The girls helped me dress in my best zombie killing outfit. We didn’t have uniforms per se, we concerned ourselves with more practical matters. They finished strapping on my gear and I hauled ass down to the rear of Master’s and Johnson Hardware store in the Jeep. They were going to follow me in a couple minutes.
The Blackhawk hovered about 500 feet away, the door gunner covering us. Some troops inside also covered us with M-16s. I put my AR-15 on the hood of the Jeep and stepped away from it. I made big pointing motions with my hands, hopefully indicating that I wanted them to land here.
They came directly over us, still at a few hundred feet. A small bag dropped out of the chopper and landed in a heap of dust.
I ran to the bag and discovered a radio wrapped in dirty socks and tshirts. I switched it on.
“Howdy,” I called, might as well sound friendly. “Whatcha guys want.”
“This is Lt. Col. Marcus Peterson, United States Army. Do we have permission to land? I’d like to speak with whomever is in charge.”
“If your intentions are peaceful, Colonel, then come on down.”
They sat the bird down in a whirlwind of dust and shut it down. After a few tense moments where we each wondered if we would shoot at each other, I turned slowly to show I was unarmed. Erin and the Masters brothers still covered the helo, though. Actually, all my people had their weapons trained on the Army fellas.
The Colonel stepped out and approached me. I saluted him, and he returned the salute.
“Michael Larson, Mayor, Commandant, Captain, and Father of this town.”
Col. Peterson smiled and we shook hands.
“I have no interest in shooting you fellas,” I informed Peterson. “Maybe your guys could assume a less aggressive stance?”
Peterson motioned, and they pointed their guns elsewhere instead of directly at us.
“Drink, sir?” I queried. “A little of Tennessee’s Finest?”
Col. Peterson smiled. “Sounds like a good idea!” I ushered him into the Hardware store where Morgan quickly set us up with a bottle of Jack and two glasses. I poured us each a couple fingers worth.
“Well Colonel, you’ve seen most of our area from the air. How about filling me in on how you’re set up, and what your intentions are with us.” These guys had the upper hand, for sure. I mean, they had a chopper, fuel, men and arms. But I didn’t want to just give away the keys to city to these guys.
The colonel allowed as how they were out of Fort Carson. Like everywhere else, they had their fair share of zombie trouble, but were fortunate to not devolve into total anarchy. They still had over half of their troops, about 8,500 folks including families on base.
“Most other installations weren’t that lucky,” the Colonel explained. “Many were entirely overrun, or lost all their folks in the subsequent city battles. We’ve stayed out of the big cities so far, just seems like too big of a job to tackle. But now we’ve seen your, uh, what do you call your contraption out front?”
“Ah,” I said beaming with pride. “The Sanchez Death Pit, you mean. Invented by an eighteen year old girl, who happens to be my wife and mother of my child. Anyway, it’s pretty simple, but very effective. You wanna take a look?.”
We walked outside and found the chopper guys talking with Gayle, Lorrie, Tina, Payton. Guys were smiling and laughing, having a good time.
I said jokingly to the Colonel, “Looks like your boys forgot to pull security!”
He shook his head. “We’ve got about an 8:1 ratio of men to women, so your gals here are a sight for very, very sore eyes!”
“Not going to be a problem, is it Colonel?”
“No sir,” he responded. “We will not tolerate any kind of unwillful behavior. That being said, we do have some VERY comfortable women who have found it to be, um, shall we say, ‘profitable’, if they are of certain moral standard.”
I winked at him as I led them up the walkway. Tom greeted us up there.
“This is Tom Zander, my second in charge.” They exchanged pleasantries as we walked on the raised walkway to get to the death pit. I continued on. “Tom and his people moved here from another town after a shared incident brought us together. We took over a truck stop north of here, arranged the shipping containers to act as walls and funnels, and to act as ramps for our zombie friends. We’ve got a little Bobcat skidsteer machine over there, dug out the pit with that and voila! The Sanchez Pit of Death! By the way, we claim all copyrights and trademarks to that name.”
The Army guys were stunned by the Death Pit. We were currently in the middle of passively dispatching a pretty good-sized heard of a couple thousand zombilators, at least. We mostly stood guard, somewhat out of sight so the zeds wouldn’t get distracted, and fired a shot every now and then at those who survived the 40-foot fall and tried to clamber over the container wall.
“It’s so simple!” cried Col. Peterson. “And yet, elegant! You don’t even need bait, right? You’ve got smoke rising from the burning dead, and that draws in others, right?”
“Exactly. See, early on we nearly got overrun a few times, and we didn’t have enough people or ammo to fight them one by one. We needed a passive solution, and Lorrie Sanchez came up with it! I’ve seen enough zombie films, although I never expected to be in one. But the people were always making dumb mistakes. They never had a place they could lock down and try and start over. We think we’ve got that, and that’s what we’re trying to do here.”
“Any problems with it?” Peterson asked.
“Mmmm, sometimes they get a little confused. The fire might die down or a bird might distract them. But then we just ring this bell we got from a church.” I pointed to the bell hanging out in the middle of the pit, supported by a 2×4 structure. “Also, we’ve got rotating beacons, cop lights, to get their attention again. When it gets slow, we have to block up the ramps so we can clean out the trampled bodies. That’s probably the biggest danger, getting clogged like that.”
The Colonel’s mind was spinning. “You could, wow, build more ramps, dig a deeper pit so they always break, rig up lights so they fire in sequence to create illusion of movement up the ramp… holy shit, this could really work.” He seemed lost in thought.
“Well, sir, it does work. But yeah, you could enlarge it sure, you’ve got big equipment, right?”
The Colonel ushered us aside and spoke to his men. They all seemed pretty excited. After a couple minutes he turned back towards Tom and myself.
“Listen, can you guys make me a list of what you need? You’ve got a good setup here and I want to see you succeed. You’re going to need more farmland than what you’ve got now. What can we do for you?”
I just about came unglued with pure glee. “Well. Let’s see. Some .50 cals would be nice. Ma Deuces and Barretts, and plenty of ammo. 100 M-4 rifles. About 20,000 rounds of 5.56, too. Um…1,000 gallons of gasoline, and tanks to hold it. A few thousand MRE’s would help. What else. Clothes. Soap. Toilet paper. Bigger bulldozer? Farm equipment. oh yeah FENCES! We need fencing material so we can expand our farms. Goats, chickens, cows, and some more families, too.”
Cpl. Flint wrote down everything.
“Mayor Larson,” Col. Peterson began. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to set up an auxiliary post here. Man it with 50 people. Some Humvees. 2 Strykers. Medical trailer and staff. And I’d like to offer you a commission as a Major in the Army Reserves. The post will be under your command.”
“I’m honored sir,” I said, my voice faltering. “Not sure I want to be in the Army, though. I just want to stay here and raise my family. No disrespect, sir.”
“That’s why I’m putting you in the reserves. You’ll stay here and command the entire county, maybe even several counties. But you will live here. With our support. Meanwhile, we will take your Sanchez idea and liberate all of Colorado, and the country, too!”
We talked awhile longer, then they took off in their chopper. However, they left the Corporal behind to act as engineer and designer of the new post. Erin fairly leapt at the chance to escort Cpl. Flint around. Poor guy, I thought. He doesn’t stand a chance!
I went back to the house and told the ladies and the baby about the conversation. Jessie spit up a little, but I didn’t take that as a negative. Gayle, however was a little different.
“Let me get this striaght,” she said, crossly. “You’re giving up everything we’ve fought for, and letting these Army guys waltz in here and take over? What happened to you? Weren’t you the one always talking bad about shitheads that live off the government tit?”
Well, shit, when she put it that way, it didn’t sound like such a good deal.
“Babe,” I said, trying to sound hopeful. “We have to connect with others. We have to get rid of these zombies. We need medicine, more food, or else we’ll just be subsisting. I want your kid and my kids,” I looked at Lorrie, “to be able to grow, and become something other than just semi-starving zombie fighters! We don’t have to go back to the old ways of pure greed and avarice, but maybe we can make a better world this time.”
Gayle looked at me, unsure.
“I’m not just making this shit up. I don’t want to be beholden to the Army, either. But I feel the best way to improve the world is to get involved, be the one on the inside and guide policy and change. Not just sit here and have fantastic, abundant sex while the rest of the world dies completely…”
What the fuck did I just say? I don’t want fantastic, abundant sex? Maybe I have Zombie fever, I should lie down…
“Michael,” Lorrie said. “We just don’t want you leaving us. Show the Army how to build these Death Pits. But let *them* do it. You stay here, mister. That’s an order.”
Lorrie scooped up Jess and stormed out of the room.
– – – –
Four days later, I was getting dressed in my ‘Class A’ Army uniform. Already had a ribbon on it, too. Red, white, and blue stripes with a ‘Z’ in the middle of it. I got several sets of camo also, as did everyone in town. But the colonel said I should wear this for my formal induction and address to the town.
I stepped out into the family room of my adobe castle to see what the ladies thought. They were already dressed in their new camo utilities.
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