Fulcrum: V Plague Book 12 (13 page)

Yanking the hatch open, I grabbed several cans of loaded
magazines and dragged them out to fall to the ground.  By this time, Caleb
ran up.  He’d apparently had an up close and personal battle with a female
as his face was covered with blood from a scalp wound.  Didn’t matter. 
He was still on his feet, he could still fight.

“Start distributing ammo,” I said, pointing at the cans
before running to the opposite flank.

Caleb nodded and grabbed one with his good arm, racing away
towards Long and Sam.  More females were in the rocks, and I was getting
worried they’d either attack us from the rear or keep going and run down Rachel
and Tiffany. 

They were staying in small groups as they worked their way
to our sides, and I decided to go for a more aggressive response than just a
rifle.  Retrieving grenades from my vest, I started pulling pins and
tossing them into the areas where I saw movement.  The detonations were
brutally loud, even over the fire from the girls’ rifles, and must have
startled them.  When the first one blew, they stopped firing and looked in
fear to see what had happened.

My own stupid fault.  They had reacted exactly the way
anyone unaccustomed to battlefields would.  Despite showing themselves to
be quite adept at fighting the females, they were thrown for a loop by the ear
shattering detonations.

“Keep firing!”  I shouted.

Slowly, first one, then all of their rifles picked back
up.  But that little lull had allowed the small herd of females to draw
closer.  By now it seemed as if they were already on top of us, but they
started dropping quickly again when the girl’s got back into the fight.

I was running for a Humvee to get more grenades when the
loudest groan so far started up.  The road vibrated under my feet, and the
sound was like a physical force.  It was everywhere around us, the hard
stone of the canyon picking it up and amplifying it. 

As the volume and pitch rose, it felt like my bones were
resonating right along with the rocks.  Reaching the back of the vehicle,
I started grabbing more grenades, pausing when the rifle fire around me
sputtered into silence.  I’ve been on battlefields where this happens, and
it’s rarely good news.

Expecting the worst, I stepped to the side and looked down
the road.  All of the females had come to a halt, looking around as the
groaning from the rock slowly faded.  What the hell? 

For a long beat, every female I could see just stood
there.  They looked at the ground, the sky, the surrounding rocky
terrain.  Many of them tilted their heads back and sampled the air. 
Then, slowly at first, they began backing away.  Soon they were turning
and running in the opposite direction.

“What fuck?”  Igor exclaimed from a few feet away.

Everyone had stopped shooting, too stunned at the completely
unexpected reaction of the females.

“The,” the girl who I’d saved from the infected said to him.

He looked at her with a confused expression on his face.

“What
THE
fuck, not what fuck,” she said, reaching up
and wiping blood off her face.

In another time, I would have enjoyed watching an American
teenaged girl teach a Russian Soldier how to curse properly.  But now, I
was more than worried.  It’s been documented for a long time that animals
somehow know when a catastrophic event, like an earthquake, is imminent. 
No one knows how, though theories abound.

Now, I’d just witnessed humans react like an animal. 
Was I reading too much into this, or had the infection reawakened something
primal in the females?  A dormant instinct that warned them when something
really bad was about to happen?

“Rachel?”  I called on the radio, fearing the worst.

“We just made it to the far side,” she said, her voice tight
with exertion.  “We’re trying to raise the access panel, but it’s heavy as
hell.”

“Any infected near you?”

“No, but Dog’s freaked out about something.”

“Not infected?”

“Don’t… think so.  Oomph,” there was a loud clang of
metal.  “He’s not growling.  And we can’t move the hatch.  We need
help.”

“On my way,” I said, turning.  “Lieutenant, get this
truck hooked up and dragged out of the way!  I’m heading across the dam to
get the bollards down.”

“Copy.  We’ll drive across as soon as we get it moved.”

I skidded to a halt and turned back.

“Negative!  Stay off the dam until the roadway is
clear.  The way it’s moaning and groaning, you don’t need to be sitting on
it, waiting.  I’ll call when it’s clear, then you come fast.”

He looked at me, glanced at the lake pressing against the
dam, and nodded.  Without another word, I turned and ran. 

I was about halfway across when the concrete beneath my feet
began vibrating again.  This time, there was no accompanying sound, but if
anything it felt stronger.  The lake’s surface was doing its dance, and
with a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, I ran harder.

As I neared the far end, Dog ran out to meet me. 
Rachel was right, he was definitely freaked out, and I was afraid I knew
why.  I nearly fell when he rammed his head into my hip, trying to steer
me, or stop me.  Pushing around him, I kept running, Dog so close to my
side I had to concentrate to not trip over him.

“I think this dam is about to go!”  I said to Rachel as
I ran up and dropped to my knees next to the access panel.

It was a four-foot square piece of heavy, sheet steel,
hinged on one side.  Strong enough to support a vehicle driving across its
surface.  Probably intended only to be lifted by a crew with a winch or
something similar.  I hadn’t paid attention to the other one since Long and
Sam had opened it, but looking at this one, I hoped I had the strength to move
it.

Tiffany had jammed a screwdriver into the holes that would
be used to attach a chain, creating a makeshift handle.  Moving into a
squat, I gripped it with both hands and pulled.  The panel shifted and
began to swing open.  And it was fucking heavy!  Grunting, I held on
with everything I had and slowly stood, my legs shaking and the muscles burning
from the exertion. 

When I had raised it a foot, first Rachel, then Tiffany rushed
to either side of me and placed their hands flat on the underside and pushed. 
With a screeching protest of rusty hinges, it rose to vertical, and I gave it a
final shove.  With a hard bang, it flopped all the way over and impacted
the asphalt, bouncing once.

Breathing like a steam engine, I stepped aside as Tiffany
dropped into the hole and began looking around with her flashlight.  I
heard a few decidedly inappropriate words come out of her mouth, then she stood
up in the opening and looked at me.

“We’ve got a problem.  This is a newer system. 
The depressurization valve is inside the tank and requires a specialized tool
to operate.”

Of course it did.

“What about just bleeding the fluid out?” 

I remembered how Scott had bypassed the hydraulics in Los
Alamos.  Tiffany was shaking her head before I finished speaking.

“Nope.  It’s designed with a bleed valve inside the tank,
so fluid isn’t spilled when you’re purging air.  There’s no way to do this
without the right tool or power to run the pumps.”

“Wait a sec,” Rachel said.  “We’re standing on top of a
hydroelectric generator.  Right?  Shouldn’t there be power?”

I looked at her for a beat, then turned to Tiffany. 
She might be young, but I’d never been an engineering student.  That put
her one up on me.

“The lake’s high because there’s no water going
through.  See those towers?”  She pointed at four massive,
cylindrical structures sticking out of the lake.  “Those are the intakes
for the turbines that generate electricity.  They must be closed, because
there’s no water coming out the downstream side.  No flow, no power.”

“Do we go back?”  Rachel asked after a long pause.

The two women looked at me, waiting for a decision.

“Will an explosion set hydraulic fluid on fire?”  I
asked.

“Depends,” Tiffany said.  “I have no way of knowing
what they’re using.  There're fluids that are water based, and won’t
ignite, but there’s also a whole range that will burn.”

I squatted at the edge of the pit, thinking for a
moment.  Dog nearly knocked me into it, shoving against my side with his
head.  He wanted us to get moving.  I didn’t blame him.

“OK.  What if we release all the mechanical locks, like
you did at the other end, first?  Once they’re open, tell me where to
place some explosives so that the system is breached and drains of fluid. 
That should work.  Right?”

Tiffany thought about it for several long seconds. 
Rachel, squatted next to me, looked back and forth between us as the young
woman thought about my idea.

“It should, yes.  And even if it ignites the fluid, we
don’t care.”

“Exactly,” I said, smiling.

“Guess we’ve gotta try,” she said, grabbing the hammer and
disappearing into the pit. 

In a few seconds, I heard the muted bangs of her releasing
the first lock.  Standing, I turned to look at the dam and the dark
surface of the water.

“Is this a good idea?”  Rachel asked.  “Is it
worth the risk, or should we back off and head south on the other side of the
river?”

She had voiced the thoughts that were going through my
head.  Sure, crossing here and heading through Arizona to Mexico would
save us hundreds of miles and many hours the pilot probably didn’t have, but
was it worth it?  If this dam went as we were driving across…  But
then, if the dam failed…

“Here’s the problem,” I said.  “Unless we head all the
way to the other side of the coastal mountains in California, we’re in the
flood zone if the dam breaks.  There will be a wall of water sweeping all
the way down the Colorado into the Gulf of California.  We don’t want to
be anywhere near that if it happens.”

“Is it any better in Arizona?”

“Yes.  We head east before turning south.  Any
flooding would be contained well away from us by the terrain.  Not so in
California.”

Tiffany was still hammering away, and it took all of my
self-control not to shout at her to move faster.

“What happened with the infected?”  Rachel asked.

“Spookiest damn thing,” I said, shaking my head.  “That
last big groan freaked them out.  Froze them in their tracks, then they
turned and ran.”

“That’s not good,” Rachel whispered, staring at me in
surprise.

I nodded, then shrugged my shoulders.

“Ready!”

We turned when Tiffany shouted.  I quickly dropped into
the pit and looked where she was pointing with her flashlight.

“There and there,” she said.  “Take out those two
valves and the whole system will drain.  What are you going to use?”

I reached into my vest and pulled out two of the grenades
I’d restocked with while fighting the females.  Her eyes got big for a
second, then she handed me the flashlight, turned without another word and
scrambled out of the pit.

Shining it around, I didn’t see what I was hoping to
find.  Ripping open pockets on my vest, I dug through, but couldn’t find
what I needed.  A simple roll of duct tape.  That’s all I needed to
hold the grenades in place.

“Rachel!”  I shouted.  “Got any medical tape with
you?”

“No,” she answered a moment later.

Crap.  OK, make do with I’ve got.  Cutting two,
one-foot lengths of paracord, I tied the grenades in place.  It took the
right touch, and tape would have worked much easier, but I got it done. 
Making two more, much longer lengths of line, I threaded them through the
grenade’s rings before carefully straightening the pins so they would pull
easily.

Moving gingerly, I climbed back to street level, paying out
the two lengths of line as I went.  Waving the girls back, I moved as far
from the opening as I could and waited until Rachel had gotten Dog to join
her.  He whined and sat on her feet, looking around with his ears folded
against his skull.

“Fire in the hole,” I said, giving the two cords a sharp
tug.

There was slight resistance, then they fell free.  I
heard the faint tinkle of the pins on the concrete floor of the pit as I
scrambled away to open more distance.  Five seconds later, the grenades
detonated so close together that it was hard to distinguish the separate
blasts.

We were well shielded from the concussive force and shrapnel
but still felt it in our feet.  A heartbeat later, flames shot out of the
open hatch as the hydraulic fluid ignited.  They receded briefly, then
quickly grew in intensity as the system drained and fed the fire.  The
heat was intense, but we were all well back.

Tiffany’s attention was focused on the bollards, which after
a few seconds began slowly retracting into the road’s surface.  She turned
to face me with a big smile on her face, jumping up to wrap her arms around my
neck and give me a hug. 

“We did it!”  She shouted.

I hugged her back, then turned to look across the dam. 
I couldn’t see the rest of the group, and hoped they’d been able to move the
crashed vehicle. 

“Sam, you copy?”  I called on the radio.

“Go for Sam,” he responded quickly.

“Clear on this end.  You ready?”

“Yes, sir.  We moved the wreck enough that we can
squeeze by.  We’re coming to you.”

“Copy,” I said.

I got Rachel, Dog and Tiffany moving, heading away from the
dam.  The bollards had fully retracted, the road now wide open for the
rest of the team.  There was no point in standing this close to the dam
while we waited for them, so I led the way towards a large parking lot that had
been built for tourists.

It was only a short distance, in a vehicle, across the
top.  I expected Sam would be leading the way, coming fast.  We
should be seeing the first Hummer at any moment.

Calling a halt once we were clear of the road, I turned to
watch for them just as another moan started up.  Dog whined, moving next
to me and shoving his whole body against my leg.  Rachel caught her breath
and reached for my hand.