Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile (11 page)

We made it to the same point at which we first encountered the interstate. The sun was getting low, and that was a catalyst for something bad to happen. It did. The fire truck died. I sent two men from my LAV to attach the chain to our towing point. This vehicle had no problem in the torque department. I was sure one of the younger Marines probably knew every nut and bolt of this machine, but I only knew one thing . . . It was tough.

The large steel chain jerked and popped every time the tension did not balance the weight of the massive emergency vehicle towed behind. I felt our vehicle surge and the independent gearing kick in, dispersing the traction to the wheel that needed it. The undead were here in force. I could not count to five without hearing our vehicle impact one of them with a commanding
THUD
.

Looking through the thick armored glass window I observed them bouncing off the vehicle, some of them thrown nearly twenty feet into the overgrown ditches along the road. We were only half an hour out from H23 when I radioed the mech, asking him to check the water gauge on the truck. The mech couldn’t read the gauge, as the water control panel had no power. I hoped that the truck at least had enough water to last us until we could repair the truck and find another water source. I was certain that the compound’s water would run out any time, if it hadn’t already.

Using the night vision capability of the LAV, I was able to pick up H23’s camera beacons. We were on course and tracking. We
made it back home with the truck in tow. The fire truck had a five-thousand-gallon capacity, and was one-quarter full. This would be enough to last us until we could find another water source. With the medical kits we have at H23 as well as the kits the Marines have, we should be able to purify the water using iodine. It would be wise to kick in a few suburban doors and grab some household bleach at some point.

Messages are constantly coming in from headquarters, most of them only for our information and not calling for action. I have had to send in one status report concerning Austin, Texas. The brass on the carrier needed the data to update their all-important status boards. I have a feeling we could soon be sent into a radiated area for the same type of
status
information. I suppose I will cross that bridge when it falls out from under me.

08 Aug

1350

I was inside Hotel 23. Trapped. The dead Marines outside were pounding on the door to the environmental control room. Sliding the steel peephole to the side, I could see her . . . Tara was there, bloody, dead, wanting. John was behind her pawing at the door. I couldn’t remember how I had gotten here; I only knew that I
was
here. Surrounding the familiar faces were the Marines. Many of them were riddled with fatal bullet holes. My radio operator was there also. He still had his headset strapped to his head . . . then . . . he talked. The dead radioman talked! He said . . . “Sir, wake up . . . I have some important information for you.”

I am not certain of the nature of the message that arrived last night while I was sleeping. I woke up to the sound of the radioman tapping on my door. The message stated that we were to deploy to the coastline to help out a wrecked Coast Guard cutter. They were in no immediate danger and were anchored off the coast of Texas, only eighty miles up the coast from where the
Bahama Mama
probably still rested on the shore. After I had read the message and discussed its contents with the Gunny, we decided it would be best to leave tonight.

Shaken from the dream, I told Tara what I had seen in my vision. She was more than a friend and I felt I could tell her anything. Also, Dean was a rock. Her wisdom helped me deal with the demons that racked my soul more often than not these days.

The feeling was similar to coming off a long vacation to find that work had piled up in my absence. As I write this, my third in command is charting our course overland to rendezvous with the
cutter that is dead in the water. In any other situation we would have departed already, but since the men onboard were relatively safe, we were taking the time in planning and provisioning to ensure a safer trip.

I would like to keep this excursion to a maximum of forty-eight hours. There is still much that needs to be done with merging the two camps. Hotel 23 cannot accommodate all the people, but I feel that with the right heavy equipment and some concrete dividers taken from the interstate, we could form a large wall around the perimeter outside the chain link fence. It could take months to gather the needed barriers but it might be worth it.

On another note, Danny hurt himself today playing with Laura outside. They were chasing Annabelle and Danny tripped in a small hole in the ground, spraining his left ankle. They are getting to go topside more these days, but the Marines are under strict orders to ensure their safety whenever they are aboveground. I have already packed my equipment into LAV number two. I have affectionately (and secretly) named this LAV “bumble bee tuna.” I don’t know why, it just fits for some odd reason.

It is very hot outside today and we will be bringing some extra water along with us in order to stay hydrated and alive. I know our water situation is not as good as it should be and neither is our fuel situation. This is a problem that will need to be resolved between official duties. In a way, I am happy that Hotel 23 is a small drop in the strategic command bucket. I am taking the same Marines with me on this mission. I didn’t notice any huge screw-ups from any of them on the last mission, so I don’t see the need to fix something that isn’t broken on a mission with such short notice. Perhaps I will mix them up on the next mission, if there is one.

11 Aug

2228

The departure from Hotel 23 was uneventful. It was very humid outside and it felt as if we were entering a sauna when we opened the hatch leading topside from the compound. The vehicles were already fueled up and ready for departure.

The roads were in severe need of maintenance that would never be given. The concrete was cracked and I hadn’t seen roads this bad since my overseas duty in Asia.

We continued east to the coastline until we came across what used to be a major roadway. Now it more closely resembled a field with wrecked cars lined up pointing east. It wasn’t what I was used to seeing. The rusting hulks were the only indication of the direction and curve of the road.

We crept along beside the wrecks in the general direction of the road, making sure to keep a safe distance from them to avoid any problems. The undead were not intelligent and this was not a known radiation zone, but the rolling hills of Texas could hide them easily in the troughs between here and our destination.

Another thing in the back of my mind was the difference in the big picture. In the old world, there were only a handful of animals that could deliver a fatal bite, such as some breeds of snake. Now the pendulum of deadly creatures to vulnerable humans has swung toward cataclysm. At least with a deadly viper one might have a possibility of survival. From the stories I am hearing from the Marines, these creatures that haunt the world have no antidote. The Gunny claims to have seen hundreds of men, strong men, who succumbed within thirty-six hours of being bitten or scratched. There is even a documented case of a few victims’ being infected by the accidental transfusion of saliva to open wounds.

Something still haunts me about them. Where do they get their energy? They seem to have unlimited supplies of energy in death. I secretly hope that someone or some think-tank is working to assess the strengths and weaknesses of these things, which most likely outnumber us by millions in the U.S. and billions abroad. These were among the thoughts swimming around in my mind during our mission to rescue the cutter
Reliance,
dead in the water. We were quite a few miles from our destination when we saw the first group of them in our NVGs.

I carefully outlined the unit’s rules of engagement (ROE). They knew to only use force against them when absolutely necessary. The loud engines of our LAVs triggered the undead to jerk on their axis and move toward us as we passed. They were conditioned and knew that any loud noise most definitely meant food.

I just glared at them from the gunner’s turret, then stared ahead into the night. The goggles were good, but one could see only so far with them, unlike the naked eye in daylight. It was sort of like having a huge green torch that lit up the night out to nearly eight hundred yards.

It was the same thing, corpse after corpse, wandering in the areas around their respective demises. Traveling with eight-wheeled vehicles had its advantages. We were fine trekking off-road until we came to bridges or overpasses. Approaching these structures meant that we would have to either pull the clogged arteries of the highway free from the vehicles that blocked them, or descend into the depths of the riverbeds. Sometimes it wasn’t a riverbed that the overpass was hiding, it was an interchange, or a smaller highway that ran underneath. That is what we happened on the night of our trip to the cutter.

LAV number one radioed back two hundred yards before reaching the decision point. They also knew never to stop. They idled forward as the radioman’s crackled voice came through: “Sir, we are approaching an overpass, the road is congested, what do you want to do?”

I asked, “What types of vehicles are clogging the pass?”

He replied, “Sir, I see a couple eighteen-wheelers.”

I had no choice but to order the men down into the embankment that lead to the perpendicular road below. I told the men to take it diagonally as they descended, and to stop for nothing. As much as I hated to think about it, these machines were still in need of depot-level maintenance (professional civilian maintenance), and on more than one occasion they have been known to sputter and die when coming to an abrupt stop.

Just as LAV number one disappeared fifty meters ahead of me into the abyss below, the radio keyed up, and then only static.

I keyed the microphone, asking for the station calling to repeat.

LAV one came back, “Sir, you might want to step on it and get around this. There is a school bus full of those things and there are quite a few of them around it.”

I gave thanks for the warning and asked the sergeant to keep me updated. We were almost on the crest of the hill and in view of them.

The radio again crackled. “Sir, we got active Geiger . . .”

I sat there for a minute, stunned. We were further away from radiated zones than Hotel 23. Why were we getting Geiger readings this far out?

As the nose of LAV two (mine) tipped over the ridge and began heading down the ravine to rendezvous with the highway, I saw the school bus. It was nothing special at first, until I took a second look.

The bus was ready for battle. Its windows had chicken wire and chain-link welded to the sides and a makeshift snowplow attached to the front. Our Geiger was now going off as we neared the big yellow bus. The bus was giving off high amounts of radiation. There were numerous undead occupants. On a more disturbing note, I could see nearly a dozen corpses on top of the bus, permanently dead.

I could not even begin to speculate on this one. The bus was hot, but the undead surrounding it were not nearly at the same level. The Geiger counter indicated the bus was giving off radiation levels that would make it deadly for prolonged exposure. Some of the occupants of the bus appeared to have very traumatic wounds, but some of them looked unscathed. They were very excited at the sound of our vehicles cruising by. The last sight I had of the bus was the second-to-last window on the right side. A young boy was hanging out of the window by his right leg. Nothing but bone was left on his left leg. His face was full of lesions and blisters. He didn’t appear to be dead, or undead.

Maintaining radio contact, we eventually skirted the wreckage and eluded the undead as we began climbing the hill to return to our easterly course. Something about the bus disturbed me. I wondered if the bus had been filled with survivors attempting to reach a safer area. They obviously came from a radiated zone and knew that to stay meant death.

I wondered how those on the roof of the bus had taken themselves out. I didn’t see any guns there with them. It was a few hours before I could think of anything else. We went on, all through the night, towing, skirting, avoiding. The only other complete stop we made was when we arrived at a fuel tanker that was at a safe distance from any bottleneck of pileups and traffic jams.

Since we didn’t
have any time to figure the vehicle out, or to try to bring it back to life, one of the men simply attached a cloth-wrapped chain to the valve of the vehicle and yanked it from the tank. Diesel began to flow onto the ground. We all knew that diesel was not very volatile, and posed no real threat as long as we were smart about handling it. Using one of the k-bars, we cut one of the rubber hoses from the side of the tanker and taped it to the broken valve with hundred-mile-per-hour tape. It wasn’t pretty, or watertight, but it did the job. We filled the vehicles and the exterior fuel tanks with the fuel. One of the mechanics tested the fuel and claimed that it was still okay, but it probably wouldn’t be in a year or so, without treatment.

We stuffed the broken valve with cloth that we cut from the seats of the vehicle, a large 120-ounce drink cup and a piece of rope.

It dripped a little, but it would take ages to leak dry. We marked it on our charts as a possible refuel point if needed on the way back. The prospect of having a known fueling point made me feel a little better, but with the shoddy maintenance on the vehicles, coupled with questionable fuel quality, any positive feelings were diminished.

As the sun came up, we arrived at Richwood, Texas. The sign indicating the name and population was partially obscured by graffiti crossing it out. I could smell the salt air. We were not far from the Gulf. We had been attempting to contact the cutter via radio all night. No joy. The men were tired and movement during the day was risky. We were in an industrial area and it didn’t take long to find a fenced-in factory in which to play hide and sleep.