The following events take place in

Redding, California, USA

Chapter 11

Same Shit Different Day

The days had turned to weeks, and then time’s endless march had turned them in to long months. The crew of five had adapted well to living within the confines of the rebuilt and now armor plated trailers that created comfortable if cramped living quarters for the five of them as they roamed the highways of America, stopping only to keep their supplies topped off. But they had also looted bookstores for texts on every conceivable topic from agriculture to engineering, making sure that they had the knowledge necessary to prevent humanity from backsliding in to barbarism.

The roving band of road warriors had come to an unspoken agreement that they were searching for a community of likeminded survivors that they could at least trade goods and supplies with, if not join.

In the driver’s seat, with his foot pressing gently down upon the accelerator of the vehicle that had been christened “Fortress,” sat former Police Sergeant Robert Cross of the California Highway Patrol. Operation Takedown had led to the arrest and eventual imprisonment of every major street racer except for one woman. That particular car chase had set California on edge, crossing state lines twice before Cross had lost control in a spectacular 1080 degree flip that should have ended him. Suffice to say, driving was the man's forte but he could move and shoot as well as the rest of his comrades when it came down to it.

The front passenger seat was occupied by Cameron Hunter, formerly of the Sheraton Resort Hotel Portland, a man who had run from Europe to America to escape a broken past that when asked about involved, “half a dozen SWAT teams, twice as many police officers, and the medical staff of three hospitals.” Like always, he was dressed in black, wearing the same body armor he had been wearing for weeks along with the four Glock 18C pistols in thigh holsters and shoulder harnesses. The H&K MP5 sub-machine gun lay across his lap as he exchanged light banter with Robert.

The remaining trio relaxed inside the vehicle, but close to the gun ports as they talked about themselves, their lives, hopes, dreams, real plans and what they would be doing if the dead had decided to stay dead and what they would do if the undead ceased to be a threat in their lifetimes. Hope remains the source of humanities greatest strength and inspiration, no matter how bad the situation.

Robert eased off the accelerator, bringing them to a halt at a regular occurrence: The impromptu roadblock caused by a massive vehicular pile up during the first days when people fled everywhere like rats on a sinking ship trying to escape the dead. They only had to wait for an instant before the horde came crawling from the wreckage as they groaned and moaned towards the fresh meat. Robert brought the engine to life, slamming the gears in to reverse as he backed away from the barricade, “Gunners up!” shouted Cameron.

The shout had Jaira and Natalie springing to the gun ports as Nastia made her way past the storage bins and shelves full of salvaged goods to the gun ports mounted in the second trailer where they waited, the barrels of the assorted firearms already protruding through the firing slits. Wisely they held their fire with too few targets and too much distance between them. Not to mention that the bulk of the fortress would grind most of the undead in to a rough paste. Only Cameron fired out the front gun port, blasting the few dead that had managed to latch on to the vehicle off the hood. Several tried to claw their way to the metal mesh reinforced glass windscreen before being perforated by gunfire. Robert backed them away faster than the oncoming horde as Cameron dropped the expended clip to the floor of the cab, “There’s a thin spot in the wreck line on the far side of the road.”

“S-S-D-D,” said Robert, “It's always on the other side of the damn road.” Cameron grunted as he flicked off the safety and sighted down the rough metal sights. A three round burst stabbed through a quartet of cheerleaders marching with the step-drag-stumble-step zombie walk. His first burst felled one as controlled bursts walked ruination through their skulls. The stupidity of the zombies was unmatched as they continued their drunken stagger scrambling over whatever is in front of them in their eagerness to feed.

“Dozen on the left!” called Robert. There was no verbal acknowledgement but controlled bursts and single shots easily trimmed down the small collection of advancing zombies. For the five men and women, the vehicle’s interior was not especially cramped to live in but the sound of gunfire inside tended toward the softer side of deafening and they had agreed that something would have to be done about it before they lost their hearing permanently.

Eyeballing the distance, Robert brought them to a temporary halt. Satisfied, the vehicle lurched forward again as Robert downshifted with practiced ease. The top speed of the fortress had never been accurately assessed but as the needle crept past fifty kilometers an hour, Robert adjusted their heading slightly to line up with the weakness Cameron had pointed out minutes before.

Several of the undead bounced off the reinforced battering ram bumper and spun, arms flailing before falling to the ground as the Fortress swept past. They were fortunate that the wreckage actually had a weakness they could exploit even if it was with bone jarring force. At seventy kilometers an hour, glass broke and metal screamed as the piles of vehicle wreckage collapsed, crushing a quantity of the gathered dead as they pulled away.

Other such roadblocks had forced them to spend time like a bulldozer while the undead beat on their armored walls. They maintained a brief vigil on the dead behind them as they rode on, until they were mere specks in the distance. Nastia mumbled something and then paused as her stomach rumbled, rarely wrong when it came to meal time. “What’d you say?” asked Natalie.

“S-S-D-D,” was the soft accented reply.

That got a smile from Natalie, “Not quite. We didn't have to listen to them pound on the walls for half an hour this time.”

“Ok, ok, fine. D-S-D-D.”

“Nah. It’s S-S-D-D… it’s always S-S-D-D.”

Noon had come and gone as they paused for lunch and argued for a few moments over what exactly they should eat, considering that their supplies were still very well topped off. Cameron’s suggestion of corned beef with crackers and strawberry syrup received a well-deserved vote of no confidence, settling on something marginally better in Jaira’s mind as they boiled water to re-hydrate and revive the MREs.

“Meals Ready to Eat” are the kind of meals that Cameron would enjoy cooking considering that he could boil water without burning down a kitchen. Then again, Cameron would eat almost anything. Out of all the possible flavors, the Chili Con Carne variant did taste rather well. With the massive road map spread out across their dining table, they discussed their next move, and came to the conclusion that they would have better luck in all things if they just pushed on.

They briefly discussed their next destination as they ate and a list came together amounting to about a dozen cities and half dozen states. Washington D.C., New York and other East Coast locations were disregarded almost immediately due to the distance involved. Even if they could raid and keep themselves well supplied and their mobile home running, they would need a fixed place to call home for the winter when the nearly all metal Fortress would become a mobile freezer, unless they somehow managed to install central heating.

The remainder of the day passed in relative quiet as they traveled the highway, stopping occasionally as Robert applied power to bulldoze vehicular carcasses aside or to break through the impromptu barricades. To Cameron, it seemed that there was one every couple of kilometers. Early afternoon saw Robert shout to Cameron and the others, “We’re down to one third on fuel!” That single comment sent two of the ladies to the Rand McNally road maps that they had taken from a long abandoned truck stop. Figuring out their position took only a few short moments, and a few more minutes to figure out where the nearest gas station was located: Twenty five kilometers down the highway in the small town of Klamath Falls.

They always started searching for a refuel when they were down to a third of a tank, which meant that they had plenty of fuel to reach the nearest petrol station. They kept a fifty gallon drum of fuel in the rear trailer just in case. Robert pulled them in to place alongside the petrol pumps and they waited. While they had seen little of the local undead population on the way in, the zombies hordes had a habit of moving around, whether following patterns or commands, nobody was sure, but whenever large groups of the undead went, they always left a couple of stragglers behind. Waiting was probably the most unnerving part of anything they did, and Cameron used the time to call a meeting so that they could decide once where they were heading, as they were truly at a Crossroads: South to California or East to Las Vegas.

It was quickly agreed that the deserts of Arizona and Las Vegas was a bad idea and that left them with the obvious destination: California. Cameron sat back as his team discussed what they should be doing. The role of “leader” was Cameron’s by circumstance and while he had grown in to the role, he preferred to let his team hammer out decision democratically. He sat back and let them discuss and argue the matter at hand, as the undead would make their own decision regarding whether or not they wanted to hassle the Spartans while they refueled.

The debate had ranged between raiding for supplies and finding another community of survivors, and had turned in to a debate between Natalie and Jaira which prompted Robert to whisper, “I love a good cat fight.” Cameron chuckled and fell silent as both men received death stares from the arguing women.

Anastasia choose the moment to slide in to the debate, “You’ve both got valid reasons,” she paused for a moment, and both gave her the floor, knowing full well that English was not even her second language, but her third, “We need bigger guns and better firepower to better defend the Fortress,” she gestured towards their armory, “We have a mix of different guns but these are small and just not enough. We need something bigger for the roof as well… mobile artillery or rockets or missiles because you can’t hit anything from the roof with what we have... not even a machine gun would be able to hit anything,” she smiled, the sweet kind of smile that only a teenager could produce, “unless you’re planning on shooting down planes or helicopters.”

Cameron nodded in agreement, “Makes sense. So does anyone know where we can find a machine gun, and may be a couple of missile launchers,” he shot a sidelong glance at Nastia, “to shoot down planes?”