“How’s it going, Connor?” Frank asked. Although they were twins, the twenty five year old brothers had very little resemblance to each other. Frank had dark hair and was two inches shorter than his blond haired brother. Both had broad shoulders earned from the hours they spent moving hay. After graduating from high school, both had enlisted in the Marine Corps. When their enlistments were up, they returned home to Lost Hills and the ranch where they had grown up. Their dad retired and turned the day to day operations of the ranch over to them.
“It’s going okay, all things considered,” I responded. “Is everything okay at the ranch?”
“So far, so good,” Frank answered, not giving his brother a chance to respond. “We saw one of those things on the way into town. Jeb stopped the truck and I started to shoot it until I realized it was Amy Jenson. She ran at the truck and started beating on the window and howling. I couldn’t shoot her and we drove away.”
“It wasn’t Amy,” I replied. “It might have been her body, but it wasn’t her. The next time you see an infected, shoot it between the eyes. It doesn’t matter if it is me or Matt or Jeb. You guys were lucky. They have superhuman strength and won’t hesitate to tear your throat out with their teeth. I’ve seen it firsthand.”
“We know,” Frank said. “We’ve been glued to the TV all day. When it came down to it, we couldn’t shoot her though. We went to school with her since kindergarten. Jeb even went to the Sadie Hawkins dance with her.” Frank rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “We both killed quite a few people in Afghanistan. This is different, though. These are people we know.”
“They were people you
knew
,” Matt corrected. “These aren’t people anymore. Their brains have been twisted. Given the chance, they’ll kill you without giving it any thought. It’s their instinct. Don’t hesitate when the situation arises or we’ll be burying you, or worse yet, you’ll turn into one of them and we’ll be forced to shoot
you
.”
“I get it,” Frank said. “I’ll be ready next time. The first time I saw an insurgent in Afghanistan, I didn’t fire. I was in thick cover and he walked fifty yards in front of me carrying a rifle and a radio. There was no doubt that he was an insurgent. I just couldn’t pull the trigger.
“The next day, we were on patrol in the same area and we were ambushed. There was only one shooter, but we were pretty much in the open. He had good cover in the rocks above and had us pinned down. My buddy was hit with the first shot. I was at the back of the platoon and was able to get back to cover. I worked my way above the shooter and I killed him. As I descended the hill to his position, I realized he was the same guy from the day before. If I had taken the shot the previous day, Paul would still be alive. I’ve struggled with not taking that shot every single day since then. Believe me, I get it. The next time I see one, I’ll be the first to shoot.”
Chapter
33
We issued Jeb and Frank the gear we had procured for them from the armory. They both declined the pistols, saying they would rather use their own. Frank also declined the rifle, stating that he was more comfortable with his personal rifle. They boisterously proclaimed their excitement at the large quantities of ammunition and the night vision goggles.
We loaded into our vehicles and headed to Saul Timmons’ house on the edge of town. I didn’t really want to drive all the way across town to talk to him, but since I couldn’t find a phone number for him, we didn’t have a choice. One side of his road had sporadic houses dotting the alfalfa fields. The other side was unbroken sage brush for close to a mile.
As we approached his house, I noticed several indiscernible objects in the road. As we got closer, the forms began to take shape. There were six infected sprawled in the road, across about one hundred yards.
A gusty breeze was whipping the white curtains in and out of the open second story window of Saul’s house when we pulled up. I opened the door as the truck rolled to a stop. A strong gust of wind hit the curtains, causing an audible pop as they unfurled like a whip.
Saul had been a sniper with the Army Rangers. It was clear he had been shooting the infected from the upstairs window as they came out of the sage brush and crossed the street. If the dead infected in the street were any indication, Saul would want to be involved in securing the well site. The noise would probably draw infected from all over town and he could rack up a huge kill count.
We walked across the dirt driveway with the strengthening breeze driving dust into my eyes, causing me to blink and rub the grit away with my fingers. The other three had pulled their gas masks down over their faces, which protected them from the swirling dirt particles.
I approached the door and Matt stopped ten feet behind me. Jeb and Frank spread out ten or fifteen paces on either side of Matt. Their military training and time in Afghanistan left them cautious of congregating too closely together, lest a single burst of automatic fire or grenade take out the entire group. Hard earned habits have a way of hanging on.
I pressed the white plastic button next to the door and heard a faint chime inside. I waited with no acknowledgment and then knocked on the door. There was still no response. I walked off the porch and stepped into the dirt where I could partially see into the open window.
“Saul, it’s Connor. Open up so we can talk.”
Still no reply.
“Saul!” I yelled louder. This time I was greeted with the all too familiar howl which emanated from inside the house.
Saul’s form suddenly filled the window. In a smooth liquid motion, his body poured through the casement. He came erect to his full six feet as he took two steps across the steeply descending shingles and jumped twelve feet to the ground. He landed on slightly flexed legs. Without losing his stride, he charged Frank. Frank was already moving to the right toward Matt, creating a better angle so that I would not be in his line of fire. His rifle had already come to bear on Saul the moment he appeared in the window. True to his earlier promise, Frank didn’t hesitate. With a single
boom
, what had previously been Saul’s body crumpled to the ground. Frank swore loudly as he approached the figure of the man who had once been his friend. He stood over the corpse briefly and then turned and walked away to his truck as the pool of blood slowly grew around Saul’s pulverized head.
I approached the front door a second time. This time, Matt and Jeb were right behind. I tried the door. It was locked. I fired two rounds into the door on the frame side of the door knob. A shotgun would have been better suited for the task, but the rifle proved sufficient. On the second shot, the impact of the bullet shattered the remains of the locking mechanism and the door pivoted inward without any further action from me.
Without hesitation, we moved inside. Jeb was completely within his element. He had spent over a year in Afghanistan and much of that time was spent clearing houses. He took the lead. I followed directly behind and Matt brought up the rear. When we came to a new room, Jeb would pause and wait for me to signal that I was ready. Once he got the signal, he exploded into the room, immediately pivoting to the right all the way to the corner of the room. I came in directly behind and pivoted to the left, leaving Matt to hold the hall. In this fashion we quickly cleared the house. We located the body of Devon Martin in the upstairs bedroom with a rifle at his side. He had a gunshot wound to his head, which explained why he hadn’t answered my phone call forty minutes earlier.
There were only a handful of people in town who had served overseas in the military. That group was very tight knit in such a small community, especially those who had been in combat units. They had experienced things with which most people couldn’t relate and as such were drawn to each other. Devon and Saul were best friends.
My guess was that Devon had come to Saul’s house when he realized what was happening. Neither of them had any family in town. They would have wanted to make their stand together. The problem was Devon had already been exposed. He probably wasn’t sick when he came. Time had taken its toll. He succumbed to the disease. Saul put him down, but not before he had been exposed, too.
I had found it curious that there weren’t more infected wandering around town. After seeing the infected in Marty’s house and then seeing Saul and Devon holed up in Saul’s house, I realized there were probably houses all over town filled with infected. They were trapped inside. Their atrophied brains couldn’t remember how to open door knobs. How long they would remain stuck inside was unknown. The longer it took them to escape, the better it would be for us.
With only half the security force I had hoped to garner, we got back in our vehicles. Matt and I drove to the school in a silence that I was sure was mirrored inside Jeb and Frank’s truck.
Chapter
34
We arrived at the school less than an hour after leaving Wim Cummings. Wim was already on scene with his drilling rig. The four of us walked across the grassy area to where Wim was in the process of lifting the drilling rig off its wheels and leveling it with the extendable stabilizer legs at each corner. Within a couple minutes, he appeared to be satisfied with the results.
Wim approached the four of us while the three men he brought with him continued to scurry around the rig, working busily. “Once we get going, we should have the well drilled in six to eight hours, assuming we don’t run into any snags.”
Matt’s eyebrows raised. “You think you’ll have it done within eight hours?”
“Assuming we don’t run into any snags. But then, I can’t remember ever drilling a well without any snags,” he responded with a grin. “There are a lot of potential snags on this one. We don’t know where the underground utilities are and there’s no one to ask. Hitting the gas main would put us up there talking with Jesus in a hurry. We don’t even have a permit. The county could shut us down at any minute,” he said as his grin grew even wider and turned to a laugh. “And then there are the wild folks out there. The more I think about it, we’re going to be lucky if we ever get it done.”
“You worry about the underground utilities and gas mains. We’ll take care of the rest,” I said before I was cut off by a rhythmic beeping as the backhoe cautiously crawled off the flatbed semi trailer. The operator effortlessly dug a shallow trench away from the back of the drilling rig. He appeared satisfied with the trench and began excavating a pit at the end of it.
While the pit was being unearthed, Wim and the other two workers were erecting the boom on the drilling rig. About the time the backhoe shut down, the rattle of its diesel engine was replaced by screeches and clanks as a section of pipe was hoisted from the back of the second truck. Wim stood at the back right corner of the rig and manipulated a series of levers to control the hoist on the boom while carefully eyeing the pipe as it was pulled aloft to the top of the boom. Once the pipe was vertical, it was moved directly below a ram with a round threaded shaft at the bottom. The shaft began to spin slowly and lowered until it entered the end of the pipe. The threads in the pipe engaged with the threads on the shaft. The entire length of pipe began to spin slowly around. One of the workers picked up a short metal fitting with three fins coming off the sides and threaded the drill bit onto the bottom of the pipe. The entire contraption was lowered to the metal platform which had a hole slightly bigger than the diameter of the bit. When the tip of the bit was a foot above the hole in the platform, it stopped descending. Wim left his post and carefully examined the bit and pipe. Satisfied with what he saw, he returned to the control panel.
“Let’s find some water,” Wim yelled as he yanked on a lever, which started the shaft spinning. With a pull on a second lever, the spinning shaft plunged into the soft earth.
Water, which was being pumped to the top of the boom, through the pipe, and into the bottom of the hole, bubbled out the top of the hole, carrying the dirt and debris the bit had loosened from the bottom of the bore hole. The water trickled through the trench the backhoe had dug and into the pit.
Matt, Jeb, Frank and I spread out around the drilling equipment. We started on separate sides of the rig about seventy five yards out and walked around it in a clockwise direction. The view was constantly changing, which made the monotonous job a little more interesting. After three trips around the drilling sight, I heard two semi trucks approaching the school. When the trucks got closer, the motors roared as the drivers engaged the engine brakes. The high compression engines overcame the inertia behind them and slowed the trucks without the brakes being applied. Both trucks stopped along the baseball field, which was about fifty yards from the drilling rig.
The drivers exited their respective cabs and climbed onto their trailers, unfastening the chains that secured the huge yellow machines. Once the first man had loosed the tethers, he climbed around the machine, checking fluids and giving it a quick inspection. He entered the cab and turned the engine over. The huge caterpillar motor sputtered and grumbled to life. The second driver performed a similar ritual with his machine. Both machines guardedly inched their way off the trailers and onto the baseball field.
Resisting the urge to watch the machinery in action, I continued looking outward for possible threats. Walking along the edge of Sixth Street, I noticed movement in several windows. The curtains had been parted slightly in two houses. When I came back to that side of the perimeter a few minutes later, I realized that several faces were now smashed up against the windows. A big plate window in one house had two faces pasted to the glass. The side of both faces slid back and forth against the cool clear surface as the mindless bodies they were attached to paced the length of the glass. They were drawn to the sound of the construction like bees to nectar in a flower.
With each successive pass around the perimeter, the two infected behind the plate window were becoming more and more agitated. Three other houses along the perimeter also had infected peering through windows. Transformed families were trapped within the confines of their own homes. Their attempts to exit were thwarted by confounding door knobs. The simple device they had manipulated their whole lives was now beyond the comprehension of their witless, infected brains.
Matt and I had already seen the end result at Marty’s house. Eventually, they would become agitated enough to break the glass. I called everybody together and we formed a new plan. Rather than spreading ourselves thin and walking a perimeter, which could lead to one person engaging multiple infected by himself, we retreated closer to the drilling rig and climbed atop the accompanying truck. We had a three hundred sixty degree view and we could all bring our weapons to bear on the same spot if we were attacked.
I looked to the baseball field. The first earth mover had bogged down as the blade cut deeply into the sod covered earth. The second machine approached from the rear and began to push the first. With the combined power, the hopper on the first quickly filled. The drivers were secure in their enclosed cabs and didn’t need immediate protection.
The drillers, however, were completely exposed. We would react to any attacks on the earth movers, but the focus of our attention was on the drilling rig and its workers.
One of the infected in the closest house began to bang its head against the window as it became more and more irate. Then the inevitable occurred; the head struck the window a final time and the clear barrier cracked. Shards tumbled from the frame to the ground, leaving a gaping hole. Within seconds, the rest of the glass was knocked free. The two infected clambered through the empty casement. With both feet firmly planted on the ground, the first tilted and slowly turned its head, visually taking in the street to either side. It lifted its nose three inches in the air, its head jerking up and down as if the act would force more molecules past its heightened olfactory nerves. The second followed suit and uttered a howl that was audible over the sound of the earth movers and drilling rig.
The howl sent the infected in the other houses into overload. Immediately, a second window was broken. The three brutes within were freed from their prison. Shortly after, the third window was broken and five more infected liberated themselves from their confinement. Three of them were children. Finally, those in the last house escaped as well.
The thirteen came together, forming a pack. They didn’t advance. Jeb fired several rounds. An infected nearly toppled, but was able to right itself and continued to stare at us, unabated. They were just a little too far to be able to reliably connect with a head shot. Jeb ceased his fire, saving his ammo until they were closer. The pack of infected began a series of wailing howls and whimpers. Replies arose from all around as unseen voices joined the ruckus.
The clamor reached a crescendo that was so loud, Wim shut down the drilling rig and climbed the boom to look around. With the rig shut down, I could hear glass shatter as more and more infected released themselves from the confines of formerly secure homes.
Wim called to me, “Are you sure you can handle this?”
As if waiting for their cue, three infected emerged from around the corner of a classroom behind us. At full speed, they hastily cut through the buffer zone between us and the buildings. Frank and Matt easily cut them down at over fifty yards from the drilling rig.
“I’d say you’re in good hands,” I yelled back as the third and final infected in the group slammed into the ground.
The chorus continued to grow steadily, but there were no more attempts to test our perimeter. More and more infected appeared across the street and held their distance just out of range, as if they were waiting for an unseen signal to attack. At least fifty paced along the perimeter of the road, keeping at the edge of rifle range.
An hour turned into two, which turned into three. The burning sun continued to slowly slide toward the horizon. There were still a couple of hours before sunset, but it was not far off.
The calls were relentless. They never diminished in intensity and the number seemed to be growing. The idea of trying to work through the night was becoming more and more suicidal by the minute.
I jumped off the back of the pipe truck and expeditiously crossed the twenty feet to the drilling rig and approached Wim.
“I changed my mind,” I said, swallowing my pride. “There’s no way Frank and Jeb are going to be able to keep them at bay once the sun goes down. Let’s plan on clearing out at least an hour before the sun sets.”
“I reached that conclusion an hour ago,” Wim shouted above the noise of the rig. “We’re in the water table right now. We still need to go deeper to get the best flow rate from the well, but we’ll have to finish it up tomorrow.” He looked at the three men helping him and then looked to the perimeter. “I’m going to shut it down and get everything cleaned up so we can get out of here before the sun hits the hills.”
As one of the earth movers began a pass in my direction, I waved my arms furiously in a futile attempt to get the driver’s attention. He was oblivious to my efforts. I tried again on his next pass with the same results. On the third pass, he noticed my frantic arm movements atop the truck. He finished his pass and guided the monstrous machine to a stop beside the drilling rig, shut the engine down, and walked to the side of the pipe truck upon which I was standing.
“We’re going to clear out in an hour. I don’t think we’re going to be able to hold this position once it’s dark,” I explained as the drilling rig shut down.
He looked around in alarm at hearing the surrounding upheaval for the first time. “What’s that noise?” he asked.
“That’s the reason we can’t stay here,” I answered.
The drilling rig was between the cab and the infected so he couldn’t see what was on the other side. He jumped down from the cab and moved around the rear of the drilling rig. Noticing the horde of nearly seventy infected for the first time, he stammered, “Where did they come from?”
“They were drawn to the noise,” I guessed.
The second earth mover parked beside the first and shut down.
As suddenly as the howling had started, it ceased. Completely. After listening to the howling for several hours, the eerie silence drove deep into my bones and sent a shiver coursing through my body, covering my arms with goose bumps, even though the temperature was still close to eighty degrees. The infected quit pacing back and forth. Standing completely still, their unwavering attention was focused on the ten faces staring back at them.
“I don’t like this,” Matt said, obviously as shaken as I was. “We need to get out of here while we still can.” To punctuate his concern, an audible
snap
pervaded my hearing as he clicked the safety selector on his rifle up to the fire position. Two more
snaps
broke the stillness as Jeb and Frank followed Matt’s lead.
The driver of the first earth mover climbed atop the pipe truck to gain a better vantage over the situation. He pulled himself erect and moved to my side. He had a 1911 pistol strapped to his leg in a thigh holster. The way he wore it gave the impression that he knew how to use it. Impressions aren’t worth much. I hoped this one was correct.
Two shrill screams obliterated the silence and sent at least half of the seventy or so infected across the street charging through the neutral zone that divided our group and theirs.
Hiccups in their unnaturally fast gait caused their heads to bob and jink in an unpredictable manner as they streaked across the field. Head shots were virtually impossible.
Everybody held their fire. It would only be seconds before the horde had closed enough distanced to increase the surety of a hit and justify expending the bullets. With thirty-five to forty infected approaching, every shot counted. The time needed to reload could easily mean the difference between life and death. We needed to wipe out most of the onslaught in our first magazine.
I briefly looked over to check the drillers. They were frantically scampering up the boom of the drilling rig like a troop of chimpanzees. They would be safe enough in the short term. I glanced behind to make sure we weren’t being flanked. The back side was clear.