Omega Pathogen: Despair (6 page)

He felt remorse in his dream or nightmare. Should he have closed in and offered them the chance to surrender? Why didn’t he do that? He knew the answer; he knew why he didn’t do that.

He began to feel. He felt intense pain in his head; his brain ached. He started to feel pain in his neck and then throughout his body. The headache was the worst of it. He opened his eyes, or right eye; vertigo began immediately to take hold and he closed his good eye again. He heard Royce say his name several times, each time sounding more distant than before until it faded to nothing.

Jim next felt the sunlight through his closed eye. Even through his eyelid, the pain from the sun was burning through to the back of his brain. Was he infected? Had he been bitten? Was this what it felt like to be taken by the SCAR virus and be turned mad? Or was this a concussion, a traumatic brain injury? It felt similar to what he’d experienced after an IED had blown up his vehicle in Iraq.

His mind registered feeling wet and cold for some indeterminable amount of time, then warm and dry. He heard someone yelling nearby but couldn’t make out the words; he couldn’t tell if they were directing the shouting at him or someone else. The voice sounded like someone he should know.

He regained consciousness suddenly. At least he knew that he was now aware of his surroundings. He awakened in a state of fear and panic. He rose to a seated position from the bed of the pickup truck and was immediately reminded of his head injury. Reflexively he reached for the left side of his head. He felt the bandages around his head and his left eye.

“How do you feel?” he heard Royce ask.

He turned his head to the left, where the voice came from, and felt pain in his neck, and then nausea with it. He saw Royce squatting on his left side and looking into his good eye. “I feel like shit. Thank you, Royce,” Jim answered.

Jim saw daylight seeping through the gaps in the steel. “Help me up, please,” he asked. Royce voiced opposition, but helped Jim to his feet when he continued to try to get up on his own.

“While you’ve been sleeping your ass off, I’ve been busy,” Royce said with a grin. Royce told Jim that while he had been unconscious, he’d dressed his wounds, though Jim had figured that out. Royce had removed Jim's blood-soaked clothes, cleaned him off and put on fresh clothes.

Royce reassured him that he hadn’t seen signs of bites while he had taken care of him. Royce said he had talked to Jim’s family in the MRAP, after he convinced them he was helping Jim and not trying to shoot him. He’d also taken his truck to the ranger station and brought back the semi-tractor tow truck. Royce had just finished checking the airboat to make sure it was operational when Jim had come to.

Jim learned from Royce that the former owners of the truck also had two large propane cylinders in the floorboard of the truck with a long hose and nozzle, a homemade flamethrower. Memories of charred pavement and shattered glass in the parking lot where the MRAP had been went through his mind.

Jim looked at his watch but, after taking a second or two to focus his good right eye, he noticed the watch was shattered. Jim fumbled around getting his watch off and tossed it aside. “What time is it?” Jim asked.

“It’s quarter after nine,” Royce answered as he stepped out of the bed of the truck and onto the ground.

Jim followed; he reached up and touched the ceiling of the steel box to guide his unsteady walk. Royce helped him down from the truck bed to the ground and then over to the airboat that was now off the trailer and on the dirt beside the road.

Jim looked around at the bodies nearby and noticed the legs lying on the ground behind the oak tree. It was the woman whose body he’d dragged there after killing her last night. He saw the gigantic man that had nearly killed him. He wasn’t sure yet, but the fight might have blinded him in his left eye. Around the large man was dark, almost black dried blood that Jim had bled from him. He saw the man he shot off the roof of the truck. All three of the bodies had been a meal for the infected that had gathered around after he and Royce had made it safely inside. There were the bodies of the infected that he and Royce had killed also littering the area.

“Jim, can I ask you something?” Royce asked.

“Yeah, Royce,” Jim said and looked up at him sitting in the airboat’s operator chair.

“Why didn’t we just corner these assholes and try to get them to surrender? We didn’t have a lot of ammo but we may have forced them to quit and walk away,” Royce said.

Jim looked around at the bodies and then out at the MRAP in the distance stuck in the mud. He thought of his wounded brother that had been shot in the back by one of the now dead group, “I don’t know that they would have walked away, Royce. And I did it for revenge,” Jim answered and stepped into the airboat.

Royce watched Jim look at the coil of large diameter cable in the boat. “I’ll be going slow out to the MRAP, you’ll need to pay out that towing cable as we go,” he said.

Jim nodded. “Is this going to be strong enough?” he asked. Royce shrugged. “It should be, they use it for pulling fully-loaded tractor trailers.”

Royce handed Jim a pair of noise-reducing earmuffs and pointed to a pair of thick leather gloves at Jim’s feet. As soon as Jim had donned the ear protection, Royce started the engine. After about a minute of letting the airboat engine idle, Royce fed it more throttle and they slid forward on the dirt toward the wet marsh and mud where the MRAP sat.

Jim watched the distance between the airboat and his family shrink as they slowly approached. As Royce had instructed, Jim let out coils of the thick cable as they moved over a mixture of dry earth, marsh, and mud. The rear double doors of the MRAP were open. He could see his children Chris, Jeremy, Berk, and Kayra gathered at the rear doors. He searched for Arzu but couldn’t find her. Then he saw his wife up in the turret, her hand covering her mouth as she shook her head.

Jim found it required more exertion than it should have when he waved to his family. They returned the gesture. They all looked exhausted. Even from a distance, Jim noticed the expressions of sadness through their smiles as they greeted him. Although he had no doubt they had been under tremendous stress, something restrained their expressions of joy.

Everyone covered their ears to protect against the noise from the airboat. Jim looked for the tow hooks on the rear bumper of the MRAP and found they were buried in the mud. He realized he hadn’t thought of bringing a shovel. He then spotted two on the deck of the boat near the bow. Royce had thought to bring some.

Royce maneuvered the boat with skill and closed the last few feet and then kissed the top of the rear bumper steps with the aluminum bow of the airboat before he cut the engine. Jim welcomed the silence. Even with the ear protection it had been excruciatingly painful to his already aching head.

Jim found it odd that his family and friends' moods seemed somber. They appeared glad to see him but not as joyful as he felt. He smiled and looked at each of his family members' faces. “God, it’s so good to see you all,” Jim said, awkwardly trying to balance himself as he made his way off the bow of the boat to the rear of the MRAP. His older sons Chris and Jeremy, and his wife Arzu surrounded Jim in a group hug. His younger children hugged him around his waist. Jim bent down to hug them back and his head pounded in protest. He fought off the vertigo and nausea and squeezed Berk and Kayra in a hug. He kissed Kayra on her forehead and received a kiss in return on his cheek. He then kissed Berk who, as he normally did, wiped the spot where he had been kissed.

Jim stood upright and nearly fell as he lost his balance from the dizziness. He half hugged and half used Arzu as support. Jim then took her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips.

“I love you,” Arzu said as she tried to hold back her tears.

“I love you too, hon,” Jim answered and looked around the MRAP.

“Dad,” Chris said as Jim looked to where he’d last seen his brother John. Lying in the same spot on the seats in the MRAP’s rear compartment was a blue and red sleeping bag zipped completely closed; by its shape it was obvious a human being lay within. Jim heard his mother Judith weeping and turned to see her sitting on the opposite side of the vehicle with tears streaming down her cheeks as she held her face in her hands.

“Dad,” Chris said his name again.

He felt his son’s hand on his left shoulder. Jim turned to his eldest son.

“Uncle John passed away last night,” Chris said and looked to his uncle’s form in the sleeping bag, then back to his father. “I’m sorry, Dad,” Chris said and his eyes began to swell with tears.

“I’m sorry. We tried, Dad,” Jeremy said.

Jim turned to look at him. He pulled Chris and Jeremy to him and hugged them again. “It wasn’t your fault,” Jim said.

They told what had happened about an hour after Jim had gone inside the hospital. A man and woman had approached them on foot. They had told all in the MRAP that they had to get out and leave it. They were told to leave everything inside and walk away or they’d be burned alive inside it. They had refused to get out and tried to contact Jim. Soon after that a volley of Molotov cocktails were flung at them and that was followed by gunshots at the armored vehicle. The two messengers disappeared for a short time.

To protect against the gunfire and firebombs, the turret was closed. They were attacked again. This time the dark red pick sped to them and began spraying the MRAP with flame. Arzu had no choice but to flee and create some distance. The weapons they had inside couldn’t be used, they couldn’t open the side gun ports to defend themselves or they risked flames entering the vehicle. If they had stayed, they risked being cooked inside.

After they got stuck in the mud, their pursuers left and came back with the airboat. Arzu, Chris, Jeremy, and the rest inside were able to keep them away. They pinned the attackers behind the oaks and shrubs, and their pickup. Their attackers’ vehicle had been disabled by Jeremy and a .50 caliber round to the engine when they had returned with the airboat.

Chris had hit the man Jim had seen buried. He had been careless and a half-inch diameter bullet had taken his arm at the shoulder.

They had feared Jim dead when he didn’t respond to their radio calls. His family had learned that he was still alive when they saw him the night before as he approached their assailants. In their night vision optics, they had seen a man stalk to the pickup, and knew it had to be him.

Jim knelt in front of his mother; she still wept for John. She lifted her head from her hands and wrapped her arms around him. Jim could feel her tears transfer from her face to his. “I’m so sorry, Mom,” Jim said.

“It wasn’t your fault, Jimmy. It was their fault, those other people. I’m thankful you’re okay,” Judith replied.

Jim stood so he could help start the work of digging out the MRAP from the mud. As he rose, vertigo took over again and he lost his balance. Kathy grabbed and steadied him. She hugged Jim.

“You really look like shit,” Kathy said, and gently touched his bandaged head.

Linda welcomed Jim’s return and hugged him as well.

Jim began to introduce Royce to everyone but Arzu reminded him that Royce had already introduced himself earlier that morning from afar. “That’s right. Royce told me that,” Jim said.

Jim enjoyed the bittersweet feeling of being reunited with his loved ones again, but knew daylight was very precious. It wasn’t late in the day but without the benefit of weather forecasts, they couldn’t be sure a storm wouldn’t roll in and darken the day enough for infected to emerge from hiding.

They set about digging the mud away from the MRAP’s rear bumper so they could attach the tow truck’s cable to the snatch hooks. Jim took a turn after Chris began the process, but after only two shovels of muck thrown free of the bumper, he was overcome by pain in his head and nausea from bending to dig.

Jim vomited the water, coffee, and the small amount of energy bar he’d consumed earlier. Jeremy took over for him and gagged several times until he had flung away his father’s vomit. Everyone but Judith took a turn; she had offered, but there were too many people that were half her age to lend a hand. Each time a shovel full of the mud was thrown away from the bumper, more oozed back in and covered the snatch hooks.

Chris and Jeremy were finally able to thread the thick chain they’d brought with them from Texas through the rings on the bumper. Most everyone was now covered with mud, but those two and Royce were the worst. Royce attached the hook from the tow truck’s cable to the chain to complete the preparation.

Royce had already positioned the semi directly behind the MRAP on the opposite side of the road, both pointed away from each other. Kathy volunteered to steer the MRAP while Royce controlled the tow truck.

Royce assisted everyone into the airboat while Kathy made sure the MRAP would start. All breathed a sigh of relief when its engine rumbled to life. Before he got in the airboat, Jeremy grabbed a couple of radios so Royce and Kathy could communicate more easily.

Everyone was directed to a safe distance away in case the tow cable snapped. Jim noticed his younger children had seen the dead lying about, and regretted not hiding them before he had went to the MRAP. Unfortunately, he realized, he couldn’t hide all of the death from them. As much as he wanted to shield them, it was nearly impossible.

Royce and Kathy did an expert job of extracting the MRAP. Royce pulled it backwards with the tow truck’s cable while Kathy maintained straight front tires and used enough of the MRAP’s four-wheel drive to keep up momentum.