“That’s a good one. Be sure to mark it on the map.”
“Already got it,” he said. “There’s no town for miles. The land is wide open. Might make a good fuel stop on the way back.”
“The grass is awfully tall, but yeah, it could be perfect.”
We flew in silence for the next several miles. I kept an eye on my flight path while Jase and Tyler scanned the countryside.
“That looks like a camp down there,” Tyler said, his finger pressed against the glass.
“It could be a bandit camp,” Jase said. “I don’t see any kids down there.”
“I’d rather warn bandits than not warn good people,” Tyler countered.
I slowed the Cessna and descended a hundred feet. Finding survivors was rare, but they were easy to spot. All we had to look for was signs of fortifications, and nearly every camp we’d found was at a farm.
“Can you get any closer?” Tyler asked, ruffling through a duffle.
I smirked. “Afraid gravity won’t catch the bag?”
“No, but it’d be nice to actually drop it within their fence.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from gritting my teeth. I’d grown an aversion to flying over camps. Every time I did, it brought back memories of Doyle’s camp and getting shot at, even though I suspected most folks were out of ammo by now. With one hand wrapped too tightly around the yoke, I dropped in some flaps, slowed the 172 to near stall speed and brought it in to circle the settlement. A half-dozen or so people came to stand outside, looking up, and shading their eyes against the sun.
The engine began to rumble roughly, and my heart lurched. I added in power. “Damn engine is getting worse. We’ve really got to get it fixed,” I muttered.
Tyler opened the window. Cool air blew into the cockpit, and he dropped out the hazard-orange painted bag filled with dirt and a single written warning about the herds heading south. He pulled the window shut and I turned back on course.
“Thanks,” Tyler said. “Any time we can warn others about the herds is potentially another life saved.”
Tyler had brought three more drop-bags, but we didn’t use them. We’d flown over what had definitely been a camp, but it looked like it had been abandoned or overrun some time ago. I often saw signs of abandoned camps, but I hadn’t seen a new camp pop up in over a month. Maybe people were moving west where the government was supposedly pooling all resources into building new “city-states” defensible against zeds.
The rumored city-states gave us all hope, but they were too far away to be considered a possibility yet. The largest rumored city was in Montana, with three states of zeds between us and them. Until we had better vehicles, the trip was too risky. We had to survive on our own in zed country.
Mid-sized groups did the best out here. Too small of a group, resources were spread too thin between fending off zeds and finding food. Too large of a group and it became a magnet for every zed in the vicinity. Camp Fox, just crossing sixty residents if the newcomers stayed, was going to become quite tempting to zeds.
The wide blue landmark in the distance caused me to refocus. “We’re coming up on the Mississippi. Start looking for our bridge,” I said to no one in particular as I strained my eyes, searching the Mississippi River for its bridges.
If the GPS had still worked, it would’ve brought me straight to our destination since Sorenson had provided the bridge’s coordinates. Now, I had to fly by sight, and I was often a mile or more off my destination. It was my fault. Like most, I’d become way too reliant on technology before the outbreak.
“Wait, I’ve got it. I’ll check in,” I said to no one in particular as I lined up to the giant yellow X that had been painted on a bridge. I pressed the radio’s transmit button. “Cessna to Camp Fox. If you can still hear us, we’re descending to land at the RP. Over.”
Dead static came as the only response.
“Clutch might have heard us, but there’s no way I could pick up his handheld from this distance. I’m not even sure he can pick us up,” I said. “We both figured that’d be the case.”
On the right day, the radio signal could cover the entire state, especially with the lack of other signals to hinder it. Today didn’t seem to be one of those days.
As the river grew larger, I descended and slowed. No signs of zeds and—unfortunately—no sign of the riverboat yet. I flew over the bridge with two steel arches. “Everything looks clear, but I’m not seeing our guys. You guys see any zeds?”
“No. Nothing,” came the response from my crew.
I lined up for the bridge again, this time running through my landing checklist. Touching down this close to the river set my nerves on edge, even though the highway was open for a quarter-mile before the bridge, and I had plenty of runway ahead of me. Still, it was discomfiting having all that iron and open water surrounding me. It wouldn’t take too much to veer off and hit a wingtip, and then we’d be stranded over two hundred miles away from Camp Fox. And, once down, I’d have to taxi onto the bridge so we didn’t have to walk to our destination.
The engine sputtered a couple times on final approach, and I throttled forward just enough to keep it from cutting out completely while still making the landing.
“That engine doesn’t sound good,” Tyler said.
“It’s been acting up more and more lately. Joel says it needs some new sparkplugs,” I said as I pulled the plane to a stop in the middle of the bridge so that I could take off in either direction at a moment’s notice.
“He’s been busy with Humvee Three, and that’s his first priority right now. But I’ll ask him to take a look,” Tyler said.
“Yeah, I figured that.” After double-checking to make sure everything was powered off, I set my headset on the dash and unbuckled.
“Rise and shine, Grizzly Bear,” Jase said, and I heard Griz grumble something unintelligible.
Tyler smirked, grabbed his bag, and climbed out of the plane. I grabbed my backpack and rifle. Before I opened my door, I glanced back at the red five-gallon jugs filled with emergency av-gas to make sure they were still bungeed together in the baggage compartment, and then headed outside. Jase and Griz followed.
Griz stretched under the sun while I locked the Cessna’s doors and turned to Tyler. “We’re all set. Barring any big change in weather, we should easily make it back to the park without having to refuel.” I thought for a moment. “I miss getting the weather forecasts. They sure did come in handy with flight planning.”
“I kind of prefer the lack of news,” he said as he pulled out his sword. “It was always sensationalizing the bad things.”
“I’ll check out the area to the east,” Griz said. “I need to stretch my legs.”
“I’ll go with you,” Jase offered, and the two sauntered off with their weapons drawn.
I started to head in the opposite direction.
“Weather reports were inaccurate as much as they were accurate,” Tyler said. “I miss pizza delivery more.”
I chuckled. “I miss pizza, too.”
We both quickly sobered. It was no fun dwelling on things that we could never have again. We all had a trigger that brought everything we’d lost to mind. Shaking off memories of loved ones I’d never see again, I scanned the distance in silence, looking for any zeds that might have heard the airplane and come to investigate. The bridge and rural highway had no cars for as far as my eyes could see. This area was rural enough that it didn’t have the telltale scars of wreckage and bodies that populated areas had.
The sun glistened off the blade a trader had given Tyler in exchange for penicillin. It was a nice weapon but it’d be far too heavy for me. I preferred my lighter weapons: the spear I’d made from an old broom handle, a machete from our first looting run in Chow Town, and a large tanto knife Clutch had given me right after the outbreak.