The Fortress passed through the ruined husks of several small towns, all clearly marked on old road maps, all equally desecrated by the army of walking dead. Millville's fall had forced the fortress to push on to the next known community: Shepperd's Ranch located just outside of a small town of Whitmore, previous population 500.

The Fortress had passed through the town itself unmolested and had pulled up where the community should have been only to find nothing but dense woods. Stranger still was that there were treads and tracks of both vehicles and people in the rough dirt road, but with the sun hanging low in the evening sky, they opted to call it a day and start the search the following day, camping in the shade of a stand of dense trees and underbrush that would shield them from all but the most determined dead.

The raid upon Parks Army base had provided more than just weapons and ammunition but also several dozen cases of claymore mines that they set up around the Fortress to cover the very big blind spot to the rear and flanks of their armored home. In contrast to traditional omni-directional mines, the claymore mine was first deployed in the jungles of Vietnam in 1966, designed to send 700 steel ball bearings in to a sixty degree arc that extended for at least thirty meters. Such mines were an improvement over traditional omni-directional mines that were equally dangerous to both sides in a conflict. The mines that were strung up were set to detonate if something crossed the strung out trip wires.

When Cameron and Robert returned to the Fortress, Jaira was waiting for Cameron to slice the fresh meat and vegetables. He was interested in learning how to cook, but she was rather possessive of letting anyone get too comfortable in what she dubbed “her kitchen.” That left Cameron the subject of extensive good natured ridicule as Jaira finished. The meal was a pleasant affair for everyone, with Natalie bragging about the bottle of whiskey that she'd won during a sharpshooting competition at Redding, tagging the bull’s eye at 450 meters.

Cameron bragged that he could have made Natalie's winning shot and that single remark escalated as everyone attempted to outdo each other. When finally out done by Robert, Cameron threatened that outdoing the leader was grounds to be left behind in his boxer shirts. That silenced everyone for a moment until Jaira threw a balled up napkin at Cameron, claiming that she had the ultimate in bragging rights, “I domesticated Cameron Hunter!” Silenced reigned at the sheer audacity of her claim, until Cameron affectionately head slapped her. Laughter engulfed all of them.

After they had cleared away, as Cameron had decreed it during their early days on the road, everyone got an hour or two to do whatever they wanted, to help distress and just relax and hopefully prevent anyone from having a nervous meltdown. Cameron and Robert spent part of the time search for the next available petrol station and once down, Cameron crawled in to Jaira's bunk.

It was somewhere around three in the morning when the flickering of the lights mounted above their bunk woke the sleeping couple who tumbled out of bed. Robert was a little jumpy and it had proved its worth on several different occasions but as the crew moved silently and quickly to their guns, everything outside was quiet and peaceful, only a gentle breeze moving the leaves of the trees. One of the other things that they had managed to get installed in Redding was an internal radio system that they now put to use to avoid screaming to each other.

“Robert!” snapped Cameron.

“Something in the tree line to the North, a flashlight maybe,” said Robert, “There! There! You see it?”

Cameron acknowledged. The blinking light was definitely manmade, and so were the corresponding flashes that came from the left and right of the original signal. Snapping on his night vision goggles, Cameron trained the machine gun to the signal on the right, “Right side is covered! Anybody have eyes on the left or center?”

Jaira confirmed that she'd gotten a fix on the center of the line, while Nastia had the left covered. Considering their situation carefully, Cameron decided that they would have no choice but to wait for whoever was out there to make the next move. Besides, their opponents thought that they had successfully caught the fortress and its occupants with their pants down.

They kept quiet, and stayed their positions for a half hour before they stood down, and those who weren’t supposed to be on watch crawled back in to bed to get some sleep. But nobody took their boots off, and slept with their guns close at hand. Cameron fell asleep on top of his machine gun and he was the first to wake, stiff, sore and tense. Everyone had fallen asleep and woke up on edge. Breakfast was sugar loaded coffee or tea as they kept a careful watch. Whoever was watching them had a hunter’s patience as the sun crested the tree line, accompanied by a trio with their weapons raised, armed with two questions, “Who are you, and what do you want?”

Considering that there were at least three small groups out there, Cameron felt less inclined to come out in to the open and opened a door to shout back an answer, “Traders from Redding! Our only interest is in making a fair trade between your community and us! Redding should have sent word!”

“Redding eh?” said the leader, “Well you folks are rather early. We thought that you all would stop in Millville before coming to us.”

That raised Cameron’s eyebrow, “Raiders destroyed Millville two days ago. Whoever made it out of there should be in Redding by now.”

The man stepped forward, accompanied by two young women with bolt action hunting rifles, “If Redding says you're okay, I suppose we can trust you.... a bit. Name's Clem,” he said.

Cameron stepped down from the Fortress, “Cameron,” he replied as he carefully stepped over the pair of tripwires to shake the man’s hand, who introduced his twin daughters, Jessica and Samantha. Closer inspection revealed that they the threesome also carried .308 revolvers in quick draw holsters “Back in Redding, they told us that there was a community out here? I assume that there are more than three of you?”

“We're a decent number and we do alright. Now what is it that you have to trade?” Clem was relaxed but his daughters had yet to lower their weapons, “We don't have all day to come to a deal.”

Cameron met what he supposed passed for a hard stare, “Clearly your outpost is somewhere in or around these woods and if you don't want us to see it or set foot in it that's fine,” Cameron cracked his neck and cross his arms behind his back, two lasers lanced through the early morning light, the beams terminating on the chest of each daughter. Natalie already had Clem’s head bracketed in the crosshairs, and the crackling in Cameron’s ear said as much, “Let’s just talk. Nobody wants blood spilt out here.”

Doubts were written clearly in to the frown on Clem’s face, “And consider the firepower I have, if I wanted to do you all harm, why would I have come out to meet you? I could have just sprayed the tree line and killed the three groups amongst the trees,” he paused pointing out where the three groups were in hiding.

That particular line of argument tended to make sense to those who were focused upon not just surviving but also upon rebuilding. Clem nodded and weapons were lowered on both sides, the groups stepping out of concealment, “The forest is where we've made our home, and it is safe from those religious fanatics who never come in to the woods. We will be watching every move you make.”

Cameron bit his tongue, urging himself to remain calm, “If those religious fanatics you refer to bear a white hand with a red star in the palm, you don’t have to worry. We’ve killed too many of them to ever be mistaken for a friend of theirs.” Clem hesitated and Cameron pushed onward, “Motorbikes mostly, some light automatic weapons right? We have food, medicine, and hygiene products.” That was all it took for Clem to cave and lead them to road, hidden amongst the undergrowth that lead to their community.

The community in question was Whitmore and they had relocated to the woods, opting to escape and avoid combat with an enemy that they could never hope to defeat. They forty strong community had build their homes, shelters, practically everything amongst the leafy tree tops connected by rope bridges.

The fear was understandable but so was their anger. They had once numbered almost a hundred but had been reduced to their current state at the hand of their fellow man, the bandit cum raiders having nearly exterminated Whitmore through forced “tithes” for protection, “The raiders had been a plague in this part of California for as long as the dead have been around” said Clem, “We held off their first attacks but then they,” Clem paused as he took a sip of water, “they just blew our walls apart. We managed to stop them a second time. That’s when our leaders foolishly agreed to start paying them for “protection.”

“So what happened?” asked Cameron.

“What you’d expect: The payments grew bigger, and when we couldn’t meet them, our women and children were taken as payment. Anyone protests were silence with summary executions of our leaders, and of course, we struck back. Some got away.” Clem did not have to fill in the gap, “When they came back, it was for genocide. Those of us that made it to trees were safe and we’ve been rebuilding for the past three months.”

Cameron frowned and reached in to a rear pocket on his vest, his fingers twitched among the numerous packets until he found them, sliding sticks of instant coffee, sugar and cream across the table. Somebody began to boil water, “We managed to take a few prisoners and we got a little information from them,” Clem's tone made it clear that things had gotten creative and persuasive. Cameron felt grateful that even as he was exposed, the Fortress was close at hand with her guns trained. “They call themselves the Blessed Redeemers, and they claim to represent the purity of faith and power of the holy Mother Church through God's prophet, Cardinal something or other.”

“I take it you're a non believer?” asked Cameron.

Clem chuckled, “They seem to believe that everyone who doesn't believe is a heretic who should be put to the sword or purified through fire, unless you can meet “the tithe,”” said Clem as he took a sip of the coffee placed before him. The Whitmore community was not the most welcoming but they had managed to come to a suitable arrangement: The fortress would stay around to provide brute strength and help with some construction for a few days, support an extended raid in to the few stores for supplies and siphon gas.

Their raids were met with no raiders and only a small number of undead. In return, the Fortress secured a port of call should they ever require one and secured a loose trading agreement before they parted ways with the community and returned to the road.

The pattern would repeat itself as the Fortress made a tour through Northern California, raiding whatever stores they came across to buildup and maintain extensive stockpiles of almost any perceivable good. What became clear very early on the Fortress’s tour was that larger cities and towns were the future ghost filled multi story jungles, the places with high population densities where were ultimately very few would survive as the dead hordes had a near limitless number of bodies to fill out the hordes. But even in smaller towns such as Shingletown, roughly 120 people remained out of a population of 1900. Survival in this world meant a throwback to living in walled and gated communities of the Middle Ages for protection against the darker elements of humanity as well as the walking dead.

After almost eight weeks upon the open road, the Fortress had traveled far clearing roads and salvaging through the ruins of America. They had made contact with numerous communities. Almost two years on, most of the communities that were willing to trade with the Fortress, did so to their benefit, making at least acquaintances, if not friends in close to a half dozen communities that dotted ruined America. There were also communities that wanted nothing to do with them, and on more than one occasion they had been warned off with gunfire. They had taken the hint and simply moved on to avoid complications, marking their maps accordingly.