Kenny and I had cleared the entrance doors and I turned us left to go around the front of the building. Ever have that feeling people are watching you? Well the bullets chip the asphalt and the concrete blocks around us told me I wasn’t as paranoid as I thought. I was huffing and puffing when we got to the corner of the building (I really need to lose weight or not get shot so often)and I stopped us. We really had no cover, but the idiot crouching at the bottom of the wall looking up had absolutely none. He had what looked to be an AK47 or its Chinese equivalent and he would look up and then spray a few rounds, keeping John and Jake behind cover. A quick tap on my shoulder and Kenny showed me people moving up, tree to tree through the field. I nodded, and held my hand up for him to stay put. (Amazing what you learn from watching all those movies) I shouldered my rifle, turned on the EOTech holographic sight and carefully waited. The bastard at the wall, all dressed in black, ran out of bullets and was reaching for a new magazine from his vest when he noticed us. He turned, fumbling and dropped his magazine on the pavement, then looked up.
I squeezed my trigger when he had his hands raised in surrender. The 5.56mm NATO steel core shell caught him at the bridge of his nose and exploded the back of his head in a shower of blood and bone. I moved at that point and Kenny stayed with me. We made it behind the Humvee and he got behind the front tire, I got behind the rear tire. Any second the lights should come on. The moonlight came on bright as another low lying cloud moved away. The dead man’s eyes stared back at me from his crumpled position a few feet away. Fuck him. He got what he deserved. (You may be thinking at this point, ‘But he had surrendered to you, you can’t just kill him.’ Guess what? I did, and I did it without remorse. More than likely he was the one who shot me and Daisy. If not, one of his buddies did, so in the grand scheme of things he won’t be missed. Some of you will probably think I am no better than the bandits that attacked us. Think what you want, I really don’t give a shit. *I* did not go to their house with the intent to kill, steal, and probably rape. *I* was in my home and *they* attacked me. There is enough of a difference between what I did and he did that I can sleep at night. I am a destroyer, not a builder. I make the world safe for the builders. )
The perimeter lights came on, really bright, enough to light up the area around us very well. Men with rifles were moving out behind the trees, some taking aim and firing at the lights. Behind us up on the walls, gun fire erupted in earnest. I drew a bead on moving targets and let fly. Kenny was chattering away on his side of the Humvee as they made a run at our position. Across thirty yards of open field. It was not pretty.
The next morning we picked up the pieces and went around tallying things. We had lost five men and two women. We had killed more than 30 bandits. Some may have gotten away, some may have been eaten. We mopped up another twenty or so zombies in the aftermath. I finally shrugged off the vest and had Odessa and Katy look at my chest. I had ugly purple bruises where the bullets struck me. Maybe a cracked rib. I would live. Others were not so lucky. We spent that day cleaning debris, stripping the bandits, cataloging what we found. We gained 20 functioning fully automatic AK-74s (a new version of the AK-47) and a few thousand rounds of ammo. We also found a few grenades that they had luckily not gotten close enough to use on us. In with the other items were found of few walking-talky like devices and kept them on to see if we could hear anything. We patched holes in the leaking and thankfully unexploded gas and diesel tankers. We recovered a few jeeps and pickups (all with local license plates unfortunately) and what little stores they had brought with them. We then mourned and buried our dead.
The next few weeks had us scavenging in earnest. We found a few places that were hit hard. We gathered and gathered until the Major called a halt to the local scavenging. We had enough food for maybe a few more weeks at best but until our ‘Lowes Farm’ started producing, we needed to go either house to house and scavenge (not a good prospect) or go further out. We took military maps and found all the Depots, army bases and anything governmental within a 50 mile radius and plotted out some raids. We figured at best they may be manned like ours with survivors, at worst the undead or bandits.
We found two more small National Guard Depots, one completely bare, like in had a fire sale bare. The other was full of dead people. Not zombies but dead people. Families, soldiers, average folks. Blood was everywhere and we wasted some precious ammo to clean out the zombies that were inside getting a meal. We at first thought the dead had gotten them, then we noticed all the bullet holes. Bandits. There were only 24 of us and we decided to leave before they came back. Hopefully it was the same ones that attacked us and they could harm no one else. Ever. I still cannot wrap my head around people sometimes. The world is sliding into a morass of chaos, so what do they do? Kill the remaining few normal people. Who wants to be king of the shit pile? I know I don’t. Some people just can’t grasp the big picture I guess.
The next run out was the Blue Grass Army Depot. That is where I started uploading the intel and data for everyone to see. We have fortified our defenses a lot in the last 2 weeks. We now have fifty caliber machine guns set around the base and on the roof. We keep them for bandits; the ammo is too precious to waste on the Z. We have outposts planted around the town, all interconnected via radio with variable check in times. We may seem like a military force, but until the government comes back online (if ever) we have to depend on ourselves.
Over.
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