because of the change in my surroundings. Tara is sleeping next to me. I’m ashamed to have blocked her out of my thoughts for so long during my period of mechanically induced exile. This is something that only a veteran can really understand. Sometimes before and during deployments you seem to detach yourself from the ones you love just to make things hurt a little less.

Using the notes in my journal I spent the entire day resting, rehydrating and debriefing John, the Marines, Tara and anyone else who wanted to listen. Saien quietly listened, and I could tell he was absorbing my debriefing. John had not sat idle in my absence and had penetrated several different networks on the military mainframe. He also confirmed what the Marines had hinted at when we met
at the rally point. Despite only getting the Cliff Notes version from Ramirez, I still discovered that someone had been jamming my receiver. John said he could hear my transmissions and did in fact pick up my distress beacon coming in loud and clear on October 11 as well as the distress call made on November 9.

I’m still in shell shock and can’t overstate how great it was to see everyone. Laura asked how my vacation went, and I told her that it went very well and thanked her for asking. She asked me if I brought her a souvenir and I told her that it was not a fun vacation but more of a working vacation. She understood what had happened to me—I could see the intelligence in her eyes. Her parents did a good deed by shielding her, but she knew. Danny walked up, punched me in the arm and said: “Good to see you!” He then proceeded to give me a hug. Little Annabelle even gave me a bark and a lick on the nose to signify that she had missed me or at least noticed my return. Dean immediately tried to feed me and had noticed that I had dropped quite a few pounds since she last saw me. I suppose it was true. The man I saw in the mirror looked like one of those guys from a reality survival television show after a couple of weeks in the wild. Multiply that by ten and that was about where I was—wild-eyed and hairy.

1100

After a shower and a shave (my first real cleansing in over a month) I felt much better. I had a horrible rash on my waist and legs from sleeping in my clothing for so long. I suppose the last wash for my clothes had been on the sailboat millennia ago. Tara said that she needed to talk to me later today after I was finished debriefing John. Something wasn’t right. Something I didn’t notice until this morning. Dean found me this morning around 0630 and forced me into a haircut. I now felt fairly presentable, with the only visible evidence of my absence being minor cuts, scars, bruises, weight loss and the slight limp I have incurred from my severe shin splints.

This morning was spent with John, Saien and the senior enlisted Marines. I flipped back and forth in my journal and went over key incidents during my time away. I showed everyone to the
best of my knowledge where the original crash site was as well as Saien’s and my rough route back to Hotel 23.

We then went into discussions about Remote Six. I passed around all the hardware I had obtained since being exposed to this organization as well as the provided documentation that I had retained. The materials passed around were: the maps of eastern Texas with the drop locations and other symbology, the M-4 with attachments, the automated Gatling manuals, iridium SATphone, experimental fuel treatment and a few other odds and ends. We deliberated the entire morning over the materials, the documents and the notes I took on all communications with Remote Six via the SATphone.

One of the ideas we came up with was that Remote Six was some sort of secondary government, previously established in case the main government was knocked out. The term “Fifth Column” was also discussed as it relates to the data at hand. John pulled up the computer screen on one of the flat-panel displays in the secure compartmented information facility (SCIF) in which we were located. He pulled up a network file system that he had cracked not long ago, and this referenced many government facilities on a map that indicated “status GREEN.” The only location out of the many on the list of active facilities that I recognized was the pulsing green dot sitting just outside Las Vegas, Nevada.

An hour into the meeting I was concentrating on the discussion when I felt a hand on my shoulder from behind. I jumped out of my seat and slapped my chest to reach for my sidearm. I wasn’t wearing my load-bearing vest.

It was Tara. My open hand shook uncontrollably and I had no way to explain what I was experiencing. My mind was still out there in the void. Lost. I couldn’t hold a pistol steady in my hand if I tried. Tara brought down some coffee for the group. I apologized to her and explained that I was still a little jumpy from my extended stay outside the wire. Of course she nodded and said that she understood and kissed me on the cheek and walked out.

I quickly summed up the major points of the meeting and went after her. I caught up to her in the passageway and she embraced me quickly.

“I honestly thought you were gone.”

“So did I. There were times that . . .”

“Don’t talk about it. Let’s just enjoy the time we have now. The
time we have been given.”

“I think you are right. Let’s try.”

At this point John rounded the corner with a “one more thing” comment and Tara just laughed and told John he could borrow me but he had to return me in one piece.

John laughed and told her that he’d do his best.

John had found a networked program that was embedded in the overhead imagery system previously discovered. Although many of the satellites were not functional and have probably re-entered the atmosphere, some of the multimission satellites were still working. The radiation sensors seemed to still be operational, and the satellite broadcast indicated hot zones overlaid on a United States map. This system was able to finally give us the locations of most if not all of the fallout areas as well as intermittent hits on probable locations of undead swarms if they had been radiated or had come from areas that were.