Payload (4 page)

“As a military man, my duty is clear,” Captain Jack observed thoughtfully. “For Queen and country, you know. In this context my options are rather limited-getting back to the Regiment is not practical at the moment. Failing that, I think my best assignment would be to offer my sword to you, Doctor, in order to facilitate your studies. Addison?”

“Get clear of the city before the vectors take over,” Addison stood. “There’s an Army surplus store a couple blocks from here with so-so security. We can get you guys equipped, take some stuff for camping, steal a vehicle, and head into the Camp Blanding Wildlife Area. My mother won’t be able to get at me there for the short term, and that should shake the cult for a while, too. Then we can figure out what is next.”

“One hates to loot,” Captain Jack mused as the trio set off. “But needs must when the devil drives. To which cult are you referring?”

“Don’t know the name, but they send women after me. Every woman I’ve ever had sex with belonged to the cult. I figure it’s some sort of ‘
breed an advanced Human race’
sort of thing. I have to keep moving or they swarm me.”

“There are worse fates,” Doc grinned.

Leslie “Bear” Mapplethorpe

Bear heaved the PC tower through the window; raking the remaining shards of glass free from the frame with a hammer, he scrambled through the opening. Dropping down into the parking lot, he wondered just how he had ever got himself into this mess.

More importantly, he wondered how he was going to get out of it.

If he was to tell the cold hard truth, it started when he loaded his Harley and twenty crates of cheap Mexican piñatas into a U-Haul in Brownsville, Texas, and hauled them to New York City, where they didn’t come close to paying for the gas. The sixty Chinese-made AK-47s hidden in the load, on the other hand, made the trip a gold-plated wonder. With part of the profits he picked up a U-Haul’s worth of flat screen TVs which he ran down to a guy he knew in Atlanta, where they became some cash and a load of untaxed rum, which he sold to a contact in Miami.

Finally free of the tyranny of the U-Haul, he had rolled north on his hog, planning on getting back to Texas forthwith. A guy he knew texted him a name and Bear had swung by to check out the contact. He ended up spending some time helping the guy, Doug, poach gators and various other oddities from the Camp Blanding Wildlife Area, another lucrative operation.

Doug owned a bar called the Harley Inn a couple miles outside of Starke, a nice enough burg. The place was a useful front and slow-time cash cow, as well as laundering the proceeds from Doug’s various enterprises. Bear bounced for a visible means of support, and crashed out back. 

He had slept in, and was at the bar eating a half-dozen eggs over hard with some bacon and grits when some deranged tourist staggered in dragging his teenaged kid who was about three-quarters dead and screaming about highway robbery or some such.

Doug tried to phone for the EMTs but the line was out-they had lost cell service yesterday, but that wasn’t big news in this part of Florida. There were a half-dozen regulars hitting the suds and one of them claimed to have been an Army medic, so they propped the kid in the storeroom and let the vet try his skills while a couple volunteers took off to summon help.

He had just finished his breakfast and was wondering what he ought to do today-he was getting set to roll back to Texas, but wasn’t sure of the dates. Doug was good people and the poaching was decent money, but Texas was home, and he had other irons in the fire.

Then there was yelling in the storeroom, and next thing he knew the kid lurched out and latched on to the day bartender, a Cuban with some screwed-up name. He took a good-sized chunk out of the Cuban’s neck before Bear and Doug could get him off, and it took two other guys helping to get the kid down. The kid didn’t just look sick, he looked
dead
, except for fighting like a wild animal.

Then the kid’s dad appeared out of the storeroom and dove on Doug, biting for all he was worth, and the kid was loose. Bear had gotten to the pistol-grip Mossburg under the bar and put a load of number four buckshot into the kid’s solar plexus, but it just knocked him down. He knee-capped the kid when the little bastard managed to drag himself to his feet, but the shots attracted dear old dad and Bear put three rounds into him without any real effect other than the results of kinetic shock.

Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, he had withdrawn to the office and locked the door.

After they had run everyone else out of the bar the father and son act had set up shop trying to get the door open without tools or even trying the doorknob. Bear figured that you didn’t need a PhD to know that whatever they had, it was real bad.

He spent the next hour using completely inadequate tools to break off the high-dollar padlock that held the security cage closed on the office window, and by the time he was done both the veteran with medic’s training and the Cuban bartender were staggering around the parking lot looking just like the tourist and his kid.

With an escape route open, Bear ransacked the office for anything resembling a weapon before yanking the PC tower’s cables.

The medic was on him before he could break for open ground; Bear planted the hammer into the guy’s skull, dropping him in his tracks, and broke into an awkward run for his bike. The Cuban was closing at a shambling walk while making a sort of moaning wail that sent rusty iron claws dancing up and down Bear’s spine.

Leveling the Mossburg, Bear silenced him with a single shot to the melon, but the family duo were already lurching out the side door and a couple of the regulars, looking just as dead, were coming from around the front of the building. Wedging the shotgun under the bungee cord on the bitch seat, Bear fired up the hog, revved it twice for luck, and rolled out, spraying gravel across the staggering attackers as he burned out of the parking lot. Seeing plumes of smoke rising from the direction of Starke, he cursed and swung the Harley west, down two-thirty.

Chapter One

Marvin and JD moved to the shoulder of the road at the sound of the approaching motorcycle. The rider slowed the bike upon sighting them, appeared to hesitate, and then rolled forward to make contact.

The bike was a Harley ridden by a large man who had his longish dark hair pulled back into a simple ponytail, wearing a sleeveless denim vest displaying numerous rally patches over a black tee shirt, faded jeans, and engineer boots.

Cutting the engine but staying astraddle his bike, the newcomer lifted his tinted safety glasses and studied the pair. “I’m Mapplethorpe, people call me Bear. You’re heading the wrong way.”

JD made the introductions. “We don’t have many options-no food or water.”

“Have you seen what that flu is doing to people? Its spreading fast-I saw a guy get bit and not more’n an hour later he was gooned out. You can’t hardly kill ‘em, either.”

“A guy I met told me to shoot them in the head,” JD remarked. “It seemed to work.”

Bear reflected on this. “Yeah, he could be right. Ties in with what I saw.”

“Where are you headed?” Marv asked.

“Dunno. Away, I guess. I’m not local, although I’ve been in this area a few weeks-I’m from Texas.”

“I’m heading to Texas, got orders. JD is going to Tallahassee, which is on the way. Want to stick together?”

Bear shrugged. “Might as well. I ain’t bringing much to the party, though: I’ve got two shells and a half a tank of gas.”

“We’re not requiring membership fees,” JD grinned.

“Do you know anywhere relatively close where we could get weapons, food, and water?” Marv asked, keeping a close eye on their surroundings. “I’ve got authority to requisition, so it’s not looting. As it is, we’re in poor shape-JD passed through the outskirts of Starke and said it looked like a war zone.”

Bear thought. “There’s a little country store and bait shop up off Sixteen, figure a little over two miles north. Decent old boy runs it.”

“I’ve got a credit card if he’s there, and we’ll leave a list of what we take if he’s not,” JD offered.

“Yeah, he’s cool. We’ll have to cut across country, but there’s a trail following those power lines that should get us nearly to Sixteen. You guys might have to lend a hand manhandling my hog the last quarter-mile.”

“Vehicle coming,” Marv warned, pointing west.

The trio watched warily as a muddy faded green older model Land Rover rolled up and stopped. Three men emerged, hands held in plain view. The driver was a dark-complexioned man in his mid-twenties with an institution haircut and an athlete’s build, wearing jeans and a work shirt. The front passenger, clad in British camouflage battle dress with an SAS beret on his shaven skull, resembled an emaciated David Niven, while the rear passenger was a short, wiry man with a bookish mien wearing desert BDU pants and a tiger-stripe camo shirt.

“What did you guys do, rob a surplus store?” JD asked, grinning.

“So we’ve spent the last three days in the wilderness area,” concluded the thin man who called himself Captain Jack Sawyer. “While Doc searched the Deep Web for news and Addison employed the regular Net. We were hoping to resupply in Starke.”

Marv looked up from the cover-less black & white road atlas Addison had loaned him. “Starke’s out. The flu is on the rampage.”

“It’s not a flu, it is a saliva-borne virus,” Doc offered shyly. “I believe it is a bioweapon deployed in liquid form. Probably much more virulent than the original creators expected, but less stable in a hostile environment.”

“Probably,” Marv nodded. “In any case, I’ve got orders to Texas. JD’s along until Tallahassee, and Bear’s good until the Texas border.”

“At least,” the biker nodded.

“As a fellow military man, I feel inclined to support your mission,” Captain Jack nodded judiciously. “Doc, Addison?”

“West is good,” Addison refused to commit further.

“I should report in to the CDC, but they are always supportive of the military,” Doc said.

“OK, Bear knows of a country store which might serve for resupply,” Marv finished his notes and handed the road atlas back. “My plan is to get to there, see what can be done supply-wise, and then head for Tallahassee. Anybody object? How are you guys fixed for fuel?”

“Three-quarters of a tank. We got some off a wrecked Cadillac up the road,” Addison mumbled.

Sid’s Grub and Gas was a tin-roofed wood building from the 1930s sitting at the edge of a graveled lot, two unshaded gas pumps halfway between the store and the road.

The six men stood on a low rise a short distance off the road and studied the business, four hundred yards away.

“Eight of them,” Marv passed the binoculars to Bear. “That we can see. Where the hell did they come from? The store is closed and there isn’t a vehicle in sight.”

“There is a bicycle in the ditch opposite the store,” Captain Jack observed. “They might have been chasing the rider.”

“There’s a campground a couple miles up the road,” Bear pointed to the east.

“Great. Gunfire might attract others and we’re low on ammunition to boot. If I ever get my hands on Bucky…anyway, ideas?”

“I’m afraid it shall come down to cold steel,” Captain Jack sighed. “Not an optimal situation.”

“Yeah,” Bear agreed. “I used a hammer on one of them, he dropped like his spine turned to Jell-O. Not my first choice, but we need water or we ain’t getting far in this damned heat.”

“Yeah,” Marv shook his head. “I’m just not used to killing Americans, especially sick people.”

“They are neither Americans nor ill,” Doc spoke up. “They are for all intents and purposes deceased.”

“Look, Doc, I’ve seen a lot of dead people,” Marv objected. “Killed a few myself. As a rule they do not walk around.”

“I agree, but what we are seeing is a brain-dead subject whose bodily functions have been reduced to the absolute minimum. The virus has essentially hijacked the body, taking over motor control and basic sensory functions of the central nervous system. The personality, the memories, for all intents the
person
that was the subject are gone. What this virus has achieved is the Holy Grail of viral organisms: it has learned to invade a host and take practical and effective control.”

“You’re saying it’s like a zombie,” JD shook his head.

“To use a term, yes. They appear to be deceased because much of the system is effectively dead tissue, which makes them immune to most forms of shock and blood loss, the two things that cause violent death in normal human beings. To kill them you must disable the central nervous system.”

“Brain or spine,” JD said thoughtfully.

“Yes, of which the brain is the most vulnerable.”

“Going old-school melee means blood splatter,” Marv pointed out. “How do we keep from getting infected?”

“This virus is not blood borne, not primarily,” Doc shrugged dismissively. “I would avoid blood as much as you can, but the threat of exposure from that medium should be low. The primary infection vector is saliva, which is a different bodily system.”

“OK, I hope you’re right. Hey-diddle-diddle, right up the middle,” Marv sighed.