Free Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 3): Salvation by Joshua Jared Scott

bouncing up and down and a series of visits from our friends. We do
have quite a bit stored in the valley for the helicopters we keep there, with
more at the two airstrips where we base our planes. There are also emergency
supplies stashed elsewhere within the Black Hills. However, I wasn’t about to touch
any of these, nor did I particularly want to take any aviation fuel from the
various municipal airports we had identified and searched over the past few
years. Those, being relatively isolated and secure, serve as our emergency emergency
reserves. That left the Air Force base.
    Ellsworth
was one of those places that always seemed to have a sizable group of shambling
bodies in residence, and our visits were infrequent enough that we didn’t
bother remedying the situation, beyond shooting any that tried to eat us. Then
again, it would not have mattered all that much. With zombies always on the
move, more were continuously arriving to replace those we killed. Regardless, the
massive stores of fuel, oil, spare parts, and so on more than made up for the
inconvenience. We filled four tanker trucks, one for us and three for the
people over in Yellowstone. Even after dropping off dozens of barrels at our
preselected fuel dumps, our allies would still be receiving around thirty
thousand gallons of the precious liquid. That should make them happy.
    I’m not
going to go into detail concerning this trip. It went smoothly enough, in large
part because everyone slated to travel to Yellowstone was present. With a force
that large, we were quite secure. The looting run also doubled as a training
exercise, and we discovered a few issues that needed to be addressed.
Coordination and communications between the teams was one, especially when it
came to obtaining extra ammo. Resupply needed to be requested before a squad ran
low. We had trained on this in detail, but, to be fair, it hadn’t really come
up before in practice. I’d have to arrange for some refresher courses.
    Another problem
involved the need to shuffle personnel about to prevent married or otherwise
romantically attached individuals from serving together. Really, just because a
girlfriend says zombies are coming is no reason for a guy, who was assigned a
specific task, to abandon his post in order to rescue her. The fact she did not
need saving made it that much worse. The woman was only letting those nearby
know that more were coming from the side. It was an informative comment, not a
call for help. I had him stripped to the waist, tied to a tree, and whipped. It
was only thirty lashes, nowhere near what he deserved, but still enough to get
the point across. By leaving his position, and without telling anyone of his
intentions, he allowed a trio of shamblers to come within a few feet of a squad
mate. The things had approached from behind, and it is a miracle the fellow
wasn’t bitten.
    Drummed
out of the militia in disgrace, he was further sentenced to spend a year mucking
stables and cleaning pigsties. Afterwards, he could apply to rejoin the force,
if he was so inclined. There were quite a few not so generous, demanding Charles
be exiled or, in a one case, executed. If any of our guys had been bitten
because of his actions, Charles would now be a corpse, but ultimately no one
was hurt. Luck had been on our side, and as such I couldn’t bring myself to do
more. Besides, the kid is only eighteen. There’s a very good chance he will
mature and never again do such a thing.
    As to
the militia members I was taking, we had six squads, each with ten people. A
squad consists of nine riflemen armed with M-16’s – between what we obtained
from the Air Force base and what the government in the islands supplied, we have
no shortage of these – and secondary weapons such as a .45 automatic, hand
grenades, and a sniper rifle to be utilized if circumstances called for it or
left sitting in the base if not. While it would be nice to carry both rifles so
they were always available,