CHAPTER 12

Cheyenne, Wyoming
 
One step at a time. Candace carefully placed her boot around loose litter that had blown into small drifts that clung to frozen urban crevices along with a light dusting of snow. One step at a time, she placed her boot down avoiding shards of glass fragments. Storefront windows had been broken into months ago, a charred suet smell remained in many. The expectation of finding anything nutritional was a wasted effort, but warmer clothing was a possibility. So, in search of anything useful she continued to look deep into the dark buildings, hoping nothing would leap out at her. One careful step at a time.

An empty soda can bounced off the sidewalk behind her, causing her to jump and clench her AR15’s cold handguard pulling the buttstock tighter into her shoulder pocket. Candace turned around before the empty can had skipped the second time, and she gave Gavin a death stare in which he rolled his eyes and looked in the other direction.

She huffed and shook her head in frustration. If they made it to the safehouse alive, she’d be surprised. Candace would never lay down and give up and would likely go out in a pile of empty brass casings, but at this point in her miserable life, she honestly didn’t know if she wanted to successfully make this journey to start over again, not with Gavin anyways.

Candace returned her attention towards the long desolate city street before her and continued on her way. One step at a time. Her thoughts turned to memories of before she had graduated high school on the south side of Chicago. Hers was a common story in a neighborhood that was shredded by gang violence. A broken home, with a father in prison for choosing a criminal career in attempts to provide, and a mother who worked multiple jobs for her appreciative children.

Candace admired her mother’s will power and sacrifice. She swore to honor her and make a life that her mother would be proud of. When she wasn’t competing in sports, Candace was in the books. She studied hard, which kept her in the library afterhours instead of on the streets with her fellow students who often ended up in jail or the hospital.

She graduated with exceptional grades that would have gotten her into state colleges if she could have afforded it, or knew what subject to major in. Instead, when military recruiters began soliciting, offering her any job she wanted because of her high ASVAB scores, the idea of enlistment began to appeal to her the more she researched the opportunities.

After growing up in a neighborhood like hers, she didn’t need to self-validate her toughness. Candace was far too intelligent for that kind of chest thumping machoism, but at the same time training in combat skills aroused her interest in the same way that sports gave her a competitive euphoria.

The Air Force recruiter’s offer of Security Forces would give her advanced weapons and tactical training that she desired, along with a higher standard of living over the Army or Marine Corps, in addition to free college while she was enlisted, GI Bill college benefits after her completion of service, and even a European duty within her first enlisted sold her on the spot.

 Candace’s mother was in tears at her Air Force bootcamp graduation. She swelled with pride seeing Candace in uniform knowing that she had escaped the talent snuffing city life that had snared generations of their family members.
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“Your great journey has just begun. The world is yours if you want it bad enough.” Her mother told her.

And Candace did want it, the entire world. But first, Security Forces school. Being physically fit from years of sports and able to observe lesson plans with exceptional study habits, Candace excelled at every phase in training. But nothing got her attention more than the weapons qualifications. Never in her life had she expected to fire real-life machine guns and grenade launchers!

Once Candace arrived at her duty station in Cheyenne Wyoming, assigned to guard a strategic-missile base, the seriousness of her job became a reality. A kid from Chi-Town guarding intercontinental ballistic missile seemed like a fantasy. After a couple of months of daily training drills and security procedure classes, she settled into a daily routine and started making friends.

At first Candace didn’t know what to expect from the Air Force culture. She expected a certain amount of harassment for being a woman, dark skinned, or just because she was the newbie. But she was treated professionally from the senior ranks, although being new meant being on all the undesirable work details. She wasn’t the only female in the unit, although the others spent more time socializing with the men than they did their jobs which she couldn’t blame them.

Most of the unit was comprised of eighteen-to-twenty-year olds in their peak hormone years. When you worked day-in and day-out with the same group, there was bound to be relationships that kindled. Unfortunately, young Airman didn’t have the maturity to separate work from pleasure and relationship arguments always ended up with someone getting transferred or punished with loss of rank and pay.

It wasn’t long before Candace started looking for her next challenge, which was to try out for the Emergency Service Team (EST) which acted more like a SWAT team than basic infantry and sentries. Even though the Air Force had promoted her meritoriously twice for exceptional performance, she would have to wait until after her next promotion to have the eligible rank for EST.

Having goals, kept her motivated and on track. While her coworkers were playing video games in the team room, she was studying tactics and SOP’s. While they went for fast food lunches, Candace was in the gym. She would go out for drinks with her unit once in a while, but not every Friday and Saturday with the rest of them.

During field exercise Candace was particularly competitive, especially during graded or scored events. Rifle and pistol qualifications were her favorite. The majority of the unit were friendly, but there was always some guy who looked down on her with spite. Beating those assholes during qualifications was always her mission and she enjoyed smugly comparing her high scores to theirs.

Her team would always laugh about it afterwards while cleaning weapons at the armory. They would say things a little too loudly if her nemeses were around, just to rub it in that they got beat by a girl. She stood in line outside of the armory to turn in her rifle and pistol through the barred window to the custodian, who would always find dirt or carbon with a Q-Tip or dental pick and make them unnecessarily clean weapons until 1700 hours.

She handed her rifle through the slot, buttstock first so the person inside could see that the bolt was locked to the rear and the chamber was empty. When she looked up, she looked into the eyes of a handsome Airman that she didn’t recognize. They locked eyes for a moment before she blushed and looked down, locking her pistol slide to the rear.

“How does it look?” She asked shyly.

“Looks pretty good from here.” He smiled and took her pistol from her. He bent down, so he could talk quieter through the barred window slot. “I think they are clean enough for turn-in, that is if you are free this weekend for a movie?”

“What if I am busy, are my guns still clean enough?” She said with pouty eyes.

“Of course, I’m an honorable man.” And nodded with a bow.

She smiled. He was cute and charming. And his west coast accent was irresistible, or maybe it was the sweet scent of CLP gun oil that she loved so much.

They went on several more dates after that weekend. She was apprehensive about starting a relationship at first, but he was outside the unit if things had gone sour. Gavin also didn’t smother her with attention that most young guys in love would, which allowed her to stay focused on her training.

Gavin did keep some distance while trying to play the game of being interested, but not too interested. It seemed to be working because she didn’t nag at him to take her out all the time. He liked her but wasn’t ready for any long-term relationship stuff. Besides, she was a grunt and that wasn’t necessarily marriage material. Not just a grunt, but a real gung-ho type that wouldn’t stop asking him technical questions about the weapons in the armory.

He hated being locked in that cage, surrounded by guns that he didn’t even like. They were cold, heavy, machines that constantly leaked oil all over his hands. If Gavin would have been a gun nut, he would have been an actual armorer, not a custodian which is more of an admin supply type of job. In fact, the faster he could transfer to logistics, the better.

The whole military enlistment had been Gavin’s mother’s scheming idea. From her voluntary seat on the city council, she wanted to influence the world. If she would have started a career in politics earlier in life, like at Gavin’s age, she could be making important policy decisions at the federal level.

Her best way to guide progress was to groom her son to someday walk the halls of congress. Civil service is the best steppingstone on the climb up the political ladder. After an enlistment in the military, she would pay for his law degree. Then onto become a state representative where together they could fix all the injustices plaguing their society.

The thought of multiple years at law school made his head hurt and he dreaded a future in politics. But greatness was his destiny, and his golden path to the elites had been chosen, beginning with civil duty amongst the lowly peasants. While he served his time, he might as well enjoy it with a smoking hot Security Force chick that was all over him.

After several months of dating, she had called him excitedly. Candace had tried out for Emergency Service Team and had been selected! After a grueling day of shuttle runs in full kit, dragging rescue dummies that weighed more than herself, tactically clearing buildings, and weapons qual to end it, she had kicked ass and was physically exhausted. She wanted to celebrate!

That was the day her life changed again. During that night of celebration, she had gotten pregnant.

To Candace’s surprise, Gavin asked to marry her stating that the Air Force would take better care of them as a family instead of single parents. After their beautiful daughter Evey was born, Gavin only had a few months left on his enlistment. Again, to Candace’s surprise, he suggested that she stay in the Air Force and continued her career path that brought her happiness. For Gavin, he wished to take care of their daughter and attend college to venture into a professional career in political law.

Being married, the military gave them a housing allowance and extra money for off base meals. They found a small two-bedroom apartment within walking distance of Cheyenne University which was very close to quaint little boutiques that Candace enjoyed browsing through on the weekends.

Candace eventually tried out again, and successfully passed the EST selection screening a second time. Gavin continued his studies at the university. As time passed, they grew apart as individuals. The longer he was in university, the stranger his behavior morphed and began causing uncomfortable clashes during dinner conversations.

Gavin explained to her why she, and her people were oppressed. She argued that she was the breadwinner of their family and that nobody was oppressing her.

“The system is designed to keep inner cities in poverty.” Gavin continued, “The entire department of Defense is systematically racists because recruiters targeted low-income neighborhoods. They use the very same people that they oppress, to defend their oppressive system.”

“The Air Force saved my life. And if it were such a racist institution, then why did I pick up rank faster than my peers?” She argued back.

He argued that because of the color of her skin, she was more likely to have a fatal encounter with law enforcement than white people, like himself.

“I have never feared for my life when interacting with police. But, with your attitude mister, I’d roll you up if I were an M.P. just for the fun of it.” Candace countered frustrated with him. “Have you always looked at me as a societal subcategory? Does it make you feel superior to believe that minorities need your help? Is that why you are trying to victimize me?”

And the arguments went on and on, almost daily to a point that she began avoided time at home by volunteering for additional duty or field training. Candace resented herself for putting work before her family, especially for Evey who had bonded more to Gavin in her absence. She felt like she was being torn apart between an increasingly resentful home life and her career that she enjoyed.

Only a few months away before the end her second four-year enlistment, she needed to make a life pivoting decision to stay in the USAF until retirement or transition to the civilian world to better care for her family. Her head was in a dark depressing cloud, while she should have been switched on during a simulated hostage rescue raid.

From high in a MRAP gun turret, Candace could view the quickly approaching combat training town. The vehicles would drop a team off on the west side of the combat town, and the MRAP vehicles would set up a ‘support by fire’ position on a nearby hill overlooking the objective building.

They were thirty seconds out and barreling down the gravel road kicking up blooms of dust when the vehicles’ obnoxiously loud engines cut off. Without power steering, the drivers couldn’t make the sharp turn while nervously stomping heavy on the break peddles. The massive eighteen-ton vehicles hit the ditch and the momentum sent the heavy machines rolling down a steep embankment.

Candace was thrown from the gunner’s hatch as the vehicle rolled and tumbled, loudly slamming into boulders and snapping trees. Inside the vehicle unsecured ammo cans, breaching equipment, comms gear and batteries, smashed into broken bloody bodies.

She woke up bleeding, oozing blood onto the rock she had landed on. Shaking the fog of unconsciousness from her vision, she stumbled from vehicle to vehicle searching for survivors. She was alone near the bottom of a canyon, injured, surrounded by dead teammates, and without any working communication.

That was the day the world went dark.

It had taken her almost two weeks on foot to make it home to an empty apartment. Candace did not take long to find Gavin in the apartment complex’s club house surrounded by the wives of deployed Airmen. Curiously, there were no men in sight, and the women were eagerly submitting to his orders. Candace had never seen Gavin take charge as a leader before, yet the women were running about fetching listed items from abandon apartments. She couldn’t decipher what the system was, but Gavin had appeared to have a method that resembled organization.

Eventually, he noticed Candace in the doorway observing the women’s abnormal obedient behavior. He stood slowly from the desk and held out his arms for her without saying anything. Candace walked across the carpet on sore blistered feet to Gavin’s open arms. He didn’t ask where she had been for the past couple weeks of mayhem, if she was ok, or of the Hell she’d traversed to get home.

 “We have established a commune.” he spoke smoothly as he had to the other women.

“Where is our Evey? Where is our daughter?” Candace asked concerned, anger building at her husband’s lack of compassion towards her or her hardships that had accrued.

“Tammy is caring for the children in the next room while the rest are on a scavenging hunt for needed materials and supplies.” He said waiving his hand proudly towards a shelving unit near the rear of the room piled high of miscellaneous items. He finally noticed her dirt and bruised stained face. “You must be tired, please have a seat.”

She sat on a hard cushioned chair, continuing to watch the women come and go that gave Candace hostile glares as if she were trespassing in their home.

“Let me take your guns to our armory.” He said, holding his hands out to receive. “We don’t allow weapons in the communal area to prevent heated disputes to escalate into violence. Hard times, such as these cultivates greed, and greed sprouts into hostility.”

As days turned into weeks and weeks into months, routines were established. At night, after a watered-down stew dinner, Gavin would lecture the dozen women on communal politics and policies that he promised would ease their burdens until government relief came. Neighborhoods around the city burned, criminal gangs ran rampant, and humans were turning into nightmarish ghouls. The worse the world became outside the little apartment complex, the worse his distorted propaganda lectures morphed into cult like gospel sermons. Candace had overheard Gavin telling women who had lost friends, family and husbands who were MIA, that they were living through the ‘Great Reset’ and were given an exceptionally rare opportunity, a duty to rebuild a new fair society equal for all.

Even though the women did all the heavy lifting, the food preparations, the night watches, and the scavenging while he stayed safely at the apartment’s clubhouse, the women looked towards Gavin for validation and emotional support. Candace watched as the women’s appreciative hugs, lingered longer and longer. As the Wyoming autumn nights grew colder, the group slowly huddled closer and closer to stay warm as the group slept, with Gavin centered among the thankful cooing women. Candace should have been angry at her husband and soulless homewreckers but instead, she was relieved for having a legitimate reason to separate from Gavin. When the time was right, she would take her daughter and escape the apocalyptic cult, never to be seen again.

In a safehouse just a few blocks away, that Candace had secured a month ago while out on daily scavenging duties that she longed for, was a cache of canned food and survival equipment that she had found in preparation of her escape. She was inventorying items in a small backpack for her daughter to carry, worrying that the loadout was too heavy for a four-year-old. A waterproof bag of small clothes for her daughter, would go into Candace’s own backpack. Weapons, ammo, and tactical equipment was ready to go.

Nodding her head with approval at her cache, she noted that the time was right for action. That night, on Candace’s turn on watch, she would grab her daughter and flee, come to this house to gear up, then head out to another safehouse that she had secured on the other side of the city. She had just locked the door when Candace heard distant screams.

Over tall wooden privacy fences Candace leapt and through overgrown yards she sprinted. The faster she ran, the louder the blood curdling screams became. She thought of her daughter and nothing else as she jumped over a chain linked fence and darted across the complex’s courtyard into the clubhouse to find a melee of arms flying and teeth biting.

Candace ran across the room; she slid across a banquet table and tackled a scab covered gray figure that had sunk its teeth into a woman. The creature gripped onto Candace’s thick winter coat as they rolled across the floor. Slamming into the wall, Candace pushed herself off the deformed monster with a gloved hand, pulling her fixed-blade knife from its skull as she stood.

With a powerful round kick, she swept the feet out from another nearby creature and plunged her knife into its face as it hit the cheap industrial carpet that is so common in low-income apartments. Jumping over a bloodstained couch, she dashed into the daycare room filled with cries and saw a horrible mess that took her breath away.

Walls, rugs, furniture, and all of the children were dripping with a putrid smelling grey chunky ooze. In the center of the room was a clump of slime and crusty biomass that looked like a months old roadkill that had been repeatedly ran over by semi-trucks. The scene was obvious that an infected late-stage monster had waddled into the room and popped like a suicide-bomber, infecting every human it sprayed.

A week later the entire commune became hostile with the sickness that had plagued the world. Every woman and child, her child, had been brutally infected. But not the man. Her man, who had hidden cowardly, barricaded inside the arms room gripping a fully loaded shotgun that never had fired a single shot to protect his flock, or his child.

Watching her precocious innocent Evey slowly loose her humanity was heartbreaking. Candace blamed herself for not being there for her daughter, not just in the end but over the last few years that she had escaped away at work. When the infected children and women turned hostile, Candace didn’t have the strength or heart to put them down so instead she locked them in the apartment complex’s clubhouse. With sounds of growls and barking behind the locked clubhouse door, she stumbled away blinded by waves of tears.

She did not have the emotional capacity to argue with Gavin as he followed her to her safehouse, dragging his feet with his head held low. Not a word was said to him, yet he continued to follow her down the street as she set out across town to her secondary safehouse. Tears rolled down her frozen face as the wind blew through alleyways of tall buildings.

She took one cautious step at a time, contemplating the last few impossibly disastrous months of her life, and if there was a life to be had without her daughter. With each step, grief turned to guilt which turned to sadness and that turned to anger. She fumed. If this mother fucker kicks one more empty soda can I’m going to shoot him in his face, here and now and not feel one bit sad about it!

Why was she risking herself by walking point? She thought to herself. If an infected jumped out from one of the buildings, Gavin could at least die in a useful manner. She paused and said the first words to him in days, while pointing forward. “You. Walk point.”

He hesitated timidly, wondering if she had planned to shoot him in the back. He didn’t know what ‘walking point’ meant, but he understood she wanted him to go first for whatever sinister reason. He was about to protest, but her glare was deadly. So, he shuffled forward past her.

The pair continued for several blocks. At every dumpster they passed, he expected to feel a searing pain of a bullet ripping through his torso, then she could dump his corpse into the trash bin with no law enforcement around to seek justice. At one point he started to silently cry, not for all the women he had let down, or even for his daughter, but in fear of death. He didn’t want to die, not today, not like that in the frozen street.

Knowing she was conspiring to kill him Gavin was about to turn around and plea for his life, when he heard a rumbling from further up the street. He stopped and listened. “Do you hear that?”

She could hear it, and also felt the deserted street rumble beneath her frostbit feet. Being careful not to slip in the snow, she climbed onto a car hood to get a better view.

“Holy crap.” She mumbled to herself.

Gavin took off carelessly running down the street without a care about the infected. She did not bother to stop him. Candace wanted to get closer too, and maybe he would draw out any of the monsters along the way. She climbed off the car and continued forward at a brisk, but cautious pace until she caught up to Gavin who watched a slowing freight train pass by.

Paralleling the freight train on the highway was a long military convoy of covered cargo trucks and light armored vehicles that didn’t seem quite right. The train was definitely slowing, and most likely going to stop at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base.

“We’re saved.” Gavin said, clearly choked up with joy. “I bet they brought all sorts of food. They’ll protect us from the damned infected.”

“Wait a minute.” She said, pulling out a cheap pair of eight power binoculars. “The markings on the vehicles aren’t American. Some of their flags are white, blue and red stripe. I don’t know what that is, eastern European maybe. But the other flags are obviously Red Chinese.”

“Who cares?” Gavin said flustered by her critical tone. “They’re here to help, let’s go!” He said and changed direction towards the Air Force Base.

It didn’t feel right to Candace. Foreign military on American soil just months after a devastating EMP and possible biological attack. A probable enemy headed for a strategic-missile base? No, this did not feel right to her at all.

“Are you coming or what?” Gavin called to her from over his shoulder.

“No.” She said flatly. “This is where you and I part ways.”

He barely paused to look at her over his shoulder before turning his back on her again. Candace raised her rifle and centered the chevron shaped reticle on his back. Images of Evey flashed in her mind. Images of Evey covered in infectious puss goo. Images of Gavin on the armory floor in the fetal position clasping onto an unfired shotgun.

She wiped away a tear, steadied her aim, took the selector switch off safe, cursed the retched man, and then relaxed the rifle putting it back on safe. She had killed countless infected in the past few months, and dozens of hostile bandits. But she had never killed a human in cold blood.

Candace tightened her shoulder straps of the heavy backpack and gripped her rifle. The icy hatred for Gavin melted away as something warm stir inside her that sharpened her senses. New tactical decision-making thoughts swirled in her brain, not those of basic survival that she had been focused on for months. But of a crucial military mission to prevent a foreign enemy from staking a claim in Cheyenne Wyoming.

An enemy who was responsible for everything that she had lost.

Her life had meaning again.

She had a purpose.
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And she was very pissed off.