Red Hammer: Voodoo Plague Book 4 (22 page)

“Can we push through that many?”  Martinez asked without
taking her eyes off the seething mass of flesh.

“We can, and we will.”  I said, intentionally sounding more
confident than I felt at the moment.  “We don’t have a choice.” I said silently
within my own head.

“Fast or slow?”  She asked.

“Slow and steady wins the race, Captain.”  I said.  She
looked at me, grinned slightly and turned back to the front as she started to
accelerate.

It took less than a minute for them to drive back into the
rain, Jackson slowing to a crawl when visibility was once again reduced to
nothing.  Lightning flashed close behind them, the sharp crack of thunder rattling
the truck less than a second later.  Dog whined and climbed into Rachel’s lap,
somewhat comforted when she wrapped both arms around him and hugged him to her
chest.  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jackson check his watch.

“Are we going to make it?”  She asked.  He shrugged and
reached up to adjust his earpiece.

“Crow’s Nest, Black Dog.  Copy?”  Jackson said into the
radio.

“Black Dog?  Really?”  Rachel looked at him with a small
grin.

“Don’t ask.”  Jackson snorted a laugh then went quiet to listen
to the radio.  “What’s status of evacuation?  I’m inbound from town.  ETA 10
mikes.”

He listened some more before speaking again.  “Copy.  Three
souls inbound if you can hold one of them.”

Rachel didn’t think it was sounding promising.  She
suspected Jackson was being told they would miss the train and was asking if
one of the helicopters could wait for them.  John seemed to be in love with the
big, noisy, bone vibrating machines, but she didn’t share his feelings.  The
damn things could go up and down and change direction so fast she always felt
like her stomach was having to play catch up. 

“Copy.”  Jackson spoke the single word and let out a breath
of frustration.

“What?”  Rachel asked when it didn’t seem he was going to
share the news.

“We’ve missed our ride out of here.  We’re going to drive to
Little Rock and meet up with them at Little Rock Air Force Base, then continue
on to Oklahoma City.  The storm’s coming fast and the Colonel doesn’t want to
risk any of our air assets by sticking around waiting for us.”

“How far is Little Rock?”

“Maybe a hundred miles.  Hours in this shit,” he said,
waving a hand at the storm raging around them.  “Ninety minutes if I can see to
drive.”

The rain continued as they pushed on to the west.  Jackson
stopped and reversed when they passed a sign that pointed to I-40 westbound. 
Neither of them had seen the sign until they were already past the turn. 
Following the curving ramp they climbed up onto the Interstate, but had to keep
the speed under 10 miles an hour.  There were wrecks and abandoned vehicles
strewn across the pavement.  Nothing they couldn’t maneuver around as long as
they saw the obstacle in time to avoid it.

Within a couple of minutes the rain eased off from fire hose
to bucket brigade volume and Jackson pushed their speed up slightly.  Then the
hail started.  Small at first, the chunks of ice no larger than a pencil
eraser, but quickly growing to the size of golf balls.  The nearly constant
impact of the ice on the roof of the truck sounded like a hundred blacksmiths
all beating on the metal at the same time.  The windshield cracked when a
particularly large hunk of ice smashed down onto it, the crack spreading as the
smaller hail stones continued their barrage.  Lightning and thunder were now
constant.

“It’s a good thing the Colonel didn’t hold a helo back for
us.”  Jackson commented.  “This kind of storm can put one into the ground in a
hurry.  Hail and rotor blades are not a good combination.”

Rachel just nodded, holding Dog tight to her body, feeling his
heart pounding away.  He had pressed his face under her chin and she talked to
him in a soothing voice, trying to comfort him as much as she was trying to
distract herself.

With no warning the hail and rain stopped, like someone had
thrown a switch to shut off the storm.  Lightning and thunder continued,
though, the countryside around them being lit in an electric white strobe every
few seconds.

“Oh, fuck me running.”  Jackson said after one of the
lightning flashes.

“What?”  Rachel looked around, but it was completely dark
other than the road in reach of their headlights.  Jackson pointed to their
left, out his window, and a moment later lightning flashed again.

The fraction of a second of light was more than enough for
Rachel to see the tornado less than half a mile south of where they were
driving on the Interstate.  She saw a brown monster that had to be close to a
mile across where it touched the ground.  In the instant of light she had seen
huge pieces of debris, frozen in the air by the flash, swirling around the
vortex.

“OK, you need to drive really fucking fast!”  She said,
trying to keep herself from screaming.

Jackson had already floored the accelerator and the truck
was gaining speed.  Lightning flashed again, the tornado still looming large
and way too close.  Swerving around a wrecked minivan, Jackson gritted his
teeth when a motorcycle lying on its side appeared in the lights.  Yanking the
wheel he avoided it, but nearly turned them over.  Regaining control he kept
the throttle hard to the floor as Rachel stared out the window, waiting for
another flash of lightning.  She didn’t have to wait long.

“It’s closer!”  This time she did scream when the lightning
strobed.

“How close?”  Jackson shouted back.

“How the hell do I know?  Close!  Damn close!  Just drive!” 
She yelled back, eyes glued to the spot in the darkness where the tornado was.

Their speed steadily climbed, and mercifully there weren’t
any more wrecks that had to be avoided and Jackson was able to keep them in a
straight line.  Lightning flashed and it was closer.  They could hear it now, a
low roar much like Rachel remembered Niagara Falls sounding when she had
visited.  Leaves, small branches and trash started blowing across the road in
front of them.  The tornado was getting closer.

Rachel glanced at the speedometer and saw they were
traveling at 80 miles an hour, the needle holding steady.  She looked back in
time to see another flash, the tornado now close enough that it filled the
entire horizon.  Chunks of debris larger than the truck they were in were
caught up in the swirling winds.  She remembered her dad saying that the debris
in a tornado was what killed you, not the wind.  She didn’t know if that was
true, or an old wives’ tale, but had no doubt the debris she was seeing was dangerous
enough to end their day in hurry.

“Faster!”  She shouted.

“This is it.  It won’t go any faster!”  Jackson shouted
back, hands locked on the steering wheel as he peered forward trying to see
farther than the headlights reached.

The truck didn’t have a smooth ride to begin with, but it
suddenly got much rougher as the wind started buffeting against it and pushing them
around on the wet pavement.  Lightning flashed and the tornado looked close
enough to reach out and touch.  They weren’t going to outrun it.

“Find a low spot, like an underpass.  That’s our only
chance!”  Rachel yelled over the roar of the engine and bellow of the wind.

Jackson had grown up in Mississippi, not far away, and he’d
learned about the danger of tornados at an early age.  He also knew exactly
what Rachel was talking about.  Tornados don’t follow small changes in the
terrain.  Ditches, underpasses, anything that was significantly different in
elevation than the surrounding terrain would be passed over and left relatively
unscathed.  He’d seen it happen a dozen times when he was a kid, but the
problem was there weren’t any places he could see to seek shelter from the
storm.

The part of Arkansas they were in was table top flat, and
the Interstate ran a perfectly straight line across that table.  It actually
was built up above the surrounding terrain which was predominantly flooded rice
paddies.  All they needed was somewhere to get a few feet below the average
ground level.

The buffeting from the wind grew worse, and their speed
slowly dropped to below 75 even though Jackson still had the engine wide open. 
They were in the “suck zone” of the tornado now, the air being pulled into the
vortex so swiftly it was slowing their progress.  Larger pieces of debris were
flying towards them, slamming into the grill and windshield as they were sucked
into the hungry storm.

“There!”  Rachel shouted, pointing ahead and to the right. 
In a flash of lightning she’d seen a raw scar cut into the earth along the side
of the freeway.  A construction project of some kind, and it had apparently
required the digging of a deep ditch a few feet to the right of the pavement.

“Hold on!”  Jackson shouted.  He fought the wheel,
struggling to maintain control of the truck as the wind speed increased. 
Cranking the wheel hard to the right he crashed through the safety barricade
and they went airborne for a moment when the ground dropped out from under them
and the truck slammed down into the water filled ditch.

Martinez had us rolling at a steady 15 miles an hour when
the front bumper contacted the gate.  The 14 ton MRAP shoved it open and
compressed the front ranks of bodies packed against it, then started to slow. 
Martinez fed in more power and the truck kept rolling, crushing bodies against
the fences that lined the driveway and under its massive tires.  The screams of
the females were audible even through the thick armor and ballistic glass.

The engine strained in low gear as we continued to bull our
way deeper into the crush of infected.  I tried to estimate how much weight was
pushing against the front bumper, but quickly gave up.  We’d either make it or
we wouldn’t.  Figuring out how much resistance was coming from all of those
bodies wouldn’t help us at this point.

The MRAP slowed more, a glance at the instrument panel
showing we were down to less than 10 miles an hour.  Our Russian guests were
cursing and breathing like they’d just run a 100 yard sprint, then I realized
so was I.  It wasn’t hot in the vehicle, but we were all sweating, filling the
air with the stink of fear.

I glanced over at Martinez and she was completely focused on
driving.  She was also cursing in a steady stream of Spanish which I understood
a little better than Russian.  I learned a few new ways to combine words for
different parts of the human anatomy as well as a couple of biological
functions.  I couldn’t help but snort a laugh when she got very creative with
different Spanish curse words for the act of procreation.

“What the hell is funny?  Sir.”  Martinez asked, wiping
sweat off her forehead.

“Not a thing, Captain.  Just expressing my appreciation for
your heritage.”  I said.

“Fuck off.  Sir.”  She said.  I grinned despite myself. 
Maybe she wasn’t showing the proper military respect, but I’d take a woman like
her, with a fire in her belly when things got rough, any day over someone who
was too worried about offending me to act like a human.  Guess that’s why it
took the end of the world for me to become an officer.

We kept pushing, the engine roaring, and the grin
disappeared from my face when our speed dropped to five miles an hour.  A fast
walking pace.  We were in our lowest gear and Martinez had the throttle wide
open, and we were barely making a fast walking pace.  Much slower and I was
going to ask the Russians to get out and push.

The bodies in front of us kept compressing.  The infected
that had been on the road had pushed forward when we appeared and crashed the
gate.  We weren’t just pushing what was right in front of us, we were also
battling against the entire rear of the herd that was trying to reach us.  The
tires began slipping, losing traction.  I looked out my side window and
couldn’t see pavement.  We had to be driving on bodies, not asphalt.  Another
ten feet and we came to a full stop, engine bellowing and tires making a high
pitched whine as they spun uselessly.

“Don’t blow the engine.”  I said, a moment later reaching
out and placing a hand on Martinez’ arm when she didn’t respond.  When I
touched her she lifted her foot off the throttle and the engine settled into a
smooth idle.  Infected pressed in from every side so tightly I didn’t
understand how they weren’t killing themselves in the crush. 

“We’re fucked.”  Captain Vostov said from behind me.  I
turned and looked at her and felt a moment of pity for her.  Her hair and
blouse were soaked with sweat and her skirt had finally made it all the way up
around her waist.  The two Russian Spetsnaz looked concerned, but were keeping
their shit together. 

“Not yet, Irina.”  I said, using her name instead of rank. 
“There’s one thing you Russians have never understood about us Americans.”

“What’s that?”  She asked in a shaking voice.  For the first
time since meeting her I could hear an accent. 

“We never fucking quit!”  I said.  “Martinez, rock us back
and forth to get some traction, then make a left turn.” 

“What?  Into the mine field?”  She asked, the fear apparent
in her voice.

“Captain, what does the MR in MRAP stand for?”  I coaxed her
as she wiped more sweat off her face.

“Umm, it stands for Mine Resistant…”  Her voice trailed off
as she realized what I was saying.  “Yes, sir!  Left turn coming up!”

I was more worried than I was letting on.  Yes, MRAPs were
designed and built to counter the use of roadside bombs by Al Qaeda in Iraq and
the Taliban in Afghanistan.  They were tough as hell.  And I hoped that the
land mines that had been used as part of Los Alamos security measures were the
lower powered anti-personnel variety.  If that was the case, we should be able
to roll through the mine field with ease.  If that was the case.  Regardless,
we were out of options.

Martinez jammed the truck in reverse and hit the throttle. 
The tires spun, grabbed and moved us a couple of feet then started spinning
again.  Back in drive we moved forward maybe three feet, then started spinning
again.  She repeated this process a few times, turning us towards the fence
just a few feet to our left every time she went into drive.  Finally it felt like
we had all the traction we were going to get, and the nose of the MRAP was at a
45 degree angle to the fence.

Now, instead of thousands of infected stacked up and pushing
against us, there were less than a hundred crammed in between us and the
fence.  In drive, Martinez pressed the accelerator to the floor and the tires
slipped for a moment before grabbing.  The infected in front were pushed back
and compressed against the fence which immediately started bowing outwards. 
Steering for the gap between two of the steel support posts, Martinez kept
pressure on the throttle and the fence ruptured, spilling crushed and mangled
bodies into the sandy no-man’s land behind it.

We followed them through the fresh gap in the chain link,
shedding infected as we bounced over the concrete curb at the edge of the
pavement.  The MRAP handled the soft sand like it had been born for it, which
it had.  The infected from the driveway were pouring through the opening in our
wake, but they couldn’t keep up.  We heard a loud explosion from behind as an
infected found a mine that we had somehow managed to miss.

“Get past the back edge of the herd, then through the fence
and onto the road.”  I said to Martinez, pointing out the windshield at the
infected filling the road to our right.

Before she could respond we found our first mine.  It
sounded like Thor himself had come down and struck the side of the MRAP with
his hammer.  Vostov let out with a decidedly un-military, but very feminine,
scream.  The heavy truck barely shuddered and didn’t slow down.  If there was
any damage, it was to the exterior armor and wasn’t a concern at the moment.

We hit two more mines before traveling far enough to get
clear of the herd on the road.  When I felt we were far enough I pointed and
Martinez turned the wheel, speeding up to crash through a section of chain link
fencing.  The truck didn’t even shudder, slicing through like nothing had
happened, then we were back on pavement. 

I looked behind and saw the herd in pursuit.  As I turned
back to the front there was the sound of a hard impact and a spot on the windshield
the size of a half dollar, directly in front of Martinez’ head, suddenly turned
opaque.  There was a second impact and another opaque spot before I realized
someone was shooting at us with a high caliber rifle.