Recovery: V Plague Book 8 (3 page)

I made
another slow scan of the perimeter of the array then carefully surveyed the
field of solar panels itself.  Nothing was moving and I didn’t see anything to
concern me.  We were standing at almost the center of the long edge of the
giant rectangle defining the area, so there was no distance advantage to going
either right or left. 

Going to the
right brought us to the far edge of the property and nothing but open prairie. 
To the left took us closer to the main building of the casino and kept us on
asphalt.  I opted for the easier path on a smooth surface and signed to Colonel
Crawford that we were moving left.  Stepping off, I glanced over my shoulder
and noted him falling in when I’d opened up about five yards of space.

I’m not one
to get easily spooked, but something about this whole situation was making me
nervous.  Maybe it was the spectral feel to the area, brought about by the
faint light of the moon penetrating the broken cloud cover and reflecting off
the rain-washed panels in a pale, bluish hue.  Maybe it was the thought of all
that open, hidden space underneath the panels. 

There could
literally be thousands of infected hiding under there.  It didn’t help my
nerves that it was raining.  Rain does a great job of creating white noise that
will mask a lot of environmental sounds.  Sounds such as a female infected
sneaking up behind you.

But that was
ridiculous.  The infected didn’t hide.  They attacked.  But what about the
females?  They had shown a level of cunning that I hadn’t seen before when they
took Katie and the others.  Posting sentries.  Cooperating and coordinating
their efforts.  Why couldn’t they be smart enough to hide and attack at a
vulnerable moment?

I’d made the
mistake of letting my mind wander too far afield and managed to come up with
scenarios that weren’t reality.  Or were they?  Oh, fuck it!  Holding up a
clenched fist I signaled for a stop.  Carefully I squatted, rifle at my
shoulder and eye to the night vision scope.  Looking under the closest edge of
the panels I began a slow scan.

Trash
blowing in a night breeze nearly caused me to pull the trigger, but I stopped
myself in time.  Continuing to sweep and look, I saw nothing that shouldn’t
have been there.  Of course there could be some females hiding on the far side
and it was too far away for me to see, but there weren’t any imminent threats. 
Letting out a deep breath I stood up, glanced at Crawford and got us moving
again.

It took us
most of ten minutes to reach the end of the long side of the rectangle and I
adjusted my estimate of the overall size of the array.  It was closer to twenty
acres.  Sure, that’s really not that large, but we were moving slow and
careful.  It would have been easy, and perhaps satisfying, to stride right
along and cover the distance in a couple of minutes.  But why not just go ahead
and put on a cowbell to announce our presence while we were at it?

At the turn
I called another halt to stoop and check under the panels.  More of the same,
or more nothing to be accurate.  Moving again, I checked the open lot to our
left then turned back to keep an eye on the front.  I froze and whipped my
rifle to the right when I thought I detected movement out amongst the panels in
my peripheral vision.  But after a full minute of watching I didn’t see
anything.

Squatting, I
checked the underside but it was still clear.  At least I hoped it was clear. 
In all fairness there was a veritable forest of iron brackets supporting the
panels.  I didn’t think I could see more than a hundred feet into the array
before the view became too jumbled to identify any individual shape.  Unless
something was brightly lit or moving fast I wouldn’t be able to see it.

Shaking my
head I stood and took a step, detecting movement again out of the corner of my
eye.  Frozen, I didn’t look in that direction, just tried to focus the edge of
my vision on whatever was out there.  The human eye’s night vision has a blind
spot directly in the center.  It has something to do with the way the rods,
what allows us to see in low light, are aligned.  Anyway, the ability to see
after dark is much better when you use the periphery of your eye.

So that’s
what I did.  Of course I could have swung the rifle in that direction and
looked through the night vision scope, but that hadn’t worked last time.  If we
were being stalked then it was by something or someone that could recognize I
was looking in their direction and would take shelter beneath the solar panels.

At first
nothing moved, then I saw it again.  Three figures moving amongst the maze
created by the panels.  But they were only visible for a quick moment, then
disappeared.  Without turning my head I signaled for Crawford to move up next
to me.

“We’ve got
company out in the array,” I said in a low mumble when he was standing beside
me.

“Infected?”

“Can’t
tell.  We’re being stalked for sure, but I can’t get a good enough look.”  I
answered.

“Go back or
continue?”  I was glad he was deferring to my judgment in the field.

“Continue,”
I said, and started moving again.

I
intentionally picked up the pace, hoping to force the hand of whatever was
tracking us.  We reached the back edge in a couple of minutes and I made the
turn without slowing.  I was dividing my focus between what was in front of us
and trying to catch another glimpse of movement in the array, but whatever it
was wasn’t showing itself any longer.

Good or
bad?  Had they realized where we were going and stayed hidden below the panels,
moving to arrive at the building first and set up an ambush?  As we drew closer
to the building I slowed, pausing to squat and look under the panels. 
Nothing.  Where the hell were they?  And what were they?

We were
within thirty yards of the corner of the structure and I could see a heavy,
steel door when I caught the movement again.  I’ve never been one to fire at
something that I wasn’t absolutely certain posed a threat, but I didn’t
hesitate.  Spinning I fired four fast bursts at the area where I’d detected
them.  As far as I could tell I didn’t hit anything and decided it was time to
put on some speed.

Breaking
into a sprint I dashed for the building, Crawford running lightly behind me. 
Reaching the door, I grasped the knob and turned but it was locked up tight. 
Stepping back I fired a burst into the knob, raised the muzzle slightly and
blew out the deadbolt.   I kicked hard and it slammed open, a pitch-black
opening in front of me.

When we had
scavenged at the Osprey crash I’d found a working, high intensity flashlight,
and I clicked it on to illuminate the interior.  I could see banks and racks of
equipment, but the building was large and there could have been a hundred
infected out of the reach of my light.  Crawford was right behind me, facing
out across the array, so I stepped through the opening to start clearing the
space.

A quick
sweep revealed nothing more than dark racks full of switches, miles and miles
of thick electrical cabling connecting everything.  Moving deeper, I kept
scanning and picked up the smell of burnt wiring.  Shit.  This was probably
going to turn out to be an exercise in futility. 

“Clear,” I
called over my shoulder. 

No, the
entire building wasn’t clear, but the immediate area was and I wanted to get
both of us inside and that door secured before whatever was outside decided it
was a good time to attack.  I heard Crawford’s foot scrape on the threshold at
the same time I heard the screams from outside.  Not just one or two, but a
whole fucking chorus of voices tore through the night.

“Shit!”  The
Colonel said.

I turned
just before he slammed the door and braced his shoulder against it.  In that
brief instant I saw what had to be at least a hundred females charging directly
at us.  They were popping up from within the array and flowing out from
underneath the closest edge.  Damn it.  I had felt something was wrong before
we even started around the solar panels, but I’d ignored the warning and now we
were trapped.

“Find
something to block this door!”  Crawford shouted as thumps began sounding
against the steel. 

He had turned
and wedged his back against the door, feet braced on the floor and was pushing
against it as hard as he could.  It rattled from the female’s assault, pushing
in an inch before he was able to overcome the pressure and force it closed
again.

The door was
set in a smooth concrete wall and there was no equipment or racks within
fifteen feet of it.  Nothing that could be used as a barricade.  Shining the
light around I spotted several giant spools with wire as thick as my wrist
wrapped around them.  They must have been there in case any repairs were needed
and probably weighed a thousand pounds each.

They
wouldn’t have something on hand that large and heavy unless they had someway to
move it.  Running farther along the wall the spools were stacked against, I saw
a small, electric powered forklift next to a charger.  Hoping and praying it
was charged, I jumped into the seat and couldn’t believe my luck when I saw a
key in the switch.

Turning it
to on I slapped the lever that raised the hooks, shifted into reverse and
mashed down the throttle.  Forks going up, back up alarm beeping, the tires
spun on the smooth concrete for a second then grabbed and I shot away from the
wall.  Forcing myself to slow, I got the machine under control and came to a
stop, spinning the wheel to head for the closest spool.

Not really
getting the hang of the forklift, I kept at it until I got one of the giant
spools raised a few inches off the ground.  Maneuvering, I looked down and
noticed the switch on the dash marked “lights”.  Flipping it up, bright
headlamps came on and now I was able to better see how badly I was handling the
machine.  It wasn’t pretty, but I was getting the job done.

Turned and
moving forward, I headed for where Colonel Crawford still struggled to keep the
door closed.  He was losing the battle, the door pushing open slightly farther
every few seconds until he could force it closed again. 

“Get
clear!”  I shouted as I roared straight at him. 

At the last
moment he leapt aside, the door coming partially open and females starting to
press in.  Then I arrived, the giant spool ramming into the door and crashing
it closed.  Two females lost limbs as the steel door slammed into its frame
with several thousand pounds of force behind it.

The forklift
came to a hard stop and I was nearly thrown out of my seat and into the
windshield.  I had braced but was still a little stunned by the impact. 
Shaking my head to clear it, I released the load so it would sink to the floor. 
There was a horrible screech of metal on metal as the forks were ground along
the surface of the door by the weight of the spool.

Shutting the
machine off, I set the parking brake and stepped out to look at my handiwork. 
At least a couple of tons were now wedged tightly against the door.  There was
no way the infected were getting through.  But for that matter there was also
no way, with them outside, we were getting through either.

“I’m
starting to think coming out here wasn’t one of your better ideas, Major.” 
Colonel Crawford sat on the floor where he’d landed after jumping out of my
way.

“I’m just
getting warmed up, sir.”  I grinned.  “Just wait until you hear how I plan to
get us back to the casino.”

We spent
half an hour clearing the building.  It was even larger than it had appeared
from the outside, and was full of hiding places.  Row upon row of racks of
switches, inverters and monitoring equipment.  Spare parts stacked to the
ceiling and creating alcoves just the right size for a female intent on an
ambush.  And so many more bits, parts, tools and assorted mystery items that I
couldn’t even hope to identify.

The battery
banks were there and took up over half the building.  The smell of burnt wiring
was strongest at one end of the space and when I shone my light around I could
see a massive burn mark on the poured concrete wall.  Tracing the pattern of
the burn I found a cable the size of my arm that penetrated the wall from the
outside.  It fed into a large cabinet from which a dozen smaller cables fed
into subsequent cabinets that divided it even further.

Ignoring the
warning label, I pulled the first cabinet open and immediately spotted the
problem.  The cable was attached to a large, silver connector that would
normally have been bolted to an electrical bus that distributed the power to
the twelve smaller wires.  But the connecter had been melted by the massive
energy surge of the EMP.

“So what is
that and how do we fix it?”  Crawford asked, peering over my shoulder.

“I think
it’s a lightning arrestor,” I said, staring into the cabinet.  “If I’m right
then maybe it did its job, stopped the electrical surge and the system is still
operational.”

“But isn’t
this where the power comes in?  If that’s the case, why wouldn’t there be
electricity going to the casino?”  He leaned forward and thumped a sticker on
the cabinet that labeled the thick cable as supply.

“Maybe
enough of a surge got past to trip some failsafe in the controller?”  I stood
up and walked over to the closest rack of switches and began looking it over
with my flashlight.

“I’m going
to look through the spare parts and see if there’s a replacement for that
thing,” Crawford said.  “And by the way, you still haven’t told me your plan to
get us out of here.”

“Working on
it, sir.”  I said, carefully examining every switch and button in front of me.

An hour
later I had covered half of the control panels and as of yet hadn’t found
anything that didn’t seem to be set in the correct position.  Of course I could
be wasting my time.  The system might have been completely fried and nothing
short of ripping it all out and starting over would solve the problem.  But,
I’d come this far and wasn’t ready to give up.

Still
looking, I paused when I heard an electric drill start up.  Noting the number
of the rack I was examining so I could come back to it, I went to see what the
Colonel was doing.  When I found him he had a large, commercial duty cordless
impact driver in his hand and was removing the bolt that connected the supply cable
to the lightning arrestor.  Once it came free he pulled the melted part out of
the cabinet and tossed it on the floor next to a shiny new one resting in a
plain, cardboard box.

“How did you
know that supply cable wasn’t hot?”  I asked him.

“Because it’s
dark outside,” he replied and began installing the replacement part.

Feeling like
an idiot, I grinned and left him to his work.  Picking up where I left off I
continued my inspection.  Ten minutes later I finished the rack I had been
working on and moved to a new one.  I moved my face closer, recognizing it was
different than what I’d been looking at.  The switches were larger and each
label had the word “master” in front of whatever description was printed on it.

Halfway
through the panel I found a large, rotary switch that wasn’t out of position,
but directly above it there was a small window and an indicator that was red
with “fault” printed in white lettering.  I was excited, but I’ve lived long
enough to know better than to jump at the first pretty face that comes along. 

Noting the
panel number, I kept checking.  Nothing else within the same rack was showing a
fault, but on the very last rack was a switch twice the size of the previous
one I’d found showing the same red indicator.  I’d heard the Colonel running
the drill again and not knowing where he was or what he might be touching, I
went in search of him before resetting either of the switches.

He was just
finishing doing something in another cabinet and I had a pretty good idea what
when I saw several more melted arrestors lying on the floor.

“Found two
master switches in fault,” I said as I walked up.

“Good.  This
was the last damaged part I could find.  At least the batteries should charge
now when the sun comes up.  If the panels outside aren’t blown out.”  He said.

“Time to
find out,” I said, leading the way back to the master control panels.

But now I
had a problem.  There were two switches in fault mode, one obviously
controlling a much larger current than the other.  Which one did I reset first? 
And did it matter? 

I looked
around hoping to spot an operator’s manual, but there wasn’t one to be seen. 
Making my best guess, I selected the smaller switch first.  It made sense to me
but I didn’t try to explain my reasoning to the Colonel.

Grasping the
switch, I tried to turn it towards the “on” position, but it didn’t budge.  I
remembered a house Katie and I had owned years ago.  Something was wrong with
the wiring and it was an almost daily occurrence that she would pop one of the
breakers with her hair dryer or curling iron, and I was usually the one to go
out into the garage to reset it for her.  Turning off first, then back on reset
them.

Holding my
breath, I rotated the switch to the left until it clicked and the red fault
indicator went away, replaced by a black indicator that said “off”.  Turning it
back to the right it clicked in place, the indicator changing to white and
reading “on”.  Other than that, nothing happened.

Moving to
the other panel I grabbed the large switch.  Its handle was long enough that it
completely filled my hand.  It was stiff and hard to turn, but I succeeded in
muscling it to off, took a deep breath and rolled it to on.

Immediately,
fluorescent lights mounted to the ceiling buzzed to life and the sound of
several exhaust fans spinning up came from the direction of the battery bank. 
I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and grinned.

“Good job,
Major!  Now.  How the hell are we getting out of here?”  Crawford asked.

While I’d
been looking at switches I’d had an idea.  It hadn’t taken a lot of
concentration to check them so I’d let my brain work on the problem of how to
get out of here.  And if I do say so myself, I’d come up with a good one.

Keeping
Colonel Crawford in the dark, I went searching for what I needed.  First, and
most importantly, we needed access to the roof.  I suspected there would be a
utility ladder leading to a hatch.  There were too many fans and pipes on the
roof for there to not be easy access for the maintenance staff.

I found the
hatch quickly but didn’t bother to climb up yet.  Gathering what I needed I
lugged it up the ladder, getting soaked when I pushed the hatch open.  Good. 
It was still raining.

On the roof
I dropped two coils of heavy gauge wire and walked to the front edge.  Sticking
my head over I was surprised to see as many females as I did.  I had expected a
hundred at the most but there were probably double that number.  They milled
around the barricaded front door, one of them occasionally testing it.

Striding
back to the hatch I picked up an end of each of the wires and fed them down to
where the Colonel waited.  I gave him enough slack to make the connections
below.  There was a set of positive and negative terminals, controlled by a
switch, which would pull power directly from an inverter tied to one of the
battery banks.  Nothing was labeled to tell me voltages or amperages and I had
no idea if this would work, but it was worth a try.

I spent a
minute telling him what I had in mind, a grin spreading across his face as I
spoke.  While Crawford made the connections below, I stripped several feet of
insulation off the end of each with my Ka-Bar.  Once this was done I began
uncoiling the two lengths of wire.  Reaching the front edge of the building, I put
one of them down and dragged the other to a point above the left edge of the
group of females.  Pushing the wire over the parapet I was satisfied when the
exposed end came to rest in a large puddle of rainwater.

I repeated
the process with the other wire after taking it to the opposite side of the
group.  It didn’t land in a puddle, but the bare copper was in direct contact
with the wet ground.  Taking one last quick look, I ran to the hatch and leaned
in.

“Ready,” I
shouted.

“Five
seconds!”  Crawford shouted back, giving me time to get to the edge of the roof
before he pulled the switch.

I ran back
and looked down.  The females still hadn’t noticed me and were apparently not
interested in the two wires hanging down the outside of the building.  Too bad.

I guess I’ve
seen too many movies because I was expecting spectacular sparks and arcs of
electricity when Crawford hit the switch.  But, like so many things, what
happens on the screen is nothing like real life.  At first I wasn’t even aware
that the Colonel had started the flow of electricity.  Then I noticed that all
of the females had begun twitching like they were parroting a Miley Cyrus
performance. 

Next,
despite the rain, I began to smell burning hair and flesh.  Then they began
falling, jerking as the electricity surging through them overrode all control
of their muscles.  Other than the sounds of bodies falling and arms and legs
drumming on the ground, the death of over two hundred females was almost
silent.  I thought I could hear an electrical sizzling sound but that may well
have been my mind playing the soundtrack I expected.

I was
mesmerized, watching their spasming bodies and had lost track of how long the
current had been flowing when there was a loud pop from inside the building and
an alarm bell began ringing.  The females stopped all movement and went still. 
I wanted to watch to make sure none of them got up but was worried Crawford was
in trouble.  Racing to the roof hatch I started to step through, pausing when
the alarm bell went quiet.

“You OK,
sir?”  I called down, noting a thick cloud of smoke being vented out of several
of the pipes that stuck up from the roof.

“All good. 
I was around the corner,” he shouted a moment later.  “Overloaded the battery
bank and one of them exploded.  There’s battery acid everywhere.  Don’t come
down the ladder.  Did it work?”

“I think
so.  Stand by,” I yelled and ran back to the edge.

None of the
females had moved, and the smell of burned hair and cooked flesh was even
stronger.  I stood in the rain watching them for a couple of minutes.  It had
worked!  I jogged back to the hatch.

“All down,
sir.  Just a whole bunch of crispy critters now.”  I said.

“That’s
good.  The battery that exploded spread acid on most of the surfaces in its
immediate vicinity, including the ladder.  You’re going to have to find another
way down.”

I stood and
looked around but didn’t see any more hatches in the roof. 

“How secure
are the wires we just used?”  I shouted.  “Will they hold me?”

“Negative. 
Both of them are burned most of the way through.  Hang tight and keep an eye
out.  I’ll be out the side door in a minute and pick you up.”  Crawford shouted
back.

Pick me up? 
Did he inhale too many toxic fumes from the battery that just exploded?  I
decided to trust him and returned to the edge of the roof and used my rifle’s
night vision scope to scan for threats.  The rain was slacking off and as I
stood there I thought about how what we just did wouldn’t have worked if it
hadn’t been raining.  Without the water we wouldn’t have been able to get the
entire group.  Was luck finally swinging in my direction?

I didn’t see
any movement and a moment later heard a rolling door open somewhere in the far
wall of the building.  A few seconds later the forklift I’d used to block the
front entrance turned the left corner, Colonel Crawford behind the wheel.  The
forks were already coming up as he drove and by the time he reached my location
they were level with the roof.

Stepping
over the parapet I put a foot on each fork and held tightly to the back of it
as he lowered me to ground level.  I started to step off but he waved for me to
stay put.

“Why walk
when we can ride?”  He grinned and headed for the casino.