Winchester Undead (Book 2): Winchester: Prey (11 page)

CHAPTER 24

Cortez, CO

February 16, Year 1

“Jake, I think this could be our golden ticket. We can’t do anything but take them at face value. I mean, what else can we do?”

“I’m not sure what good it would do us. They say they’re in Nevada, Sara. I can’t even start to wrap my head around how we could move all our families safely across the country to what is basically a mystery group who ‘claim’ that they are the good guys. They could be anyone and anywhere for that matter.”

“Baby, I’m not sure that the vote to stay was the right one. Right now the attacks are light, but I don’t think the problem of The Tribe is going to go away on its own. I think it will only get worse.”

“I know, and I’m starting to agree, but the group voted on our course.”

“It’s time for another vote.”

“Maybe.”

Jake wasn’t sure anymore. Bill, one of the older survivors, had spent the last four weeks slowly scavenging all the pieces he needed to repair his HAM radio to the point of finding butane-fired soldering irons and physically replacing pieces damaged by the EMP. The solar panels and deep-cycle batteries needed to power certain desired amenities was another pet project of Bill’s, and with no surviving family members, he was generally left alone to work on his projects in his spare time and off-duty days. No one believed he would be successful until he received a news broadcast from the BBC on a shortwave radio frequency. Quickly, the group came to realize that the broadcast was old and on an electronic loop, repeating every three hours. However, it did give everyone hope of finding other survivors outside of their small Colorado town. Contact with a group claiming they were authorized government agents operating out of Nevada shot through the Colorado group like a bolt of lightning. Initially, many of the members wanted to immediately leave for Nevada and the promise of a better life, but then the magnitude of the logistics, the realization of how hard an overland journey would be set in, and the original spring of hope was quickly replaced by a deep well of despair.

To make the low morale worse, the attacks on the scavenging teams by members of The Tribe were increasing in frequency, as were probes into the group’s defenses. Jake was certain that before long they would have to fight off a full-scale siege by The Tribe.

Bill burst into the room. “Jake! Part of the fence is down and there are walkers in the compound!”

Jake bolted out of his chair, joined by Sara. They ran out of the room, each armed with a machete or an axe. Bill continued through the old middle school, raising the alarm with all the other members before joining the group on the south side of the school grounds where the fence was breached. The children remained in the school, secured in an interior classroom with two of the older women, who gladly took the job of protecting the group’s young.

Outside, Jake found that nearly fifty feet of fence was down and approximately sixty walking corpses shambled through the opening. Down Pine Street, he saw men in an old truck herding the zombies towards the school and anger raged through his veins. The religious cult had gone too far.

The fight for the school’s courtyard lasted for nearly an hour. Two of their group were lost to bites, a man and a woman. Each of them left behind a spouse and a child.

After the fight, drenched in sweat, Jake turned to Sara. “This is too much. The Tribe has gone too far. Once the team repairing the fence is done, have everyone meet in the cafeteria for another vote. It’s time we hunt these jackasses down.”

CHAPTER 25

Fort Bliss, Texas

February 16, Year 1

After each building they passed, more and more undead appeared around the edges, closing in on the sound of the Humvee rumbling by slowly. The group found each intersection manned by a now dead or missing MP, only the vehicles or dead bodies left behind. The bridge over the Liberty Expressway was not blocked, but after crossing it they ran into the fenced western edge of the Army Air Field’s flightline.

“Around or through?”

Chivo shrugged and looked at the shambling horde that was just starting to crest the top of the bridge.

“Those fuckers just won’t quit. They won’t give up, will they?”

“No Chivo, they won’t.”

“The airfield looks clear and we’ve got to get on the other side of the runways.”

Apollo gunned the motor and the big desert tan truck lurched forward towards the fence before following the road left and to an open gate that crossed the road. He stopped the truck just past the gate and both men climbed out of the Humvee. The undead horde, relentless, still approached, but they had a little bit of time.

Chivo closed the double gate and set the pin in the asphalt before wrapping the chain hanging on the gate around the gate poles twice. His last pair of flex cuffs went through the chain and through the fence to secure the gate the best he could.

“Too bad they didn’t leave the lock. That was my last pair of flex cuffs.”

Apollo shrugged. They returned to the Humvee and continued north, crossing over the rail spur that the Army used to transport their vehicles, and sped along at a blistering speed of forty miles per hour. They could see no movement in the dark desert around them, dead or alive.

Driving through the rail depot, Chivo pointed to a dark strip of road on their left. “I’m not sure this road makes it to the range, but I seem to remember that one does.”

Apollo took the next left and the next right to turn onto Chaffee Road. With the moonlight, they could see a large number of undead trying to turn and follow the passing Humvee on the other side of the fence that lined the perimeter of the Army Post.

“Chivo, this whole fucking place is dead. How are we going to find any survivors?”

“We survived. Lindsey survived. There have to be others that survived too.”

They drove in silence across the large expanse of the post for twenty minutes before they approached a highway crossing over their small road. Cars and trucks sat dormant on the road and Apollo never slowed the Humvee, trying to clear from under the bridge as quickly as he could after losing Odin to a falling corpse. Apollo slammed on the brakes and turned onto a dirt road; Chivo watched in the sideview mirror as three bodies fell off the bridge to follow them. He didn’t see if any of them got back up and he hoped their legs were shattered from the fall and they were unable to walk or follow their passing truck. One more fence was all that separated them from Purple Heart Boulevard. More dormant and abandoned vehicles lined the road.

“Left here.” Chivo pointed to a dirt road to the north and Apollo followed.

“OK, you’ll see the shooting berms around the range in a second. Go right and we can go around them into the desert.”

“Wait, what is this? This isn’t an Army range,” Apollo asked.

“Sort of. It’s the Rod and Gun club. It’s the closest place I could think of where we could find ammo and maybe some other gear. If we’re lucky, it hasn’t been looted yet. If we’re really lucky, no one is in there, because it was closed for Christmas when the attack hit.”

Apollo slowed, driving the Humvee off the dirt road and into the desert, following the tall dirt berm of a rifle range before turning to drive across the back of the ranges towards the middle of the complex. They drove through the clay shooting range and stopped close to the rear of the building, parking on the range. Apollo turned the Humvee to point towards the open desert in case they needed to make a fast escape before moving the selector switch to “OFF.”

Chivo climbed out of the passenger seat and crouched by the rear tire with his rifle up, sweeping the back of the dark building with the muzzle of his rifle. Apollo climbed out of the driver’s seat and walked around the front bumper, rifle up, taking position next to his teammate. He opened Lindsey’s door and whispered, “Do you want to stay here in the truck or do you want to come with us?”

“I don’t want to be alone again.”

Lindsey climbed down from the Humvee and crouched beside Chivo. He pulled his pistol out of the holster and handed it to Lindsey. “You know how to work one of these?”

“Sure, I guess.” Her right index finger snaked into the trigger guard.

“Hang on. Keep your booger flinger out of there, off the trigger and along the side of the gun until you’re ready to shoot. Otherwise you’ll end up shooting one of us by mistake. Good. Now keep the pistol tucked up to your chest like this. We’ll take care of anything towards the front. Just make sure nothing shuffles up behind us. Got it?”

Lindsey looked over her shoulder to the desert expanding into an endless black hole and looked back at Chivo with wide eyes, who smiled and gave her a quick thumbs-up.

“If you two are done playing tea party, we need to clear this building and get secure.”

Apollo and Chivo glided silently towards the building, each with his M4 raised, carefully watching their own slice of the pie in front of them and to the sides. The back door of the building was not closed all the way. Chivo slowly pulled the door open and held it open with his foot. Apollo stepped forward and waited. Chivo put his left hand on Apollo’s shoulder, who waited for Chivo to squeeze his shoulder to give him the ready signal.

Chivo shook Apollo’s shoulder, the sign to wait. Apollo glanced over his shoulder at Chivo with a confused expression, not understanding what the holdup was and why they weren’t making entry. Chivo picked up a piece of a brick that was by the door and threw it into the dark building, which resulted in a resounding crash piercing the still winter’s night.

Immediately the sound was responded to by a dark moan that erupted deep inside the building, followed by more crashing and the sound of chairs being knocked over. Chivo picked up another piece of brick and propped the door open before signaling Apollo to fall back away from the door. Lindsey stayed behind Chivo, facing towards the Humvee and the desert, trying to keep rear security, but she kept looking over her shoulder nervously and shuddered with a soft whimper when the walking corpse crashed towards the open door.

Chivo squeezed the pressure switch on his M4’s vertical grip, activating the weapon-mounted light, and illuminated what used to be a very overweight middle-aged man stumbling towards them. Chivo backed up, bumping into Lindsey, who quickly scurried out of the way. Chivo let the corpse fall through the doorway before firing a single shot into the zombie’s skull, putting the man down for good.

They all waited for another full minute before stepping over the rotted corpse by the door and into the back of the Rod and Gun Club. Slowly, Chivo and Apollo swept each room, checking every closet and every place a person could hide. The smell was nearly unbearable. The small restaurant in the building must have been stocked with food before the EMP hit and all of it had rotted. The smell was so bad it even masked the smell of the rotting corpse just outside the back door. Twenty minutes later Chivo and Apollo were confident that the building was clear and they found what they were looking for: ammo.

Flashlight held in his teeth, Apollo stacked boxes of civilian .223 in a pile on the counter next to the cash register. Chivo ripped open the cardboard packaging and dumped the rounds, one twenty-round box at a time, into an empty green ammo can.

“Are you keeping count of how many boxes you’re opening?”

“Yes, but if you keep interrupting me I won’t be able to.”

“Twenty, thirty-three, fourteen, seventy-two ...”

“Damnit, you ass.”

Chivo and Apollo both chuckled, their first chance for real humor since Zennie died.

“OK, looks like we have right at three hundred rounds.”

Chivo looked at the loose rounds in the bottom of the ammo can.

“Shit.”

“Yeah, well, it’s still better than nothing and much better than what we had before.”

“Lindsey, how about we get you your own pistol so I can have mine back,” Chivo said, pointing at the glass case she was sitting on. In the case lay a single pistol, a Glock 19. The rest of the case was empty. In a drawer under the glass case, Chivo located the pistol’s case and the two magazines that came with it. Also in the drawer was a fifty-round box of 9mm, and the good luck continued when on the wall behind the glass cases they found a display of holsters, including one for a G19. A few moments later, Lindsey was now the proud new owner of a Glock 19, loaded and holstered on her right hip.

“You didn’t even have to wait seven days, chica.”

Lindsey smiled at Chivo, who busily got back to work reloading his empty M4 magazines.

CHAPTER 26

The Basin, Big Bend National Park

February 16, Year 1

Russell pushed the nude woman off the bed and onto the floor where she fell with a thud and woke with a scream. He backhanded her across the jaw and she fell silent, staring at the floor, scared to look up at him while he pulled his dirty jeans on. The motorcycle club president pulled his long hair into a tight ponytail, lit a cigarette, and walked out of the cabin into the cold morning air. The sky over the mountains to the east glowed faintly orange with the rising sun; Russell hadn’t slept in three days, flying high on crystal meth. He pulled a large zip-top bag out of the saddle bag on his motorcycle, which was full of smaller bags of Xanax, Vicodin, and Viagra, and a handful of smaller “one hit” bags of crystal meth. His supply was dwindling fast. The decongestant was cooked down into crystal meth for the club members, and if he was getting low then he knew everyone was getting low. If they ran out of drugs, the club members would tear themselves apart.

“Where the fuck is Buzzer?” Russell yelled to no one in particular, his voice echoing softly against the mountains.

“Give me a prospect!”

Two scraggly men leapt out of the old van in the parking lot and ran to where Russell stood.

“You two get another prospect, take the van north, and knock over as many pharmacies as you can find. Get back here before sundown tomorrow, and you better come back loaded with gear.”

“What, leave now?”

“Yes, god dammit! Leave fucking now!”

The two prospects ran back to the old van, yelling another man’s name before starting the van and driving down the road towards the exit of The Basin.

Russell walked to the row of smaller cabins on his right and opened the door to the first one he came to. Brad, whom everyone called Dirty Dick or DD for short, lay flat on his back, feet on the floor, passed out on his bed with a lit cigarette in his mouth. Russell kicked DD’s foot, startling him awake.

“What, Prez?”

“Have you seen Buzzer?”

“Naw, he and Mike haven’t gotten back yet.”

“Get someone and go find them.”

“Right, Prez.”

DD pulled on his boots, walked out of the door, pissed on the bush in front of his cabin and sauntered off to get another club member. Ten minutes later the mountains echoed with the thundering exhaust of the two motorcycles leaving The Basin towards Terlingua in search of Buzzer and Mike.

Russell walked back to his motorcycle and pulled out his bag of drugs and a small glass pipe. He needed a boost to make it another day.

Groom Lake, Nevada

Cliff entered the conference room. Wright, Arcuni, and four other airmen, along with Chris, Rick and Evan, the newly arrived PJs, sat waiting around a large table in the middle of the room. The PJs were dressed in brand new woodland BDUs and were freshly showered, which they took no small joy in after having had to endure such a long time without running water while stranded at Nellis AFB.

Cliff walked to the front of the room by a large smart board and began, “Lance is dead.”

Most of the people in the room looked shocked. Wright was the first to speak, “What happened and what are we going to do now?”

“Unless by some miracle of God or Buddha or The Flying Spaghetti Monster or whatever deity anyone can believe in anymore we find a microbiologist or a virologist or someone else who is similarly trained, we will have to assume that there is not nor will there ever be a cure for the Yama Strain. The Kali Project is now officially over.” Cliff met the face of each man. The feeling of defeat filled the room.

“Our mission now, what we must accomplish, is to redouble our efforts to find survivors. We have to help them in any way we can. We need to bring survivors here so we can protect them and help them survive. We are no longer fighting to save what is left of the United States. Our fight now is against the extinction of the human race.”

“Ben.” Cliff pointed to Major Wright. “What is our current status board of survivors?”

Wright sat up and flipped through the pages on his clipboard. “We currently have contact with two hundred and nineteen known survivors in sixty-seven groups that are confirmed through radio contact on the civilian amateur radio bands. We have located another hundred possible survivor group locations using the SeeMe SATINT system.”

“Anything on the military bands? Any contact with any of the remains of our military?”

“We have only caught brief bursts of encrypted transmissions, but we didn’t have the right crypto to intercept and decode.”

“Keep trying. Broadcast in the blind on the military freqs as well. If we’re going to make this work, we are going to need more than just the civilian survivors. We’re going to need trained men and women to fight the undead to protect our facility first, then to branch out into the surrounding areas.”

Cliff stopped for a moment. “What about our first group, our friends in the national park in Texas? Do you have the new imagery yet?”

Wright pointed to one of the airmen sitting further down the table. “Have you had a chance to evaluate the latest?”

“Not yet, sir. We just got it downloaded from the last overhead pass before coming to this meeting.”

Cliff pointed to the smart board behind him. “Can you pull it up now? Put it up here? I want to take a look at it.”

The airman said he could and walked to the computer on the table against the wall. The group continued to discuss finding more surviving military members when Evan, one of the PJs who had been silent thus far, joined the conversation.

“Nellis was completely dead. We had to scavenge the base for supplies and four teammates were lost during those operations. We didn’t find a single survivor. Maybe there are others, maybe there were better equipped bases, or our Navy not in port might still have living souls on their ships, but out of our entire base I’m confident that we were the last three living persons.”

The airman by the computer cleared his throat. “Cliff, the latest imagery is up.” He dimmed the lights and a large photo taken from the satellite that passed overhead filled the screen. It showed The Basin in Big Bend National Park, but was too far zoomed out to see more than just the general outline of the roads. The airman zoomed in the image, panning up the road towards the standing structures and stopping on what looked like a small group of people congregating near a vehicle before zooming in further.

“What the hell?” Cliff pointed to the group of undead bent over something in the middle of the road. “Is that a child?”

An uneasy silence fell on the room before the airman used a laser pointer to begin talking everyone through the evaluation of the imagery as he completed it.

“That appears to be a crew-served weapon, those are motorcycles, and yes, I believe that is a group of walking corpses feeding on a small child. That appears to be the remains of another body near the child and I think that is another body on the roof of this building here.” The red dot pointed to the overhead view of the roof of one of the cabins.

Cliff stood and walked closer to the screen. “Zoom out. We need to see if there is any evidence of survivors.”

The photo zoomed out slowly. The roads were quickly lost in the expanding view of the desert.

“Wait, pan north and zoom in a little along the road to the north. The projected screen zoomed into the road and panned slowly, following the empty road.

“Wright, which direction did those bikers come from again?”

“They rode in from the west.”

“OK, follow the intersection road west.”

The airman continued west, following the empty desert road before stopping on a view with a vehicle in it. Without being asked he zoomed in, filling the screen with the overhead photo of an SUV pulling an RV traveling westbound.

“OK, that has to be them,” Cliff said, a rare smile creeping onto his face. “When is the next overhead pass?”

Wright looked at the clock on the wall. “Four hours.”

“Great. Go back over past imagery and figure out where that RV and truck came from, then find out where it went. I want to know what happened to our friends.”