Recovery: V Plague Book 8 Read online

  Recovery

  V Plague Book Eight

  DIRK PATTON

  Text Copyright © 2015 by Dirk Patton

  Copyright © 2015 by Dirk Patton

  All Rights Reserved

  This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the copyright holder or publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a critical book review.

  Published by Voodoo Dog Publishing, LLC

  2824 N Power Road

  Suite #113-256

  Mesa, AZ 85215

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2015

  ISBN-13: 978-1511732901

  ISBN-10: 1511732903

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, brands, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  ALSO BY DIRK PATTON

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for purchasing Recovery, Book 8 in the V Plague series. If you haven’t read the first seven books you need to stop reading now and pick them up, otherwise you will be lost as this book is intended to continue the story in a serialized format. I intentionally did nothing to explain comments and events that reference book 1 through 7. Regardless, you have my heartfelt thanks for reading my work and I hope you’re enjoying the adventure as much as I am. As always, a good review on Amazon is greatly appreciated.

  Trapped in the cold outside

  There ain't no shelter

  And they want to force my hand

  Until I take what I want

  And break all the lies

  And defeat the fucking liars

  Smash all the temples

  And crawl through the rubble

  And cry to the fallen

  I'm the last of my kind still standing

  Alice In Chains – Last Of My Kind

  1

  “Why there?” Martinez asked over the intercom when I told her where we were going.

  Colonel Crawford and I had climbed aboard the Huey five minutes ago, just moments ahead of a charging phalanx of infected females. Once on board he had introduced himself to Katie before I had a chance, or frankly even thought about it. She told him she’d heard a lot about him from Rachel, making him smile when she thanked him for helping me. She has a way of making men smile when she wants to. And grimace and groan. When she wants to.

  The Colonel and I were the last boots to leave the ground when Tinker Air Force Base fell. Spooky, an AC-130U gunship, had kept the infected beaten back while the last of the defenders boarded a waiting C-130 and escaped. Our ride couldn’t swoop in and pluck us out of reach of the infected until the two large planes cleared the area.

  The C-130 was carrying the Marines and Rangers that had volunteered to stay behind and face certain death so that all of the civilians could be evacuated, but the Navy had showed up at the last minute to help and everyone that was still alive made it out. They were winging their way to the southeast, heading for the Bahamas, but we weren’t going with them. Not yet, at least.

  When the evacuation order had been issued, Air Force Tech Sergeant Scott, Irina and Igor had set out in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle to find me. It turned out that I hadn’t needed finding, but now they did. And we weren’t going to go lounge in a tropical paradise and leave them behind on the Oklahoma plains.

  “Because we’re out of everything,” I said. “There’s food, water, shelter, weapons and ammunition there. And fuel too, if we can find a way to transfer it from the Pave Hawk into this.”

  I had told Martinez to head for the casino where we’d rescued Katie. We were dangerously low on supplies and had been running and fighting for days. We needed food, rest, and more bullets. Not necessarily in that order, but I was ready to take anything I could get.

  A few moments later the Huey banked as she put us on our new course and I leaned against the rear bulkhead. Katie was still strapped in to the door gunner’s position, catching my eye and giving me a bright smile. I winked at her and leaned my head against the vibrating, steel wall. Dog, at the end of his safety tether, lay down next to me and put his head in my lap, big golden eyes staring up at me. I placed my hand on the back of his neck and closed my eyes.

  “Holy shit.” Colonel Crawford’s voice roused me and I realized I had drifted off.

  He was next to Katie, looking through the open side door at the ground below. Moving Dog’s head out of the way I scooted over next to them and looked down at the wreckage of the Osprey I’d been in when it went down.

  I had seen the results of the crash from ground level. But as with many things, the perspective from the air is dramatically different. The gouge in the field looked like something dug with heavy equipment and the scattered debris and bodies really drove home just how violent the impact with the earth had been.

  “Martinez, make a couple of orbits to see if it’s clear, then set down for a few minutes.” I said. “Katie, you see anything moving, light it up.”

  “What are we doing?” Crawford asked as Martinez cut our speed and began a slow, wide circle of the area.

  “Weapons,” I said. “I can’t tell you what the civilians at the casino had, but I suspect it was a little of this and a little of that. Probably a bunch of different calibers and doubtful they had anything other than semi-auto only. There were several Soldiers and Marines that were killed in the crash. There will be M4s and probably some ammo we can grab down there.”

  Crawford nodded and I turned my head when Katie called over the intercom.

  “There are half a dozen males bumbling around, but no females. Want me to take them out, or save the ammo?” She asked.

  “Take them,” I said. “I’ve got exactly three rounds left.”

  The M60 began hammering out short bursts a moment later. Katie used the tracer rounds to adjust her aim and quickly chewed up the handful of infected.

  “Clear,” she called to Martinez who spun us around and dropped to a hover a couple of feet above the dirt.

  I led the way out, jumping to the ground, Colonel Crawford right behind me, Dog voicing his complaint that he was still tied up and couldn’t come with us. We ran, clearing the area as Martinez gained altitude. She would stay in a low orbit, keeping an eye out for any danger while we scavenged.

  There were a lot of dead bodies in and around the wreck, and they’d been baking in
the sun for a couple of days. They were ripe. Eye watering, stomach turning ripe. I didn’t even have a shirt I could pull up over my nose and mouth to try and filter the stench. Katie was wearing it and all I had on my upper body was a blood and mud stained tactical vest.

  Ignoring the odor that is all too common in my vocation, I headed for the remains of the Osprey’s fuselage. I clicked on a weak flashlight I’d taken from a liquor store in Tulsa, but it didn’t do much of anything.

  “Here,” Crawford pulled the high intensity light off his rifle and handed it to me without taking his attention off our rear. I was pleased to see he hadn’t forgotten what to do in the field.

  Clicking the light on I shined it around the interior, glad when I didn’t see anything other than wreckage and bodies. Well, happy I didn’t see any infected waiting to attack, not that there were dead Soldiers and Marines inside.

  “Going in,” I said in a quiet voice to let Crawford know what I was doing.

  “Go,” he replied, letting me know he was watching my ass for me, and I climbed over the first large piece of debris.

  The odor of decaying bodies was worse inside the partially enclosed space. Way worse. I held my breath as much as I could, moving carefully. There was wreckage everywhere, and much of it had sharp points or edges. I remembered how it kept shifting when the female had been looking for me, and I was concerned about something moving and causing me to fall and seriously injure myself.

  It took longer than I liked, but I wound up scrounging four pistols, five M4 rifles and an armload of full magazines. I’d taken several mags off the bodies previously, before setting off across the plains to follow Katie’s captors, but there had been a lot I hadn’t been able to carry. Opening one of the dead Marine’s packs, I hit the jackpot. Four unopened battle packs of ammo and another ten fully loaded magazines.

  Humping all of this out into the fresher air, I piled it up and was turning to go back and search for more when the M60 began firing. Spinning, I looked up to see what direction it was firing, following the path of the tracers to a point on the ground a hundred yards to our south. There were a lot of figures sprinting towards us. Infected females.

  Martinez slipped the Huey sideways as Katie kept firing nice, controlled bursts into the group. I dropped the AK47 I’d taken from the terrorist I’d killed in Tulsa, snatching up one of the M4s. I checked it over, happy it had a sound suppressor screwed on the end of the muzzle. Loading my vest with full magazines, I raised the rifle and fired a few rounds at the females that were still alive.

  Everything worked exactly as expected and I let the rifle drop to the end of its sling as I gathered up supplies in my arms. A few moments later the door gun fell silent and the Huey touched down between the point where the females had been and us. I could see Katie through the open side door, facing the direction the threat had come from, constantly scanning back and forth for any additional infected. Damn, but I had married well! Shame she couldn’t cook.

  2

  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 aro
und 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.