Free The Search For A Cure by C. Chase Harwood

enemy – and you’ll have to watch your back.”
      Ken kept his mouth shut after that. Deep down, he knew Wilson was right. He’d choked. He’d held onto the fifty-cal like it was some kind of life preserver. He froze and he didn’t know why. He had expected it to be like a video game – blowing away zombies – it was nothing like a video game.
      A little later the radio squawked. It was Tyler Preston who had volunteered to keep watch down route 16 at the Henderson farm. He’d been having a grand old time calling in: ‘The flies er comin to the web’, as he described the refugees heading north.  
      “Motherfucking fuck! Someone got their ears on? Come back?”
      Ken picked up the radio. “Go ahead, Tyler.”
      “Fucking, holy fuck! Coming in the door! Fuck yo –“
      The sound of gunfire – a brief handful of shots echoed from a distance, then nothing. Ken’s radio howled with static and he twisted the squelch knob to stop it. “Tyler, come in. You’ve got Private Ridley here. Come in?”
      “Whoa, that dude is getting his,” said Wilson.
      “Maybe the storm - screwing with the atmospherics. He’s getting trigger happy?”
      “Get real - you heard that same as me. Fuckin’ crazy motherfucker‘s toast.”
      Then they heard a distant jingle of shaking chain link.  
      “Hmm, now that’s interesting,” said Wilson. Throwing his hood over his head, he moved to the edge of the roof and peered out. It was nearly pitch black. His flashlight burned through maybe twenty feet of it. He turned and stomped on a switch that lit up the floodlights lined up across the top of the building. The rain and fog was too dense. In fact the brightness of the lights made things worse, the reflection killing his night vision. He could just barely make out the ghostly image of the power line tower fifty feet away. He stomped on the switch again. Then he heard the chain link again. “Either the fuckers are trying to get out or Deadhead’s are comin’ in.” He turned to Ridley, “Can’t see jack. You’re going to have to go downstairs and walk over there.”
      “Okay. But why can’t we both go?”
      “Cause I know how to fire the fifty, you green panty-waste. Now be a man and get the fuck down there.”
      Ken’s soaking wet boots squeaked on the concrete floor as he crossed through the main room. If he ignored all of the dead power equipment, the place really was like some medieval castle. The new residents had used the big room that night for a banquet, celebrating their new digs. They’d gotten rip-roaring drunk and then crashed on sleeping mats all over the floor. To the private’s astonishment, Major Deighton was passed out on some kind of head table with a woman curled up under his arm.   He desperately didn’t want to wake the man if this was a false alarm. The major’s wrath was always brutal. He’d be cleaning the latrine for week if he blew it.
      The room was full of loud snoring and he could hear at least two different couples quietly fucking somewhere among the slumbering crowd. Ken couldn’t believe his crappy luck as he went through a small entry foyer - pulling watch on this of all nights. He quietly unbolted the steel outer door and stepped outside.
      The ground was saturated and he cursed as his right boot sunk into a puddle that was higher than his ankle. He swept the flashlight back and forth close to the ground until he’d found the clearly marked path that led past the mines to the prisoner cage. The cattle ramp/drawbridge completed the castle image in his mind - World goes to shit and somehow we embrace the dark ages. He felt bad for the folks in the cage, and frankly didn’t understand the major’s mindset on keeping them locked up like that. Why not just let them go if they didn’t want to fight? If folks wanted to bug out north, why shouldn’t they? It wasn’t like they had signed a contract with the Army like he had. Keeping them as bait – well