THEM (Book 0): Invasion (5 page)

FOUR

UNREAL

ONCE BACK AT THE CABIN I plugged the girl’s cell phone into the charger and tried the landline again. No dice. I left the cell phone on, though, just in case someone tried to reach the girl. I figured I could tell them what had happened and at least give them closure, even though it might make me a suspect in her murder. Considering the circumstances, I thought it was unlikely that the courts would be back in operation anytime soon, but eventually things would return to some level of normalcy, so I decided to turn off the phone after all. No sense getting involved until I spoke with Randy about it.

I felt pretty hungry. The day’s events had ended up being a lot more stressful than I had expected. Not that being in a nuclear apocalypse was supposed to be a day at the beach, but I hadn’t expected things to be this chaotic and violent so soon. I put some soup on the stove and munched out on some deer sausage and crackers while I waited for the soup to heat, then I tried calling my parents again using the landline. I got nothing but a busy signal, so I decided to keep trying on the odd chance I might get through. Once the cell phone I’d found was charged enough, I’d also start trying to call them on that. Couldn’t hurt to try.

Once my soup was ready, I hunkered down in front of the short wave and started scanning the freqs for some news of what was going on out there in the big wide world. Nobody seemed to know exactly what had happened, but we did know who fired the first shot. Apparently the North Koreans decided to drop the bomb on Seoul, and that started a whole chain of events that had ended with the U.S., Russia, and China tossing nuclear weapons at each other. It would have been only a matter of time before something like this happened. I mean, once you let the crazies build nukes, the logical conclusion is that eventually they’re going to use them. Heck, even a ten-year-old could see that.

Thankfully, something major happened that caused the powers that be to stop just short of total global annihilation. Apparently some greater threat had appeared out of the blue, but due to conflicting reports I couldn’t get a clear picture of just what that was exactly. Some said it was a global pandemic, others said aliens, while still others were yammering about an impending zombie apocalypse. Go figure. I was more likely to believe the alien invasion scenario than I was the zombie thing. Come on, zombies? I love Romero films as much as the next guy, but that was just a little too far out there for me to believe.

Still, there were some pretty hairy reports about massive riots and waves of civil unrest hitting large cities all across the globe. There was also some talk about cannibalism, which wasn’t surprising if you took into account just how close to starvation much of the global population was at any given moment. Throw in a little hysteria and confusion, and it was easy to see that most of this stuff was hearsay being blown out of proportion. Even so, it made me worry that much more for my folks.

Strangely, reports were coming in of violence even in countries where no nuclear attacks had occurred. Even small nations across the African continent, and island nations and territories like Haiti and Puerto Rico reported they were also experiencing massive waves of violence, rioting, and looting. Again, I figured this was just human nature rearing its ugly head. Most folks with half a brain who hadn’t prepared for something like this would figure out pretty quick that they needed to secure the essentials if they wanted to survive. Add in the fact that roughly 1 in 25 people showed sociopathic tendencies in modern society, and you had the makings for some serious fan-hitting shit.

My only consolation was that my dad was a self-reliant son of a bitch. He had been assigned to Force Recon in the Corps, and had seen some pretty hairy shit while he was active. Understandably he never spoke about it much, but the old man was tough as nails, and I believed he could turn into a stone killer if need be. He’d also do anything to keep my mom safe, and kept an arsenal of firearms in their house along with enough ammo to keep a small army at bay. He’d likely dig in for a while until he knew it was safe, then he’d secure reliable transport and bug out as soon as he was able. I just hoped I’d be able to speak to them before he decided it was time to beat feet.

After finishing my meal and listening to the shortwave for about an hour, I decided to check my battery bank and the solar panels I’d put in earlier in the year. I had installed eight panels on the roof where it got the most southern exposure, along with a bank of batteries in an attached shed that sat alongside the cabin. Since the system was tied to the grid, I’d also set it up so I could disconnect the house from the power company and run off my battery bank and panels. Being a natural worry wart, I grabbed a flashlight and headed outside to check the condition of the batteries. I’d gone with sealed gel cells both for the cost and for the lack of maintenance, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to make sure none were showing signs of failure. Once I was sure the system was in good working order, I locked it up and headed back inside for the night.

After that, there was really nothing I could do but keep trying to call my folks and hope for the best. Dad’s vehicles were probably knocked out by the EMP, so he’d need to secure transport before heading out. That could take him while, depending on how bad things got, which meant he might just decide to bunker in place. I really wanted to get a lock on my parent’s location before I left, but finally decided that if I didn’t get them on the phone by morning, I’d head for Austin and hope I got to them before Dad decided to blow town. I continued listening in on the shortwave and calling every 15 to 20 minutes, until I finally dozed off on the couch sometime after midnight.

The sound of creaking floorboards on my front porch woke me up at about zero-three-thirty, according to my watch. I still had my Glock on me and my M4 was leaning up against the side table close at hand. I slipped on my boots, listening for any additional noise from outside. While it could have easily been an animal, no raccoon was going to be loud enough to make those boards creak. Only thing that heavy would be a black bear, which I’d only seen once in all my years on the ranch. That, or a human. I was betting on the latter, although how someone would have found our place at random was a mystery to me. This cabin was well back up in the woods from the main road, and it’d take an aerial search team and a FLIR camera to find it in the dark.

No matter. I assumed it was someone who’d headed out in the woods to bug out and stumbled across the place. Or possibly an illegal‌—‌I found them on the ranch all the time. If it was a looter I’d try to scare them off, and if it was an illegal, I’d just give them some food and send them on their way.

As I was reaching for my rifle, in my grogginess I accidentally caused my soup bowl to collide with the table lamp. Although the sound wasn’t really that loud, it may as well have been a gunshot in the silence of the Hill Country night. Immediately after that, I could hear a pair of heavy feet shuffling to the door, followed by scraping and banging on the frame and door itself.

Must be a drunk, I thought to myself. But that in and of itself was a pretty damned deep mystery. How in the hell would a drunk make it up a mile of dirt roads and jeep trails in the middle of the night? Let me tell you, it gets pitch dark up here after sundown, and on an overcast night like this one you’re lucky to see two feet in front of your face without a flashlight or some other artificial light source. If whoever it was had come in a vehicle, then I’d have heard them coming up the road. As far as I could tell there weren’t any flashlights swinging around outside, either.

I figured it was time to take a look, so I crept over to the window and peeked out. All I could see was a large, dark figure swaying back and forth, more or less bumping into and banging on the door and wall outside. Deciding that this was just a little too weird, even for my tastes, I crept over to my gun safe and popped it open. I used just a sliver of light from my mini taclight to see the dial so I could crack it open, and grabbed my NVGs from inside. Strapping them onto my head, I turned them on with my eyes closed and cranked down the brightness, then opened my eyes and waited for them to adjust. After about 30 seconds or so, I headed to the second bedroom.

When I was about 14, I’d made an emergency egress point, otherwise known as a trap door, in my bedroom floor here at the cabin. Originally, I’d made it so I could sneak out and go frogging and coon hunting in the middle of the night, although when my dad found out he threw a fit. My grandpa calmed him down, saying he’d always wanted to do the same thing when he was a kid. Since Grandpa overruled Dad on all things having to do with the cabin and land, I got to keep my trap door. These days I kept the hinges well-oiled and the latch maintained, just in case I ever needed a way to get out of the cabin without making a lot of noise. This would be one of those times.

Secretly praying that no rattlesnakes had taken up residence under the house recently, I carefully lowered my rifle down the hole and on the ground below, and crawled out head first. It was a tight fit, and I recalled how much easier this had been as a kid. After getting my bearings, I tucked my rifle over my arm to keep it from scraping the ground, and began to low crawl out from under the house. I could still hear my guest banging and scratching at the front door the whole time, which pretty much covered any noise I made. Once I was out from under the cabin, I press-checked my rifle to make sure I had a round chambered, and headed around the house.

Coming around the corner, I could get a much better look at the guy through my NVGs. At first glance, he looked like he was either extremely muddy, or that he’d been in an accident and was covered in blood. A head injury could account for his strange behavior, so I assumed the latter. It looked like he had suffered a nasty cut over his eye; there was blood all over his face. As I crouched and watched him from around the corner of the cabin, something niggled at the back of my mind. His movements and behavior were strangely familiar, but I just couldn’t place them.

Then it clicked. The way this guy was moving reminded me a lot of the illegal who’d attacked me at the Stop N’ Steal. That guy had moved with the same rhythmic swaying motion, and with the same repetitive pattern as well. Weird. I decided to sit tight and observe him for a moment, since he didn’t appear to be an immediate threat. I leaned against the cabin and made myself more comfortable so I could keep an eye on him for a few minutes.

Strangely, the guy’s pattern of movement never changed. He just kept sort of banging on and walking into the door, over and over again. To be honest, after a while watching him started to put me to sleep, so I’d look away every now and again and scan the area for other threats. With nothing changing after about ten minutes or so, I was about to call it a night and go back inside.

Then there was a loud rustling from the treeline behind me. Likely it was a rabbit or a squirrel evading a night predator, but it sounded like thunder in the still silence of the night. I turned to look, just in case it was another human instead of an animal, but couldn’t see anything. When I turned back to see if my guest had noticed, I got the shock of my life.

My visitor had turned fully toward me to see what had made all the racket, and now that he did I could see that this gentleman wasn’t well. For starters, he was missing half the right side of his face, which looked like it had either been torn or gnawed off. He was similarly missing his right arm at the elbow, which ended in a nasty, jagged wound that should have been dripping blood all over. It was instead dry and crusty, like a newly scabbed cut.

Finally, the guy’s throat had been ripped out.

His throat had been ripped the hell out. And he was still moving around.
Shit.

The impact of what I was seeing though my NVGs freaked me out so bad that I stumbled. And as I reached out to the wall to steady myself, I missed it completely and fell to one knee, making a shitload of noise as I bumped into the cabin wall. That sure got his attention. Before I could get back to my feet, he was moaning up a storm and making a beeline for me, despite it being blacker than charcoal on a cast iron kettle out here.

I got my bearings and started backing up, mumbling to myself, “This isn’t happening, this is not happening, holy shit, this is really happening!” Well, maybe I screamed that last part like a little girl, because Stumpy the one-armed freak was gaining on me as I was backing up. I yelled at him, as loud as I could, “Stop, or I will be forced to shoot!” That only seemed to make him even more agitated, and the sum’ bitch picked up his pace.

I knew that I couldn’t keep backing up or I was going to go ass over teakettle on a branch or rock and have this asshole right on top of me. Once I came to that conclusion, it was abundantly clear what I had to do.

“Screw this,” I declared, and fired two rounds center mass on the guy.

No effect.

“Ah, shit!” I switched the selector from select fire to full auto and lit the guy up. I emptied a mag in him, which made him jerk about like a puppet and seemed to halt his progress as he staggered about. Unfortunately, once I ran out of ammo, he kept coming.