Recovery: V Plague Book 8 (2 page)

Martinez
quickly got us back on course as she climbed a few hundred feet.  Clouds had
moved in, the humidity going up, and the first raindrops began to fall.  We
didn’t see any more infected as we covered the short distance to the casino. 
Well, to be accurate we didn’t see any living infected.  There were several
bodies, all of them appearing to be male from our altitude. 

Vultures
were feeding on most.  I idly wondered if the birds were infected, and if they
were, where they’d been.  I’d noted before that there was an odd absence of
scavengers, especially considering the millions of bodies for them to feast
on.  Had they been holding up somewhere because they were infected?  Maybe there
had been so much readily available food in the cities that they hadn’t needed
to venture out.

I started to
dismiss these thoughts, but reminded myself that scavengers could become a
problem, especially if infected.  Normally a healthy human, or dog, had nothing
to fear from vultures or crows.  But what if the supply of carrion for them to
feed on started running out?  Would they then become predators?  One more thing
to keep in the back of my head.

The casino
complex came into view several minutes before we reached it.  As the Huey
slowed I could make out the bodies of the infected we’d killed before scaling
the wall.  The Pave Hawk still sat on the helipad.  Nothing looked disturbed or
changed.  I scanned the ground for the spot where Roach had landed when I’d
dropped him off the roof, but couldn’t find any sign.  Oh well, good riddance
to a fucking waste of skin.

As we
hovered in the rain, surveying the area, females began appearing from the far
side of the structure.  Hueys are far from quiet and we were probably drawing
them in from miles around.  The numbers on the ground continued to grow until I
guessed there were about a dozen of them.  And I suspected they would keep
coming.

“What do you
want to do, sir?”  Martinez asked.  “We’re getting low on fuel.  Pretty soon
someone is going to have to rewind our rubber band so the rotor keeps turning.”

“What do you
think about the roof?”

I wasn’t
wild about landing at ground level.  Sure, we had the door gun and could clear
out the group below us before we touched down, but I had little doubt there
would be more showing up.  Landing and getting inside safely was only half the
problem.  If enough infected showed up while we were in the building we would
be trapped.  Cut off from the helicopter.  Besides, how the hell would we
refuel if it was parked that far away from the Pave Hawk?

“I think I’d
never try it normally, but now that’s our best option.” 

The Pave
Hawk occupied the spot designated for helicopters, which meant the roof was reinforced
at that location.  There was plenty of empty space available, we just had no
way of knowing if it could hold the weight of the Huey or if the surface would
collapse when the skids came down on it. 

“I’m going
to come into a hover, first.  Everyone off, then I’ll try touching down.  If
there’s a problem I’d rather it just be me.”  She said.

My initial
reaction was to argue with her plan, but I realized she was right before
anything came out of my mouth.  It would be bad enough if we lost the helo and
Martinez.  It would be downright disastrous if all of us were onboard and it
broke through the roof and crashed down to the floor below.

She got the
helo in position as I told Crawford what we were doing.  There had only been
three headsets in the Huey and none of us had given up ours when he joined us. 
While he helped Katie unstrap from the door gunner’s position, I released Dog
from his safety tether and removed the makeshift harness I had wrapped around
his body.  He shook vigorously, then sneezed in my face, happy to be free.

“Out!” 
Martinez shouted when she had us in a stable hover, the skids just inches above
the roof.

I slapped
Dog on the ass and he shot out the side door, running across the roof and
waiting.  Katie jumped down, sprinting to join him, Crawford and I right behind
her.  I was glad to see Dog let Katie stand next to him and even scratch his
ears.  His mistrust because of her infection status, whatever that might be,
had finally passed.

We stood
watching as Martinez lowered the Huey until the skids came into contact with
the roof.  I moved so I could see both of them, shielding my eyes from the
maelstrom of water and debris that was being kicked up by the rotor wash.  I nodded
at her when everything looked OK.  She let the full weight of the helo come
down, but kept the rotor spinning at full speed in case she needed to make an
emergency take off.  The surface seemed solid, and after nearly a minute I
waved at her and she slowed the engine before shutting it down.

“Not
something I want to do every day,” she said a minute later when she climbed out
of the pilot’s seat.

I grunted, wiping
water out of my eyes and began digging through the weapons and ammunition I’d
retrieved from the crash sight.  Katie walked up and helped, and soon everyone
was armed and well supplied with loaded magazines.  Martinez headed for the
Pave Hawk to do a more thorough inspection than she’d previously had time for. 

“What’s your
plan, Major?”  Colonel Crawford asked, watching Dog sniff around the far edge
of the roof before lifting his leg and peeing on a vent pipe.

“There’s
food and water here,” I said.  “And it’s secure.  We’re going to get some rest
and try to figure out where to start looking for Scott and the Russians.”

Katie had a
look on her face I recognized.  The look that says she’s not happy about
something, but is keeping her mouth shut.

“What?”  I
asked her.

She met my
eyes and let out a sigh.  “Nothing.”

“Nothing, my
ass.”  I said.  “What’s on your mind?”

“Just
remembering the last time I was here,” she said.  “No biggie.”

I nodded,
and not for the first time wished I was one of those wise husbands who knows
exactly what to say to comfort their wife.  But I’m not.  A long time ago a
former girlfriend, on her way out the door, had told me I wasn’t capable of
empathizing with other people’s emotions, whatever the hell that meant. 

Maybe this
was what she was talking about.  That, or she was as bat shit nutty as I’d
always thought.  So, I settled for taking Katie’s hand in mine and leading the
way to the Pave Hawk, ignoring the look that Crawford gave me.

“Well?”  I
asked, interrupting Martinez’ inspection of the damaged avionics.

“Radio and
navigation are beyond repair,” she said, then flipped some more switches. 
“Plenty of fuel, and she may fly.  Maybe.  I need some time to go through the
systems and catalog all the damage.  There are a lot of systems that are
mechanical on that old girl over there that are computer controlled on a Pave
Hawk.  I’m worried there’s too much damage to the electronics to get her in the
air.”

“OK,” I
said.  “Food and rest first, then play with your toys.”

“I’m fine,
sir.  Really.”  Martinez didn’t stop working.

“Do I need
to make it an order, Captain?”  I asked in a firm tone.  “You’ve been shot, in
a plane crash, and walked across half the damn state in the past three days.”

She paused
what she was doing and turned to look at me.  I saw the intent to keep
arguing.  Releasing Katie’s hand I stepped closer and looked directly into her
eyes.

“Jennifer. 
We all thought you were dead.  You should be dead.  Something’s going on that
is keeping you on your feet, but no matter what that is your body needs food
and rest.  Don’t work yourself to death and make me think I’ve lost you again. 
Please.”  I said in a low voice.

She looked
back at me for a moment before lowering her eyes and powering down the damaged
Pave Hawk.  Climbing out of the cockpit, she stepped over the body of the pilot
Roach had killed and headed for the door to the VIP area.

“You can be
a real sweetheart when you want to be,” Katie said, taking my hand and smiling. 
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Bite me,” I
said, leading her across the roof.

We all moved
to the opening in the roof bulkhead, stepping around the door I’d pried out of
its frame to gain access to the casino when I rescued Katie.  The stairwell was
dark, so I knew the solar system that powered the giant building was out. 

“Power’s
out,” I said quietly to the group.

“The EMP,”
Crawford mumbled.

“So that’s
what it was,” I said.  “Know anything about solar systems?  Will it have been
fried or just knocked off line?”

“No idea,”
he said.

Shit!  It
would be really good if we could get the power on.  Much easier and safer to
clear the building, and a whole lot more comfortable while we rested.  In fact,
I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go inside if we didn’t have light.  The casino
was just too damn big to clear by flashlight.  I’d rather spend the night in
one of the helicopters.

I had seen a
large array of solar panels from the air when we’d arrived, but didn’t know if
there was any equipment located adjacent to them that I could check.  For a
moment I’d thought the power was out because the sun was down but remembered it
was on the last time I was here, which had been night also.

“OK, I’m
going to go see if there’s something I can do before we go in.”  I said,
heading for the edge of the roof.

It didn’t
take me long to find what I was looking for.  As I’d suspected, when Zemeck,
Martinez and Rachel had climbed the grappling rope he’d pulled it up and left
it coiled on the roof.  Saying a silent “thank you” to my dead friend, I stuck
my head over the edge and looked down.

A small
group of females milled around, one of them seeing me and screaming.  A moment
later they were all standing perfectly still, staring up at me.  Moving back I
turned and looked at the others.

“Females,” I
said.  “Not a lot, but too many for me to go down.  If we all get on the edge
we can take them out.”

Colonel
Crawford nodded and was the first to step to the low parapet.  I kneeled down
next to him, my rifle over the edge and pointing down.  Katie and Martinez
joined us a moment later.  I fired the first shot, knocking a female off her
feet, then they opened up and three more fell.  Two of the females instantly
turned and began running away from the building but the rest kept standing there,
heads tilted back to watch us.

“I’ve got
the runners,” I said, tracked one of them for a second and pulled the trigger.

She tumbled
to the ground, dead.  Adjusting, I sighted in on the second runner and fired,
but missed the bobbing head that was moving away from me.  Changing aim, I
fired again, my round striking the middle of her back.  The way she flew
forward and rolled in a loose-limbed tumble the round must have severed her
spine.  She began screaming, thrashing her head back and forth, but she couldn’t
move her limbs.

“Fuck me,” I
said, actually feeling a moment of pity for the poor creature.

Taking my
time, I lined up for a head shot, pulled the trigger and silenced the wounded
female.  The rest of the infected were down and I made a quick scan of the
area, not seeing any more.  Standing, I grabbed the rope and after making sure
the grappling hook was still tightly secured, tossed it over the edge.  It
unrolled smoothly, slapping against the side of the building a second later.

“Going by
yourself?”  Katie asked as I bent and grabbed the rope.  “You need someone to
watch your back.”

I paused. 
She was right, but then if there were two of us on the ground and a lot of
females showed up we might have a problem getting both of us back up the rope. 
I thought about it for a moment but Crawford ended the discussion.

“I’ll be
right behind you,” he said.  I nodded and gripped the roped tightly, scrambling
my way over the edge.

“Watch
yourself,” I said.  “The rope’s going to be slick in this rain.”

Going down
was easier than coming up had been the other night.  Bracing my feet against
the wall, I moved my hands down a knot at a time, walking down with my feet. 
It’s not hard.  The biggest thing to focus on is making sure you keep your
center of gravity above your feet.  If you don’t, well, you turn upside down,
lose your grip, fall on your ass and break half the bones in your body.

Fortunately
I did it right and stepped onto the ground in a short amount of time. 
Immediately I turned, moving away from the rope and raising my rifle.  Scanning
my surroundings I didn’t see any movement, but kept watch as I heard the scrape
of the Colonel climbing over the edge and starting down.  Soon he was standing
next to me, rifle up and ready.

I glanced at
him and hand signed the direction we were going.  He nodded and I stepped off. 
Crawford fell in five yards behind and was so quiet I had to glance over my
shoulder to make sure he was really there.  I guess I had expected less from a
Colonel who had spent most of his time behind a desk, even though I knew it
hadn’t always been that way for him.  He hadn’t earned that beret by being a
slacker desk jockey.

It took us
five minutes to work our way out of the maintenance area at the bottom of the
wall and across a small, paved area to a massive solar array.  There were
hundreds, maybe thousands, of panels and each was six by twelve feet.  They
were mounted on iron brackets, held a few feet off the ground with enough space
between each for a man to walk through and perform whatever maintenance they
might require.  They also created a maze with enough space below the surface
for infected to be lying in wait, ready to drag me down to my death.  I stopped
a few yards from the edge of the first panel.

Where to
start looking?  For that matter, what was I even looking for?  Standing there,
I took a moment to scan the area as I thought about what to do.  All was clear
and I checked on Crawford.  He was behind me, facing the opposite direction,
keeping an eye on our rear.

OK, what did
I know about solar?  I knew the electricity generated by the panels was Direct
Current, or DC, and not compatible with the lights, motors and pumps in the
casino that ran on Alternating Current or AC.  That meant there had to be some
inverters somewhere that converted the power before it was supplied to the
building.  And since there had been power at night, there also had to be a bank
of batteries to store electricity generated during the day for use when the sun
was down.

But where
the hell was all that equipment?  Copper wire is expensive, so I suspected that
it would be somewhere between the generating array and the destination for the
power, but after turning two complete circles I couldn’t spot anything.  Would
they have put it inside the casino?  Maybe the inverters, but I didn’t think
they’d put massive banks of batteries inside.  Too great a risk for explosion
and fire if something went wrong.  Even if the local building codes didn’t prohibit
it, I was pretty sure their insurance company would.

With that in
mind, where the hell would the equipment be?  Raising my rifle again I scanned
the perimeter of the array, stopping when I saw a sprawling, squat building on
the far side of the sea of panels.  Focusing on it I realized why it hadn’t
caught my attention before.  It had a very low profile roofline and was well
screened from view by trees and shrubs. 

I was fairly
confident this was what I was looking for when I noted the forest of vent pipes
sticking up from the roof.  Gasses from batteries can be extremely toxic, and
if allowed to build up can also be very combustible.  Proper venting solves
that problem, and this building was definitely well vented.

“There,” I
mumbled to Crawford, pointing across the array at the distant structure.

He nodded,
then turned back to watch our rear, waiting for me to lead the way.  But which
way, through or around?  The array was massive.  Probably every bit of ten
acres.  It was a long way around, but as I looked at the maze with about a
million hiding places for an infected, it was an easy decision.  We were going
around.