“How old are you?” I asked.
“Seventeen.”
“Probably has worse language than me.”
“Dad was in the Navy,” Craig said and looked away.
“I’m in the Navy too. It’s cool. What did your Dad do?”
“Something with weapons systems.”
“Good for him. I bet he had air conditioning.” I thought of spending hours and hours in the hundred-degree engine room.
“Shh.” Roz shot me a look.
I sighed and patted Craig’s hand.
“Sorry, man. I hope your Dad’s okay.”
“Me too,” he said.
I sighed and slipped my logbook out of the backpack that Christy had retrieved from the house, then dug around until I found a beat up pen.
Joel had pulled his NYFD hat over his eyes and snored gently. He was so quiet I couldn’t even hear him over the moans of the dead below. How did he sleep in this living hell?
“What’s that?” Craig asked me.
“The only thing keeping me sane,” I said and set pen to paper to write about how we had escaped the base.
15:10 hours approximate
Location: Remains of San Diego Naval Base, San Diego CA
Weapons:
2 fully automatic assault rifles
Enough magazines to make them count
1 Colt 1911 .45
22 Rounds of .45 ammo
1 Heckler and Koch MP5-N sub machine gun
1 large knife
1 very large wrench
I’ve heard a lot of situations described as clusterfucks. I’ve used the term a number of times myself. Generally the word had a lot of meanings, but this was the best example I’d come across yet.
We’d been back on the base for a few hours and all we’d managed to do was run, hide, and shoot a bunch of people that were acting crazed. I know now it was the damn virus that caused the zombie apocalypse but I didn’t know it then. If I’d had any clue, I might have done the smart thing and jumped back into the ocean, then would’ve swam until my legs gave out. With any luck, a killer whale would choke on my sorry white ass.
We’d just run from a barricade that covered multiple streets. There were dead all over the fucking place and it seemed like every one of them had a bead on us. Joel Kelly moved out on point while Reynolds brought up the rear. I stayed in the middle and tried not to trip on anything. Joel used fancy hand signals; after a while, I thought I’d caught on and knew when to stop, when to crouch, when to crawl, and when to haul ass like I was running from a fire.
We came to another cross street that used to lead to a few fast food restaurants. Bodies on the ground. So many bodies. We crouched at the corner of a building and a street missing a signpost. The whole thing had been run over and was tangled in a heap of twisted metal that used to be car. Now that car was a burned out husk filled with bodies. Must have been a family of six. They were all dead, but still smoking. I gagged at the smell.
Joel grabbed the front of my jump suit and dragged me away.
We rounded a corner and ran smack into a band of them. They turned white eyes on us and commenced with snarling and moaning like a bunch of wild animals. Reynolds shot the nearest one in the chest and then his rifle jammed. Joel tapped him on the shoulder, so he fell back while Joel provided covering fire.
Reynolds worked his gun and then came up shooting. He moved backwards as Kelly also fell back, and then we were on the run again.
We dove into what used to be a fast food restaurant. The place was deserted and trash had been hauled out and scattered all over the floor. A bag of sesame seed buns was split open but covered in blood. I was so hungry I considered rooting around until I found one that hadn’t been splattered.
“Think they have food here?”
“Fuck if I know. Sweep the kitchen.” Joel nodded at Reynolds.
Joel went low but peeked out a window. The others had been broken out so he avoided those. I stayed next to him while Reynolds moved into the other room. He came back a few seconds later and shook his head.
Joel moved toward him but Reynolds shook his head once again.
“Shit,” Joel said and followed Reynolds.
“What?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
“You really don’t,” Reynolds said and moved ahead.
“I want to go on record as saying I hate this.”
“Yeah, yeah. Quit whining and man up so we can get away from this hellhole.”
“Think the cities any better?” I asked.
“Can it be worse?”
He had a point.
We moved out of the building and slid past a small store next door. The entire front had been shot to hell. There was a pile of bodies out front and most didn’t twitch. Joel scouted and then held out his hand before crossing in front of it.
“Friendlies!” he said in a low voice. He looked back at us once and then dashed across the field of fire of whoever might be manning a gun inside.
No one shot at him, so we stayed low and followed.
We sprinted to the end of the street and then paused next to a burned out bus. It was white, but flames had turned the outside into shades of black. Soot stuck to my back when I slammed against it. Something fell out of a smashed window and grabbed my neck.
I dropped and let out a little scream of horror. Joel looked from me to the hand and smirked. I followed his eyes and got a look at my assailant. It was a hand, all right, but it was covered in blackened flesh.
“Fuck this,” I muttered.
Then the hand twitched.
I could have just leapt right out of my skin but managed to hang onto my sanity by a thread. Fingers moved, grasping at nothing, then they went still again.
We pressed on and found ourselves near an administrative building. Shapes moved behind dark windows.
The place looked familiar and I thought it might have been some kind of processing center for those shipping out to new commands.
“Be ready,” Reynolds said.
“Who’s in there?”
“Not sure,” he said. “But they probably aren’t friendly.”
We crouched behind a car and went over our weapons. Joel popped his magazine and checked it while Reynolds did the same. Joel laid out an extra mag and then came up in a crouch.
“If they rush us, shoot the first few, then we move. They aren’t the fastest things, so we should be able to make it across the street.”
“You guys move. I’ll cover,” Reynolds said.
Luckily, we didn’t have to turn the street into a bloodbath.
A pair of guys in green moved out of the building. They had guns like Joel and looked like they knew how to use them. Reynolds looked over the side of the car and then grinned. He whistled once and then put a hand in the air.
The guys snapped to and aimed guns at us. From my vantage point, looking through the remains of a blown out window, I feared they were going to start shooting and ask questions later.
Reynolds held his gun in the air and then rose slowly. Joel did the same.
“Good to see someone’s alive,” one of the guys said.
We moved on the soldiers’ position. Other guys in green filed out of the building. Joel Kelly and Reynolds nodded at them and they nodded back. They went into this weird dance where they looked each other’s gear up and down, then exchanged this and that. I saw at least two magazines swapped out for other magazines. Rounds were checked and counted out. Someone handed Kelly a pack that looked like food. He tossed it to me then took one for himself.
“You guys with the eight?” one of the other soldiers asked.
“We just got here,” Reynolds said.
We’d moved back into the building the guys had just vacated and crouched in the remains of an overturned trashcan. There were quite a few blood splatters but no bodies, for a change. Not even any parts of bodies.