Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile (29 page)

Saien and I checked every nook of the maintenance office area and moved on to the maintenance bays. After checking the maintenance bays and scavenging some small items that were light and could be of use, we made for the dealership’s key locker to pick out our next ride. After assessing the pros and cons of the various vehicles, Saien and I decided on an extended cab diesel pick-up truck. It was new-looking and seemed in decent working order, other than the tire on the right front being a little low. The compressor in the garage obviously wouldn’t work without electricity, so we will have to find one of those cheap car lighter compressors at some point along the way or we’ll have to jack the truck and use a bicycle pump.

Amazingly, there are no jumper cables anywhere in the area and even if there were, jumping another vehicle would be too decibel-costly. Saien stood watch as I pulled the battery on the Ford and set up a charging station. I wanted to siphon the gas from the wagon but it would have no use on the diesel. Looks like we may be stuck here for at least a day while this battery charges in the sun. I placed the solar charger on top of the truck and put one of my dirty pairs of skivvies underneath to tilt it south. After a full, uninterrupted charge the battery should be suitable to start. I really wish I had access and skill to weld some bullshit over the windshield
Mad Max
style so that Saien and I could have something durable for our trip and something we could shoot out of without worrying too much. I continued to check the vehicle over
where I could. The oil seemed fine and at the proper level and the key from the key box fit the ignition with no problem. The spare underneath the truck bed was full-sized and was full of air. I kept checking my watch. I didn’t want to miss any possible communications during the satellite phone window today. Since the solar charger is being used for the truck battery, I’m forced to keep the SATphone turned off to conserve the battery until the window.

An air of strangeness surrounds Remote Six. Nothing checks out in my head. The odd gas treatment, the Reaper beacon technology and the remarkable solar panel that seemed to charge batteries faster than my commercially bought home panels ever could.

The sticker price on the truck was $44,995. The sticker also stated that this rig got 17mpg on the highway. The owner’s manual said the tank would hold 26.2 gallons of diesel fuel. Using mental math, I calculated that that was over four hundred miles per tank. Hotel 23 was over two hundred miles from here. A full tank of diesel would get me home.

I studied the owner’s manual, specifically on the tire change. Sometimes manufacturers used some ignorant proprietary means of loosening the spare tire or something else. Sure enough, this truck required the owner to assemble some device to crank the tire from the bed frame through the back end of the truck. I saw no value in this and knew that it could mean that we would be in for some trouble if we had to pull a NASCAR pit stop on a road somewhere. I detached the spare and threw it in the bed of the truck, as there was plenty of room. I also took some time to verify the jack lift points. I found a towing chain in the garage and threw that in the back end of the truck to make it easier to clear roadblocks. I also spotted a coffee can full of old spark plugs and asked Saien to gather as much of the ceramic from the plugs as he could and to try to keep the pieces as large as possible. The ceramic pieces could prove useful later for a little B&E.

In a fleeting thought, I disconnected the charged battery from the wagon and took it over to the truck. They were not the same model battery, but I thought I’d give it a try anyway. Saien was using vise grips to crush the ceramic from the old spark plugs while I tried my science experiment. Before I got too involved in
this, I walked the perimeter once more to ensure that we were not in any immediate danger of being overrun. Back at the truck I set the wagon’s battery in the spot where the dead battery was. I haphazardly connected the vehicle wires to the battery and went to the driver’s side to see what I could see. I flipped the ignition to power the dash so that I could see the fuel level. I was very lucky to see nearly a full tank in the truck. Diesel was not as refined as gasoline, meaning a longer shelf life, so I decided to see if I could get the truck started without fuel treatment.

I told Saien what I intended to do so that we could discuss the pros and cons of starting up a vehicle out here and possibly drawing attention. It was around eleven when we loaded up the back of the truck to attempt to start it up. Our thinking was that if no undead came to the noise, we’d stay a little longer to make sure our gear was packed properly and that everything else was in order.

I keyed the ignition and the truck sputtered for about five seconds before turning over. I then had a thought about the battery. With gloves, I reconnected the factory-new battery to the truck while it ran so that the alternator could do its job instead of the panels. The vehicle alternator would charge the dead battery much faster than the sun, no matter how efficient the panel.

After reconnecting the truck battery and quietly shutting the hood, I walked the perimeter once more. I saw no sign of activity in any direction around the car dealership. Checking my maps, I estimated about 230 miles or so until we’d reach H23. We should be in radio contact before that time, depending on the transmitter we used. John would be monitoring the aviation distress frequency, so that would be the best way of reaching H23 at the soonest possible time. The trouble would be finding a serviceable VHF radio to make the transmission. It would take about thirty to forty-five minutes to get a decent charge on the battery, so I thought I’d double it to at least an hour to make sure. I opened the door and took in the new-car smell that still lingered despite months of abandonment. Flipping on the heater, I enjoyed the feel of artificial warmth flowing over my hand. It had been a while. With our gear stored in the back, it would be possible to catch some sleep in this vehicle if we picked good spots to hide during the night. On another truck we discovered a bed cover that could easily be transferred
to this truck. That seemed useful to keep our gear dry and any undead stowaways out of the back. The next order of business was to take the bulbs out of the taillights and remove all the reflectors from the truck. The only lights I wanted were the headlights if I needed them. The undead were not the only enemy. I covered all the exposed areas with duct tape to avoid any chance of an electrical short. The truck would never be road-ready without a professional welder’s help, but it would have to do for our trip. I flipped on the radio and scanned both AM and FM bands.

Nothing.

Nothing to mark the existence of what once was a bustling medium of information flow.

Consulting the overhead maps, Saien and I plotted our next leg southwest. We are not far from Carthage, maybe fifteen miles. It looks like we need to keep it that way. We would need to head down Highway 79 and veer south to intercept 59. The priority will be to stay on county roads as much as possible and dip into larger roads only when necessary. When I estimated 230 miles, it was a straight-line estimate. Looking at the road schematics overlaid on the imagery, I saw that this could add some time and distance to the trip. We must also consider that we will not be able to maintain the speed limits of a year ago with all the debris and other dangers that lay waiting for us along the way. My cousin James hit a buck in his truck a couple of years ago, totaling the vehicle. That deer couldn’t have weighed more than 150 pounds. Hitting a two-hundred-pound corpse could end our day quickly. Corpses do not try to get out of your way. They are like bugs to a zapper. They don’t care what is between them and the light, they just go.

With the imagery I had received from the drop was a transparent sheet of plastic with two oblong orange circles, another asymmetrical orange shape and a radiation symbol in the bottom right corner. I then realized the purpose. I put the transparent sheet over the map of the region and it showed the fallout areas covering Dallas, San Antonio and New Orleans. The Dallas and San Antonio areas showed extensive damage, but the New Orleans fallout areas indicated a decimated area covering southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi, part of southern Alabama and the tip of the Florida Panhandle. After a minute of my jaw hanging slack
Saien asked what was wrong. I told him I had friends in all these areas and that I was taken aback to see proof that they were most likely dead. He said he was sorry for my loss and took the overlay from the map, prompting me to move on with the planning. I was confident we could make the outskirts of Carthage in a day if we worked together.

As we sat there discussing our plan, I kept catching Saien glancing down at my rifle. I knew that he wanted to know how I caused the explosion from the day we met as well as the explosion on the advancing undead when we were getting the wagon running. I finally broke down and told him a sanitized version of what I knew. I told him that the drop was from the government and that I had been in previous contact with what was left of them. I explained to him that there was a Reaper UCAV orbiting overhead watching our every move and waiting for me to lase my target with the device mounted to my rifle. I saw no reason to inform him of the beacon device or the fail-safe associated countermeasure.

I showed him the iridium phone and told him that the only time it would be usable would be between the hours of 1200 and 1400 due to the degraded satellite orbit. He asked me who was on the other end, and I informed him that it was always a mechanical-sounding recording with a text situation report (SITREP) and that he knew as much as I did on that subject. I told him that I was headed to a place in the vicinity of Nada, Texas, and that he was welcome to help me get there if he so desired. As San Antonio had been destroyed and that had been his original destination, his silence told me that he had no other place to go. It being late October, we decided to build a fire in the maintenance courtyard for warmth. The October chill was definitely in the air, and last night I was very uncomfortable as I tried to get my few hours of sleep.

Before all of this I loved my eight hours of rest per night. Now I am lucky if I get five hours. I only take what I need as the thought of sleeping away what little life I have left disturbs me. The SATphone is on and I’m just waiting for the call.

2100

A message arrived today at 1350 instructing me to proceed to the next drop point marked on the chart, southwest of my current position, and that the drop will occur tomorrow at 1500 hrs. No mention of Saien or anything else in the message. I checked the chart and circled the next point along our path southwest with the letter S designating the location. The imagery I had in my hands indicated that the area was over a small airport. The drop was located east of Carthage just off highway 79. We have made preparations to leave in the
A.M.
to increase our chances of finding the drop point. I am not sure how I am expected to pinpoint and navigate to the area on the map with so little detail about exact area/coordinates at which the drop is to occur.

A few hours ago Saien and I decided that we should start a fire to fend off the late October cold. I gathered firewood from outside the fence just as the sun began to set. We stacked the wood and Saien tore a page from a book he was carrying in his pack. I noticed the title,
Milestones
. The cover was simple, and it appeared that this was not the first page he had torn from the book to make fire. The book looked as if it was missing about half of the original pages. We cooked some of the last remaining heavy foods and filled our stomachs for the long day ahead tomorrow.

“There you go again, writing in your book.”

“At least I’m not tearing pages out of it.”

“Goodnight, Kilroy.”

“Same to you, Saien . . . one eye open, man.”

“Both eyes, my friend.”

22 Oct

0900

We have been on the road since 0700 weaving in and out of wrecks. We’ve had to get out of the truck half a dozen times to tow cars out of our path. Half of those times we’ve had to kill undead. Most notable was the corpse that still lay waist-strapped to its gurney in the back of an ambulance unbeknownst to me. It posed no threat, but it severely freaked me out when I tried to attach the towing chain to the back of the ambulance and the damn thing sat up in its bed like Dracula and reached for me, mouth agape. I had no idea that it was inside. It was of course hideous and decaying and will be one of hundreds of horrible snapshots I’ll carry in my brain until I die.

I pulled my sidearm, punched a hole in its head and shut the ambulance doors before its back hit the bed. After hearing the suppressed shot, Saien ran over to the ambulance and asked what happened. I told him not to worry about it and to be glad he wasn’t on chain duty for this round of roadblock fun.

We have taken a break in an open field on top of a hill. Saien is on watch while I calculate our current location and how far we are from the airfield. Highway 79 is the shortest route, but a smaller county road may be our fastest considering the volume of cars that have been left abandoned on the highway. As I tuned through the AM and FM bands to see if I could hear anything from the high ground, I cleaned up the salvageable AK-47 as best I could. Using some oil and sandpaper taken from the maintenance bay of the dealership, I dismantled the weapon and removed the rust from it. I must say that it really does look like baling wire on the internals
of the weapon. I took my knife and cut the jagged wooden edges where the bullet passed through the stock and sanded it down as best I could. The hole wasn’t in a bad spot and the weapon didn’t have a sling, so I used some of the paracord from my knife sheath and fashioned a makeshift sling for the weapon through the hole of the stock. It was now fully serviceable, with approximately forty-five rounds loaded between two magazines. I again coated the exterior liberally with oil and threw it in the back of the truck with a round in the chamber and safety engaged.