Stronghold Read online

  Stronghold

  Ron Tufo

  Contents

  Acknowledgement:

  Author Note:

  Prologue 1

  Prologue 2

  1. The Migration Begins

  2. The Compound

  Chapter 3

  4. The Escape

  5. Hurry up and Wait

  6. The Never Ending Journey

  7. The Great Truck Liberation

  8. The First of Many

  9. This is our future?

  10. The Rescue at Lookout Mountain Nursing Home

  11. An Old Fashion Maine Winter Night

  12. The Waldo County Hospital Raid

  13. Creature From the Black Lagoon

  14. Ida’s Revenge

  Chapter 15

  16. The Voyage Home

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also From DevilDog Press

  Stronghold ©2018 Ron Tufo

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living, dead, or otherwise, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  Set in Mark Tufo’s best selling Zombie Fallout world with permission from the author.

  Editing by Sheila Shedd

  Cover By Dane at ebooklaunch

  Created with Vellum

  Acknowledgement:

  To all of the Tufo family: I can imagine and have imagined a lot of things in my life. (Some grand and heroic, some not so much.) What I can’t imagine is ever being part of any other family. Oh for sure, we have had our not-so-glorious moments. But far and away, this has been the best family in the world. Thank you all for being part of my life.

  To my brother Mark and Tracy, his wife, who led the way. You guys took the risks. You deserve the rewards. Good on you.

  Author Note:

  I wanted to write.

  If you have to blame someone for this book, blame my brother Mark. I could not leave his challenge to me unanswered.

  “Write a book yourself,” he said.

  “It will be fun,” he said.

  I knew I shouldn’t have listened to the little shit.

  I am the firmest of believers that no one does anything good by themselves. There is always some direct and indirect help along the way. You may think you are writing a book by yourself but it is not the case.

  Where did your memories come from, even your imagination? How about the research? Information had to exist before you could find it. And no book has ever come to be well written without the aid of a superior editor. I am so fortunate to have been able to make use of the talent and effort of Sheila Shedd.

  Thank you, Sheila, your smile is exceeded only by your ability to teach me how to write again.

  Prologue 1

  Battle of Hastings: 1066 AD

  The war between the Saxons and Normans was the bloodiest the world had ever seen to date. William, Duke of Normandy, emerged victorious and was crowned the new King of England as William the Conqueror, in December of the same year. What is significant here is that Harold, (the previous King of England whose army was vanquished) was killed in the battle by an arrow through his eye. It may have been the only way to kill him.

  When you study the artwork of the 11th century, there is a startling theme that consistently comes forward. Many of the subjects are portrayed very poorly. There are examples of artworks of that time of much higher quality, which begs the question: Why, after some ten centuries, has this “bad” artwork style survived? I believe it is telling us something of extreme importance.

  It is not that the king hired some crummy artists. Oh no; it is that there were some horrible subjects. The artists were doing their best to let us see the truth. There were zombie-like beings even back then. When Dr. Hugh Mann discovered the Mann-ites in the WW1 Era, no one realized that was merely a “re-discovered” of them.

  Zombies, back in the 11th century, were not the glutinous-oozing zombies of today. The virus had not mutated that far yet. These zombies still held a modicum of humanity. No doubt their brains were rotted from the inside, but physically, they were just different enough to be identifiable. However, the hunger for human meat was quickly coming into first place on the hit parade.

  Over ten thousand men died in the Battle of Hastings, which lasted just one day. Not a single body has been found, in spite of centuries of searching. Whoever did all the burying certainly didn’t want a discovery made; maybe they didn’t want a secret revealed. There’s a thought, in some circles, that William had all of his infected troops slaughtered by his own, still completely human, soldiers and then had everyone, including the Normans, buried in a secret location in an attempt to rid the world of this abomination. We all know how that worked out.

  Prologue 2

  History is nothing if we do not allow it to teach us. - Dr. John McNamara, the Boston Latin School, Sept 4, 1964.

  I entered Boston Latin School as a Sixie. The school had a system of classes that went from Class Six to Class One, 7th grade to senior year, and Dr. Mac was my favorite teacher. As I stumbled through the hardest high school in the country and rebelled at just about everything, I always admired Dr. McNamara. He was a gentle man with a fury inside him to teach all of us young, hormone-driven males; Latin School was an all-boys school.

  Football was my first love; everything else was a distant runner-up. Never occurred to me that I had to keep my grades up to keep playing on the team. Also never said I was the smartest kid to ever attend that school. History, however, was my second love.

  As I grew older, Dr. Mac’s lessons were the ones that I remembered best. I also began to realize that he knew what was happening to the human race even though he could never discuss it for fear of severe career-ending ostracism. He knew and tried his best to help us understand it so that the light could dawn over Marblehead someday. (Hey, get used to it. You are going to see a lot of obscure quotes if you end up reading this whole thing!)

  Successfully, he impressed the somewhat unimpressionable, and somewhat unimpressive, mind of young Ron Talbot.

  As he walked us through the bloodiest timelines and battles of history, he did not concentrate on the usual mind-numbing facts like “What year did this battle take place?” or “Who was the current King Charles ruling England at that time?” we knew it was a long time ago, and there were at least a hundred King Charles’s; pick one.

  Instead he helped us to understand that sometimes there was no reason for the massive shedding of lives other than sheer stupidity and greed. He would pique our interest with insights of his own, bordering on but always skirting the words: “infected humans,” never mentioning the phrase. Clever, he was.

  Years later, when I returned to Latin School to attend a retirement party for him, we had a short and revealing conversation about his lessons of years ago. He asked me what I remembered best of his teachings.

  I answered without hesitation, of which I was really proud, proud for him as he smiled at my willingness to reminisce, and for myself as I easily pulled some stuff out of long term memory. I began: “Doctor Mac, I always knew that you had things to teach us that far exceeded a basic, high school History class. I have grown to understand them. My family is prepared for the worst the human race can throw at us. I do believe that we are an infected race and that, ultimately, it will be the end of us.”

  In my whole career, I have never seen a teacher smile as wide as he did. He clapped me on the
back, looked me straight in the eye and said, “I knew, behind that vacant stare you wore at the end of each class, there lay an actively considering, intelligent young man!”

  “Gee, thanks, Dr. Mac…I think!” Sadly, he passed away quietly a few short weeks later; it was a loss to the world.

  The Migration Begins

  Be sure to put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. - Abraham Lincoln

  “Mark! Mark! You need to shoot now, son,” I yelled up at my youngest child. “They are coming from the front only. Rotate and fire now before they get too close.” I hurt myself, I yelled so loud. Mark was in the tower covering the right flank with Mr. Gatling’s most terrible weapon. Even though he had been trained and certified on the gun, he hesitated turning it to a new firing vector and spewing out rounds. I could understand why, but it had to be done and quickly. Our defensive middle was about to be overrun.

  I yelled again. “Now, Mark! Now!”

  He was not moving. I knew I couldn’t get up there in time. Instead, I started to yell at our people on the front defense. Then I saw my dad. He was climbing stairs two at a time. Hell, even I couldn’t do that anymore. He got to Mark and I could see and feel him gently coaching my son into action while there was still time.

  If I knew my son well enough; the problem wouldn’t be that he froze under the pressure. It would be because he didn’t want to follow the command his crazy-assed father had just issued to him because if he did, that would mean firing a freaking Gatling Gun over the heads of his friends and family. Come to think of it, I probably wouldn’t have done it either.

  I had judged there to be enough distance for him to work with; start high and walk in with fire from behind the zombies. It looked good on paper, anyway.

  My dad, Tony, gently but firmly instructed Mark to rotate and do just that. The forest full of zombies began to look like one of those splatter paintings from a jet engine exhaust. A very surreal sight indeed, as they sprayed against tree trunks, turning the bark from birch white to grayish goo.

  Damn that gun was scary. Louder than you would think. Each round was a deep thunder as it exited the barrel. Be on the receiving end of that a few hundred times and the bravest army would become piddling puppies. Actually, I was pissed that somebody else was getting to be the first one to use it in action. If the zoms had had any idea what was happening to them, they would have broken and run. Our defensive line started to hastily pull back out of Mark’s trajectory.

  I’d never say this to his face, but Gary is a master tactician. He knew when to hold and knew when to fold up and run.

  We had survived our first attack…let me rephrase that. We had survived our first attack in spite of being woefully unprepared, undermanned and under-womaned, and with only a limited amount of battle experience under the belts of a very few members of our little army. Goddamn had we been lucky.

  I’d like, if I may, to give you a little family history; particularly how our group came to be in Maine. Back before the Talbot Clan had moved to Searsport, my parents, Tony and Mary Talbot, lived in a Boston suburb condo. Both were getting on a bit, and I would drop in fairly regularly to see how they were doing. Lately though, one never knew what to expect.

  My dad and I still went to work together every morning. Tony was in his early eighties, and still going strong. Guys on the paving crew would watch over him as he worked to be sure he didn’t try to do too much. Lately we had been patch paving the streets in the city of Boston in preparation for the Marathon. To make Tony’s day a bit easier on his body, he had been given the physically easy but mind-freezing chore of running the ten-ton street paving roller. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect, maybe not the best decision I have ever made. A beast of a machine, for sure, with a glacial top speed of two and a half miles per hour However, in the hands of a driver like Tony, it was capable of crushing small cars in a single pass. It wasn’t so much how fast he went but where he tried to take it.

  The roller was about twenty feet long, eight feet wide, and had the turning radius of Idaho. It was not meant to circle around Volkswagens no matter how much he tried to make it maneuver like a go-kart. We used to make side bets on how many cars he would crush in a given work day. His record of four has stood unchallenged for decades! It was a really good thing that Boston kept comprehensive liability coverage.

  The liability underwriting agents of the city, though, undoubtedly figured we were pulling a major scam of some sort, but they couldn’t figure out where the money was going. One balmy Friday morning, Mr. Insuranceman shows up at the equipment garage and says he is going to be with us for the day, just to make sure we are following all of the safety precautions. (Suuurrrre we are!) Well, the first thing that happens whenever a new guy shows up is that we put him in the Bronco of Death with Charlie. Charlie has been officially declared by the Guinness Book of World Records as the “Most Dangerous Driver in a City of Most Dangerous Drivers.” No one, but no one, who knows him wants to ride shotgun with him to the job site. That particular honor is reserved for the new guy. If his sanity survives the ride and his psyche does not develop an instant deathwish, he is fully absorbed into the crew with open arms and many, many beers.

  Mr. Insuranceman didn’t make it. Oh sure, he got to the job site with us. I had never, until to this day, seen a person extrude himself through a vent window in an attempt to quickly exit a passenger vehicle with the doors still locked. Somehow, he did just that. As he oozed out on to the curb, various unintelligible vocal contortions could be heard, some of which seemed to assert rather questionable lineage designations.

  Unbeknownst to him, however, was the fact that my father was warming up Big Daisy. He was invited to join Tony in the operator’s compartment and was shown how to mount the roller’s now moving climbway. Dad had already started to roll. It was 8:01 a.m., the official start of the day. And Yesss!! folks–we have a new world record!! By 8:03 dad had already taken out a fire hydrant and two granite curbstones in a masterful piece of roller operations. While Mr. Insuranceman was attempting to close his unhinged jaw, the rest of the crew was whooping and hollering, congratulating dad on his new record. Eddie, one of our longest running crew members, held the winning ticket, having bet that dad would be in his mobile prime today and put on a display for the insurance guy. The guy hailed the nearest cab and was never heard from again. We all kind of figured that no one back at the office would believe him anyway. See ya!

  Then, there’s Squeak. After work, I’d often drop dad back at the condo and go to get a pizza. Mom was never the greatest cook, and as of late, she had been doing less and less of it. Dad was exhausted, as was I, and pizza had become the order of the day. I had already called ahead and spoke to my old buddy at Guido’s Restaurant. Squeak was an offensive lineman from my old high school football team–a dear friend and a running back’s wet dream. I could run behind this guy all day long. His given Samoan name was Tuamam Ne’igalomeatia Tuiasusopo. (A mouthful, right? Took me about a month to learn how to pronounce it correctly.) Thank god one of our teammates came up with his original nickname: Meat. Mountain of a man does not begin to describe Squeak (yeah, I know I just said his nickname was Meat; I will deal with that shortly…slow down, champ.) Tuamam means “Good” in Samoan; Ne’igalomeatia means “Unforgettable Pain.” Judging by Squeak’s gigundus size, I’m guessing while his Mom was happy to have a healthy baby boy, thus Tuamam, at the same instant she was screaming bloody hell and named him the other half right as she gave birth. Brave woman.

  Now, on to the giving of “Squeak.” It came into being on the football field, as some of the best nicknames do come to be. It was just after the other team had fumbled the ball. Meat was in the midst of the pile on the ground, trying to gather in the fumble, when suddenly all you could hear was a series of high pitched screams–not unlike the sounds of a bad hinge on a door from a Grade B horror film. The shrieks would stop and then they would start again, and no one could see what in hell was going on. Players fr
om both sides gathered around the pile of bodies–not to see who’d recovered the fumble–but to see what was causing the strange squeaking sounds. Player after player was removed from the pile until finally there were only two left: Meat and his nemesis opposite defensive tackle.

  One could finally make out that the twelve year-old girlish noises were coming from Meat. Why, you ask? Because the other guy was repeatedly jamming a hidden hat pin into his cheek (not the one on his face). Not one to let out a full-blown scream, Meat was doing his best to mute the reaction he would have to each poke, sounding like a high pitched but soft, “EEEEEE,” “EEEEEE,” through clenched teeth.

  Needless to say, the refs relieved said defensive lineman of his weapon and threw him out of the game. As he was leaving the field, both teams were busy congratulating him on his clever use of props. Hey, you have to appreciate good tactical thinking. That day, “Meat” died and “The Squeak” was born.

  My pizza was ready when I got there; always good to see Squeak. He asked me again when I was moving to Maine. He knew it had been a constant dream of mine, even back then. He also knew how I felt about the eventual crumbling of the country to outside, and maybe even inside, forces. Although we had laughed about it, there was always an undertone of “I wanna be with you guys when it happens.”