Marion stared at me and then said, “You realize there’s the very real possibility that some government, maybe even our own, is responsible for this. On that drive you have are population studies and dispersion projections, along with extensive medical research.”
Marion let her words sink in. I could feel myself being overwhelmed by the possibilities. After a long silence between us, I simply said, “I’d rather believe in Bigfoot.”
Marion stood up and put her hand on my shoulder as she walked by. She said goodnight to me and walked out of the room.
It’s after 1 a.m. right now and I’m sitting in the commissary writing this. Everyone else is asleep in the barracks area. I have decided not to dwell on Marion’s observations, but instead focus on our immediate predicament. We are trapped here in the exact situation I was dreading. I haven’t gone out to the garage again to listen for signs that our attackers are still there, so I don’t know if they’ve given up or not.
Tomorrow we are going to have to find a way out of here. I’m trying not to depress myself by thinking about how bad our only transportation has probably been damaged. I only hope they haven’t taken all of our supplies. Nobody wants to speculate on what’s going to happen to us. A couple minutes ago, Chloe summed it all up when she took a crap right in front of me.
It’s pretty pointless to post guard shifts. Nothing short of a nuclear detonation could breach this place. I’m going to go to sleep now. All my nightmares are outside, so I should be fine in here.
DAY 94
It’s 5:45 a.m. and I just woke up a few minutes ago.
I felt instant guilt that I had fallen asleep on my guard shift. While it’s true what I said about nothing being able to get in here, it was a rookie move and I probably would have kicked someone else if they had made such an arbitrary decision with all of our lives.
I checked the bunkroom and found that everyone is still asleep. I cautiously walked up to the bay doors and listened for a few minutes for any sounds of our new friends. I didn’t hear anything. While my first instinct is to wake everybody up and bolt out of here, I am going to let them sleep while I compose my thoughts and properly plan our next move.
Technically, we could probably hold out here for a week with the supplies we have, but I am concerned for our gear sitting just outside in our vehicles. When everyone wakes up, I will weigh our options with them.
On a side note, I discovered a laundry room with washers and dryers. I gathered up everyone’s clothes and started a load. While I was waiting, I stretched out and tried to exercise (it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance). My ribs are still pretty sore but getting better. I think my knee is going to be screwed for life. I can walk on it, but it keeps getting injured all the time. I threaded the thumb drive Marion gave me onto a cord and put it around my neck. It seems sort of useless to me, but you never know.
This constant running from place to place is no way to live. There’s got to be somewhere safe in this world. I miss my parents, but try not to think about it. The anxiety of not knowing their fate is miserable. More later.
We have escaped the bunker.
When everyone got up this morning, we discussed our game plan. Jim and I went back to the bay door and listened. After five minutes of hearing nothing, Jim took the butt of his rifle and rapped it on the steel entrance. I could feel my mouth drop open when he did it.
When nothing knocked back, Jim looked at me and shrugged. We gathered up everything we could salvage and placed it near the entrance. Jim and I crouched down at the bottom of the ramp with our weapons ready and signaled Albert to open the bay.
We waited nervously as the door swung slowly (and loudly) open. Boulders (that had probably been stacked in the entrance by those things) rolled down the ramp toward us. Finally, the door was open. The first thing I noticed was the stillness and cold air. Puffy flakes of snow drifted down out of the overcast sky.
We waited for a minute, then walked up the ramp. Once outside, we scanned the lip of the canyon above us...Nothing. They were gone. A three-inch blanket of fresh snow covered everything around us. Miraculously, our vehicles were still intact. The Rover has a few more dents in it, but they hadn’t molested either vehicle. We quickly loaded our gear up and then went and got the women and kids (and Chloe, of course).
Grace was complaining that she had “runny poo” and needed to go to the bathroom. Her timing was perfect, as always. Alison went with her to the bathroom while we sweated it out near the SUVs, trying to look everywhere at once; sure those things would return at any moment. Chloe didn’t seem alarmed though, and sniffed around casually. She’s got pretty good instincts, so I relaxed a little. Chloe wandered over to where one of our attackers had fallen yesterday after I shot it.
I started to call her back but curiosity got the better of me and I approached the area. I cautiously pushed aside some bushes and saw a body lying on its back…looking up at me! I brought my weapon on line in a panic. The thing’s jaw opened and closed slowly like a fish as it continued to stare. I noticed several bullet holes in the center of its chest and one through its throat. The rounds had most likely penetrated all the way through and severed its spine. It was human (at some point). Its features were bloated, like when guys take too many steroids, and its clothes were grimy, tattered, and military. The most unusual thing was that it had long hair and a full beard. Most of the Infected I’d seen didn’t seem to grow hair after they turned.
Marion appeared behind me and looked over my shoulder. She took out her camera and took several pictures of the thing. For some reason, her actions annoyed me. I looked around the area, worried about the thing’s friends.
“Albert’s Bigfoot.” I commented.
Marion only nodded. “I should take a blood sample.” She said.
Instead of responding, I fired a round from my silenced weapon into the things head, putting it out of its misery. I looked over to her and shook my head. I wasn’t about to spend any more time there than necessary.
As we walked back to the vehicles, Grace and Alison returned. Grace looked a little green, but I didn’t have time to worry about her.
Albert shut the bay door and we got the vehicles started and rolled out of there. We had to move slowly as we didn’t have chains on, but managed to get back onto the highway without incident.
We went past the town of Weed, not seeing any signs of life there. We hadn’t gone very far after that when Grace started whining that she was carsick. We reluctantly stopped and let her out. I was impressed that so much puke could come out of a kid that small. I was also a little worried. Jim and I looked at each other, both of us concerned about the same thing. Alison, Marion, and Albert all looked worried as we watched Grace retch onto the road.
Marion looked at me and said, “It could just be that her system couldn’t handle the military rations. Let’s not start jumping to conclusions.”
And there it was. None of us really knew firsthand what the symptoms of the plague were, or how it manifested itself. We knew it spread by bites, but nobody really knew how it spread initially. We were all thinking the same thing; we had just left an abandoned and sealed military bunker that had a brand new strain of the infection in it and had all been fine before we got there.
Cody approached Grace to comfort her and Alison told him to stay away from her. He looked at us, confused. Marion pulled him close and held him. I could tell Albert was getting a little freaked out.
He glared at Jim and I and said, “She’s just got a sour stomach. Don’t even think about it.” I nodded to him, but neither of us was convinced. Grace stood up and started crying.
“I just pooed my pants.” she whimpered.
Normally, I’d find that declaration somewhat amusing, but under the circumstances, it was just sad. Marion handed Cody off to Alison and approached Grace. She examined her eyes and felt her forehead. Albert went to the back of the Rover and retrieved a change of clothes for Grace. Jim and I stood guard while Marion helped Grace clean up and change.
I looked at Alison meaningfully and she nodded, undoing the snap to her holstered pistol. We finally got back on the road but put Grace and Cody in separate vehicles. Albert wanted to keep her with him, but nobody would agree to that. Albert looked at me desperately with tears in his eyes. I told him she’d be fine.
We agreed that we should find a place to stop and wait this out. We pulled off the highway into the town of Yreka. This place looks like a war zone. Most of the buildings have been burned to the ground and burnt out and wrecked vehicles sat haphazardly all over the roads.
We saw a few undead wandering aimlessly, but they were moving slow and didn’t seem to take notice of us.
We finally found a two-story bank that was unscathed and pulled into the parking lot behind it. After clearing the building with Jim, we set up camp on the second floor. There is no power, and no water (hence no flushing toilet), but those are the least of our concerns. The building has three exits and a good view of the surrounding area.
I took Albert out to go find gas. There is a service station just down the street. I didn’t have much hope for it and mostly just wanted to get Albert away in case something happened to Grace. We got luckier than we deserved though. The storage tank had fuel in it, and even more surprising, we found a propane heater in the garage bay that works.
When we got back, Grace looked a little better. Alison gave her some Imodium and Compozine to help with her diarrhea and vomiting. She was sleeping, but shivering from the cold (we hoped). We set up the heater, and warmed the room up. That seemed to help.
Albert won’t accept that Grace could have more than the flu or food poisoning. We all hope that’s all that’s wrong with her, but time will tell.
We are back to guard shifts tonight and Chloe and I are on first watch. Cody tried to stay up with us but conked out within twenty minutes. I hate to admit it, but he’s a pretty good kid. He adores Grace, and although I don’t think he suspects what we do, he knows something is wrong. I don’t know what to say to comfort him. He’s trying to be tough but I know he’s scared. We all are.
DAY 95
We are all pretty optimistic that Grace will be fine.
From our limited collective knowledge of the plague, we agreed that the incubation period seems to be twenty-four hours maximum. It has been well over that since Grace first got sick and she seems to be getting better and has been able to hold down liquids.
We had a disturbing development sometime during the night. Over a dozen Infected have congregated around our building. More seem to be wandering toward us. Jim has observed two kinds of plague victims; slow movers, and fast movers (not counting the ones at the bunker). Most of these are slow movers.
Marion speculates that fast movers are more recently infected victims. This makes sense, as they look to be in better shape and not as emaciated and decomposed as the slow ones. This is all very interesting from an academic standpoint, but not very helpful to our situation. Alison thinks that Grace is well enough to travel, so after Albert, Jim, and I go take care of the undead outside, we are moving on.
We are now officially in Oregon, in a gift store just north of Ashland. We are, for the most part, safe and sound.
Once we dispatched with the undead surrounding us in Yreka this morning, we got back on the highway headed north. For miles there was nothing but open white fields. The weather was overcast, and at times we had to go slow because we didn’t know where the road was under the snow, but until we started up into the pass, the trip was pretty uneventful.
When we got up the mountain toward the Oregon border, we started seeing abandoned cars and what I assume were decomposed bodies under the snow. Nothing was moving. When we reached the top of the pass, we found something shocking.
Someone had built a ten-foot-high concrete barricade across all the lanes of the highway. Abandoned military trucks, burnt out vehicles, frozen snow-covered corpses, and charred trees stood as testimony to the battle that had taken place here. We had passed a bulldozer a mile back that had been used to clear a path of all the cars. There were bullet pockmarks all along the wall blocking the road.
Two firebombed tanks sat on either side of the road, their turrets drooping. Nobody won that fight.
Somebody had spray painted a message on the wall that read: “Non-residents turn back, Oregon citizens only. Violators will be shot.”
The message was not very friendly, but certainly clear. It gave me both concern and hope. I wondered if Oregon could have survived the infection. The fact that nobody was here to greet us confirmed that it wasn’t very likely. The other immediate concern was how we were going to get past the wall with our vehicles.
Albert and I explored the wall while Jim stood guard. The concrete extended a good thirty yards up the hill on both sides. On one side was razor wire, and on the other, a sheer cliff. I didn’t have enough explosives to blow a hole in the wall after using them as an insurance policy to escape David Kester’s compound.
Frankly, we were scratching our heads wondering how we were going to get through the barrier, when Cody said, “Why don’t you just shoot the wall down with a tank?”
I almost dismissed the question until Jim looked at me with a raised eyebrow. Jim said that if there were any rounds left, and if we could get the turret moving, it might actually work. Being an MP, I had no experience with tanks, but Jim said he’d played around with a few when he was in the service.
We checked the tanks out and quickly dismissed the idea. They were both dead. We did find a fifty-caliber machine gun stored in one of them and two boxes of ammo. Even the fifty-caliber wouldn’t be able to chew through a wall as thick as the one we were up against.
We were almost back to square one until I thought to look in the tank’s storage compartment. The first tank had nothing, but the second had twelve bricks (about fifteen pounds) of C-4 plastic explosive in it.