Recovery: V Plague Book 8 (9 page)

The grenade
detonated with a bass thump I felt in my chest and the soles of my feet.  The
solid door and heavy file cabinet had muted much of the blast, exactly as I’d
hoped.  Stepping back into the short hall I couldn’t see much because of the
dust and debris floating in the air.

I was heading
forward to see if my idea had worked when the Colonel called out to me.

“Major, you
should come hear this.”

I joined
him, looking in the direction he was facing.  I didn’t hear anything at first
and started to ask what he was referring to, then held my breath when I heard
it.

“Help!  Help
me!  Who’s out there?  Help!”  The voice was coming from the area with all of
the cells.

“What the
fuck?”  I said, Crawford and I exchanging glances.

“Someone’s
alive,” he said.

I almost
said something really sarcastic and mildly disrespectful about him being
Captain Obvious then remembered he was a Colonel and I was a Major.  Biting my
tongue I shook my head.

“If that
door is breached we need to clear the police station first,” I said.  “Make
sure we didn’t just release a whole bunch of infected.”

“Agreed,” he
said and we slowly turned into the smaller hall.  Behind us the man kept crying
out for help.

The dust was
clearing and I could see the heavy file cabinet lying on its side, a large rent
torn through the thick steel.  The deadbolt had been punched out of the door,
leaving a nice hole.  We dragged the cabinet out of the way and lights on,
carefully pulled the door open. 

The
explosion had warped it and it took some force to swing it far enough to pass
through.  Two infected males greeted us, both wearing torn and soiled Oklahoma
State Police uniforms.  I was in front and shot them both.

We were in a
wide hallway with several closed doors.  Ahead I could see that it opened into
a large space filled with cubicles.  A long, chest high counter ran the width
of the space, restricting access from the public area just inside the glass
doors that were covered with the metal shutters.

I tried the
knob on the first room we came to, finding it locked.  This was a wooden door
with a standard commercial handle and I blasted it free with a burst from my
rifle.  Kicking it open, I scanned but the space wasn’t occupied.  It was only a
storage closet.

We gained
access to the next room in the same manner, finding the station’s armory.  A row
of M4 rifles lined one wall.  Shotguns, pistols and a couple of bolt-action
sniper rifles were racked on the other.  A large cabinet occupied the wall
farthest from the door and I stepped in and pulled it open.  It was stuffed
full of ammo.  Lots of pistol and shotgun, but there were several thousand
rounds of 5.56 mm for the rifles.  I’d come back for it.

The next
room held an infected male and a body.  It looked like the station commander’s
office.  I shot the male and pulled the door closed.

Closest to
the cubicles was a large room with tables and chairs arranged to face a small,
tabletop podium.  Most likely a training and briefing room.  It was vacant. 
Behind the table was a small closet and I pulled it open carefully, standing
well back with my rifle up.  But there weren’t any infected, only a pegboard
with several sets of keys hanging on it.  Bingo!

I grabbed
all the keys and shoved them into the empty pouches on my vest that normally
held grenades.  Tucked in the far corner of the closet was a lightweight,
wheeled hand truck.  It was folded up and probably used to more easily move
boxes of files.  I grabbed it and carried it out to the hall where Crawford was
waiting for me.

On our way
back to the jail section I stopped and checked all of the dead cops, looking
for keys.  I found several sets and discarded the ones that were obviously for
personal vehicles.  Pausing at the armory I unfolded the hand truck and loaded
it down with five cases of rifle ammo, then balanced three of the rifles on
top.  You can never have too much ammo or be too well armed.

Moving back
through the damaged door I tugged the cart over the debris on the floor, then
turned and headed for where Katie, Dog and Martinez waited.  Dog was happy to
see me, giving the stack of loot a good sniff.

“Seeing you
walking in with enough guns and ammo to start a small war brings back
memories,” Katie said from the far side of the room.  I just shook my head.

“There’s
someone alive back there,” Crawford said, bringing surprised looks to both
women. 

“How?” 
Martinez asked.  “I thought enough time had passed that if you weren’t vaccinated
you would have turned.”

“Me, too,” I
said, parking the cart by the exit.  “We’re going to go take a look.”

“Careful,”
Katie said.

I nodded and
led the way back toward the cells.  The man had stopped calling out and for a
moment I wondered if we had imagined it, then dismissed that thought as
ridiculous.  Maybe one of us, but not both.

Stepping
through the last door we stopped next to the iron stairs that led to the second
level.  Everything looked the same, but the infected locked in the cells were
agitated.  Well, if there had been any loose they would have homed in on the
yelling and we’d be able to see them.

“Hello?”  I
raised my voice.

“Hello!  Up
here!  Help me!”  I looked up at the second level and could see a frantically
waving arm sticking out between the bars of a cell at the far corner.

The Colonel
and I slowly climbed the stairs, metal treads ringing under the soles of our
boots.  When the man heard us on the steps he stopped waving his arm and fell
quiet.  The infected didn’t, their hisses and moans sending chills down my
spine. 

At the top
we turned right and moved along the elevated walkway.  To our right was an iron
safety rail painted bilious green.  It was all that prevented a fall to the smooth
concrete floor below.  To our left were the cells.  Each was six feet wide and
maybe ten deep.  Two stacked bunks were on one wall, a small toilet-sink combo
in the back corner opposite the beds.  The openings were covered with heavy,
iron bars that were thick with old paint.

Every cell
held at least one infected, some of them occupied by two.  We had to hug the
safety rail to avoid the grasp of the males who were shoving their arms through
the bars, trying to reach us.  Many of the ones with a lone infected also held
a rotting corpse that the infected had been feeding on. 

The smell
was horrible and brought back memories of an operation years ago when I’d been
part of a unit that was sent in to stop a genocidal dictator in a shithole
country in an even shittier part of the world.  Our first day on the ground we
came across a mass grave that was still open and this was the closest to that
throat constricting, bile inducing stench I’d encountered since.

Reaching the
cell where the arm had been waving, I aimed my rifle in so the flashlight shone
on the occupant.  He was a small man, not much more then five foot eight or
nine and slight of build.  In his late 30s or early 40s he had a pasty white
complexion and dirty hair down to his shoulders.  He stood there staring back
at me, blinking in the light.

I moved the
rifle around, checking the rest of the cell, pausing when I saw a body tucked
under the bottom bunk.  The man turned his head to see what I was looking at.

“He was
infected,” he said.  “The guards were gonna let us out.  Let us take our chances
rather than die locked up like animals, but they turned before that happened.”

“How long
ago?”  I asked, moving the light back to his face.

“Four days,”
he said.  “I’ve been drinking the water out of the toilet and pissing and
shitting in the corner.  Thank God you’re here.  Are you the Army?  Please get
me out of here.”

“Why isn’t
he infected?”  Crawford asked me as if the man wasn’t standing there.

“How long
have you been locked up?”  Crawford asked the man when I didn’t respond.

“Just before
the attacks, however long that’s been.  Come on.  Get me the fuck out of here. 
Please!”

“Can’t have
been vaccinated,” I said to Crawford.  “What do you want to do with him?”

“What’s your
name?”  Crawford asked him.

“Walker. 
Johnnie Ray Walker.  My friends call me JR,” he said.

“And why are
you in here, Mr. Walker?”  Crawford asked.  “And before you answer, you’d damn
well better tell me the truth.  I’m going to go check the files and if you lie
to me I will leave you in there to rot.  Do you understand?”

“Yes sir, I
understand.  I got caught with a bunch of guns that didn’t belong to me.”  He
didn’t hesitate or try to explain.

“I’ll be
back,” Crawford said and motioned me to follow him.

We walked
back down the balcony, staying well away from the cell bars and clanged down
the stairs into the hallway.

“What are
you going to do with him?”  I asked.

“Don’t know
yet,” the Colonel said.  “First things first.  Let’s get you on the road then
the Captain and I will see what we can find out about Mr. Walker in the files
while we’re waiting for Scott to arrive.”

“You realize
he just might be immune,” I said.  “If he is they’ll want him in Seattle.”

“Already
thought about that.  If he is, he just became the most important man on the
planet.  But I think it’s more likely he just hasn’t turned yet.”

The night
passed slowly.  Rachel and Bill had heard the wolves several times, but as each
of the howls floated through the air it sounded a good distance away.  They
were unable to sleep, shivering as the wind continued to strengthen and the
temperature dropped.  Sometime in the middle of the night Bill had piled
several larger branches on the fire and built it up until they had to move back
to keep from being burned.  But it provided heat.  Enough that they survived.

The day brightened
slowly, a low layer of steel grey clouds pressing down over their heads.  There
was no sunrise, just a steady increase in the light.  Returning from relieving
herself behind a large tree, Rachel looked up at the sky.  To the north the
clouds were even heavier, the bottoms appearing swollen and dark.  In the south,
where she was from, that would mean a hell of a rainstorm was approaching. 
With the temperature of the wind blowing in her face she was afraid they were
about to get a lot of snow.

“What are we
going to do?”  Rachel asked, holding her hands out to the warmth of the roaring
fire.

“We’ve got
some serious weather coming,” Bill said, squatting next to her and looking at
the northern sky.  “We need to get a shelter built but we need water, too. 
We’ve already depleted my entire survival ration.  When we were coming down I
saw a lake northeast of here.  We should move there.”

“But how is
anyone going to find us?  Shouldn’t we stay where we came down?”

Bill reached
up and patted a bulge in the shoulder of his flight suit.  “Distress beacon
that was activated when we ejected.  It’s transmitting our location every five
minutes.  They’ll be along to get us but it may take them some time.  While
we’re waiting it’s up to us to survive.”

Rachel
nodded, wishing for the hundredth time in the past few hours that John and Dog were
with her.

“Then we’d
better get moving,” she said.  “I don’t think it’s going to be long before that
storm gets here.”

Working
together they smothered the fire with dirt scraped up with their bare hands. 
Flames extinguished, Bill gathered up their parachutes, shoving the fabric and
lines back into the packs.

“Why are we
taking these?”  Rachel asked, helping.

“The
canopies will make great weather breaks when we get a shelter built and the
lines can be used for all kinds of things.  They’re strong as hell and we’ll be
needing rope.”  Bill helped Rachel shrug into her chute.

Parachute on
his back, he shouldered the small survival pouch and after checking his compass
headed across the clearing.  He walked with the pistol in his hand, Rachel sticking
close to his side with the flare gun in hers.

“That was
pretty impressive.  The flare gun with the wolf,” he said as they walked.

“I’ve got a
friend who likes to say, “you fight with what you have”.”  Rachel answered with
a smile as she thought about John.  “I’m just glad it worked.  Did you see the
size of that thing?”

“I’m not
sure how much damage my pistol would have done,” he answered as they reached
the far edge of the clearing.

They paused
before crossing into the forest.  Even with the heavy cloud cover the clearing
was brightly lit, but the forest was much darker.  Trees soared above their
heads, thick boughs of pine branches spreading and blocking much of the weak
light that made it through the overcast.

“Think
they’re around?”  Rachel asked, referring to the wolves.

“Yes,” Bill
answered.  “I doubt we’ve seen the last of them.”

He stepped
over a fallen tree and into the forest.  Rachel followed, looking in every
direction as she thought about the terror that she had seen the night before.

“I thought
wolves had been wiped out in North America,” she said a few minutes later.

“Mostly, but
the government started re-introducing them a few years ago.  Maybe even longer
than that.  I remember reading something about it.  They started in Montana and
the ranchers were up in arms because the wolves were killing their livestock. 
Don’t know how that all got worked out.  Guess there’s some here too.”

The
conversation died and they kept walking.  The forest floor was rougher going
than Rachel had expected.  It was littered with fallen tree branches and the
occasional rotting log.  Most of them could be stepped over but occasionally
they encountered a downed tree that was so large in diameter they had to walk
around it.  The going was slow and despite shivering from the cold wind she
could feel sweat trickling down her back.

The wind
wasn’t as strong in the forest as it had been in the clearing, which was a
relief, but the sound it made as it sighed through the trees was so loud that
they couldn’t hear anything else.  Their footsteps seemed muted and distant,
covered by the noise from over their heads. 

Rachel had
learned enough from John to realize the sound of any approaching enemy would
also be masked and knew she couldn’t rely on her hearing as an early warning
system.  Constantly scanning around and behind them was tiring and slowed their
progress.  As they kept moving she was fairly certain they were being stalked.

Every ten to
fifteen minutes Bill would stop to check his compass, frequently adjusting
their course.  Staying on a steady heading in a forest is all but impossible
without the aid of something that will reliably point north.  On one of their
stops Rachel held her breath when she caught movement at the edge of her
vision.  Snapping her head around she almost laughed when a large rabbit hopped
over a tree branch to start munching on a stunted bush.

“Hungry?” 
Bill asked, raising the pistol and taking aim.

“Wait!” 
Rachel reached out and touched his arm.  He lowered the pistol and gave her an
irritated look.

“Don’t tell
me you’re worried about killing the cute little bunny,” he said with a
sarcastic tone in his voice.

“Don’t be an
asshole,” Rachel said, staring right back at him.  “If you kill it, we’re going
to have to take it with us to cook later.  Right?”

Bill
nodded.  “So?”

“You shoot
it, it’s going to bleed.  You really think it’s a good idea to be walking
around with raw meat?  With wolves in the neighborhood?”

“Shit!” 
Bill exclaimed, lowering the pistol. 

He was
embarrassed and they didn’t have any more conversation for some time.  That was
fine with Rachel as the terrain steadily became more rugged.  They were
climbing and had already been at a higher altitude than she’d ever been in her
life.  It was hard to catch her breath in the thin air and she needed every bit
she had just to keep moving.

Bill stopped
again to check his compass and Rachel noticed his watch.  It was noon.  They’d
been walking for at least four hours and were still climbing.  Where the hell
was this lake?

“How much
farther?”  She asked when he pointed at the updated direction for their trek.

“You’re
guess is as good as mine,” he answered, somewhat petulantly.  Really?  Still
pouting because a woman had thought of something he hadn’t?

“Well, I
don’t have a guess.  I didn’t see the lake, you did.  So what’s your guess?” 
Rachel asked with as much patience as she could muster, realizing that John had
spoiled her. 

He wasn’t
worried about little things like whose idea it was or who might know more about
something.  She’d quickly forgotten how condescending many men were just
because she didn’t have a pair of balls between her legs, and how threatened
they were if she happened to be right about something.

“Maybe
another couple of hours,” he finally said and started walking without waiting
to see if she was ready.