John glanced at his watch, then around the countryside, biting on his lower lip as his anxiety started to peer through. He was used to working with other highly trained personnel, and after the event, he’d pulled his hair out with the line-level people he was forced to work alongside when he’d worked for Carnegie, but at least those soldiers were trained, albeit poorly. Barry and Jared were not only civilians, but Silicon Valley civilians used to skinny half-caff lattes, getting their hair cut at work, and riding around in the comfort of a Tesla or some other equally sophisticated mode of transportation. John accurately doubted either man had even been much of a hiker before the event. Although, Jared seemed to be holding up physically so far.
John recognized he had been dealt a shitty hand. He’d won card games with worse hands, but card games didn’t give him this level of angst. John released his tortured lower lip and exhaled. He knew very well he had no choice but to be a strong leader, strategize for their success, and get these two thinking with a warrior’s mindset.
“Okay, we go for a little longer; then we lay up till tomorrow. We can’t have any of us getting hurt this far away from Calvin and the girls.”
When neither Jared nor Barry commented, John turned and trudged up the trail. Part of him enjoyed how easy it was to travel on a paved trail, but the Special Missions operator side of him felt uneasy about walking right out in the open. Another positive aspect of being on the trail was they made far better time than they had been making stumbling through brush and unstable rocks along a thirty-degree slope.
An hour into their trail walk, the group began to smell rotting corpses again. John held up his hand, indicating the need for the group to halt. Jared moved up next to John and dropped to one knee, his eyes darting about as he sniffed at the air, trying to determine the direction of the awful smell. The terrain consisted of the usual rolling hills, fingers and draws that made up much of the geographical features between the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay. These earthly lineaments made it impossible to see too far ahead of one’s direction of travel. Jared’s untrained nose was unable to pinpoint the odor’s direction.
“You and Barry lie low while I go out and see what I can see,” John whispered.
Jared nodded his head, turned, and motioned for Barry to get off the trail and into some of the higher weeds. They each went to a prone position facing opposite directions as John got to his feet and moved down the hill and off the trail.
John moved slowly and quietly through the milk thistles as the strong odor of decaying human flesh continued assailing his sense of smell. As the stench grew in strength, John saw an area up ahead where a finger stretched away from the main slope of the mountain running down in an easterly direction a hundred yards before flattening out. In the middle of the flat area was a large oak tree, and under the tree, John could see tents and other signs of human inhabitants.
John slid down to his belly and fished his binoculars out of his pack, using the optics to closely inspect the camp. He saw ten tents with a ton of camping gear strewn about, but no humans. John watched for ten minutes before deciding to go down and have a closer look. John moved over the side of the finger and flanked the encampment using a classic military envelopment move in order to close the distance to the tents without being seen. Heading straight at any threat in an assault maneuver was simply stupid these days. John’s movement placed him off his objective’s centerline and brought him to his target from the side.
Once John was inside the camp, he froze at the sight of boots sticking out of one tent. When the boots didn’t move and John remembered the God-awful smell he was standing in the middle of, he approached the tent and, using his rifle barrel, drew the flap back. Inside were two dirty, bearded dead men. Next to the men were two AR-15-style rifles. John stole a quick look over his shoulder before grabbing both rifles and dragging them from the tent.
Crouching, John dropped his pack, then fieldstripped each rifle. He opened a zippered pouch on his pack and dropped both bolt carrier groups along with their charging handles into the pouch. He wished he had the tools to remove the triggers, but, sadly, he lacked any armory tools, so he dumped the useless upper and lower receivers and moved to the next tent.
The moment John saw the cadavers’ rifles, he realized he wouldn’t be able to stockpile weapons as easily as he could stockpile weapon parts. Extractors wore out, as did firing pins and other little essential parts of these guns. Now the rifle he possessed did not share parts with the rifles he’d just scavenged, but until his weapon failed him, he would use it. In the meantime, he planned on gathering parts for his future weapon, which would need to be a standard AR-15-type platform.
The next nine tents yielded several more AR-15-platform weapons along with an assortment of handguns and a few Soviet-style AK-47 assault rifles. The tents were also home to seventeen more dead bodies—all men. They’d suffered no apparent sign of trauma, causing John to assume they either died of starvation, dehydration, or an illness. Once he finished scouring the camp for food or water and finding none, John grabbed a large North Face bag used to house a six-person tent. John loaded several assembled weapons into the bag and hefted it onto his
