Radioactive Omnibus- A Prepper Survival Story (8 page)

“They can’t do that!”

“Hey, we need to be smart.”

The soldiers around the tents kept eyeing Jim suspiciously.

“They want me to convince Matt to give them the information they’re looking for.”

“And what happens if you can’t convince him?”

Jim looked over at Annie huddled next to Coyle. She had her arms wrapped around his leg and was glancing up at the soldiers around her. Jim saw Samantha follow his line of sight.

“Oh, God,” she said.

“It won’t come to that.”

“It might,” a stern, cold voice said from behind him. When Jim turned around he saw the same sergeant who had his gun against his temple no less than twenty minutes ago.

“You give me any trouble on this trip and I’ll put a bullet in your head right after I make you watch me put one in each of one of them,” the sergeant said.

“Sergeant Hult,” Locke said from behind the two of them, “will you join me for a moment, please?”

“Yes, Sir!” Hult said.

Coyle walked over to Jim who had his eyes on Locke’s tent.

“What’d captain stars and stripes want?” Coyle asked.

“We’re going on a trip. I need you to come with me,” Jim said.

“Why do I get the feeling that we’re going to do something dangerous?” Coyle sighed.

Jim saw Hult exit Locke’s tent with a grimace on his face. Whatever Locke had said to him, he wasn’t happy about it. Hult marched towards Jim and slammed his shoulder into him as he walked by.

“We leave in an hour,” he said, not making eye contact.

It didn’t take long for Jim and everyone to pack. They barely had anything to bring with them. When to the two trucks Jim saw rumbling down the dirt path came to a halt in front of them and he saw one of the soldiers jump out his jaw dropped. The soldier Jim recognized smacked on some gum with a smile on his face, ear to ear.

“When they told me who I was picking up I literally told my CO to shut the fuck up. He wasn’t very happy about it,” the soldier said.

Jim laughed and stretched out his arms. The two men hugged and slapped each other on the back. Jim turned around and introduced everyone.

“Sam, this is an old friend of mine, Brett Fox. Brett, this is my sister Sam, her daughter Annie, and my friend Coyle.”

Brett shook Samantha’s hand, gave Annie a high five, and gripped Coyle’s hand so hard that he heard it pop. Coyle made sure he didn’t show the grimace on his face until Brett turned back to Jim. Brett introduced his partner to the group. He simply called himself Twink.

“What are you doing here?” Brett asked.

“It’s a long story, but it’s damn good to see you,” Jim replied.

Annie grabbed Tigs’s cage and lifted it up. The cage rocked back-and-forth awkwardly barely lifting from the ground. Tigs meowed uncomfortably from inside. Jim tried to convince Annie that Tigs would be safer at the camp, but Annie insisted on taking Tigs along. Coyle agreed with her.

“Yeah, if we run out of food at least we’ll have something to eat,” Coyle said.

Ten minutes later, they were still trying to get Annie to stop crying.

The truck rumbled off with Coyle in the rear truck with Hult and his soldiers, while Jim, Annie, Samantha, Tigs, Brett, and Twink sat in the lead truck. Brett passed the time with old war stories of him and Jim. He kept it clean due to some of the company, but he wasn’t always successful.

“So this dumbass comes running out of the bunker with a handful of grenade pins screaming his head off, and just before they go off he jumps behind the barricade, where I’m sitting there with the bomb switch in my hand. I asked him what he was doing and he says, ‘Some redecorating’.”

Brett pulled up the sleeve on his arm and exposed a six inch scar ran along the top of his forearm. “Twenty stitches,” he said, “some redecorating job.”

“I got a black eye for that one,” Jim said.

“That was almost twenty years ago, right after I joined. I was a little brash during my first tour,” Brett said.

“We got lucky that year,” Jim said.

“Lucky? Hell, it’s like we were protected by a legion of angels. Some of the shi— stuff that we got ourselves out of was unbelievable,” Brett said.

“I thought you got out years ago?” Jim asked.

“Ah, I tried.”

Brett looked down at his rifle and dusty uniform, and shrugged.

“I’m just not good at anything else, Jim. This is what I know. This is what I love.”

Jim thought back to his first few years in the Navy. The pride, the rush of being out on a mission, the feeling of victory in the success of that mission. He understood what Brett meant. There was a time when Jim thought he’d always be in the Navy.

“How long ‘till we get there?” Jim asked.

“A few hours,” Brett answered. 

Samantha spoke up, “A few hours? I thought Matt was in Phoenix?”

“He’s in a facility just east of the city. It’d be faster if we cut through, but the city still isn’t secure yet,” Brett replied.

“Secure from what?” Jim asked.

“Half the city is in havoc. With all the other shit that’s been happening around the country, we don’t have the personnel to secure the city. They’re actually bringing home U.S. soldiers stationed in other countries to help with relief,” Brett said.

“It’s that bad?” Jim asked.

“It’s turning into the wild-fucking-west out there, man.”

Brett leaned back and slammed his body against the seat, making a loud thump. He flashed another wide smile.

“Good job security for me though,” Brett said.

The sun was still high when they arrived at the makeshift base. It wasn’t much to look at, but what it lacked in building structure it made up for in fire-power. There were constant patrols around the camp along with guard stations that housed machine gun nests. Jim wasn’t sure if this was to keep people out, or in.

Coyle jumped out of the truck first and quickly rushed over to Jim. He clutched his bag and kept glancing back behind him.

“Those guys really don’t have a sense of humor. If you find me dead, tell the police it was that guy,” Coyle said.

Jim looked back to see Hult frowning at them. Samantha pulled on Jim’s shoulder and spun him around.

“When do we get to see Matt?” she asked.

“Once you get him to give us what we need, the rest of you can see him,” barked Hult.

Jim had dealt with men like Hult before. Angry, wreckless, strong, and unpredictable at times. It was men like Hult that made Jim want to leave the Navy in the first place.

“If you think you can keep my daughter from seeing her father…” Samantha said raising her fist.

“I’ll help you after they get to see him,” Jim said holding his sister back.

“Five minutes,” Hult said.

There was one stand-alone building in the center of the camp. Jim noticed the camp had been constructed around it. It had one door guarded by two armed men. Jim watched Hult scan a badge and enter a code on the key pad of the door to enter.

Inside was one solid room with cubicle barriers separating different desks and personnel. Jim, Samantha, and Annie were escorted by Hult and his men past the desks to a dimly lit hallway with multiple doors on each side.

The group walked down to the fifth door on the left. When Hult unlocked and swung it open Samantha and Annie darted inside. Jim watched the family on their knees of the cell, hugging each other. He could see the bandages covering Matt’s face in between the heads of the girls. His eyes were puffy not from the tears, but because someone had beat him.

Samantha held Matt’s face in her hands and the three of them just sat huddled on the floor whispering to each other. Matt’s bandaged fingers ran through his daughter’s hair. Annie smiled at him and his eyes welled up with tears. 

“Matt, what happened? Why are you here?” Samantha asked.

“Okay, time’s up,” Hult said.

“No!” Annie screamed.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Daddy will see you soon,” Matt said.

Matt kissed Samantha goodbye. Samantha had to drag her daughter out of the cell. Her screams of ‘daddy’ echoed down the hall.

Hult motioned for Jim to enter and then slammed the door shut behind him. Matt sat motionless on the ground except for the light shaking of his shoulder.

They’d broken him, Jim thought. The wounds on his face were over a week old. They had let him heal because they knew that they’d bring his family in to see them. Jim felt sick. The military was using his family as bait.

“I knew you’d go and find them when all of this shit started to happen,” Matt said.

Jim helped Matt off the ground and onto the cot, gently.

“Matt, what happened?” Jim asked.

“Did they tell you what they want?”

“Some kind of security data. They think it’s on a hard drive and that you know where it is.”

“They’re not as dumb as they look then.”

“Matt, if you know where it is then just tell them. If you don’t tell them they’re going to hurt Sam and Annie.”

“You don’t understand, Jim. The project I was working on handled all of the security codes, clearances, and firewalls for all classified military documents. Those documents had intelligence information on terrorist groups, covert agents, missions, and nukes. It had fucking everything. I was meeting with a group of military personnel every week for status updates on the project and any updates they needed to add. The week before the attacks in San Diego, I found a hole in the firewall where documents of classified information were being sent from secure servers to ghost files with no known source. When I approached my superiors about it, they said that it would be handled internally by the military. The morning before the attacks I was at the office and saw that the hole was still open, so I checked to see what had been sent and there was an encrypted order with a list of times and locations all around the country. I think there’s a high level security leak in the military that caused these attacks.”

“Did you tell them that?”

“No, I don’t know who’s involved, but I figured if they tried to go after Sam and Annie they’d eventually run into you. And I was right.”

Jim thought for a moment. If there really was a high level mole in the military ranks, then whatever information was on that drive would be toxic. It’d destroy anyone who touched it, but Jim didn’t see any other way to get his family out of here safely.

“If I get you that drive can you track down the sources of the orders that were sent?”

“Yes, but I’ll need enough processing power to do it.”

“Where is it?”

“There’s a safe in the basement of my office building. You can only get to it through the vault behind the guard station. The code to get in is 4-2-8-5 and you’ll need to use a guard key. They keep spare ones in a lock box in the bottom left drawer of the desk. That’ll be locked too, but should be easy enough to get inside. Once you’re inside the vault there will be a red filing cabinet. Pull the cabinet out and open the panel in the wall. The combination for the safe is 12-1-22-58. The hard drive is inside.”

“So once you have it you’ll be able to figure out who’s been behind all of this?”