First Wave (The Travis Combs Post-Apocalypse Thrillers) (2 page)

Travis glanced over the group, whose faces were
aglow with firelight. He had really taken to these “civis.” He had spent most
of the trip engaging LB, a former Army helicopter pilot, and Evelyn whose son
had lost his life in Iraq shortly before the surge.
Even when you’re out of
the military, you’re still in.
Travis stared into the fire in between
conversations over the next hour. He recalled vivid images of hundreds of other
campfires he had sat around over the years in the woods around Ft. Bragg while
training other operators in the skills to stay alive in the wilds.
I sure
don’t miss the mosquitos, chiggers, and poison ivy.

Travis looked over his shoulder, towards the river’s
edge, and saw Mark and Fran holding hands under a tree a hundred yards from the
glow of the campfire. Just as he was turning his gaze back, he caught movement
coming down the moonlit gravel road. It was a tall man, in a uniform, weaving
his way towards Fran and Mark. The figure stumbled like he was inebriated.

“Hey Pete, looks like the river ranger is here,” he
said nodding towards the beach. Everyone stood up eager to hear news about the
vans. “I’ll go talk to him and see what’s up,” said Travis as he strode towards
the beach.

As Travis walked to where the road dead-ended at the
river, he saw the ranger increase his stride towards Fran and Mark who had
their back to him, their attention lost amidst the loud gurgle of rapids. The ranger’s
skin was mottled and his shirt unkempt. He wasn’t slowing down and, as Travis
neared, he heard the figure emit a wheezing, rodent like sound. Then the ranger
did a partial leap for the back of Fran’s head, heaving his face on to her
shoulder. She turned and shrieked as the man slammed his jaws on to the right
side of her neck, biting out a sizeable portion of flesh. Fran reeled back while
the ranger bit further through her neck, sending a spray of bright red, blood
on to Mark’s face. Her husband recoiled a step back in horror but then shot
forward, punching the man in the side of the head and screaming at him. The
ranger snapped its jaws at Mark, catching his thumb in the crossbite and shearing
it off. Travis was in an all-out sprint and did a linebacker’s slam on the
ranger, sending him flying off Mark into a large boulder a few feet away.

The disheveled ranger immediately got up, unaffected
by the jarring impact and fixed his attention on Travis. The man lumbered towards
Travis, with the glimmer of fresh blood dribbling from his lips running down over
the bronze badge on his uniform.

Travis pulled his eight-inch tactical knife from its
sheath and rushed forward, slightly sidestepping the oncoming attacker while sinking
the blade below the man’s sternum right to the hilt. Without any sign of being
diminished, the ranger pawed at Travis’s face with crusty hands while a
sickening acrid smell ushered forth from its rubbery lips. Travis yanked the
blade out and drove it in an uppercut through the man’s lower jaw, pulled it
back out, and stomp- kicked him on the chest, sending him backwards. The ranger
was flailing his arms, and on all fours when, across Travis’s left side, came the
flash of a wooden oar striking the man across the head as Pete moved in and made
a wild swing. After two more blows from the oar, the figure lay lifeless with
its head pancaked on the rocks.

Travis’s face was like chiseled ice as he stood over
the body of the ranger. He tapped his dirty boot into the ribs, making sure the
man was dead and then gazed up at Pete, who was leaning on the upright oar
catching his breath. He noticed the man’s skin was marbled blue and grey, like the
person they’d seen earlier on the river trip. It resembled someone suffering
from cyanosis or carbon monoxide poisoning. Chunks of the man’s hair were
missing and only small strands, resembling dental floss, hung off the side of
his head. An ammonia-like odor emanated from the body causing Travis to step
back.

“What the hell just happened Trav?” muttered Pete.

“Not sure bro. Maybe this guy was jacked up on nose
candy or meth. I’ve never seen anything like that and I’ve seen some crazy shit
before.”

Mark was kneeling over Fran’s limp body, his own
bloody hand curled back in his chest. His wife’s blood formed a small puddle
next to her head as her glassy eyes shone in the moonlight. Katy and the others
rushed up and huddled around the two, with bewildered looks painted across
their faces. Katy bent down next to him trying to avert her eyes from Fran’s
mangled face. She swiftly wrapped the shredded stump with a bandanna pulled from
her neck and then looked Mark over for any further injuries.

Travis knelt down and removed the pistol from around
the man’s bloody holster along with a flashlight and pepper spray. Then he did
a quick chamber check of the Glock 19 and stowed the two magazines in his back
pocket. Travis dragged his knife across the man’s pant leg and resheathed it while
palming the pistol in his right hand. Out of habit, he refocused his attention
on the bigger picture around them and scanned the road and surrounding cliffs
for any movement. “Go check on the rest of the group and get them back to the
campfire,” he said to Pete. “Then load it up with tons of firewood. This could
be a long night.”

“Where are you going?”

“On the high ground over our camp to scan for movement
and see if anyone else is out there. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Katy and Pete ushered Mark back to the campfire while
the others helped drag Fran away from the water’s edge, towards a tangle of
downed tree branches. Then they covered her body with a tarp.

Travis was on a rock formation that rose sixty feet
above the beach, peering down the faintly illuminated road that wound through
the thousand foot high walls of Diamond Creek Canyon. Other than the sound of
some crickets and a gentle breeze in the willows, the only other sound came
from the trembling voices at the campfire below him.

After he was satisfied, he stowed the pistol in his belt
and scrambled down the trail to the group. Their faces were tight. Everyone’s pensive
eyes darted from Mark’s hunched, moaning figure beside the fire to the gravel
road by the beach.

Travis moved out of the
shadows and his broad form cast a long shadow on the boulders behind him. “I’m
not sure what the hell just went down or what was wrong with the ranger, but
let’s hike out of here at dawn and get some answers. For now, let’s take turns
keeping the fire going and make sure your eyes and ears stay sharp,” said
Travis.

LB got up and walked a
few feet over to the gear pile and brought back a handful of wooden oars,
placing them around the outskirts of the campfire, while Pete piled more wood
on the blaze.

Few people slept and, other than awkward small talk,
they sat silently around the fire, catnapping or staring furtively into the
darkness.

Around four-thirty am, dawn was muscling into the
canyon and wrens and jays began to sing. At first, it seemed like the same
serene setting they had awoken to each morning. Then Evelyn sat up and looked
at Mark. “My god, what happened? Look at his skin.”

Mark was lying face down in the sand with no
indication of breathing. Pete rushed over to his side and turned him on his
back. Flecks of caked sand fell of his mottled blue face and patches of his
hair had fallen out.

“Katy, you’re the ER nurse- what do you make of
this?” said Travis. Before she could respond, Mark’s eyes opened and he sat
straight up. From his mouth came the same contorted vocalizations that Travis
heard from the ranger.

“Mark, buddy, it’ll be ok. Just sit still,” said Evelyn.
His milky eyes fixated on her and then he shot his hand out at her sandaled
foot. She gasped and jumped back. Travis grabbed an oar and held it against
Mark’s chest. “Easy dude, just stay put. We are going for help shortly.”

The man slapped the oar aside and lunged at Jim, who
was a few feet away. Jim fell back on piles of stacked gear while Mark scurried
on his knees to grab Jim’s ankles. Travis and Pete raced over and yanked his
shoulders, throwing him back on the sand. Then Travis moved in and squirted the
pepper spray in Mark’s bulbous eyes. The man turned his attention on him and
snapped his jaws, while flinging one hand at Travis who kept spraying, until
the entire canister was empty. Mark kept coming. Travis raised the Glock making
sure no one was behind his line of sight, “Mark stop. Enough!”

With their eyes fixed on the immediate melee, no one
had seen Fran’s reanimated corpse straggling up to the fire pit, her head
half-attached and flopping sideways. She came up behind Jim, who was just
recovering from his tumble, and tried to grab his right arm.

Katy and Evelyn snatched up oars and drummed down
vicious blows upon Fran’s loosely tethered head. It finally broke free of the
remaining tendons and rolled down towards the river, its jaws still snapping
lustily while the rest of her body went limp beside Jim, who was screaming.

Travis, with no more than six feet between him and
Mark, loosed two rounds into the forehead, dropping the figure beside the smoldering
ashes of the fire.

With both bodies unmoving, everyone paused to catch
their breath and make sense of what was going on. Jim was screaming, “Get me away
from here! Please someone get me away from these things. I want this trip to be
over already.”

“We need to get the hell out of this canyon,” said Katy.
“What if there are more of those things lurking around?”

“Let’s not wait to find out,” said Travis, glancing
at the two bodies. “Fill your packs with water bottles, any remaining chow, and
the usual survival gear, and let’s hoof it outta here.”

****

It was five-thirty a.m. by the time they moved in
silence up the road, engulfed by the undulating contours of the canyon. Travis
holstered the pistol under his baggy shirt and downed some water and a protein
bar, before shouldering his pack. He thought of grabbing the ranger’s belt and
holster but it was sticky with blood and viscera.

Walking alongside him was LB, who was nervously
running his fingers over his thin goatee. He told everyone on the first day to
call him by his nickname
LB,
which, as he said, stood either for “little
buddy” or “little bastard” depending on his mood that day. LB had been a helicopter
pilot for a metropolitan news station and now, with kids grown and being a
widower, was looking for a trip that provide some time to reflect on his life.
Travis, Katy and Pete were the younger members of the group, being in their
mid-thirties.

The rising sun painted the cliff walls ochre, and
the birdsong and buzzing insects, broke the rhythmic crunch of boots falling on
gravel. Nearing ten a.m., the party rounded a bend in the road beside an arroyo
and the familiar smell of rotting flesh pierced Travis’s nostrils. The repugnant
odor brought back gut-twisting images of remote caves in Afghanistan.

A hundred yards up the road, with its front end
smashed into a pile of rocks, was the river ranger’s white truck. Travis
motioned the group to halt as he moved towards the rig with the pistol at
low-ready. The driver’s door was ajar and tracks led to the other side by a
towering pillar of sandstone. A young woman’s body was propped up against a
bus-sized boulder, looking almost like she was taking a shade break.

Her neck had a gaping hole in the side. What
remained of her looked like a driftwood mannequin, with the remaining flesh
shrunk wrap to her bones. Fire ants had just discovered the rotting figure and
were moving like a red ribbon over her pants. Travis inspected the body from a
distance. Her left hand was still gripping a small pocketknife and dried blood
was found under her nostrils, ears, and eyes. There were no other tracks in the
area, not even from coyotes.

Travis moved cautiously toward the driver’s door of
the truck. By the tracks on the ground, with their lack of tread detail and
rounded edges, he figured this scene had played out five days prior. Inside the
rig were a few water bottles, binoculars, and a walkie-talkie. He motioned for
the rest of the group to come up.

 “Any ideas, Katy?” said Travis. She looked over the
body with one hand covering her mouth, “Looks like this woman was in bad shape
right to the end. Wonder if the ranger attacked her or someone else?”

“Yeah, I imagine she hurt worse than a giraffe with
a sore throat,” said Travis.

“Stop with the military humor and show some respect,”
she replied.

Pete walked up, peering at the body. “It’s just his
way Katy. He doesn’t mean anything by it. Let’s see if the walkie-talkie she
was carrying still works. There should be a repeater tower southeast of here.”

“Nothing, it’s not picking up a thing,” Travis said,
in a somber tone after flipping through the channels.

He squatted down a few feet from the desiccated
body. “This is probably the river ranger’s wife. Question is- was she coming or
going from the area we just came from?” He rubbed the whiskers on his chin.
“Let’s push on in ten minutes. We still have some miles to make if we’re going
to reach the main road before nightfall.”

An hour later, after refilling their water bottles
at Mesquite Springs, Katy moved up next to Pete who was trailing behind and
tugged on his shoulder. “So, we’re going on over three weeks together and I
still don’t get Travis’s dark sense of humor. You’ve known him for years- has
he always been like this?”

“Well, he’s always been a practical joker and a
glass
half-full
kind of guy, at least until recently. His deployments in the
Middle East, and God knows where else, changed him from the carefree dude I
knew. The sarcasm and constant humor is just his way of dealing with life’s
headaches. Spend time around a bunch of his old unit buddies and your ears may
go up in flames.”

Katy was about to speak, when the sight of a capsized
eighteen wheeler on the road ahead, caught everyone’s attention. As they
crested the top of an incline, where the dirt road met the asphalt by Route 66,
they saw hundreds of abandoned vehicles strewn on the waffle pattern of empty
streets that made up the small town of Peach Springs. Some vehicles had doors
open suggesting a quick departure of the occupants, while others had
blood-stained dashboards and windshields. A half-dozen cars in the immediate area
were riddled with bullet holes, and numerous rotting body parts littered the
half-mile long stretch of road before them.  Most of the small houses were
completely burned to the ground while many others had the windows shattered out
and doors swung on broken hinges, or were missing completely.

Travis stood frozen, his throat tightening, while he
stared at the decimated town. Creases from a clenched jaw pulsed through his
scruffy beard. He scanned the area beyond the homes for any movement but the
only living creatures were the flocks of ravens picking through the decaying
remains.

“My God, what’ve we walked into? What’s happened to
the world?” whispered Evelyn, her eyes welling up while the others stood
paralyzed, surveying the horrific scene of carnage before them.

Travis tried to swallow and then blinked his eyes
hard a few times. “Let’s get out of this exposed area and trot over to that
boulder field,” he said. Everyone pulled up their shirt collars to cover their
faces, as they strode through the littered street abuzz with flies and
departing flocks of hungry birds.

As they edged towards the boulders, Travis could see
that the hotel and attached restaurant a thousand yards down the road, were
still intact. They picked up their speed and made it to the shaded, north side
of the boulders where they plunked down in the sand. Travis plucked out the
binoculars from his pack and glassed over the parking lot beside the hotel.

There was a tangle of abandoned vehicles around the
buildings but no signs of activity. The hotel sign was laying bent across the
highway. Another sign indicated the
Grand Canyon Caverns
twelve miles
east and the historic
Waverly Ranch
a mile to the south.

“Looks like the world has changed since we were last
in it.” Travis ran a dusty hand over the stubble on his chin while thinking. “Let’s
take a breather here for a while. Get down some water and chow. Pete and I will
pay a visit to the hotel and see if there’s anything of use or if the phones
still work. The rest of you stay here. No point in having all of us crammed in
a tight space in case bullets start flying. This maze of boulders will provide
plenty of hiding spots and high ground. Keeps your knives handy…just in case.”
He handed the radio to Katy and the SAT phone to LB. Give these a try again
while we are gone. Just keep the sound turned down.”