Oh, and for those of you playing the game it's based on, this is a real location. I thought it was interesting.
Three.
Bixby got the hell out of there, and headed Downtown as quickly as possible. Given that Downtown was only a block or two away as the crow flies, it didn't take long. His goal was the fenceline southeast of the mechanics area.
Little A was an interesting mix of features to look at, especially five years after the Crash happened. Before the Blight turned the dead into monsters and the living into fugitives, it had already been an oddity: A country club next to a hotel, with a truck repair center and gas station in the same complex all rolled into 80 acres near Cheyenne. Like a lot of the remote West, there was a mishmash of rural, urban, rich, poor, all slammed together by the necessities of geography. It was close to the ruins of Warren Air Force Base, which ironically was both it's salvation and a large source of it's future problems.
When the Crash happened, it was like watching a dike fail. First there were scattered reports of people biting other people. This was laughed off, for the most part. It was always considered someone's YouTube stunt, there were endless jokes about bath salts. Even when the Blight became evident, it was downplayed as GRID/HIV/AIDS had been, a 'disease' that afflicted people on the margins, people with risky behavior patterns, in a world that never really gave a damn about either demographic.
Drip. Drip. Drip. CRACK. When the dike went, it went everywhere, all at once. Patients in hospitals died. When they did, they came back - faster than humanly possible for days on end, if the brains inside them weren't blown out. Every 'Vector' created two, three, ten new cases. Scientists searched for a cure at warp speed - and many went mad as they saw physical impossibilites in the autopises. Complete new nervous systems, attached to the old ones but separate. Not only dead things moving, but seeming to defy all natural laws of energy. There wasn't enough time, there wasn't enough bullets, there weren't enough living humans in that initial onslaught to last.
In America, a fateful decision had been made. Everything west of the Mississippi was left for dead. Warren was evacuated while soldiers in Cheyenne were still fighting. By the time it was all over, over half the town was dead, a large chunk of the rest was heading for what they called the Recession, and a few hundred stragglers and survivors hit the road for the nearest defensible position.
That was Litttle A.
After the initial shock, they found they'd been left behind - and publicly too, by a government that declared everyone still alive over the river Homo Sacer - men beyond law. The ancient weapon against pirates was revived and used against the poor bastards who'd been left for dead. Their chief fortune at Little A was the appearance of some members of the U.S. Agricultural Service, who'd headed in from the High Plains Grasslands Research Station. As immediate food got low and the danger of heading out for beef and consumables mounted, they were given a broad authority by the soldiers in charge to turn a golf course into arable land.
Two years after they started, it was going well enough with all hands on deck that they could actually export a little bit of what they made to other Enclaves that had survived the Crash and get back things they needed, like fuel, electricity, and scavenged goods. Occasional sweeps of the outlying areas were done on foot to try and herd cattle close enough to add meat to the diet. They weren't thriving, but they were surviving, the couple of hundred who were still alive there. Most were working farmhands or security. A few of the luckiest, most unscrupulous, or most necessary were the barons of the land. A few were Takers, the men and women who went beyond the wire in an attempt to convert the scavenge of a dead land into enough Bounty to find a way across the river, in a new life without any goddamned Zombies.
Taking was left to the crazy or the desperate. Bixby thought he knew which one he was, but always worried he had turned both as he looked for a way out for himself and Emily. Now there was a way, but he needed to get Micah.
He moved swiftly past the old gas station, now converted into the trading area of the Enclave. Odd tents and sheeted storage bubbled up on the blacktop underneath the canopies - they'd long ago run out of gas, anyways. He didn't even notice the guys bickering over prices at the various stalls. Just as well he didn't go there anyways. The temptation was always there to part with some of the precious Bounty for creature comforts, and while he was so close, he couldn't bear to.
It's been said that extreme deprivation for long periods of time causes madness. Bixby believed this implicitly; he had enough anecdotal data for two lifetimes. Sometimes he gave in, bought something, and felt twice as bad afterwards for wasting his ticket out.
Passing the mechanic's area, he also ignored that. A car was an expensive luxury in a place where you could barely afford a pot to piss in. Maybe if he had a bigger crew than him or Micah, he could maybe justify it as a business expense and the crew could chip in on keeping it running. As long as he had Micah, though, no one else would join him.
Finally, he reached the fence. What used to be a decorative split rail fence in the days before the living dead was now an eight foot high collection of every kind of wood that could be spared, from the decorative trees that had lined the golf course to every sheet of plywood a Taker could scrounge. Parts of it were backed up with abandoned 18 wheelers, scrap cars, even pieces of heavy furniture in spots.
One of the 18 wheelers had a crude L spraypainted on it's side. Bixby jumped on the hood, then quick-climbed to the roof. He leaned his head over the side of the trailer, looking out over the wall to the two - no, three now - tiny sheds that lay exposed on the other side. Hearing the noise, a large pale figure with black veins showing at various parts of his body looked up, squinting.
"Hey, Ox!" Bixby called to the figure. "Can you do me a favor and tell Micah I need to talk to him?"
Ox didn't reply immediately. He made a hocking noise, spit, wiped his chin. Finally, he said, "Be a few."
"Thanks, Ox." He made it sound as cheerful as possible before he slid off the trailer back onto the hood. He hit the ground shaking his head. Poor Micah. He couldn't even catch a break from those other Latent bastards, it sounded like. Maybe we SHOULD have went to Duke, instead, came unbidden from the corner of his head where his guilt was.
Shit, like that'd have been different, his cynical side replied as he headed towards the main gate.
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