The Fall of Society (The Fall of Society Series, Book 1) (18 page)

           
“Nope,
it took me a couple more tries.”

           
“Of
asking her out?” Maggie said.

           
“Yeah,
but like I said, I couldn’t find her when I was free, so the only way was to
get arrested again and again,” Derek said with a little embarrassment.

           
“How
many times did you get arrested on purpose?” Joe asked.

           
“Four.”

           
Maggie
laughed and so did Corina because of her mother.

           
“Wait
a minute…” Joe thought. “How was it that she got the job to go after you four
times in a row? What are the odds of that?”

           
“No
odds,” Milla said. “Later, I found out that my boss at the bail bond company was
his cousin.”

           
“Hey,
family comes in handy sometimes,” Derek said.

           
“You
know, I’ve always wondered how you got him to do that for you, because when he finally
told me about it, he also told me that he didn’t even like you,” Milla said to
Derek.

           
“I
gave him a bunch of free pot.”

           
“What?
He smoked pot?”

           
“Tons,”
Derek smiled. “God, I miss pot!”

           
Tom
laughed. “That was a great story; you deserve something for that entertainment.”
He reached into his box of food. “If you won’t eat any of our stew, then at
least have some desert.” He tossed cans of peaches to Ardent’s group.

           
They
all caught the cans and decided to put them away in their bags for later.

           
“Thank
you,” Ardent told Tom.

           
Derek
said, “Yeah, thanks.” He peeled off the lid and offered some to Ardent, who
used a knife and plucked half a peach out for himself. Then Bear took one,
Lauren after him, and finally, he offered some to Milla. She took some and
Derek had the rest. “We’re a unit,” Derek said to Tom.

           
“I
can see that,” Tom answered.

           
Outside
the windows, the sun was setting and outside the walls, the dead were restless—the
melting sun stirred them.

           
When
the sun was gone, their vision was best…

           
It
was going to be night of the living dead
…

THE
PENINSULA

I
n the southern California night
, about fifty-five miles northwest of Los
Angeles, was the city of Oxnard and home of the Port Hueneme Naval Base. This
place was no different than any other city—it was a decimated shell with
destroyed homes and burned out buildings everywhere. Corpses littered the cityscape,
ones that were destroyed carcasses and plenty of the ones that were still
moving around. Lost, soulless things.

           
At
the south end of town, in the naval base, was something different that the dead
didn’t know about. There was a half-mile long peninsula in the base’s harbor,
and it was the haven for survivors, lots of them. The people there, mostly
military, had blocked off access to the peninsula with a wall of shipping
containers a quarter mile long, from the dock’s edge inside the harbor and all the
way out to the ocean shore. The containers were triple-stacked and that made a
wall of steel about twenty-five feet high.

           
At
the end of the wall on the beach, the containers were lined up until they were
submerged in the ocean waves and they were wrapped in concertina wire to catch
any potential dead swimmers. The wire did have a few corpses snagged in it, the
husks slow-danced to the ocean music and salt water sloshed out of the bullet
holes in their heads, some skulls were half-blasted away. Explosive packages
were tactically placed every few feet along the sand and on the containers in
the water. Near the water’s edge, on the inside of the wall, they built a ramp
out of dirt and sand that led up to the shortest shipping container that could
serve as jump ramp for small vehicles, to get out in the event of an emergency.

           
This
was a well thought-out fortified encampment.

           
There
were roughly 600 survivors, consisting of soldiers from all four branches of
the military, including the National Guard and the Coast Guard. All the ranks
were mixed together, but there was order and a definite chain of command. About
a third of them were ordinary citizens, the most battle qualified were cops and
firemen, which were few, and the rest were your average over-the-counter soccer
moms, bankers, security guards, writers, kids that luckily were with their
families, but there were orphans, too, lots of them, kids whose entirely
families were slaughtered before their eyes, hidden in attics or unseen in cars.
The infection refugees were all over this place, dozens of tents were in
organized clusters, and there were a few campfires, but only in designated
areas that were enclosed by four walls of shipping containers to ensure that
they weren’t seen from any angle because that would draw attention.

           
The
kind of attention they didn’t want.

           
The
atmosphere in the camp was of quiet fear; there was no loud talk of any kind,
by order, and no laughter. Sound carried, and sound was one of the things that
attracted them, so everyone spoke as softly as they could and only talked when
necessary, especially at night. The 600 souls here were on constant alert in
this shantytown of the displaced. There were numerous vehicles ranging from
military to family RVs, eighteen-wheelers, motorcycles, and anything that could
be used to
get away.
There were several
helicopters waiting quietly on the ground, military and commercial aircraft, including
one that was left on top of one of four circular storage tanks at the far end
of the peninsula; that was an Army Black Hawk helicopter, and it looked fully
armed. There were also a number of tents on the storage tanks. The buildings
were few here, industrial for the most part, and two large warehouses that had
the signs of food processing companies on them, some kind of storage
facilities. In the harbor were a few boats and two larger vessels, one being a
passenger ferry and the other a cargo vessel. Hidden guards were posted
onboard.

           
On
top of the shipping container wall, were guards keeping watch every fifty feet
or so, but they were out of sight behind makeshift guard shacks, camouflage
netting, tents, hunters blinds, and anything else that hid them from sight.
They needed to keep watch but not be seen. This place was their secret, and they
needed to keep it because their lives depended on it. At what appeared to be
the middle of the shipping container wall was a gap that they used as an entry;
it was barely wide enough for the eighteen-wheeler trailer that was backed up
into it as the wall’s gate. The rear of the trailer that faced the outside of
the wall was reinforced with steel plating to cover the space under it, between
the wheels, which made it a solid closure. The only way to open and close the
gate—was to drive the truck out and reverse back in to seal it again.

           
On
top of the gate trailer was a guard shack and two soldiers were posted in it;
they sat there very still as they kept watch over the dark ruins of the city,
which lay past a large parking lot that had some abandoned cars, some of which
had been stripped for parts for other machines. It was deathly quiet this
night, but the soldiers were vigilant. Besides the cars, the parking lot was occupied
by a couple dozen corpses that had been taken care of by the guards when they
wandered too close to the wall. All the lifeless piles had expertly placed
bullets in their skulls.

           
The
two soldiers had radios—all of the ones on guard duty did—but there
was no open speaker chatter, because all of them wore earpieces for silence. The
black soldier was in his late thirties, but you couldn’t tell by looking at him
that youth was on his side. This was Hayward Coombs. He noticed something out
in the parking lot then signaled his partner, who saw what Hayward pointed at
to the left.

           
A
dead walker…

           
It
emerged from the distant darkness of the parking lot as it shuffled along
toward the wall, it was so badly decomposed that its gender wasn’t identifiable.
It slowly zigzagged through the maze of fallen undead and crept closer to the
shipping container barrier. At one point, it stopped and stared at the crescent
moon that was blood red and draped in dark gray clouds; it wanted to go there
and walked toward it, away from the camp. It lost interest when it couldn’t
reach it and turned back around toward the wall.

           
And
then the two soldiers heard a crackle from their radio pieces, followed by the
whisper of a soldier at another guard post. “Guard One, this is Guard Three, I
have a wanderer in my sights. Over.”

           
The
soldier with Hayward replied in his microphone, “Guard Three, this is One, take
it out. Over.”

           
“Copy
that. Over,” the soldier responded and went silent.

           
Two
seconds later, a silenced rifle reported its soft sound, and the walker’s head
violently jolted as the bullet passed through its skull. It dropped and joined
the others.

           
“Wanderer
down, Guard Three out.”

           
Hayward’s
partner was a man in his thirties, short black hair, and a hard face that was set
with dark blue eyes. His quietly raised his sniper rifle and slowly scanned the
parking lot for any other creatures through the military-grade night scope, but
there was nothing for his silencer to whisper to. This same man drove the
chromed muscle car up to his home and saw his mother burst out the front door
in the beginning days of the infection.

           
This
was the same man that watched his mother turn into a “thing,” as she ran by his
windshield with enraged, strange eyes.

           
He
looked at all the dead bodies in the parking lot, but that’s not what he
saw
—

           
He
remembered calling her
…

           
Mom?

           
He
shouted…

           
Mom!

           
She
didn’t answer and then disappeared over a fence.

           
He
walked toward the house with his pistol
…

           
Lightning
struck, and it chilled his spine
…

           
John
Mandall closed his eyes and shook the memory off.

           
“You
okay, John?” Hayward whispered.

           
“Yeah,”
he quietly answered. “Yeah, Hayward, I’m fine.”

           
“What
were you thinking about?”

           
“Truth?”

           
“Yes.”

           
John
lied. “I’m thinking that we should leave this place.”

           
“Why?
It’s secure here, and we have food and water that should last for a few years.”

           
“That’s
what the commander said when we first arrived three months ago, that they had
enough food stored in the warehouses to last about seven years if they rationed
it carefully.”

           
“I
remember.”

           
“Hayward,
that was back when there was only 200 of us. Now there’s about 600. How long
will that food last now?”

           
“I
see your point.”

           
“No,
you don’t,” John continued. “The food is the least of our worries.”

           
“What
do you mean?”

           
“A
high number of people like this produce a lot of waste, especially body odor;
that really attracts those dead bastards. I’m surprised that they haven’t found
us yet.”

           
“We’ve
been lucky.”

           
“Luck
always runs out, you know that.”

           
“You
gotta try to be more optimistic,” Hayward said.

           
“Fuck
optimism, I make my own way, and I’m only concerned about two survivors.”

           
“I
got your back, too, bro.”

           
“I
know, man, that’s why we should hit the road,” John said.

           
“And
go where? The blackbird’s low on fuel.”

           
John
thought about it. “Maybe south. Look for some chopper fuel or switch to a
vehicle.”

           
“A
vehicle is too dangerous.”

           
“So
is being sitting ducks.”

           
Hayward
was uncertain. “I don’t know, man.”

           
“I
do.”

           
A
distant echo reverberated slightly off the plastic of their tent; they kept
quiet and listened as they scanned the dark horizon, but heard nothing.

           
“What
was that?” Hayward asked.

           
“I’m
not sure,” John said as he looked through his scope.

           
It
came back and they realized what it was—the roar of a car motor—it
was distant but quickly came their way and John saw the car, an SUV, as it
rammed through one of the parking lot’s closed gates in a screech of burning
rubber.

           
“Oh
shit,” John said.

           
Hayward
looked through his scope. “Goddamnit.”

           
They
watched the SUV speed toward them, and it was out-of-control—muffled
gunshots burst from within the vehicle, piercing the passenger window—the
SUV clipped a couple abandoned cars and then it didn’t turn fast enough to
avoid the next one; it hit the compact car, ripping it open as it plowed over
it, sending the SUV into the air. It corkscrewed sideways, hit the ground,
rolled over a couple times and came to a halt in a broken mess about sixty feet
from the wall. The wreck became quiet for a moment, except for the
hiss
of the cracked radiator, and the
liquid that was leaking out of the bottom of it, that was possibly gasoline. The
driver door was kicked open, and a man crawled out. His face was bloody from
the accident, and it looked like he had bite marks on his arms and legs. He had
a pistol as he stood up and backed away from the SUV as another person, a
woman, crawled out after him.

           
It
was obvious
what
she was with a few
gunshots in her chest.

           
She
growled at him from her hands and knees, her eyes were vicious and they were
focused on him. “Baby, stop, please!” the man said. “Stop this! It’s me!”

           
The
thing didn’t acknowledge him as she sprang to her feet and charged him.