Back Draft

Well it was another interesting day. You know the Chinese have/had a curse, it said; ‘May you lead an interesting life.’
Boy, am I cursed, it seems. Although we did accomplish a fair amount of goals today and gained some ground on the bandits. And it was my idea, so revenge was mine in a way. Ignore me if I get over excited or rant a little, I am back on the pain meds as I tore my leg up again and had to be re-stitched.

John and J.T. (new daddy and all) went with the other APC to the water treatment plant. I felt bad for Maria; she had to be with those two cooped up in the APC all that time. More on them later.
So we rolled out to a fire station. Not the fire station we mentioned on the radio that was part of my plan. I feel like I am in the A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together. The bad part was it took us nearly an HOUR to figure out how to use the damn fire truck. What a sorry bunch we were, not one of us were firemen or even volunteers at the Depot. Closest thing we had was Kelly, who once helped the military run a water truck in Iraq. He knew at least what all the valves and things meant. It took some trial and error to figure out how to hook up the hoses, etc. During that time we pulled the APC into the next bay over and pulled the doors down. We did (well they did, I sat on my ass and watched from the top) have to clean out the station of a few Zak, stealth like, with axes and crowbars. We had Jake up on the roof looking around with Albert, who he was teaching the sniper craft to when he had time. By the time Kelly was ready with the fire truck and the other men who volunteered to help with the fires were comfortable enough on how to direct the hoses we had been out about two hours.

We received a call from Maria telling us the water treatment plant was secured and back working. Apparently debris got in one of the separators (big paddle like things in the tanks) and caused the system to shut down. They cleared it and had the pumps running now. It would be another hour before pressure came up if they were reading the dials over there correctly. Luckily someone locked up when they left the plant and no dead heads were there to greet them and no bandits either. They had an easy time of it so far. Which made me feel a bit uneasy.

The Major was going to come with us but we all vetoed that idea; we needed someone at the base in case bandits struck while we were out. Besides, he was a leader amongst us, the rest of us were expendable, even though we didn’t like to think that way. The walkie-talkies we recently liberated from radio shack had programmable channels, Watson, our resident electronics guru, figured out how to transmit on all frequencies on the radio and made two channels on half frequencies. We figured if the bandits were listening in, we needed something they could not listen to. Our Depot came poorly stocked with military grade hand held communications, so we improvised as best we could. The half frequencies would be hard to hear or even find if you did not know what you were doing and we were banking we did not have a mastermind in with the bandits. We hoped at least. So Jake radioed to us on channel 13.5 (my idea), and told us the fire was stalled in several spots as the wind was being turned in circles by some of the buildings (good news) but he said he saw movement three blocks over and it was too quick, he hoped, to be Zak. (bad news)
So we geared up for a battle.

I was making sure the .50 caliber machine gun’s belted ammunition was loaded correctly when Jake radioed again saying what he saw was probably not bandits. We all stopped when we heard this and waited. He then came back over the air saying what they saw were two women and a man, only one of the women appeared armed, were checking doors making their way this way. Jake thought they were survivors out looking for food or shelter. There was a drag of about a dozen zombies slowly trailing them. We did a quick vote. Unanimous we would see if we could offer them help. Yes, I know, could be a trap, but how bad can my luck be? The trio was half a block away from us when Kelly went out the side door and yelled to them from the sidewalk. They all froze, the woman with the gun brought it to bear on Kelly, but I knew by now Jake had him covered. Kelley told them to come on and get inside. They didn’t move. He told them to look behind them. They did, then they started running toward the fire house. We got them inside and buttoned up the place long before the dead heads got here. By that time though, Albert and Jake, both using heavily modified and silenced L92 rifles had thinned the herd somewhat. But we all knew, once one Z saw you every Z in a ten block radius would come to check out what the commotion was about.
This might give us away more than loud gunfire and we still had some fires to knock down.

The rest of the guys downstairs went through the side door and went hand to hand with the zombies. Over in less than a minute. It was one on one and Zak never had a chance. I watched our new ‘friends’ from the top of the APC and from behind the 50. I asked them nicely to put their weapons down and the trio did so without hesitation. The rifle, if you can call it that, was an old .22 caliber lever action, the other two had butcher knives. Wow. They were tough if that was all they needed. Boy I hope I wasn’t being suckered. They were all really dirty and their clothes were torn in a lot places. They also had a lot of scratches on their faces and bodies showing where the torn clothing was. The tallest, a girl, because if she was a day she was maybe sixteen and was probably pretty at one time, her long blond hair tangled and matted. The next tallest was the man, probably a little younger than me, in his thirties (always hard to tell age after things such as starvation and hygiene start to play a part in your looks) curly black hair and eyes like those of a frightened animal. The shortest was a woman to be about near her fifties. She had brown hair shot through with streaks of white. She eyed me like I was her enemy and she didn’t trust me. I liked her already.
‘So, who are you and where are you from?’ by now everyone was filing back into the bay with us and gathered around cleaning the gore off their various weapons.
‘My name is Janet, I from here,’ the woman spoke, I knew she would, she also nearly spat out the words, ‘this is Fred and Lucy. They’re from Lancaster. I found them hiding in a church on Main Street, but the fire made us move. We did find some food there thankfully.
Now who are YOU?’

I stared at her for a moment, no one said anything. Then I laughed. I liked Janet a lot.
I gave her the short version. She nodded, and Kelly gave them some water and some of those dreadful energy bars we always pack. Fred sat on the floor by the Fire trucks bumper and never looked up. Lucy sat on the bumper and watched everyone. Janet continued to stand as we got our stories straight. She is or was an administrator at the now defunct hospital; she was on vacation when everything started to break down. She just got home the day everything went to Hell. She bunkered down in her house as the news said, saying that was her first mistake listening to the government, and eventually had to get out because of the fires. She saw the newly dead walking around from here basement windows and then heard people talking during the night. This gave us an idea where the bandits were hiding out, well at least the ones starting the fires we hoped.

Lucy and Fred were neighbors in Lancaster. Lucy’s parents were dead, Zak got into their house and Lucy climbed out an upstairs window and made it to Fred’s house.
(I was amazed how many people could be alive still and in hiding, which gave me another idea, for later) They then took Fred’s car and drove to here and just outside of town the car quit on them. I asked them why they didn’t stay in Lancaster, but apparently the living to dead ratio was much more in favor of the dead there. The only road close and clear was to here. They made the mile and half hike from his car to the church on foot. Their only defense was the 22 rifle Lucy was carrying. At this point I was pretty sure Fred would not be much use to us, at least not now. He looked to be a walking comatose victim. Shock, will do that. Anyway Janet got to the church, which the other two had left unlocked, and when the fires got close, they all left, and here they were. Now what were going to do with them?

We gave them a some choices; Stay here and when we swing back through, if any of us made it back, they could hitch a ride with us, or they could try to make the few miles to the Depot on foot, but that was a risky idea at best. We told them about the bandits, who were more of a threat than the zombies at the moment, would likely shoot them if spotted. Janet looked at Fred and Lucy then back to me, ‘We’ll wait. Can you give us a gun or two just in case?’
I nodded and passed over my 9mm and the spare 4 magazines. Kelly gave Lucy his pistol and magazines. We thought it best Fred set in a corner and drool for a while without giving him a deadly weapon.
‘Know how to use that?’ I asked and before I was done Janet had the magazine out, racked the slide and checked the action. ‘I think I will manage.’ She said as she slammed the magazine back into the grip. She went to Lucy and showed her how to work her pistol. We got the three of them to the roof and told them to keep the room access door locked and to keep down. We would yell up or something when we came back. We left them then.

It looked like a twisted Shriner’s parade, a fire truck being lead by a slow military vehicle. With Janet’s info and where she lived we had a pretty good idea where the bandits would be at or would come at us from if they weren’t already waiting for us. The fire was almost out in the center of town where it had started and burned North East.The court hosue was gone, Burkes Bakery, a lot of good places lost. I am just glad a lot of people are dead and weren’t able to witness it. So far the Library was safe but that is where we decided to start. Jake and Albert jumped out of the APC and went into the library, their job was to make it up on the roof for observation and high cover. Kelly pulled the fire truck as close as he could to a burning building and our untrained crew went to work. The APC was parked backwards toward the fire, so I had a clear view of three streets that the 50 could bark down if it needed to. Apparently even Zak is afraid of fire, because here we were out in the open but they stayed a good block from any of the fires. Once in a while one would shamble out of a building on fire and catch some of his buddies on fire and it would spread out again. This is probably how the fires are working so fast. Jake was putting down the burning zombies before they could spread after we watched this first ‘wild fire’. His gun not being able to be heard over the pump engines in the fire truck. It took an hour to put out the trees and empty property near us, and then another hour to dampen the surrounding area near the library to keep it safe. At this rate it would take days to stop the fires.
Kelly knew this and called a quick huddle near the APC.
‘Guys this is never going to work. It would take several fire departments, trained fire departments to stop all this fire, we need to pick and choose what we are going to do.’ We all nodded. To the North it got more open and then the cemetery, which would act as a natural fire block. To the east, it would burn until it hit the more suburban areas, and that would burn for a while. Hard choices, but there was nothing in that area we knew we needed and we just didn’t have the men. We were getting ready to pack it in and head East two blocks when the sky opened up.

With a shout everyone looked up, letting the rain pour onto their faces. It came down hard. Like a freaking hammer, hard. The fires were going out. Our luck seemed to be turning in our favor for once. Oh how wrong I was.