Transmission: Voodoo Plague Book 5 Page 3

  Rachel had been in shock after shooting Jackson. Yes, he had turned and tried to kill her, but she had felt a small part of herself die when she pulled the trigger. She hadn’t known him long, but he had become a friend. A friend that deserved better than to turn into one of the raging infected and get shot in the head. She couldn’t even bury him. He was still strapped into the cab of the pickup, sitting in the bottom of a flooded ditch. Not a fitting way to go out.

  She didn’t know how long she stood in the water in the bed of the truck after firing her pistol and ending his life. It was a long time, based on how high the sun had gotten in the sky. Slowly coming out of her shock, she looked around. It was a beautiful day after the storm. The air had been scrubbed clean, the temperature down after all the rain. It was deathly quiet, the violent winds having denuded the countryside of all life.

  Dog sat at the lip of the ditch, looking off into the distance, watching over her as he patiently waited. She forgot she’d left the Bronco running, and it idled away, waiting as patiently as Dog. Forcing herself to move, Rachel stepped over the tailgate and started wading through the water toward the earthen ramp. She had only covered a few feet when she stopped and turned to look back.

  Her rifle and pack were in the cab, next to Jackson’s body. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was go back down into the ditch and climb into that cab, but the weapon and supplies meant a chance at survival. She knew she was extremely lucky to have survived this long, and didn’t want to go on with only a pistol and the clothes on her back.

  Heaving a sigh, she holstered the pistol and trudged back through the water, climbing over the tailgate again. Reaching the back of the cab, Rachel bent and looked through the window she had broken out. Jackson sat lifelessly in the driver’s seat, seat belt holding his corpse upright. Her pack was next to him, sitting in close to a foot of water. Cautiously, she reached into the cab.

  Rachel’s skin broke out in goose bumps as she extended her arms into the space next to her dead friend. She imagined him suddenly reaching out and grabbing her in his iron grip. Pulling her all the way into the cab before tearing into her throat with his teeth. Heart pounding, she forced her body forward, grabbed the pack’s straps and yanked it through the opening.

  Adrenaline gave her a boost of energy and the pack came easily and quickly. But, it was heavier than she remembered, and the fear-induced adrenaline didn’t help her manage the weight when she straightened up and it struck her in the stomach. Rachel let out a whoosh of breath as she was knocked onto her ass in the bed of the truck. Sitting with the pack on her lap she looked hard at the cab, but the body hadn’t moved. It wasn’t coming after her.

  “Stupid.” She muttered to herself and spun up onto her knees to see through the window.

  She couldn’t see her rifle, but knew it was in there. It must have slipped onto the floor and was under the muddy water. The only way she could retrieve it was to climb all the way into the cab and feel around in the water. Moving before her courage could falter, Rachel stood and slipped a leg through the opening, gently placing her foot on the submerged seat. Quickly working her other leg through, she followed with her hips and splashed onto the seat.

  A quick check of Jackson, who thankfully still hadn’t moved, and she started searching for the rifle. It only took a moment to find, and she was concerned when she lifted it and water started running out of every opening. Would it still fire? Of course it would. John had swum across a lake with a rifle strapped to his body when he’d rescued Dog back in Georgia. But had he stopped to dry something out or clean something when he’d reached the shore? That she didn’t know.

  Steeling herself, Rachel squirmed through the window into the open air. With every movement, her skin crawled, expecting Jackson’s corpse to suddenly reanimate and attack. But it didn’t. He was dead and nothing was going to change that. This wasn’t a cheesy TV show about zombies, she reminded herself. This was real, and nothing’s more real than death.

  Back at ground level, Rachel went to the rear of the Bronco and lowered the gate. As the sun warmed her chilled body, she opened the pack and spread its contents out to check and start drying. Her eyes fell on a plastic encased MRE and her stomach grumbled so hard it nearly cramped. Using one of her precious bottles of water, she prepared and wolfed down the meal.

  It was tuna with noodles, and nothing had ever tasted as good. She’d heard John and Jackson and a few other soldiers grumbling about MREs and how bad they tasted, but she was hungry enough to eat anything and enjoy it. Dog had joined her as she prepared the meal and she shared with him as she tried, and failed, to not eat too fast. Apparently he agreed with her assessment. The food was good!

  Next she set about trying to figure out how to dry out the rifle. The damn things came apart. She knew that. She’d seen John with one stripped down to more parts than she could count, but she couldn’t figure it out. She settled for removing and unloading the magazine and shaking all the water out of it. Then pulled the bolt open and shook the rifle hard before holding it to her mouth and blowing into the opening to force out any trapped water.

  Magazine reloaded, she pulled the charging handle and a round went into the chamber as smoothly as ever. So far, so good. Stepping away from the idling truck, she held the rifle out at arms length, aimed into an empty field, and pulled the trigger. It fired and cycled, loading a fresh round. Best of all, it didn’t blow up. Satisfied with the results, Rachel worked the sling over her head and let the weapon hang down her back as she inventoried her supplies.

  Finally satisfied, she loaded everything back into the pack and deposited it between the Bronco’s front bucket seats. All she had to do was gesture and Dog leapt up into the truck and moved onto the passenger seat. Climbing behind the wheel she checked the gauges and looked up when Dog growled softly.

  A vehicle was approaching. It was far in the distance, coming from the east, and had just come over the horizon. Rachel’s heart immediately started beating faster. Her experiences with other survivors did not have a good track record. They might have seen her, but then they were far enough away that if her vehicle wasn’t moving it should just blend into the environment. Did she start driving and try to outrun them, or was it better to hide until they went past?

  Rachel only thought about it for a moment before shutting the engine off, grabbing her pack, taking the keys out of the ignition and jumping down to the pavement. Dog followed her out of the truck and she ran in a crouch for the rice paddy on the north side of the road. The ground gradually dropped away from the Interstate at first, quickly transitioning to a short, steep embankment down into the flooded field.

  Rachel ran until her feet were in the water, then turned and threw herself onto the mud. She was facing the truck, 75 yards away and well concealed by the terrain. Raising the rifle, she looked through the scope. She had intentionally left the door swinging open on the driver’s side of the Bronco, and it made it look more like an abandoned vehicle. As long as no one stopped and felt the heat from the recently running engine, it would seem as if the truck had been sitting there for weeks.

  The hiss of the approaching vehicle’s tires finally reached her ears. It seemed to take forever before she also heard the engine and exhaust, then an old station wagon flashed by without slowing. Rachel let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, listening to the car speed farther and farther away. The farther the better, as far as she was concerned.

  After a few minutes she could no longer hear any sound from the vehicle and decided it was safe to move. Picking herself up out of the mud, she glanced around and walked back to the Bronco, Dog staying close to her side. Behind the wheel, she inserted the key into the ignition and reached out to ruffle Dog’s ears. He dipped his head toward her, enjoying the contact. With a wan smile, she grasped the key and turned it to start the engine. Nothing happened.

  5

  We were following I-40 again, nobody in a talkative mood after witnessing the communal funeral
pyre outside Little Rock. Each of us was lost in our own thoughts as we flew. I was scanning through 180 degrees to our front, my head on a constant swivel. Other than a very occasional car fleeing to the west, nothing moved. There weren’t even any birds flying below us.

  The thought occurred to me that maybe the virus had jumped from humans to birds. Why couldn’t it? How many times had there been bird flu scares over the past several years? Obviously that virus could mutate and infect humans. I wasn’t a scientist but I was pretty sure the eggheads that were working on this had already thought to check. Even so, I made a mental note to ask the question. All I needed was a bunch of enraged ravens attacking when I least expected it. And I wasn’t talking about the football team from Baltimore.

  I dismissed the thought, not sure whether to chuckle or get really concerned. Maintaining my scan, I let my mind drift, and it went right where I didn’t want it to go. Rachel. OK, fuck it. Time to deal with this. I missed her. Very much. With a start, I realized that maybe it was more than just missing her. Something was missing without her around. The same thing that was missing when Katie wasn’t around. Then why was I out looking for Rachel instead of heading for Arizona?

  Because I didn’t have a clue where to start looking for Katie when I got there. The only shred of evidence I even had that she might still be alive was my truck missing out of the garage of our burned out house. But, so what? It could be missing for a hundred reasons. If one of those happened to be that she had taken it and escaped, then where had she gone? It had been over a month since the attacks by the Chinese. In that amount of time, she could be anywhere.

  A thousand miles to the south, safe on a white, sandy beach in Mexico. She could be holed up in a cabin somewhere in the Arizona mountains, or could have headed north into Montana or Canada. Hell, enough time had gone by that she could be almost anywhere in the world by now. And as I thought about it, I remembered that three doors down the street lived a retired airline pilot that had his own twin-engine plane. If Katie had gone with him, she could truly be anywhere in the world.

  Was I making excuses? Justifying my decisions? No. I was just trying to analyze what I knew. If she was even alive, my wife could be anywhere on the planet and I didn’t have the first clue where to even start looking for her. On the other hand, Rachel had been alive less than 24 hours ago, and I had a very good idea where to start looking for her. That didn’t mean Rachel meant more to me than Katie. It just meant I had a reasonable chance of finding and saving one of them.

  Sitting there, looking out the Black Hawk’s windshield, my heart ached. It ached deep and hard. For Katie, and for Rachel. I made a conscious effort to not hit something in my frustration, clenching my fists tightly in my lap. Hitting things inside the cockpit of an aircraft in flight is generally not a good idea.

  “You OK?” Tom asked over the intercom. I glanced over and noticed him looking at my fists.

  “Fine.” I answered, forcing my hands to relax and making myself think about anything other than the two women I cared about.

  “Good. Don’t need you losing it up here.” He said, then pointed out the windshield to the east. “Another car coming.”

  Spotting it, I nodded. Tom followed his normal pattern and swung us off to the side and descended. Turning when we reached 100 feet he flew by the car that was speeding west. It was an old Oldsmobile station wagon, originally blue but now mostly rust. Three small, white ovals stared out of the back windows. Children looking up at us. A man and woman were in the front seat. He wasn’t Jackson and she wasn’t Rachel. Tom didn’t need to be told the vehicle was a negative. He climbed back to our previous altitude and got us back on our heading.

  We had only been flying for another few minutes when an alarm started sounding, accompanied by two red lights on the instrument panel. Tom reached forward and silenced the alarm and cycled the power to the warning lights. They blinked out, were dark for a couple of moments, then one after the other started flashing red again. He thumped an analog gauge a couple of times, but the needle was in the red and didn’t move.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Over temp warning from the rotor shaft. Lots of false alarms in these things. We’ll just see what happens.” He answered, but didn’t sound as confident as I would have liked.

  When Rachel and I were fleeing from Atlanta we’d encountered a downed Air Force flight crew and their crashed Pave Hawk helicopter. I was almost sure they’d told me that there had been an over temp warning from their rotor shaft that the pilot had ignored. Then they’d crashed.

  “Put us down, now. Let’s check it.” I said. Tom looked over at me to protest, but saw something in my eyes that made him bite back his words and start descending.

  He landed on the eastbound lanes of I-40 a minute later, the big rotor spinning down as we unbuckled and got out. The door gunner was still strapped in and I told him to grab a rifle and get out to keep watch while we were on the ground. Tom was already climbing up the outside of the helicopter to reach the rotor shaft maintenance access panel. While he worked, I circled the area, making sure there weren’t any infected about to crash our party.

  “Told you!” Tom shouted a moment later. I looked over my shoulder to see him holding up a part of the helicopter that was connected to a thin electrical cable.

  “You could show me that all day and I still wouldn’t know what it is.” I shouted back.

  “It’s the primary temperature sensor for the shaft housing. It came lose and was lying next to where the exhaust pipe is routed. It was reading the heat from the exhaust, not a hot rotor shaft.” He said, turning back to presumably return the sensor to its correct location.

  He never completed the turn. The smooth, leather soles of the cowboy boots he was wearing slipped as he shifted his weight. A Black Hawk has shallow foot and handholds made into its surface, but they weren’t intended for maintenance crews wearing shoes with slick soles. When Tom’s foot slipped his hands weren’t gripping anything other than the temperature sensor, and he fell, his other foot’s purchase causing his body to rotate. He hit the pavement head first, and from 40 feet away I heard his neck break. I rushed to him, but knew he was dead before I touched the body.

  The door gunner ran up behind me and looked down. “Oh my God! Please tell me you know how to fly this thing, sir.”

  “No such luck.” I replied. “Keep an eye out. I’ll see if I can raise anyone on the radio.”

  Leaving Tom where he lay, I climbed into the Black Hawk’s cockpit and slipped on a headset. The radio was still set to the frequency that had been dialed in when he contacted the Little Rock air controller, and I wasn’t surprised when I couldn’t get a response. The radio antennae in aircraft are designed and located to optimize the ability to reach other radios at a lower altitude, or at best, the same altitude. With the helicopter sitting on the ground, I didn’t expect our signal was getting out very far.

  Switching to the guard channel, reserved for military emergencies, I tried again. I hoped I would have success in reaching one of the other Black Hawks that was searching for my missing friends, but again I only received silence in response to my hails. Checking to make sure the Sergeant was watching the surrounding terrain for any approaching threats, I powered up the internal navigation systems to find out where we were.

  It only took a few seconds for the system to lock onto enough GPS satellites to accurately pinpoint the spot where I was sitting. Being an aviation system it didn’t show roads and cities, but did show major geographic features as well as both military and civilian airports. Little Rock Air Force Base was 115 miles to the west. West Memphis airport was 18 miles to the east. Powering the Black Hawk completely down, I climbed out and buttoned up the aircraft as tightly as possible.

  “Looks like we’re walking.” I said to the Sergeant as I moved to stand next to him. I couldn’t remember his name and took the opportunity to glance at the tape on his uniform. Gabbert.

  “Where are we going, sir?”
He looked and sounded frightened. I reminded myself that he was just a regular Air Force Staff Sergeant. His world had been inside aircraft up to this point, and being on foot in hostile territory was probably terrifying for him. I’d give him a little latitude so I didn’t wind up with a basket case on my hands.

  “West Memphis.” I said, pointing east down the perfectly straight blacktop. “Little Rock is 115 miles behind us. There’s still a few civilians in West Memphis, plus there will be plenty of abandoned vehicles for us to choose from.”

  “How far is it?” He asked, swallowing nervously.

  “A little over 10 miles. Not far. We should be there well before dark.” I smiled, trying to exhibit some confidence for the man to pick up on, but I didn’t think it worked.

  We started walking, leaving Tom’s body where it was. There wasn’t anything else I could do with it. Putting it inside the helicopter would have prevented scavengers from feeding on it, but would also have made a hell of a mess as it started decomposing. I didn’t have an entrenching tool – small folding shovel – with me, so digging a grave wasn’t an option either. So I regretfully decided to leave him where he was and try to get to West Memphis so I could do something to help those of us that were still alive.

  6

  We had been walking for about an hour and hadn’t seen a sign of any other survivors. The countryside was eerily silent, even the birds having abandoned the area or were too afraid to make any sound. I was pretty sure they were just gone. The wind blew steadily in our faces as we moved eastward, providing the only environmental noise other than our boots on the asphalt.

  Gabbert was jumpy as hell at first, constantly looking around and over his shoulder with his rifle held high and tight to his chest. I had to remind him several times to keep his finger off the trigger and along the receiver of the weapon. Now, after a few miles in the hot afternoon sun, he was tiring. His eyes were only on the road directly in front of him and he’d let the rifle hang down his back on its sling. I’d made him move it to the side so it was at least readily accessible if he needed to fight.