Carlie Simmons (Book 3): The Way Back (16 page)

Chapter 37

Six days later, Carlie was sitting at a
table in the commissary next to Shane and Matias. They were nibbling on some
cornbread and finishing a plate of rice and beans with cheese flakes when
Duncan entered the room. He quickly made his way to the round table and sat
down across from her. She slid the platter of cornbread towards him but he
shook his head and brushed the plastic container aside.

“Ms. Simmons, would you mind accompanying
me to D-Wing? I need your help with personnel verification.”

“Come again—how’s that? I don’t know
anyone here at this base.”

“You might, just come with me, please. If
this is who I think it is, you’re going to want to see this. I can’t say
anything further. Just follow me.”

Carlie stuffed the last piece of cornbread
in her mouth and licked the crumbs off her index finger. Then she grabbed her
daypack and followed Duncan out of the room while Shane and Matias trailed
behind.

“Keep in mind that what I’m about to show
you needs to stay under wraps for now until the sec-def figures out how to
address this with the larger community here,” Duncan said as they quickly
maneuvered down steps, through hallways, and into a security containment area
on the lower level.

“OK, now you’ve really got me curious,”
she said while looking back at her friends with raised eyebrows.

As they passed through a set of steel
double doors, Duncan stopped before a one-way observation window. The overhead
fluorescent lights in the small holding room beyond made it difficult to
discern the slender figure inside who was sitting with her back to the window.
Carlie moved forward, straining to see the person at the metal table. The woman
had on a mish-mash of tattered clothing with blood splatter on the sleeves and cracked
leather boots with soles that were wafer thin. An empty machete sheath dangled
off her left belt and her hands were baked brown. The woman’s raven-colored hair
was tangled and had been hastily pulled back into a ponytail.

Duncan moved forward and tapped on the
glass, causing the woman to turn and stand. As she moved forward Carlie saw the
hardened expression of a familiar face as the thin woman moved slowly to the
window. Her eyes bore a feral look and her taut face revealed two parallel
scars on her left cheek that caused Carlie to gasp. She felt tears well up
inside her and her lips began to quiver. She laid a hand over her heart and
then formed it into a fist that moved up to her lips.

“My God, it’s Eliza.”

Carlie put her outstretched hand up to the
window, pressing it into the glass as tears streamed down her cheeks. “You made
it out alive. My dear Eliza. You made it.”

Chapter 38

An hour later, Carlie was sitting alone
outside of the medical lab where Eliza had just completed a physical exam.
Duncan came down the steps and sat beside her on the green wooden bench that
lined the wall.

“How much longer before I can see her?”

“She should be done in about twenty
minutes. The docs say she’s slightly malnourished and had mild hypothermia but
is in good shape otherwise.”

“What about those scars on her face?”

“She’s got more than just those,” Duncan
said, motioning with his fingers towards his arms and back. “She’s seen quite a
bit of action out there.”

“Jesus, I can only imagine. You said Air
Force One went down near Boise two months ago,” Carlie said, shaking her head
and clenching her fist. “She’s been gutting it out on her own all this time
while trying to make it back here. I knew she was a stubborn one but this…this goes
beyond mere survival.”

“She said during the initial debriefing
that Agent Willis was with her for the first few weeks or so. Did you know
him?”

“No, I met him once at White Sands. Seemed
like a solid guy.”

Duncan pulled up a photograph on his
tablet and handed the device to her. “She also had this on her. It appears to
be an encrypted laptop.”

Carlie stared at the photo, her eyes widening
as she looked at the image. “Damn, and she had it with her the entire time.”

“She said her father told her to get it
back here at any cost. That it had critical intel that could help us with the
virus.”

She handed the tablet back to him. “That’s
right. I initially acquired this at Ground Zero in New Orleans. It had come
over on a freighter from Cuba and had CIA encryption. Last I saw it, it was on
its way back to White Sands so General Adams and his people could decode the
thing. It may be our one hope of unlocking the Annoric Cold-Weather
Bio-Facility in Alaska.”

“That was all that she was carrying aside
from the usual weaponry required for life on the road today.”

“And your scouts found her where,
exactly?”

“About thirty miles south of here. She was
fighting her way out of an abandoned truck stop—after dispatching a bunch of
zombies. One of my guys saw the whole thing unfold—said she had just killed
four creatures in the back parking lot and was trying to hotwire a car when
three more closed in on her. She quickly gave them a dirt nap too.”

“Willis must have taught her some firearms
skills that came in handy.”

“Not with a firearm—she used her machete.
Her rifle and pistol mags were already depleted from another battle earlier in
the day, she said. By the time my guys got to her at the truck stop she had
already finished killing several more that had moved in on her. She must have
fought her way through dozens and dozens of those things just getting through
the suburbs down there.”

Carlie was trying to reconcile this image
of Eliza with the one she knew from her time on her protective detail in
Arizona. She was afraid that the kind-hearted woman she knew may have been
swept aside, or more likely erased, in order for Eliza to have survived such
agonizing loss and hardship.

“With the right amount of skill and a
smidgen of luck, miracles can happen,” Carlie uttered in a soft voice.

“I’ll have her escorted to her room in a
little bit if you want to wait for her there.” Duncan got up to leave. “I’m
sure you two will have a lot to talk about. You’re probably the closest thing
to family she has left now.”

Chapter 39

Carlie was sitting in Eliza’s room looking
at the seasoned accouterments on the wooden desk in the corner beside the bed. The
tarnished blades, their formerly stippled handles worn smooth; the pistols
whose slides showed exposed metal; the tan backpack with its threadbare
shoulder straps and frayed edges. She heard the door handle behind her click
and open. Duncan’s face appeared in the entrance followed by Eliza as he
escorted her in and then left.

Eliza was clad in clean fatigues that
seemed at odds with the woman’s weathered face and hands. She stood still as
Carlie stood up and moved towards her but then stopped. Eliza’s face held a
faraway look as if she was trying to process who was in front of her. A white sliver
of sunlight shining in through a narrow window to Carlie’s right landed on
Eliza’s neck, causing the young woman to tilt her head and gaze outside.

The young woman spoke in a whisper, her
monotone voice barely audible. “It seems like a long time since I’ve felt the
warmth of the morning sun on me.” She angled her chin up into the sunlight as
her lips started to tremble. It looked as if the warming rays were penetrating
beyond her epidermis, as if an invisible cord tethered to her body was pulling
her into the light. “I never knew for sure if I’d ever really make it here.”
She looked at Carlie but still stood motionless by the door as if needing to
know she could turn and run.

“Seems like it was not long ago that we
stood at a base like this before,” said Eliza.

“I remember. I was telling you that you
were a warrior and could overcome anything that life threw your way.”

“All these months—I hoped to make it back
here…” She paused, darting her eyes along the ceiling. “But I never knew for
sure if it would really ever happen. I kept trying and trying but just couldn’t
seem to make it.”

“But you did. You’re finally here, Eliza.”

“Am I really here, Carlie, in this place
with you right now, or is this another dream?” she said, her voice cracking as
she moved a foot forward then stopped. She lowered her head into her hands as
tears began flowing down her cheeks and her legs began quivering.

Carlie rushed forward and embraced her as
Eliza folded into her and began sobbing. “Tell me this isn’t a dream.”

“Only the good kind, Eliza,” she said, no
longer able to quell her own tears as they both hugged and wept as the walls of
the room resounded with pent-up sorrow. After a few minutes, Carlie took a deep
breath and motioned Eliza back to sit on the bed while she sat opposite her on
a folding chair.

“There’s nothing left for me—not the old
life I once knew. With the laptop safely here, I don’t have anywhere else to
go.”

“This base will be our home for now.
You’ll be safe here.”

“Safety is an illusion—there’s no such
thing anymore except what you forge with your own hands.”

Carlie looked into Eliza’s resolute eyes
and then at her deeply weathered skin and facial scars. She reflected back on
her own ordeal in the tropics and how she had the strength and courage of her
friends to help make it through such a gut-wrenching experience. How different
that would have been if she had been alone after having everyone she loved torn
from her.

“I’m sorry you’ve had to endure such pain
and loss by yourself. I wish I could’ve been there for you.”

Eliza looked at her and smiled then
glanced up at the window. “Now that I’m here, I don’t want to be shuffled off
to some remote corner of the base by the sec-def. I know he had no love for my
father. He probably views me as extra baggage now.”

“That’s not going to happen. Not while I’m
around. Once you’ve had time to recuperate, we can talk about what comes next.”

“I’m not going to lounge in this room. I
want to finish the training Willis and I started and become a better fighter. I
want to help others, Carlie. Everything I once knew and depended on is gone.”

Carlie put her hand on Eliza’s shoulder.
“Not everything. You’ve still got me to boss you around and I’d be honored if
you join me and my team.”

“How’s that possible? Will Lavine even
allow it?”

“If he won’t let you on my team, then I’m
not on his.”

Eliza let out a half-smile, keeping her
head slightly turned to prevent her scarred cheek from showing. Then she moved back
on the bed and leaned against the wall, staring up at the vent. “A real bedroom
with central heating. I’d forgotten what such a thing feels like.”

Carlie pulled up a chair and turned it
around while resting her arms on the backrest. “When we got back here, I
marveled at a bar of soap and a bottle of lotion. You’d think the shower house
I was in was a chic European spa,” said Carlie with a sigh.

“One of the soldiers offered me a Snickers
bar on the ride back here and I thought my taste buds exploded when I bit into
that thing. The sugar was almost too much.”

“And what about the feel of clean socks
and underwear?”

“Yeah, right. I mean, did you ever think
that those were so essential to feeling human again? And what about dragging a
brush through your hair and not having it filled with twigs and dirt.”

“For me, it was always sand—endless white
sand in my hair, ears, nose, toes, and everywhere the sun didn’t shine,” said
Carlie with a chuckle. “And then there were the sand fleas.”

“Yeah, Duncan said something about you
biding your time at a resort in Mexico,” Eliza said with a short-lived grin. “Sorry,
he told me to say that—said you’d find it funny but I guess not judging by your
look.”

Carlie’s stolid expression gave way to a
chuckle which turned into a fullblown laugh, causing Eliza to resume her smile.

As the soft rays of sunlight filling the
room lengthened over the coming hours, the women exchanged stories that were
interspersed with occasional mirth, sighs, or tears. They conversed into the
late morning until their hunger led them down to the cafeteria, where they
continued talking like two old friends as if no time had passed. Carlie could
see in Eliza a look that she had witnessed in battle-hardened soldiers but
occasionally she would catch a glimpse of the carefree girl that she once knew
and that brief flicker of hope breathed life back into Carlie’s soul. She felt the
months of tension in her face wash away and her stride lighten with each step.

Chapter 40

Three days later, Duncan was sweeping his
binoculars across the miles of frozen tundra as he lay sprawled out on a snow-encrusted
ridge a quarter-mile away from the Annoric research facility. It was a
single-story octagonal structure measuring one hundred feet in diameter. He
knew from studying the layout on his tablet that the majority of rooms and labs
existed on the nine subfloors buried deep beneath the permafrost. He knew if there
were survivors they would be holed up in the lower levels but his SAT imagery
wouldn’t penetrate that far inside the facility.

Outside of the main entrance was a small
cinderblock building with a satellite dish atop it that had been previously
used for communicating with the outside world. Duncan surmised that the crumpled
metal dish was canted severely on its side either from extreme wind damage or
someone wanting it offline. Surrounding the entire facility were thirty wind
turbines that seemed to be intact and spun furiously in the gusty air. These
accounted for a third of the facility’s electrical needs with the rest coming
from a fusion reactor on the lowest level.

Duncan felt more confident moving forward
with his plans to penetrate the facility since he was able to obtain the
security entry codes from the laptop that Eliza had provided. In addition, the
hard drive contained a detailed schematic of the structure, personnel records,
and research protocols. If everything went according to plan they would be down
and out in a few hours and then on their way back to Ft. Lewis by tomorrow.

As Duncan continued scanning the immediate
area, plumes of his breath wafted upward like miniscule ghosts, the fur trim on
his parka collecting some of it and instantly forming his breath into ice
crystals.

On either side of him were seven other men
who were a part of his 1
^st
Special Forces unit. Bogged down by
inclement weather, frigid temps, and fuel shortages for the helicopter, he and
his men had been delayed in their efforts. Now with a break in the weather,
they were hopeful that they could finally obtain what they so desperately
needed—the last vestige of the original KAD97 virus.

“What the hell are we gonna do with this
test tube of viral bugs, again?” said Mendez, a wiry soldier lying on the snow
to Duncan’s right.

“We get it back to Fort Lewis and then our
new comrade—the Russkie scientist—will brew it up into an antidote that we mix
into our morning coffee,” said Duncan with a slight smirk. “You drink coffee
don’t you, Mendez? Otherwise, you’re fucked.”

“I could go for a hot drink about now.”

“Yeah, well, why don’t I stop what I’m
doing and brew you a cup of Chai tea seeing as how you sound as helpless as a
bleating calf that just dropped from her momma’s belly.”

“Hell, Sarge, you hit that nail on the
head,” said Ruffalo, a stout soldier to their right who was adjusting the focus
on his binoculars. “Mendez even needs my help opening his MREs.”

“That’s because I can’t stomach the
initial smell, you piss-ant,” said Mendez.

“Alright, as much as I’d love to continue
this banter, let’s head downrange to the lab. These last fifteen minutes of
observation haven’t revealed any movement but, all the same, treat this infil
with the same precautions as any other and keep an eye out for any deeks. We
don’t know if anyone or anything is still inside.

“Mendez, you and your team cover us as we
approach. Once we’ve unlocked the outer security hatch, then I’ll give the go-ahead
to come up.”

“Copy that,” said Mendez, who was lining
up the sights on his MK12 rifle.

Duncan scrunched up in a low crouch with
three of his men and they slipped over the tiny ridge, zig-zagging across the
crunchy snow in their Arctic footwear. Their dappled white garments and weapons
blended into the endless snow drifts that carpeted the landscape. Within
minutes, the unrelenting wind had erased signs of their passage and they made
it to the semi-enclosed concrete entrance. While the three soldiers provided
cover with their rifles, Duncan removed his mittens, letting them dangle off
their lanyards that attached the handwear to his parka. He removed a small
computer device resembling a Smartphone and plugged one end of a terminal into
a port in the security keypad on the wall.  The red-illuminated numbers on his
device rolled over until six numbers were revealed. He tapped the code into the
keypad and then heard the vacuum-sealed double doors to his left begin to open.
“Thank you, Eliza Huntington,” he muttered to himself.

He quickly removed the portable device,
jammed it into his parka, and then reached for the FN Bullpup 5.56 rifle slung
off his shoulder. As he stepped into the entry, he smelled an amalgam of bleach
and body odor that reminded him of a gym locker-room.

As they entered, the overhead fluorescent
lights went on, triggered by a motion-sensor device on the wall. The passageway
before them was ten feet wide with bare concrete walls and a beige-tiled floor.
Lining the walls on both sides were metal doors. At the end of the forty-foot-long
hallway was another entry similar to the main doors.

Duncan flipped back his parka hood and
tapped his ear-mic, telling Mendez to move up to his location. As he dragged
his sleeve across his frost-encrusted beard, Duncan walked forward and heard
something crack under his boot. He glanced down and saw the remnants of long
bone splinters.

The rest of Duncan’s men moved up
alongside him, their rifles kept in a low-ready position while everyone scanned
ahead. Duncan knelt down and brushed the pure white bone fragments aside with
the muzzle of his rifle. “Looks like these were four finger bones,” he said,
searching the floor for more clues. “But where’s the rest of this poor
bastard?”

“Looks like he won’t be using any of the
security keypads around here,” said Ruffalo.

A small cyclone of wind-chilled snow
blasted into the chamber as Mendez and his team entered. “Before we close the
main doors, let’s sweep the rooms on either side,” said Duncan.

A few minutes later, after both teams
indicated everything was clear, Duncan slapped his palm on the red button near
the entrance doors and sealed them in. The passageway quickly flooded with warm
air from the overhead vents and the men began unzipping their parkas and
removing their woolen headwear.

“Thermal imagery sent to me from Fort
Lewis earlier indicated that the main compound is devoid of human life and any deeks.
However, some of these facilities have impenetrable walls that can prevent
proper scanning of existing creatures on the inside, especially in the lower
levels.”

As Duncan led his men down the hallway,
the double doors ahead unlocked along their vacuum-sealed edges and both doors
began opening inward while a blinding light flooded in towards them, partially
obscuring the disheveled figures of eight former lab technicians. The first one
to emerge before Duncan was a ghastly yellow figure dressed in a blood-stained
lab coat, the nails from its slender fingers clacking along the doorframe. It
paused and looked forward, its milky eyes unflinching. Its lips separated as it
emitted a low hiss while the other creatures sprang forward, moving with
greater agility than anyone expected.