Eastern Front: Zombie Crusade IV (27 page)

Jack
knew that there was no quick end to this war, and he wasn’t hoping to destroy Barnes with one master stroke. He planned to slowly degrade his enemy’s forces and supply lines, and hopefully use the weather to his advantage as winter set in. Once he stopped or destroyed this horde, the survivors around the country would have even more time to settle islands, peninsulas, and mountain fortresses. Rail and water transportation would allow for the movement of troops and supplies with a speed and efficiency Barnes couldn’t hope to match. The general had millions of hunters to form into armies, but he didn’t have nearly enough human allies to modernize his tactics or strategies. Jack wasn’t sure if the advantages the resistance forces enjoyed would be enough to win the war any time soon, but they would hopefully allow the humans to fight back while infected-free enclaves, especially on fertile islands, developed a system that would ensure their existence. That fact, he realized, was definitely worth the sacrifices he was asking of the river peoples and Utah; the survival of the human race depended on them.

CHAPTER 16

While Jack was preparing Chad and the others for conducting the retreat across Kentucky and Tennessee, Carter was back on the same boat that had brought him to Vicksburg. The only difference was that he had just David with him now, and they were speeding north back to Cairo. Bobby and Gabe were staying in Vicksburg to help in any way possible, with their main purpose being to teach the soldiers there how to improve the quality and usage of their armor and weapons. Carter also felt a lot better knowing that he had people he could trust with his family in the event of another forced retreat by the settlement. He figured that T.C. would stay with the community he’d become so invested in, but hoped to eventually convince his sister and niece to join his mother in Fort Wayne.

He tried to grab a few hours’ sleep as the boat pounded its way over the choppy, freezing Mississippi, too exhausted to do anything more than flop on one of the bunks in the cabin and wrap himself up in a poncho. He’d slept in much worse conditions during the wars, and learned there that even a few fitful hours’ rest could really improve his condition. David was tired too, and neither of them ha
d enjoyed a decent night’s sleep since leaving Brandenburg more than five days earlier. But they had to find Jack as quickly as possible and set him to working on cementing the fledgling alliance with Vicksburg and the other river people. The last time they’d talked they’d agreed to a protocol on how to conduct the attempt to reestablish contact, and Carter was pretty sure they were now faced with one of the worst contingencies they’d discussed: a defeat at the bridge with Jack’s force on the run.

After learning from Andi during the radio conversation with Fort Wayne that contact with Jack’s force had been lost, Carter decided to proceed under the assumption that the retreat across Kentucky was under way. He’d check in with home base again once they got to Cairo, but fully expected to discover that they had no new information to pass on. At that point Carter and David would begin a methodical physical and radio
search for Jack. The first step was to motor up the Green River, just west of Owensboro, where Jack planned to blow bridges that would force Barnes’ army to the south. Once on the river they would try to reach Jack by radio, or possibly even luck out and run into him or one of his patrols at the bridges. If they failed to locate him on the Green, they would then retreat to the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, where they would start the process all over again. Sooner or later, if the plan worked, the two parties would stumble across one another.

Suddenly Carter felt himself being shaken and looked up to see David’s haggard fa
ce staring down at him. “Get up . . . the beauty sleep didn’t work.”

Carter pulled himself into a sitting position on the bunk and wiped his eyes. “Wow, what time is it?”

“Nine AM, and we’re only a few hours out of Cairo.”

“Damn, I ain’t
slept for seven straight hours since we left Fort Wayne.”

“Yeah, me too. The pilot
just woke me up. Said he was tired of listening to my snoring.”

“Well, do we eat MREs for breakfast or wait for whatever Cairo has to offer?”

David shook his head, “You know we have to head up the Ohio immediately.”

Carter nodded a
nd sighed, “Guess I was hopin’ we could pick up a couple a hot McMuffins before headin’ out.”

“I’m thinking about asking the mayor if we can borrow a faster boat than the one we have waiting there, our electric motor will take a long time to get to the Green River running against the current.
Maybe you’ll have time to locate a quick drive-through.”

“
Naw,” Carter said, patting his stomach, “I promised Deb I’d leave off the fast food, ‘cept the MREs of course.” He tore open a packet of  freeze dried something. “I like yer idea ‘bout a faster boat; noise control ain’t exactly our biggest concern anymore.”

“How hard are we going to look for Lori and Blake on our way to the Green?”

“If I was them I’d be hidin’ if I heard a big boat comin’ upstream. I mean, we’ll have a general idea where they are when we come to the first wrecked bridge, but I don’t think we have the time to go back lookin’ for ‘em.”

“I suppo
se you’re right,” David relunctanly agreed, “and Jack probably wants them blowing bridges till they reach Vicksburg anyway.”

Carter frowned, “Seems a shame, don’t it?”

“Not as shameful as letting Barnes cross either river with that army of his.”

“Yeah, I guess yer right
about that. Hey, I got an idea,--how ‘bout we talk our current pilot into takin’ us right on into the Ohio?”

“Sounds good to me; what you plan on offering in exchange?”

“Follow me and find out.”

Carter marched up
to the pilot with David in tow. He wasted no time making a proposal to the pilot, offering an AR-15 with two thirty-round magazines and five hundred rounds to load them with. The pilot must have been a poker player, recognizing opportunity when it came his way. He let out a barking laugh, “I wouldn’t do it for five M-16s and a thousand rounds for each of ‘em.”

David immediately decided that the impromptu negotiations required a lawyer’s
skill. “I would have bet that you’d do it for less than that, but no matter. My friend here’s got a generous spirit; plus he doesn’t realize what we could really get for that AR package.”

The pilot realized that he wasn’t going to be able to rip off the skinny guy with a Kentucky accent,
and with a sour expression he tried to salvage something from the deal on the table. “I owed the mayor a favor, plus he threw in a hundred gallons of gas; that’s the only reason I took y’all down to Vicksburg. I mighta missed some lucrative opportunities in the time it took to get ya’ll there and back.”

“Y
ou mean in addition to the five thousand rounds of ammo and four cases of moonshine that accompanied us to Vicksburg but aren’t down in the hold now?” David pointedly inquired.

The pilot’s shoulders sagged visibly. “If we find your friend on the Green
, I get Carter’s original offer. If we have to backtrack and head down the Tennessee ya’ll will have to double it.”

David nodded, “Sounds fair enough, but there’s more to it.”

“What now?”

“Wherever we find Jack,” David explained, “you’ll take all of us back to Cairo when we’re finished.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. Whatcha think I’d do, leave y’all sittin’ out there on the river in hostile territory?”

David smiled as he held out his hand, “Just making sure I understood the deal.”

The surly pilot shook David’s hand, “And don’t forget we need to stop in Cairo and refuel before we head up the Ohio.”

“A h
alf-hour stop sound fair enough?” David asked, remembering that they needed to check in with the mayor and try to get an update from Fort Wayne.

“Fine,” the pilot agreed
as he turned back to guiding the boat.

Carter whispered in David’s ear as they walked back through the cabin,
“Remind me to never buy nothin’ from a lawyer.”

David smiled as he whispered back, “
I’ll also remind you to avoid double negatives or a manipulative attorney might try to take advantage of you.” Carter scowled at David, who laughed, “Fine, never buy anything from a lawyer.”

Vickie’s jaw dropped at the audacity of Doc Redder’s claim. “Do you know how crazy you sound? There’s no way that Jack Smith has any genetic link to the infected.”

Redders’ eyes grew wide, “Sample A is Jack? Are you serious?”

“I have no idea what you think you’ve found, but you must have contaminated your samples from the creatures somehow.”

“All of them? I don’t think so, and contamination wouldn’t account for my findings. I didn’t want to give you too much information up front, but I guess the cat’s half way out of the bag now. I’ll tell you everything I’ve got, then you try to find where I might have gone wrong.”

“
Fine, you can start by explaining why on earth you think that Jack ‘Sample A’ Smith has any connection to the infected.”

Redders
looked relieved. “Look, you’re right about this not making any sense. I can’t explain how this all came to be, but I can tell you that the end result of some incomprehensible genetic engineering is this not- too-far from human species we now call the infected. That’s apt, because they are infected, but not just with some mutated rabies virus. The altered rabies virus is foundational, and it starts the process, but it’s much more complicated than that.”

Vickie tried to will away the headache that was creeping into her temples. “I don’t doubt anything you just said, but you still have not explained what Jack has to do with any of this.”

“I was running random scans, comparing my samples of the infected against one another, trying to find the commonalities, hoping I could isolate what sort of infection we were dealing with.  I found a few unexpected things—chryptochrome-2 for one. It’s a magnosensitive protein. But the weirdest thing was the hit from a stored human sample in the database—“

Vickie interrupted, “I did store Jack’s sample. I was briefly interrupted when I was about to check it for something—something personal that requires doctor/patient confidentiality—and I uploaded the sample with every intention of deleting it once I got my results.”

“What was Jack worried about?”

“I can’t talk about that right now. Believe me, it has nothing to do with the infected.” Vickie located an aspirin bottle and swallowed three pills. “
Just keep going with your story,” she instructed. “Believe me, you have my full attention.”

“Well, this is where it gets crazy. The best way I can describe it is inexact, but gets the main point across. It’s like pre-selected bits from Sample A combine with
aspects of the human part of the host to create the para-human part of the new life form. Like gametes, but Sample A contributes a few extra chromosomes, and there are some decidedly non-human elements in the creature’s DNA.”

Vickie held up her hand. “Slow down a minute. It sounds like you’re saying that Jack and whoever an infected was before the transformation are like the parents of some mutated offspring?”

Redders nodded. “Pretty much, especially if by mutated you’re including deliberately inserted non-human genes and the viral replication delivery system.”

“You know this is insane. You’re saying that Jack is like the genetic father of all the infected. That just can’t be possible.”

“And would you have said that a zombie apocalypse was possible a few months ago? I know, the terminology needs to evolve, but I’m telling you that we need to throw out any preconceived ideas about what is and isn’t possible.”

Vickie was about to object when she thought of General Barnes. She only knew the man by reputation, but that was enough to inform her that he was an insane genius, someone capable of deliberately trying to destroy mankind. He also had a bizarre fascination with Jack, allegedly stemming from the time they had served together in Afghanistan. She remembered that Jack had been his driver when there was an outbreak of the infection
in a small village there, and that both Jack and Carter considered that episode to have been a test run for Barnes. If the crazy general had been experimenting with his virus, or whatever else it was, Jack had been right there in the middle of it. “Oh Jesus,” she exclaimed, looking over at Redders. “You may not be so crazy after all.”

The stop in Cairo was fast and uneventful; Fort Wayne had yet to hear from Jack, and the river pilot was able to quickly fill his gas tank and get back out on the water with nobody even knowing he was in the area. Smugglers, it seemed, always had to be careful about who might see them, and where. David had paid a perfunctory visit to the mayor while they were in town to let him know about the deal they had reached with the boat-owner, and he also promised that they wouldn’t put the craft or pilot in danger. Of course they both knew he’d lied about that, but the mayor trusted that David and Carter would do everything they could to avoid trouble.