Stone let out a long string of hacking coughs before spitting into a handkerchief. “You okay?” Marks asked him.
“Emphysema. The women don’t know and I want to keep it that way; they got enough to worry about,” Stone said. He slowed to ease the truck onto a gravel county road. After a short distance, he cut the wheel and put them back onto another all-terrain vehicle trail. “Just my luck. I build up this damn doomsday bunker, and by the time anything good happens, I’m too fucking old and sick to use it.”
“Hey, at least you didn’t have to spend your good years doing this. You got to enjoy them, right?” Marks said.
The old man shook his head and laughed. He reached over Marks and popped the glove box, removing a half-smoked cigar, which he placed between his teeth. “Yep, guess that’s one way of looking at it.” He slowed the truck and eased it off the road into a patch of tall grass. “It’s just up here. We walk the rest of the way,” he said.
They left the truck and followed the trail. The old man carried a Hungarian AMD-65 rifle with a short barrel and collapsible stock. He let it hang from his left arm while he navigated the trail. Just ahead, Jacob could see a wide path of cleared brush and exposed churned earth. The man continued on, walking directly into the barren field.
“It came down during the early fighting; mechanical failure would be my guess—never seen one of those black eyes take down an aircraft. I heard the crash from back at the cabin when I was still sleeping above ground,” Stone said as he left the trail and entered the debris field. “I came out here with my boys. We salvaged everything we could from it. The pilot must have ejected; there was no sign of him in the cockpit, but the plane was full of ammo. Couldn’t make use of the 30mm or the bombs. Still, we worked hard at removing everything.”
They followed Stone over a rise and into a depression. Just ahead of them, they saw the destroyed body of an A10 Warthog. Stone sauntered past the aircraft to a relatively flat spot covered in dried and dead tree limbs. The old man lifted the limbs away, revealing a carefully arranged stack of green bombs with yellow tips.
“Well, holy hell. You definitely got yourself some ordnance.” Marks moved close to examine the bombs. “You know these are armed—you could have blown yourself up moving them around.”
Stone grinned while removing a bottle of Schnapps from his back pocket to have a drink. “So do you think this would make enough of a distraction?” He offered the bottle up to the rest of them, all waiving it off but James.
Jacob crept close to the stack of bombs. “L-Tee, this is what we need; the way we can use it against them.”
“Use what?” Marks asked.
“The hunters, how they always attack and each wave gets bigger than the last, drawing in the main body. We could set these up, bury them in the woods and draw them to us. We lay down fire until the horde arrives… when they mass right over these things… boom,” Jacob said.
Stone laughed, causing more of the deep coughs. “Hell, yeah ‘boom’. You’re talking three thousand pounds of boom. That’s enough bang to get you all out of Dodge and then some,” Stone said.
Marks stared at the weapons, a smile slowly building on his face. “Okay, how do we get the bombs into position? These aren’t exactly light.”
“I got a Bobcat back in the barn. I can help you get ’em moved, but there’s something I need from you in exchange.”
James, staying quiet till now, handed the bottle back to Stone before walking away from the bombs and moving closer to the aircraft body, leaning against it. “What do ya need, Stone? Talk to me, brother.”
“I think you already know.” The old man looked away, kicking at the earth with his worn combat boot. “It pains me to say it, but I need you to get my family out of here. This isn’t the end of the world I’d prepared for. Eve's right; I can’t keep the kids locked up in the shelter all day underground, and it’s only a matter of time until they find us here. We were okay until my boys disappeared. Now I just don’t have the help to take care of the place and give the kids the attention they need.”
“So Eve is their mother, then?” James asked, shooting a covert wink at Jacob.
“What? No, she’s their aunt,” Stone answered.
Marks grimaced and stepped ahead thoughtfully. “What happened to them? To your sons, I mean.”
Stone turned away and moved closer to the aircraft before leaning back against it. He took another sip from the bottle before answering. “They went out on a run. Hardware parts to fix the radio, some plumbing supplies for the well. They never came back. It’s as simple as that, I guess. Left us here with the kids and Eve. And now the changes in the way the black-eyed bastards are acting, the numbers of them that keep moving to the lake—I’m worried our time is running out.”
Stone shook his head. “I set this place up to be big enough for my entire family—my two sons, their wives, their kids, and Eve’s family—if she ever slowed down enough to start one. That girl can’t hold still for a minute, always putting more focus on that job of hers than starting a family. She had a serious boyfriend or two but never a husband. She's too damn stubborn for that, I figure.
“We all made it here, but the boys took their wives out salvaging that one morning and never came back. Eve found their truck down by the East Bay. She never found any sign of the boys or my daughters-in-law. Not a
