First Wave (The Travis Combs Post-Apocalypse Thrillers) (10 page)

The familiar shrill of a nighthawk, circling above
for insects, was echoing off the canyon walls. The rocks were painted in an
orange hue, as dawn unfolded. Travis and Pete were quietly walking amongst the
tangled arms and legs of the group, waking each person. Night time travel in
the desert would have been preferred if they had NVGs. Otherwise, it was too
risky, as everything in the unforgiving landscape had evolved to pierce, poke,
sting, or impale. Travis knew that there was a practical reason that native
cultures of the Southwest had taboos about venturing out at night.

Before the first slivers of sunlight had pierced the
landscape, the group had crested the ridge above the alcove. The country ahead
was a seemingly unending surface of grey-brown slickrock, punctuated by an
occasional grove of juniper trees. Every hundred yards there was a swale of
sand, but the region was so bleak that not even animal or insect tracks were
evident on the doppled surface. Many miles in the distance was a backdrop of
jagged mountains rising up like an earthen vertebrae. The canyon they had just left,
now seemed like an oasis compared to the monotonous expanse ahead.

Nora led the way followed by Rachel, who stayed on
her sister’s boot heels the entire time. Nora carried an AK along with LB, and
Travis, who had the other two. Katy clung to the shotgun like it had become a
familiar friend. On Pete’s belt was the .45 formerly carried by LB, and Evelyn
had the Glock from one of the bikers. Jim clutched the shoulder straps of his
pack and plodded along behind Travis as if tethered by an invisible leash. Behind
Katy was Becka, clinging to her grandfather’s lever-action that she had once
used for hunting.

They paced themselves by hiking for ninety minutes,
followed by a twenty minute shade break. This was loosely dictated by the
presence of the tree groves, and each one provided a mental talisman of how far
they had to go before resting again. In this landscape, Travis knew they would
average around two miles per hour and that they may have to bivouac somewhere
overnight as Evelyn’s hips and knees might not hold up to the mileage. By Noon,
they had covered eleven miles. The temperature was spiking, and most everyone
had the familiar red flush to their cheeks that comes with mild heat stress.

“Ok, let’s take a siesta for a few hours,” Travis
said as they approached a massive grove of junipers. Everyone dropped their
packs and plunked down on the soft duff underneath the welcoming shade of the
trees.

Once they had rehydrated and snacked, Pete took off
his boots and began massaging his feet while falling into guide mode again.
“Remember, everything out here is foot powered and you have to take care of
your foundation. So, get those boots and socks off, put them in the sun for a
while to give ‘em a solar bath, and then rub those gnarly soles of yours, you
desert rats.”

Everyone followed his lead except Travis. He felt
the need to intermittently skirt the perimeter of the grove, scanning the
horizon for any movement. He pulled out the binoculars and glassed the
direction from which they had just come, as well as the surrounding areas.
While squatting down, he noticed some pieces of ancient pottery strewn on the
ground. The familiar black and white appearance indicated it was the
prehistoric ancestors of the Yavapai. He picked up a piece, flipping it back
and forth between his fingers.
They’ve been here for over one hundred
generations and survived drought, warfare, the Spanish, smallpox, and the
intrusion of the modern world. Hell, knowing them, they’re still going strong. This
is just going to be another hiccup in their oral tradition. Something to be
said about the benefit of living in a tribe.

Katy came over and kneeled down next to him. “I
think the hike is catching up to Ev. You know her- she’s stoic and will just
keep going ‘til she drops. Do you have any of those painkillers we can give
her?”

“Yeah, there’s a bottle of Vicodin in the saddlebag
by my gear,” he said. She rose and began to walk away when Travis said, “Hey, Katy,”
he paused, “thanks for always watching everyone’s back.”

She nodded with a half-smile, and then turned and
headed back to the group.

They rested in the grove until four p.m., waiting
out the hottest part of the afternoon, which rose to the triple digits. Just
sitting under the shade of a tree, in ninety degree weather, a person would
sweat off six quarts of water in a twenty-four hour period in a desert region.
Hiking in the mid-day heat would double, or even triple, that expenditure rate
and their water supply was confined to what they carried, making siestas a
necessary part of backcountry travel.

With feet rested and a nap under their belts,
everyone was eager to push on for the second leg of the journey. “How much
farther is it, Nora?” asked Pete.

“Mmm….” she paused, scanning the area, matching it
to the mental topo map in her head. “I’d say we’re just a little over half
way.” She pointed to a single column of rock rising up from the desert floor.
“That’s Misty Butte right over there. On the other side is the canyon where our
line shack is located.”

“Why’s it called Misty Butte?” said Evelyn.

“Well, ma’am, that’s just what my family called it.
My grandma’s name was Misty…well…actually her nickname. She always used to
complain to my grandpa about how she wanted to live where there was more water
and joked about leaving him to move to a house by the ocean. He was born a desert
cowboy, from a long line of cowboys, and met her in Phoenix after her dad moved
the family there from San Diego for work.”

Nora slung a saddlebag over her shoulder and walked
out of the grove. “My grandma once asked him to take her on a cruise but he
wouldn’t have it and, instead, took her fishing for a week up in Montana. I
remember that trip because I was only about ten and when they came home, and I
asked my grandpa how he liked Montana. He summed it up in three words:
Can’t
see far!
Anyway, she died a few years after that, and my grandpa buried her
on the west side of that butte, so she could face west towards the ocean.”

The group hiked in single file formation for the
next two hours until they could see the lip of the canyon beyond Misty Butte
and the gravestone Nora had mentioned. As they approached, Travis motioned to
the group to drop down to avoid silhouetting themselves, as they neared the
canyon’s edge.

Creeping up to a cluster of currant bushes, Travis
lowered his gear and scanned the canyon floor below. It was more winding than
most and only about three hundred feet deep. The bottom was lined with
ubiquitous cottonwood trees, with a smattering of willow and hackberry trees.
Opposite from where he stood, and about a hundred yards beyond the ribbon of
trees, was a large bench of sandstone that was up off the canyon floor about
fifty feet.

Nora pulled on his shirt sleeve and pointed to the
bench. Nestled in a thick stand of trees, was a finely hewn stone shack with a
tin roof and chimney protruding off the back that seemed to melt into the slickrock
walls behind it. Alongside the shack was a corral of weathered fence posts and
a small tack barn to the right. Behind the structure, to the right, was a slot
canyon where the walls seemed to muscle apart.

He glassed up and down the canyon and surrounding
rim.  The only way down was a slender mule trail a few hundred yards away from
their present location. “Anything we should know before heading down there?” he
asked Nora.

“This trail to my right is the main entrance to the shack.
Unlike the place we came from, this canyon is filled with lots of small side
canyons and springs. The nearest dirt road is about six miles to the east, so
it’s not likely there’ll be anybody here. Only my family used this place, and
that was only in the spring and fall,” she said.

The sun was dipping in the west as Travis motioned
to the group to follow him down the trail. With Misty Butte as their backdrop,
they descended the narrow path to the canyon floor. Pausing in the cottonwood
grove before the line shack, he squatted and surveyed the building for any
movement while studying the ground for tracks, which only revealed rain, pock
marks and the pungent smell of decaying leaves.

He looked back at the group, with his hand raised,
and then realized they didn’t have a command of hand signals yet for what he
expected of them. He motioned LB, Katy, and Nora to move up. “I’m going to
skirt around the left side of the building towards the front door. Nora, I want
you to cover me, while LB and Katy, you two move along the left side and await
my instructions. Remember, above all else, where your muzzle is pointing and
make sure that ain’t at the backside of your partner.”

Pointing his two fingers up to his eyes, he said,
“Just so we’re all clear, this hand signal means ‘Do you see anything?’ and
this hand signal,” he switched to all four fingers extended and pointing
forward, “to move in that direction. Got it?” They all nodded in agreement.
This
would have to do for now. One more thing to cover with my ragtag band of desert
insurgents,
he thought.

The rest of the group remained in the shadowy
confines of the grove, while the two teams split up and approached the small
stone shack from either side, while darting from tree to tree. Nearing the
corner of the building, Travis indicated a rock pile where he wanted Nora to
wait and provide rear cover. He then crept up alongside the stone facade. A
small overhang, held up by withered beams, extended beyond the front door and a
rusty bucket lay on its side, beside a punctured wicker chair. He looked at Katy
in the distance and gave the
eyesight
hand signal to her. She looked
back towards the windows of the shack and then nodded in the negative to
Travis. He motioned for her to come up while LB stayed behind.

Once she was on the opposite side of the doorway,
she steadied the shotgun and pointed it towards the ground, her finger indexed
above the trigger. Travis had his Glock in a low-ready position and then raised
three fingers to Katy, lowering each one until he slid forward and slowly grabbed
the door handle, giving it a gentle twist. It was unlocked. Entering the fatal
funnel of the doorway was punctuated with explosive action, as he swung the
door open and rushed in, sweeping each corner of the small shack for signs of
movement. Katy remained in ready outside the door as the small shack was barely
large enough for one person to provide a safe survey.

“We’re clear,” he said, lowering his pistol. Katy
stood and walked inside, holding the shotgun in a forward position with rigid
arms. Travis raised his hand and motioned her to relax her position. “It’s OK.
We’re clear…you can ease off now.” She rolled her eyes and lowered the weapon,
exhaling and blowing a strand of hair off her nose.

Travis stepped outside and motioned to the others to
come up. They emerged from their positions and clambered up to the porch overhang.
Travis holstered his pistol and went back inside to scan the contents of the
stone building. The walls were made of rough-hewn, sandstone slabs cemented in
place with mud mortar. The tin roof was held up with massive timbers of
hand-peeled logs overlaid with a lattice of straight limbs. The furnishings
were sparse, as befitting a cowboy camp, and consisted of a bunk bed, plywood
table, two chairs, stack of firewood, oil lamp, propane stove and fuel, assorted
cooking pots, and a Dutch oven. On a shelf above the table were a few books, and
several bowls and cups. In a large, cedar-lined chest behind the door were some
wool blankets, box of matches, bar of soap, a few rolls of toilet paper, some
spools of thread, sewing needles, a bottle of rum, and a dozen, sixty-four
ounce cans of chili con carne, along with two cans of coffee.

The sun’s last rays were withdrawing from the canyon,
as the shadows piercing the windows of the line shack grew longer. Nora was
already inside getting the lantern lit when Travis moved up beside her. “That
lantern can be on for the next half-hour, long enough to cook up some grub.
After that, no lights. Use my headlamp if you need to find anything, but we need
to observe light discipline and not turn this place into a signal beacon.”

Pete stepped up and did a visual inspection of the
cooking items. “If someone can help me, I’ll fire up the stove and warm that
chili.”

“I’ll help. We’ve got a lot of pine nuts to add in as
well,” said Katy.

“Travis moved to the corner, pulled up a chair, and
removed his boots. “This shack will keep us warm tonight so let’s all plan on
sleeping here,” he said. “We can take turns again with sentry duty, in two hour
shifts. As there are more of us now, I want to have two people on each shift,
spread out in different directions. I’ll go over the details after dinner.”

It was around two a.m. and Travis’s guard duty
outside the line shack was nearly up. The moon was just sinking over the
canyon’s rim, leaving the trees in shadow. His eyes were heavy as the toll of
another long day was catching up to him. He rested against a rock pile under a
large cottonwood tree and fought to stay awake. There was a gentle breeze
caressing the leaves of the tree above, causing him to drift in and out. The
smell of wet earth from the recent rains, permeated the air. He could hear the
approaching footsteps of Pete, who was coming to relieve him.

“Hey boss, it’s your turn to catch some shut-eye.”

“Yeah, thanks. I’m sure I’ll sleep like a babe.”

“It’s sleep like a log…babies never sleep,” chuckled
Pete, as Travis handed off the AK and then walked towards the line shack.

When morning came, few people stirred except Travis,
who was already up walking the area, counting off paces and scanning the
ridgelines for potential chokepoints and overwatch areas. Despite the tactical
mindset he was in, he couldn’t stop marveling at the natural beauty of the
place. A small spring trickled out of the slot canyon behind the shack and
merged with the main artery of the larger canyon, forming a small pool. Deer,
jackrabbit, and javelina tracks dotted the ground. The well-concealed location
complete with ample water, firewood, and wild game relaxed the lines of tension
in Travis’s face as he settled on a weathered stump, in sight of the line shack.

A few minutes later, Pete strode up and sat on a
slab of sandstone next to him. “Morning bro. Ooh, looks like you could use more
beauty sleep.”

Travis let out a faint chuckle, “Nah, then I’d
exceed your good looks and you’d have some competition with the ladies left in
this world.”

“There’s one lady here you don’t have to worry about
winning over,” Pete said, glancing back at the line shack.

“No thanks amigo. You forget I had a fulltime
blanket companion for years…
’for better or worse,’
and all that.”

“
Blanket companion
…is that an Army term? Geez,
dude, it sounds like you were so sweet on your wife.”

“It used to be different in the beginning, before I
was gone all the time. Sara was a good woman, but with each deployment, the
gulf between us kept expanding. I mean, hell, one week you’re next to your
fellow unit buddies popping bad guys in some third world shithole, and the next
week your home cuttin’ the lawn and changing diapers, while trying to forget
the images of some dude’s head you splattered on a cave wall. It’s not like we
ever had a lot of deep dinner conversations.”

“Is that why you pulled up stakes and left?” Pete
said. “I’ve never heard the whole story.”

“It was mutually agreed upon. I think we had both
come to the end of the line with what we expected from one another in our
marriage. I thought moving away from Bragg and getting Sara back to her parents
in Denver would change things, but it just further stripped our relationship
bare. For a while, I thought of walking the straight and narrow but working a regular
job…having a house and minivan…just isn’t me, man,” he said, standing up and
stretching. “I’d much rather live out of a rucksack and have the open road as
my home but, damn, I don’t want to miss out on my son’s life. Which is why,
after this trip, I was going to look into working for the Denver Police
Department or SWAT, or something not too mind-numbing back home. It’s not like
I have a lot of marketable skills, outside of being a shooting instructor or
bodyguard.”

“And now you’re gonna tell me that you have no
interest in that lovely lady in the line shack?”

“She’s a spirited woman that’s for sure,” he paused,
looking up at the canopy of trees. “I’m sure she wants to get home as much as I
do though.”

Evelyn had emerged from the shack and was ambling
over with a slight limp. “Mornin’ boys. What are you two doing up so early?”

“Oh, Pete was just sharing some sage advice on how
to achieve domestic bliss.”

Evelyn laughed and put her hands on her hips. “My
husband, God rest his soul, used to say that there are only three words couples
need to know for a long-lasting marriage-
I was wrong
.”

“I would agree with that, as long as it’s not me
saying those three words,” Travis responded back with a grin. “As I’ve come to
learn, in a marriage there’s only one person who’s right all the time and the
other one’s the husband.”

Evelyn smacked his arm and smirked. Travis stood up
and looked up at the rim of the canyon, aglow in sunlight. “Let’s get everyone
up and fed. Then we will discuss our game plan,” he said.

An hour later, LB was cooking up chili and a pot of
coffee as the group gathered on benches under the embrace of a massive sycamore
tree. It looked like a scene that had probably unfolded at the place a thousand
times before, with cowboys having an early breakfast before hitting the trail.

After taking a sip of coffee, Travis spoke, “In
talking with Nora about her family’s land and walking around the area, it seems
like we have a pretty good thing going here compared to what she’s told me
about other regions. Remoteness, freshwater springs, a wealth of wild game, and
edible plants, along with Nora’s cattle roaming above the canyon, makes this a
place to consider staying in for a while.”

Evelyn interjected, “How long do you envision that
being Travis? I mean, shouldn’t we at least head into Prescott or some town
nearby and see if anything has changed? Maybe there are some makeshift
communities out there.”

Travis shot an irritated glance at Jim and then
continued, “With those endearing gangs of thugs and the undead in the outlying areas,
we would do best to keep a low-profile until we can solidify our small unit
tactics and survival training. Then we can venture near town and see what other
bands of people are still left.”

He finished the coffee and placed the cup on a
weathered fencepost beside him. “Let’s plan on hunkering down here for a few
weeks, doing some training and getting fat off free-range cows. I’d also like
each of you to think about what other skills or hands-on experience you have that
can be shared with the group,” he said pacing back and forth. “Small units
depend on everyone being cross-trained, so if you know how to sew, mend a
broken arm, fix damaged gear, or have experience hunting…whatever it is, I’d
like you to start contributing your knowledge each night around dinner, so the
rest of us can learn and strengthen the tribe. In the meantime, I want go over
how to harden the entrance to our little canyon here and talk about perimeter
security. Finish your chow, grab some water, and we’ll walk the immediate area
and arrange some trailguards.”

The rest of the morning was spent on placing
unobtrusive mantraps along the trails leading towards the line shack. Travis
had learned a simple but effective setup from an old Sgt. Major who had honed
his fieldcraft in Vietnam. These were not the ubiquitous snares found in the
movies, that yanked a person by the foot into the air, but involved finger-diameter
saplings, four feet in length, that were carved into points at both ends. One
end was driven into the ground at an angle so the other end came up to groin
level. Six to eight of these improvised punji sticks would be placed in a
cluster along the trail, under a heavy overhang of branches, for the
unsuspecting intruder to walk into. The Apaches used the same methods for
impaling deer on mountain trails in northern Mexico. It was a trailguard that
took mere minutes to make but had a high probability of success, compared with
more elaborate trap systems.

The afternoon focused on small unit tactics,
patrolling, and room clearings using the line shack and barn. They drilled
repeatedly, first in pairs, then two evenly divided teams, and then as an
entire group. “You fight like you train so train the way you are going to
fight,” was the old mantra Travis had learned. They practiced until they were
moving in a fluid fashion, using hand signals, but Travis knew that this was
mere training. He wondered what some members of the group would do,
particularly Jim, when it came time to actually pull a trigger under combat
conditions.

That evening, they sat outside the tack barn in the fading
sunlight, as Nora took the lead, sharing what she knew about butchering
animals, tanning hides, and making jerky. Katy followed up by doing a short
demonstration on ankle sprains and splinting methods. As the monotonous hoot of
a long-eared owl filled the darkening canyon walls, they briefly went over the
night’s sentry duty and then retreated to the line shack for sleep.