Payload (7 page)

“Minimal higher brain function,” Doc nodded. “Basic fight or flight mode: limited short-term memory is consistent with that state of mind.”

“Good to know.”

“Where is Marv?” Captain Jack asked.

“He headed north, said to work our way to the river and wait for him. Moved like he had a plan.”

“Good chap.”

Other than the Ranger they were all present, Bear saw, plus the young couple JD had helped, a husky thirty-ish black woman wearing jeans and a purple tee shirt, and the blond guy who had used the road flares he had seen earlier. Everyone was breathing hard and visibly shaken, except for Addison, who was only breathing hard.

Bear checked his watch. “OK, we wait twenty minutes, catch our breath, then head to the river. Nobody shoot unless I say-the noise is too dangerous. Right now the zeds are sticking to the roadway.”

“What happens at the river?” the road-flare guy asked in a calm voice, keeping it quiet.

“We meet up with one of our guys.”

Marv never really went out, but he spent quite a while on the edge of it. At some point the truck stopped moving with his body on top of a pile-Airborne training had taught him to roll and relax, and it had helped a lot.  When his head finally cleared he realized that the truck was lying on the passenger side with the front end sloping downward and about six inches of muddy water was lapping at the low end of the fractured windshield.

The river, he realized: they must have reached the south end of the bridge and rolled down the slope to the river’s bank. The bridge, he remembered, was about eighty feet above the water.

Testing his limbs, he found a new crop of bruises and a few new abrasions, but nothing serious. Touch-checking his gear, he squirmed to get his feet under him, realizing he had come to rest atop the corpses of the two back seat passengers. The driver was hanging from his seat belt, the air bag sagging limply from the steering wheel; he was alive, but not for long: Marv’s shot had hit him in the neck, and he was steadily bleeding out. The front passenger had ended up between the truck and the river bank, and was no threat to anyone.

Checking outside for infected, Marv took several deep breaths, focusing his thoughts. A helicopter crash and a vehicle rollover in less than twenty-four hours was more than anyone could expect, even from a Ranger. But the mission clock was still running, so he had to dig deep and get moving. FIDO: fuck it, drive on: the mantra of the Infantry, along with FIDMAT: fuck it, don’t mean a thing. Both seemed appropriate at this juncture of his life.

The fourth man was next on the back seat pile; Marv relieved him of an empty Mac-10 machine pistol and went through his pockets. The limper was wearing a wetsuit under blue Wal Mart coveralls, which explained why he was moving funny; the limp was from a gunshot wound. Under the limper Marv found his Colt and a black nylon sports bag that was only a third full, but heavy.

The driver wore a shoulder holster rig with an empty holster and two M1911 magazines in the mag pouches; Marv slotted one into his Colt and felt much better-he only had had the round in the chamber left.  The glove box held a box of .45 hollow points, two more loaded M1911 magazines, and a strip map from an online map site.

The front passenger was also wearing a wet suit under Wal Mart coveralls. Checking his pockets was out unless the truck was moved, but Marv did find and confiscate a heavy sports pack whose straps had gotten tangled around his one unpinned arm.

Squirming out onto the river-bank mud, Marv touch-checked his gear again and carefully ran his hands over the payload’s metal case, but the shiny metal was unmarked-titanium was a good choice for this sort of thing, he decided. Other than the loss of his soft cover, his gear was all present. They had hit the crash barrier at the end of the bridge’s rail, he saw, scattering the bright yellow water barrels like ten-pins.

Orienting himself, he rose to a crouch, stifling a groan, and eased away from the wreck, heading east.

The main body of the Yard Gnome Action Team had moved forward to the river bank, a difficult business in the soft, muddy ground, and chosen a position on a sandy patch out of sight of the Interstate.

“Captain Jack, take watch,” Bear rubbed his head. No one else was inclined to give orders, nor seemed inclined to object to his. “Doc, make sure everyone is OK. Hey, are we all here?”

“Yep. Moogie made it,” the medic held up the gnome. He had produced an outdoors folding chair from a forest green nylon tube and was sitting comfortably. The chair was green nylon suspended between black plastic rods, and looked surreal in their current surroundings.

“No, wasn’t there a woman in a purple tee shirt? A black woman?”

“I think she was Cuban,” the road-flare guy offered. “But I didn’t see her after we started moving.”

“Great.” Bear looked back the way they came. “Let me catch my breath and scrape off some of the mud-maybe she just stopped to rest. I’m Bear, by the way.”

“Dyson Winters,” he offered his hand, which was hard and calloused. “You guys are pretty squared away.”

“I saw you with the road flares-that was hardcore. That’s Doc in the chair, that’s Addison, the good-looking guy is JD, and that’s Captain Jack Sawyer. Marv, a soldier, should be joining us soon. He’s what passes for our leader, I guess, although we’re mostly a self-propelled clusterfuck.”

“This is Moogie,” Doc held up the statue again. “We’re the Yard Gnome Action Team, helping Marv get to Texas, part of his mission.”

The young couple were Jack and Toni Adams from Dayton Ohio, on their way home from a honeymoon at Disney World and assorted other tourist points. They had rented a car when flights out of Florida were grounded. She was a pert little blond who did hair, he was a sandy-haired assistant manager of a Jiffy Lube. Dyson turned out to be the operator of a martial arts and mixed fighting styles dojo in Atlanta returning from a UFC event in Miami.

“JD, get an inventory of what we’ve got,” Bear sat down and flipped open his Buck lock blade one-handed.  “What’re you guys’ plans?”

“We’re heading back to Dayton,” Jack said. “I’m still working on a plan.”

Noting the unspoken disconnect, Bear started scraping mud off his boots. “Dyson?”

“I’ll stick with you guys until you get close to Atlanta,” the martial artist shrugged. “I think a group is going to be needful.”

“Won’t the government start…sorting things out?” Toni asked, fear in her voice. Jack put his arm around her shoulders.

“Sure,” Dyson nodded, handing his pack to JD. “Just a matter of days. But right now, how do we get across the river?” He stabbed a dirty finger towards I-75. “I could slip across, I’m a sneaky bastard, but there’s no way a group will make it. Those things tend to stay in place.”

“I don’t know,” Bear admitted. “But Marv is an Airborne Ranger, and I expect he’ll have ideas. Doc, where are you going?”

“Just a little bit east-I’m going to burn these samples I took. I’m using Sterno, so there won’t be any smoke.”

“Is that safe?”

“Very much so.”

“Wait, you mean you had those samples you took back at Sid’s in the Land Rover this whole time?”

Doc held up a multi-compartmented container. “Full isolation protocols, never fear. I needed time for the protein tests to run their course.”

“Doc, if I find out you’re carrying any piece, part, or extrusion of an infected subject, or anything similar, I will beat you like a rented mule. You could live to a hundred and the beating will still be fresh and clear in your memory, you get it?”

“How can I conduct research?” the medic protested.

“Don’t. Because if I catch you trying, you’ll never conduct anything with those hands again. I’m not kidding-I just beat a Denny’s waitress to death with a baseball bat, and I’m not in the mood to compromise. We are permanently a virus-free zone.”

“What if Marv says it’s OK?”

“Marv would probably shoot you. Besides, what he thinks doesn’t affect me-I ain’t in the Army.”

Doc headed off, muttering.

“Well met, old chap,” Captain Jack drawled cheerfully. The others turned to see a muddy Marv limping into camp.

“…and the truck rolled,” Marv took another drink from the bottle of water. “I’m the sole survivor, as it were. The guys involved looked to be a mix of Hispanic narcos and Asian guys, but not Chinese, probably further south. Indonesian, I’m guessing based on the coins one guy had. The operators from the Wal Mart truck were wearing wet suits, zombie armor, I figure. They had worked up a barrier of heavy plastic sheeting over the trailer entrance just inside the doors which I think was intended to delay the infected long enough for the operators to get clear.”

“In short, a terror attack,” JD observed.

“Exactly.”

“Here, take these,” Doc shook two pills from a bottle into Marv’s hand. “Anti-inflammatory. I’ll give you some muscle relaxers when we make camp.”

“Now, post-mission debriefing: what, if any, intelligence did we get from this operation, besides what I just told you guys?”

“The zeds don’t like fire,” Bear pointed out. “Dyson held them at bay with railroad flares.”

“They are easily distracted, and if they lose sight of the target, they generally won’t re-acquire,” Captain Jack said.

“Baseball bats suck,” Bear shook his head. “Too hard to breach the skull.”

“Good stuff,” Marv nodded. “The more we learn, the better off we are.”

“My point exactly…” Doc began, but Bear cut him off.

“Doctor Frankenstein has been carting around infected samples,” the biker jerked a thumb at the medic.

“That ends,” Marv shook his head. “We have enough problems. Destroy all you have and don’t gather any more.”

“But I confirmed my theory-the saliva-producing glands are the vector epicenter,” Doc protested. “Blood is a possible transmission medium, of course, but its much less so than, say, HIV. It is also remarkably weak-even the saliva won’t remain vital for more than seconds outside a body.”

“Great, you’ve confirmed your theory.” Marv gave Doc a thumbs-up. “I catch you with another sample and your next theory will be establishing whether a human being can survive being gelded with unsterile instruments. You read me?”

“…yeah,” the medic muttered. 

“What’s our supply situation?” 

JD shrugged. “We kept all our firearms and ammunition, but we lost most of the melee weapons-we’re down to one bat and Addison’s ice axe. Oh, yes, Doc has a katana. We got all the medical gear and probably enough camping gear to function, and about a day’s worth of bottled water, but no food.”

“I had a bunch of the food in my pack, but I dropped my pack when I moved on the truck, and I’m too gimped up to even think about going back for it.”

“I’ll get it,” Dyson volunteered. “I’m a stealthy bastard, bow hunt and all that. The sun should start setting in twenty minutes-I’ll go before full dark.”

“These aren’t deer,” Marv pointed out.

“I can out-run ‘em if I have to,” the martial artist shrugged. “I’m willing.”

“OK, if you’re sure. What was in the bags I brought in?”

“The black bag had a Mac-10 and five extra magazines for it, plus six of these magazines,” JD held one up.

“P-mags for an AR-15 family weapon,” Marv grinned. “I’ll carry them-I feel lost with my pouches empty.”

“And six hundred rounds of 9mm, one hundred rounds of 5.56mm, and fifty rounds of twelve gauge buckshot, all boxed. The pack had five rolls of duct tape, and a lot of rope.”

“That helps. Addison, can you use a Mac-10? Good, since you don’t like long guns, it’s yours. Give the SiG to Doc. Now all we have to do is arm Dyson- he can have our one bat until things pick up. Our firepower just took a big jump.”

“Not enough firepower to get across that bridge,” Bear pointed out. “And there doesn’t look like another bridge for quite a ways in either direction.”

Marv struggled to his feet and studied the waterway. “Anybody a real strong swimmer?”

“Yeah, I am,” Dyson said.

“Could you swim this river towing a safety line?”

The Georgian stood and studied the expanse. “Yeah.”

“At night?”

“Sure.”

“OK,” Marv lowered himself back to a seated position. “JD, bring the rope here. Yeah, this could work. We set up a ferry, pull one of those crash barrels back and forth. They’re about a hundred gallon size, so they should displace enough water to support one passenger. Once Dyson gets the rope to the other side it’s a matter of hauling.  You still game, Dyson?”

“Hell, yeah!”

“OK, come twilight you get the food-pack and suss out the lay of the barrels. They’re bright yellow, so getting one without the infected noticing will be tricky. We’ll cross under the cover of darkness and hole up someplace. One more thing,” the big Ranger dug into his thigh pocket. “Doc, you are the electronic guru: can you fix this?”

Doc examined the satellite phone. “Not with what I have-the antenna has broken off and the battery pack is damaged. With some tools and some spares…maybe.”

“You’ve had a sat phone this whole time?” JD demanded.