Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (68 page)

“I told you our people had been
busy!” the Captain shouted proudly. “And not just military! The entire country
turned out! This protocol overrides every other mission in the nation! All
resources were allocated to this one task!”

In the deep darkness of the
assaulting thunderheads, ten sets of headlights appeared behind them bouncing
through the fields, brush and trees at a dangerously high rate of speed, but still
not nearly fast enough to catch the friends. One set of headlights disappeared and
they picked out the sound of a horn honking steadily over the blustering wind.
And it wasn’t an air horn.

“One down!” Tripper crowed. “And we
haven’t even fired a shot yet!”

“We won’t have to!” Lucy shouted
with glee. “We’re here! Though the bushes between those trees there!”

The Hedgehog blasted out of the
brush and brambles into a clear, muddy field a hundred yards across leading right
up to the gate set within the modular base attached to the Quarantine Wall…just
as the distinct sound of tornado sirens began to blare in the distance.

“Holy shit! It
is
a
tornado!” Tripper screamed.

A guard held them up at the
entrance, standing hunched over to protect his eyes from whipping dirt and
minor debris. The guard reached for his sidearm when an internal alarm went off
as those on the watchtowers realized the group was being followed. A few
warning shots forced their pursuers to turn around and drive back to the
distant treeline. When they reached the protection of that boundary, the cars were
parked and several dozen people poured from the vehicles and scattered into the
sparse cover to watch.

“I’m Calvin Hobbes!” Calvin shouted.
He actually stepped out and showed the man his driver’s license, holding it
tight in the dangerous crosswind. The distinct moan of the Dragon’s twin
diesels rumbled faintly in the distance as the powerful train approached the civilian
barricade. But the intensity of wind and thunder from the storm threatened to
drown out all exterior sound.

“That train is with us! It will not
attempt to breach the wall, but our guy needs to get close enough to join us
here!” Calvin explained, looking to the south. Part of the Ogden barricade crossed
the tracks between two broken lines of trees, blocking the train’s progress,
but judging from the sound, Hef hadn’t slowed.

“Thank you, sir!” the guard nodded
and let them pass. “We are aware of your vehicle and its mission!”

So involved was Calvin with the
progress of his friend in the train that he didn’t even stop to wonder how they
were so well informed on his mission.

“Pull into that area over there,
sir!” the officer shouted over the storm, trying to ignore the various sirens
blaring throughout the compound “This entire area currently within this fence
will be yours! We will be building more in the coming days!” The officer
pointed to a long line of pod housing three pods deep along the wall and
possibly twenty or thirty pods long with several larger facilities fastened
into the structure.

“Get in there and take shelter!”
Calvin shouted, pointing for the others to take refuge within the structure.
Felicia jetted away into the compound with the other two vehicles close behind,
leaving Calvin at the entrance.

 “Where do you guys sleep then,
Corporal?” Calvin asked the soldier.

“We sleep in those Quonset huts
over there!” he pointed to the huts along a fence line connected to the
concrete walls. They were basically being bunked out in the open in front of
the wall where those on the wall could keep them under their sights.

“Shouldn’t you be getting to some
kind of shelter?”

“We don’t leave our post!” the man
shouted back.

“Doesn’t look like those are very
well protected anyway!” Calvin called over repeated peals of thunder.

Both men were getting whipped by powerful
blasts of wind.

“We’ll see about getting you some
better armor for those buildings!” Calvin promised, knowing Hef could have his
company ship in the materials. “Our friend can get you some bulletproof walls!
No sense in you all taking random shots from out there in the woods from pissed
off villagers!”

The man’s eyes widened in appreciation
and he nodded in return. “I—uh, thank you sir!” he looked to his buddy and both
smiled back. “Lieutenant Stephens, sir! Glad to meet you!”

“I am coming up on the barricade
now, Calvin!” Hef shouted over the earbud. “There are too many vehicles parked
there for me to bust through.”

“He’s right, Calvin!” Lucy informed
him, looking up from the monitor in concern. She had managed to get the
infrared cameras to move on the drone and had a clear view of the approaching
vehicle, although she now carried her laptop on its side. “He’s going to have
to take the field to the south or north! I like the north!” her voice quieted a
little as she ran inside one of the cubed structures. “He’ll be coming out
right out there,” she pointed from the doorway to fifty-feet north of the
tracks, which ran right up to a fortified gate in the Quarantine Wall. Heavy
tree branches and an assault of millions of leaves flew about in the field in
violent, twisting whirlwinds, randomly obscuring their view.

“We’re safe, Hef!” Calvin told his friend.
“Do what you have to do!”

“Ok! I am leaving the tracks and
will try to slide through this field to the north!” Golf ball chunks of hail
sent splashes like meteor strikes from standing water in the dips and valleys
of the ten acre field before them.

“Wait! It’s been raining too much
here!” Calvin shouted a warning. “You’ll just sink! Besides, there are trees on
both sides of the road!” He crouched with the two soldiers just inside the
gates of the Army compound, underneath the overhang of the tiny guard shack,
view obstructed only by the rage of an approaching tornado. The track ran between
two tree lines, the heavy oaks and cedars of which were currently being whipped
about like the wispy branches of a willow. Behind the dancing line of trees on
both sides sat a large field, the northern field leading right up to the little
fort they had assembled at the base of the wall. The southern field rolled
about a hundred yards past the base and right up to the Quarantine Wall.

“I see them! I can get through a
few trees! Ok, I am off the tracks!” he shouted.

The tempo of the train changed in
the distance. The rumble had been growing louder for a while, but they hadn’t been
able to separate the sound from the thunder and roaring winds of the
approaching storm. Suddenly the train busted through two trees across the open
fields, heading straight for a section of downed trees, its bright LED lights
shining at them from the northern tree line. Moving fast, about fifty mph, but
slowing noticeably as it entered the muddy field, Calvin realized he was right;
the train was just too heavy. Reaching the middle of the field, the colossal
vehicle sank nearly halfway up the treads and Hef was forced to physically jockey
the heavy steering handles side-to-side in an attempt to find a solid track of
land to climb up out of the massive mud pit. Despite his best efforts, the train
lurched to a stop sideways and tilted on its side, the cars sliding in the mud
to jackknife along side the engine, nothing but thirty or forty yards of mud
and flying debris between Hef and his awaiting friends.

“I cannot make it!” Hephaestus shouted
over his mic, barely audible over the screaming wind and near-constant peals of
thunder.

“Just get out and run, buddy!”
Calvin shouted back.

“I must straighten the train if I
can! Sideways it will give the citizens another barricade to hide behind!”
Revving the engines repeatedly, he rocked the massive vehicle back and forth,
finally breaking it free just enough to pull the engine around the other
direction to straighten the train out, but sinking it to the rails on either
side. Adding to the debris field of the approaching tornado, mud and grass
sprayed in all directions as he used the two dozen smaller tri-treads to pull
the cars back around behind the engine, leaving a much smaller profile for
anyone to hide behind. Unfortunately this included himself, and he now faced
the line of trees. Several bullets began plinking ineffectively off of the
train engine. Gunning the engine several more times while jerking the steering
handles side-to-side again, Hef tried to throw as much mud from next to the
treads as he could before shutting down the powerful engines.

Trip crawled up next to Calvin, looking
through his binoculars to see between fifty and a hundred people standing along
the paralleling tree line nearly two football fields away. “Wow! They’re pretty
tenacious to stay out here in tornado weather!” Tripper yelled over the wind.
“They must want us really bad!”

The wind had picked up even more in
intensity and fist-sized chunks of hail rocketed into the field, while
quarter-sized ice balls hammered the vehicles within the compound. The storm reached
a dangerous crescendo, everyone not within a shelter instinctively dove for
cover and hung on to anything solid; Calvin, Trip and the soldiers dove for the
thick steel fence;  the townsfolk grabbed for trees; Lucy and the others shut
the doors to their modules. A roar so loud no one bothered to speak filled the
valley for several minutes, powerful winds ripped several trees in the distance
from the tree line and slammed them into the nearby vehicles. Calvin, Trip and
the soldiers clung to the heavy fence in desperation, unfathomable winds
lifting all four into the air forcibly as the guard shack disintegrated. Just
when Calvin felt he would surely lose his grip, that he couldn’t possibly hold
on any longer, the storm abated and his body dropped to the ground. The wind died,
the lightning and thunder moved east and the sky brightened, becoming calm once
again.

“Great timing,” Calvin complained
bitterly, prying his numb fingers from the links of fence. “Hef could have used
the tornado as a distraction.”

“Are you ok?” Athena called, the
rest of the gang rushing from the modules behind her to check for damage to the
vehicles and compound.

“Fine,” Calvin assured her. “These
guys didn’t even have armor and they’re ok,” he pointed to the two officers,
who despite a few cuts and bruises appeared to be fine, though both nursed
bleeding fingers from clutching the chain links without chain mail gloves.

Hephaestus had, indeed, tried to
use the blasting winds to cover his flight to the compound, but during the most
intense moment had been forced to dive into the mud and dig out a temporary
shelter, jamming both arms into the deep mud to anchor himself. Now in the
middle of an open field between two armed forces, he was finally beginning to
regret being so obstinate. Bullets began striking the downed trees and nearby
rocks. Perhaps he should have let Calvin go after all. Calvin would have found
a way out of this, already. “I do not suppose you have a way out of this for me,
Calvin?” Hef asked, sounding more than a little desperate.

“We’ll just come back out there and
get you, buddy,” Calvin replied, but a group of non-coms and guards that seemed
to have appeared from thin air formed up along the entrance to block his path.

“No leaving the base when there are
hostiles out there,” a colonel warned him, rushing up and grabbing Athena and
Sarah in her firm grasp to keep them back.

“I’m not leaving my friend out
there!” he stated in an unnecessarily loud voice as the storm had blown through
and there was no longer a reason to shout. But he was angry. And that was
always a reason to shout, if not a very good one.

“You’re under our protection now.
We can’t let you go back out there yet.”

Calvin brushed past the colonel and
pushed the sergeant who tried to block him out of the way with a firm thrust of
both arms. When two privates tried to grab him, he clocked one on the jaw and
kicked him in the groin. Then he spun, dropped six inches and put his elbow
firmly into the midsection of the second and finished with a turning uppercut
as he stood tall again. He felt rather than saw Tripper’s over-handed blow that
sent the soldier to rest on the ground. They were going to rescue their friend
and no one would stop them. Striding boldly and without fear towards the open
gate, unslinging his rifle, knowing Trip had his back, and preparing to fight
past the final two soldiers standing in his way, he never saw the shooter that put
him face-down in a puddle, never heard the second shot that dropped Tripper
heavily onto his back.

“What the hell, Dude!” Scaggs
yelled from the Hedgehog, climbing into the back to man a turret, switching on
the compressor.

“Hey!” Athena screamed. “We’re the
good guys!”

Standing off to the other side and
unseen, Lucy saw her chance to go. She turned and ran between the distracted
guards into the field, nothing on her mind but helping Hephaestus. Nothing else
mattered. If she could just make that boulder thirty feet away…

“Hey!” one guard shouted and fired.

With a thwack as the projectile
struck her high in the back, the young exotic woman was gone before she hit the
ground. Her incredible forward momentum carried her face-first several feet
through the mud, burying her body slightly a crater as if she were an asteroid
coming to Earth, or the starship Enterprise in nearly any of
The
Next
Generation
movies.

 “I’m sorry,” the colonel
apologized to the others. “We really can’t allow you to leave under the
circumstances. You’re the only civilians we’re actually charged with protecting
and we’re not going to let you go out into a live fire battlefield.”

“So you fucking shoot us yourselves
instead?” Joel argued. “That’s pretty fucked-up logic, dude!”

“They will be alright. Those were self-contained
taser rounds. After the recent massacre, all first-line troops are using only
non-lethal rounds.”