"Hey, Boss." Carol came forward into The Traveler's cab, with a clipboard in her hand. She had been working to inventory our supplies since we had left Fairfax, Virginia two weeks earlier. We had raided a couple of small stores along the way and the storage bins in the rear trailer were full. "I have finished the inventory, and other than medicines we are pretty well stocked." She paused for a moment as she handed me the clipboard. "I was thinking. We have been hearing about forted communities that are surviving. We could trade things we scavenge for things they have, like fresh vegetables."
I smiled at Carol. "I had been thinking along the same lines. There has been some CB radio traffic from one such community somewhere outside Raleigh, North Carolina. I was hoping to maybe try to do some trading with them as we passed through." Looking at the inventory sheets Carol had handed me, I agreed with her assessment. If we could find medicines, I knew they would be worth their weight in gold to the outposts - not that gold had any real value these days.
"Regina, keep your eyes open for a billboard advertising a drugstore or a drugstore sign. If we can find an Eckerds or CVS and raid the pharmacy, it would top our supplies off." Regina nodded as she concentrated on driving the big rig. The dual armored trailers gave it a heavy cumbersome feel which coupled with all the cars she had to push out of the way to make progress kept her attention on the road.
Several miles and a couple of hours later, we could see a sign ahead for a Walgreen's. Since it was just about lunchtime, it would take us about an hour to get to the store. That gave us all afternoon to see what we could salvage.
As we pulled off the interstate, a Walgreen's Drug Store could be seen just down the road. "Guys, this is as close as I can get," Regina called out. She had parked in the middle of the road with a clear path into the parking lots on either side. That would give her room to maneuver the big rig if things went bad.
"Tito, Maurice, Carol, Sam, Peter! Gear up. We are going to see what that drug store has for us." Each member of the team grabbed his or her gear and started getting ready. The gear was based on what each person had found during his or her original escape and was comfortable with. One day, I hoped we would find a weapons cache large enough to outfit everyone with the same gear. We had hit several National Guard and Police armories, but most had been emptied when the groups were called out to help with the riots that broke out in the last days.
As we moved down the road, we formed a loose line. "Tito, cover our rear. Maurice, you take the right, Sam take the left side. Peter, you're out front with me. Keep a watch, I don't want to get caught in the open." The team shook out and started covering their assigned areas. I had a rudimentary knowledge of military tactics, but I had been working the team the best I could since I knew that we would need that type of tactical professionalism if we were going to survive.
"Traveler, we have made it to the store." Regina's reply came back quickly over the radio. We had made it to the doors of the drug store without encountering the dead. I hoped our luck would hold. The sliding glass doors where not locked, and easily slid apart when Sam forced the pry bar between them.
Inside the Walgreen's was dark. We could not see any motion in the gloom, but the high displays between the aisles meant you could not see too far anyway. "Peter, Sam, Maurice... You clear across the front and come down the far side. Carol, Tito ... You are with me." Slowly we made our way into the store. Like most Walgreen's, the store was constructed with a register at the front, cosmetics down the near side, and groceries on the far side. The pharmacy was located in the far back corner.
As we pushed down the cosmetics side of the store, Carol stopped me with her hand on my arm. She pointed out one of the dead, a young girl in the remnants of a Walgreen's smock. She was inside the four short walls of the cosmetic's counter and stumbled from side to side. A quick shot from my silenced Beretta to the side of the dead girl's head ended her suffering.
As we moved through the store towards the back, we ran into no other dead. I did not hear any gunfire from the rest of the team, so anything they ran into they were able to handle with the silenced pistol Maurice carried. As we reached the back wall, I could see the beams of light from the other group's flashlights. Moving along the back wall, we met just outside the pharmacy. "Carol, take Tito and Sam with you. Start raiding the pharmacy. Antibiotics, painkillers, and such come first. Peter, start raiding the first aid aisle. Bandages, ointments, and other useful things come first. Maurice and I will provide security. Let's move folks!"
While the first aid aisle of the Walgreen's had been ransacked, the pharmacy was an untouched treasure trove. Whoever had raided this Walgreen's had not been able to get through the locked door of the pharmacy. Sam forced the pry bar between the door and jam. When Maurice and I lent our weight to the pry bar, the door gave way with a loud crack.
"Carol, you and Maurice go through the shelves and get the drugs that will be the most helpful. I'm thinking antibiotics, painkillers, and that sort of things. But you would know better than I. Sam, provide security." Carol and Maurice, with Sam watching over them, proceeded down the aisles of the pharmacy. Almost immediately, I could hear boxes, bags, and bottles being dropped into the large bags they were carrying.
"Looks like we have everything worthwhile, Boss." Maurice could drag the word boss out to almost 10 syllables and give it a definite sarcastic tone. We had picked up Maurice just outside of Petersburg, Virginia. We had cut across to Interstate 85 from Interstate 95. This would lead us to Charlotte, North Carolina, which was the destination I was pushing toward. Standing six and a half feet tall and packing almost three hundred pounds of muscle, he was a dominating presence, but actually a very quiet and introverted person. He had worked for the city of Petersburg driving city buses, and when the end came, he used his bus to escape. While he would not talk about his past prior to being a bus driver, he was very proficient with firearms and well versed in small team military tactics. An old tattoo faded into his upper arm, made me believe that his past included a stint in some army's special forces. While he acted as our backup driver, he would always find some reason not to act as a team leader when I split the crew into teams for a job.
"Alright, everyone lets move out." With Sam leading the way, we moved through the store and towards the front door. The team fell into a strung out line with Carol and Maurice in the center. They both had heavy bags of drugs slung over their shoulders.
"Fall back into the store," I whispered to the team. As we had left the Walgreen's, we found ourselves facing a large crowd of the dead moving between the road where The Traveler was parked and our location. Unfortunately, we had attracted the attention of the dead and the crowd was moving towards us.
A quick burst dropped the first of the walking dead but they continued to shamble towards us. We moved back into the store, working towards the back and hopefully a rear entrance. At least we could use the rear office space to fort up and hold off the dead, momentarily.
"Get Inside!" I yelled at the team. The oncoming dead where pushing through the aisles towards us as the team moved through the storeroom doors back into the hallway beyond. We kept hammering them with fire from our personal weapons. Once we had all passed through the doors, I jammed a broom through the door handle to keep it from opening. "Peter, rearguard!" At the far end of the short hallway was a doorway that led to the storeroom. On the far side of the storeroom, the metal door to the old cold locker could be seen.
"Sam, what have we got?" I had joined Peter in the hallway as rearguard. We could hear the dead as they crashed through the store and began to pound on the closed hallway door.
"Sir, this is a good hold point." Sam replied. "They will bottleneck as they come down the hall and we can thin them out some." He was stuffing shells into the Remington 870 shotgun as he spoke. "If it looks like they're gonna overrun us, we can pull back into the freezer."
"Alright, lets move these crates across the door for cover." Looking at the contents of the storeroom, we could build a fairly defendable area. Everyone stood around looking shell-shocked, surprised at the situation. While we had had a few close calls since the day the dead started walking, we had never been trapped like this. "Let's move the goddamn crates people!"
The team dragged the crates and boxes into a semi-circle in front of the freezer door. We could hear the dead hammering against the door at the store end of the hallway.
"Tell me you remembered to bring them?" Peter grinned at my question. He pulled a pair of improvised explosives from his bag and handed me one. "One ... two ... three!" We pulled the strikers and threw the explosive charges down the hall into the oncoming dead. I slammed the storeroom door behind us, and Peter pushed a heavy crate across the doorway. The improvised explosives detonated, shaking dust from the ceiling.
Everyone took positions behind the crates and readied their personal weapons. We were carrying a hodgepodge of National Guard M16 Rifles, SWAT H&K MP5 submachine guns, and 12 gauge shotguns. "You really think any of us is gonna get thru this?" Tito asked me with a smile.
Looking at my team, I saw a lot of scared but determined faces. "Well, I might!" I quipped. I was going to get my team out of this if at all possible.
We could hear the dead beating against the door and the low grumbling growl they made. With a scream, Carol threw down her shotgun and began to cry as she curled up in the corner. The past couple of months were proving too much for her.
"Well, she picked a hell of a time to go weepy on us," Tito complained. Moving over to Carol, he began to whisper to her, trying to calm her down.
With a crash, the door gave away, but the crate held it shut. "Hold your fire. Tito and I will take the first wave. You get any that get too close. Once we run dry; Maurice and Peter move up and cover us while we reload."
The crashing of the dead against the door finally moved the crate far enough that one of the dead pushed through. The old man dressed in plaid flannel with half his face eaten off pushed his upper body through the gap, only to be stopped by Tito with a single shot from his M16. The dead behind the old man kept pushing through. Tito and I continued to kill them with well-placed single shots. But the dead kept pushing forward, sliding the crate further and further away from the door.
"Shit!" The crate finally slid out of the way and the dead came pouring through the doorway. Tito and I kept up a disciplined hail of fire, killing them as fast as we could. It was not going to be long before we ran out of ammo and the others would have to cover for us.
"Reload!" Tito yelled. Maurice and Peter had been waiting and began to fire as we withdrew to reload. One of the dead rose up alongside of me just as I was slamming another magazine home. I jammed the butt of my M16 into its maw and tried to keep it off of me. Sam shoved his shotgun up between us and fired at point blank range, removing the dead man's head and my sense of hearing.
"Fall back into the freezer," I yelled. Our weapons reloaded, Tito and had I joined our fire to that of Maurice, Peter, and the rest of the team. But the dead continued to push forward. But in order to get out of here, we would need and exit. A sudden thought occurred to me. "Sam, bring me the explosives!"
Setting the charge against the outside wall, I moved back towards the freezer unit. The fire from the rest of the team kept the dead pushed back enough for me to make it to the door. Slamming it shut behind me, I continued to keep count under my breath. "Eight... Seven... Six..." When I had reached the count of two, the explosion of the charge I had set rocked the freezer. Shrapnel pelted the door, but nothing came through.
Nodding to Tito, he threw the freezer door open. Amid the blood and body parts, one of the dead stood in the middle of the room with both its arms blown off. A quick burst from my MP5 to the head finished it off. Moving quickly, the team made for the hole that the explosion had blown in the wall. Tito, Peter, and I formed a firing line, as new dead tried to push into the room from the hallway.
The team made it outside into the open. But as the three of us pulled back through the hole I had blown in the wall, one of the dead slipped through and attacked Peter. The old woman's corpse wrapped one arm around his neck and tried to bite through his jacket into his shoulder. Normally, that would have worked, but the zombie's lack of teeth meant that she could not penetrate the leather. But her weight bore Peter to the ground where he was attacked and bitten by more zombies.
"Come on, there is nothing you can do for him now!" yelled Tito as he pulled me out of the store into the open.
"Yes, there is," I replied as I fire a single shot between Peter's eyes, ending his pain and suffering. Even as Peter's dying screams faded, the dead were hit with fire from outside the store. "Pour it into them!" I yelled at the rest of the team. The team intensified its fire on the dead trying to get through the makeshift barricade. Among the sharp reports of rifles, you could hear the deeper booms of Carol and Sam's shotguns.
After a few tense moments that seemed like an eternity, the fire from outside ceased. We had already stopped shooting as all of the walking dead inside had been put down permanently. Grabbing our gear and the duffel bags of drugs, we quickly moved towards the front of the store, fully prepared to board The Traveler and get out of here.
"What the hell?" I came to a sudden stop just as I came around the front corner of the Walgreens. Instead of finding The Traveler and the rest of my team, our rescuers were a group of men, clad in black fatigues and carrying M16 rifles. Having my rifle slung and staring into the barrels of theirs, I slowly raised my hands. "Hi!"
"Lay down your arms." The order came from the largest of the guards. I could not see anything that marked him as the leader, but then again I wore nothing that marked me as well.
"Listen, we don't want any trouble," I started. I had the feeling that I was not going to be able to talk our way out of this one. "We just stopped to pick up some medicine and ran into some zombie trouble. Now we will just be moving on." I had started moving away from the guards as I talked, but the sudden tenseness that came when they raised their rifles brought me to a stop.
"Lay down your arms," the leader of the black dressed soldiers repeated. "Now!" My team had been caught flatfooted and we knew it. I eased my rifle off my shoulder and put it on the ground. The two Kimber .45s from my shoulder holsters and the Para Ordnance P14-45 I carried in a thigh holster followed my rifle, along with the machete and sawed-off shotgun from across my back. Behind me I could hear the rest of my team laying down their arms as well.
Escorted by the black-clad guards, we left the Walgreen's and moved down the road. Looking back up the hill, I did not see The Traveler. Regina must have moved it when these folks appeared. Parked in the lot of some type of old diner was a pair of trucks, late model Ford F650 Super Duty by the looks. Each sported an M60 machine gun mounted on the roll bar where someone standing in the bed could fire it over the top of the four-door crew cab.
"Get in," the leader of the guards ordered. Since he had asked so nicely and we were disarmed, we climbed into the back of one of the trucks. A quick drive through the remnants of a small town brought us to a huge brick structure surrounded by fencing. A gate with ramshackle towers on either side could be seen where the road turned into the structure.
As the trucks approached the closed gate, I could make out the details of this outpost. By the looks of it, it had once been a mill of some type, probably textile. The yard around the mill was enclosed in a standard chain link security fence with barbed wire at the top. You could see places where the fence had been patched or reinforced. Due to the slapped together nature of the patches, I figured these were due to attacks by the dead.
"This way," the head enforcer ordered. While they had disarmed us and were rather emphatic about our doing what they wanted, we were still not tied up or treated like prisoners. Following the enforcer, we entered the mill through a heavy steel door. At the end of the corridor was a large room overlooked by a throne upon a raised dais. Well, basically it was a Lazy-Boy covered with a plush purple quilt, but given the way the occupant sat in it, the throne image came across.
"I want to welcome you to my humble abode," boomed the man sitting on the throne. "I am the Baron James Thatcher, and this is Thatcherville." As he spoke, Baron Thatcher stood up from the throne and slowly spun around, his arms extended in a gesture that was suppose to encompass the entire mill. In reality, this guy was definitely playing with a very short deck.
"So my new friends, just who are you and where have you come from?" the Baron asked.
"We are traders and travelers, survivors from farther north. We salvage what we can and trade it for things we need." I answered the fat man, this Baron Thatcher. "We were searching a Walgreens Pharmacy for antibiotics and other useful drugs when we where attacked by the dead. Luckily your soldiers were there to help out."
"Well," the Baron Thatcher started, "since traveler's afoot are bound to be tired and night is coming, you can just stay here." He began to spout commands for the servants to "fluff the down pillows" and "make ready the executive wash rooms". It was painfully obvious that no one paid him any attention. So, just who ran the outpost was still a mystery.
The guards led us to a large room that had probably been a large office space filled with cubicles at one time. Now it was a large suite with two large beds and very gaudy decorations. After we entered, the guard shut the door and I could hear the lock set. Motioning to Sam, I mimicked turning a key and he nodded, touching my ear I looked around. Sam grinned and started talking totally irrelevant stuff with Carol.
"Hey, Carol and I get one of these beds!" When Carol turned to him with surprise, he signed to her in American Sign Language to play along. One of the things we had discovered early on was that both of them knew it, and I had them teach the group. It gave us a way to communicate with the dead being attracted to voices, or in this case without the guards hearing us.
"You got that right, Baby!" Carol replied in a sultry voice. As the two of them carried on about what a night they could have on a real bed, I signed for the rest of the team to scatter out and look around. Tito and Maurice started a drool banter about the "booty" on one of the woman we had seen in the Baron's throne room as they searched one side of the apartment. At one point the discussion got so exaggerated with slang and comments of bad taste that the rest of us where about to die laughing.
A couple of hours later, a knock at the door announced the entrance of the leader of the guards who had been introduced earlier as Heinrich. "The Baron requests your presence at dinner." Somehow, I didn't think the invitation was much more than a thinly disguised order, so we followed him back to the throne room.
Dinner was served by a group of young women. Watching one cringe as she set a plate down in front of Heinrich set my nerves on edge. After dinner, the Baron stood to make an announcement. "Tonight we celebrate the fifteenth birthday of young Jeanna. Sergeant of the Guard Terrance has won the bidding for her." Two guards with a struggling young woman between them entered the throne room from one of the side doors. The Baron walk down from his throne and sensually touched her face as she continued to struggle. "But tonight I take my prerogative." The smile on his face was sickening.
"Shit!" Regina awoke with a start. She had fallen asleep on watch. Since guards from the local outpost had captured James and his team, she had kept The Traveler hidden. But with only Kim and herself to keep watch, it was hard to stay awake all night. Looking out the window, she could see nothing around the outside of the rig. Sitting back in relief, she thought about James and where he might be now.
"What the hell?" Looking out the front window, she could see movement among the buildings surrounding The Traveler. Shambling from the shadows came first one then many more of the dead. Quietly she awoke Kim, but the dead had already started to beat upon the sides of The Traveler.
"What are we gonna do, just the two of us?" The panic in Kim's voice worried Regina. If Kim lost it, Regina would be on her own and The Traveler was too big to be handled alone.
"Come with me." Regina led Kim back to the cab and ordered her to take the passenger side seat and its forward mounted M60 machinegun. "Thin out the dead in front of us and keep them from swarming over the hood." Regina watched Kim's face until she was sure Kim understood. Turning the key, Regina brought the big rig's massive motor to life and hit the switch to turn on all the external lights.
For a second, the dead recoiled from the sudden burst of bright light as the external spotlights came on. Regina used that second to slam the rig into life. The rig slowly started to move, it ponderous weight fighting against the power of the big V-12 diesel engine. The dead crowded the front and would have brought many vehicles to a halt, but the weight and power of The Traveler continued to push forward. Flipping the cover off the switches, Regina fired the first charge from the rig's close defenses. Some 240 12-gauge shotguns shells fired around the rig, scything through the crowded dead and opening a space around The Traveler.
Pushing forward as The Traveler gained speed, Regina kept the RPMs high on the engine. The heavy weight of the armored dual trailer rig squished the dead as it ran over them, while Kim and the front mounted M60 thinned down the crowd ahead. Knowing she would have to reload it later, a time consuming manual task, Regina flipped the second switch to fire the remaining charge on the rig's close defenses. As the assault thinned the dead, Regina drove the rig out of the crowd and pulled away to safety.
At the outpost of Baron Thatcher, we were plotting to escape. "We have got to find a way out of here," I told Sam in a whisper. He nodded his agreement.
"Our ... caretakers ... are running a pretty predictable timetable. I think if we plan it just right we can overpower the guards and have about a 45 minute head start before they realize we are gone." Sam looked thoughtful for a moment, and then he continued. "But I think we might be able to recruit the young girl who brings our food."
When the young girl returned to our suite with the noon meal, Sam flirted with her and pulled her into a conversation. When he mentioned leaving, she almost begged him to take her with us along with her brother. After that it was just a matter of planning our escape. The girl gave us more than enough information on how to get through the complex. The most shocking fact was that when she turned 15 on her next birthday, she could be selected by any of the Baron's advisors or enforcers to act as a concubine. Such legalized rape had Sam in what amounted to a killing fury.
So we made our plan. When the guards checked in just after the evening meal, we would overpower them. Changing into their clothes, Sam and I would escort the rest of the team like we were taking them to see the Baron. The girl and brother would meet us in the hallway and show us a way out of the compound. Her brother was a guard trainee and would secure our weapons for us. Then we would make our way back through town to the parking lot where we had left The Traveler. Hopefully, Regina would be watching for us.
As the guard crumpled to the floor, the second guard came around the corner. But, I was waiting for him and quickly dispatched him by hitting the back of his head with the piece of pipe I had picked up. Hearing an approaching noise, I made ready to take out another guard. We had only planned on the two, but if we needed to take out three to get away, so be it. I recognized the young girl that had brought our food and lowered the pipe. The man with her must be her older brother, Mikey.
"I thought you were gonna meet us down the hallway?" I asked as I stripped the uniform from the guard. Sadly, I don't think this guy had bathed in a while and his uniform was a bit ripe, probably had fleas as well. I put the black shirt on over my regular clothes and grabbed his hat.
"It was too dangerous to go that way with these," Mikey replied as he held out a large duffel bag. Most of our personal weapons where in the bag, along with Carol and Sam's shotguns, but the M16s we had been carrying were missing. "The Baron's guards took your rifles for themselves," Mikey explained at my questioning look. Motioning the rest of the team to follow, we formed up with Sam as rear guard. Hopefully anyone seeing us would think we where two of the enforcers leading the guests somewhere.
The two kids led us down several hallways, then into a section of hallway that had not seen any use for a while. We exited the outpost through a small door and fire escape on the backside of the old mill. Using a neighboring building as cover from the guards in the gate watch towers, we moved down the street and started across town towards where we hoped The Traveler would be.
Amazingly, the trip across town was uneventful. The Baron and his enforcers had made considerable efforts to destroy the dead and clear the area. This had been before the Baron's mental health went south, when he was planning to expand out into the town itself.
As we approached the Walgreens where we had been captured, we could see a few of the dead milling around. Using the buildings on the other side of the street as cover, we went around them and towards the parking lot. But in the distance we could hear the sounds of truck engines.
"Shit, I was hoping we had more of a lead over these guys!" The enforcers from the outpost we were calling "Sadisticville" had caught up with us. We had just gotten to the empty parking lot where we had last seen The Traveler, a parking lot that now sat empty.
"Over here," Sam yelled. He waved us over to a pair of metal garbage bins surrounded by some old crates and boxes. While not the best cover in the world, it was better than being caught in the open. No sooner had we gotten to the garbage bins, than the enforcers came roaring into the parking lot. The lead vehicle fired a burst from its mounted machine gun over our heads.
"James! You have abused the hospitality of Baron Thatcher and stolen from him. Surrender and throw yourself to his mercy and I can guarantee the lives of your friends will be spared." Heinrich, the head enforcer of the Baron's guard, was a bit pissed from the sound of his voice. He had the same twelve troops and two trucks with him that he had when he captured us. Looking at the faces of my crew, I knew they did not want to surrender and return to that hellhole of an outpost the Baron controlled.
To reinforce his ultimatum, Heinrich and his troops laid down a withering sheet of fire. Luckily, they were deliberately aiming high, forcing us to keep our heads down. Risking a glance around the side of one of the garbage dumpsters, I could see why. The black-clad enforcers were moving forward from cover to cover. They would have us surrounded in minutes. Desperately, I continued to look around, trying to find anyway out of this. But as they moved ever closer, I could not come up with any ideas.
As I hunched down with bullets whizzing over my head, I could hear the rumble of additional engines coming. With reinforcements coming, I could see no choice but to surrender to the enforcers. Suddenly the air was split with the bellow of an air horn. Glancing around the dumpster again, I looked just in time to see one of the armed trucks go crashing into the four enforcers trying to sneak up on us down the right side.
"I love that girl!" I yelled. Regina drove through the enforcers and brought The Traveler to a halt diagonally across in front of us. "Go! Go! Go!" Even as I yelled at my team, they were already running towards the side door of the rig. Kim opened the door before we got there and we all piled in. I was bringing up the rear and pushed the two people who had come from the Baron's in front of me. Landed on my butt facing back out the door, I used my legs to kick two of the Baron's enforcers who were trying to climb on board as well. Kim slammed the door shut quickly, blocking them out, but almost taking my feet off in the process.
"Hit it Regina!" Before I could yell, I felt the big rig lurch into motion. Regina swung us around the backside of the store and into the parking lot on the other side. I could see Heinrich looking at the burning wreckage of one of his trucks and screaming at his men. At first I was worried that he might try and follow us, but he was still standing there screaming as we pulled away.