Deadfall: Survivors (25 page)

Twenty or so minutes later, the helicopter landed back in the clearing again
, and Captain Rhodes came back out. The three Apaches had taken the fight to the unknown group at the conference center, and had been joined by four other of the helicopters. They were called Hueys (that’s when I found out the name) plus a Chinook (what??). They had landed near the center, and were taking control of the area. Apparently, they were quite pumped. I guess these guys were soldiers, and were finally doing what most of them had trained for.

Rhodes told us that they had mounted an attack on the center
, and that they clearly outnumbered the men inside. He then asked if we would take him and some of his men to the center. He would stay on the radio to follow the fight, but that it seemed it would be over by the time we got there. I had nothing to say because I wasn’t about to decide, and while we were a little on edge about heading back into a gunfight, he eased our fears a bit by saying that the helicopter would follow right above us, and this time be ready for anything.

So once again, we were on the road, heading right back down
Highway 9, past the wreck of the two trucks, and the mangled bodies inside. It occurred to me later that unless they had had their brains chopped up, those bodies would come back as well. It also dawned on me that there’s  no way that all this commotion had not drawn the attention of every single zombie in a good twenty mile radius. Granted, it would take them a while to walk there, but, I was a bit uneasy about it. I guess the rest of the group wasn’t, maybe having created themselves a little courage by the fact of having the soldiers with us. Or maybe, I just wasn’t reading them right, and they were just as uneasy as me.

Everyone was quiet as about twenty minutes
later, we began driving up into the conference center. In the parking lot, two of the Hueys were “parked”. We were greeted by a pair of soldiers, who talked briefly with the captain, who was in the bed of the truck. He hopped out, walked to the driver’s window, and informed us that the “battle” was over and that they had taken the place.

We parked up near the entrance. I somewhat remembered this place. We piled out of the car
, and followed the captain up to another individual, a Major Bowers, the guy in charge of this mission, and therefore the guy in charge of the center now. We overheard them talking about the battle. They had lost no one, and had killed twenty three of the men inside the center. If there were more, they didn’t know, but they were conducting a “sweep” of the compound. Military terms I wasn’t too sure of, but I figured they knew what they were doing. I heard the unease at which the Major explained how they had quickly turned the battle around, but that the men inside had refused to surrender and had fought to the death. They had preferred death, and this had left the Major a little uneasy about the situation.

I piped in that maybe they should go around making sure that they have their heads done in
, or we would have more things to fight. The Major stared at me, a blank stare that revealed that he didn’t quite understand what I was talking about, and then that spark in the eye when he did understand. He barked out some orders to a couple of the soldiers nearby, telling them to make sure the men they had killed were completely dead. He told them to use knives to save ammo.

The Captain introduced me
, and then the rest of the group. The Major was thankful for our intervention, and asked us if we needed anything. I could only look back at the rest of the group, mostly because I had no answer myself, and only wanted to make sure they didn’t either.

“What’s going to happen here?” I asked.

The Major explained that they were going to dig around to try to find out who these people were. It would probably take a day or two, but that they would collect any supplies they could use and then head back to Fort Fisher. He asked us how far we were from our house, giving away that the Captain had already revealed a little to him about us. When I told him about a day, he told us that we were welcome to remain here for the night, if we wanted to. He insisted that we would be safe here.

I was, again, a bit uneasy about saying yes, but after a quick conference with the rest of the group, we decided to stay. The Major smiled and told us that as soon as they had ensured the place was clear
, that he would get us a place to stay. The Major ran off, and after thanking us again, Captain Rhodes walked off as well.

I think we were all just awestruck. Just this morning
, we had been crawling out of a zombie attacked house after a peaceful night, and now here we were, in full presence of the US Army, our first real encounter with any real semblance of remaining civilization. We had been involved in a battle, I guess you could call it that, had been shot at, and had survived. We would be spending the night with what appeared to be about forty five other living human beings. It was quite a step for us.

As we began to get a few of our things out of the truck, Heather still had that grim look on her face, pursed lips, the occasional clenching of the jaw. She was not happy to be in amongst the soldiers. I tried to calm her, but really all I could say was that it would be ok, and who knows if that was true either.

We hung out for a bit at the back of the truck, some of us sitting on the tailgate. There was obvious activity inside and at one point, the Chinook flew over us. It was a huge helicopter; I guess that’s  the one that was carrying most of them. It flew back behind the center where I believe it landed.

Tague moved up next to me as the Chinook disappeared behind the main building
, out of sight, and told me,

“You know,
it’s  only a matter of time. Remember that massive horde of zombies that we kept running into on I-26?”

“Brian, that’s exactly what I was about to say”, chimed in Heather.

Apparently, this was on all our minds, as the conversation quickly broke down into this topic. The helicopters had come out of the east, so they probably had not seen the horde. At this point, the horde was probably stuck in Asheville, and Black Mountain is an easy day’s walk. We made the decision to leave everything we could in the truck, just in case we had to make a quick escape. We pulled out the map, and found a way up north into the mountains, behind Black Mountain, that would allow us a free route away from the Interstate, which was directly south of us, and our only way to Highway 9.

I can’t remember just how long we waited there by the truck, maybe two hours, but at some time later that afternoon, the captain returned to let us know that everything was clear
, and that we could bring our things to the main cafeteria where apparently, they were rustling up some food.

The mood that evening was quite celebratory.
The soldiers were understandably in a good mood. It had been many months of detached boredom, wandering the countryside in the helicopters, looking for anyone and everyone, very rarely with any kind of success. Now, here at Black Mountain, they had fought a battle, won it, and they felt really good about themselves. It’s  rather funny to think that these soldiers probably felt as if they were on deployment on a foreign land, when they were right here in good old North Carolina.

Apparently, they had raided the food stores the unknown group had brought here. They were grilling steaks.
I’d  like to know where our unknowns had actually found steaks. I hadn’t seen meat like this in a very long time. I only knew of one place that still had steak like this, the deep freezers back at the house. I wondered if they had found another house like mine. They had made it seem from their conversations, that ours was not the only one.

I
’ll  be honest though, that in the middle of that somewhat loud and raucous group, we felt a little more at ease. I could see a few more smiles all around, and the steaks sure were good. Safety in numbers maybe, but for a few hours that night, we felt comfortable and at ease. 

Captain Rhodes joined us at some point that evening, and he brought us some of the information we wanted. The soldiers had gone through a lot of what had been left behind
, and he had just one word for it all.

Peculiar.

“The food stores I get, there were plenty of men here, but the gear is something else. These guys aren’t just survivors scavenging here. They’re  organized, and have something behind them, as in, like us. There’s  gear here that, unless you know exactly what it’s for, you don’t know what it is. For example, they have something here that’s  used to measure electromagnetic fields. In the field, we use something like this to figure out where a camouflaged enemy power plant or generator is.”

I remember swallowing
hard after I heard that. I knew exactly what they were looking for. But since they hadn’t found us yet, I could only assume that being underground helped shield from that.

“
There’s  also plenty of communication gear here, as well, powerful stuff. I just barely glanced at some of the logs here, but we’re going to pack everything up and go over it all once we get back to the ships. There are laptops and computers, as well, all fully functional and well taken care of. This isn’t just stuff you find out in the world right now.”

Tague asked where they were storing all that stuff
, and the Captain mentioned something I didn’t quite understand, but I could see that Tague was thinking about something. I would find out later just what was going on in his head.

As the evening began to get late, the Major had soldiers cleaning up and setting up to sleep. Aaron told us he had moved the truck closer to the entrance. We were all still
of the mind that something wasn’t sitting well with us. He had also moved our sleeping gear to an office that was right behind what had probably been a reception desk. It was a quick shot to the outside.

Can you see where
I’m  going with this? Soldiers or not, we just knew better.

We were quite restless that night. I know
I slept a little at first, but Heather woke me up, sometime during the early morning hours, 4 am would have been my guess. She hadn’t been able to sleep. She pointed out that Tague wasn’t with us. We sat up and chatted softly for a while, when we heard some movement outside of the room we were in.

We walked to the door just in time to see four or five soldiers go running by
, towards the outside. A few moments later, two more went running by. I looked at Heather just in time to see Tague walking up to us. He moved us back inside the little office, where the others were beginning to stir. He began by telling us that he hadn’t  been able to sleep at all, and had snuck off in hopes of finding and taking a good look at the gear the soldiers had confiscated.

Then he grinned and pulled out a small laptop from under his coat.

“I think I’ll have a good look at this later,” he said.

I remember Aaron gasping.
“You serious? You stole from the military?”

Again, it wasn’t like they would take us to federal prison.

Tague had other news, though. He said that there had been an explosion in the room with all the gear, but that it was unlike anything he had ever seen. Instead of the explosion having destroyed everything, instead, everything was covered in silver colored soot. He showed us his hand, the open palm and fingers covered in the odd material. It seemed metallic in nature, but it was extremely soft, again, just like soot from a smoky fire.

He told us how everything in the room was just covered in the stuff, but other than that, everything was intact. When I asked how he had managed to get in the room, that’s when he mentioned that something else was going on. He had hung around close to the room when, as he explained, the soldiers in the room got some kind of call on their radios
, and all of them dashed out.

We were all quite nervous already. Evan mention
ed that maybe it was time for us to say farewell, and clear out of the area. There was a general agreement on this, and we began to pack up. Just as we were finishing, Captain Rhodes burst in, initially with a surprised look on his face to see us up, awake and packing.

“Listen,
something’s  going on. Some of guys on guard spotted a mass of zombies headed our way along the interstate. It could just be a moving horde, and we’re  tucked in nicely in here. The word is if we keep nice and quiet, they should just pile on by on the highway. Either case, everyone is up and geared up just in case.”

Evan asked him why they just didn’t bug out on their helicopters.

“Well, if we start them up, it takes a while, and it will certainly draw their attention. We would prefer to remain here another day or two, just to go over and make sure we’ve found everything that might be here.”

There was a pause. We were looking at each other, and I think we all had the same thing in mind.
We needed to get out of there.

“I'm sure
we’ll be just  fine. Do me a favor, and just stay here. I’ll let you know what’s going on.”

As soon as he left, our efforts to pack up
increased. As we filed out of the room and headed towards the door, we overheard two of the guards at the main doors talking, and we jumped into the conversation.

“The head of the column is about a mile out. We spotted them on our night gear.
They’re coming out of Asheville to the west.”