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The Survivors Ch. 01

By: millennium_bard



My name is Michael. I used to have another name, but that was long ago before the Change.

I had never believed in werewolves, witches, vampires and such. There were enough real life monsters on TV and walking the streets. There was no need of anything more to scare a sensible person.

I was a loner after I left the Army, never quite fitting in with civilian society. I had my pickup and my travel trailer, and that was more than enough for me. I could pick up my home and travel from town to town and from job to job whenever I took the notion. And I took the notion about every 3 or 4 months.

I had joined the Army at age 17 to avoid going to jail. The recruiter had promised me that the Army would teach me a trade. I did learn a trade in the Army and they taught me all too well. When I left the army 20 years later, the one thing I could do better than almost anyone else was kill people. Point me at a target, and the target dies.

There is the regular Army. Then there are the Special Forces. Then you have guys like me.

Ever wonder who gets the jobs that are too disgusting or "sensitive" for even Delta Force or the Navy SEALS? We did. They called us. "The Ghosts."

Because we weren't on any military payroll, we never lived on any known military base. Officially, we didn't exist. Did someone want to make an example out of someone and their whole family? Send in the Ghosts.

20 years of killing men, women and children. 2 decades of putting my soul in a box and forgetting it existed. Over half of my life being one of the most evil fuckers ever to walk the planet. Then the day when they decide that it's no longer "politically expedient" to keep us around.

"Thank you, have a nice life, and please try not to kill anyone. And by the way, since you were never on any military records, you won't be getting any retirement check or VA benefits."

Thanks a fucking lot.

Those of us with any sense had accumulated a tidy bankroll stashed away somewhere. A lot of the others suicided.

I bought myself a camper and a truck and started drifting. I had to. Too long in one place and everybody starts looking like a target.

3 years of being a loner. Avoiding making friends. Finding a hooker when I needed to have that need met. And then traveling on again.

I wasn't worried about my ex-employers sending out someone to get rid of me. They knew better. If the hit team missed, I would go after the ones who gave the orders. And there wasn't a single person in the country that any of the Ghosts couldn't get to eventually. Not even the president.

Then some idiot managed to release the Hellbug. I still don't know who or why, or even what the Hellbug is exactly. But I damn sure know what it does. When people get infected with the Hellbug, they either die horribly, or they Change. The ones who die are the lucky ones.

I was up in Montana, way the hell up in the mountains when the Hellbug plague hit. In less than a month, 80% of the world's population died. Most of the rest Changed, becoming something less than human.

But at the time it all started, I had no idea that anything unusual had happened. I was too busy enjoying the solitude of my mountain cabin. No TV, no radio, no mail, and nobody else within 30 miles.

I had just come down from the mountains to get some supplies. I had noticed the lack of traffic on the way into Billings, but didn't give it much thought at the time. Billings itself was like a ghost town. I pulled my truck into a Wal-Mart parking lot and sat there a moment to take stock. There should have been people moving in and out of the store, to and from their cars. There were vehicles in the parking lot, but there was an eerie stillness to the scene.

I reached under the seat and hauled out my gun belt and strapped it on. As I got out of the truck, I finally heard something. A woman screaming in terror. I am real familiar with that sound, having been the cause of it myself so many times. I drew my .45 and checked the load, then headed toward the noise.

As I rounded the side of the building, I saw that there was not one, but two women there. And what was attacking them was straight out of a nightmare. I had been isolated in the mountains, and I hadn't heard a thing about the Hellbug plague. But I knew that what had just now ripped the throat out of one of the women wasn't something that I wanted to get any closer to. While it was feeding on the still quivering corpse of the first woman, I put 2 230-grain hollowpoints into its head.

The second woman looked up at me when she heard the gunshots and scrambled to her feet. She looked at the dead bodies for a moment, then came running over toward me.

"Come on!" she said as she passed me. "Where there's one of them there's more."

After what I had just seen, I figured that the best place to be was elsewhere, so I turned and followed her.

"The blue truck with the trailer!" I called out to her. She altered her course towards my truck. By the time I got there, she was trying to open the locked doors to get inside. I used my remote to unlock the doors, and she scooted inside and shut the door as fast and she could move.

Once I was inside the truck, I turned to the woman, the gun in my hand now pointed at her, and asked.

"OK, you want to tell me what the fuck is going on around here? Where IS everybody?"

She looked at the .45 and went very still.

"My name is Melissa Carter. And that was a Changeling that you shot back there."

"What the hell is a Changeling?"

Melissa brought me up to date on the whole Hellbug plague. "A Changeling looks like a stereotypical Hollywood werewolf. You saw the damn thing, and like a werewolf from the movies, they can transmit the virus or whatever the hell it is, through a bite or a scratch. If the person bitten or scratched survives the attack, within days, they either die, or Change. Thank God the Changelings don't have the intelligence to use weapons or vehicles."

"So you mean to tell me that that creature used to be human?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes, and you saw how it acted. More beast than human," she replied. "They kill anyone who isn't a Changeling, and when there are no humans around, they kill each other."

"Fucking wonderful." I spat.

"We'd best be getting out of here before more of those things show up." Melissa said nervously.

I holstered the.45 and started the truck. "Where can I find some gas around here?" I asked. "And sooner or later, we're going to need some supplies."

Melissa thought for a moment. "You could probably siphon some fuel out of the tanks at a filling station. If you're quick enough, we might even avoid attracting the notice of a Changeling pack."

I followed her directions to a gas station on the outskirts of town. It had a clear field of fire in 3 directions. Only the shell of the station building offered a blind spot.

"Can you use a gun?" I asked Melissa. She nodded. I reached into the back seat of the truck and hauled out a gun case. I handed it to her. "There's a 12 gauge shotgun in there. 5 rounds of 00 buckshot. You see anything at all, shoot it and figure out what it was later."

She unzipped the case and slid the shotgun out. She kept the muzzle pointed at the floor as she worked the slide to chamber a round.

I eased out of the pickup and reached into the back for my siphon hose and pump. As Melissa prowled on the other side of the truck, I pried open the lid to one of the big underground tanks and started feeding the hose down the hole. I filled 2 10-gallon cans and used them to fill the tank on the truck, then filled all 5 10-gallon cans that I had with me. I stowed the siphon and loaded the gas cans into the bed of the truck.

"Cover me," I told Melissa. "I have to get inside the station and see if there's any thing there that we can use."

'Just hurry up," she said. "The longer we're out here, the more likely that a Changeling will catch our scent."

I didn't bother replying. I just headed for the station, keeping low and fast.

Inside the station, there were a couple of long dead bodies, but nothing living, I grabbed a flat cart that still had boxes of canned good on it ready to be stocked on the shelves. To the load I added anything that looked useful, including a few cases of motor oil. As an afterthought, I took every scrap of tobacco and every lighter I could find. I hauled the cart with its precarious load out to where Melissa waited and started stacking the boxes into the bed of the truck.

Just as I finished fastening a tarp over the load, I heard the shotgun boom twice in rapid succession. I turned around and saw 2 dead Changelings about 10 feet from the corner of the building.

"Into the truck and lets get the fuck outta here!" I said.

Melissa was in the truck before I was, and was cranking her window down to poke the shotgun out. I was starting to like this gal.

As we pulled out and headed off down the highway, I could see the rest of the changeling pack emerge from around the side of the station and begin feeding on the bodies of their fallen comrades. When my pulse had slowed a bit, I looked over at Melissa. "Good shooting back there."

"Thanks," she said. "I used to hunt ducks with my dad when I was a kid."

"So who was that that got killed back where I found you?" I asked.

"That was my sister," she said. "We went into the Wal-Mart to look for guns, but there was a pack of Changelings laired up in there."

"Have you had any contact with anyone else that is still human?"

"Only by radio." she said. "And that stopped a week or so ago."

"How did you manage to avoid catching the Hellbug?" I asked.

"Same as you I suppose," she replied. "There were 4 of us living way the hell out in the country, and we stayed put through the worst of it." She shuddered. "Our husbands went into town a week ago to scavenge supplies, but they never returned, so Amy and I went looking for them."

Now that the immediate action was over, Melissa slumped down in the seat and gave way to the shakes. I looked over and saw the tears streaming silently down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry that I wasn't in time to save your sister." I said. "But at least you're safe now."

She wiped the tears from her eyes and sat up a little straighter. "I didn't really know Amy all that well, and she could be a real dumb bitch at times, but she was all I had left," she said after a while. 'I met her when Charlie took me out to his brother's ranch so that we could work on saving our marriage," She made a noise that was half snort and half sob. "The day I made up my mind to tell him that it was no use and that I was going to go back to L.A., the TV started showing the news about the Hellbug plague. So I stayed were I was. It was too risky to go back to a city where the plague would spread like wildfire."

Melissa looked around. "Where are we going?"

"Back up into the hills," I answered. "It stands to reason that we have a better chance of finding other survivors away from population centers, and most likely, a lot fewer Changelings."

She shrugged. "Makes sense I suppose," was all she said.

Actually, the main reason I wanted to get back to my place was to get my hands on my weapons cache. I had enough serious firepower there to fight a medium sized war. Damn near all of it was illegal, not that that was a consideration anymore. And I figured that we were going to need more than a shotgun and a couple of.45's if we were going to survive for very long.

Several hours later, we were at my cabin. Melissa helped unload the truck and unhitch the camper. I nodded to myself. She was willing to pull her own weight, she didn't ask a lot of questions, and most importantly, she had proved that she could shoot and kill without hesitation.

Once we had everything stowed, I left Melissa to fix something to eat while I went up to the cave about a mile from the cabin to raid my cache.

On the way up and back I had the time to think. If there was a God, he had one sick sense of humor. I finally get away from killing people, and some dumb fuck in a lab sets something loose that kills more people than anyone else in history. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the irony. I put those thoughts from my mind as I approached the cabin with my load of weapons and ammunition. The only thing to do now was concentrate on survival. Crying over the past was a waste of time.

When I returned, Melissa had a meal ready on the table and had even done the dishes that I had let go for a couple of days. I took an appreciative sniff of the tempting odors wafting up from the table. "Smells heavenly," I said.

"Even more so since I didn't have to cook it."

She gave me a wan smile and seated herself across from me. The food was as delicious as it smelled, and I told her so,

"Thank you," she said. "I wanted to let you know that I am not going to be dead weight around here."

"Never thought you were." I replied. "Anyone who can shoot like you do is welcome to ride with me anytime."

After dinner, while she cleared and washed the dishes, I unpacked the weapons I had brought down from the cave.

"Who the hell are you anyway. Rambo?"

I looked up to see Melissa staring in awe at the weaponry laid out on the living room floor.

"Naw," I said with a grin. "Rambo was a pussy."

Melissa chuckled. Not a girlish giggle despite her apparent youth, but a full-throated laugh from deep in her belly.

She sank down easily to sit cross-legged beside me. "Teach me how to use them."

As I started to describe the function of each weapon, I covertly studied Melissa as she sat there absorbing every word I said. She had taken off the flannel shirt she had been wearing when I found her, and was now wearing a tight sleeveless t-shirt and jeans that looked as if they had been painted on. She was about a foot shorter than my 6'1" and couldn't weigh more than 110. Small breasted and lean, she looked to be in better shape than I was. Her hair was a bit past shoulder length and she had pulled it back into a ponytail. When I realized I was staring, I turned my eyes away from her and picked up another weapon to demonstrate.

When I had run through the weapons, Melissa picked up each one and repeated everything I had said, word for word. I was impressed. She caught my look and gave me a smug grin. "I was an Army brat," she said. "Daddy never had any sons, so he taught me all the 'boy stuff' instead."

I loaded all the weapons and positioned them around the cabin for easy access. Melissa watched my every move without stirring from her spot on the floor. When I was done, I opened a cabinet and took out sheets and blankets.

"You can have the room down here. I'll sleep upstairs where I can have a clear field of fire out of the upper windows."

Melissa seemed to flow to her feet. :"I'd rather not sleep alone" she said. "All I have to bring to this partnership is myself." She reached down and pulled her t-shirt off in one smooth move, exposing her pert breasts with the small pinkish brown nipples already starting to stiffen in the cool air if the cabin.

"All of me."

I wasn't about to turn her down. It had been a long time since I had been with a woman, and God only knew if I would ever get the chance again. I put the bedding back in the cabinet and gestured for her to precede me up the stairs to the loft.

When Melissa reached the bed, she turned to face me and undid her jeans, then pushed them down to her ankles and stepped out of them. Her panties followed, then she was standing nude before me. I shed my clothes and stepped up to her, letting my hands slide up her arms to her shoulders. I could feel her shiver under my touch, but it wasn't from fear. Melissa slowly reached out and encircled my waist with her arms and leaned into me, laying her cheek against my chest, her tits firm against my body. I just held her for a long while, knowing that this was what she needed more than anything else right now. Finally, she took a couple of steps backward, taking my hands and pulling me down on top of her as she sat on the bed, then leaned back. As I came down on top of her, she let her hands slide around to roam over my back as she brought her legs up to lock her ankles behind my buttocks. I raised my weight off her, but she pulled me back down. I bent my head to kiss her, and she responded eagerly, her lips opening to allow our tongues to slide together. Melissa reached down between us and guided my erection into her, sighing and returning her hand to my back as I slowly sank my shaft into her. The position was awkward for me, with my feet still touching the floor, but I managed to get a steady rhythm going. Melissa raised her hips to meet my thrusts, and her breathing grew ragged as she slid her hands down to my lower back, urging me deeper into her. She began to moan and yelp as she approached her climax. I kept on stroking until she gave a convulsive shudder and went limp, still biting my shoulder and chest. After a moment, I pulled out of her and moved her to the center of the bed. I still hadn't come yet, and was as hard as ever. I spread her legs wider apart and moved into position over her again. She gasped as I re-entered her still twitching pussy and drove my shaft in to the roots. Melissa smiled up into my face as I held myself above her on stiffened arms, thrusting into her hard and fast and deep. Her legs went up and around my waist. She lifted her arms and twined her fingers behind my neck. After a few minutes, she let her legs fall open with her knees still bent. She braced her feet against the mattress for better leverage as she pumped her hips up to meet mine. When I came, she pulled my face down to hers and she kissed me hard as I jetted my seed into her belly. I collapsed beside her and lay there panting for breath. Melissa wriggled around until she could snuggle up to my side and went to sleep with a small smile on her lips.

In the morning, we were both up at dawn.

"Time for weapons practice." I told Melissa after breakfast.

She followed me outside to the area I used for target shooting. I took an H&K MP5K out of the duffle bag I was carrying and threaded a suppressor into the barrel.

"We can't afford to attract attention with gunshots." I told her. "So we'll practice with suppressed weapons for now."

Melissa proved to be an apt pupil, and by the end of the morning could feather the trigger to get off three shot bursts in full auto mode. She shredded the hell out of any target I pointed her at. After the target practice, I told her to police up the spent brass for reloading while I went up to the cave for the rest of the weapons and explosives.

When I came back down, Melissa had a surprise for me. She had seen movement down in the trees and had gone to investigate. What she had found was a very scared teenager named Sandra.

Sandra was filthy and stank to high heaven. I had Melissa take her into the bathroom and clean her up.

Over the next few days, I wondered just how Sandra had survived for so long. She was lazy, uncooperative, and thought she had all the answer to life. Typical 16 year old.

Even Melissa was losing patience with Sandra. The teenager refused to help with the dishes or any of the other chores, instead spending her time bitching about the lack of electricity, TV, etc. Me, I would have simply thrown the little bitch out on her ass the first day if Melissa hadn't taken such an interest in her.

About 3 weeks after Sandra showed up, we found another couple of strays. A woman named Connie and her 9-year-old daughter Ashley. Connie's story was all too familiar. Her husband and teenaged son had gone into town for supplies and had never returned. With all the extra mouths, it was time for another run to town. We left Connie and Ashley at the cabin. Sandra insisted on coming along with us since Connie had steadfastly refused to tolerate her bullshit.


The Survivors Ch. 01



We approached Billings cautiously. This time when we stopped at that gas station, Melissa had more than enough firepower to handle anything that might arise until I could get into action as well. Sandra refused to even touch a gun. "They're icky," she sneered.

Once we had all the fuel the truck would hold, we moved carefully toward downtown Billings. There were burned out houses and businesses everywhere we looked. But finally we found a store that looked relatively intact. I posted Melissa at the door as a guard while I explored the interior of the store. I loaded cart after cart with canned good and staples like beans, flour, sugar, rice and canned shortening. We had gutted the camper trailer to better use it for cargo, and in a couple of hours I had the trailer as full as I could safely get it. When I signaled Melissa to return to the truck, I noticed that Sandra was missing. She had been sulking in the cab of the truck when I'd entered the store.

"Hey," I called to Melissa. "Where the hell's the kid?"

"She stomped off a while ago. Said she was going to try to find a CD player and some music. I told her to wait, but she gave me the finger and took off that way." And she pointed toward the center of downtown.

"Let's go find her before the Changelings do." I said. As we got into the truck, I looked at Melissa and said, "I'm gonna beat some brains into that little bitch before she gets us all killed."

She just nodded her agreement.

We spotted Sandra walking downtown. She had changed clothes and was wearing a half t-shirt and low slung jeans with brand new Nikes. She had a portable CD player in her hand and headphones over her ears.

"She must be suicidal!" exclaimed Melissa.

I pulled the truck to a stop a half block ahead of her and got out.

"Sandra!" I yelled. "Get your ass over to the truck right now and quit screwing around."

She gave me an insolent look and slowed her walk even further.

I spotted a movement out of the corner of my eye and went for my gun. But the Changeling was too close and already moving. I got off one shot just as it buried its fangs into Sandra's shoulder. The Changeling fell dead as Sandra tried to scramble away from it. The teenager managed to get to her feet, and started to stumble towards us, crying and holding her bleeding shoulder.

"It's gonna be OK." I said comfortingly as she got closer to me. I put my arms out to her just as a three shot burst sounded from behind me. As I was looking at Sandra at the time, I saw the bullets rip into her belly, jerking her upright. She swayed there with a look of blank astonishment on her face, then another three shot burst nearly tore the girls head off.

I spun around, and pointed my gun at Melissa. "Why the hell did you do that?" I yelled. "The wounds weren't anywhere near fatal."

Melissa let her H&K dangle from its sling as she sobbed. "She was dead already!" she cried. "Do you think I wanted to kill her?"

I put her back into the truck and then got into the drivers seat. As we drove back to the cabin, Melissa leaned against my shoulder and cried as if her heart were broken.

When told of what had happened, Connie shrugged. "She did the right thing Michael. If she hadn't put Sandra down, she either would have died a horrible lingering death or became a Changeling herself. And we would still have had to kill her."

I sat down and put my head in my hands. God knows I'd killed girls Sandra's age and younger while I was a Ghost. Hell, I took out whole damn families. Too many to count. But I hadn't lived with them, started to care for them, thought of them as part of my family. I'd gotten out of the habit of thinking like a Ghost. But if our little band was to survive, I had to put my soul back in the box and become what I had always hated being.

I felt something settle in the pit of my stomach. An all too familiar feeling. The same damn sensation I always got before a mission. These abominations could not be allowed to exist.

I looked up, and the women recoiled from the look in my eyes.

"Connie," I said. "Tomorrow, you, Melissa and Ashley take the truck and visit every farm and ranch in the area. If you find survivors, try to bring them back here. If you find any other working trucks, bring one back with you. Especially any 2 ½ ton work trucks."

"Ok," said Connie nervously. "What do you have in mind?"

I have her a humorless grin. "We're taking the fight to the enemy." I said. "We're going to war."

Melissa relaxed a bit for the first time since she had killed the girl she had come to see as an adopted daughter. "I want to kill every damn Changeling in Billings!" she said.

"For a start." I replied. "But that's just the beginning."

I shook myself and stood up. "Let's go get that trailer unloaded."

The next morning, I saw the women off on their search with a few last words.

"If you see any signs of Changelings, leave the area immediately and get right back here. Don't try any heroics, don't get separated for ANY reason, and come home safe."

Melissa gave me a kiss before she climbed into the truck, and little Ashley gave me a hug before climbing in to sit between the two women.

The way I saw it, good recon would be the key to our success. The women were out of the question. They didn't have the training or the experience. But I could slip in and out of town easily enough. It had to be easier than some of the missions I had been on in the past. And if I could find a small airfield with an undamaged plane, there was a meadow about a mile from the cabin that would make a suitable airstrip. Air support could come in very handy, as well as providing a swift evacuation if needed. Flying various types of aircraft had been part of my training, and I figured to have no trouble with anything I would find at a small regional airport.

I sat in the kitchen and studied maps of the area, looking for places that might have Changeling lairs. From what the ladies had told me, Changelings preferred to hole up in abandoned buildings such as the Wal-mart where I had found Melissa. Emerging from their dens to hunt and feed. Changelings tended to band together into packs, and each pack had a well-defined territory, attacking anything, human or otherwise, that entered their turf. That could come in handy to know.

When I had memorized the maps, I packed them away and put on my battle gear. Out in the back of the cabin was a small shed where I kept a motorcycle. I wheeled it out into the open and started the engine as I settled onto the seat. It was time for me to go do what I did best.

About 3 miles from Billings, shut down the bike and coasted into a driveway. The place looked deserted at first glance, but I knew better than to trust initial impressions. I eased the kickstand down and got off the bike, slipping the safety off the H&K that had been slung across my back. There were 3 Changelings in the garage. They came charging out as soon as they heard the bike. I spotted them coming around the side of the house and opened fire. The suppressor on the H&K did its work, and the three Changelings dropped in a heap with a minimum of noise. Further recon of the house and garage showed nothing else living, so I pushed the bike into the garage and closed the door. I faded back into the trees behind the house and made my way towards town. I found the carcass of a dead dog and deliberately rubbed it all over my body. Hopefully the smell would help disguise my human scent long enough for me to find what I had come for and get away.

I found traces of Changelings everywhere, and even spotted a few skulking around buildings that they lacked the wit to get into. It seemed that if there wasn't a window broken or a door already open, it never occurred to the Changelings to simply use the doorknob,

The really troubling sight was when I spotted a female changeling carrying a baby. The mutation was breeding true.

Inside a Radio Shack, I found what I had come for, two-way radios and batteries. I also found a couple of battery chargers and added them to the already stuffed duffle bag across my back. I exited the store and carefully secured the door behind me. I might want to come back here and didn't want to find it full of Changelings.

It took me almost 3 hours to reach the garage where my bike was stashed, then another 4 hours back home to the cabin.

Melissa was standing guard on the porch with an AK47 when I rode up to the cabin. As soon as she was sure it was indeed me, she let the rifle dangle from the sling and came running to throw her arms around me. She backed off in a hurry and wrinkled her nose. "Phew! You stink like hell," she said.

I handed her the duffle bag and looked around. I saw another pickup and a nice big farm truck with a wooden livestock rack on the back.

"You ladies did real good." I told her, and she flushed with pleasure at the praise.

"Come on in," she said. "We found a few people, but I think we're going to have trouble with one of them."

"As soon as I get out of these stinking clothes and get a quick dip in the stream." I told her. I had a spare set of BDU's in the saddlebags of the bike, and I took them along when I walked to the stream. I stripped off the clothes I had been wearing and dove into the icy cold water, scrubbing hard with handfuls of sand to remove the smell of deceased canine as best I could. I put on the spare clothes, and strapped on my gun belt and slung the H&K. The smelly old clothes I picked up with a stick and hung them from a tree branch a few yards from the cabin clearing to let them air out.

When I entered the cabin, everyone went silent. Melissa came over and stood by my left side, leaving my gun hand free. "This is Michael," she said. There were about a dozen people sitting around the living room, mostly women and children, but a couple of men as well. One of the men stood up. "Melissa here tells us that you're in charge here," he said. "My name is John Betts, and I've lived here all my life. Why should you be the one in charge?"

I looked him over, a stocky man about 40 with graying hair and a challenging air about him.

"I am in charge because this is my cabin. Because I have training and experience that none of you have, and because with me, there is a chance that we can retake at least Billings from the Changelings and eradicate them."

Betts looked at me sourly. "But how can you challenge God's plan?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked as patiently as I could.

"You are living in sin with that woman," he pointed at Melissa, "And yet you dare to challenge the test that God has set us in the form of these Changed Ones?"

"As for my living with Melissa, I really don't see that as any of your business," I replied evenly, "As for the 'Changed Ones,' I suppose that you have a better plan?"

Betts fairly shook with rage at my demeanor. "The Changed Ones were transformed by the power of God because they had lost their faith and strayed from the Teachings of the Bible!" He shouted. "It is our duty to God to guide them back to the paths of righteousness so that they may regain their humanity and shed their bestial forms."

"You're nuts." I told him.

"The unrighteous must be cleansed from out midst!" he screamed.

"And the insane must be driven from our midst," I replied as I drew my .45. "The door is over there. Don't let it hit you in the ass."

He crossed his arms and stood there with his legs apart. "I shall not be the one that leaves," he said, "You are no longer welcome here in this house of God."

I put a bullet between his eyes.

"Anyone else want to go preach to the Changelings or challenge my leadership?" I asked. Only Melissa and Connie moved, and that was only to draw their own guns and hold them ready. No one screamed or fainted at what had just hapened in their midst. They had all seen so much horrible death recently that they were numbed to it.

One woman stood up, still staring at Betts' rapidly cooling corpse. "I cannot stay with you," she said, Are you going to kill me like you did my husband?"

"I gave him the chance to leave. He refused." I answered. "If anyone lese wishes to leave, they may do so now without repercussions. Those who stay must acknowledge me as the leader and follow my orders and the orders of those whom I place in charge over them."

Mrs. Betts looked around at the rest of the people, but none of them moved to join her.

"Then I will take my leave." And she started toward the door.

"If you wish to remain until morning, we will see to Mr. Betts and give him a proper burial." I said.

"Thank you," she said in a tight voice. "But I cannot remain in this place with you any longer."

I watched her open the door and slip out.

Turning to the people who had stayed, I pointed at a couple of the men. "Take the body outside and lay it in the shed. Tomorrow morning we will bury him as promised."

I looked at Melissa. " Get some of these folks to help clean this mess up, and then come to the kitchen."

She nodded. "You and you," she picked out a couple of the steadier seeming women. "Come with me and we'll get this place cleaned up so that we can all get some rest."

The men I had tasked with carrying out the body returned and sat back down with their families. I spoke up so that they could all hear me. "If you listen to me and do what I say, most of us will get out of this alive. I am going to train you as best I can, and then we are going to put that training to work. I don't care if you pray or not, just don't let it get in the way of our work. If you have any suggestions or ideas, feel free to come to me or Melissa with them."

I looked them over for a moment.

"Melissa is my second in command not because she is my lover, but because she has proven that she can and will kill when needed, even to killing our own adopted daughter when she was bitten by a Changeling. When she gives an order, obey it as if it came from me."

I gave them a moment to absorb all this, and then continued. " As soon as possible, we will start construction of living quarters for everyone. In the meantime, find a place to sleep here in the cabin on the furniture, the floor, or wherever you can find room. No one leaves without permission, and from now on, everybody goes armed at all times. Any questions?"

No one spoke for a long moment, and then a little boy raised his hand. "When is supper?"

I started laughing. "As soon as possible son." I replied.

Connie holstered her pistol and gestured for a couple more of the women to join her in the kitchen to prepare supper. I went to the big closet under the loft stairs and started taking out pistols and ammunition.

"Strap these on and load them. Wear them at all times except when sleeping or bathing, and keep them within arms reach while you do that." I said.

Without having to be told, a teenage girl came over and started to take the gun belts from me and pass them around. One young man looked at the gun in his hands helplessly until one of the others showed him what to do. A good sign, the new folks were starting to help each other already.

When supper was ready, we all sat down to eat wherever we could find room. One of the women said Grace, and then we all dug in.

After the meal, I spoke to each of the new arrivals, getting their names and some of their background. One of the women, Becky, had been a Trauma team nurse at the hospital there in Billings. I promptly put her in charge of everything medical. The others all had useful skills except for the youngest children, and I was sure that we could find something for them to do. The teenager who had helped with the guns was named Vicki. She had come in as a loner, having lost her entire family to the plague early on. She attached herself to Melissa much the same as Sandra had, but with a much better attitude.

We buried Betts as promised, putting him in a grave overlooking the valley below. Connie read from the bible over the grave, and one of the men burned his name into a wooden slab to be mark the grave.

Most of the people thought that I had chosen the gravesite because of the view. In reality, I had chosen it because there was plenty of room for more graves. I knew better than most that we would be losing people before this was over.

With all the new people around, it was hard to find the privacy to make love to Melissa properly. Finally though, I got tired of waiting and took Melissa up to the cave. I hadn't shown anyone else the cave yet, reserving it as a last ditch retreat if worse came to worst.

I lit a couple of candles and set them in niches on the cave wall. Melissa was already setting up a cot and trying to get undressed at the same time, as eager to make love as I was. She didn't even wait until I got my pants all the way off before she dragged me down on top of her, guiding my erection into her already wet pussy. She pulled her legs up and hugged me with her knees as I sank my cock into her. I held myself still for a second, then started fucking her in earnest. She was very tight around my cock as I pumped in and out of her, squeezing with her vaginal muscles and thrusting her hips up to take me deeper. I could feel her contractions as she started to climax, and sped up the tempo of my strokes, trying to hold out until she was well into her orgasm, but it wasn't easy.

I still marveled that she had given herself to me so completely so soon, but I wasn't about to question my luck. If I had led a normal life, she was the kind of girl I would have happily married and settled down with.

I finally let myself go, filling her with my come, pushing into her as deep as I could go and then holding myself in her as my cock twitched and spewed my seed against her cervix. I rested there for a while, trying to keep most of my weight off her as we both came down slowly from our peaks.

I leaned my head down to kiss her, and thought about how hard it would be if I had to kill her someday.

After the first week, I sent teams out to scout the surrounding farms and ranches. They were to scavenge any supplies and weapons that they found, and to report back what they had seen.

One team didn't return, and I led a heavily armed patrol out to look for them. Melissa was left in charge at the cabin with strict orders to keep everyone inside and on alert until we returned.

We found the team and their vehicle about 40 miles from the cabin, their truck was shot full of holes, and the bodies had been looted. This wasn't the work of Changelings. They didn't use weapons and had no use for anything the men had carried.

I scouted around and found where the ambushers had laid in wait. Someone had at least rudimentary training. There was a clear field of fire from the ambush point, and nowhere for the people in the trap to retreat. This was a far bigger danger to us than the Changelings.

It was up to me to see that this didn't happen again.

I sent the patrol back to the cabin and set off to track whomever had ambushed our scout team. It didn't take long to find their trail. Evidently they weren't expecting anyone to be following them. I allowed myself a grim smile. This was what I had trained for.

It was well after midnight when I came upon the ranch house that the ambushers were using as their headquarters. The full moon gave me more than enough light to pick out the lone sentry at the main gate. Typical amateur mistake, forgetting that there was more than one way in and out of there.

I eased up behind the sentry and wrapped an arm around his throat, cutting off any outcry. I drove the point of my knife into the base of his skull where the spinal cord meets the brain. One convulsion and he went limp. I rolled the corpse into a ditch and headed for the ranch compound.

I move silently along next to the barn, listening for any sounds within. All I heard were some horses moving restlessly in their stalls. I found a loose board in one of the walls and slipped inside. I stood very still, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness as much as possible. I unhooked the flashlight from my belt and hooded the lens with my fingers. The flashlight had a red filter over the lens to protect my night vision, but I wasn't about to take a chance on someone seeing the light that I allowed to leak between my fingers. I made a fast search of the barn, but only found a dozen or so horses and a lot of hay bales.




The Survivors Ch. 01



I moved into an empty stall as the door at the front of the barn opened. I peered through a knothole in one of the boards in the wall of the stall. A bearded man was dragging a woman or girl by one arm and being none to gentle as she struggled.

"Might as well relax missy," he said. "We took you fair and square, and I drew the high card, so you're mine first."

That was all I needed to hear.

As they came abreast of the stall I was hiding in, I took a stun gun from a belt pouch and slipped out of the stall to move up behind them. I zapped the girl first, getting her on the back of the neck. She slumped down without a sound. As the man started to turn in shock, I drove my knife into his kidney; then again a backhand slash across his throat put him down quietly and permanently. I couldn't chance the girl coming to and screaming, so I ripped the dead man's shirt into strips, then bound and gagged her. I put her in the stall where I had been lurking and moved toward the partially opened barn door.

From the barn, I could see the house clearly. All I had to do now was to find a way inside without being seen. I left the barn, keeping to the shadows as I eased around to the back of the house. Some fool had left the back door open. No doubt thinking that they were nice and secure here. I moved to the door, and after a quick peek inside, entered. I was in the kitchen of the house. The smell of the rotted food on the unwashed dishes nearly made me puke. I threaded a suppressor onto the barrel of my .45 and started down the hallway toward the front of the house. If they thought that they were safe, they most likely wouldn't have their weapons within reach. The more I could kill before they woke up to the fact that they were under attack, the easier it would be to finish off the rest. I wasn't interested in taking prisoners. Well, not for long anyway.

There were three men in the living room engaged in raping a woman on the floor. Two were holding her down while one writhed atop her. The woman saw me with my gun in my hand, but didn't make a sound and turned her eyes the other way. My first shot took out the guy holding her legs. As he slumped, I shot the one holding her arms. The man on top of her tried to lunge for a gun on the floor nearby, but the woman wrapped her arms and legs around him, holding him long enough for me to put a bullet into the side of his head. She rolled the body off of her and scrambled to her feet. I grabbed her arm and pulled her close to whisper in her ear. "How many are there and where are they?"

" Four more in the house upstairs with my daughter," she whispered back. "And one more that took my sister out to the barn."

"The one in the barn is dead and your sister is safe but tied up out there. Go out through the kitchen and go to the barn. I'll meet you there when I'm done here." I whispered to her. Then I gave her a shove toward the hallway and moved on to the stairs leading to the second floor. I eased up the stairs, keeping my feet next to the wall where any loose boards would be less likely to squeak and give me away. The first two rooms I checked were empty. In the third a man was sleeping. My knife made sure he would never wake up again. In the next room, I could hear the girl sobbing and pleading and male voices laughing and jeering at her. I moved to the door of the occupied room and found it partly open. I pushed the door open with my foot and saw the girl tied to the bed while a man was amusing himself by jabbing her bare belly with a lit cigar. No one looked up as the door opened until I spattered the cigar man's brains all over the wall with a pair of shots from the .45. The other two men dove for their guns. I shot the one on the right first, a double tap that put him down. The one on the left got off one shot that grazed my side before I put a round into each of his shoulders. The girl on the bed was rigid with terror, as scared of me as she had been of the men who had been torturing her. I couldn't blame her. She flinched when I approached with my knife out and opened her mouth to scream. But she closed it again when I used the blade to cut the cords holding her feet to the bedposts, and then cut her hands free.

"Your mother and aunt are out in the barn. Go there and stay put until I get there. Got it?"

She nodded and scooted off the far side of the bed, then sidled along the wall as far from me as she could get until she could bolt out the door. I turned back to the man I had shot in the shoulders and kicked him over onto his back.

"You and me are going to have a little chat about your operation here." I told him with a smile.

A half hour later, I had all the information I needed from the captive. I dragged him by the hair outside to the barn and thrust him inside. I tossed the older woman my knife. "Do what you will with him," I said. "He is of no more use to us."

As I went back into the house to search it more thoroughly, I heard the man begin screaming. It was a long time before he went silent.

I found the keys to a pickup in the pocket of one of the dead men. I pulled it up to the front door of the ranch house and started loading it with anything useful I could find. The biggest prize though was a trailer-mounted generator that would provide electricity up at the cabin.

When the women emerged from the barn, they found the blankets that I had left by the door. The older woman cut holes in them and they put the blankets on like ponchos. The older woman returned my knife. "I am Sheila Davenport. My sister is Christie and my daughter is Tammie."

"I'm Michael," I told her. "Get everyone into the truck. We leave here in 5 minutes with or without you."

She wasted no time in herding the others into the truck. I took a last look around, then got into the truck and started the motor.

"Where are we going?" Sheila asked.

"To my place." I replied. 'Where you'll be safe from men like that."



The Survivors Ch. 02



It was well after dawn when the four of us pulled up to the cabin in the ambusher’s pickup.

I could see several guns tracking our movements from the upper windows and the tree line.

When I stopped the truck, I got out carefully, not knowing how itchy the fingers were on those triggers.

Once I was recognized, Melissa came outside carrying her AK47.

“Take care of these ladies,” I told her. “They’ve had a rough time.”

“What about the men that you went after?” she asked quietly.

“All dead,” I said shortly. “Did they bring back the bodies of the team that got ambushed?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Carl and Deke are out digging the graves now.”

I took her in my arms and held her tight. “Damn it, I should never have let them go out without more training.”

She hugged me tight and them pushed away to go tend to the newest members of our band.

I went inside and got out of my bloodstained clothing. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I started to undress. With blood on my arms, chest and face, I looked like something from West Hell.

No wonder the women had been scared of me. 

After I was cleaned up and dressed, I went out to the gravesite with the rest.

Long after the service was over, I stood there looking at the three fresh graves.

Two men and a woman gone because they hadn’t been prepared enough. 

I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

The mood in the cabin was somber and quiet for the next couple of days.

The other teams had returned with enough supplies to last us for a while, and one team had even brought a few head of cattle back with them.

I led another heavily armed party back to where I had rescued Sheila and the others.

We got the horses out of the barn and onto the big 2½-ton truck for the trip back to the cabin. 

The horses would be used for mounted patrols. Quieter than a motorcycle or ATV, and they wouldn’t use any of our dwindling supply of gasoline.

I took Melissa back to the cave for a proper good-bye before I made another run back into town. 

For all I knew, it might be the last chance I would have to be with her.

Tonight though, we didn’t make love. Melissa seemed to know what I needed more than I did myself, and she just held in me her arms all night long.

In the morning, I felt better than I had in years. 

There’s something about the love of a good woman that does wonders for healing a damaged soul.

“Be careful.” Melissa said as I shrugged into my battle harness. “Come back safe.”

“Always,” I said. I gave her a kiss, then fired up my motorcycle and headed back to Billings.

This time I was going to do a recon of Logan International Airport.

I found my way to the airport easily enough, and for once I didn’t see any Changelings along the way.

I left the bike alongside one of the big hangars where I had a clear view and no place nearby for Changelings to lurk.

It was a long and nervous hike to where the private planes were parked. And I was seeing signs that changelings had been there recently. Fresh turds were clearly visible where the Changelings had passed within the last hour or so.

I re-checked the loads in my H&K, and then moved on, trying to look in all directions at once.

Finally I spotted what I had been hoping to find. An old Douglas DC3 sitting on the parking apron by a charter service hangar.

I made my way closer to the plane without being spotted by any of the changelings that I could hear moving around somewhere nearby.

From what I could see on the outside, the plane looked to be in good shape. But the only way to tell if it would start would be to actually get into it and fire it up.

But that would bring every Changeling at the airport on the run, and I was all alone.

Time to go get some help.

I was almost back to the bike when the Changelings found me. Their rank stench was the first clue I had that they were closing in on me.

I turned fast and saw the closest Changeling only a few yards away and coming fast.

I shot for the center of mass, and the creature went sprawling limply.

I flicked on the laser sight on the H&K, and then put a quick burst into each Changeling as the red dot showed on their bodies.

When the subgun ran out of ammunition, there wasn’t time to change magazines.

I dropped it and let it hang from the sling as I drew my .45.

The last Changeling dropped almost within arms reach just as the slide on the .45 locked back.

I dumped the empty magazine and reloaded as fast as I could, then I reloaded the H&K as I moved on toward the bike.

All that noise was sure to bring other Changelings, and I didn’t want to be around when they got there.

As I approached the gate I had come in through, I saw a group of changelings right in the middle of the road. I rolled on the throttle and blew by them doing nearly 90.

I was by them too fast for them to do more than make a futile grab for me as I blazed past.

After that, the rest of the trip home was smooth and uneventful.

Back at the cabin, I sent Tammie to round up the others for a briefing.

Once everyone was gathered in the living room, I laid out my plan.

“There is a plane out at the airport that we can use,” I said. “But getting to it is going to be tricky as hell. There are changelings all over the place, and when we try to start the engines on the plane, the shit is going to hit the fan.” I paused to let them absorb what I had just said. “If the plane does not start, then we’re going to have to fight our way out again. If it does start, we’ll all have to be aboard and secure within a minute, or else the Changelings will tear us apart.”

Deke raised his hand. “I’ll go,” he said. “I can’t fly the plane, but I can keep the Changelings off your back while you get it running.” He gave a chuckle. “Besides, I’m getting bored just hanging around here.”

Melissa nodded. “We’ll need a truck that we can just abandon there,” she said. “Drive up to the plane, get in and take off before too many Changelings have a chance to gather.”

I gave her a proud smile. She had a good head for tactics, and I wondered again about her past. For damn sure she hadn’t been just a simple housewife.

Tammie spoke up so softly that I almost didn’t hear her. “I’m going too.”

I looked over at her and shook my head. “Sorry hon. But you don’t have the training yet.”

“I don’t need training to drive the truck.” she replied. “If I drive, that leaves the rest of you free to fight.”

I wasn’t too sure about her mental state after what she had been through, but I couldn’t fault her reasoning.

“OK,” I said. “Tammie, Melissa, Connie, Deke, Vicki and Carl. That’s about all we’ll have space for in the truck, and also about all we’ll have time to board the plane before all hell breaks loose.”

“When do we go?” asked Carl.

“I want to give the Changelings a couple of days to settle down after all the fuss today,” I replied. “And we’re going to need to rehearse un-assing that truck until we can all be out and ready to go in under 10 seconds.”

That brought a couple of groans from Deke and Vicki, and chuckles from the rest.

I drilled the team mercilessly over the next few days, including extra work with Tammie on firearms and other basic skills.

Tammie attached herself to me like a shadow, much the same way that Vicki had adopted Melissa. 

In training, she proved to be fearless and aggressive, ready to take on anyone who was willing to practice with her.

A couple of the younger guys tried to be friendly with her, and she accepted their friendship, but remained aloof as far as getting romantically involved with any of them.

Melissa watched the whole thing with amusement. “You know that Tammie thinks of you as about 2 notches above God don’t you?” she said to me one evening as we relaxed in the cave after a session of intense lovemaking. “She refers to you as “The Avenging Angel.”

I laughed. “Well I ain’t no Dannite, and I seriously doubt that heaven would allow me in.”

Melissa stretched and gave me a slow smile. “Well I want you in,” she said. “And I think I’ll start right here,” as she slid down the cot to take my cock into her mouth.

“You’re all the heaven I’ll ever know.” I said. “And all the heaven I’ll ever need.”

She didn’t reply, her mouth being full at the time.

When I was about to come in her mouth, I tried to pull her up and on top of me, but she resisted, taking my cock deeper into her mouth and throat, swallowing to suppress the gag reflex, then pulling back just far enough to breath before taking me deep again.

It was all too much, and I came, spurting my semen straight down her throat.

She nursed on my cockhead for a while, making sure that she got every drop, then let my dick slip from her mouth as she moved up to lay alongside me and snuggle some more.

As I lay there with her in my arms, I wanted to ask her about her past. To learn more about her. But something inside my head told me that prying would be a bad idea right now. She would tell me more in her own good time.

About two weeks after my trip to the airport, we were ready to make the trip back for the plane.

Melissa had chosen an old Ford pickup that had seen better days, but was still mechanically sound.

As planned, Tammie did the driving while Connie rode shotgun.

We all had our personal weapons, plus all the heavy armament that I’d had stashed in the cave. A couple of belt fed .30 caliber machineguns and an old M2 .50 caliber heavy machinegun that I had rigged a pintle mount for in the bed of the pickup.

Tammie was a good driver, and we made good time to the airport.

She had worked at the airport one summer, so knew the layout well enough to take a more or less direct rout to the charter service where the DC3 was sitting.

As we pulled up to the plane, I heard Connie’s AK47 start yammering as she laid down suppression fire toward the closest buildings.

I bailed out of the truck as soon as it slowed down enough, and raced for the rear door of the plane. I got the door open and moved up the stairs and into the plane as fast as I could move. I slid into the pilots seat and started scanning the gauges.

I started the port engine first.. It turned over so slowly at first that I thought we were screwed, and then it caught with a cough and a roar.

Tammie slipped into the co-pilots seat and started strapping herself in.

I got the starboard motor going just as all the other guns outside opened up.

I could hear the people boarding the plane, and as each one entered, the volume of fire outside diminished slightly.

Connie came forward and said that Deke was the last one, and that he was bringing the .50 with him.

“Son of a bitch!” I said. “I forgot the goddamn tie down cables!”

Carl yelled back ‘I’ll get them!” and dove out the still open rear door.

A moment later, Carl ran out in front of the plane with a half dozen changelings in hot pursuit. 

Carl looked back and gave me a thumbs-up as he ran, then stopped, turned around to face the pursuing Changelings and drew his revolver. He dropped the first 5, then calmly raised the gun to his head, put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Tammie screamed at the sight, but it was a cry of rage, not squeamishness. 

I jammed the throttles forward as someone belatedly closed and secured the back door, and the plane started to roll forward. I taxied the as fast as I dared to the closest runway, then pushed the throttles to the firewall and we got the hell out of there.

The ancient DC3 handled like a dream. There was enough fuel to get us to the meadow that I was going to be using as an airstrip, but not much more than that.

I made one pass to recheck the area, then put down as close to the trees as I dared.

The landing was rough even by my standards, but we made it safely and with the plane intact.

When I shut down the engines, I could hear Tammie cursing in a low steady tone.

I unstrapped myself and went back to see how the others had fared, leaving the teenager alone with her thoughts.

Everyone else seemed to have made it OK although they all were stunned at Carl’s loss.

That night, a lot of firewood got chopped as those who had been on the raid vented their frustrations on the woodpile out back. Myself included.

“Carl saved us all by his actions.” I announced at supper. “To honor his sacrifice, I hereby declare this community to be named Carltown.”

That night as I sat with Melissa down by the creek, Vicki and Tammie came down to sit with us. 

It was a strange feeling having a family of sorts, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.

I figured the best thing to do was to play it by ear and see how things developed.

The next problem was how to get fuel for the plane.

Tammie was the one who came up with the solution that I should have thought of in the first place.

“Why don’t we just take a couple of the fuel trucks from the airport? They should hold enough fuel for the plane several times over.”

I could only nod in agreement. 

This time only two people would go. One to drive each fuel truck. 

I figured that if the keys weren’t in the trucks, I could hotwire them easily enough. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Tammie was adamant about being the other person to go, and after the way she had handled herself on the last raid, I had no real reason not to take her. Besides, she knew where the fuel depot was and where the trucks would be.

The next morning bright and early, we left for the airport again on my motorcycle. 

I would have to abandon it there, but I could always find another one someplace.

Tammie directed me to the fuel depot and we got there without any problems.

I left the bike sit where it was as she pointed out which trucks held gasoline and which ones held jet fuel.

The first truck had the keys in the ignition and it started right up. I put Tammie in the drivers seat and ordered her to get going.

The second one I had to hotwire, and I was nervous about how long it was taking. 

Then I heard the horn of Tammie’s truck start blaring in an attempt to draw the Changelings into following her, giving me the time I needed to get the truck started.

At last the motor rumbled to life and I scooted up behind the wheel. I put the truck in gear and started moving just as the first Changeling appeared in front of me. I stepped on the gas and ran right over it without slowing. As long as I kept the speed up enough, the Changelings wouldn’t be able to climb aboard.

I roared through the gate, scattering a crowd of Changelings that Tammie had left far behind. I looked for her on the way back to the cabin, but saw no sign of her truck until I pulled up to the cabin.

Tammie and Melissa came running up as soon as I got out of the truck, both of them laughing and hugging me.

“Good thinking with the horn” I told Tammie. “You most likely saved my ass back there.”

She blushed beet red, but grinned happily at the praise.

“We have a couple of pretty good daughters don’t we?” Melissa said later that day. “And we just might be adding to them soon.”

“Huh?” was the most intelligent thing I could think of to say.

“I’m a week late with my period.” Melissa told me. “I think I’m pregnant.”

I sat down hard. “Well I’ll be damned.”

Now this was something I hadn’t expected and should have foreseen.

“That’s great Honey!” I told her.

Melissa sat down in my lap smiling like the cat that ate the canary.

Tammie and Vicki were getting as thick as thieves lately, and I was keeping a wary eye on them, remembering all too well how much mischief a couple of teenagers could get into.

Sure enough, they came to me with a hair-brained scheme.

“Michael,” said Vicki. “We want to take some people out to scrounge again. There are plenty of places that we missed the last time.”

“Yeah dad,” added Tammie. “We talked it over and figured out the best places to look.”

“Whoa there you two,” I said, holding up my hand to still their protests. “Nobody is going anywhere for a little while yet.”

“But Michael,” started Vicki.

I shushed her. “There will be another scavenging run in a couple of weeks, and you two can lay out your ideas then. But until that time, everyone is staying put to help get the new buildings up so that everyone can have shelter this winter. The cabin is getting too damn crowded as it is.”

The girls grumbled, but didn’t pres the matter. I was suspicious that they had given up so easily and resolved to keep a closer eye on them.

The new cabins were going up quickly, especially now that we had the horses to help haul the logs from the surrounding forest to the building sites.

There were few disciplinary problems, and the offenders were put to work digging the wells that would be needed to supply water for all the people, the one currently in use being woefully inadequate for the job.

Even Tammie and Vicki wound up doing a few shifts in the wells for mouthing off at the wrong time.

It was coming on mid fall now, and the snows would soon be coming. I knew that we had to lay in enough supplies for the winter, as we would likely be snowed in for months at a time.

“Ok you two devilettes,” I told Vicki and Tammie, ‘Where do you think we should be looking for supplies?”

Vicki ran off to get the maps that they had prepared, and I called in everybody for another meeting.

Vicki spread the maps on the table and stepped back to let Tammie do the talking.

“We know that old man Parkins hoarded all kinds of stuff before the Hellbug plague,” she began. “We think that we can find quite a bit of food and other essentials at his place.

There also ought to be a lot of stuff over at the Schmidt ranch. Neither place was visited in the last round of sweeps.”

Deke nodded in agreement. “Parkins was an old skinflint who was always ranting about the end of the world coming. He had all kinds of stuff over at his place in case someone dropped the bomb or something.” He laughed, “The old buzzard must be laughing his ass off in hell right now about how he was right all along.”

“All right,” I said. “We’ll make the run tomorrow. Everybody goes except for Melissa, Becky and the kids.”

“But I want to go along too!’ protested Melissa. “I’m not that far along yet!”

“You are starting to show, and that will slow you down.” I told her. “And if I take you along right now, I’ll be worrying about you and our baby, and not concentrating on the job at hand. We can’t afford that right now.”

She pouted a bit, but said no more.

She was as loving as ever that night, but I could tell that she was disappointed about being left out of the scavenging foray.

I knew better than to try to bring up the subject while we lay together at the cave, and in turn, she did her best to let me know that she still loved me.

The scavenging trip went without incident. If there had been anyone intent on ambushing this party, they changed their minds when they saw all the guns and determined people. 

We left with 3 trucks and came back with 7, each of them loaded to capacity with all kinds of goodies.

The girls had been right about old man Parkins. We found a bonanza at his place. Canned goods by the case, enough ammunition and guns to fight a medium sized war, and best of all, a huge assortment of medical supplies including antibiotics and surgical instruments.

From the Schmidt place we brought back 2 big farm trucks, one full of barrels of gasoline and fuel oils, and the other full of sheep.

Some of the other places we visited had already been stripped, and at least one of those had been emptied within the last day or so.

I left notes at each place setting a place and time for a rendezvous in case anyone was inclined to join our community. But far enough away from the cabin that those with hostile intentions could be dealt with at a safe distance from home.




The Survivors Ch. 02



The notes had an effect, and a week later, I met with the Johnson crew. They were well equipped and eager to join the fight to retake Billings.

They brought with them much needed building supplies, several trucks, and of all things, a WW2 surplus half-track complete with a huge-ass snowplow blade on the front.

Thus our numbers increased by 15 men and 17 women. There were about a dozen kids along with them, some of whom had been orphaned by the Hellbug or by the Changelings.

The extra manpower enabled us to complete the construction of the extra cabins in plenty of time before the snows hit.

Pete Johnson had the brilliant idea, and the engineering know-how, to build a wooden aqueduct to bring water from the stream to a holding pond hastily dug a few dozen yards from the cabins. Thus ensuring a steady supply of water throughout the winter months.

Angus MacCray was one of the Johnson crew. He had been a Baptist minister before the plague, and was thrilled to have an eager congregation again.

I soon prevailed upon him to formalize my relationship to Melissa. 

The wedding was perforce a simple one, but any excuse for a celebration was welcome.

“You know,” she said to me on our wedding night. “I never did know your last name.”

I thought about it for a moment. She was right, I had never told her my last name.

“You are now Mrs. Melissa Phillips.” I informed her.

“ I like the sound of that,” she said with satisfaction.

The next morning we woke up to see a blanket of snow almost a foot deep covering everything in sight.

It was going to be a long winter. 

But come spring thaw, we would start the war to retake Billings from the Changelings.



The Survivors Ch. 03



Having my wife at my side with our little community growing and prospering was probably the best couple of months of my entire life.

But I knew it couldn’t last.

Around Christmas time I was feeling edgy and restless.

It had been almost 3 months since anyone had been to town, and we badly needed intel about the Changelings and where they were laired up.

Pete Johnson told me to relax, that with the mountains full of snow during the winter, the Changelings would be starving to death in Billings.

I wasn’t so sure about that.

Pete was thinking in terms of humans.

But the changelings weren’t human anymore.

“Melissa, I have to go scout out Billings,” I told her one night in early January, “We don’t know what the Changelings are up to, and for all we know they may be spreading out of town looking for food.”

She put her hands flat over her bulging belly protectively, “We can’t let them find us here.” 

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m going out tomorrow to do another recon. I need you to be in charge here while I’m gone.”

‘What about the baby?” she asked. “Will you be back in time?”

“I’ll try,” I assured her. “But you know I can’t give any guarantees.”

Early the next day I was ready to go, my horse saddled and my gear packed as best I could against the cold and the snow.

“We’ve got to be crazy,” remarked Pete Johnson as he saddled his own horse. “It’s gotta be 10 below out here, and it’s a good three days ride to town as deep as the snow is.”

“Well, you can always stay behind if you don’t like the odds.” I told him.

Pete just chuckled as he rechecked the cinches on his saddle. “Hell boss, you gotta let a man bitch once in a while.”

He stepped up into the saddle and gathered the reins, “Bitching about the weather and other conditions has been a soldiers right since the dawn of time.”

I turned my horse and led the way out of the barn and down toward the tree line where the snow wasn’t as deep.

I didn’t need to look back to know that Pete was right behind me. I knew he would be there no matter what came up.

It took us a full week to reach Billings. We took our time the last couple of days. 

Scouting outlying ranches and homes, but finding no sign of Changelings anywhere.

“Where the hell are they bossman?” Pete asked finally.

“I don’t know, and I don’t like it either,” was all the answer that I could give him right then.

We settled on an isolated house that sat on a hill a couple of miles from town.

From there we had a good view of Billings and the surrounding countryside.

On the second day in our observation next, Pete called me to the front room.

“Holy shit Mike!” I heard hi exclaim. “You gotta see this!”

I hurried to the front room where Pete had set up his 60X spotting scope on its tripod.

There must have been 8 or 9 hundred Changelings milling around near what had been a school athletic field.

I couldn’t make out what they were doing, but I was worried. 

From what I had been told of Changelings, they NEVER gathered in packs of more than 20 or 30.

Then I got a good look at the focus of their attention. 

A Changeling wearing clothes appeared to be speaking to the mob.

Changelings always went naked. 

Changelings talking? 

And gathering in one place without the usual internecine warfare?

This was not a good sign.

“Pete, Take the horses and ride like hell back to Carltown and bring at least a dozen fighters and supplies for a 2 week campaign.” I ordered.

Pete didn’t argue at all, he simply donned his coat and hat, then slipped out to the barn where the horses were stabled.

I waited for him to get gone, and then I shrugged into my battle harness and boots.

There was only one way to find out more about the Changeling’s new developments, and that was for me to go in for an up close and personal look. 

I eased down the hill, keeping to brush as much as possible and working my way at an angle towards a group of burned out buildings.

It took me the better part of 4 hours to travel the 2 miles to the ruins, and another couple of hours to reach a point where I could see and hear what was going on.

There was a Changeling wearing clothes all right. And the noises it was making sure sounded like speech to me, but not in any language that I had ever heard.

Since I had no way of understanding what was being said, I backed away silently and made my way downtown, keeping to cover when possible, and doing my best to avoid any stray Changelings that might have decided to skip the monster pep rally.

I was about ready to exfiltrate the town, having noted a dozen major lair sites.

There was a drainage ditch running roughly North-South that offered a route out of town and back toward the observation post with a minimal risk of detection. I slipped down into the ditch and headed North, my H&K held ready for any surprise visitors.

I heard a commotion approaching from the west, and I flattened myself with my back against the west slope of the ditch.

The thick band of dead weeds and bushes lining both rims of the ditch had served to catch and hold the snow, thus further blocking any possible view down into the ditch..

The concrete bottom of the ditch was cluttered with random debris but largely free of plant growth, or anything else that might offer concealment.

I lay without moving as the noise came closer and closer.

Then a body hurdled the snowdrift on the rim of the ditch and crashed to the concrete bottom with a sickening thud.

The noise from above got louder, now holding a note of triumph in the cries.

I pulled the pins from a couple of grenades and gave them a toss up and over the snow bank above my head.

One was a fragmentation grenade, the other was white phosphorous.

The frag grenade blew with a flat crack that was followed by screams and much thrashing around.

When the white phosphorous grenade went, there were suddenly a lot more screaming voices and confusion above.

I shoved myself to my feet and started on down the ditch to take advantage of the chaos to cover my escape.

The commotion would bring every damn Changeling in earshot on the run.

As I neared the Changeling crumpled on the floor of the ditch, I damn near jumped out of my skin when it moved.

I was swinging the H&K around to finish it off when it saw me.

Instead of attacking instantly like every other Changeling I had seen so far, it cowered away from the gun with a cry.

“Don’t shoot me!” it pleaded.

The words were distorted, coming from a muzzle full of fangs, but were understandable.

I held my fire but kept the subgun pointed at the Changeling. “Why not?” I asked.

“Just let me go! I won’t tell anyone about you!” she begged.

She?

I looked closer. Sure enough, there were definite breasts beneath all that hair and filth,

I made up my mind. “Come on then, Stay ahead of me and keep moving. One false move and I’ll blow you in half.”

I may have been crazy, but no way could I pass up the chance to find out more about the changelings new metamorphosis. 

I kept my prisoner ahead of my and kept my gun trained on the center of her back.

If any Changelings had shown up, I would have put the first burst into her, then dealt with the newcomers.

Despite an obviously broken arm, my prisoner didn’t slow me down at all. She seemed as eager as I was to get the hell out of town.

I wasn’t crazy about taking her back to the observation post, but I could see little choice if I was going to get any answers out of her.

It was full dark when we got back to the observation house.

I made her keep well in front of me as I moved around sealing the blankets over the windows to keep any light from leaking out and drawing attention from below.

When I had the place as secure as I could make it, I moved us both to an interior room with no outside windows and lit a Coleman lantern.

“Sit down in that chair over there across from me and stay there.” I ordered.

She carefully moved to the indicated chair and sat down slowly, never taking her eyes off the muzzle of the subgun.

I sat down in a chair across the room from her.

“The only reason that you’re alive right now is that I need information,” I told her. “If I decide that you’re lying to me, or if you don’t co-operate fully I’ll kill you without warning.”

She bobbed her head nervously.

“Let’s start with how you can talk and understand me,” I said. 

“ I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t remember anything before I woke up this morning.”

I nodded for her to continue.

“I mean, I knew what words meant, and that this was not how I am supposed to look. But when I tried to ask someone what was going on, he sniffed at me, then attacked me.” She shook a bit as she cradled her broken arm. “I got away from him and ran. I’ve been running and hiding ever since.”

“Where were you at when you woke up?” I asked

“I think I was in the Wal-mart.” She said. Then she cocked her head to the side. “But why do I know it was a Wal-mart and not my own name?”

I shook my head. “That’s something I can’t tell you.” 

A couple more hours of questioning showed me only that she was young, confused, and scared.

I wasn’t going to get any more useful information out of her.

“ Please,” she said. “My arm hurts so bad. Can you help me?”

I pulled the trigger on the H&K.

The muzzle was still pointed at her, and the burst ripped her chest and head to shreds.

“That’s the best I can do for you.” I said to the barely twitching corpse.

I dragged her body outside and down into the trees. There was a hollow log that I had found when we had initially scouted the place.

I stashed the body in the log and sealed the ends with some large rocks.

If I made it through the winter alive, I’d come back and give her a proper burial.

Pete arrived 3 days later with 14 men and women from Carltown and enough supplies and ammo to fight an extended campaign.

Tammie and Vicki were with them looking excited and eager.

“What the hell are you two doing here?” I demanded when I got them alone for a moment.

“We’re here to fight just like everyone else.” Said Vicki as she brushed her hair back out of her eyes.

“We’ve had the same training as everybody else,” chimed in Tammie. “Besides, we were going nuts just sitting up there doing nothing.”

Well, they were here now, and I couldn’t spare anyone to take them back.

“Ok. But first time one of you fails to jump when I say so, I’ll shoot you myself.” I said.

“We know the rules dad,” said Vicki.

I just went on in to where the rest were waiting for me.

“OK. Listen up people.” I began. “We have a serious threat here. The Changelings are starting to come out of their totally beast phase.”

I paused to let that sink in.

“In the last couple of days I have seen Changelings wearing clothes, and I actually captured and spoke to one who had regained the use of speech, but was still physically a Changeling.”

That brought a few gasps and excited whispers.

“This does make them a lot more dangerous for us.” I continued when the buzz died away. “If the Changelings start remembering how to use weapons and vehicles while retaining their savage nature, we won’t be able to stop them. They outnumber us dozens to one.”

“What can we do now?” asked Pete.

“We strike hard, and we strike tonight.” I said. “Before they can get any more organized.”

I spread a map of Billings on the table. 

“Here, here, and here,” I pointed out the 12 biggest lairs that I had pinpointed during my recon.

“We’ll start on the west end of town and work out way east. When we reach a lair site, we kill every living thing inside, then we burn it to the ground.”

“But if they’re getting their minds back, why do we have to kill them?” asked Buck, one of the young men that Pete had brought with him to Carltown.

“Because the remission might be only temporary. And because if they ever get organized enough to start using weapons as well as their native ferocity, they’ll wipe us humans out in no time.”

I made a mental note to keep him close to me during the fighting. I couldn’t have some softhearted kid endangering us all.

I divided us into two 8-man squads. Pete led one and I led the other.

I kept Tammie, Vicki and Buck with me. I figured that I could take up their slack if I needed to.

We made our way down to the first of the 12 lair sites without any trouble. 

At least the Changeling’s fear of the dark was still holding true.

I sent Pete’s squad around back of the schoolhouse where the Changelings had holed up.

Even from a half a block away the Changeling stench was overpowering. Pete had 2 flamethrower men in his squad, and I had 1 in mine plus the flamethrower that I was carrying.

“Light’em up!” I bellowed and sent a stream of liquid fire through an open window of what I assumed was the gymnasium.

Jack, the other flamethrower man, concentrated his fire on the doorway and open windows, setting Changelings ablaze as they tried to escape the inferno within the building.

Pete was holding up his end on the other side of the building, and the rest of our troops killed any Changelings that the flames had missed.

The assault was over in less than 5 minutes. Not a single Changeling survived.

The next assault didn’t go as smoothly.

A couple of Changelings hit us from behind as we were torching the building.

Tammie went down under their first rush, her neck broken and her throat torn out before she even knew that we were under attack.

Buck killed the Changeling that had killed Tammie, only to be killed a second later by another changeling that hit him from the side.

I flamed that Changeling as it stupidly bent over Buck’s corpse to feed

Vicki went berserk when she saw her adopted sister die and had to be restrained from entering the now blazing building to kill more Changelings.

We lost 3 more that night, among them Pete Johnson and Amy, a vivacious girl who had been very sought after by most of the single men in Carltown.

I had no idea how many Changelings that we had killed during the night. 

All I knew is that it wasn’t enough.

We withdrew from town back to the observation post.

We watched through telescopes the next morning as scattered bands of Changelings roamed the streets, often on all fours, sniffing for a scent trail.

“Jack, take the bodies and the rest of the people back to Carltown.” I told him.

“Tell Melissa about Tammie, and tell her that I’ll be home a couple of days after you get there.”

“Damn I’m so sorry about Tammie,” Jack said with tears in his eyes. ”Maybe if I’d been faster, or more alert, I would have seen them coming.”

“No son,” I assured him. “Not even I could have seen them coming out of the dark like that with our night sight ruined by the flames, and our ears ringing from all the gunfire.”

I sighed. “Let’s just make sure that they didn’t die in vain.” I said. “Let’s never make that mistake again. Always post a guard at the rear of an assault in case the bastards do an end run around us again.”

I waited for an hour or two after the main party had left. Then followed them, laying booby traps and rigging lethal surprises along the trail that I could not conceal.

The next morning I heard the distant explosion and saw the pall of smoke over the trees where evidently the Changelings had found the observation house and triggered the booby trap I had left there. A cutting charge to split open a 500-gallon propane tank beside the house, then another charge to ignite the vapors.

With the other ball bearing studded bricks of C4 that I had placed around the outside of the house and timed to go off with the charge that ignited the fuel air mixture, I doubted that there would be many survivors.

I arrived back at Carltown within a day of the others.

Melissa threw her arms around me, bawling like a baby over the loss of Tammie.

I comforted her as best I could.

Vicki was also tearful, but calmer. 

She and Tammie had been as close as sisters can get, and I wondered how she was handling the rage and grief that she must surely be feeling.

It wasn’t until she came into my arms for comfort that my worst ears were realized.

I looked into her eyes and saw there a mirror of my own.

Vicki had put her soul in a box and locked it away somewhere deep inside.

Outwardly she seemed to be doing well after all that had happened.

Until you looked into her eyes and saw the emptiness there.

Vicki had become a Ghost.

And a little more of my soul died.

Vicki spent the next month practicing with a rifle that she had talked one of the men into modifying for her. She had sweet-talked the man into making a dozen interchangeable suppressors for the rifle, and wheedled another man into turning out several hundred custom .308 cartridges for her rifle.

I watched her as carefully as I could, but then events caught up with me in a rush.

Melissa delivered a healthy 8.5 pound baby boy that we christened Carl Peter Phillips.

It was after the naming ceremony that I noticed that Vicki was gone, and so was her rifle, ammo, and one of the horses.

That night a blizzard hammered us, preventing me from going out to bring Vicki back.

When the storm eased I went looking for Vicki, but couldn’t find a trace.

Melissa mourned the loss of her third adopted daughter, and would have likely gone mad if little Carl hadn’t given her something to concentrate on.

By spring thaw, Melissa was pregnant again.

It was the third warm day in a row and the snow was melting fast when one of our sentries radioed back to the house. “Vicki is back, on foot, and she has someone with her.”

I rushed out of the house and down the road to where the sentry had spotted Vicki.

Sure enough it was our daughter returned.

Skinny and hard-muscled, she had hacked her hair short with a knife, and carried her rifle in her arms like it was a baby.

But as glad as I was to see her again, it was her companion who got most of my attention.

A Changeling girl barely into her teens, looking scared spitless and shaking like a leaf.

“Who’s your friend?” I asked in what I hoped was a casual tone.

“This is Cindy,” Vicki replied. “She’s been with me for almost 3 months now.”

“Are you Vicki’s daddy?” Cindy asked quite clearly.

“Yes I am,” I replied.

The Changeling girl looked at Vicki for support and got a nod to go ahead.

“Will you be my daddy too?” Asked Cindy.

Of all the things I had ever imagined, adopting a Changeling was never even a remote possibility.

How would the rest of the community react to her?

Vicki spoke up then, interrupting my train of thought. “Cindy is my friend and my sister. And I’ll kill anyone who hurts her in any way.”

Said in that flat even tone of voice and backed by those pitiless eyes, it was clear as a bell that she meant every damn word.

”Welcome to the family kid.” I told the Changeling.

Vicki relaxed visibly.

“Daughter mine,” I said to her in a no nonsense tone of voice. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“I know, dad.” She replied.

Just for a moment, I saw the old Vicki shining through her eyes, and I knew that the girl I had come to love so much was still in there somewhere.

Then they were the flat blank orbs that were the mirror of my own.

“Come on Vicki,” I said gruffly. “Melissa is in there wanting to see you.”



The Survivors Ch. 04



"Vicki!" Melissa shouted when she saw her adopted daughter coming through the door.

She ran to embrace Vicki, tears streaming down her face. She didn't notice the Changeling girl until Vicki pulled away slightly and turned to shrug her rifle off her shoulder.

When Melissa saw little Cindy, her hand flashed down to the pistol that she wore constantly.

Vicki's hand flashed out like a striking snake to catch her mothers hand ad stopped her from completing the draw. "No mom!" she spoke rapidly. "This is Cindy. She's my sister and she's OK."

Melissa backed off several steps, but she didn't try to continue drawing her gun, although she kept her hand on the butt. "You have some explaining to do young lady."

Cindy saw the naked hostility in Melissa's eyes and cowered back against my side for protection and comfort.

"I'll take Cindy around and introduce her to everybody," I said. "That way there'll be no misunderstandings about her status here."

Vicki met my eyes for a long moment, and then nodded slowly. "Thank you father."

She turned back to Melissa with a lopsided smile. "Is there any coffee made mom? This is going to take a while. "

Melissa nodded abruptly and turned to lead Vicki into the kitchen.

I looked down at Cindy and put my arm around her shoulders. "Come on short stuff, I'll show you off to everyone and let them know that you are part of the family."

She smiled up at me with trusting eyes.

This wasn't going to be easy at all.

In the kitchen, Vicki and her adopted mother sat across from each other cradling cups of coffee and just looking at each other for a long moment.

"Well Mom, it's like this," Vicki began.

*Vicki's story*

After Tammie was killed on the raid to wipe out the major Changeling nests in town, I was obsessed with killing every Changeling I could. I knew that Dad wouldn't let me go on any more raids for a long time if ever.

I talked Matt into making me a sniper rifle and practiced with it until I was confident that I could hit my target every time.

I slept with Jack while he worked up some special ammunition for the rifle. A lot of it since I knew I would be out there alone for a long time."

(She looked steadily into Melissa's eyes.)

"I knew exactly what I was doing. I waited for you to give birth, then I saddled my horse and rode out while everyone else was celebrating, 

I knew that you and Dad wouldn't approve of what I had to do to make those creatures pay for Tammie and everyone else that they've killed.

(Vicki waited for her mother to pour more coffee and sit back down before she continued.)

I headed for the Miller's place to establish a base of operations.

It's close enough to Billings that I wouldn't have any trouble getting to and from town, and far enough out that the Changelings wouldn't be likely to come out that far.

I spent the week of that first blizzard holed up there in the Miller house studying maps and making plans. 

I found a cellar in the basement that held canned food and other supplies that we had missed when we made our earlier sweeps.

There was plenty of firewood and I brought in hay bales and bags of grain from the barn before the storm got too bad.

There wasn't much to do except to keep the horse and myself inside and try not to freeze to death until the storm broke.

When the dawn came on the 8th day, the sky was clear and bright even if it was cold as hell.

I saddled my horse and went out for a scouting trip. I tied my horse to a tree just down the slope of a hill that overlooks Billings and belly-crawled up to some bushed on the summit. Peeking through the branches with my binoculars, I could see a few Changelings moving around, scavenging anything they could find that was even remotely edible

The urge to start shooting was almost overpowering, but I remembered Dad's lessons. .

Never set up a snipers next without scouting at least 3 escape routes before hand.

I slithered back down the hill to where the horse was and started back to the Miller place. 

I didn't want the tracks I was leaving in the snow to lead straight back to my lair, so I found a creek that was still flowing and rode downstream for about a mile before coming out on the opposite bank and turning for home.

The hill I had just left was a lousy place to start sniping, Only one way out of there that was even remotely secure, and a limited field of fire.

I needed a better place so that I could start making those bastards pay for killing my sister.

A week later I found the first of the snipers nests that I would use.

I scouted the escape routes like Dad had taught us, then I moved on to look for another nest.

When I had several places scouted and memorized, I felt I was ready.

I went to the first nest that I had scouted and set up the spotting scope and my rifle.

I didn't know how many shots that I could get off before the Changelings figured out where I was, so I made my preparations for a quick getaway.

Looking through the spotting scope, I found my first target. A male Changeling wearing a blanket draped over its shoulders.

I quickly found him through the scope on the rife and calculated the range at about 600 yards.

I tracked him until he stopped to sniff at the air by a burned out house and squeezed the trigger slowly.

The suppressor worked perfectly and the rifle made very little sound.

I had held the crosshairs just above the Changeling's head and was gratified to see the bullet strike him just below the neck dead center in the spine.

I watched for any signs of life, but the bullet had performed exactly as designed and the beast was dead.

I worked the bolt to chamber another round, and then put my eye back to the spotting scope to look for my next target.

I made 6 more kills from that nest, and then decided that I had pushed my luck far enough. I gathered my scope and rifle and headed back for my lair.

Over the next couple of months, I raised merry hell with the Changelings. Then I decided that I needed more ammunition.

Besides, my food supply was getting low, and I was starting my period, I didn't dare risk the changeling scenting my menstrual blood.

I started visiting places I knew that we had missed on earlier sweeps. I made a travois to haul my booty back to the lair, as I had no other way to haul stuff around.

I found a reloading press and enough powder, primers and bullets to keep me in business for a long time at one house. 

Another house provided more than enough food to last me a long time. I made several trips to get everything back to the Miller place.

I considered coming back home, but I knew that you and Dad wouldn't let me go out again, and I still had too much killing to do.

I found an old Remington 12 gauge shotgun and a hacksaw at one of the places I visited, along with a few boxes of shotgun ammunition.

I sawed off the barrel of the Remington to make it easier for me to carry and swapped the bird shot in the shells for some steel ball bearings that I found at another empty place.

If I got into a close fight with Changelings, the shotgun would be a better choice than the rifle or my pistol.

At last I was ready to get back to killing Changelings.

It was starting to get warmer, and the Changelings were becoming more active again.

The Changelings were near starvation by now, and I found that I could get several easy kills if I shot one Changeling at the far side of a pack, then let the others start feeding on it's corpse.

My days started to blend into one long blur of shooting, retreating and shooting some more.

But somehow I still hadn't had enough. The Changelings still hadn't paid nearly enough for Tammie.

Then a couple of months ago, I was headed back from a particularly successful sniping session when I heard singing.

I stopped the horse and listened for a while. 

Sure enough, it was a girl's voice, singing a happy tune. I had to check this out.

I dismounted and secured my horse. I made the decision to leave my rifle in the scabbard and just took the shotgun and my pistol.

I eased through the trees until I could see the clearing where the voice was coming from.

It was a Changeling girl, sitting on a log idly drawing in the mud with a twig as she sang.

My first thought was that there was just another monster to kill, and I started to bring up the shotgun.

I still don't know why I held my fire that day.

I saw movement behind the Changeling child, and realized that an adult Changeling was stalking her.

I reacted on instinct and fired at the adult Changeling.

The steel ball bearings worked as I had hoped, and the Changeling fell in its tracks.

The Changeling girl ran off into the woods.

I reloaded the shotgun and stayed put for a while, listening for movement and watching for any signs that the adult Changeling hadn't been alone.

At last, I went back to my horse and took a circuitous route home.

The next morning, I looked out a window and saw the Changeling girl from the clearing sitting on a swing that dangled from the limb of the oak tree in the front yard.

She was kicking her feet and swinging just like any normal child her apparent age would be.

I picked up the shotgun and went outside.

"Hi," she said when she saw me.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, keeping the shotgun pointed not quite in her direction.

"You shot that mean one who was after me," she replied. "And I didn't know where else to go. All of the big ones in town want to hurt me."

I heard a rumble from her belly, and I swear the girl looked embarrassed.

"Stay here," I told her.

I went back inside and heated some of the stew I had fixed the night before.

I ladled some into a bowl and stuck in a spoon.

I took the food outside and set the bowl down on the porch and moved back. "Come on and eat something." I told her.

She dragged her feet to stop the swing, then came skipping over to the porch. "Thank you," she said politely and sat down beside the bowl. 

To my surprise she folded her hands and bowed her head. "Thank you O Lord for this food. And thank you for sending her to save me from the mean one. Amen."

Only then did she pick up the bowl and start eating.

This was going to take some thought.

On the one hand, she was a Changeling.

On the other hand, she acted like a well brought up child.

All I knew was that I couldn't just kill her in cold blood.

When the girl was done eating, she brought the bowl over and handed it to me. "Thank you," she said.

I stood there a moment making up my mind.

"Come on inside," I told her.

I put the bowl and spoon into the sink and then sat down on the couch in the living room.

The girl sat in a chair by the fireplace, enjoying the warmth of the blaze.

"What is your name?" I asked.

"Cindy," she replied. "Cindy Carson."

I thought for a few moments.

"How long have you known your name?" I asked.

"Always," she giggled. "What's your name?"

"Victoria Phillips," I answered.

"Is your mommy dead too?" Cindy asked.

"Yes, but I have a new mom and dad now." I replied.

"I wish I had a mommy and daddy too," she said wistfully, a tear trickling down through the fur on her face.

Shit. Now I was starting to feel sorry for a Changeling.

"All right, you can stay here with me for now," I told her. "But if you start acting like one of the mean ones, I'll have to shoot you the same as I would them."

Cindy nodded soberly.

I prepared a room upstairs for her, and when it was dark, I locked her in.

The next day I decided to try cleaning her up a bit. She obviously hadn't had a bath in a very long time.

I heated water on the stove in the biggest kettles in the house and filled the bathtub. 

Cindy didn't hesitate at all about getting into the water and grabbed the soap and shampoo.

I left her in the bathroom and went downstairs to reload my expended rifle cartridges.

Cindy came downstairs an hour later, smelling a lot better and her fur was almost fluffy.

There were some clothes that had belonged to the Miller children that fit her well enough, and she was happy to have clothes again instead of running around bare.

Clothed, Cindy looked just like any other pre-adolescent girl if you ignored the fur on her face and her protruding muzzle.

A couple of days later, it was time for me to go sniping again.

"I hate to do this Cindy, but I have to lock you in your room until I get back." I told her.

"That's ok," she replied. "I understand."

I gave her some of the books and magazines that were lying around the house and gave her a bucket to use as a temporary toilet, then locked her in.

The days killing went well, and I racked up another 30 kills. But somehow the satisfaction wasn't there anymore.

When I got home, Cindy was sprawled out on the bed engrossed in a book. She looked up when I opened her door and gave me a smile and a wave, then went back to her reading.

The next couple of weeks went pretty much the same, and eventually I stopped bothering to lock Cindy in her room.

It was nice to have someone to talk to, and she had a wealth of information about the Changelings and especially the ones she called The Awakened.

The Awakened were those who were starting to regain their memories and ability to talk and reason. But most of them retained the ferocity and blood lust of the rest of the Changelings.

Those who were further awakened and didn't have the same killing urge were hunted down and slain by the other Changelings.

As far as Cindy knew, she was the only one her age who had managed to get away and survive out in the wild long enough to find shelter and food,

Her father had died in the initial plague, and her mother, like Cindy, had changed, but had never lost their ability to reason and speak.

Then her mother had made a slip and the other Changelings had turned on her and torn her to pieces. 

Cindy had seen what was happening and had fled before the others spotted her.

I had lost my nervousness around Cindy by now, and she would often come to me for a hug or to curl up next to me on the couch in the evenings as we watched the flames in the fireplace.

I took Cindy on my next sniping run, and she proved invaluable by pointing out places where I could see and kill the Mean Ones as she called them.

The killing didn't bother her at all. She had seen far too much already.

And my kill score climbed steadily.

Finally I decided that it was time to come home.

I debated leaving Cindy at the Miller place, but I just couldn't leave her all by herself again.

So I made a cloak for her and we started off for home.

I think of her as a kid sister, or even as a daughter now, and I won't let anyone hurt her.

(The women looked up as I came back inside with Cindy)

"Well," I said. "I think that she will fit in here just fine."

Vicki just nodded and smiled at the Changeling girl. I saw the warmth and humanity come back into her eyes and relaxed a little more.

Melissa sat staring at her coffee cup for a long minute, then sighed and stood up,

"Come on Vicki," she said. "It's about time that you met your little brother."



The Survivors Ch. 05



At first everyone was wary of Cindy of course. However they soon became used to having her around. Her friendly nature and polite behavior soon won them over and she became an accepted member of our community.

Vicki was fast becoming a legend among the fighting men and women of our group, and I had to firmly quash the efforts of several who wanted to follow her example. Vicki helped there by telling the more eager ones about the times that she had nearly been caught etc.

I was laying plans for an aerial recon of Billings using that old DC3 that we had brought back the previous fall.

But first I had plans for the National Guard Armory just outside of the town of Ronan.

I had been there before, scouting it out long before the Hellbug plague. As a Ghost, it was a habit to know where supplies and arms could be found.

The armory at Ronan had piss poor security even before the plague. I anticipated little trouble in getting in and out. The only problem I could foresee would be the local Changelings. And we had all had enough experience in fighting them that we should go through them like grass though a goose.

Vicki stayed behind on the initial recon flight while Melissa sat beside me in the co-pilots seat.

The flight was uneventful and we had little trouble finding the armory. The road near the Armory was plenty flat and long enough to set the goony bird down with room to spare.

Melissa took notes as we orbited the area, marking concentrations of Changelings on a map of Ronan.

On the way back, Melissa turned to me. “Michael, we have to talk.”

I looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Go ahead Honey, you know that you can always talk to me about anything.”

She took a deep breath. “I never told you what I did before the Plague did I?”

“Nope,” I replied.

“I worked at the Los Alamos labs,” she said.

“I had figured out a while ago that you weren’t just a housewife,” I said with a grin. “What did you do at Los Alamos?” 

“I was a biochemist,” she said after a moment.

“Bio weapons or chemical weapons?” I asked.

“Bio weapons,” she said quietly.

Several things added up in my head and I didn’t care for the answer.

“The Hellbug?” I asked.

She just nodded. 

Well shit.

“And what fucking fool authorized the development of a mutagen like the Hellbug?” I demanded.

“General Hamilton,” she replied.

The plane dove sharply as I reacted to the name.

I pulled up back into level flight and stared at my wife. “Travis Hamilton?” I asked in disbelief.

She nodded and stared straight ahead out the windscreen.

That fucker Hamilton had been the man in charge of the Ghosts. 

It had been on his orders that we had gone around the world killing and destroying anything in our path.

Hamilton had been to one to tell me personally to slit the throats of an entire family in Japan just to provide an example and a warning.

Now I found out that he had been involved in the Hellbug program.

Somehow it didn’t really surprise me.

“It’s unstable you know,” Melissa spoke suddenly.

“The Hellbug?” I asked.

She nodded. “That was why we were going to destroy all traces of it. The organism mutated too rapidly for us to develop an antidote or a vaccine.”

“Let me guess,” I said in disgust, “Hamilton wouldn’t let you get rid of it.”

Melissa gave a short bitter laugh. “He was thrilled with a toy that would kill and keep on killing forever. When we told him that it would literally wipe out the human race, he just laughed and said ‘so what’s the problem?’”

Yeah, that sounded like that bastard, a true psychotic all the way to the bone.

“So how did the Hellbug get loose in the first place?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know for sure. When General Hamilton started acting more and more unstable, I put in for a transfer and got it. That was where I met Charlie and married him.”

Half of me hoped that Travis had caught the Hellbug and died horribly. 

The other half of me hoped that he’d survived so that I could kill him myself.

Then we were over our landing strip. I circled low a couple of times looking for the all-clear signal.

When I got it, I put the plane down and taxied up to the shelter that had been built to protect it through the winter.

Melissa and I climbed out of the plane as a couple of our men started to refuel and get the plane ready for the next flight.

I put my arm around her as we walked back to our cabin. “No matter the past, I love you and always will.” I told her quietly.

Vicki came out of the cabin holding her brothers. Melissa quickened her stride to take the baby from her arms. She opened her blouse and let the infant nurse.

Vicki cocked an eyebrow at me in inquiry. “Did you find anything interesting?”

“Should be a piece of cake,” I told her.

She fidgeted there for a moment, shifting the toddler in her arms from one hip to the other.

“Ok spill it,” I said.

“Jack asked me to marry him,” she blurted.

I grinned despite myself. “And you said..?”

She blushed and lowered her eyes. “I said yes, but only if you approved.”

Jack was our best at reloading ammunition. A tall slender man in his mid 20’s, he was utterly fearless and a dead shot. 

“Well then I guess I had better go have a talk with the groom.” I said.

Vicki leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, then went inside to tell Melissa.

Cindy came skipping up with several of the other kids. “Hi daddy!” 

I ruffled the hair in her head, “Hi sweetie. What are you lot up to?”

She giggled and said that they had been out checking the trap lines and had just taken the days catch over to the tanning shed.

I told them that they had done good and to go to the cabin and tell Vicki or Melissa that I said that they could each have a cookie or two if there were any left.

With that the kids scampered off and I continued to our little rock walled armory.

Jack was sitting in his usual comfortable chair, turning out precision ammunition for our hunting rifles and didn’t see or hear me come in until I cleared my throat.

I was taken aback by the speed with which he spun out of the chair to come to a stop on one knee at least 4 feet to the side and with his .45 pointed straight at my head.

“Take it easy Slick,” I said. “Vicki’d take it poorly if you shot her old man before the wedding.”

Jack rose to his feet, putting away his pistol. “I take it that Vicki had a little chat with you when you got back?”

“She sure did,” I replied. “And I told her that I would come and talk to you.”

Jack met my eyes squarely. “And do we have your approval?”

“Of course,” I assured him. “Actually what I wanted to talk to you about is the raid on the armory. How would you like to come along?”

“Hell yes!” Jack said with a grin. “I’ve been going nuts around here doing the same old thing over and over again.”

“Then come on up to the house after a bit for the briefing.” I told him. I turned to go, then paused and looked back at him. “Before you two can get married, you will build her a house of your own.” 

Jack nodded, “Already in the planning stages. We start building after the raid.”

“Good man,” I said. “Just remember, Vicki is my daughter, and if you hurt her in any way, I’ll kill you if her mother doesn’t beat me to it.”

I let him see the Ghost in my eyes for a second and he paled. “I understand Sir,” he said.

That evening at the cabin when the pre-raid briefing started, I was amused to note that Vicki was sitting on the couch as close to jack as she could get without quite being in his lap.

Cindy was sitting snuggled up to his other side and he had an arm around the little Changeling affectionately.

Melissa nodded toward them and gave me a wink and a smile.

“Here’s how we are going to have to do this,” I began. “I will put the DC3 down and come to a stop near the main gate. As soon as the plane comes to a stop, the first squad will deplane and set up a hard perimeter. Second squad will come with me for the initial penetration of the facility, Third squad will follow to help haul away anything useful that we find. We will board the plan in the reverse order.”

I looked at Jack and Vicki. “You two will each command a squad. Jack, you have First Squad, Vicki, you have Third Squad. You two pick out 6 fighters each and report back to me when your have your rosters filled.”

I looked over at my wife. “Melissa, you and Cindy will come with me as part of the Second Squad.

I’ll decide who else goes in a little while.”

“What do you mean Cindy’s going with you?” Vicki demanded furiously when we were alone after the meeting broke up. “I’m not letting anything happen to her!”

“Settle down!” I snapped at her. “I’m not going to let anything happen to her either. But her senses are far more acute than ours, and she would be able to spot ambushes and lurkers long before we will. That makes her more valuable to our success then me or you or anyone else.”

She subsided then, but it was clear that she didn’t like the situation one little bit.

The next morning we gathered at the plane long before daybreak. I wanted us to be landing at dawn.

During the long winter months, we had all rehearsed un-assing the plane over and over until we could empty the aircraft in less than 3 minutes.

Jack and a man named Bradley had even installed twin .30 caliber machine guns in a chin turret controlled from the co-pilots seat.

There wouldn’t be a repeat of Carl’s sacrifice.

Once everyone was aboard, I signaled for the chocks to be taken away from the wheels and fired up the port engine. 

Once I had it running smoothly, I started the starboard engine and waited for it to settle down.

Melissa checked the free movement of the chin guns and gave me a thumbs-up.

I pushed the throttles forward and adjusted the pitch of the props. We were soon airborne and climbing into the pre-dawn sky.

We came out of the west just as the first rays of morning were lightening the horizon.

I lowered the landing gear and flaps. “Hold on everybody! 60 seconds to green light!”

I sideslipped us down with everything hanging out in the wind and we came to a stop right where I had wanted to be.

I hit the switch to turn on the green disembark light over the rear hatch.

Melissa was already out of the plane before I finished shutting down the engines.

As soon as I cleared the door, I motioned with my H&K, “Let’s move out.”

Melissa was toting the shaped charges of C-4 from my cave stash. I took the first from her and used it to blow the gate open.

Cindy stayed close, sniffing at the air and listening hard.

We had all drilled with hand signals, so there was little noise after the first pop of the gate being blown.

Cindy froze and pointed at a nearby building. I flipped my night vision goggles down and spotted the Changeling trying to hide behind the corner. I pointed him out to our sniper, and she took out the Changeling with a single silenced shot the next time it poked its head around the corner.

Melissa tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at the building that we had come to raid.

I looked closer and saw several dead Changelings near the personnel door. They had been shot, and we hadn’t been the ones who had killed them.

We had company.

I told off one of the men to take Cindy back to the plane and to bring up Third Squad. I wanted as much firepower as possible if we were going to have a firefight with humans.

Vicki came up a few moments later and whispered that Cindy was securely inside the plane.

I raised my hand and signed to move ahead in pairs.

We made it to the armory building without incident. I was about to blow the door when it occurred to me to try the doorknob. Sure enough, it was unlocked.

I examined the doorframe and found no less than 3 different booby traps. 

Once I disarmed those, I opened the door and went in low and fast, followed at 3-second intervals by the rest of the squads.

I pulled Vicki closer, “Don’t touch a damn thing, there are traps everywhere,” I breather in her ear, she nodded and faded back to pass the word.

Something was hellish wrong here.

This place should have been crawling with Changelings, and yet we had only seen one live one.

Someone had put those booby traps there recently, and someone had killed those other Changelings within the last hour as the blood was still flowing from their wounds and hadn’t started to coagulate yet.

There should have been at least some gunfire from the plane, as Changelings would have surely been drawn to the sound of the landing.

With a sinking feeling I broke silence. “Everybody back to the plane on the double. Anything moves, kill it.”

I headed further into the warehouse as everyone else slipped out the door and away.

I knew about what I was looking for, and it only took me a few moments to find it. 

Hidden among some boxes of BDU shirts was a SADM, (Special Atomic Demolition Munitions) and the counter was at 10:33 and counting down.

I spun and ran like hell.

I sprinted back to the plane and was gratified to see the port propeller start to move as soon as I came into view.

By the time I settled into the pilots seat, Melissa had both engines running.

I got the DC3 turned and shoved the throttles to the firewall as soon as I heard the rear hatch cluck shut.

“Everyone get down on the floor and lay flat!” I called over the intercom.

As soon as the tail came up, I hauled back on the yoke. The moment the wheels left the ground I raised the landing gear and adjusted the flaps. We roared down the valley at treetop height.

If I could get enough distance between us, before… Behind us there was a brilliant light just as I banked around the side of a mountain.

“What the hell was that?” Melissa asked shakily.

“Someone set a pony nuke back there.” I told her.

“But they don’t keep those at a Guard armory!” she protested.

“No they don’t,” I agreed.

The mountain shielded us from the worst of the blast, but the goony bird still buffeted briefly as the attenuated shockwave caught up with us.

I stayed low and fast until the manifold temperatures forced me to throttle back and climb a bit.

“Someone had to bring that SADM with them for the express purpose of destroying that armory.” I said.

“But who would have access to a backpack nuke?” Melissa asked fearfully.

“I don’t know. But we had better start setting watches again out in the woods and along the roads.” I answered.

I orbited over Carltown at about 9,000 feet looking for anything unusual.

I saw a convoy of military trucks coming up the road that would take them right past the turnoff to our place. I swung off to the north and came back low and quick, putting down as soon as I cleared the tree line at the end of the landing strip.

“I want everyone that can carry a gun to meet me at Check-post Alpha as soon as you get out of the plane.” I said over the intercom as I taxied to the shelter. “Vicki I want you to take our snipers and set up about 300 yards back into the trees and look for infiltrators. Take Cindy with you.”

As I was shutting down the engines, I kept Melissa back for a moment. “Take Becky and the children to the cave, then come back down yourself.”

She nodded and then left as I finished shutting down the plane.

By the time I got to the cabin, everything was deserted.

I stopped long enough to get my heavy weapons from the bedroom, and then headed down to Check-post Alpha.

I had chosen this place for the main check-post on our driveway because of the high ground on both sides. With our men and women on the slopes above the road, we had any potential hostiles in a murderous crossfire. There were also a dozen or so claymores on either side of the road in the ditches just in case anyone tried to shelter there.

As I approached the roadblock, I saw the first of the military trucks pull up and stop by the barrier.

I took in the details as I got closer. 4 APC’s, of Vietnam war vintage, 4 2 ½ ton trucks, 2 Humvees, and a Bradley fighting vehicle. But in the front was the real surprise, a WW2 era jeep.

I heard a noise behind me and saw that someone had decided to bring our own heavy machinery up.

The old half-track with the snowplow blade was growling down the road to the Check-point. I noted that the blade was raised to provide cover for the driver, and that the big .50 was mounted on the roof pintle, manned by Jack.

I caught a glimpse of someone slipping out if the truck at the rear of the convoy and gave a handsign.

My people turned and slipped off up into the trees on either side of the road, vanishing from sight within seconds.

The man in the passenger seat of the jeep stood up and leaned on the top of the windshield. “Now this isn’t a very friendly reception,” he remarked. 

“It’s as friendly as it’s going to get until you tell your men to get back in their truck,” I said evenly. “That is, if you don’t want them killed.”

The man affected surprise. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

About then Sally Kendall and Cindy came out of the trees leading several bound men in camouflage uniforms who looked mighty dejected. Cindy came to stand next to me and I noted that the men shrank away from her as she passed. They were obviously terrified of her.

“Hi daddy!” she said as she gave me a hug. “Vicki said we should bring these guys to you.”

“Thanks Honey,: I told her.

The man in the jeep was looking at is in dawning horror.

“Vicki said I shouldn’t bite them,” Cindy said with a wink at me. “But I haven’t eaten at all today, and some of them look delicious.”

I knew that she was kidding, but the men didn’t, and one or two wet themselves at her words.

The little minx was enjoying playing the bloodthirsty role to the hilt.

It occurred to me that Melissa hadn’t come down to join us yet. 

I leaned down and whispered for Cindy to go get Vicki and check out the cave,

She hugged me and then took off up into the trees again.

I turned back to the man in the jeep. “It would seem that your intentions were less than friendly.”

He straightened up and snarled. “I give you one minute to lay down your arms and call your people down here and disarm them.”

“And who the hell are you to demand anything?” I asked.

I am Colonel Frank Carter, US Special Forces.”

“Do you know who I am?” I asked.

He gave me an unpleasant grin. “Michael Phillips,” he said. “My orders are to bring you in and to wipe out any potential resistance that I find.”

“Bye-bye fucker,” I said and flickered my fingers in a pre-arranged signal.

The men in the jeep died first, their heads blown apart by our snipers.

The rest of our people opened up from the trees.

A few of the intruders tried for the ditches and were promptly killed when the claymores went off.

Sammy, who had been sitting in a dugout near by, detonated the explosives that we had planted beneath the roadway, wreaking havoc with the vehicles. We only took a handful alive, the rest were either killed outright in the firefight or had suicided when capture seemed inevitable.

Vicki came back down and told me that I had better come right away.

I hustled after her up to the cave.

There were a dozen dead men scattered around the cave entrance.

Inside the cave was a nightmare.

Almost half of the children had been slaughtered and Becky was lying on the ground with her intestines spilling out of a gash that split her from crotch to breastbone.

Melissa had been shot in her side and was sitting against the wall of the cave with one of our medics treating her injury.

I knelt beside her and checked her over as best I could without getting in the medic’s way.

“She’ll recover in time,” the medic assured me. “The bullet passed through the muscles just above the hip bone and exited cleanly.”

“They caught us by surprise,” Melissa said through teeth clenched against the pain. “They tossed in flash-bangs and came in shooting. I got hit right away.”




The Survivors Ch. 05



She let out a hiss as the medic began stitching her wound.

“Becky tried to stop them from killing the kids, and one of the men laughed and stabbed her, then jerked up on the knife, ripping her open,” she continued when she could breath again.

“Just relax,” I told her. “They are either dead or captured.”

Melissa grabbed my sleeve and pulled me closer. “They knew your name and mine,” she said urgently. “I heard them talking before Vicki showed up.”

“I know,” I told her. “The one down by the check-point knew my name and said that his orders were to bring me in.”

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“We take the war to them,” I said.

The medic gave her a shot then and she was soon out cold.

I supervised the evacuation of the wounded and the dead, and then I went back to the cabin.

We had some prisoners, and I wanted information.

I won’t go into details about the questioning of the prisoners, it is enough that they talked.

After we had wrung all useful intelligence from them, I turned them over to the women whose children had been butchered in the cave.

What was left of them afterwards we hung by the road as a warning to others with similar ideas.

Melissa healed slowly. And I was by her side as much as possible. 

I used the time to train a couple of others how to fly the DC3. Then we went looking for a bigger aircraft.

At an Air Force base in Idaho we found a C-130 and promptly appropriated it.

There was a flat stretch of highway not too far from home where I could safely land the big aircraft, and we made arrangements to evacuate Carltown.

Vicki and I made several scouting trips in the DC3 looking for a place to relocate. Our needs were simple enough in theory. The place had to be defensible and would have to be someplace where we could become self-sufficient. 

Easier said than done however.

On one of the trips, we found another DC3 at a small rural airport.

Vicki flew our DC3 home while I brought the new one in.

Vicki and Jack took over the recon flights soon enough so that I could spend more time with Melissa and my sons.

The concept of being a father was still new to me, and I wasn’t at all sure that I had what it took.

But the boys seemed to be happy with me and Cindy was a terrific older sister to them.

Melissa and I grew even closer over the next few weeks as I could now devote more time to her and our children. 

Then came the good news, Vicki and Jack had found and scouted a place for us to relocate to.

Melissa went with me to see the place for ourselves, and indeed it seemed to fill all of our needs adequately. The place was out in Western Nebraska, about 50 miles from the nearest town. 

Plenty of farmland and empty houses to renovate and move into.

We came back full of optimism.

With three aircraft to haul people and belongings, the move went smoothly.

I made three trips with the C130 before fuel became an issue, but that was enough to haul all of our heavy gear and even some of the vehicles.

I took a while for us to get everyone settled and clear out the few Changelings that were out in such a rural area. But we didn’t lose anyone and we still had part of the summer and all of the fall to gather supplies for the winter.

On a flight back to check out the situation at Billings, we saw smoke coming from the site of Carltown.

We overflew the area twice, but there was no mistake. 

Someone had come along and burned us out.

I made a decision that night as I lay with Melissa in my arms.

Whoever wanted me that badly was going to get me.

But it was going to be on my terms, not theirs.

And they were about to find out what it meant to piss off a Ghost.



The Survivors Ch. 06



I took my time getting ready for this trip. I had no idea how ling I was going to be gone this time. 

If I came back at all.

To tell the truth, that pony nuke back in Montana had scared me a bit. Just knowing that someone wanted me dead that badly was a little unnerving.

I wasn't scared for myself, but I couldn't shake the vision of Hamilton ordering a nuke strike on our little farm community.

I made my preparations to leave as unobtrusively as I could.

Vick and Melissa knew that I was going of course, as did Vicki's husband Jack. But I was trying to keep as low a profile as possible for now.

"How are you going to find General Hamilton?" Melissa asked.

I grinned at her. "A guy like him is never hard to find. All I have to do is look for lots of activity. He'll be somewhere nearby."

She hugged me tightly. "I'm scared," she whispered." "Me too," I replied. "But we both know that I have to find him and find him before he finds us. For all I know he has the launch codes for a silo somewhere, and might decide to use them."

She shivered in my arms. "That would be just like that paranoid bastard." She agreed.

Melissa pulled back a little and kissed me fiercely, and then she turned and went outside to check on our sons.

Vicki came up to me with Cindy in tow. "Dad, I want you to take Cindy with you when you go."

I turned to face her. "Say what?"

"I am getting worried about her," Vicki said.

I have been hearing some talk, and I think she'd actually be safer with you than here for right now."

I felt the Ghost rise up in me again. "Who dares?" I rasped.

Vicki took a step back in spite of herself. "Nothing concrete. Mostly just whispers and she's been getting a lot of dirty looks from some of the women lately. And it would be all too easy for an 'accident' to happen."

I took a deep breath to calm myself and forced the Ghost back down, but it didn't quite all go away.

"You have about a week," I told Vicki. "Get her checked out on the MP5K and find a handgun that she can shoot comfortably enough to get good with it. A 22 or maybe a .38."

Vicki nodded. "Right," she said. Turning to Cindy she smiled tenderly down at the Changeling child. "Come on squirt. We have a lot of work to do and not much time to do it in." She took Cindy's hand and led her out of the room.

I went and sat down in a rocking chair and thought dark and evil thoughts about anyone who would threaten a child as sweet as Cindy. I realized that I had become quite fond of her in the months that I had been around her.

I heard a shout, and then a burst of autofire outside, and I was out of the chair with my gun in my hand before the echoes had died away.

When I went through the door low and fast, I saw Jack standing there with an Uzi in his hand.

There was a very dead body a few feet from him, a large revolver a few inches from one out flung hand.

"What happened?" I asked.

"I'm not entirely sure," replied Jack, "I was looking for Vicki and saw this joker taking aim at Melissa and the kids. So I yelled at him to drop his gun. He turned and I shot him."

I took a closer look at the dead man. 

No one I knew.

"Who the hell was he?" I asked.

Jack shrugged. "Hell if I know. I don't recognize him."

My blood went cold. An infiltrator.

"Get everyone together for a meeting ASAP." I told Jack. "Priority 1,"

He nodded and took off at a dead run.

Melissa had scooped the boys up and headed for cover when the first shots sounded. Now she came over, leaving the boys hiding in cover. "What's going on?" she asked worriedly.

"We got problems," I told her. "Get he boys inside, and if you see anyone you don't recognize, shoot them."

She pulled her 9mm and went to go collect our sons.

When everyone had gathered, I stood on the porch and addressed them. 

"Folks, we have a new problem. Those same bastards that burned out Carltown sent an assassin after Melissa and me today. Jack was able to stop him before he could strike, but it was a narrow escape."

I looked around at the gathered crowd.

"There will likely be more of them showing up. So I am going to take the war to them."

There were murmurs at this announcement. I held my hand up for silence and the mutters died away.

"While I am gone, Melissa, Vicki and Jack will be in charge. Obey them as you would me, and we just may make it out of this in one piece. For now though, if you see anyone you don't recognize, kill them. Don't wait to see if they are friend or foe, if you don't know them, shoot to kill."

I dismissed the crowd and took my family back inside.

"No time for training," I said to Vicki. "Issue Cindy a knife, MP5K and a simple .22 revolver. Make up a field pack that she can carry. We leave tonight."

Melissa looked on the verge of tears. "So soon," she quavered.

I took her in my arms and relished the feel of her body against mine. "I can't wait until another infiltrator shows up," I told her. "Next time we might not be so lucky,"

"At least take a few men with you," she pleaded.

I shook my head. "No, they would only get killed, or worse, get me killed." I sighed. "This is something that Cindy and I have to do alone. Together we have a decent chance to survive and to nip this shit in the bud."

Melissa was silent for a long moment. "When will you leave?" She asked at last.

"Tonight," I said. 

She took my hand and tugged me toward the stairs that led to the bedrooms upstairs, "Then let's not waste any more time talking."

I wasn't about to argue.

As it turned out, Vicki, Jack, Melissa and a mechanic named Paul accompanied Cindy and me as we left around midnight.

Our immediate destination was a small airport just outside of what had been the town of Alliance.

We arrived around dawn, and waited for full daylight.

Once the sun was well up, we left the truck and did a careful recon of the airport. 

There were only a handful of Changelings, and we soon had them wiped out.

As I had hoped, most of the small aircraft there were still in decent shape, and it didn't take John long to get an elderly Piper Cub running and ready to go.

Once the plane was ready, we topped off the fuel tanks.

I loaded the supplies and Cindy aboard the Cub and turned to get one more kiss from Melissa while Cindy was saying her goodbyes to Jack and Vicki.

"Come home safe to me," Melissa said softly.

"I will," I assured her.

"You'd better," she smiled bravely through her tears.

Vicki hugged me and Jack and John shook my hand before I climbed into the Cub.

"I'm gonna try to get a couple more of these planes up and running," John said. "Vicki and Jack can fly them back to the farms, and I'll drive back with Melissa."

Be careful and leave at least an hour before dusk, whether you are done or not." I said.

John nodded and headed back into the hangar with Melissa trailing him to act as a lookout.

"Mike, I put a few clips worth of some special rounds I loaded for your trip. They'll go through body armor like it wasn't there." Jack said. "But use them carefully, you only have a couple hundred rounds of them. The rest of your loadout is standard hollowpoint and FMJ mix." 

I thanked him and closed the door.

Moments later, Cindy and I were taxing down to toward the runway.

Once airborne, we circled the airport once, and then I pointed us into the sunset and eased the throttle back a bit for maximum fuel economy.

Cindy was looking out the window on her side, absorbed in the view of the countryside 5000 feet below. I wished I could have been so relaxed.

We flew on roughly west-southwest until we passed what had been Cheyenne.

There was nothing left of the former capital of Wyoming but burned out rubble.

"What happened here?" Cindy asked.

"No idea love," I replied. But I had a suspicion that General Hamilton's boys had been responsible.

I was watching the fuel gauge carefully.

If we didn't find a place to refuel, we would be hoofing it the rest of the way,

Down below and just ahead, I saw a small truck stop just of the interstate,

I buzzed low over the building to check for signs of Changelings.

Sure enough I saw a dozen or so of the shaggy figures, but they were acting most unlike any Changelings that I had ever seen.

Instead of gathering outside aggressively, these scattered in blind panic, running off into the scrub brush as if the devil himself were after them.

Another look at the gas gauge told me I had to land, and right now.

I swung us into the wind and put down easily on the frontage road.

I taxied as close as I dared to the pumps with my H&K held ready.

Cindy had her own subgun out and ready, although I had little confidence she would hit anything except at point blank range.

I exited the airplane, followed by Cindy, lugging a 5-gallon gas can in her free hand.

I watched nervously, trying to look in all directions at once as Cindy pried the cover from one of the underground gas tanks.

She fed a siphon hose down the hole and started cranking away on the handle of the siphon. The other end of the hose was in the gas can. Once she had filled the can, she carried it over to the plane and poured the fuel into the planes tank.

It took her 8 trips before the plane was full.

"All done Grandpa." She said.

I eased over toward the building itself to where I could peer inside.

There were plenty of signs that the Changelings had been laired up here for quite some time.

But there were a few empty 5-gallon gas cans still among the debris.

"Cindy honey, " I said. "Slip in there and get as many of those gas cans as you can carry."

She slung her MP5K and entered the building. I trusted her keen senses to warn her if any Changelings tried to come in through the back, and I concentrated on what I could see to the front and sides of the building.

Cindy came out of the building with a dozen cans she had tied together with a length of electrical cord through the handles.

Smart girl.

She carried the cans over to the siphon and proceeded to fill them with gas.

As she finished with each one, she carried it to the Cub and stowed it as far back as she could. When she was done, She climbed into her seat and waited for me.

I paused a moment, but there was no sign of the Changelings returning.

Most curious. They should have been swarming all over the plane as soon as we hand landed.

I got back into the Piper and started the engine. As soon as I could, I taxied out to the frontage road and took off straight ahead.

As we climbed, I was remembering the mountains ahead. There was always the pass by Laramie, but if General Hamilton were operating in this area, he would have that bottleneck guarded.

And the last thing I needed was for him to figure out that I was coming his way. 

I swung us to the Northwest and headed for a pass I dimly remembered from maps I had seen long ago, and I cursed myself for not having boned up on the geography of the area while I had the chance.

The flight through the mountains was harrowing, and we nearly ended up slamming into the side of a mountain a few times.

Only the full moon gave us enough light to see by. Otherwise I would have put down somewhere and waited for morning.

The Cub was heavy and sluggish with the weight of all that extra fuel in the back, and it was tail heavy.

I kept the speed just a couple of notches above stall, and we wended out way through valleys and up over passes whenever possible.

The Cub was mostly wood and fabric, but all those gas cans in the back would give us a radar signature that not even a moron could miss. So we stayed low and slow, keeping as low a profile as possible.

Cindy seemed to be enjoying the ride, not flinching even at the close escapes. I doubt she knew just how close a few of them were.

We finally broke out of the mountains about dawn, and it was time to set the plane down and refuel.

I landed us on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and it only took a few minutes for me to check the oil in the engine while Vicki poured the gas into the planes fuel tank.

We were off the ground again in less than 20 minutes.

This time I stayed just high enough to clear power lines and trees, hedgehopping toward Salt Lake City.

For hours, every farm or small town we overflew had been burned out and destroyed. 

Someone wanted to make damn sure that there was no shelter or anything else useful left for someone to use. 

It also meant that there were likely very few surviving Changelings in the area.

I felt my intuition stirring, and I landed on the next flat stretch of road I saw. 

"Cindy," I said. "Put the rest of the gas into the tank and then get rid of all the gas cans except the plastic one."

To her credit, she didn't ask why, she just did it.

While she was busy, I moved a couple of yards away into the brush and relieved my bladder.

When I was done, I let Cindy use the bushes, and then we climbed back aboard the Cub and I took off.

Without all that extra weight in the back, the Piper handled responsively. 

I took us up to about 9,000 feet. As far as I could see, nothing more advanced than a few now wild horses and cattle were moving below.

I took us up as high as I dared. The Cub didn't have oxygen, so that limited us severely.

As we flew on, I taught Cindy to take the controls and hold us nice and steady.

She soon caught on and was able to keep us in a stable turn at will.

We had been eating from the lunches packed for us by Melissa and Vicki, since I knew that what we didn't eat we would have to leave with the plane.

"What are we going to do when we find them?" Cindy asked suddenly.

"I am going to kill as many as possible," I said. "But the one we absolutely must get at all costs is General Hamilton."

"Why him?" she asked.

"Because he is the one who released the Hellbug and made the Changelings. And he is the one who sent the men to kiss us at Carltown." I replied.

She bared her teeth in a silent snarl. "Then I want to be there when you kill him."

I looked at her for a long moment. 

"Cindy. You know that we may both get killed on this mission."

She nodded,

"If I get killed. Do not try for General Hamilton yourself. Instead, get away and make your way back to the farms and tell Melissa what happened. She'll know what to do."

The little Changeling leaned her head on my arm and cried.

There was definite activity around Salt Lake City. 

There were trucks and tanks and helicopters everywhere.

I made sure to stay well clear and as high as possible to avoid detection.

However the soldiers down there were concentrating on killing anything that moved on the ground and setting fire to every damn thing that would burn. No one would be looking for us way up here.

Then I saw a glint in the sky ahead. 

It was at least 20 miles away and crossing from left to right. And it was a lot higher than we were.

The bastard had air support.

I should have expected it. But for so long we had been the ones in the air that I had forgotten that what we could do, others could as well.

Then I saw another distant speck, closer this time and heading our way. "Hang on!" I said and put the piper into as steep a dive as I dared.

Against jet fighters, our only chance was to get low in a hurry and stay there.

When we passed 1000 feet I pulled back on the stick as hard as I dared. Too little and we would make a nice hole in the ground

Too much and the wings would snap right off.

As it was we leveled off about 30 feet off the ground and traveling way too fast for an old ragwing like the Piper Cub. 

But there was a chance that we hadn't been seen, a piper cub is a small aircraft, and we had had the sun behind us.

I made a series of S turns to check our tail, but saw nothing.

Either we hadn't been seen or else the dive and the low flight lost them.

I knew that General Hamilton liked Nellis AFB out in Nevada. He had talked about it many times when he would stop by to give us our orders.

His idea of being 'one of the boys' was to rattle off a few inane thoughts and then sit there and grin.

I wonder if her knew how much we despised him.

I checked the compass and adjusted course to head for Las Vegas.

The plane gave out about 100 miles shy of our goal, and I stretched the glide as far as I could before coming to a rather bumpy landing out in the desert.

Cindy and I pulled a camouflage net over the Cub after pushing it into a thicket of mesquite.

The longer it took them to find it from the air, the further away we would be.

"Grandpa?" Cindy said as we hiked into the desert evening. "When will we stop to sleep?"

I thought for a moment. I was used to going 2 or 3 days without sleep, but Cindy couldn't stand that kind of pace.

"We'll stop here in about an hour," I said at last. "I want another couple of miles between us and the plane before we stop."

"OK grandpa," she said and took my hand as we hiked on.

Not long after that, Cindy stopped dead in her tracks. "I smell water," she said. "This way," and she led the way off at an angle to the route we had been taking.

Sure enough a few yards away there was an old stock tank kept full by a decrepit windmill.

I checked the water, then filled out canteens.

Supper was beef jerky and dried corn. We couldn't risk a fire.

I sat with my back against the windmill with my H&K in my hand,

Cindy lay on the ground beside me, using my thigh as a pillow. I stroked her hair and sang softly to her until she went to sleep.

That day we stayed near the stock tank, taking turns bathing and generally readying our gear. By my estimate we were about 30 miles from our goal.

I didn't want to think about what would happen if I was wrong and General Hamilton wasn't there.

We left at dusk. In the desert, traveling at night is always the preferred way to go.

It took us 2 nights travel to get to Nellis.

Sure enough , there was all kinds of activity there,

Vehicles of all kinds and people were everywhere. There were fighters and a few bombers on the tarmac and even a few of the old Huey Cobra attack helicopters. And off to one side, a lone Apache gunship with 5 stars painted on it. 

That would be Hamilton's private toy, I thought to myself.

As we eased deeper onto the base, Cindy's keen senses kept us from discovery numberless times.

I followed her lead, letting her guide me around mines, tripwires and other assorted nasties.

I shook my head. The girl was a born Ghost.

Finally we eased under a barracks building to wait out the heat of the day. I unlimbered my binoculars and scanned the area.

Then I saw something that made my blood run cold.

There was something familiar about one of the women talking over by one of the hangars. I focused on her and cursed silently.

Angela.

There were a few female Ghosts back when I had been active,

Officially they were called The Furies.

The rest of us Ghosts called them Hell Bitches.

Cold as ice, never showing any emotion, they were efficient killing machines.

They would often seduce their way onto an enemy base, leaving a trail of corpses behind them.

Angela was one of the worst of the bunch.

There was one mission that we were on together. The target was a Syrian colonel. A simple hit and git mission. Not for Angela, she came up with a refinement all her own.

While I was off icing the Colonel and his mistress, Angela went to the nearby school and entered the dormitory building.

When she came back, we had to hurry to make the pickup point on time, so I didn't get a chance to ask her what she had been up to.

It was the next day that I found out that she had held each child down with her hand over their faces and used the knife in her other hand to disembowel them

Every kid in the place was killed. 




The Survivors Ch. 06



After that, she became Hamilton's personal attack dog, and some said lover as well.

If she was here, so was Hamilton.

I eased back further into the shadows under the building to wait for nightfall.

All I had to do now was find out where Hamilton was and then it would be a simple matter to kill him.

Getting away would be the trick.

I pillowed my head on my pack and let myself fall into a semi doze. Cindy used my belly as a pillow and was asleep in seconds All too soon it was coming on evening, and it was time to move before the K-9 patrols came around.

As soon as we eased out from under the building however, things started to go to hell in a big way. 

I stood up and found myself face to face with Angela.

She and I reached for our knives at the same instant.



The Survivors Ch. 07



Dear God she was fast, much faster than I was. She had her knife out and moving before mine even cleared the sheath.

Cindy was fast too. Still lying on her side on the ground, she sank her fangs into Angela's left calf muscle, gripping the leg with both hands. The sudden shock of pain made Angel pause for just a moment. That was all the opening that I needed.

I didn't dare try to take Angela alive. For one thing, she was a far deadlier fighter than I was. 

Trying to get information out of her would be futile. So I struck for the kill.

The knife came up, striking her just under the solar plexus, angling up toward the heart. I felt the momentary slight resistance as the blade punched through her shirt and skin, then the blade slid through her muscles and organs with a wet, tearing sound. I felt the knife twitch for a second as her heart beat once around the steel piercing it, then I twisted the hilt of the knife and yanked it out of her.

The blow had knocked the breath out of her, and she died with a look of shock and amazement on her face. 

I lowered her to the ground as Cindy scrambled to her feet, wiping the blood from her face with her sleeve. "Yuck." She said softly but with feeling.

I rolled the corpse under the building where he wad been hiding. "Come on," I told Cindy. "The patrol dogs are going to smell the blood and all hell is going to break loose."

I had a faint idea where to find the general, but Nellis was just too big to get there, find him and kill him before the alarm was raised when the security patrols found Angela's body.

Shit. 

"Back to the flight line," I whispered to Cindy. She nodded.

We made out was back to the flight line, keeping to shadows and moving as silently as possible.

The desert night was warm, bit I still felt cold as I strained to hear the first hint of an alarm being raised.

Cindy and I crouched near a FB111 sitting on the tarmac a dozen yards or so from Hamilton's Apache gunship. I could hear the voices of the crew working on the chopper and arming it. 

"C'mon you guys, hustle your butts here. If this bird ain't ready to go the instant the General arrives, it'll be our asses get fed to his pet monsters."

"Lighten up Parker," another voice said. "The bird'll be ready. It ain't my fault that the General flies this thing like a ham-handed chimp."

"Yeah Chief," chimed in someone else. "The General gets to showing off for that ice bitch of his, and he comes back with the chopper all fucked up. Hell, it's a miracle he got back here last time."

The crew Chief sighed. "Yeah, I know. But do any of you want to tell the ice bitch that her boyfriend has to wait to go play with his new toy?"

There was a chorus of "No Chief." And a renewed business as the men got back to work.

Cindy moved off so quietly that I didn't even notice she was gone for several minutes. When I did notice I cursed myself for getting too wrapped up in the ground crew's conversation.

Cindy slipped back up beside mea few minutes later. "I went to listen to the guys in the big hangar over there." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder to one of the biggest hangars on the base. "They 're bitching about having to load nukes on the biggest plane I've ever seen."

Oh shit.

That could only mean that they were going to hit our new homesteads. 

Even as spread out as we were, it would only one good-sized nuke to be sure of getting all of us.

No way I could let that plane take off.

I let Cindy lead me over to the hangar. The main doors were partly open, and it wasn't hard for us to slip inside unseen and hide among some boxes along one wall.

There was a B-52 sitting along in the middle of the vast room with men swarming over it like ants.

"I don't see what the fuss is about some damn group of farmers out there." One guy was saying.

"It's that same group that wiped out the colonel and his crew," said someone else.

"Good riddance," came back the first speaker. "That was one seriously sick bastard, and his buddies weren't a lot better. You saw what they did in Oakland to that commune."

Someone spat and said, "True enough, but as long as I have a place to sleep that's safe from the monsters and 3 meals a day, I ain't gonna complain too damn much."

Cindy was bristling at the men's words, and I laid a hand on her shoulder to calm her down. She hugged me and stayed quiet, watching the men with an unwavering gaze,

I took out a small notepad and pen and scribbled a quick note telling her to stay put while I went outside and took care of something. She read the note, nodded and hugged me again.

I slipped out of the hangar and made my way to the FB111 again just in time to see the ground crew packing up their tools and moving off.

As soon as they were far enough away, I slipped up to the Apache and scrambled atop it. I spent a few minutes arranging a nasty little surprise for the General, then slithered down the side of the aircraft and headed for the hangar again.

I had just slipped inside and found Cindy again when I heard a jet engine spooling up outside.

'Someone's going on an early flight. ' I thought. 

There was only the one engine started when I heard the whine of the jet go up and the noise started moving away. 

F-16 I thought. 

That could be a problem if we had to fly out of here.

Try as I might, I couldn't see any way to get to the plane in the middle of the hangar without being seen.

Then it hit me, I didn't have to get there unseen. All I had to do was get there as someone they were expecting. 

Cindy and I made out way to the offices in the back of the hangar and slipped into one. As I suspected, there was one of the huge coffee urns there, along with a wheeled serving tray and a supply of cups etc.

I soon had the coffee going and started putting cups etc. on the tray.

Cindy watched for a moment, then she started grinning. "Gonna give them a little wake-up call huh?"

I winked at her. "Yup."

I used the sink to clean Angela's blood off my hands and arms, then rooted around until I found a set of fatigues in roughly my size. There were corporal's stripes on the sleeve. 'Perfect' I thought. Cindy came up with a stained white apron from somewhere and I slipped it on over the fatigues. 

The coffee was done and I moved the urn to the trolley. Then I whispered to Cindy to wait until everyone was looking at me before slipping out to wait for me in out hiding spot. She nodded and moved to stand beside the door.

I left most of my weapons with Cindy. All I kept was my pistol tucked inside my shirt and a single grenade that I stuffed into a pocket.

I opened the door quietly and pushed the trolley on through headed directly for the plane. 

I was nearly there when someone noticed me. The crew chief came over and looked me up and down suspiciously. "What the hell are you doing here?"

I shrugged. "Hey, I'm just doing what the ice bitch told me to do."

"And what's that?" he asked warily.

"She said to bring you guys some coffee." I replied. "She said she wanted you guys wide awake and alert so there won't be any fuck-ups with the nuke loading."

"I'd better check on this," he muttered.

I gave him a cheerful grin. "Go ahead. It won't be my ass that gets fed to the general's pets for interrupting him and his ice bitch in the middle of their pre-flight orgy."

The crew chief grunted at that and waved me on toward the plane. "Hurry up then, we don't have a lot of time here."

I waved him a salute and pushed the trolley under one of the big bombers sagging wings. "Coffee for anyone who wants it!" I called. This announcement was greeted with glad cries from the working crew, and they soon clustered around the trolley for their caffeine boost. 

"Is there anyone else?" I asked.

"Yeah, Connors didn't bother coming down from doing her nav system checks," said the crew chief after scanning the crowd around the trolley. 

"No problem," I said cheerfully. I filled a cup with coffee and picked up some packets of creamer and sugar. "I'll just take hers on in if that's OK."

The chief just waved me on, so I climbed up through the open access hatch in the belly of the bomber.

I carried the coffee up forward to the nav station where a rather cute blonde sat muttering to herself as she ran system diagnostics.

"Here's some coffee," I said.

Connors almost jumped out of her skin when I spoke. "Goddamnit!" she snapped. Don't sneak up on me like that!" 

The she looked closer at me. "Who the hell are you?"

I handed her the coffee and the packets. "I'm the guy who got stuck with coffee detail by the ice bitch."

She rolled her eyes. "Someday someone's gonna ice that cunt and her psycho boyfriend, and I'm gonna party for a week."

"Yeah, I'm not too fond of those clowns myself," I said with a straight face.

Connors sighed. "If it wasn't for those goddamn monsters of his, I'd tell the general what I think of him and his idea of nuking a bunch of farmers. Then I'd shoot him right in the nuts."

She scowled at the navigation console. "I'm about ready to go AWOL anyway and fuck Hamilton and his whole crew."

"Mighty open talk," I observed.

Connors tossed her head. "Fuck it. The ice bitch and her kill crazy bunch are gonna find a reason soon, and I'm gonna be monster chow anyway. They don't like anyone to be too good at their job." She gave a short bitter laugh. "They already killed my sister and my boyfriend for no better reason."

I made a decision.

"Ok, you want to get out of here in one piece and fuck over the general in the process?" I asked.

Connors looked at me carefully. "What, a cook is gonna get me out of here and kill the general and his ice bitch?"

I let her see my eyes clearly and she shuddered. "No," I said softly, "But a Ghost can. The ice bitch is already dead."

Her eyes widened. "Holy shit!" she breathed. "So you're the one that has the general shittin' his drawers and jumping at shadows."

She reached under her console and pulled a couple of wires loose, then she efficiently stripped the ends of the wires and twisted them together.

"Let that bunch of incompetents figure that one out," she snickered as she tucked the wires back up under the console. "Nothing will happen until they fire up the attack radar, then every circuit breaker on board is gonna pop all at once."

I handed her the grenade. "Got a good place for this?"

She grinned evilly. "You bet." She moved up into the cockpit and busied herself near the pilots console for a bit. "I never did like the pilot anyway. His idea of comforting someone grieving is to hustle them into the sack."

Now to get back to Cindy without being seen.

"Connors, make an excuse to leave the hangar in about 10 minutes. Meet me by the old Aardvark out there near the general's Apache. I'll have a friend along. And remember, she IS a friend." I told her.

She winked and pretended to go back to work.

I exited the plane and started pushing the trolley back toward the offices. The crew chief gave me a wave of thanks and turned back to supervise his men. I pushed the cart back into the office, then slipped back out and made my way over to where Cindy waited. "Back to that other plane," I said.

Cindy and I made it to the door just as Connors climbed out of the B-52 waving a piece of electronics. "Chief, I'm going to take this out to the 'Vark and plug it into their system. If it works there, then it had to be the main capacitor, if not, I'll bring the one from the 'Vark over here and it'll get this beast up and running."

"Get a move on Connors," was the reply.

By the time Connors got over to the FB111, Cindy and I were waiting for her.

"As soon as I open the canopies, get in," she said eyeing Cindy warily.

Moments later we were all in the aircraft. Connors started flipping switches and the starboard engine began to whine to life. "We'll have about 5 minutes until security is all over this plane," she said tersely. The starboard engine settled into a steady whine and the port engine started to spool up. 

I ran my eyes over the gauges. Nearly full fuel tanks, and glory be, the stores list came up. We had a belly full of cluster bombs and a full set of AMRAAM's on a rotary launcher in the forward bay.

I could see a sedan with a flashing light on top come to a halt near the open door of the big hangar. 

"Time to scram," I said and shoved the throttles forward.

As the plane started to move, I could see men pouring from the hangar to stare at us as we started to taxi toward the runway.

As soon as I had us more or less centered on the main runway, I jammed the throttles into full afterburner and began the takeoff run.

There were missile batteries everywhere, so I just climbed enough to raise the landing gear and clear the fences at the end of the runway, trying to stay under their effective envelope.

I stayed low and fast, until we had put some miles between us and the base, then I lifted us to about 100 feet and pulled back out of afterburner.

Connors was shaking and sweating in the co-pilot's seat, and Cindy was trying to make herself small behind us.

I made a couple of sweeping rudder turns to check our six, then straightened out on a course that would take us in a great curve to the south and then back up toward home.

"Do you know how to work the weapons?" I asked Connors. She held up a hand palm down and made a so-so motion. "I can get the missiles up and ready, I don't know about the bombs."

"Get the missiles up," I said. "If it looks like we'll run shy of fuel, we'll jettison the bombs later."

I kept the radar warm but in standby until we reached the area near Denver. No sense in telling the enemy where we were by broadcasting radar signals all over the place.

Connors and Cindy had started chatting, and the older woman was starting to relax around the little changeling.

Finally I climbed to 15,000 feet and switched on the radar.

There were two blips up ahead. A big one at about 10,000 feet and almost 40 miles ahead. And a smaller one much higher and a little closer.

The B-52 and the F-16 I guessed.

I shut down the radar and climbed another 10,000 feet. Connors and I were on oxygen now, and Cindy was using the smaller emergency bottle from behind my seat.

A few minutes later, I heard the radio crackle to life. "Phillips, I know it has to be you out there. No one else would have the balls to steal a plan right under my nose from my own goddamn base."

Hamilton.

I keyed the mike. "Yes, it's me you psycho bastard, and next time I'll get you too."

"Now is that any way to talk to your commanding officer?" came the reply with a chuckle.

"Commanding nutcase," I replied.

Abruptly the general's tone became crisp. "Here's the only deal you're going to get, so listen close. Either you come back and agree to work under my command, or I am going to turn all of those pretty farms and your family into radioactive glass."

"Fuck you," I replied and shut off the radio.

"Are the missiles ready?" I asked Connors.

She nodded and swallowed hard. She switched the radar to attack mode and locked onto the B-52 with ease.

"Screw the bomber right now," I told her. That goddamn fighter is out here somewhere, and unless we get him, he's going to nail us before we ever get into missile range of that bomber."

She started pushing buttons and soon found the fighter. The F-16 was ahead of us and slightly to one side, coming down at us fast. 

I heard the missile lock indicator tone start up.

"Oh no you don't," Connors growled. She hit a few more switches and the warbling tone stopped.

She peered closely at her screens, then pushed a button 3 times in rapid succession. Through the controls I felt the vibrations as the forward bay doors opened, then felt and heard the thump as 3 of the AMRAAM's were dumped out into the slipstream.

The missiles steadied and raced ahead of us, curving up toward the now visible fighter.

The F-16 pilot was good. He managed to avoid the first 3 missiles by a diving turn while dropping chaff.

But Connors had already pumped another pair of missiles out, and these were aimed in the general direction of where the pilot would be when he came out of his turn.

The second set of missiles locked onto the fighter at the last moment, and there was no time for the pilot to evade.

I saw a flash of light as the fighter pilot ejected, and then another pair of flashes a second later as the missiles blew the small fighter to bits.

"Now lock us on to that bomber," I said.

Connors tried, but the bomber had dropped low and off our screens.

Well, I knew where the bastard had to be headed, so I pointed the nose of the Aardvark toward home and nudged the throttles up a bit more.

Cindy was shivering behind us, and she was making small whimpering noises.

Connors reached back and patted her reassuringly.

We were almost home when we spotted the bomber climbing to attack altitude ahead of us.

I jammed the throttles into full afterburner and went after him.

Connors reached over and pulled the throttles back. I looked at her in surprise. "What the fuck?"

"Watch," she said smugly.

As the B-52 leveled off at 10,000 feet, we were less than a mile away. 

"Missiles ready?" I asked.

Connors just pointed at the bomber.

We watched as a flash of light and a billow of smoke erupted from the nose of the aircraft, and it pitched over hard, falling off on one wing.

"The grenade," I said.

Connors smirked. "I rigged it so that when the master breakers under the dash were pulled, the pin would come out."

"You have a nasty sense of humor," I said.

"It gets better," she replied. "the emergency O2 bottles are under the console. The grenade blast set those off too."

We saw several people eject from the stricken bomber as it plunged earthward.

There were several good chutes visible as the B-52 hit the ground and exploded.

"Can you arm and ready those bombs?" I asked.

"I think so," Connors said.

We orbited the area while Connors figured out how to arm the cluster bombs and read them for action.

I made a single pass over the area where the aircrew had landed, and Connors dumped the entire load of cluster bombs right on top of them.

We didn't hang around to see the results, the fuel was getting low, and I had to find someplace to put this bird down before we fell out of the sky, the FB111 not being noted for it's gliding characteristics.

I saw a long straight and relatively flat stretch of highway just outside of the town of Scottsbluff.

The wind was wrong, but I didn't have a lot of choice. I set the bird down.

It wasn't the best landing I had ever made, and we ended up sliding down the roadside ditch, but we walked away from the plane with only minor bumps and bruises.

"Where to now?" Connors asked.

"Home," I said, pointing north.

Something was bugging me though. I wished I could have seen General Hamilton's body.

Had he been killed when the cockpit of the bomber exploded? Had he been caught in the cluster bomb run? I had no way of knowing for certain, and that cocksucker seemed to have more lives than a cat.

As much as I hated the idea, I was going to have to go back to Nellis soon and find out once and for all.

But for now, just getting home was my main priority. And we still had over a hundred miles to travel.