As she inched forward, carefully studying
the forlorn faces in front of her and glancing behind her to check for any
surprises, she saw that there were two men and two women with their hands outstretched.
They were crying and whispering the same message over and over. “Thank you,
God. Thank you.”
Chapter 28
Two hours into their flight along the
coastal sand dunes north of Baja, Matias pulled his headset aside and leaned
back over his right shoulder. “We’re about twenty minutes out from San Diego.
I’ve been getting the standard automated distress beacon from the navy base at
Coronado Island but nothing else.”
“Unless you say otherwise, Carlie, I was
going to circle in around Coronado and set down there, if it looks good.”
Carlie tried to look upbeat at the thought
of finally arriving at her brother Matt’s last known location but instead only
gave a stern thumbs-up and continued peering out the window. What if she didn’t
find any signs of him there? What if he was already dead, buried in some
unmarked grave in the dunes? Her heart felt like it had a red-hot dagger driven
through its core. She had to stay positive—to focus on him greeting her at
Coronado or that he had made it out to their family cabin in the mountains
before the world crumbled. Her cheeks quivered. She raised her hands up in
front of her chin, resting her elbows on her knees and trying to contain the
anguish of what was to come.
****
As they neared the Naval Amphibious
Coronado, Carlie could see the decimated buildings below, the majority of which
appeared to have been blown up. A few were left standing while the rest were
charred remnants. Even the palm trees were gone as if a mighty wave had scoured
the land.
“The base commander may have initiated a
self-destruct sequence of critical structures if he knew the area was going to
be breached,” said Shane, peering over her shoulder. “Or an order was given
from elsewhere to take out the key infrastructure.”
Matias circled around the thumb-shaped
wedge of land that jutted out into San Diego Bay south of the main island. He
flew in low above a canted street sign indicating Trident Way, then over what
was once a chapel, a string of fast-food restaurants, and finally past the
Turner Field Airbase near the bay. Several miles to the north, directly across
the bay, were the derelict buildings of downtown San Diego, their monolithic
forms standing silent like extinguished candles over the quiet streets below.
As Matias swung to the right, setting down
on an isolated helipad two hundred feet from the ocean, Carlie saw a row of
close to fifty burial mounds, each affixed with a wooden cross. Her chest
constricted and she felt herself unable to swallow. She gripped the edge of the
seat, digging her fingernails into the thin fabric until she lost sensation in
her hands.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and saw
Jared looking at her, his deep blue eyes causing her grip to ease up. “Hey,
I’ll go down there and look with you. If your bro is as tough as you are, then
he’s probably long gone from here, sitting on some mountaintop, laughing at the
world.”
Carlie tried to nod but felt her face
tighten. Instead, she grabbed her rifle and asked Amy and Pavel to remain on
board. Then she flung open the door and hopped out onto the tarmac, hastily
making her way to the shoreline where the earthen graves were strung out in a
single-file line running the length of the beach.
As Carlie rushed along the weed-choked
path, she stopped briefly at the foot of each mound to examine the initials
painted in white on the makeshift wooden crosses. Her eyes scanned ahead faster
than she could walk and she found her pace increasing to a frantic trot as her
vision kept going in and out from one grave to another. Her lips trembled when
she thought there was a match with her brother Matt’s initials but then the
corner of her mouth would slightly crack in relief followed by a tinge of guilt
because she was glad it was someone else.
Shane and Jared were trying to keep up
with her but eventually gave her some space and fell back. As she neared the
end of the graves, she felt relieved at the lack of visible evidence of her
brother’s presence. Then Carlie slowed and nearly stumbled on a knotty patch of
grass as she noticed the last mound was devoid of a crucifix. She abruptly
stopped and studied the grave, searching for an overturned marker, but found
none.
Carlie looked down the long row of graves
that she had just passed and wondered why this one was lacking a marker. She
frantically scanned the beach and saw two weather shovels amidst a pile of
scrap wood and an empty paint can in the grass ten feet away. She lowered her
rifle to the ground and then retrieved a rusted shovel. Carlie moved back to
the grave on the end and was about to thrust it into the truffle-colored dirt.
She began digging into the loose soil and
soon heard the shovel clank against something. Scraping the remaining dirt, she
saw the slender legs of a woman wearing orange Nike tennis shoes. Carlie took a
deep breath and then flung the shovel down. She ran her hand along the back of
her neck, massaging it while looking out over the ocean and fighting back the
anguish inside that was simmering.
How will I ever find my brother’s remains
even if he is here? There must be graves all over this region. Maybe he made it
out of here, to our cabin in the mountains. Yes, he must have made it
—
he
can’t be buried in the sand like a piece of driftwood.
Her mind raced back
to her surroundings as she heard the crunch of footfalls on the beach as Shane
and Jared approached.
“Carlie, you don’t have to do this alone,”
said Shane.
As she looked up to respond, she saw
movement as two coyote-tan Humvees rolled along the main entrance road, coming
into view. She dropped the shovel and picked up her rifle, nodding to Shane and
Jared as they all turned to look at the weathered vehicles rolling up to the
far edge of the airfield opposite the helipad.
“Let’s hope these guys are friendlies.
Whoever they are, they’ve been surviving here through all of this so they’re
probably gonna be some tough hombres,” said Shane.
As they all slowly lowered their rifles to
a low-ready, Carlie stepped alongside Jared and Shane and scanned the immediate
area for tactical options. “Just remember, as we’ve discussed in various
‘what-if’ scenarios around the campfire, we’re not surrendering our arms no
matter how good these guys seem.”
The shoreline was peppered with various
sand berms. Interspersed between her group and the helicopter was an abandoned
truck, a cluster of oil drums, and a heap of empty wooden crates tipped on
their side. This would provide some cover but there wasn’t anywhere to retreat to
given the ocean behind them, and not enough time to make it to the helicopter.
She saw Matias leaning out of the pilot’s
side in the distance. Carlie couldn’t risk having their only means of
transportation damaged or destroyed along with the people inside. She
reluctantly raised her right hand towards Matias and twirled her finger
vigorously. He gave her a wave and closed the door then lifted off. Carlie saw
the helicopter make a hard right and disappear to the west beyond the burnt-out
remains of Coronado just as the Humvees pulled up.
“Alright, fellas,” she said, palming the
handgrip of her rifle and motioning for them to take cover behind the berms as
the vehicles came to a stop twenty yards away. “Either this will be a welcoming
party or it will turn into our very own O.K. Corral.” She moved forward a few
feet next to an oil drum and studied the physical characteristics and gait
patterns of each of the nine men as they exited their rigs.
Chapter 29
“You Coast Guard?” yelled the wiry man
walking towards them. He was dressed in desert camouflage fatigues and wore a warrant
officer’s hat. He pointed up to the sky at the helicopter. “Coast Guard—we
haven’t seen many military personnel in these parts, not since the collapse.”
He stopped within a few feet of Carlie as she raised her rifle slightly. He
removed his hat and tucked it under his left arm while smiling. “Pardon me, ma’am.
My name is Captain Jake Bairdsley.”
She slowly lowered her rifle, glancing
again at his hat, which clearly bore the rank of a warrant officer, and then
looked up into his hazel eyes. “Carlie” she said, noticing the hint of tattoos
along his wrists, mostly covered by his oversized shirt sleeve that looked two
sizes too large. The man had the forbearance of someone in the military but
there was something about him that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. The
rest of the men beside the Humvees were wearing similar clothing except for one
who was dressed in all-white dress regalia typically worn at military
ceremonies.
“We’re on our way back from Mexico. That’s
a Maritime Security helo that we snagged back in Cancun.”
“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen
anyone land here. Probably going on ten weeks now. That’s when Coronado fell.”
She waved her hand back towards the beach.
“You know anything about the graves here? Did they belong to a particular unit
here?”
“Not sure. Those graves are everywhere on
this island. Ya know, there’s probably some record of it back at our command
building. My, uhm, boss kept detailed records on such things before he died.”
“Your ‘boss’—you mean your C.O.?”
“Yeah, my C.O.”
The man tucked his hands in his pockets
below the two .45s on his hips. She could tell he was nervously fidgeting with
this fingers below the fabric as he tried to keep the strained smile on his
face.
“So how did you guys make it?”
He shifted his weight to his left side and
Carlie could see his men in the distance start to move, angling their bodies
slightly.
Something is off with this guy.
She could tell Jared was
getting entrenched in his position to her right but could no longer see Shane
out of the corner of her eye.
“We were all away on the mainland doing
some R&R, ya know, just before the virus hit. I just, uhm, gathered my men
up and then we hacked our way through those creatures trying to get here, ya
know. Then we sealed off the entrance routes and have been here ever since.
That’s how it all went down.”
“So you’re the captain of these men here,”
she said, nodding towards the hat under his arm.
“That’s right. Yes, ma’am,” he said,
placing the hat back on his head in a clumsy motion. She could see how loose it
was and then noticed his long fingernails were encrusted with dried blood. He rotated
his hat slightly and then turned his head to the side, pushing up on the brim and
tilting the hat back. Carlie saw the other men by the vehicles move again
slightly at his posturing. She could smell his fetid breath and tilted her head
slightly to avoid the lingering odor.
“You want to telegraph your intentions any
further or do you just want to shout back at your men to launch their assault?”
He smirked and raised an eyebrow as he
turned towards her, glancing at her hips and tracing his eyes up her figure.
“Not sure what you’re referring to, ma’am.”
She could now see that Shane had crept
along the series of berms until he was positioned at her two o’clock. “How
about this,
Captain,
” she said, raising the barrel of her rifle at his
head and stepping forward. “You tell your men to place their weapons down and
move to the left of their vehicles or my friends and I will blast you into so
many pieces even the undead won’t know you were here.”
His right arm was twitching and his smile
fading. A bead of sweat rolled off his right temple and he let out a deep
breath. “You’ve got some cajones for a woman—thinking you and your two gimps
can take on all of us.”
“It has nothing to do with cajones—just
with taking the pack leader out of the equation. That can often tilt the odds,
ya
know
,” she said, firing a round into his forehead as he started to move for
his pistol. His head exploded in a pink mist and his rigid body careened back
onto the blacktop.
Jared and Shane had already started
shooting at the other men with short controlled bursts as Carlie dove next to a
sand berm and unleashed a volley of precision shots at the nearest men. Four
men were dead from her team’s collected efforts before the rest began returning
fire. Some stood behind their vehicles while others remained in the open, shooting
over the airfield.
The man in the white dress garments fired
off two random shots and then sprinted towards the sand dunes to Carlie’s
right. With the majority of the men dispatched, she took off running and
intercepted the lone shooter as he made it to the beach. She fired off one
round at his upper leg, causing him to tumble onto a dirt mound. His pistol had
fallen out of his hand, landing nearby on a clump of grass. As he struggled to
crawl and retrieve his weapon amidst a trail of blood-coated sand, Carlie came
up and stepped on his hand. The man winced and recoiled into a fetal position.
She picked up the Springfield XD pistol and tucked it into her belt.
The man also had blood-encrusted
fingernails and the foul stench that came from his open mouth as he bellowed
almost made her gag.
“You’re going to answer me a few
questions. If you do so correctly then I will give you a quick death.
Otherwise, I will string you up off the pier and let the sharks take you apart
slowly.”
The man had both his hands up, pleading
with her. “Please, please, I only did what the others told me to do,” he said
in between grimacing and holding his wounded leg. “I’m not a bad person. I was
a college student before this—I was gonna be a filmmaker.”
She lowered the barrel of her rifle to his
neck. “What happened to the navy personnel here?”
“They’re all dead. We showed up here about
six weeks ago. We were luring survivors over to our camp, letting them think we
were military.”
“How?”
“There’s a radio station a few miles south
of our hideout at the elementary school. We’d listen in on the airwaves for
chatter and then fool people into thinking the navy still had a small outpost
here.”
“Are there any other survivors here—any
more of your men?”
“No, it’s just us. You were the first
people we’ve seen in over a week.”
The man paused and his eyes shifted along
her boots. She stepped on his injured leg and he shrieked.
She looked up and saw Shane and Jared
walking over, then glanced at the row of graves to her left. “And what of the graves
here—who are they—what do you know about them?”
“Those were here when we arrived. They’re
all over this island. Who the fuck cares, they’re dead.”
She squatted down beside him and put the
pistol to his head. “I care, and you would too if you had a conscience. What
little you probably had was lost when you joined up with these guys.”
“Please, don’t kill me,” he said while
sobbing and clutching her ankle. She pushed him back onto the sand, knocking
loose a leather pouch on his belt. It spilled open, revealing a dozen dried
human ears. She raised a hand up to her mouth and the muscles in her cheeks
quivered. Carlie turned away to the sand dunes and then glanced back down at
the wretched figure beneath her.
“Please, miss, have mercy on me. We were
starving. There wasn’t anything left to eat.”
She leaned forward and lowered her barrel.
“Mercy is not feeding you to the sharks,” she said, pulling the trigger.