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

“Where are we at with the search efforts
for the president?” said Conrad Lavine, the Secretary of Defense who had
overseen operations at Fort Lewis since the outbreak began.

Sergeant Major Ron Duncan pulled himself
away from the wall monitor that showed a map of the western United States. “The
same as yesterday when we got the distress signal from the Secret Service agent
after they crash-landed during the storm. That would place them right about
here,” he said, pointing to a region north of Boise, Idaho.

Duncan was standing in the main server
room which was lined with a dozen computer monitors on the walls and as many
intel analysts buzzing between the different consoles, collating data that was
then placed up on the large monitor in the center of the room. Various charts
and spreadsheets showed a breakdown of prominent cities around the western U.S.
indicating existing populations along with mortality rates.

“If we had reliable satellite feed, we
could’ve pinpointed their current location better. As of last night, I had a
fix on the president’s subdermal tracking beacon so we know he’s alive but they
may have been forced to move from the crash site. Until this storm clears and
we can get better reception, we’re sitting with our hands under our asses.”

The sec-def smirked slightly, shooting a
look of disappointment at Duncan. He didn’t particularly like the sgt. major or
men like him in the Special Forces even if they were highly efficient at their
jobs. He looked at Duncan as a blunt instrument which, in another reality
before the pandemic, he would have wielded at his discretion and without regard
for the wellbeing of the man, or
organic
asset
, as he often
called soldiers during briefings to his Pentagon underlings. Now Duncan felt it
was alright to swear in front of him and shrug off formalities, which grated on
him even further. Still, he needed the operator as he was the most capable and
experienced field commander at the base, which was home to the two remaining
units of the 1
^st
Special Forces and a smattering of the 7
^th
Infantry Division. It was the largest intact military base in the western U.S. with
931 personnel and it provided direct support for the few surviving military
outposts dotting the tristate border region of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

With the uncertainty of locating President
Huntington growing thinner with each passing day and the early demise of the vice-president,
the speaker of the house and other members of Congress, Lavine surmised that he
would now be the supreme leader of what was left of this country and had already
prepared the speech he would give if that should befall him.

In the early days of the pandemic, he had
no desire to replace the president and he preferred to stay in the shadows
conducting his business. Still, he had no love for Huntington, whose weak
international policies he had openly challenged on more than one occasion.
Lavine knew that he could prove himself a more capable leader, especially in
this new world that favored raw force over adherence to dogmatic thinking and
antiquated policies.

“Sir, there’s some new intel that came in
from one of our jeep convoys that has just returned from southeast Washington,”
said Duncan. “They say there’s a group of civis there holed up at the prison.”

“Isn’t that a military prison there?”

“That’s right. It was in the city of Walla
Walla. I was going to walk down to C-Wing and talk with the convoy leader about
it.”

“Very good. Keep me posted. I will be in a
meeting for the next hour with the virology staff to see how things are coming
with their research on the pandemic. Since Doctor Efron was on board Air Force
One and is KIA according to the last transmission from the pilot, we’re even
further in the dark on this virus than before.” Lavine shook his head.
Christ,
did it have to be Efron that got an early ticket to the next world and not one
of the others on that plane?

Before both men turned to leave, a red
blip appeared on the main monitor. Duncan stared at the screen as the satellite
imagery began refining the search grid until a circle formed around an area
northwest of Boise. The red blip was in the middle of the circle. As it
continued to flash, two words appeared underneath:
Subject Deceased.

The bustle of activity in the room
abruptly ceased as everyone came to a standstill and stared at the words.
Lavine staggered back and slumped into a chair, holding his head in his hands.
Duncan tapped on the keyboard and kept trying to refocus the search area image,
muttering, “Goddammit, he can’t be dead. What the fuck is wrong with this
equipment?”

As the image kept fading, Duncan kept
hitting the keypad harder and swearing. Finally he stood up and put his hands
on his hips and began pacing along the front of the room. 

“I’ll gather my team and fly down there
once this storm clears. Perhaps the others survived.”

Lavine stood up, rubbing his temples with
his fingertips like he was trying to erase a smudge. “No, we can’t spare the
manpower or any helos.”

“Pardon me, sir, but there could be
survivors that made it out of Air Force One.”

“That’s over five hundred miles away and we’ve
lost too many critical assets already. I’m not going to risk weakening our
existing personnel infrastructure here by sending you and your men out there
for what will most likely be a body recovery op.”

The other staff kept dividing their looks
between the two men while glancing intermittently at the two words still
flashing on the screen. Duncan briskly walked over to the desk by Lavine and
stood before him, whispering towards his left side, “Even if this were you and
your cabinet, I’d still sift through the rubble to see if anyone was alive
because we don’t leave our people behind.”

“Sometimes you rely too much on your gut
and not on your brains, Duncan,” said Lavine, who arched his shoulders back,
returning the man’s glare. Then he pointed up to the main computer monitor. “Do
you see that database there—the one that shows our current supply and fuel
amounts? You know, just as I do, that we’ve got enough here to make it through
this winter into late spring at best, and that’s at our current rate of
consumption minus any mass influx of people arriving here suddenly. So don’t
talk to me about sacrifice and who gets left behind because I deal in those
realities every waking minute. I need rock-solid intel before I will risk
sending any assets here out into the field beyond our state borders. Plus we
don’t even know if there are fuel resupply dockets in that region to guarantee
the return of any air elements.”

Lavine leaned forward to whisper in
Duncan’s ear. “Don’t question my authority again in front of my staff. However
valuable you may be on the battlefield your counsel is required only when I
request it.”

Duncan removed his olive-drab cap, running
his rough hand over the blond stubble on his head and then tilting his chin up
at Lavine. “Sir, you’re standing so close I can’t tell if those are my toes I’m
feeling or yours.” Lavine backed up a foot and then creased his eyebrows
together. He looked past Duncan’s shoulder at the communications officer and
snapped at the young man. “Send out notice that there will be a general
assembly in two hours with all base personnel so I can discuss this tragedy.”
Then he turned away, stomping past Duncan and briskly walking towards the
entrance.

When the orange fingers of dawn slid above
the horizon, Carlie sat up and looked out through the tangle of bamboo to the
serene waves beyond. She could hardly tell that it had poured for half the
night. She and the others had slept around the dwindling fire as rain poured
over their animal-like forms huddled in the sand, no different than the other
jungle denizens. Looking over the ocean, she took a deep breath and hoped that
the day would continue with clear skies. In another reality, she would have
paid good money to take a vacation in such a seemingly idyllic setting but now
she only felt like shaking her head to see if their castaway nightmare was
still unfolding.

She looked over at Amy, who was still
asleep but emitted the occasional moan when she moved. Shane and Matias were
gone and she figured they were reconnoitering the tracks on the beach. Jared
and Pavel were adding small twigs to the bed of campfire coals and fanning it
back to life. She wasn’t sure why as there wasn’t anything to cook but, still,
there was nothing like the constant company of a campfire to remove the edge of
hostile surroundings.

As Carlie rubbed the sand out of her hair,
she caught a glimmer of a reflection a few feet away to her right. Just outside
the bamboo grove, near the small emergency exit, was a pile of canned goods.
Carlie excitedly glanced around the area, looking for movement of any kind, and
then sprang to her feet. Grabbing her machete, she motioned to Jared and Pavel
to follow her while raising her finger to stay silent. As she crept outside the
bamboo grove, she examined the ground for unusual tracks.

Coming around to the backside, she saw a
neatly arranged grouping of canned tuna, pears, and beans along with a box of
matches and an avocado-colored bar of soap. As Jared eagerly moved forward, she
raised her machete at chest height to motion him to stop while she studied the
sand for any tracks. Puzzled that she couldn’t discern any visible signs, she
nodded for him to continue while she walked out to the edge of the treeline
towards the beach.

“Gather up the goods. I’ll be right back.”
Carlie saw Shane and Matias walking back and met them halfway on the white
sand.

“Anything?” she said.

“No, the tide last night must have washed
out the tracks you saw,” said Matias. “We walked for about a mile and didn’t
see anything other than bird and turtle tracks.”

“Well, somebody paid us a visit last
night,” she said, raising her machete and pointing back to their shelter.
“There’s a pile of canned foods about six feet from where I was sleeping and
not a single track to indicate that anyone had even been there.”

“That’s hard to believe—though I ain’t
doubting you, Ms. Crusoe,” said Shane with a slight chuckle. “I’ve tracked
fugitives in the desert for years and there’s no such thing as covering up or
eliminating signs of your passage—only minimizing them and then only if you’re really
good. The rain probably washed everything away.”

“Well, then this guy…or gal…is that good
because there’s not a single track to indicate anything other than that these
canned goods fell from above.”

“If someone went through that much trouble
covering their tracks by our camp then why did you find some yesterday by our
canoe?” said Matias.

“Maybe they didn’t know we had arrived yet
or we pulled in right after they’d walked by…who knows,” said Carlie. “Either
way, we’ve got some breakfast awaiting us for a change. Let’s grab some chow
and then I’d like to scout the backside of the island and see just what’s
here.”

As they walked back to their makeshift
shelter, Pavel was trotting towards them.

“You should come—Amy, she is not well,” he
said.

Carlie sat beside Amy and placed one hand
on her flushed forehead. “God, she’s burning up.” She carefully removed the
soiled gauze from the thigh while Amy gave out a moan in her delirium.

“Those red streaks emanating out from the
wound are a sure sign of infection,” said Shane.

“She needs antibiotics,” Carlie said,
looking up at the jungle canopy and sitting still for a long minute, letting
out an occasional sigh.  

Jared came running back into the bamboo
enclosure. “We’ve got a shit-ton of movement headed this way—probably twenty or
more of those cheese-faces.”

“Can we get back to the canoe?” said
Matias.

“No, they’re coming from that direction.
These things look bloated, like they’ve been floating in the ocean for weeks,
so they’re moving slow but they are headed towards us.”

“Grab all the gear,” Carlie yelled. “Someone
help me hold the other end of this stretcher and we’ll head north, down the
beach. This structure we built will hold off a few but I’m not taking my chances
here with an entire herd of undead.”

As everyone scrambled to retrieve their
meager items, they could already hear the sound of the leaf-littered floor
rumbling from the movement of shuffling feet headed their way. Matias grabbed
one end of the improvised stretcher while Carlie held the other as they moved
at a brisk walk down to the treeline near the beach.

“Let’s stay just inside the cusp of the
palm trees so we’re not exposing ourselves on the shoreline,” Carlie said in
between breaths as she labored to carry her end. Her body was fatigued from
lack of food and she found herself, once more, summoning already depleted
reserves to push forward.

They pushed on down the beach as the
growing menace behind them increased, the creatures flowing into one ribbon
that cut through the jungle like a furious serpent. As Carlie and the others
staggered along the beach trying to stay in a tight formation around the
stretcher, they saw several more creatures ushering in from their left. Carlie
tugged the stretcher, motioning Matias to head towards the shoreline.

“There’s nowhere to retreat,” yelled Jared,
who had a machete in one hand and a club in the other.

As they crested a slight rise in the
beach, Carlie could see that there were small mounds of sand that had been
recently dug up. She turned back and noticed the zombies closing the distance.
She stopped and lowered her end of the stretcher while Matias did the same.
Carlie was hunched over, trying to catch her breath, then she stood erect and withdrew
her machete.

As they formed a protective arc around Amy,
who was semi-conscious, everyone reflexively crouched into a fighting stance
with their bladed weapons outstretched.

Carlie took a step forward. “Shane, Matias
and I will drive a wedge down the center. Jared—you and Pavel stay by Amy’s
side. If things get really grim, hoist her on your shoulder and head into the
surf.”

The three of them waited until the horde
was thirty feet away, their machetes poised and bodies tense. Then they rushed
forward with ear-shattering cries to engage the first row of ravenous
creatures.