Dumping his tray into the spot reserved for getting them cleaned he went out the door after glancing at the clock on the wall. He still had a couple of hours to kill so decided to walk around the base and check it out. The area the bulk of the people were quartered in currently was actually a moated area in the middle of a peninsula. The moated area had a few roads leading into it. All the bridges except one had been destroyed to keep them from being crossed by the infected if a herd managed to get that far. The one bridge left was wired to explode at the push of a button.

  The bulk of the activity for the base was conducted outside the moated part. For instance, the mess hall was situated right off the road where the one remaining bridge still crossed over the moat. Walking straight out from the mess hall, or galley as the sailors liked to call it, brought him to the bay. To his right was a long stretch of sand and rocks that eventually led back to the mainland. The mainland was far enough away that the infected never really had a reason to come tearing down the beach to get to the settlement. If they did decide to venture up the peninsula then there were covered pits, tall walls, trip wires and all kinds of deadly obstacle course fun for them. The whole area was covered and closely monitored on a CCTV system. That system was the primary source of security for the entire base. Kyler understood that they could see most of Norfolk and the Naval Base from the monitors as well.

  The military hated to see soldiers just sitting around in the barracks relaxing so there were also armed sentries who patrolled the perimeter on a randomized schedule. To his left was a road leading to a large bridge that went over to the mainland. The bridge had been left intact with metal fencing welded across the middle of it to keep out the infected. The bridge was rigged to explode but they hoped to eventually be able to use it to supply the base so hadn’t blown it up yet. The bridge was much closer to the base so there were typically a handful of Zombies on the other side of the barricade trying to get in.

  Kyler walked past an armed soldier who was walking away from a shift of sentry duty up on the bridge. The sentry gave Kyler a quick once over then nodded and kept walking. Kyler walked the perimeter of the base checking out the defenses and taking in the view. On the sheltered side of the base there were rows upon row of docks with a variety of boats tied up at them. Everything from USCG vessels, yachts, small sailboats and your everyday pleasure craft. Easy enough to evacuate the base quickly by water if needed. The ocean side of the base hummed with the crashing of the waves and loud squawks of the gulls. Kyler stopped walking when he came across the first pile of seagulls feasting on a Zombie that’d washed up on the beach. The gulls and vultures hadn’t gone hungry during the apocalypse.

  Snapped back to reality by the grisly scene on the beach he checked his watch. It was past time for him to head back to the parade ground for the training. It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea what the training was for. Assuming it was going to be something about working as a team with the new people he’d be meeting he broke into a fast jog to try to make it there on time. The parade ground was in the middle of the moated area in the middle of the base. The beach he’d ended up on was the furthest possible point from the bridge that crossed the moat to where the parade ground was.

  He was halfway to the parade ground when he remembered he was supposed to bring his gear with him. Cursing under his breath he turned in the direction of the barracks. He was already late when he busted into his room and began collecting the gear he’d assembled earlier. His roommate chose that exact time to return home and get chatty. Kyler shut him up by telling him he was late for training and had to leave right away. The cook knew all about having to be on time so rushed him out the door with the advice to run like crazy.

  Being on time’s a big deal in the military. If you show up late for muster you’re called out as being UA or AWOL. Either of those things can see you standing in front of your commanding officer and explaining why. Punishments range in severity from a verbal reprimand to a dishonorable discharge depending on the circumstances. Timeliness is slightly more important than godliness in the military. One of the reasons ex-military hires have always been so popular is due to the fact that even if they sucked at their job you could at least count on them to show up on time.

  Kyler was well aware of the deep-seated aversion to tardiness that pervaded the military. It made sense. You couldn’t exactly base your attack plans on everyone showing up to confront the enemy force sometime around noon. He jogged onto the parade ground with his pack hanging loosely off his shoulders and his personal arsenal of weapons dangling off him in every direction. Maybe Chief Presly wasn’t a stickler for the whole being on time thing.

  “Look who decided to show up. Drop your gear and get in line. You look like some kind of GI Joe Christmas tree.” Chief Presly said in reference to the weapons dangling off of him like soldier of fortune Christmas tree ornaments. Kyler tossed his pack and extraneous weapons down by the bleachers. He did that as fast as he could then ran over to get in line. There were five other men in the line plus the chief. They’d intentionally kept the team small to be as stealthy as possible. The chief waited until Kyler was standing in the line next to the others before addressing them.

  “Patrol meet Kyler. Kyler meet the patrol. Everyone here’s a volunteer. If we get caught, we’ll all be killed. Probably in a humiliating and extremely painful manner. Let’s try not to get caught. If Kyler’s ready, then maybe we can talk through the plan now. Kyler do you need to take a leak or anything? We can wait a little bit longer for you. It’s just a mission to save thousands of lives.” The chief said sarcastically.

  “I’m good sir.” Kyler answered red faced. It turned out the chief was one of those men who took timeliness very seriously. It made it even worse that Kyler himself was pretty much never late to anything. It’d been drilled into him that showing up late was a form of disrespect. He was the guy who was always ten minutes early to everything.

  “Outstanding. We were waiting on you to begin because I think everyone else here has jumped out of an airplane before. Right?” The chief eyed the group to see if anyone was going to step forward. It was a group of seasoned operators, so he very much doubted any of them weren’t well trained. The only person in the line without at least a decade of field experience was Kyler.

  “I haven’t sir.” Kyler stated emphatically. He wanted to make sure that point was well understood before he found himself with a parachute strapped to his back and an open door in front of him. It suddenly made a lot more sense to him why Hartfield and Presly assumed they could find the Senators hide away so quickly. He’d been wondering how they were supposed to get to Georgia through all the enemy troops being sent up from there. Especially if they were supposed to find the Senator in time for assassinating him to actually do any good.

  “Thank you, Kyler. We assumed that was probably the case. You’ll be tandem diving with Ritz. He’s got the most experience at HALO jumps.”

  “I’ve done it twice chief.” Ritz reminded the chief.

  “That’s two more times than the rest of us.” Presly said quickly. “No worries. We’ve got about two hours before we leave. That should be plenty of time for you to give us a lesson.”

  “You sure we just shouldn’t do a regular jump chief? Might make more sense to do something we’re all familiar with.” A stocky looking guy with a huge beard asked.

  “Sorry. You’re going to have to shave that raccoon off your face. You need a good seal for the oxygen mask.” Ritz said glancing over at the man. From the comfortable way he insulted the guy Kyler could tell they must know one another. Of course, with men like this camaraderie was easy since they all came from a similar military background. The number of elite operators in the world was small enough that it was very possible they did already know one another.

  For the next hour Ritz covered the theory and techniques they’d need to survive a HALO jump. It turned out there were multiple ways one could die making this kind of jump. Kyler was kind of relieve
d all he really had to do was hug Ritz and not forget to breathe. Then when he hit the ground, he was supposed to try not to break his legs. His fear was partially averted by the calm professionalism of the men around him. They all radiated a quiet competence once you got past the dark humor and juvenile attempts at creative insults.

  Kyler found himself boarding a plane way too soon. They’d taken a boat across the bay to a landing area where they’d hiked another mile to a hole in a fence around an airstrip. One of the reasons for them waiting to leave at night was that the Zombies were less likely to walk onto the airstrip at night. Infrared cameras hooked up around the field would let the guards know if any infected did happen to show up. Once the guards spotted any infected, they would take them out as quietly as possible to avoid attracting others.

  They were flying at night to avoid being spotted when they jumped. They’d be flying high to avoid being spotted on radar and then parachuting down into a deserted forest. Kyler was busy trying to wrap his head around the need to breathe pure oxygen ahead of time to avoid getting the bends. Ritz had used the word ‘hypoxia’ like twelve times when he’d been conducting the training. Kyler still wasn’t sure what hypoxia was, but he was positive he didn’t want it.

  In no time at all the cargo hatch at the back of the plane was being lowered. Kyler found himself strapped to a strange man he’d just met on the verge of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. If the chief had seriously been trying to talk him out of this mission, he should’ve brought up the whole death jump thing earlier. Kyler felt his body stiffening up. Fear paralyzed him. Ritz must’ve sensed the fear.

  “Hey man!” Ritz shouted over the sound of the rushing wind. “Loosen up! You only have to be brave for like five seconds. Once we’re out that door the rest is easy. I guarantee we’ll get to the ground one way or another! It’s pretty much impossible to miss!”

  Kyler didn’t draw a lot of comfort from those words. He tried to focus on his breathing to prep for Ritz dragging him out the open door into the freezing night air. He had no idea how they were going to find the Senator once they hit the ground. One thing at a time though. First, he needed to survive the jump. Once he was safely on the ground, he could worry about what to do next on this really bad version of mission impossible.

  Chapter 5: Island Life

  Frank walked over to where they were eating lunch at. He stood at the end of the table politely holding a bottled water and a paper plate with a couple of sandwiches on it until Randy asked if he’d like to sit with them. Frank sat down and washed down a bite of his sandwich with water before saying anything.

  “Janet let me know you guys are definitely going to be joining us. We’re lucky to have you aboard. Just so you know it may be a little longer than normal before you can be shipped off to a settlement. We have to wait out the Zombie Spring Break on our local beaches.” Frank said smiling.

  “What about the Brotherhood pushing up this way?” Randy asked.

  “Yeah. That’s definitely not a good thing. We’ll be stuck between a rock and a hard place if they decide to show up while we’re sitting on an island surrounded by the infected. We don’t have any comms here, so we’re pretty much cutoff from the world until we either get the warehouse back or head over to the fallback base. I’m not prepared to abandon this warehouse quite yet.” Frank answered.

  They ate in an uncomfortable silence after that. Randy and Kelly had plenty more questions, but they weren’t suitable to ask in front of the children. They’d already learned the man who’d attacked Randy had died from the gunshot wounds. He’d been the older brother of the man who’d stayed with Randy on the island to try and track down the kids. The two men who’d had his back were both friends of the man. The one who hadn’t done anything was free. The one who’d pulled his gun on them was lying face down in a pit with his hands and legs tie wrapped behind him while Frank decided what to do with him. He’d promised Randy they wouldn’t be letting the man free until Randy and his family had left the island at the earliest. There was a very real chance Frank may just have him tossed in the lake with his hands and feet tie wrapped together. No one appreciated a man pulling a weapon on a couple of teenaged girls who were defending their parents.

  Janet had shown up to meet with them as promised. The discussion had been much less of a time sales pitch and more of an education on recent history in the area. She’d told them all about how the settlements had come into being following the collapse of society from the pandemic. She’d explained how the initial efforts of the military to gather everyone together and protect them had backfired. They all felt a collective shiver at the thought of being in a single place with thousands of other people around you. They all knew what happened in that kind of situation. It’d happened repetitively in the beginning. Caitlyn and Myriah both had flashbacks to a church in Oviedo where they’d taken their first steps on the journey into this madness.

  The civilian population had been gathered into large fortified sections of the towns and cities. Armed guards had patrolled the walls shooting any infected who got close. That approach had failed horribly. Tens of thousands of people who’d survived the first few weeks of the dying times had been ripped apart once they made it to one of these bases. The Zombies had always come. They came in numbers too great to be stopped by soldiers with automatic weapons. Ammunition stockpiles that’d seemed unlimited ran out as wave after wave of screaming Zombies ran headfirst into the grinder of fully automatic weapons fire to get at the humans. Every base had eventually been overwhelmed. Only a few people out of the thousands who’d huddled together for safety actually surviving the onslaughts.

  The ones who survived the early days learned from those mistakes. They formed the settlements. The settlements were a loose network of small nomadic villages consisting of no more than forty people per site. The number forty had been arrived at by trial and error. It was the largest gathering of people that didn’t seem like it immediately attracted the infected. They coupled the small groups of survivors with a rigid lifestyle to ensure the best chances for survival. Fencing, extreme rules around making noise, and specific roles for each of the forty people helped make them self-sufficient while still linking them to something bigger.

  The settlements were spread out around Virginia and North Carolina. They typically tried to setup each settlement with its own towns to loot and enough room to establish new camps as needed. The groups had to be mobile to survive. They moved to different camps at different times of the year to keep from being in one place for too long. Being in one place for too long was a sure way to attract the infected.

  This way of living had grown to hundreds of settlements that were protected by roving bands of warriors known as rovers. The rovers were armed patrols circulating around the settlements and providing for trade and assistance as needed. The rovers reported back to a mysterious place known as the command center or HQ depending on who you talked to. The men in charge of all of this were the ones who’d cobbled it altogether to begin with. A mix of civilian and military leaders who periodically issued new rules after getting them approved by a representative vote from the settlements.

  Everything had been moving along like clockwork until the attacks began. Snipers and bands of vigilantes from the south had started showing up and taking out entire settlements. A single sniper would setup and shoot a few people then disappear. The noise from the rifle shots would summon an army of the infected to instigate a massacre. Additional groups of specialized rovers had been added into the rotation to combat this threat to the settlements. Janet assured them that the mayors of the settlements were working with the roving patrols to come up with new ways to combat these threats. Randy remembered Kyler telling him these attacks had been the reason they’d sent him south in the first place.

  Kelly had asked Janet if one of those ideas was for them all to sail away on an aircraft carrier to a land that wasn’t plagued by the infected. Glancing around nervously Janet had just answered that Kelly
was very well informed but that wasn’t something they were really discussing out loud quite yet. At least not out here so close to the people advancing from the south. She did tell them with a couple of winks that the settlement they’d be sent to was very close to a large naval base. On top of that she mentioned that the number of settlements in North Carolina may have very recently been significantly reduced.

  With a plan in place that held an actual future they could look forward to they were all feeling a little bit better about life. They left the mess hall to go sit by the lake and let the kids splash around in the water. Sitting beside the lake in a couple of chairs that’d been dragged down from the rental shop Randy felt like everything was finally working itself out. He’d always tried to stay optimistic for the kids. They were the reason he drove himself so hard.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Kelly asked him. She was nursing a red solo cup filled to the brim with warm red Kool-Aid. Not the most exciting tropical drink but way better than sipping lake water and hoping it didn’t kill you.