I wanted to sleep, but my brain wasn’t having any of it.
Sanctuary Base: it sounded tranquil enough. Too tranquil.
We’d been talking about breaking out of the armory now for more than a month while towns and cities burned and the stuff of nightmares clawed at the barred windows on the ground level of the armory. But that was simply chatter between team members. We’d all kept our opinions to ourselves when Sgt. Green was in earshot because he’d have clamped down on that notion immediately. He wanted us focused on just getting through the freaking day alive.
We weren’t exactly going to starve in our location. The armory had at least a year or more worth of rations in the company stores. We had ammunition, lots of it, and weapons. We could rain death onto the creeps at a murderous rate any time we wanted to but even with our guns and ammo, we’d still lost more than 90 percent of those who’d made it to the armory when the call out came. And there was also the matter of fresh water. We’d filled two storage rooms with plastic Jerry cans of fresh water in the days after the siege began. We kept filling them until the municipal water supply finally shut down. But we all knew we’d eventually run out and the closest source of fresh water was from the Bow River – a death sentence for anyone wishing to venture even two hundred feet from the safety of our position.
Surely Sgt. Green had to have realized that we couldn’t stay here forever. I sat up in my cot and glanced at Jo. Her stringy mop of red hair covered her face and I listened to the sound of her breathing when the sheer magnitude of Sgt. Green’s death hit me like a brick thrown in anger through a shop window: I could no longer defer to an adult’s wisdom. None of us could – we just didn’t have that luxury anymore.
“We’re going to figure something out, Jo,” I whispered as I climbed out of my cot and grabbed my flashlight. I snuck out of our room and crossed the hallway into what was Sgt. Green’s billet. On the floor across the room was a half open sleeping bag on an air mattress. His helmet and fighting gear was laid out neatly next to his ruck sack, and it looked like he’d just crawled out of bed to take a leak and would return minutes later. Only that wasn’t going to happen.
I shuffled across the room, placing my flashlight on the floor next to his gear.
“He must have had a plan,” I said quietly as I started fishing through his kit. I found his trusty field message pad stuffed in a pocket of his webbing and started flipping through the pages. There was a list of everyone’s names dating back to Day Zero, most with a line struck through them. I saw a detailed list of rations from the company stores along with a count of ammunition, each one listed by its NATO nomenclature.
I tossed the pad onto the sleeping bag and pulled out Sgt. Green’s junior general kit, an olive drab cotton duck covered portfolio containing maps, plastic coated sheets to write on and china markers. I tore open the Velcro fastener with a loud rip and flipped through the pages. There was a detailed drawing of potential routes of access away from the armory along with a series of scenarios he’d written under the heading THREAT ASSESSMENT: SIMMONS – READ THIS.
I arched my eyebrows and flashed my light on the page.
Simmons:
Congratulations, you found my OPS kit and that means I’ve bought the farm so guess what, kid? You’re in charge now. Before you start protesting that someone else should take command of what’s left of the King’s Own, dig through my ruck sack and look for the ball peen hammer. It’s there for you to club yourself in the head with for being a moron. I picked you as my 2IC because you’ve got a tactical mind and you get shit done. More importantly, I chose you because out of all the survivors of the King’s Own, you have the most to lose and by that I’m talking about little Jo. Your kid sister is going to be the catalyst for a hell of a lot of tough decisions. Because of her, you’ll make the hard choices – the ones that twist your stomach into knots because you know deep down inside you’re ordering someone to their death or to take a life. That’s the burden of leadership, kid. It’s not pretty, but there it is.
We can’t stay here. By my estimation, we’ve got enough fresh water to last us until Christmas and after that we’re fucked big time. So we have to conduct a breakout, got it? You have to get out of the city and then after that it’ll be a matter of finding a secure position with a reliable source of fresh water and game for you to hunt because those rations aren’t going to last forever either.
On the following pages you’ll find a detailed plan. I’ve given it an operational name for now – call it PLAN Z.
We have two fully functional fighting vehicles and enough Jerry cans of diesel to refill the tanks once and that’s it. The quick and dirty is pretty basic: use both APC’s to break out of the armory and head out of the city. West – preferably to the mountains where there’s lots of game and hundreds of streams with fresh water that will keep you all going. You’ll have a hell of a fight on your hands just getting out of the downtown core and any number of things can go wrong. The carriers are old but serviceable. They each have a cruising range of about 700 KMS in optimal conditions. Use them until your fuel runs dry and depending on where you’ve made it to, you’ll have to scrounge for diesel. You might have to abandon them, which would be a shame because once the combat locks on each carrier are engaged; nothing can get you so they’ll be a solid last line of defense. They’re the Alamo.
You could all pile into one carrier but I recommend taking both because if one breaks down you’ve got spare parts. You should split the team into two squads, each with a squad leader and a 2IC. Kate Dawson should be your second and Pam Cruze should take the other carrier. Sid Toomey will give you push back and you’ll need that for sober second thought. Doug Manybears and Kenny Howard are both qualified drivers and Mel Dixon is a damned fine shot not to mention being machine gun qualified. Put her in the turret of one carrier and Toomey in the other. Once you’re out of the city, keep an eye on your fuel levels and try to stay on relatively even ground because you can’t afford to throw a shock absorber or blow a tire. Fix a toboggan and tent group onto each carrier because you’ll need them for shelter when the snow flies. It’s the middle of October right now, who knows when the snow will hit us. Pack as much naphtha as you can for the stoves and lanterns.
Pack light and medium anti-armor weapons, a 60 MM mortar for each carrier as well as rounds to spare. Bring pyro. Para-flares and trip flares. You’ll need smoke for the dischargers on each vehicle and bring M1 frag grenades – there are five cases in the company stores.
I wish I could offer you something better than this. Maybe light at the end of the tunnel or a beacon of hope, but I got nothing, kid. I don’t know what caused Day Zero and at this point I don’t want you or anyone else wasting a minute thinking about the why’s of your situation. The only thing that matters is staying alive. Now, a warning: once you’re on the road the creeps aren’t going to be the only threat. You can deal with creeps if you keep your wits about you. The real danger will be other survivors. They’ll do whatever it takes to get your food, fuel and weapons. They’ll drag you into the weeds and cut your throat just for the boots on your feet, got it? Trust only in the team and if you come into armed conflict with survivors, wipe them the fuck out and take their shit because that’s what they’ll be planning on doing to you.
I’ll close off this letter for now. I’m sorry about your mother, kid. She hit the wall hard and couldn’t deal so try not to hate her for what she did. Take that anger you’ve got bottled up inside and put it to good use – by fighting to survive.
Soldier on, troop.
I started at the letter as a wave of nausea threatened to flatten me.
Wipe them the fuck out?
Kill other survivors? Holy shit!
Sgt. Green had never talked to me about breaking out of the armory but I knew him well enough to know that he’d have simply ordered both APC’s to be loaded with gear and he’d have delivered orders to everyone with the expectation that our team would follow his plan to the letter. He was a regular forces infantry sergeant – the mere fact that he wore three chevrons on his sleeves absolutely demanded obedience. But how the hell could I even hope to get the team to follow me in the same way they did with Green? I wasn’t even the oldest member of the King’s Own. I didn’t have enough time in to command the tiniest amount of respect and obedience from everyone else. And what if I presented his plan and just read the letter to everyone? How would Sid Toomey react to Sgt. Green appointing me as his successor?
Cruze said everyone would follow me, and maybe she was right. But follow me to where? Green said head to the mountains but what if we actually managed to break out of the city and headed to Sanctuary Base? If the place was creep-free, they must have implemented some damned good security procedures to deal with them. Or maybe their location was secluded enough that creeps hadn’t stumbled onto the place yet.
“Well we’re fucked if we do and fucked if we don’t, aren’t we, Sarge?” I said to the letter. “But you’re right. We’re going to die if we stay here.”
I stood up and grabbed my flashlight. I glanced at my watch, it was 01:15: a little more than five hours until the broadcast. Cruze was trying to figure out the location of whoever sent the message and I decided that come hell or high water, in the next twelve hours we’d make a decision. Whether we headed west or east: the most important thing was to get out of town alive.
Plan Z was Sgt. Green’s plan. Now all I had to do was sell it to the team.
Kate Dawson and Kenny Howard were on sentry. Overhead, a moonless sky only amplified the bleakness of the smoldering cityscape. I longed for the constant hum of traffic or a police car’s siren; any one of those million or more noises that used to be the soundtrack of the city seemed like they never existed at all. Silence was our best defense and when we talked to one another, it was always muted or hushed whispering – if we could have willed ourselves to become invisible, we would have.
Somewhere out there were other survivors. Somewhere people like us were clinging to one another, fighting to see another morning or draw their next breath. I imagined that most would emerge from their hiding places in the same way a mole or a ground squirrel would come out of its den to search for food. Always moving quickly. Always keeping a sharp eye for predators.
Hope probably hadn’t even occurred to other survivors.
I threw the pair a wave as I climbed up the staircase and strode through the tower doors. Kenny was scoping out the area around our position with a set of night vision goggles and Dawson was poking through a foil ration bag with a plastic fork. She was wearing a thick black hooded sweatshirt that hung loosely over her combat pants. Around her waist was an olive drab web belt containing a holster with a 9 mm automatic, a water bottle and the large pouch she kept her first-aid kit stored in. Her auburn hair was tucked underneath a Boston Bruins ball cap, a thick ponytail hanging down onto her shoulders through the back.
“Hey,” I said with a wave. “Anything weird out there tonight?”
Dawson gazed up from her ration pouch and nudged Kenny in the ribs. “I got nothing … what are you seeing, Kenny?”
He pointed to the parking lot of what used to be an office supply shop about a block and a half away. “If you count the pack of feral cats attacking that creep across the road as weird, then yes. Cats are fair game for the living dead so you’d think they’d have high tailed it out of here long ago.”
“Cats are hunters,” Dawson said, shoveling another mouthful of what appeared to be ravioli into her mouth. She glanced up at me. “If feral house cats are attacking the creeps then I’m all for it. You should be in bed, Dave.”
“Go team mittens,” I said with a snort. “Also I can’t sleep so I decided to see how you guys were doing. Anything on the radio?”
“You mean anything from Sanctuary Base,” said Dawson. “We know about it and before you decide to flip out all over Mel, she’d left the radio on short wave and we heard a series of beeps – like someone keying a handset or something. She got all excited because she thought it was this Sanctuary base and so naturally Kenny and me asked her what the hell she was talking about so she told us. You were in the can.”
I made a disapproving grunting sound. If Kenny and Kate knew about the radio broadcast then there wasn’t any point in keeping it under wraps. “Shit … anyone else know about it?”
“Sid and Doug are asleep until their shift at 0400,” said Kenny. “We should tell them so we can figure out our next move. It’s something, right?”
Kenny Howard had a shock of bright red hair on top of his head that seemed to glow in the darkness. The pale skin on his face was dotted with freckles that climbed down from his cheeks onto his skinny neck. He was wearing an army issue sweater with rolled-up sleeves and a pair of combat pants worn away at the knees. His carbine was slung over his right shoulder and there was a plastic coffee cup dangling from a belt loop on his waist. On his right forearm was a homemade tattoo that Mel had done for him using the ink from a Bic pen and a sewing needle. It was comprised of two words done in a reasonably fancy font and wasn’t half bad for an amateur job: “Still Alive”.
“Yeah, it’s something,” I answered. “I told Cruze – she’s in the OPS room trying to see if she can find the place on a map.”
The fire in the parking compound had died down to little more than a pile of glowing embers drifting into the air. A pair of creeps pressed against the fence, their gaping mouths hanging loosely as if on hinges. Two creeps didn’t pose a threat but at least four times a week, groups of up to ten threatened to push the fence down so we’d launch a smoke grenade into the abandoned lot behind the armory using a makeshift slingshot and the monsters would stumble toward the billowing blue or red smoke. Two months ago, we reinforced the perimeter of the fence line with rolls of double concertina razor wire. It was Sgt. Green’s idea, because if the fence ever did come down the monsters would wind up snagged in the wire buying us time to muster our defenses. Not that it would have mattered much because if the creeps did get through, it would be due to a massive swarming of hundreds that we’d have less than no chance of killing without taking major casualties of our own.
Dawson opened her vacuum bottle and poured a cup of coffee into her plastic cup. She handed it to me and I took a swig. “We’re going to have to reorganize the team,” she said as she screwed the cap back on and stuffed the bottle into a thermal sleeve.
“Or what’s left of the team,” added Kenny. “Kind of timely that broadcast came through what with Sgt. Green winding up getting killed. It’s time to get the hell out of the city.”
“Maybe,” I said, handing the cup back to Dawson.
“Maybe?”
Kenny spun around and looked at me like I’d taken leave of my senses. “There were fifty of us six months ago and there are eight of us left now. If we’d blown out of town at the start of this shit, we could have headed for the country – or maybe linked up with other military elements.”
Dawson raised a hand. “Just chill, Kenny. What we should have done then doesn’t matter anymore. What we do next is the most important decision we’re ever going to make. I think everyone would agree that we’re going to have to make a break for it.”
I grabbed the night vision goggles from Kenny and slipped them over my eyes. I didn’t want to respond to Dawson’s statement, not because I disagreed with her, but because if we were going to conduct a breakout then it would have to be a single plan that everyone could get behind. We couldn’t afford to get into a pissing match between personalities, because when you’re at war, the tactics and decisions can’t be negotiation points. And there was still a decision to be made that loomed large: go west and take our chances in the mountains or head toward a place called Sanctuary Base that we knew nothing about.
I scanned a dark alley about two hundred feet from our position and spotted a creep feasting on what looked like a large rat. Another creep stumbled out of the shadows and lumbered up the alley when another pair of feral cats launched themselves at the creature’s head with two deafening screeches. The monster clawed at its face in vain and tripped over an overturned garbage can, landing hard on its back.
“I agree with Kate,” I said, handing the goggles back to Kenny.
“On getting out of town?” he replied.
“About feral cats being on our side,” I said.
“What’s the plan?” the pair asked impatiently. My cat joke didn’t even register.
I took a deep breath and said, “We’re going to get out of here. But first we need to listen to the next broadcast, so we’re in a holding pattern. We can’t contact them on this radio; the range is only a few miles. We need a base station for that and the one in the armory needs electricity.”
“You’re thinking we should head there?” asked Kenny.
I shrugged. “Maybe once we know where they are – but we need to look at other places we can take refuge. We have to be careful because we know absolutely nothing about those people yet.”
Dawson sipped at her coffee and threw me a wary look. “It could also be a set-up. An invitation for other survivors to get themselves killed while the people at Sanctuary Base take their supplies.”
I thought of Sgt. Green’s cryptic warning about other survivors and shuddered. “You’re not wrong about that, Kate.”
There was a clattering sound from the park behind the armory and the pair of creeps at the chain link fence slowly canted their heads in the sound’s direction and then stumbled off into the darkness.
Dawson took another swig of coffee. “You’re going to be in charge then?”
I handed Kenny the night vision goggles which he promptly slipped onto his head. My eyes drifted from the scene in the alley to Kenny and then over to Dawson. “Is that a request or an assumption?”
“More of a statement of fact,” said Dawson. “If you want, I mean.”
I looked a Kenny. “What do you think?”
He adjusted the focus on the goggles and stared out into the night. “Better you than me, brother. At this point I’d even take Dawson in charge if she can get us the fuck out of the city alive.”
“Thanks a lot, Kenny,” she said sourly.
I allowed myself a mild chuckle and then gazed up at the night sky. The city had been blanketed by cloud cover day or night for months – it was as if the sun, the moon and the stars had turned their backs on us.
“Snow will be hitting us soon,” I said glumly. “If we’re going to make a move, we have a narrow window of opportunity. We need to think about supplies for when we get out of here.”
“In the morning I’ll check on the tent groups and the toboggans then,” said Kenny.
“Check on the carriers, too,” I suggested. “Maybe do a fitness inspection and see if there’s anything we need to fix.”
Kenny’s lips arched up into a grin. “You’re thinking we use both APC’s to break out of here, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Something like that – I’m going to try and get some sleep.”
Dawson put a hand on my chest. “Dave … do you actually
want
to be in charge?”
I looked down at her hand and sighed heavily, “I want to protect Jo. And if that means that I have to hatch a plan to get out of the city to protect her, then I’m going to do it. Sanctuary Base will be broadcasting again at 06:30 – might as well inform Sid and Doug when they go on sentry.”
“And then what?” she asked.
I started walking toward the doors and the stairwell. “I’m still trying to figure that one out.”