Winchester Undead (Book 2): Winchester: Prey (5 page)

CHAPTER 9

Near Terlingua, TX

February 14, Year 1

Bexar kept the old Jeep Wagoneer’s speedometer as close to fifty miles per hour as he could in an attempt to conserve the gas they had. The trip ahead of them was very long. The Reed family—Bexar, Jessie, and their young daughter Keeley—were fleeing Big Bend National Park; their friends had been killed by the Pistoleros, a biker gang who survived after the fall of man by plundering and looting survivors. Pulled behind the Wagoneer was an RV that Bexar had scavenged from one of the RV parks in the confines of the national park. The owner was missing and presumed dead, so Bexar didn’t have to kill any living person to take it, and to Bexar that was a significant distinction.

As isolated as Texas Highway 118 was, Bexar constantly checked his side mirrors, worried that the bikers would come rumbling up behind him. Bexar’s plan was to take his family and skirt along the Rio Grande to stay away from the major highways as long as possible in an attempt to elude the biker gang while trying to reach Groom Lake, Nevada. A man calling himself “Cliff” promised shelter, supplies, and a safe haven for the Reed family. All they had to do was get there. Bexar turned left and onto FM 170, towards the ghost town of Terlingua.

Keeley played happily in the back seat, oblivious to the horrors of the previous day when she had been sheltered in Bexar’s cabin. In the cabin she was protected from the gun battle that killed Jack, Sandra, and their son Will. In the distance ahead of Bexar’s Wagoneer, a lone motorcycle rider was only a speck on the horizon, blending in with the asphalt. The morning sun glinted on the motorcycle’s chrome and caught Jessie’s attention.

“Bexar, do you see that?”

“Yeah, looks like something in the road. Maybe a motorcycle. Or maybe what’s left of one.”

“It kind of looks like it’s moving. Do you think it’s moving?” Jessie asked.

Before Bexar could answer, the Jeep’s windshield exploded inward, showering the interior with shards of glass. The report of the rifle reached their ears just after the glass hit their faces.

“Fuck! Jessie, are you hit? What about Keeley?” Bexar yelled over the wind noise.

Keeley, fastened into her safety seat, screamed in terror. Jessie told Bexar she was OK as she climbed over the front seat to get into the back with her daughter. A lone figure stood in the middle of the highway, away from the parked motorcycle, with a rifle shouldered and pointing towards the approaching Jeep. Bexar had no cover, no place to hide and protect his family, so he pushed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. The old Jeep’s engine roared in protest and even with the RV in tow the speedometer needle steadily rose past sixty miles per hour and then seventy miles per hour.

The biker fired three more shots from his large AR-10 rifle before trying to dive out of the way of the Jeep. Bexar’s face bent in anger at the man attacking his family and followed the lone rifleman with the steering wheel of his Jeep.

The impact of the man against the front of the Jeep was much harder than Bexar expected. Jessie screamed. Blood exploded from the biker’s skull as he bounced off the hood of the Jeep and fell forward. The front left tire ran over the man’s body, jostling the Jeep. That tire exploded in a shower of rubber chunks.
 The Jeep lurched hard to the left
. Bexar fought to correct the action with the steering wheel, but the RV swung out from behind the Jeep, momentum overruling Bexar’s frantic efforts to keep control of the vehicle.

The rest of the windows in the Jeep exploded, shattering while the Jeep fell to its side and began to roll. The RV came off the hitch, and the safety chains keeping it attached to the back of the Jeep pulled the back end of the Jeep in an arch following the heavy trailer’s path. Jessie fell over the front seat and flopped onto the front floorboard of the Jeep. Bexar gripped the steering wheel as hard as he could and watched the horizon spin with each roll. Finally it stopped. Everything stopped into an incredible silence that lasted only a breath before being pierced by Keeley’s screams. Bexar brushed the pieces of broken safety glass off his face before opening his eyes and seeing his wife’s body crumpled on the passenger floorboard. Luckily, the Jeep had landed upright.

“Fuck. Damnit, Jessie, talk to me.” Bexar unlatched his seatbelt and leaned over to check on his wife. Jessie was breathing and her pulse was strong. Bexar took a deep breath and tried to open the driver’s door with no luck. Three hard kicks later, Bexar forced the door open and climbed out of the destroyed Wagoneer. The RV’s safety chains broke and the RV lay in a shattered mess of fiberglass and insulation about one hundred feet from the road in the desert. Keeley continued to scream. Bexar gently brushed the glass off her face while checking the rest of her body for any obvious injuries. He found none. Stealing a glance at Jessie, he could see she was bleeding badly.

Bexar forced himself to take a deep breath and try to think through the next step. To the north he saw a small motel and a road going up the hill. The road to the Terlingua ghost town. Ahead, about a half-dozen undead, attracted by the rifle fire and the incredible wreck, staggered out of the desert and down the hill from Terlingua towards Bexar and his family.

Bexar climbed into the Jeep and dug around the mess of gear for his rifle. The AR-15 was in the back of the Jeep, having been tossed there during the collision. A quick check and it appeared that the rifle was undamaged. Bexar felt dizzy and tried to shoulder his rifle. Unsteady on his feet, Bexar leaned against the crushed hood of the Jeep and took aim at the closest walking corpse. Three shots later, he was able to move on to the next approaching threat. Bexar’s aim was badly shaken and it took a full magazine of .223 to put down all the zombies, but all the threats were resolved for now.

Keeley, still screaming in her car seat, was Bexar’s first priority. Jessie would have to wait, but since she was unconscious, hopefully any more approaching dead wouldn’t notice her. Bexar cut the car seat’s harness and gently pulled his daughter to his shoulder with a hug.

“It’s OK baby, we’re OK. Daddy’s got you and you’re safe.”

Keeley in his arms, Bexar jogged towards the hotel and stopped at the door to the first room he came to. The door was locked. Bexar drew his pistol and kicked in the door, Keeley held tight against his shoulder with his left arm. He was relieved to find that only the smell of stale air and bedding. Bexar made a quick check to make sure there were no surprises under the bed or in the bathroom before he sat Keeley at the foot of the bed.

“I’ve got to get Mommy. I’ll be right back. Try to be quiet. I love you.”

Bexar pulled the broken door closed and hoped it would hold closed. Keeley screamed and banged on the door with her tiny hands. Bexar tried to jog back to the Jeep, tripping several times, still dizzy from the wreck. Reaching the Jeep, he pulled his go-bag from the back seat and placed it on the cracked asphalt before climbing into the front seat to get his wife. Bexar made a fast blood check and found that the blood covering her face was from a deep gash on her head. If the world were still normal they would be headed to the hospital to get stitches, but for now all they had were each other.

As gently as he could, but quickly, Bexar extricated his wife from under the Jeep’s dash and laid her unconscious body on the road next to his go-bag. Digging in his bag, he retrieved the trauma kit. Bexar decided against the Quikclot, since this wasn’t an arterial bleed, and pressed a large wad of gauze onto the wound before wrapping her head with an Israeli bandage to hold it all in place. Bexar shouldered his go-bag, knelt, and picked up his wife. Struggling, he was eventually able to get her on his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Bexar moved as quickly as he could while still being careful not to fall. His vision was blurry and he thought he might throw up. Reaching the hotel room where Keeley was, he heard her screams from outside the door.

So had two more undead.
 

Bexar slowed his walk and drew his pistol. As quietly as he could, he walked up behind the two zombies clawing at the hotel door, put the muzzle of his pistol against the back of the skull of the first, and pulled the trigger before turning and shooting the second zombie in the face at point-blank range.

Pistol reholstered, Bexar looked back at the wrecked Jeep. He should have chosen a room that couldn’t be seen from the highway. Bexar left Keeley screaming in the hotel room without opening the door and walked further away from the road to another hotel room, one that couldn’t be seen from the road, and banged on the window. There was no reaction from inside the room from the noise. Bexar gently sat Jessie on the ground and leaned his unconscious wife against the wall while he kicked in the door and quickly cleared the small hotel room. Bexar pulled his wife into the room and laid her on the bed before leaving and running back to the first hotel room to get his daughter. She was no longer screaming but was sobbing, being scared and alone. He picked Keeley up and was greeted by her little arms squeezing his neck in a big hug. Bexar was sure that in under an hour she would probably be laughing and playing. Little kids rebounded so quickly.

“OK baby, Mommy needs you to snuggle so she’ll feel better, and she needs you to be extra quiet so she can sleep. Do you think you can do that?”

Keeley’s little head nodded yes, her face wet with tears. Bexar sat Keeley on the bed next to his wife, shut the door, and returned to his destroyed Jeep. Fearful that another passing biker would find them and they would lose what little provisions they still had, Bexar needed to gather all their gear and he needed to get it hidden quickly.

CHAPTER 10

Big Bend National Park

February 14, Year 1

“Prospects, get your asses up here!”

Six prospects ran from the back of the group of motorcycles to the front where the Pistoleros new club president, Russell, was standing at the entrance to the Basin, the dumpsters still partially blocking the roadway.

“Where the fuck is Stinky?”

The prospect standing closest to Russell spoke up. “We don’t know, Prez. He stopped to patch his tire and never caught back up.”

“OK, whatever. You six get up there and kill every motherfucker you find. I want these assholes dead, and I want our brothers who are dead put down for good. Secure the deuce and anything of value you find. Honk four times when it’s clear and you’re done. Got it?”

Russell and the rest of the full-patch members of the motorcycle club hung back by the dumpsters that Jack and Bexar had used to block the road into the Basin. Russell didn’t know that Bexar and his family had already escaped. All they knew was that the club had intercepted radio transmissions between some people here and some guy named Cliff, and that the group here was loaded with supplies, food and ammo. The motorcycle club wanted what they had and they came to take it. They would kill whoever had it, but for the first time since the start, this group fought back. Russell survived by retreating back to the club’s base camp for help.

The eleven fully patched members of the club waited with their president in the cool high desert air, smoking cigarettes and drinking lukewarm beer from the saddlebags on their motorcycles while they waited for Stinky to show up. They had nothing else to do while they waited for the prospects to kill all the remaining people in the Basin without risking any more full members.

To Russell and the rest of the men drinking beer by their motorcycles, the morning passed slowly. Sporadic gunfire echoed off the mountains above them. Seven beers into his waiting, Russell finally heard a car horn honk four times. That was the sign, so the men threw their empty bottles on the side of the road, started their motorcycles, and road into the Basin side by side in a column of two.

“Where the fuck are the rest of you?” Russell growled after shutting off his motorcycle.

“Jake and Fungus got bit so we put them down. They’re over there with the rest of our brothers.” Tiny pointed to a row of bodies with motorcycle vests laid over each one.

“Fine, where’s the dickhead who started all of this?”

“We found him, his woman and a kid. All dead.”

“Were they walkers?”

“No, just dead, shot in the head.”

Russell walked to where the prospect pointed and looked at the body. “You dumbass, he was already dead when he was shot in the head! Find the guy who shot him! Find the other guy!”

Russell looked across the pile of bodies and around to the motels and the Ranger Station nervously before walking over to the bullet-riddled motel. He ducked under the walkway,
 trying to hide from an enemy sniper he believed was hiding in the trees on the hillside.

Another prospect ran up to Russell. “Prez, you’re going to want to see this. We just found a bunch of good shit in one of the cabins!”

Russell followed the prospect up the hill towards Bexar and Jack’s cabins.

“The water works, the toilets flush, there’s two vehicles and there’s a bunch of other shit.”

“Great. Go get me Buzzer.”

Russell stood near Bexar’s cabin, looking at all they had found, when Buzzer walked up.

“Buzzer, you’re the new VP. Get someone to go find Stinky. Send some prospects to get the others, the women, and the rest of the gear. We’re moving Church here. Also, get me a couple of scouts. We’ve got to find the asshole who did all this.”

Buzzer nodded and walked off, yelling for prospects.

CHAPTER 11

Groom Lake, NV

February 14, Year 1

Cliff walked into the radio hut. Major Wright and the airman on duty sat with their backs to the door, both wearing headphones plugged into the radio console. The airman made notes on his yellow notepad while speaking to someone on the other side of the microphone, while Wright zoomed in the satellite’s latest photo over a location that Cliff didn’t recognize.

On the wall to their left hung an old large paper map of the United States. Where the airman had found the old paper map was anyone’s guess. Colored push pins were placed sporadically across the map, each pin representing a group of survivors that the radio operators at Groom Lake had contacted since their arrival on the C-130 from Peterson AFB in Colorado. That aircraft sat disabled in the middle of the dry lake bed above them after being damaged on landing.

Quickly counting, Cliff found more than sixty pins spread across the U.S., mostly in the middle of the country between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains. The different colored pins represented the approximate number of survivors in each group. If Cliff remembered what Wright told him correctly, that would mean that there were currently a little over two hundred survivors that the airmen had contacted and accounted for. That was good news for Cliff. If there were survivors, then there was a country to save, and that was his mission.

Wright sneezed loudly, breaking his concentration from the computer screen, and he noticed Cliff standing in the room. The Air Force major waved Cliff over to the console and removed his headphones.

“Cliff, we’re contacting more and more survivors daily. It’s very strange. I don’t think the EMP affected every area the same. There seem to be pockets where some of the electronics survived. Or at least there are a good number of individuals finding access to radio equipment that was shielded enough to survive.”

“Major if that’s the case, there’s a good chance that there are many more who survived with no way to contact us. We’re going to need to formulate a plan on reaching out to those we can’t contact.” The airman at the radio snapped his fingers, interrupting their conversation, and waved them to his console before pushing a button to activate the external speaker.

A women’s frantic voice filled the room. “He’s back and he’s trying to get inside. We ran out of ammo a week ago. I don’t know what to do!”

The airman tried to sound calm and hopeful for the woman. “Can you get into the attic to hide? Take water with you if you can, but the important thing is to be out of sight and be as quiet as possible. They usually lose interest and leave.”

Wright pointed to a house on his computer screen. “That’s the house she’s in. This image is thirty-seven hours old and it is the latest pass we have. Her name is Jamie. She’s thirty years old and in a town just south of Houston, Texas. Her neighbor was apparently a bit of a prepper and took Jamie and her husband into his home to shelter about a week after the attack. The neighbor was bitten about a week ago while repairing the radio antenna on his roof. He brought the radio online, hence their being able to contact us, but he died shortly after. She and her husband made contact with us about three days ago. They are nearly out of food and are completely out of ammo, so her husband left yesterday to scavenge for supplies. He has since returned as a walking corpse and has brought some new friends with him.”

Cliff and Wright turned their attention back to the radio when the speaker crackled to life again. Loud banging and the moans of the undead came through the open mic clearly, followed by a loud crash.

“Oh my God, oh my God, they’re inside now … Mark, no, please don’t. Mark, it’s me, it’s Jamie, please don’t, don’t …”

The radio hut filled with sorrowful screams of pain before the radio went silent, the microphone’s push to talk apparently released. The airman sitting at the radio console looked pale. Sweat dripped down his forehead.

“Will, why don’t you take ten minutes. I’ll take care of things here until you get back.”

“Thanks, Major.”

The airman shakily rose to his feet and walked out of the room, looking slightly ill.

Wright walked to the paper map on the wall and replaced the white pin just south of Houston with a black one. “That’s the fourth person we’ve heard die on the radio like that.”

Cliff shook his head. “We’ve got to figure out a way to help these people. We need to come up with a plan, a way to get survivors here where they’ll be safe. Or at the very least we need to figure out a way to get them the supplies they need, be it food, water, ammo or whatever.”

Wright nodded. “To do that we need a helicopter, but even then without any refueling assets we couldn’t get one all the way to Houston and back. Besides, all we have for pilots is Arcuni, and he could barely fly what we came here in, much less a helicopter. What we need is another plane, something we can land on rough roads and short strips.”

“Like another C-130?”

“Yes, but the one sitting on the lake bed above us won’t fly again without a serious amount of parts and skilled work, neither of which we have.”

“OK Major, since you volunteered, why don’t you start looking for something we can take? Something that a small team could drive from here to get and bring back. Something close.”