Deadland's Harvest (8 page)

“How will we survive the herds? If Marshall couldn’t survive, we have no chance here!” a woman cried out.

Tyler stood up. “I have an idea, but it’s a long shot.”

The following morning’s flight was a bumpy one, and I had to keep both hands on the yoke. The weather was unseasonably warm, and the heat caused thermals to pop up in the air. Tyler was strapped in next to me in the Cessna 172. Sitting behind us, Jase scanned the countryside for anything useful while Griz slept soundly, his snores coming over the intercom every once in a while.

Clutch, as Tyler’s second-in-command, was in charge of the park whenever Tyler was offsite for longer than a few hours. When Camp Fox had relocated to the park, the pair had reached an agreement to never ride in the same vehicle because the park couldn’t risk losing both of our seasoned military officers. Even though their knowledge and leadership had saved our collective ass many times over, I suspected the other reason they didn’t ride together was because they pissed each other off as much as they needed each other.

Clutch couldn’t come along today for three reasons. First, the air was too turbulent for his back. Second, Tyler was the only person who’d spoken with the guy we were meeting today. Third and most important, Clutch was shit as a diplomat. He was great at getting people in line—and was likely running all the residents through the training wringer right now—but when it came to begging for help, Tyler’s smooth personality was needed.

Tyler currently had his head propped against the glass, looking outside, his hand tapping to the beat of the music piping through our headsets. He had his iPhone plugged into the plane’s audio system, and the connector charged the device while it played. Right now, music from the Nadas filled my headset.

“The zeds around here aren’t showing any signs of migrating yet. I wonder if they do leave, how far south they’ll go,” he said without looking up, the music volume auto-muting while he spoke.

“Who cares as long as it’s a long ways from us,” Jase replied from the backseat.

“I don’t get it,” Tyler said. “The zeds are rotting away. Why would they migrate when they’re probably going to be dead within a year, anyway?”

The zeds still owned the area, but their bodies had slowed down as the plague ate away at their flesh and muscle. With how decayed many were, that they hadn’t died off already made no sense. Then again, that anyone could have their throat ripped out and yet return as a zed made no sense either. The virus, in its cruel effectiveness, was terrifying.

Still, on this trip, our greater risk was survivors, not zeds. Most zeds remained near towns, with only herds roaming the countryside. If only I’d flown over these roads before and mapped out any roadblocks or signs of raiders, we could’ve driven today. This was the first time Tyler was meeting with this radio contact. I would’ve preferred to drive so that we could have taken more reinforcements.

Tyler’s contact, a riverboat captain named Sorenson, had a community roughly the size of Camp Fox on a riverboat casino. He’d told Tyler he was confident his people would make it through the migration unscathed, and Tyler had believed him. The question was, would Sorenson take Camp Fox under his protection as well? That he had offered to meet with Tyler gave us all hope.

Right now, everyone at Camp Fox was busy packing up their belongings and pulling together all the food, livestock, supplies, and weapons for winter under the assumptions that Tyler’s diplomacy would succeed and we could temporarily relocate to Sorenson’s riverboat. If Tyler failed in gaining Sorenson’s help today, our only option was to run. I hoped to God Tyler wouldn’t fail.

On the ground, a few zeds dotted the landscape. Nothing like the herds Clutch, Jase, and I had seen north of us. Every hour I hoped the herds would stop their migration or at least pass through without coming near Camp Fox, but I knew better. I’d seen the herds and the paths they’d trampled. They moved like locusts intent on a mission. “Maybe the zeds in Chow Town will head out with them,” I said, thinking of the only possible benefit of the migration.

“We can only hope,” Tyler said. “It would be great to be able to get into town and clear out the stores before bandits get to them.”

Right now, around three thousand zeds lurked in the streets of Fox Hills, now called Chow Town. I’d made the unfortunate mistake of getting myself stranded in town not once but twice, and I’d barely gotten out alive each time. No one was crazy enough to venture near Chow Town. Zeds had laid claim, and no one dared challenge them for it.

Every day, a few more would trickle out of Chow Town, and our scouts would put a quick end to them. Still, at that rate, it would take years to clear out the town that had once been Fox Hills.

We couldn’t wait a decade for the zeds to clear out of Chow Town. We needed food and resources
now.
After Clutch’s farm and Camp Fox were destroyed, it was too late to replant, leaving everyone to harvest wild crops and the few gardens that had been planted. It scared the beejeezus out of me knowing there were even more zeds on the way, eating everything in their path.

Swallowing, I glanced over my shoulder. “Hey, Jase. Did you bring the map that’s marked up with the herds?”

“Got it right here.”

“Good. If we get the chance to make a fuel stop, I’ll fly us north. What do you think, Tyler?”

He nodded. “It’s a good idea to see if they’re still on track for what we calculated. I think we’ll need to start scouting to the north every day.”

“I’ll use the Cub. It burns less fuel, and I don’t want to use this plane except when we have to because it’s in desperate need of an overhaul.” I paused. “And we have another problem.”

“Oh?” Tyler asked.

“The fuel tank at the Fox Hills airport is nearly empty,” I replied. “I can get two, maybe three, more refills for the portable tank from it. Jase has marked every airport in the area that might have av-gas, but if I have to travel farther for refills, I need a bigger portable tank. A gas truck would be perfect.”

Tyler chuckled. “Easier said than done. Every gas truck we’ve found is needed for ground support in case Camp Fox needs to become mobile. We can’t sacrifice a single truck right now.”

“I guess I’ll start searching for a plane that runs off auto fuel.”

His eyebrows rose. “There are planes that run off regular gas?”

I nodded. “Quite a few, actually. There weren’t any at the Fox Hills airport, but I’m sure there’s one at a nearby airport.”

“Hey, it looks like a grass strip down there,” Jase said.

I scanned from side to side and found a yellow crop duster sitting in tall grass. A single building and white tank sat near it.

“That’s a good one. Be sure to mark it on the map.”

“Already got it,” he said. “There’s no town for miles. The land is wide open. Might make a good fuel stop on the way back.”

“The grass is awfully tall, but yeah, it could be perfect.”

We flew in silence for the next several miles. I kept an eye on my flight path while Jase and Tyler scanned the countryside.

“That looks like a camp down there,” Tyler said, his finger pressed against the glass.

“It could be a bandit camp,” Jase said. “I don’t see any kids down there.”

“I’d rather warn bandits than not warn good people,” Tyler countered.

I slowed the Cessna and descended a hundred feet. Finding survivors was rare, but they were easy to spot. All we had to look for was signs of fortifications, and nearly every camp we’d found was at a farm.

“Can you get any closer?” Tyler asked, ruffling through a duffle.

I smirked. “Afraid gravity won’t catch the bag?”

“No, but it’d be nice to actually drop it within their fence.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from gritting my teeth. I’d grown an aversion to flying over camps. Every time I did, it brought back memories of Doyle’s camp and getting shot at, even though I suspected most folks were out of ammo by now. With one hand wrapped too tightly around the yoke, I dropped in some flaps, slowed the 172 to near stall speed and brought it in to circle the settlement. A half-dozen or so people came to stand outside, looking up, and shading their eyes against the sun.

The engine began to rumble roughly, and my heart lurched. I added in power. “Damn engine is getting worse. We’ve really got to get it fixed,” I muttered.

Tyler opened the window. Cool air blew into the cockpit, and he dropped out the hazard-orange painted bag filled with dirt and a single written warning about the herds heading south. He pulled the window shut and I turned back on course.

“Thanks,” Tyler said. “Any time we can warn others about the herds is potentially another life saved.”

Tyler had brought three more drop-bags, but we didn’t use them. We’d flown over what had definitely been a camp, but it looked like it had been abandoned or overrun some time ago. I often saw signs of abandoned camps, but I hadn’t seen a new camp pop up in over a month. Maybe people were moving west where the government was supposedly pooling all resources into building new “city-states” defensible against zeds.

The rumored city-states gave us all hope, but they were too far away to be considered a possibility yet. The largest rumored city was in Montana, with three states of zeds between us and them. Until we had better vehicles, the trip was too risky. We had to survive on our own in zed country.

Mid-sized groups did the best out here. Too small of a group, resources were spread too thin between fending off zeds and finding food. Too large of a group and it became a magnet for every zed in the vicinity. Camp Fox, just crossing sixty residents if the newcomers stayed, was going to become quite tempting to zeds.

The wide blue landmark in the distance caused me to refocus. “We’re coming up on the Mississippi. Start looking for our bridge,” I said to no one in particular as I strained my eyes, searching the Mississippi River for its bridges.

If the GPS had still worked, it would’ve brought me straight to our destination since Sorenson had provided the bridge’s coordinates. Now, I had to fly by sight, and I was often a mile or more off my destination. It was my fault. Like most, I’d become way too reliant on technology before the outbreak.

“Wait, I’ve got it. I’ll check in,” I said to no one in particular as I lined up to the giant yellow X that had been painted on a bridge. I pressed the radio’s transmit button. “Cessna to Camp Fox. If you can still hear us, we’re descending to land at the RP. Over.”

Dead static came as the only response.

“Clutch might have heard us, but there’s no way I could pick up his handheld from this distance. I’m not even sure he can pick us up,” I said. “We both figured that’d be the case.”

On the right day, the radio signal could cover the entire state, especially with the lack of other signals to hinder it. Today didn’t seem to be one of those days.

As the river grew larger, I descended and slowed. No signs of zeds and—unfortunately—no sign of the riverboat yet. I flew over the bridge with two steel arches. “Everything looks clear, but I’m not seeing our guys. You guys see any zeds?”

“No. Nothing,” came the response from my crew.

I lined up for the bridge again, this time running through my landing checklist. Touching down this close to the river set my nerves on edge, even though the highway was open for a quarter-mile before the bridge, and I had plenty of runway ahead of me. Still, it was discomfiting having all that iron and open water surrounding me. It wouldn’t take too much to veer off and hit a wingtip, and then we’d be stranded over two hundred miles away from Camp Fox. And, once down, I’d have to taxi onto the bridge so we didn’t have to walk to our destination.

The engine sputtered a couple times on final approach, and I throttled forward just enough to keep it from cutting out completely while still making the landing.

“That engine doesn’t sound good,” Tyler said.

“It’s been acting up more and more lately. Joel says it needs some new sparkplugs,” I said as I pulled the plane to a stop in the middle of the bridge so that I could take off in either direction at a moment’s notice.

“He’s been busy with Humvee Three, and that’s his first priority right now. But I’ll ask him to take a look,” Tyler said.

“Yeah, I figured that.” After double-checking to make sure everything was powered off, I set my headset on the dash and unbuckled.

“Rise and shine, Grizzly Bear,” Jase said, and I heard Griz grumble something unintelligible.

Tyler smirked, grabbed his bag, and climbed out of the plane. I grabbed my backpack and rifle. Before I opened my door, I glanced back at the red five-gallon jugs filled with emergency av-gas to make sure they were still bungeed together in the baggage compartment, and then headed outside. Jase and Griz followed.

Griz stretched under the sun while I locked the Cessna’s doors and turned to Tyler. “We’re all set. Barring any big change in weather, we should easily make it back to the park without having to refuel.” I thought for a moment. “I miss getting the weather forecasts. They sure did come in handy with flight planning.”

“I kind of prefer the lack of news,” he said as he pulled out his sword. “It was always sensationalizing the bad things.”

“I’ll check out the area to the east,” Griz said. “I need to stretch my legs.”

“I’ll go with you,” Jase offered, and the two sauntered off with their weapons drawn.