The following day, the Dirty Down and Dead motorcycle gang mounted up and headed out of Lakehead. While they were crossing the I-5 bridge over Salt Creek, they saw four people in camouflage-colored kayaks, rowing as fast as they could. All four had packs and rifles strapped to the back of their vessels.

Horndog nearly laid his bike down, trying to swing about, which sent the others sliding off the road onto gravel. Horndog shot off the road, racing his hog through the brush towards the kayaks that were now disappearing up a smaller offshoot creek. Once he hit mud and did drop the bike, he jumped up and took off at a sprint, leaving the cycle running.

It took some time for the rest of them to catch up to the southerner, while Tiny stayed behind to watch the bikes, because of his wound. They ran through the trees and reached what a sign identified as Gregory Creek. Horndog stood there with his hands on the back of his head, exasperated because the kayakers were now nowhere to be seen, and there would be no way for them to keep up on foot.

The gang mounted up, a bit sullen, while they rode down to the larger city of Redding. Once here, the group took a break at one of their storage sheds, complete with prisoner pad and command module. A couple hours later, Stan sent them out to search the town.

It didn’t take long for Scooter’s voice to crackle across the walkie-talkies. He was requesting assistance by the water park. Redding had been popular with both tourists and locals, known for its huge water park back in the days before the invasion.  

Once everybody arrived, they saw Scooter aiming his new shotgun, that he had acquired from the Jackals, at a manhole cover. When he saw his compadres, he yelled, “They were in the park. At least ten to twelve people, including some children. The adults were armed. They fled down this drain hole.”

“What the hell are we waiting for,” Horndog scowled. “Let’s get down there.”

“Agreed. Get it open short stick,” Stan the Man ordered.

“I’m not scared,” the big southern man said, and grabbing the metal ring on top of the cover, pulled with all his strength and slid it off.

Immediately four shots rang out from the darkness below, barely missing Horndog who had rapidly thrown himself on the ground. Scooter angled his shotgun over the hole and fired down, sending buckshot below.

“Shit,” Horndog said, looking at the others, realizing that nobody was going to risk jumping into the dark hole.

When he himself moved for the hole, Stan said, “Wait. Go right after.”

The gang leader pulled a fragmentation grenade from his fanny pack and prepared to pull the pin. Daniel couldn’t believe that the son-of-a-bitch was going to drop a grenade down on children. He had to think quickly.

“Stop,” he said, stepping in front of Stan, then explained, “If it’s one room, then that will kill everyone, and Horndog will still be on the hook.  I’ll go down and check it out. Give me a flashlight.”

Scooter handed him a flashlight and Daniel held it over the hole. When nobody shot at him, he took a quick look, or ‘turkey peek’ as they called it in the marines. He didn’t see anybody. It was about ten feet down. After dropping the rubber flashlight in, Daniel slid down the ladder with his hands and feet on the outside edge, a trick that the military used for quick entries.  

Daniel hit hard, feeling the impact in his ankles and knees. He quickly observed that his light shone on a blood trail, which led down the tunnel. Scooter must have hit someone. From the looks of all the blood, it was a bad wound.

“What do you see?” Stan called down.

“It appears to be some type of drainage tunnel from the water park. There is a blood trail. I’m going to follow it a bit. If you don’t hear from me in five minutes, you a-holes better come down after me,” he shouted back up, wishing that he had thought to bring a walkie-talkie.

The tunnel was about seven feet tall and maybe five feet wide. It smelled musty and looked very gloomy in the dull light emitting from his flashlight. There was something more, a smell. The smell of people. The type given off from several people residing in cramped quarters for long periods of time. He found himself doubting his rash decision to rush down here.

Daniel followed the blood further into the tunnel system, and after only a few yards, he came across an elderly man lying in a pool of blood. The man had several buck shot holes all over the left side of his body, with one of the wounds in his leg spurting bright red blood. Daniel would have to move quickly, if he was going to stop the bleeding. He removed his belt and quickly applied one of his field tourniquets.

This caused the old man to groan, but stopped the arterial bleed. Still, the man had lost so much blood that he was going to die. Daniel heard a click to his right. He rapidly turned and shined his flashlight that way, lighting up a group of over twenty people.

A male and a female stood in front of the others aiming pistols at him. The click had been the woman pulling the hammer back on a .38 Special. The man had a Colt .45. The pair looked very afraid, yet determined.

 Some of the people behind them looked sickly, while others were elderly, and a few were young. They were in what appeared to be a large room that the tunnel opened into. Daniel could see mattresses and sleeping bags on the floor behind the people. It appeared to be their living quarters.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Daniel promised. “But I have to send him away.

“Don’t do it bounty hunter,” the woman, a heavyset-brown-haired lady that looked like she should be teaching a history class, warned him.

Daniel pulled out his overseers’ baton and explained quietly, “He is going to die. When you are blasted with one of these batons, you go to the overseers’ ship, where they make you a slave. It isn’t a great life, but it is way better than death.”

“We will unload these pistols on you,” the brown-haired lady’s voice trembled as she said the words.

“Listen. I am assuming that there is no exit back there or you people would already be gone. I am guessing that you have been living done here for a long time. So, regardless of what goes down now, my companions up there are going to come down here, and I can assure that it is going to turn into a shit show real fast. Also, I can see that your .38 is empty from the front side of the cylinder. I am assuming that his .45 is also out of bullets, or as we both know, I would already be dead. So, let’s make a deal.”

“What kind of deal?” she asked hesitantly.

“I’m going to send this dying man to the overseers, where he will at least have a chance of surviving. Then I am going to walk out of here. You will not leave this tunnel until you hear our motorcycles ride away. You understand?” he finished.

“Why are you doing this?” she inquired.

“Because I am not one of them,” he whispered. “Now what’s it going to be? We are running out of time.”

The school-marmish-looking woman thought for a moment, then said, “Just do it. Save James if you can.”

Daniel aimed his baton at James and pushed the button. With a bright green flash and a fizzle, the older man was gone. Daniel held his finger to his lips to silence the gasps of the onlookers when he heard his crew cheering above.

“Toss me your empty .38,” he demanded, pulling out a handful of rounds that he had taken from one of the dead Jackals. Once he caught the empty gun, he loaded the revolver with six rounds, frightening the people in front of him. He aimed the gun at the ceiling and fired off all six rounds. He wanted his partners to fear coming down there.  

“Quiet,” he shushed the frightened people after their ears stopped ringing. “Remember, stay down here until you hear our bikes leave. Once we are gone, move your home.”

“Who are you?” the woman asked.

“They call me Dat.”

“I’m Barbara. Thank you Dat,” she whispered.

Daniel laid Barbara’s .38 on the ground and placed his remaining eight bullets next to it. He would have handed it to her, but he half-expected that she would still have unloaded it into his back. Then he made his way back to the metal ladder.
            “Dat? Dat? You okay? Alright bro, it’s been five minutes. I’m coming down,” he heard Hambone say.

“Let me throw one of them grenades down there first,” Horndog requested.

“You throw one of those hand grenades in here and I’m going to shove it up your butt,” Daniel answered, then added, “I’m coming up.” When he reached the top of the hole, the bikers helped pull him out.

Once he was up, Scooter said, “We thought you were dead, bato. We heard all those gun shots.”

“And saw the green blast,” Tiny added.

“Yeah, tell me that you got one for me, Dat.” Horndog was hopping from foot to foot with excitement, looking like he was about to piss his pants.

“Pipe down ladies and let the man talk. Just what the hell did happen down there, Dat?” Stan the Man silenced the others.

Dat ran his hand through his hair and thought for a moment, running over his story in his head one more time, before he said, “I followed the blood trail and found a dead man that Scooter had hit with his shotgun. I continued on for a bit farther, and saw the rear of the group as they made their way down the tunnel. They were moving slowly because it was dark, and they had kids. I blasted a man in the rear of their group. Suddenly shots rang out from some side tunnels.”

“Are they heavily armed?” Stan asked.

“I told you they had guns,” Scooter reminded them.

“Yes, several of them were shooting at me. At least three, maybe four. I still can’t believe that those idiots missed me. I guess I got damn lucky. Still, going back down there would be a risky business,” he answered the biker leader.

“Holy crap Dat, you never fail to amaze me. You just bought Horndog, a man who hates your guts, thirty more days. You are becoming the best investment that I have ever made,” Stan the Man praised him with a huge grin on his face. “If the Marine Corps had a few more like you, we could have stood a chance against the overseers.”

 “Stan, let me take somebody down there to capture a few of them for later bounties,” Horndog interrupted.

“I have a better idea. Why don’t we mark this spot, and we will come back the next time that we are in the area. You know, when they are not expecting us and lying in wait to ambush us with all of those weapons in that dark tunnel. Let’s just ask the boss what he thinks. Oh, wait. That’s me. Guess that means that we are going with my plan.” Stan the Man laughed.

The gang leader took out a small bottle of paint and put a white dot on top of the manhole cover, then had them close it. They went back to the shed. After Stan visited the command module, they received their reward. The bikers loaded up as much of the supplies as they could carry, and left a crate behind, locked in their shed.

Stan the Man ordered them to mount up. He didn’t want to risk a counterattack on his drunk crew in the middle of the night. A few minutes later, the gang was back on Interstage 5, rolling south. Daniel let out a long sigh of relief. There was no way that his luck would continue to hold out. If he didn’t handle this biker situation soon, he was going to end up doing something that he would regret.

The gang reached Red Bluff, where they holed up in a gas station store and spent the night, drinking and listening to music. The others had Dat retell his story, congratulating him on his survival. Even Horndog seemed to be going a little easier on him.

They stayed in Red Bluff for a couple of days, searching buildings and houses, not seeing anything of interest. That is until they found a dead elderly woman in one room. It seemed like she had just passed. Horndog became very angry when they couldn’t bounty her and after toppling the bed, began kicking the corpse. Daniel swore quietly to himself that he was going to kill the southerner with his own hands.

Before they rode out, they had a discussion, with Stan saying, “We are at a crossroads. We can either continue down I-5 and pass through several small towns or take Highway 98 to Chico which has always been good hunting for us.”

The gang members began to argue as they were evenly split on which way to go, causing Stan to say, “This ain’t no democracy. Chico it is.”

The ride down 98 was slow going due to road blockages and damage. After moving several burnt out cars and trucks, they continued on. Once they got close to the large Californian city, they started seeing columns of smoke rising into the sky in the distance. To Daniel, the grey and black plums looked like giant tentacles trying to choke out the sun.

Soon they could see that the town had been transformed. Hundreds . . . no thousands of seekers had descended upon the city and were devouring the vast resources that it provided.

There were three overseer units, with about six hover cars each, spread around Chico. It seemed that the overseers were protecting the seekers from any possible threats. It looked like any remnants of a population were now long gone, either captured, killed, or fled.

There was an alien airship, the first that Daniel had seen, firing red power beams at the larger buildings, which caused explosions and brought them down. The alien craft was just a little larger than the enemy hover crafts and oval in shape. It was made of a reflective material and Daniel found it hard to tell which end was the front and which was the back.

“They really are consuming the planet,” Tiny bemoaned.

“What happens when there is nothing left?” Hambone wondered aloud.

“Not under our control, so not our problem. Our only concern is this gang and getting our next thirty days of freedom,” Stan the Man repeated his selfish mantra.

The motorcycle gang stayed on the outskirts of the devastated town for three days, watching the consumption of Chico. The destruction made Daniel sick to his stomach. They had to take a stand against these aliens before everything was gone. Stan kept them there, hoping that some final survivors would try and make a last-minute dash for freedom. When it didn’t happen, the gang continued south.

After racing along for an hour and a half, they passed another column of hover cars heading north. Then they arrived at the former Californian capital. Once again, it struck Daniel that the cities of men were oddly quiet, with the absence mankind.

The bikers rode through the now empty area known as West Sacramento, and crossed over the Sacramento River via the I Street Bridge. Next, the motorcycle gang turned back south on I-5, then cut through some neighborhoods, arriving at the Sacramento Executive Airport, or SAC as it used to be called.

Although there were no longer any airplanes flying in and out, the place was still very active. It was now an armed compound. The compound had three rows of fencing and at least eight visible towers that were at about twenty feet tall. Daniel could see armed men in each tower. Stan led the gang right up to the front gate, where three men were standing. The gang shut down their bikes. 

“State your business,” a man with a badly scarred face demanded. He wore a black hooded sweatshirt and black cargo pants. All three of the gate guards carried swords in sheaths at their waists.

“Shit, Creeper. You know who I am,” Stan said.

“State your business,” the man named Creeper repeated. He had stringy black hair under his hoodie and looked dirty.

“Creeper, if you don’t tell Jilly that Stan the Man is here to discuss business, then I am going to put my boot up your ass.” Stan’s patience grew thin.

“The Dirty down and Dead are always welcome within the fences of the Sacramento Clan. You may enter. Sacramento Clan Leader Jilly is in her private quarters,” Creeper advised.

The gang fired up their bikes and rode past several hangers and out onto the runway area. There were over a dozen corporate-style jets, to include Boeings, Gulfstreams, and Airbuses sitting on the tarmac. About half of them were burnt out shells, while the intact ones appeared to be used for housing. The gang drove right up to a white and grey Airbus ACJ350. Two men with submachine guns stood at the bottom of the stairs.

Once they shut down their rides, the door at the top of the stair ramp popped open. A black-haired beauty with tanned skin stepped out onto the top platform. She wore a silk black nighty and matching robe.

“To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected visit, Stanley,” the sexy woman said.

“Business as usual Jilly,” the biker leader answered.

“Come on up . . . and oh . . . bring that tall cute one with you,” the woman known as Jilly ordered, staring hard at Daniel with her smoky dark eyes.      

“Oh, she likes you Dat. Be careful, boy. This tiger has claws and bites.” Stan grinned his biggest grin.

ride down 98 was slow going due to road blockages and damage. After moving several burnt out cars and trucks, they continued on.

Once they got close to the large Californian city, they started seeing columns of smoke rising into the sky in the distance. To Daniel, the grey and black plums looked like giant tentacles trying to choke out the sun. Soon they could see that the town had been transformed.