Transmission: Voodoo Plague Book 5 Page 4

  The terrain around us was almost perfectly flat as we closed in on the river. We crossed the occasional small lake, but the pavement didn’t even change elevation, just continued on concrete pilings that stuck up out of the water. Far to the south I could see what looked like a cluster of small businesses, and toyed with the idea of checking them for a vehicle. I don’t mind walking, but I needed to be covering a lot of ground quickly, not plodding along at four miles an hour.

  Making my decision, I motioned for Gabbert to follow me. Clear of another lake, we climbed over the guardrail on the edge of the shoulder and down a dirt embankment to the field below. It may have been a rice paddy at one time, but now it was just chest high grass and weeds. Ahead, maybe a mile away, I could just make out the top of the sign for one of the businesses and assumed it was a truck stop. There had been an exit a quarter of a mile back, but I hadn’t paid any attention to the signs that let travelers know what services were available if they got off the freeway.

  We hadn’t gone far, maybe a couple of hundred yards, when my little sixth sense started tickling the hair on my arms and running up and down my back on tiny mouse feet. Without breaking stride I casually looked around, then checked over each shoulder, but didn’t see anything. The feeling didn’t go away and I came to a stop, holding a hand out to halt Gabbert.

  “What’s wr -,” he started to ask, slamming his mouth shut when I glared at him and held a finger to my lips.

  Rifle now up to my shoulder, I started a slow, 360-degree scan. The wind was blowing harder with strong gusts, and the vegetation in the field moved constantly in waves. Several times I paused in my scan, thinking I’d spotted something, but it was just a larger weed or bush that wasn’t moving in tandem with the surrounding grass. I paused; a full circle completed without finding anything, and was preparing to start a second scan when Sergeant Gabbert screamed.

  He was a dozen feet behind and to my left, and was already vanishing into the tall grass by the time I swung my rifle around in his direction. Before I could even take a step, his scream was cut off as the vegetation surrounding the area where he’d disappeared starting shaking violently. What the fuck?

  I moved towards the spot, but didn’t make it before I caught motion out of the corner of my eye. Not one to normally shoot without knowing what I was shooting at, I spun and fired six fast rounds at the location where I’d seen movement. The grass shook in a way that wasn’t from the wind, then a faint grunting sounded briefly. Not detecting any more movement, I turned to face where I’d last seen Gabbert. The grass was shaking, independent of the strong wind, and I could hear more grunting sounds. I wanted to put some rounds into the area, but if Gabbert wasn’t already dead, I might finish him off.

  Taking a step, I froze when the grunting stopped. There was a rustle in the grass and a bush shook as whatever it was started coming in my direction. Back pedaling, I focused in on the wake I could see in the waving foliage and started firing in burst mode. Nine rounds expended, my blood ran cold when there was a squealing scream, then it changed direction and moved swiftly away from me. I tracked the movement of its passing, and it was moving fast. A lot faster than I can run.

  Moving forward again, I kept a close eye out for any more danger as I looked for Gabbert. I found him easily, and he was dead. Vacant eyes stared at the sky. The grass was pressed down under what was left of his body. Scanning the area again for movement, I didn’t see anything, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Glancing down at him in between scans of the immediate area I could see damage to his right leg, abdomen and throat. His lower leg was slashed open to the bone. His abdomen also ripped open, intestines spilling out onto the ground, and most of his throat was torn out.

  Fuck me! What can do that to a full grown man in just a few seconds? At first I thought it had to be an infected, but dismissed that. The infected only had the teeth and nails they were born with. A human, no matter how enraged, simply cannot inflict that kind of damage on another with bare hands. Besides, even the smart infected scream once they start attacking, and I hadn’t heard a sound until after I had put some rounds into whatever it was. I wanted to go check the spot where I’d fired on the first movement, but the little voice in the back of my head was screaming at me to get out of that field as fast as I could.

  Now if this had been a horror movie I would have ignored it and gone stumbling around until something equally horrible happened to me. But this wasn’t, and I like to think I’m at least a little smarter than film characters, so I started backing toward the pavement. Rifle up and constantly scanning I moved carefully, expecting to have my legs slashed out from under me at any moment.

  The wind continued to pick up, tossing the grass around like the surface of the ocean in a strong storm. If there was still anything moving in the field other than me, it had the perfect cover. I’d never spot a disturbance in the grass in time to defend myself. Glancing over my shoulder, I noted I was just under 200 yards away from clear ground where I could see and effectively fight whatever this was. Walking backwards, I did a quick magazine change.

  Wading through chest deep grass when there’s something, or several somethings, that are most likely stalking you is not my idea of a pleasant stroll. I tried to watch in every direction at once. Continually the wind would ruffle the top of the field and for a brief instant I would think I was seeing the wake of an approaching threat. But nothing attacked, and the ground finally started rising as the grass and weeds thinned out. My instinct as I moved into a more open area was to dash for the road, but there was no way in hell I was going to turn my back on the field.

  Finally at the guardrail, I swung a leg over without taking my eyes off the grass. Back on the asphalt, I calmed my breathing, rifle up and scanning across the large field. Whatever had attacked and killed Gabbert was either gone, or being completely masked by the undulating surface of the grass. Shaking off the creeping feeling that was resting on my shoulders, I flicked my eyes up to the business that had been my destination.

  There was a reasonable chance I could acquire a vehicle there, but I wasn’t about to try crossing the field again. That meant a quarter of a mile backtrack to the exit. Glancing to my left, east, I looked for any sign of habitation. Nothing for as far as I could see, which was a good distance in this terrain.

  Decision made, I stepped off to the west and headed for the exit. I kept the rifle up and ready as I moved, not relaxing until I had made it back out over the waters of the small lake I’d crossed earlier. Continually checking behind me I was moving slower than I liked, but when a predator is in the area, possibly stalking and waiting to strike, speed over caution is rarely the right way to go.

  I reached the exit without incident, tempted to cut across a narrow arm of the field, but rethinking that idea and sticking to the pavement. The exit cut through a corner of the field, the pavement half the width of the main freeway that I had been walking on. There were narrow, gravel shoulders on each side, the tall grass pushing right up to the edge. It was even taller here, nearly to the top of my head, and it felt like I was walking in a tunnel.

  Only a dozen yards down the exit road, I paused and surveyed my surroundings. Standing in the middle of the road there was maybe ten feet of clearance to either side, then the thick edge of the field started. Ten feet is nothing. I could cross that in less than a second. Depending on what the predators hiding in the field were, they might even be able to leap all the way from hiding to where I was standing.

  Ahead of me, the road stretched out perfectly straight for what I guessed to be a half of a mile, and I could make out two large structures. From where I stood they appeared to be a truck stop and a cheap motel that probably catered to long haul truckers. I could also see the sun glinting brightly off of several vehicles parked around the buildings. But was the risk of running the gauntlet of the field worth it to maybe find an operable vehicle?

  Eyes scanning up and down each side of the road as I weighed my options, I tried to come up
with what kind of animal I might be facing. Unfortunately I didn’t know this part of the country well enough to even make a guess. Whatever it was had to be big and powerful to have killed Gabbert as swiftly as it had, and there just weren’t that many large predators in North America that I could think of that were capable. A bear? Panther? No, those didn’t fit. His leg has been taken out from under him first, then his stomach torn open and throat slashed as he lay on the ground. This was something built low.

  Giving up on trying to figure out what it was, I decided I didn’t really have a better option than to proceed and find a vehicle. Stepping off I moved deeper into the canyon of tall grass, eyes constantly scanning, rifle up and swiveling back and forth in sync with my eyes. The wind was still ripping through, creating a loud sighing sound and rustling all of the vegetation in the fields. It was causing so much noise I wasn’t able to depend on my hearing to alert me to an impending attack. Frequent checks of my rear were consistently negative, but I also knew that without constant attention something could emerge from the weeds and bring me down from behind before I knew it was there.

  I had covered half the distance to the truck stop when movement to the front brought me to a stop. As I watched, three low, hulking figures trotted out of the grass and onto the road no more than thirty yards away. They had massive shoulders and necks and long bodies, nearly five feet, with narrow hips and were covered in a dense coat of black, wiry fur. Their heads were cruelly shaped and held well below their front shoulders. Gleaming, razor sharp tusks, several inches long, jutted up from their lower jaws and each animal had to weigh at least 300 pounds. Razorback hogs. Oh shit!

  7

  I didn’t know much about razorbacks, but what I did know scared the hell out of me. They are faster and stronger than any human, generally nasty tempered, and with their sharp tusks I now understood how Gabbert had been taken down and eviscerated so easily. But the question was, had we stumbled into them, or were they hunting us? I didn’t think the hogs were predators that would come after a human. As far as I knew they would just defend their territory, but I didn’t know enough about them to understand why they had killed him and come after me.

  They stood there staring at me, blocking the road. The largest one was closest to me, and his head was lowered as he made a popping sound with his mouth. I could see foam forming along his lips and splattering onto the black pavement. If this was a dog my first thought would have been rabies, but I wasn’t so sure that’s what was going on.

  Rifle sighted in on the leader’s head, I reflected that I had the same problem now that I’d had with the bear I’d encountered in Tennessee. The M4 rifle does not fire a heavy bullet. Certainly wouldn’t be my choice for trying to take down a 300 pound wild hog. Or three of the damn beasts. With my thumb I checked to ensure the fire selector was set to burst, then decided to try something a little more devastating.

  Moving slowly so I didn’t trigger an attack, I reached to a pouch on my vest and pulled out a grenade. Carefully I pulled the pin and let the spoon release into my hand rather than spin away and clank across the pavement. As soon as the spoon came off the actuator I started counting. At three and a half I tossed the baseball sized explosive at the razorbacks. I was too damn close for this, but I needed a knockout punch on the half ton of pork that looked like it was ready to charge.

  I followed the grenade with my eyes, trying to time my move with its arrival on target. I had tossed it underhand with a high arc so it would come down in the middle of them. If I had timed it right it should detonate a couple of feet above the ground. Optimal placement for a fragmentation grenade. Unless you’re standing within the damage radius of the metal fragments that would be propelled outward faster than the speed of sound when it detonated.

  Dropping to the ground a fraction of a second before the grenade exploded, I successfully avoided the jagged metal that whizzed overhead, but was still pummeled with the concussion of the blast. And deafened. Popping up I snapped the rifle on target. One of the razorbacks that had been standing to their rear had taken the worst of the damage and lay on the road dead. The grenade had apparently gone off just a few feet in front of its face, destroying the animal’s head.

  The second hog from the rear writhed on the ground, squealing in pain. I couldn’t see the extent of his wounds from where I lay, but he was down and no longer a threat. The largest one, the one who had been foaming at the mouth, had damaged hips and rear legs, but was dragging his badly bleeding body in my direction with his front legs. I pulled the trigger and pumped three rounds directly into his face. He spasmed once before collapsing to the ground, dead.

  One of the lessons I’d had beaten into me in training was to not relax just because the enemy in front of you is neutralized. That lesson had been reinforced a few times in combat over the years. Now it was automatic, and I quickly got on my knee and scanned behind me. Finding nothing, I stood and walked slowly to where the last razorback was sprawled across the asphalt, writhing and squealing. I stopped a few feet away and looked at him.

  Fragments of the grenade’s casing had apparently severed his spine and also torn open his body on the side facing the blast. As he thrashed about, blood and body fluids gushed out of the rent in his abdomen. He saw me standing there looking at him and began trying to drag his shattered body across the pavement to attack me. As he moved, his head turned and the sun shone brightly on his face and for the first time I got a good look at his eyes. Blood red. Just like an infected human.

  I was stunned. Rooted to the spot in horror at the thought of the infection spreading to animals. I had idly wondered earlier about the possibility of birds being infected, but hadn’t thought about pigs. I should have. The swine flu has been a problem for as long as humans have been keeping and raising the animals. Now a virus has jumped the other way? That’s just marvelous.

  Firing a single round into the animal’s head, I moved to check the other two. I was dismayed when I pulled back each of their eyelids and saw the same red eyes. What the hell did that mean? Were they going to hunt us the same way infected humans did? I still didn’t know if this whole encounter was because we had stumbled into their territory, or if they had been stalking us.

  I didn’t think an animal like this would stalk. They weren’t predators the way a wolf, a big cat or a bear are, and stalking wasn’t part of their nature. But was it now? And were these male or female? I stepped to the back of the biggest razorback, and using the toe of my boot raised one of its rear legs. It, he, had an enviously huge set of balls. A quick check of the other two revealed they were both female. I guess slow and stupid was exclusive to males of the human race.

  Reminding myself to not get caught up in over analyzing things, I stood and checked the area around me. Still clear. For the moment at least. Were there more of these waiting for me? Putting those thoughts aside I resumed walking toward the truck stop. I was on high alert, moving slowly with my rifle ready to go, but I made it to the far end of the field without encountering any more of Miss Piggy’s cousins.

  I was downwind from the truck stop and could smell the bodies well before I got there. I reminded myself to not only watch for infected, but also keep an eye out for razorbacks and aggressive scavengers. It was to the point that I was ready to shoot anything that moved.

  The truck stop was massive. There was no other description for it. In front were 20, slightly elevated islands with four gas pumps per island. To the side, 10 islands with two diesel pumps each. The building was all glass, half of it shattered out and twinkling in the afternoon sun. Peering inside I could see what looked like an only slightly smaller version of a shopping mall. Aisle upon aisle of merchandise stretched farther into the structure than I could see.

  Dozens of bodies littered the floor inside, several more lying on the concrete apron between the pumps. They all appeared to have died a violent death and were in various stages of decomposition. Some were bloated with gasses, others already having ruptured, spilling their gela
tinous contents onto the ground. A few hadn’t started bloating yet and I guessed they had only been dead for a day at the most. Definitely no longer than that in this heat and humidity.

  Insects were everywhere. Flies. Ants. Beetles. More than I had ever seen, all busily consuming or laying eggs in the rotting flesh. Checking closer, several of the fresher bodies showed injuries consistent with what the hogs I’d just encountered could do. Legs and torsos slashed open. Throats ripped out, ribs crushed under the weight of the heavy animal as they’d probably stood on their victims to finish them off.

  Well, that answered one question. The razorbacks hadn’t been defending territory. They were actively aggressive. I could only hope they’d be as aggressive with infected humans as non-infected. I made another slow scan of the area to check for any approaching danger. All I saw were more bodies in the motel parking lot. Then the missing piece struck me. No scavengers other than insects. There should be crows and vultures and other birds. Coyotes too, and possibly even domestic dogs that had gone feral. None of the bodies showed any sign of having been fed on. Where the hell were the scavengers?

  Deciding I’d seen enough, I started looking around for transportation. The first thing that caught my eye was a silver Shelby Cobra Mustang with a fuel nozzle still sticking out of its filler neck. I took one step in that direction before stopping myself. I wasn’t here to find a car that would be fun to drive, and I didn’t need one that could go fast. I needed something tough and practical.

  I turned a slow circle, looking at vehicles, but also checking my surroundings. Nothing was moving and I spotted a ride that suited my needs. A brand new Lexus GX SUV sat at the farthest fueling island. Walking over I took a second look around, but it was the only four wheel drive vehicle in sight. Bending as I approached, I checked under to make sure nothing was lying in wait, ready to grab my ankles and yank my feet out from under me.