“We can’t keep this secret forever,” Mack called out to the Major as she started to walk away.
All Reynolds did was shake her head and kept walking.
— | — | —
ChapteR 39
October 31st 1100
Stone stood on the bridge and watched the scouts check their bikes and chatter amongst themselves.
A dozen motorcyclist volunteers had come forth from the survivors on the island. They ranged from leather-clad weekend warriors with spotless Harleys, to blue-collar workers on weathered daily riders, and smart mouthed twenty-somethings on 1300-cc Hayabusa street racers. Equipped with backpacks holding fold-up road maps, and composition books, they were allowed over the bridge into
Zombieville
in pairs to scout out sections of the wasteland for the “three F’s” (food, fuel, and firearms). They were even sent out with weighed measuring lines to see how much fuel was left in the various gas station storage tanks that they encountered.
Quietly, Stone had ordered them to catalog what routes were closed by traffic jams that would never move, and which ones were still open. Although each rider was armed to the teeth, they were under strict orders not to engage any infected. It was expected that they would use speed and maneuverability to evade and elude them. Stealth and speed—-in conjunction with detailed intelligence reporting—-were crucial.
A former Marine Recon corporal-turned welder that everyone called Tiny organized the bikers and they had adopted the title,
The Rough Riders
. Tiny, as chance would have it, was over 350 pounds, and used a Yamaha R1 superbike to haul himself around. On the sleeve of his riding jacket, he had a well-worn patch from the II Marine Expeditionary Force sewn above skull and crossbones.
Tiny had trained the bikers in the past couple days to perform route reconnaissance almost to the same detail as in the Corps. They were ready to evaluate each roadway over the bridge in
Zombieville
and provide information on conditions and activities along the route. They would note which areas would provide best cover and concealment; bridges by construction type, dimensions, and classification; location of intact stores and numbers of zombies encountered, if any.
Stone had ordered them to make sure what routes were open and large enough for large trucks to maneuver and turn around if needed. If a future convoy was bunched up due to obstacles or traffic jams, it would be dead meat.
As Tiny stuffed his map into his pocket and checked his radio, he nodded at Stone, “Well, boss, if I’m not back by dark avenge my death.”
“You and your guys up to this?” Stone asked, low enough that only Tiny could hear.
“See that goofy sumbitch with the Mohawk helmet over here?” Tiny said, gesturing to the nearly incoherent Pugsly-faced Latino on the bike next to his. “We Survived the Dragon which is 318 curves and switchbacks in 11 miles. Only we did it at triple digit speeds. If the Highway Patrol couldn’t catch us in a Charger, I don’t think a bunch of zombies living in rags can even come close, Holmes.”
“You got the spray paint?”
Tiny nodded. “
Tune to 620AM,
right?”
“Right. Tag stuff that can be seen from a distance if possible—but only if it’s safe enough to stop.”
“You got it, boss,” Tiny said, pushing the starter button on his crotch rocket. The 998cc bike thundered to a low growl. He pushed his jet-black helmet down over his lumpy head, an airbrushed skull adorned across the back of it.
“All right, see you by dark. Remember, after sunset all points north of here are a free-fire zone, so if you come back at night, you are coming back in the crosshairs.”
“Just the way we like it,” Tiny said with a laugh, popping the clutch on his bike with his boot as he twisted the throttle. The huge man went from zero to seventy in five seconds and three gears, disappearing up the highway in a flash of leather, tattoos, and steel.
Within a half minute, the other 11 Rough Riders thundered down after Tiny and into
Zombieville
.
“How many bullets you think it would take to put that big bastard down?” Reid asked.
“Let’s not find out.”
««—»»
The dozen Rough Riders had broken up into six patrols, two riders each, so that if one machine broke down they could still make it back on a single bike. Five of the six teams had returned within three hours, the only team still out past 3pm was Tiny and his partner.
Reynolds stood nervously next to Stone, taking time to debrief each of the riders as they returned from over the bridge. The returning patrols had brought some good news and some bad. There were infected roaming the streets, but only in small groups. No one had seen more than a five or six in any one pocket. The roads were jammed at most intersections, but were not completely impassible. There had been several fires, but many of the businesses and homes had survived. All of the riders complained in quiet tones of being watched by wild dogs wherever they went.
“The last patrol was the one scouting the airport right?” Reynolds asked, chewing on a fingernail.
“Yes they were going up through Foley all the way, then doubling back and checking on the airport,” Stone explained.
“Have they responded to the radio?” she asked, spitting a bitten fingernail out across the hood of the hummer.
“Not for an hour or so, but those bikes are so damned loud they probably couldn’t hear anything short of a nuclear blast.”
She nodded. They stood alone at the hummer separated from the MPs watching the roadblock by fifty feet. The sharpshooters were thoroughly disappointed. They had only seen four infected all day, none of which had come within rifle range. Reid had even joined their rotation as a spotter with no luck.
For once, the number of survivors who came to the roadblock outnumbered the zombies. Each town only had a few survivors out of every hundred or thousand, and they were making their way to Gulf Shores. These were not just any normal people. These were people who had seen everyone they knew, and thousands that they did not know, die. Then those who had just died would reanimate, and promptly attempt to kill them. It did not make any sense.
Modern Americans just did not have the psychological fortitude to handle this strange turn of events. One day they were drinking a Starbucks and eating a scone, the next you were digging through dumpsters while hiding from gangs of undead and packs of feral dogs. Several of these survivors began to make their way to Gulf Shores because of the radio broadcasts. With their inevitable goggles, scarves, and improvised ski masks they wore as preventative from infection, they looked like shell-shocked World War I pilots who had spent too much time in No Man’s Land.
The bridge guards were amazed to find out where they came from and what their story was. Many of these newcomers did not feel like talking. One even turned around after an hour and wandered back up the highway into the zombie wilderness, unable to be around other normal living people.
“I got the translation of that logbook you gave me the other day,” Stone said as they stood there waiting for the last of the
Rough Riders
.
“More good news?”
“Depends on how you look at it. You want the summary or the whole details?”
“Hit the high points, Captain,” she said.
“Well most of it is boring, ships-movement type stuff. The last few pages are the gripping tale. Not to ruin the ending, but the hold is full of infected crewmembers. The character at the wheel with the 9mm Q-tip in his ear is the ship’s engineer. He was infected along with the rest of the crew. He trapped them all below decks, jettisoned the ship’s life rafts in the ocean, and dropped anchor at sea.”
“Problem solved.”
“Well, you would think. However, a couple more things caught my attention. They left Odessa in the Ukraine three weeks ago with an infected crewmember aboard, so they did not get it here. In addition, they carried old radiological equipment like every good former Warsaw-Pact ship does. They were picking up a good amount of radiation at sea off Florida and Virginia,” Stone related as he kept looking down the highway towards
Zombieville
.
“Great.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the whine of a pair of motorcycles over the horizon, like the buzzing of an overworked chainsaw in the distance. Soon enough, two huge riders appeared down the highway bearing down at the roadblock head to head beside each other.
“That would be Tiny and Pugsley.”
Stone and Reynolds stood against the hummer and only had moments to wait as the two bikers downshifted and finally stopped just feet away from them.
“Man, that was a kick in the ass,” Tiny said, rubbing the top of his head after he killed his bike and removed his helmet.
Reynolds had not even let the big man step off his bike before she was interrogating him. “Did you recon the airport?”
“If you can call it that. Every damned plane out there is a burned hulk. That place went up like a pyromaniac’s wet dream. There is a jumbo-jet across the runway that is more ash than anything else. About all we found of
your
plane was the tail, or at least that’s what I think it was from the markings,” Tiny said, scrolling through a small digital camera he pulled from his jacket pocket before passing it to the Air Force major.
Stone looked over her shoulder as she moved through the photographs on the view screen. Burned hangars, melted tires, the frame of what could have been a fuel truck, and charred private planes appeared in picture after picture. A pile of nearly cremated bodies emanated in all directions from the grey wreckage of Reynolds’s CV-22.
“I guess the fire and explosion took out about a couple hundred of them that night. Good thing, or else we might not be here today,” Tiny said, digging in his backpack. Stone noticed a couple of heavy gold nugget rings on the man’s hand that he had not seen before, but he dismissed it.
Reynolds handed the camera back to the biker. “Get me a full report on everything. Keep up the recons and make sure all the teams have cameras. I want a daily update,” she said as she turned around and started walking off the bridge back to town.
“She always that friendly?” Tiny asked as he pulled a football jersey signed by Joe Montana from his backpack and replaced his dirty shirt with it. When he pulled his old shirt off, he displayed a chest and upper arms in which every inch was covered with dozens of bright tattoos. The oversized autographed jersey barely fit the huge man’s barrel chest.
“What in the hell is that?” Stone asked.
“We got a lot of good leads. Found a few shops that hadn’t been looted. I got a plan to scout out everything from here to Mobile in the next week. But it’s all good, boss,” Tiny said. He held up an ID card that said
Requisition Detachment
on it. “We’re all on the same side right?”
Tiny tossed a bag of miniature candy bars into Stone’s hand while he ripped into another for his own use. “Happy Halloween, boss.”
“Tell Spud to add iodine to the list,” was all Stone could think of.
— | — | —
ChapteR 40
Reynolds rapped her fingers on top of the meeting table as they waited for Doug to arrive. She stared across the table at George and the 3-Blind-Mice. Then she looked at Jarvis and Stone to her left and right.
“Let’s go ahead and begin; we can catch him up when he gets here,” Reynolds said.
“Agreed,” George said, nodding along with the three colonels.
“As you all know, at this point we are looking into options to further explore the brave new world that we have found ourselves in,” the senior most retired colonel, the Ringknocker, announced as he rapped his nugget on the tabletop for emphasis. “Now I would like to hear from each of you what you planned out over the past week. Major, since you are our resident aviation expert, why don’t you begin and then we will take Captain Stone and Lieutenant Jarvis with their proposals in order.”
Reynolds cleared her throat. “Doug has two 77,000-cubic foot hot air balloon canvases along with burners at his house. He has a plan to sew the two together, suspend a gondola under them, install a small engine, and make a hot-air blimp that is capable of flying as far as eight hundred miles in twenty hours.”
This statement brought guffaws and a few chuckles from the men in the room.
“Doug? Oddball Doug, the phone repair guy that’s been hanging out at the radio station?” Stone asked.
“The same,” replied Reynolds. This was going to be a tough sell.
“Major, I know Doug well,” George said. “He is one of the more eccentric figures we have in town. He went to my church with his family before they moved. I can promise you that he is one odd bird, but—he is a hell of a smart person.”
“He came to me with the plans after I asked about the ballooning equipment and it seems possible. He even has a FAA Balloonist certification and showed me pictures of when he attached weather balloons to a La-Z-Boy and floated 4,000 feet up in it.”