Red Hammer: Voodoo Plague Book 4 (9 page)

Rachel nosed the big Ford around the gas station, letting it
idle down the gravel drive.  To her left she could see a couple of males
stumbling along, zeroing in on the rumble of the big V8 engine and crunch of
the tires on the gravel.  Stopping at the edge of the pavement, she looked
around but didn’t see any other infected.

“Lindsey, do you know how to get to a big highway, like the
Interstate?”  Rachel asked the older girl, hoping she had paid attention when
her parents drove.

“Turn right.”  Madison answered, sounding absolutely certain
with her directions.  Smiling, Rachel turned the wheel and accelerated onto the
asphalt.  Having never owned an American car, Rachel was surprised at how well
the old sedan still drove.  She couldn’t help but continue to smile as she
pushed the car up to 50 miles an hour, the throaty rumble making her feel
powerful, unlike the buzzy four cylinder Japanese engine in her hybrid.

The road was perfectly flat and straight as an arrow except
when it occasionally made two routine, consecutive, opposite direction ninety
degree turns to adjust for the corner of a new rice paddy.  After the second
set of turns she had to keep her speed down to steer around infected males that
were stumbling across the pavement, alerted to her presence by the rumbling
exhaust.

The girls were quiet as she drove and Dog stuck his head out
the open window, enjoying the wind.  Rachel was starting to relax a notch,
growing more confident with the power of the car under her control.  After a
few more miles they reached a three way intersection, the road they were on
continuing straight ahead, a larger road heading ninety degrees to her left. 
Braking to a stop, Rachel looked at the faded signs posted on a pipe that leaned
drunkenly in the weeds.  Straight ahead was West Memphis, five miles away.  To their
left, the new road was state highway 18.  There was no indication where it led,
but Rachel was sure she didn’t want to go anywhere near Memphis, or West
Memphis, or anything Memphis.  She turned left.

“You should have gone straight.”  Lindsey spoke up from the
back seat.

“We’re not going anywhere near Memphis, honey.  It’s full of
monsters.”  Rachel said, meeting Lindsey’s eyes in the rear view mirror.  The
girl stared back at her for a moment before nodding and looking out the side
window.

The new road was slightly wider, having an actual yellow
line painted down the middle of it, but soft dirt came right to the edge of the
pavement on either side and the asphalt was barely wide enough to turn the big
car around if needed.  Driving off onto the shoulder was almost a certain
recipe for getting stuck.  Rachel’s tension level raised a couple of degrees as
she thought about this, her foot backing off the accelerator until their speed
slowed to 30.

Rachel slowed for an upcoming ninety degree jog in the road,
glancing over at the open window Dog was enjoying.  She thought about reaching
across and rolling it up, but decided it wasn’t necessary.  Nothing was coming
through that window with Dog sitting in the passenger seat.  Negotiating the
right hand turn, Rachel drove for a hundred yards before having to turn ninety
degrees back to the left.  Her view in the direction of the turn was blocked by
a tall dike like she had walked along the previous night.  She didn’t see the
roadblock until she was already most of the way through the turn.

A large pickup and SUV, painted brown with gold stars on
their doors sat across the road.  Both vehicles were labeled as Crittenden
County Sheriff.  Four men dressed in jeans and white T-shirts leaned on the
vehicle’s fenders, pistols on their belts and rifles in their hands.  A month
ago the sight of law enforcement might have made Rachel cringe and look at her
speedometer, worried she was about to get a ticket.  Now, she was immediately
suspicious and slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a halt thirty yards
from the men.  She shifted into reverse, but kept her foot on the brake when
two of them raised their rifles and aimed them at her.

From the back seat the two little girls started crying and
Dog growled, staring at their ambushers through the windshield.  Rachel debated
flooring the throttle and trying to steer around the bend in reverse.  Could
she do it without putting the car into the ditch or getting stuck in the soft
dirt of the shoulder?  Would the men really start shooting, and if they did
were they good enough to hit her?  But if they didn’t hit her, they might hit
Dog or the children.

One of the men who hadn’t raised his rifle stepped forward
and lifted a small, powered megaphone to his mouth.  He claimed he was with the
Sheriff’s Department and ordered Rachel to turn the car off and step out with
her hands over her head. 

“Girls, get down on the floor.  Now!”  Rachel said without
turning her head.

She heard them scrambling behind her, flicked her eyes to
the mirror to make sure they were down, then took her foot off the brake and
floored the accelerator.  The engine bellowed and the rear tires screamed as the
heavy car shot backwards.  The men were caught off guard for a moment.  They
could tell the driver of the vehicle was a woman and the last thing they
expected was for her to run.  Women were supposed to cry and beg, but
eventually do what they were told to do.  They weren’t supposed to go
screeching away in a cloud of tire smoke.

The first bullet punched through the windshield as Rachel
was turning the wheel to steer the car around the bend in the road.  It blasted
through just below the rearview mirror and on through the back window.  That
was the only bullet that hit glass before they disappeared behind the
protection of the dike.  The car was going fast and Rachel fought the wheel,
trying to straighten them out, but every time she corrected their direction of
travel, she over corrected. 

By the time she thought to take her foot off the gas, it was
too late and the car went into a spin, ending up with both rear tires and one
of the front ones in the soft dirt on the left shoulder.  They were facing back
the way they had come and Rachel shifted into drive and pressed on the
throttle.  The car moved a few inches before the rear tires dug deep into the
dirt.  In seconds the rear wheels were buried all the way to the axle. 

Master Sergeant Jackson sat in a web sling, behind the
pilots of a Black Hawk, staring out the open side door at miles and miles of
nothing but rice paddies.  Two Rangers sat farther back, lost in their own
thoughts as the big helicopter pounded through the humid air.  A door gunner
was strapped in behind a minigun, an Army Private sitting to his side, ready to
provide any support he might need. 

They had been searching for Rachel and Dog for hours. 
Jackson had promised the Major that he would personally take charge of the
search, and he was keeping that promise.  He doubted they would be found alive,
if they were even found, but he knew the mission the Major was on and looking
for lost friends was the least he could do.

The search had gone back up and down the river several times,
high passes for a broader view of the area and low, slow passes looking for
bodies washed up on the shore.  Someone had suggested to Jackson that they had
probably been washed all the way to Louisiana by now, but he had grown up in
this part of the country and knew that wasn’t how the river behaved.  The
Mississippi twisted and turned like a snake, and in every twist there were
sandbars that formed when the river current slowed for the bend and dropped the
soil it had carried down from upstream. 

All kinds of debris, including bodies, washed up and
grounded on the sand on a regular basis.  In fact, without constant steering by
a knowledgeable pilot, the river wasn’t nearly as easy to navigate as most
people thought.  A boat or barge without power might be carried downstream for
a short distance, but it would quickly end up on the shore or a sandbar.  This
knowledge was the only reason Jackson held out even the faintest hope of
finding Rachel and Dog.

They hadn’t bothered to search the eastern shore of the
river.  For miles in either direction from Memphis, thousands of infected lined
the shoreline.  If they had washed up within wading distance of them, well,
Jackson didn’t want to think about what had happened to them.  After thoroughly
searching the river and western shore as far as 80 miles south of the bridge
where they’d gone in the water, he’d directed the air assets to start moving
inland on the western side of the Mississippi.  Currently, the Black Hawk he
was riding in was flying a search pattern a few miles to the south of their
temporary base at the West Memphis airport.  Two more Black Hawks divided up
the area farther south, all of them slowly working their way west.

“Master Sergeant, we’ve got some activity on our forward
camera.”  The pilot called over the intercom.  Jackson snapped out of his
reverie and turned to look at the high resolution screen mounted in the
cockpit.

They were currently flying at 1,000 feet and with the flat
terrain had a good line of sight in all directions.  Two miles ahead of them,
and a little to the south, the cameras were zoomed in on a narrow strip of
blacktop that bent around an earthen dike.  A large, four door sedan was
stopped in the road a short distance from two police vehicles that were parked
diagonally to each other, creating a roadblock.  As Jackson watched he could
clearly see two of the men he assumed were police officers raise their weapons
and point them at the vehicle.  A moment later it shot backwards, fishtailed
around a bend before losing control and spinning off the pavement.  Jackson
wasn’t sure, but thought the officers had been firing at the car as it started
backwards.

The co-pilot adjusted the camera and zoomed some more onto
the car.  A moment later the driver’s door popped open and a woman with long
hair leapt out and yanked the rear door open.  Jackson’s pulse started pounding
when he saw the woman, but as good as the resolution was, it wasn’t good enough
for him to tell if it was Rachel.  Back door open, the woman hustled two
children out of the back seat, seemed to be yelling to someone inside the car,
scooped the smaller girl up in her arms and started running out into a flooded
rice paddy.  When the dog jumped out the passenger window and started following
them, Jackson nearly let out a whoop of excitement.

“The guys from the road block are pursuing.”  The pilot
said, looking at another screen fed by a different camera that was still
focused on the roadblock.

“The woman, dog and children are our search targets. 
Consider everyone else hostiles!”  Jackson had to make an effort not to shout
into the intercom.

The pilot responded instantly, lowering the nose of the
helicopter and feeding in full power.  The Black Hawk surged forward, losing
altitude until they were only fifty feet in the air, screaming along in excess
of the aircraft’s published top speed of 180 miles an hour.  Jackson watched
the monitor as they quickly closed the distance, glancing around briefly to
satisfy himself the two Rangers and door gunner were ready.  Turning back to the
monitor he could see Rachel was running as fast as she could through the
flooded field with a child in her arms.  Another child ran in front of her, Dog
bounding along at her side. 

The men in pursuit were sixty yards behind, having covered
the distance to the abandoned car quickly, but also being hampered by the water
as they pursued into the paddy.  The helicopter was still nearly a mile out,
and apparently not yet detected by anyone on the ground.  One of the men came
to a stop and raised his rifle in Rachel’s direction.  They were approaching
from an oblique angle and the pilot didn’t hesitate to shoot.  The hellfire missile
roared off the left pylon, and almost instantly accelerated to 1,000 miles per
hour, covering the distance to the parked police vehicles before the man could
pull the trigger on his rifle.

Both vehicles erupted in a massive explosion, everyone on
the ground stopping and turning to see what had happened.  As the fire burned,
the pilot flared to bleed off speed and roared into a nose down hover 20 feet
above the ground.  The helicopter was protectively positioned between the four
men and where Rachel and Dog stood with the children.  Jackson didn’t need the
cameras and monitors to see the shocked looks on their faces.  It’s not every
day you find yourself face to face with a fully armed Black Hawk.

I opened my eyes to see Martinez standing over me, hand
outstretched towards my shoulder.

“We’re just crossing out of Mexico into Arizona.”  She said
before turning away and resuming her seat.  I groaned softly, stretching my
back and shoulders, then sat up and looked around.  The two AF Sergeants still
slept, and catching Martinez’s eye I tilted my head in their direction.  She
scooted across the deck and nudged them awake with the toe of her boot.

I checked in with the pilot and asked him to let me know
when we were over the Phoenix area.  I might not have been able to stop, but
this new bomber had some pretty advanced imaging equipment on board and I
wanted to spot my house and see if I could get any idea of what might have
happened to Katie.  Depending on what I saw, I might be heading to Arizona once
the mission was completed in Los Alamos.

As we flew over the southern part of the state, we all
started getting ready.  First order of the day was to get stripped down and don
the polypropylene underwear that would protect us from the intense cold when we
first exited the aircraft.  For a few minutes we all looked like big kids
wearing our Doctor Denton footy pajamas at a party.  But kids didn’t wear skin
tight, thermal underwear, and sure didn’t look like Martinez.  Scott and Yee
were doing their best, but couldn’t help steal appreciative glances at her. 
Grinning and ignoring all of them, I finished dressing in my combat fatigues,
finally slipping into the bat suit which also was well insulated.  Boots back
on, I packed everything else away into my pack, then stacked a helmet, insulated
hoodie, goggles and my rifle on top of it. 

Next I inserted a small earpiece for a tactical radio then
slipped into an oxygen mask that covered the lower half of my face, plugging
the end of the supply line into a narrow tube that was mounted to a bulkhead. 
The tube supplied pure oxygen which was all we would breathe until on the
ground in Los Alamos.  To prevent the bends it is necessary to purge your
bloodstream of all the nitrogen that is naturally occurring in the atmosphere. 
To do this you need to breathe pure oxygen for at least half an hour before
jumping.  We had more time than that, but I knew a SEAL years ago that hadn’t
properly pre-breathed and was hit so hard with the bends on the way down that
he couldn’t control his jump and wound up dead.  I might die in Los Alamos, but
it sure as hell wasn’t going to be because I hadn’t prepared.

Checking on the other three, I received a thumbs up from
each of them as they plugged into the plane’s oxygen and confirmed it was
flowing into their masks.  Moving forward, careful to make sure I didn’t snag
my O2 line, I stuck my head into the cockpit.

“I was about to call you.  Phoenix coming up on our left.” 
The pilot said when he looked around and saw me.

It wasn’t practical for me to switch places with the
co-pilot to gain access to the imaging controls, so I talked the man through
finding my house.  It was dark below, much of the sprawling metropolitan area
showing no signs of life.  There were occasional pockets of electric light that
looked like small neighborhoods, but they were few and far between. 

The monitor was displaying the feed from a high definition
night vision camera and I was easily able to identify landmarks.  The co-pilot
made adjustments with a small joy stick, finding Sky Harbor airport in the
middle of the city, then following the ten lane freeway that ran right by it. 
The same freeway I’d driven to the airport a few weeks ago when I’d left on my
trip to Atlanta.  For a moment I idly wondered if the car was still where I’d
left it in long term parking.  Dismissing the thought, I watched as the camera
panned along the freeway which was clogged with wrecked and abandoned
vehicles. 

As the view kept panning to the eastern suburbs it struck me
that there was no movement.  No people moving.  No infected moving.  Not even
animals.  Where the hell did four and a half million people go?  That wasn’t a
question I could answer from 40,000 feet in the air.  Eyes glued to the monitor,
I spotted the freeway exit for the area of town I lived in and the camera
adjusted to a new angle as I gave directions to the co-pilot.  Soon I
recognized neighborhoods, my stomach clenching when all I saw were burned out
husks that had once been houses.  Following the streets, I counted the number
of turns, and saw the iron gates that controlled access to my neighborhood.

The gates were torn out of the stone columns they had been mounted
to, lying to the side of the road in the front lawn of the president of our
HOA.  That house had burned as well.  Following a couple more streets I started
counting, still seeing nothing other than the remains of large homes that had
burned.  Then I spotted my house.  Or what used to be my house.  I made sure I
was looking at the right one by checking the shape of the pool in the back
yard.  Katie and I had put a lot of time into designing the perfect pool for us,
and my heart sank when I saw it was only half full of water, debris from the
house piled around the edge from the back wall having collapsed.

I stood there staring for a long time.  Until this moment I
had refused to accept that Katie wasn’t sitting at home waiting for me.  Getting
up early every morning, doing yoga for an hour then running five miles before taking
a swim in the pool.  While I knew that I had been clinging to hope and fantasy,
reality didn’t hit me until I saw the destruction.  And reality hit hard.  I
couldn’t talk.  Couldn’t move.  Couldn’t do anything except stare at the
monitor.

We were moving northeast and would soon be out of visual
range.  The co-pilot made adjustments with the joy stick to keep my house centered
in the image, clicking a button to zoom in.  He zoomed in a bit more, leaned
forward to stare at the screen then turned to face me.

“There’s no vehicles in what’s left of the garage.  Should
there be?”  I didn’t understand what he was saying at first, then leaned
forward to look at where he was pointing.

No vehicles!  I had driven Katie’s car to the airport the
day I’d left because my truck won’t fit in the low ceilinged parking garage. 
She always bitched about it, usually preferring to drop me off and pick me up
so she had her small Mercedes and didn’t have to drive my behemoth.  This time
she had plans to meet a friend for coffee, so I’d driven myself, leaving my
truck at the house.  The truck was gone!  Had she gotten out? 

She and I had spent a lot of time four wheeling in the
Arizona desert and mountains, and we lived so far out of the city that it was
just a five minute drive to Tonto National Forest.  She had access to guns and
a very capable four wheel drive truck.  And she was smart, tough and practical. 
I’d always thought she would have made a hell of an SF Operator.  Well, if she
didn’t get pissed off and shoot a superior for telling her what to do.  Very
early in our marriage I’d made the mistake of trying to assert my male
dominance and tell her the way something was going to be.  I’d never repeated
that error.

While I was thinking this we moved out of camera range and
the co-pilot shut down the display.  I thanked him for helping and returned to
the back, sitting down and feeling hope displace the despair that had washed
over me when I’d gotten my first look at the house.  Was I being foolishly
optimistic?  Perhaps, but perhaps not.  Katie was tough enough to survive. 
Sometimes she could act like a pampered princess, but if she’d had time to arm
herself, gather up food and water and get in the truck, there was a reasonable
chance she was alive.