Winchester Undead (Book 2): Winchester: Prey (15 page)

CHAPTER 33

Terlingua, Texas

February 16, Year 1

Miles away Bexar saw the thick black smoke rising above the mountains. The flat tire had cost him valuable time and even though he knew that the tire full of Fix-A-Flat wasn’t really safe on the motorcycle, he rolled hard on the throttle and leaned over the tank, trying to get every last bit of performance out of the old beat-up Harley. Sparks flew with each sweeping turn, the floorboards under his feet scraping against the asphalt as Bexar ignored the highway’s painted lines and took each turn apex to apex as if on a racetrack.

The closer he got to Terlingua, the more the pit of despair grew in the bottom of his stomach. Bexar’s mind raced faster than the motorcycle.
If Jessie caught the cabin on fire they might be OK, but if the bikers found her ...
The throttle wouldn’t roll any further backward. It was wide open, and Bexar pushed the motorcycle recklessly fast on the narrow highway.

Reaching the turnoff for Terlingua, the back wheel of the motorcycle shuddered with the hard braking to make the turn. After he cleared the turn-off, he saw it. The cabin was a burned-out shell. Only part of the rock walls stood, and over two dozen undead shuffled around the ruin. Bexar stopped the motorcycle where the road split at the top of the hill, shouldered his rifle, and began putting the walking corpses down for good. Thirty rounds and a magazine change later, the twenty-five undead were down. Every time Bexar took aim, he was scared that he would see his wife’s face, snarling in anger and death, but she wasn’t among the walkers. He left the motorcycle in the middle of the road and jogged, limping, to the cabin.

In the dirt next to the cabin lay his little girl, the t-shirt he’d given her the night before from the store next door soaked in blood, her tiny body partially eaten by the dead.

Bexar yelled. Tears poured down his cheeks and he collapsed to the ground. He had no idea how long he sat next to his daughter’s mangled body, but eventually he stood and walked through the smoking ruin of their cabin. Jessie’s body was not in the cabin, and he didn’t find her body anywhere nearby. Bexar walked across the parking lot to the Starlight Theatre, which was empty, as was the store, but large bullet casings and links littered the parking lot. Bexar had no military experience, but he instantly thought of the bikers and that big fifty-cal machine gun they’d used against them in the park.

Mindlessly, he kicked the shell casings around before walking into the store and returning holding a souvenir beach towel. Bexar walked to his daughter’s dead body and wrapped her in the cheap towel. He gently picked her up in his arms and walked down the hill towards the old Terlingua Ghost Town cemetery and found an empty space. The rocky soil was too hard and he couldn’t dig a grave, so Bexar spent the next three hours gathering rocks from a crumbling wall of a long abandoned house in the ghost town, gently laying the rocks on her body, making a mound of a grave the best he could.

The sun hung low against the western sky when Bexar was finished and walked back up the hill, his clothes covered in dirt and dust, his face wet with sweat and tears. Bexar walked into the Starlight Theatre and behind the bar. He only had the supplies in his go-bag, he had no idea where his wife was, but he guessed she was probably dead. Or maybe the bikers took her. If they took her, possibly they went back to The Basin, but a dark blanket of depression fell over him, realizing that his little girl was dead, and he blamed himself. Bexar took the bottle of Gentleman’s Jack down from behind the bar, poured three fingers of the brown liquor into a dusty glass, and downed the whiskey in one long drink before pouring another one. The whiskey burned his throat and he started to feel his muscles relax. He needed a plan. A plan to rescue Jessie. But first, he had to find her. He tried to concentrate, but he couldn’t focus. His sweet little girl’s body, half-eaten by the dead, filled his mind. Bexar drank the second glass and poured another.

Groom Lake, Nevada

“Where’s Cliff?” Wright asked the airman that walked into the radio hut.

“I think he went topside to see the mission off and he isn’t back yet.”

“Get up there and bring him to me. He’ll want to see this.”

The airman nodded and walked out the door. Wright leaned in towards the computer monitor. The SUV was on the road and looked badly damaged; the trailer was off the road and quite obviously destroyed. A body lay in the road behind the Jeep and two more bodies were in the parking lot of the buildings to the north. Wright had no idea what it was, but the building looked like it could be a hotel or maybe some storage units. For all the power the satellites had, Google would have made finding out more information easier.

Cliff burst through the door and walked to Wright and his computer.

“Here is the SUV; it’s about twenty miles west of the park. It looks like it wrecked, but with those two bodies in the parking lot away from the wreck, I think someone survived.”

Cliff nodded. “What about the park and the motorcycles?”

“The interior of the park is here. Looking at past overheads, our best guess is that our friends were set up in these cabins on the south side of the parking area. You can see now, there are a number of motorcycles near the cabins and a pile of bodies to the north in this other parking lot.”

The airman at the radio console snapped his fingers sharply to get Wright’s attention before waving him over. The airman scribbled notes on the yellow pad of paper in front of him, but his handwriting was so bad the major couldn’t read it. Wright pushed the button on the console that activated the external speaker. The man transmitting refused to give his location and referenced a handful of code words that meant nothing to Wright or the airman. The airman shrugged at Wright, but Cliff reached for the handset and keyed the mic.

The airman pointed to the computer screen. The transmission was being made over an emergency SATCOM channel that was reserved for theater-wide communications in Afghanistan. That was peculiar, but Wright assumed there had to be military survivors all across the globe. The airman made a few clicks with his mouse and located the geostationary satellite being used for the transmission, which was positioned over the United States. So that meant the transmission had to be from inside CONUS, or at least North America. The communications system should have a GPS lock as well, but that feature wasn’t functioning for some reason.

Fort Bliss, Texas

Chivo sat on the roof of the Humvee after moving up there for safety when Apollo left to explore the rest of the area on foot for supplies. The sound of an engine approaching caused an instant reaction from Chivo. He spun towards the sound on the roof while simultaneously raising his rifle. Off the end of his barrel, he saw an old Land Rover drive around the side of the building and towards the Humvee. Apollo was behind the wheel, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, Lindsey in the passenger seat.

Chivo lowered his rifle and turned back to the radio to continue trying different channels on the SATCOM. The first few hours Chivo tried the predetermined channels to contact the project director and handler for the anti-drug mission they had been on in Mexico. Those had no response. Chivo tried some of the theater-wide channels from when he was in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the channels used in Afghanistan some ten years ago had a response. He didn’t know who it was, but at least there was someone else out there. The clipped conversation went back and forth, but Chivo was unwilling to reveal too much about himself or his location without positively identifying whom he was speaking with. Luckily, he had remembered to disable the locater.

Apollo climbed out of the newly found Land Rover and walked to the side of the Humvee where Chivo was waving frantically at him.

“Apollo, this guy says he’s Lazarus Actual.”

“You’re shitting me. He trained me at The Farm. Let me have that.” Apollo climbed on the roof of the Humvee and took the handset from his teammate.

“Lazarus Actual, this is Mule Spike Six. Do you still have that scar?”

Groom Lake, Nevada

The external speaker activated, Wright and the airman looked at Cliff, who seemed to recognize the voice and showed a rare smirk. “Mule Spike Six, yes I do. And your mother says hi.”

Using a bit of code, they agreed on using another SATCOM channel since neither had any way of knowing who could be listening, if anyone was listening at all. After the channel switch and over the next few minutes, Apollo relayed their status, their location, and a quick rundown of how they’d fled from Mexico.

Cliff turned to Wright. “How far away are they from our friends in the Texas Park?”

Wright took his map compass and ticked off the scale distance with the map on the wall. “Call it two hundred fifty miles as the crow flies.”

Cliff scribbled down a location on a pad of paper and handed it to Wright. “Figure out a way to get Mule Spike from Fort Bliss to this location before they head to the park. Keep them away from ZA2 and away from I-10 if at all possible.” Cliff wrote down a list of instructions, including a twenty-four-digit key he wrote from memory.

Fort Bliss, Texas

Apollo took the small notepad and pen out of his shirt pocket and began taking notes.

“All right, Chivo. We’ve got an op.”

“An op? Doing what, staying alive? We’re a bit understaffed and undersupplied at the moment.”

“Cliff says he has an inland resupply cache. These are the directions and this is the code to get in.”

“Pyote? Where the hell is that?”

“No idea. We’ll have to follow the directions. But he wants us to leave immediately and get to the supply cache pronto.”

Chivo held his hand up to the sky. Four fingers separated the sun from the horizon. “We’ve only got about two hours until dark, mano.”

“Yeah, so we need to hurry it up and we need some containers to siphon the diesel from the Humvee so we can take it with us for our new ride.”

“Do we still trust this guy? It’s been years since he was at The Farm.”

“I caught a rumor that he was with a project called Osiris.”

“What the hell is that?”

“No idea, and I knew better than to ask.”

“Fuck it, my little Mexican buddy. What else do we have to do?”

Chivo packed up the antenna and the radio and put it in the back of the Land Rover before walking inside with Apollo and Lindsey.

CHAPTER 34

Dumas, Texas

February 16, Year 1

The C-130 turned for the downwind leg of the landing pattern over the hangars, the four big turboprop engines roaring through the desert landscape. Arcuni brought the cargo plane across for a short base to final and put the wheels down just before the first hash marks on the runway. Taking the middle turnoff for the taxiway, the big plane taxied alongside the old Quonset hut. The ramp lowered and Rick, Evan, and Chris trotted out of the back of the plane to meet the people running from the hangar towards the plane. Arcuni left the engines running while ten survivors and their four children were met by the PJs.

“Where’s the rest of you? I thought there were fourteen.”

“There were.”

“OK, all of you can come with us, but once we get back to the facility, you will be strip-searched for bites and quarantined for forty-eight hours. All weapons must be declared, but you will keep them and you will be required to be armed at all times. You will also be required to earn your keep on our base. Do you understand?”

One of the men, who introduced himself as Jake, shook Chris’s hand and the group all walked towards the ramp of the Herc. The PJs fanned out, providing security on each side and towards the rear of the group.

Once everyone was in the plane, Garcia pointed to the cargo net seats towards the front for the new passengers before raising the ramp. Arcuni taxied to the runway. Some undead were visible, shambling towards the plane from the highway, but they were far enough away that Arcuni knew he would be airborne before they became a problem. Arcuni pushed the throttles forward and the big plane bounced down the runway until rotating and lifting into the sky as he banked to the right to turn for the next group of survivors on their mission.

Arcuni didn’t have the luxury of a winds aloft report, a full weather report, or even all the charts he needed to fly safely, but he did at least have the charts for his flight today. He’d found them in a big binder stuffed behind the right seat. They were outdated, but at least he had something. The airspace markers really didn’t mean anything anymore and they were ignored, but the elevation markers and the rotating plotter navigation ruler he’d also found were needed and used. Assuming neutral winds aloft, the flight to Cortez should be about an hour. It was also nice that the cabin pressurization system worked and he didn’t have to worry about everyone getting hypoxic from the lack of oxygen on the flight.

Looking out the windshields at twenty thousand feet and across the expanse of the southwest, it was easy to imagine that none of this had happened and that everything below him was normal. However, if everything were normal, he wouldn’t be flipping through an aircraft’s manual trying to learn the systems while flying for a dangerous operation where others’ lives depended on him. Arcuni turned the last plotted waypoint and toggled the lights in the cargo hold on and off twice to signal his passengers to seatbelt in as he started the descent.

Cortez, Colorado

Black smoke poured out of the twin exhaust stacks of the old Peterbilt semi-truck, the engine pushing the truck as hard as it could. The trailer’s doors were tied open and three men of the group were lying on the floor of the trailer firing the only three rifles they had as rapidly as they could at the trailing pickup trucks. A gray C-130 roared overhead, seeming to float on a string, nose down, hanging on the props as it flew the final approach into the small municipal airport in Cortez.

Two old pickup trucks raced after the semi. Men stood in the beds of the trucks and fired rifles over the cabs towards the fleeing semi-truck. One of the men in the trailer yelled in pain, hit in the top of the shoulder. He accidently dropped his rifle, which clattered out of the back of the trailer only to be run over by the first chasing pickup. The driver of the semi downshifted hard; the truck lurched forward before leaning sharply as the truck bounced and shook around the corner onto Airport Road.

The cargo plane taxied back towards the center of the airport and onto the flightline by the beat-up hangars before turning back onto the taxiway, tailgate lowering towards the approaching semi. The three PJs jumped off the lowering ramp, rifles up and ready for action, as the semi-truck burst through the fence and bounced through a ditch. If this had been an operation before the EMP, overhead air support would have neutralized the threat before landing, but the PJs adapted and overcame for the new world. Impossibly slowly, the big old truck lurched hard to the left and crashed onto its side, sliding to a stop on the pavement by the first hangar.

Chris, Evan, and Rick jogged towards the overturned truck but threw themselves to the ground when the first rifle round cracked overhead, barely audible over the loud turboprop engines behind them. The two trucks bounded through the hole in the fence created by the semi and stopped. The first person to appear out of the semi was a teenage girl, and a man standing in the back of the first pickup shot her. Rick watched the girl drop to the ground, clutching her stomach; he thumbed the safety of his M4 down and squeezed the trigger. The shooter’s head snapped back and his body fell in the bed of the truck. Chris and Evan followed suit, quickly firing their rifles and killing the seven men in the pickup trucks before running towards the overturned semi and the injured girl.

Rick climbed the cab of the truck and found the driver, a middle-aged man, dead, his neck obviously broken. Evan ran to the teenage girl, who rolled in the dirt, crying in pain. Blood flowed out from around her hands as she clutched her stomach just above her jeans. Chris went to the back of the trailer and found twelve other men with various injuries, one of them dead.

“Is anyone seriously hurt?” Chris yelled into the trailer.

No one responded. “OK, everyone out. The plane is waiting. Where is everyone else? Are any more coming? Is there anyone else chasing you?”

A teenage boy with shaggy hair nodded. “Yes, there are more in our group. They’re not coming. We barely escaped those gunmen.”

“OK, everyone up and move fast. Get to the plane. We’ll be right there with you.”

The group of men, including the teenager, left their dead with the truck and half-jogged towards the waiting plane. Chris jogged past Rick and Evan, waving his left hand in a circle above his head, and got in front of the group to lead them safely into the aircraft. Rick and Evan knelt next to the teenage girl and lifted her off the ground. They fell in behind the group, carrying the injured girl with them, moving towards the open cargo hold of the aircraft.

Garcia stood at the tail ramp, M4 in his hands and his headset plugged into the communication port at the rear of the plane. Once Evan’s boots hit the ramp, he half-yelled into the headset for Arcuni to taxi. Arcuni hadn’t seen the firefight behind the plane, but he did hear the excitement in Garcia’s voice. He also saw three more old pickup trucks driving towards the airport at a high rate of speed. He put two and two together and decided it would probably be best to take off as quickly as possible. Arcuni didn’t bother to taxi to the runway. He pushed the throttle all the way to the stop. The big plane rumbled down the taxiway and into the dirt before he pulled back hard on the controls. The powerful plane, lightly loaded, launched into the sky and quickly left the pursuing trucks behind.

In the back of the plane, Garcia got the cargo ramp closed just before the C-130 leapt into the air. The newly arrived passengers fell onto the floor, exhausted and dirty. Chris and Evan knelt over the teenage girl, an EMS trauma bag open between them. Chris started an IV while Evan cut off the girl’s shirt, bra, and jeans with a pair of shears. They rolled her on her side and checked for an exit wound, but found none and rolled her back face-up. The girl cried in pain before Chris could get a dose of morphine injected into her arm. Evan packed her wound with gauze and applied pressure, trying to stop the bleeding. Normally, they fought to keep someone alive to get the patient to a field hospital for immediate care, but there was no hospital. There was no other help. They were the only ones who had any chance at saving this girl’s life.

Chris wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm. Her breathing was getting shallower. She was going into shock. They both worked hard and methodically, doing all they could to help the girl, but it wasn’t enough to save her. A loud gasp followed by a rattled breath, and the girl was dead. Evan closed her eyelids and pulled the silver space blanket over her head. They didn’t have half the gear they normally carried in the Pave Hawks, much less a body bag.

The teenage boy hung his head and cried into his hands while the man beside him hugged him and tried to comfort him. The two pallets of supplies turned out to be worthless. The large group of survivors they’d come to resupply now sat in the cargo hold of the aircraft in silence and in much smaller numbers. Rick wanted to ask them some questions about their attackers, but there would be time later. There were some ground rules he had to tell the new arrivals. Rick walked to the group, who now huddled close together around the teenage boy.

“I’m sorry to bring this up now, but there are a few things I need to tell you. When we arrive, everyone will be submitted to a strip search for bites and quarantined for forty-eight hours. You will be given food and a change of clothes and you will be able to bathe. You will be expected to contribute and earn your keep in our facility, but you will be safe there. All weapons must be declared, but you will be allowed to keep them and will be expected to be armed at all times. Do you have any questions?”

One of the men gasped and pointed behind Rick. The dead teenage girl sat up, the silver space blanket falling off her face. Chris pulled the knife out of the sheath on the front of his armor and jammed the blade deep into the girl’s temple. The girl fell over, dead for good. Chris retrieved his knife, stood, and stomped off towards the cockpit, cursing loudly. Evan pulled the blanket over the girl’s head again. Blood seeped out from under the blanket across the non-skid floor.