“So Doug’s house is Gulf Shore’s version of Area 51 now?”
“Looks that way.”
“Well, I can’t say I have a warm fuzzy feeling on the military right now. I ran across that Major this morning passed out on a park bench at the marina with an empty bottle of Aristocrat about ten feet away from her.”
“No shit?” Mack asked with a smile spreading across her face. “That’s funny. The iron bitch cracked.”
“I shook her awake and made her go home before the sun cooked her too bad. All she did was mumble about how the last people she would ever meet is on this damned island and she didn’t like any of them.”
“Sounds like her alright.”
“She wandered off in a pissy mood so I just left her to it.”
Mack laughed and pushed her plate away, took the hanging microphone, and pulled it to her face as the song ended. She held a finger up to her lips to remind Billy to be quiet and hit the broadcast switch on the board. When she did, a red
On Air
sign lit up in the studio.
“And that was
Happy Together
by the Turtles. Stay tuned for ten in a row here on WGSH, voice of Infection-Free Gulf Shores after this announcement,” she said into the foam then switched the broadcast button back off and the red lit sign went dim again.
“The Turtles, huh?” Billy asked, picking flakes of mullet in lazy circles with his fork.
“Yeah, George recommended we play some more uplifting stuff so we have had Huey Lewis, Hanson, and the Beatles on repeat all day.”
“Good thing Wyatt isn’t here after all.”
“He was coming in at 9 tonight and DJing for an hour. I’m sure it will be wall to wall
Slipknot, Primal Concrete, Pantera,
and
Black Sabbath
.”
“Nine tonight?” Billy asked. Wyatt had left the house before Billy was even awake that morning as it was. The boy only just turned twelve years old and even before the outbreak, Billy had kept a close reign on the youngster after dark. School was set to resume in two days and Billy was looking to the return of some sort of normalcy. School would get Cat back out of the house. She had found out about the ferry sinking from the rumors in town and had locked herself in her room, brooding in teen misery.
“It’s okay. Doug is bringing him up here after they wrap up at his house today. Wyatt is going to broadcast for an hour then Doug is gonna take over and play new age stuff until the night crew comes in at midnight.”
“So you guys are coming home about ten?”
She nodded. He looked at her arms as the sunlight streamed through the windows. He had always had a thing for body hair on girls. It is the hair on the arms. Not like Tom Selleck-type shit, but when they are sitting there in a sleeveless shirt and you see that soft sheen of short hairs on their shoulders, gossamer and thin as a spider’s web. So smooth and sleek that if you had not caught that ray of light in just the right way coming through the window, you may have never known it was there. That was beautiful.
Over the speakers in the station could be heard the now-familiar public service announcement. It ran a few times an hour on the only station broadcasting along the Gulf of Mexico. It was Mack’s soothingly smooth radio voice delivering the pre-recorded words:
“You are listening to 620AM, the Voice of the Gulf Coast, broadcasting from Gulf Shores, Alabama. Due to the current situation the citizens of Mobile Point, which includes the entire island from Old Ft Morgan to the Perdido Pass Bridge and separated from land by the Intracoastal Waterway, have taken proactive steps to prevent further infection. Absolutely no possibly infected outsiders are welcome at this time! If you have family within this area, own property within this area or are completely uninfected and would like to apply for shelter then proceed to the intersection of Alabama Highway 59 and 29th Avenue Road by the amusement park during daylight hours. Do not proceed past this area at night as the military council has declared it a free-fire zone. If you are observed ignoring these rules, then lethal force will be used to stop you. Thanks for listening and have a nice day.”
“You added the last part yourself, didn’t you?” Billy asked.
“Aww, you are getting to know me so well,” she said and reached out to muss the sun-bleached hair on his head.
A voice from behind interrupted their alone time. “Mmmm, mullet for lunch today? I thought they were just doing pepperoni soup?” Stone asked as he walked into the studio unannounced. Billy noted that the MP had the black Coast Guard officer walking a few feet behind him.
“Yeah, I went with mullet instead,” Billy said, swiveling around in the office chair.
“Since I’m too late for lunch, what’s for dinner?”
“More mullet, you coming over for dinner? The price of admission is paper plates. Feel free to bring some veggies, too. I haven’t gone grocery shopping this month.”
“I’m sure I can find something. Say aren’t you from the Biloxi-Gulfport area?” Stone asked, leaning against the wall of the studio. The Coast Guard officer would not take his eyes off Billy.
“My ex-wife is. Can’t say I miss it.” Billy said.
“Let’s talk about that.”
— | — | —
ChapteR 42
November 10 0700
“What are you looking at, numbnuts?” Reid yelled in the ear of the five new recruits trying to figure out how to work an M4 for the first time. Short on ammunition, Reid walked them through basic weapons nomenclature and manipulation, taught them how to clean it, then dry fired unloaded rifles from standing, sitting and prone positions. To teach proper trigger control, grip, and sight alignment, he placed a large washer on the end barrel of each rifle. The point was simple, if you dropped your washer when you pulled the trigger—you were a fuckup.
“Remember, people, the building block of basic rifle marksmanship is that if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, riddle them with bullets,” Reid read aloud from his much dog-eared internal field manual that he had amassed over a thirty year career of being a target. His huge German Shepherd followed him around with her tongue hanging out of her head like a pink scarf.
“Something to think of tactically:
do not
run away in a straight line from a zombie, they can follow straight lines but cannot turn rapidly…therefore, what you need to do is run away and around in a circular manner while engaging, if you run at all.”
The First Sergeant yelled as he walked around them in a circle, “As the great all-knowing and all powerful Clint Smith says, ‘If you’re not shootin’, you should be loadin. If you’re not loadin’, you should be movin’, if you’re not movin’—one of these ghouls is gonna eat your face off. Remember, do not shoot fast. Shoot good. Only headshots matter. If you can’t get a headshot, then don’t make the shot.
“Stay on your headshots, come on, frickin’ slaying bodies. Good-a-go? Up here on your primary position,” he said, hands bladed in front of him one after another. “Tap-Tap, Tap-Tap. Slap that fresh magazine in, rack the bolt, slaying bodies. Good-a-go. Now let’s talk tactical reloads…”
Stone nodded as he watched Reid instill the need for marksmanship in the new volunteers. A good many of the zombies were encountered with head trauma that were still very much undead. The fact is that it is very hard to get a successful “kill shot” on a zombie. The portion of the brain required to be destroyed is a very small target. Imagine aiming at a soccer ball and being able to hit the brand name stitched across it. You often see oblivious zombies shuffling around with gunshot wounds to the face, jaws blown off, eyes gouged out, flaps of scalp cleaved away or dangling by black bloody tethers to a grey skull, and other wounds from near misses with their active brain. All messed up but still making it.
Reid glanced at Stone and wrapped it up. “That’s it. You are doing well for a bunch of cheesedicks. Keep it up and I will let you stick around for cake and punch this afternoon. Remember you are in the Army now and in the Army we do more before 9am than most people do all day,” Reid said, winking at Stone. The First Sergeant walked up to him as he sat on the bumper of a hummer.
“Pretty good, old Top, I see you haven’t lost your knack for the crash course.”
“The only way to fix this is to walk into the middle of it and start cussing. Once you start cussing, they start moving. It worked in Vietnam, it worked in Iraq, and it works here.” Reid said with a smile. “Trying to organize these people is like trying to put socks on an uncooperative octopus.”
“Darwin’s Laws of the dystopian apocalypse has pretty much thinned out anyone that is dumb and slow, so our learning curve should be better.”
“Adept observation, sir. How is the search for volunteers for Operation Certain Death?”
“I’ve got twenty drivers and truck loaders lined up. They are coming in the morning so that we can have a few dry runs as a convoy before we go over the bridge. After I put the announcement out at yesterday’s neighborhood watch meeting I got almost a hundred people come by the armory. I chose the youngest and strongest. Last thing we want is someone to have a heart attack out there,” Stone said.
“Well, the turn out doesn’t surprise me. Hell, word is out everywhere that going out over the bridge is like having an unlimited credit card. After those damn videos who can blame them?”
Reid was right. A few days ago, they had arrested one of Spud’s kids who were selling homemade DVDs on the street. The disks had video taken of
Zombieville
that was clearly shot by an unidentified Rough Rider. The DVD was confiscated and the seller roughed up. However, the next day, three more people showed up selling them. It became something of a cottage industry. Where there was a demand, entrepreneurs would create a supply.
“Looks like the source of our DVD problem just drove up,” Stone said, looking at the cherry antique Cadillac that made its way into the armory’s parking lot.
“I don’t trust that little crap,” Reid said to Stone.
Stone smiled and patted Jenny on the head, the giant dog’s huge head like a cinder block wrapped in fur.
“Don’t worry, Top. Spud is harmless. Moreover, if he ever gets too big for his britches we will just place him under arrest when he comes to get his people’s chow. They are dependent on him and he is now dependent on us.”
Reid smiled. “Hearts and minds.”
“Hearts and minds,” Stone repeated as he walked off towards the Cadillac. Reid was already going into immediate action drills with the new volunteers.
Stone walked around the side of the big car as Spud was digging in the trunk.
“I got some more radio stuff and some cables…we found some antennas, too, they are pretty damn big though so I’m not sure…”
“Cut the shit, Spud. You need to drop the crap that Tiny is doing with the DVDs. If I didn’t need him so bad I’d throw him over the bridge and leave him there,” Stone said as he closed the distance between the two of them.
Spud nodded, “Ok, ok, no problem, boss. That was his own little side thing anyway. I’ll stomp it out. But seriously we need to talk.”
“About what?”
“I need to have some of my guys on that little expedition over the bridge next week. Let me put a truck and three guys in it. Put ’em on a little side mission. We’ll just tag along.”’
“Absolutely not. This is a military mission not an organized looting spree. And I’m gonna kill Tiny for telling you anything.”
“Hey, chill, boss, chill. I did not get it from Tiny. He is a military dude at heart, he don’t tell me shit about what you do. I got it from the street. Hey, speaking of which, everyone is asking about this iodine stuff now. What the hell is up with that?”
“Did you find any?”
“No, just salt with iodine in it. Not by itself.”
“No, it will say KI on it. Potassium Iodine. Maybe in medicine cabinets in bottles talking about thyroid issues.”
“You got a bad thyroid? I thought you were a kind of big guy but just thought it was all that armor and shit you wear.”
“Just tell your people to be on the lookout. Did you bring the eggs? I got some guys waiting on them.”
“Ok, I will put the word out, and yes, I brought the eggs. Two dozen fresh from what could be the last chickens on the island. So when do you want my guys here for that trip across the bridge?”
««—»»
The sun was low in the late afternoon sky when all the Rough Rider patrols were back from
Zombieville
. The beach patrol had returned and the night shift was on their way out to take over the watch on the bridge, Ferris wheel, and Q-boat from 1700-0500 the next morning. Everyone else, almost 90 volunteers, were standing in loose platoon formations around the parking lot of the Armory in the coolness of the afternoon.
First Sergeant Reid bellowed out at the head of the assembled unit, “Fall In!”
At this barked command, those with formal military training stood at attention, or something close to it. Those without mimicked as best they could with their platoon and squad leaders pushing and pulling them into something approaching the right position. After ten seconds of movement and energy in the parking lot, four platoons were formed, each with a platoon leader or platoon sergeants to the side of their unit of 20-30 soldiers.