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Authors: Dirk Patton
Rolling Thunder - 03
Rolling Thunder
Voodoo Plague Book
3
Text Copyright © 2014
by Dirk Patton
Copyright © 2014 by
Dirk Patton
All Rights Reserved
This work may not be redistributed, copied or reproduced by
any means for any purpose other than brief excerpts used as part of literary
and critical reviews.
The people, places
and events depicted herein are fictitious and are purely from the author’s
imagination. Any resemblance to locales or persons, living or dead, is
coincidental.
Also by Dirk Patton
Voodoo Plague
Crucifixion: Voodoo
Plague Book Two
Rules Of Engagement:
A John Chase Short Story
Thank you for purchasing Rolling Thunder, Book 3 in the
Voodoo Plague series. As you’ve probably already guessed from the title this
is the third book in the series. If you haven’t read the first two books I
would encourage you to do so first, otherwise you will be lost as this book is
intended to continue the story in a serialized format. I intentionally did nothing
to explain comments and events that reference Books 1 and 2. Regardless, you have
my heartfelt thanks for reading my work and I hope you’re enjoying the adventure
as much as I am. As always, a good review on Amazon is greatly appreciated and
the best way to ensure Book 4 happens.
Crying parents tell their children
If you survive, don't do as we did
A son exclaims there'll be nothing to do to
Her daughter says she'll be dead with you
The
Fixx – Stand or Fall
I pressed harder on the accelerator as I heard two more
blasts from the shotgun. Sergeant Jackson of the Murfreesboro Police and a few
dozen others were making a last stand against the horde of infected that had
breached the defensive wall we had set up to buy time for evacuees to board
trains that would take them to safety. Not all of us made it onto those
trains. Some were paying the ultimate price and falling to the unstoppable
rampage of the infected. I didn’t hear any more shots and would have liked to
think it was because I had driven out of hearing range of the battle, but I
knew better. The handful of defenders who had been caught before boarding the train
wouldn’t stand up to the thousands of raging females for even a minute.
Glancing in the small mirror mounted to the dash of the
purloined ambulance, I noted that Rachel was still unconscious. She had been
flattened by a massive explosion when a truck stop’s underground fuel tanks had
touched off. I didn’t know how badly, if at all, she was injured, but I had
taken a cautious approach and strapped her to a backboard after putting a
cervical collar on her. Just in case. I’m not a religious man and couldn’t
summon up a prayer for her, but I fervently hoped she was just knocked out with
no other trauma. In the new world we found ourselves in, a world where
survival of the fittest was truly the law of the land, any incapacitating
injury was also a death sentence. In the seat next to me Dog let out a series
of low whines as he looked into the back at Rachel’s still form.
As I drove, I looked over the cab of the ambulance. The
vehicle had a compass integrated into the dash and told me I was driving north.
Between the seats a sturdy laptop mount held a rugged looking computer.
Driving with one hand I raised the lid and the screen flared to life,
displaying a login screen. Shit. I can use a computer with the best of them
but don’t ask me to try to hack into something. Blow it up, ok. Shoot it, no
problem. Hack into it? I’m not even sure what that really means. Closing the
lid to get rid of the light from the screen I caught a brief glimpse of something
shiny on the outside of the laptop. Clicking on the overhead light I saw a
single strip of tape with some writing on it. Leaning forward I could make out
“EMTsROCK99” hand written in black sharpie. Raising the lid back up I typed
this in one handed and was rewarded with the display changing and showing a
detailed road map with a pulsing blue dot that had to be the ambulance’s
location.
By now I had driven at least ten miles and felt safe enough
to stop so I could figure out where we were and where we were going. Pulling
to the side of the road I made sure the doors were locked and decided to turn
on the red and blue emergency lights on the roof while I was stopped. There
were still people north of the approaching herd and they would be fleeing to
safety in a panic. All I needed was a van load of refugees to plow into the
ambulance. I hoped the emergency lights would help us avoid that little
problem.
I played with the map for a few moments, zooming in then out
and scrolling around. We were currently sitting on Tennessee state highway 10
and were about 35 miles south of Interstate 40, highway 10 running north from
Murfreesboro and staying to the east of Nashville. I wanted to avoid the large
city if at all possible. The original attacks had not included Nashville, but
the second wave of infection just a couple of days ago probably made that a
moot point. The day the second wave had hit I had briefly spoken on the radio
with a Royal Air Force humanitarian aid flight and was told that they had lost
all communication with Nashville. I had a pretty good idea why that had
happened and didn’t feel like confirming my belief the hard way.
Still staring at the screen I ducked involuntarily when a
helicopter flared into a hover just in front of me, a hundred feet in the air,
and a blinding spotlight lit up the inside of the ambulance. I recognized the
sound of a Black Hawk helicopter and drug my pack out of the back and dug
through it for my secure comm unit. It took me a minute to find it and get the
earpiece inserted in my good ear, then another couple of minutes as I tried
different channels to communicate with the helicopter.
“US ground forces on secure comm calling unidentified Black
Hawk.” I said into the throat mic.
“Devil three seven on station over you,” a voice with a
heavy Boston accent replied when I hit the right frequency. “Identify yourself
and state your status.”
“Major John Chase, Fifth Group. I have two souls with me,
one injured, and need evac. Can you comply?”
There was a long pause before the voice responded,
“Negative. Aircraft is already over capacity.”
I wasn’t surprised. “Do you have a medic on board?” I
asked, glancing at Rachel in the mirror. “The casualty needs assessed and
possibly treated.”
“Wait one,” was the reply.
A long moment later the spotlight winked out and in the
ambulance’s headlights I could see four ropes drop to the ground beneath the
helicopter. Moments later four figures slid down them to the pavement. One
wore a large pack, the other three had rifles strapped to their bodies and
immediately set up a defensive perimeter the second their boots hit the
ground. Killing the ambulance’s emergency beacons and headlights I stepped out
to greet them, Dog jumping to the ground next to me. Another figure slid down
a rope to the asphalt and the helicopter pulled up and away before going into a
tight orbit around the area.
I walked forward and first met the medic who I directed to
the back of the ambulance. He clicked on a low power light and looked at the
bloody shirt wrapped around my head, but I waved him on. Rachel was the
priority. The last man who had fast roped down walked up to me, stopping a few
feet away and looking me up and down. He wore First Sergeant’s chevrons on his
uniform and a green beret on his head. His name tape read Glendon. He glanced
at my oak leaves and nodded a greeting. He wasn’t being disrespectful. You
never salute a superior officer on the battle field. If you did it would be
like holding up a big neon sign for the enemy that says “kill this guy, he’s
important”.
“Could have used you guys back in Murfreesboro,” I said,
checking on the location of the three men who were watching our perimeter.
“Was that you? That big explosion?” He asked and I
recognized the Boston accent I’d heard on the radio. Guess I hadn’t been
talking to the pilot.
“Yep, that was pretty much the end of us. The herd is only
a few miles behind but we held it long enough to get two trainloads of evacuees
out of town.”
“Well, Major, we were northwest of Nashville picking up one of
the civilian leadership when we saw the explosion and came to investigate.”
Civilian leadership meant a member of congress, or one of the President’s
cabinet members. Being as we were in Tennessee I had a reasonably good idea
which it was. “He’s on board with his family right now and isn’t too happy
that we’ve delayed to help you.” A small grin spread across his face. I knew
how he felt about politicians. They talk tough, but tend to rant like children
when they’re scared, and to a man, the military enjoys inconveniencing them as
much as can be gotten away with. I grinned back and motioned for him to walk
with me so I could go see how the medic was doing with Rachel.
“Well, you have my thanks for dropping in. Tell me what’s
going on. Is Nashville safe? What about Fort Campbell?”
“Fort Campbell has fallen,” he said, all traces of the grin
gone from his face and voice. “The defensive line at the southern Tennessee
border has also fallen. Nashville is chaos. Whatever the hell happened a
couple of days ago, well, half the people in Nashville turned or went crazy or
whatever the hell you want to call it. The other half is doing the best it can
to survive, but there’s no coordinated effort and after the packs overrun one
group of survivors they move on to the next. You don’t want to go anywhere
near Nashville.”
I nodded, not surprised by anything he was telling me. We
reached the back of the ambulance and looked in on Rachel and the medic who had
removed the cervical collar and was running his hands over the back of her head
and neck. She was still unconscious. Dog stood watching the medic, one of the
rare times his ears weren’t straight up. Sergeant Glendon raised a hand to his
earpiece, listened for a moment then excused himself and stepped away to hold a
conversation.
“How is she?” I asked the medic.
“What happened to her?” He asked without pausing in his
examination.
“That huge explosion you guys saw. She was maybe 250 yards
from it and got knocked flat. She was on her back, unconscious when I got to
her.”
“She’s got a big lump on the back of her head, probably from
hitting the ground when she got knocked down. I can’t find any other signs of
injury, but with her unconscious I can’t do any of the tests I’d normally do
for spinal injuries. Why did you put her on the backboard?” He stopped what
he was doing and turned to look at me.
“Just seemed like the right thing to do.”
“OK, well like I said, all I can find is the lump on her
head. She probably has a pretty bad concussion. There’s no sign of it being
worse than that. Her pupils are fine, equal and reactive to light. Her vitals
are all good. There’s really nothing I can do for her at this point.” He
started packing away the equipment he had used to check out Rachel.
“So, should I leave her on the backboard?”
“For now I would. It won’t hurt anything. If she wakes up
and can feel and move all her limbs, unstrap her and try to keep her from
taking any more blows to the head for a few days. If she wakes up and has
problems…” He stopped talking and looked at me with a helpless expression.
“Yeah, I got it,” I said, letting him off the hook. He
packed up the last of his equipment and turned to me.
“Want me to take a look at your head?” I had forgotten I
was injured too. Nodding I climbed up into the back of the ambulance and sat
down on the bench next to the medic. He carefully untied the bloody shirt and
unwrapped it from around my head. As soon as the pressure came off the pain
hit and I could feel blood running down the side of my face.
“Damn, Major. Your ear is almost completely ripped off.”
Well, that explained why I could hardly hear out of that ear.
The medic worked fast. First he numbed me up, then cleaned
the raw edges of skin where the infected had torn my ear lose. Opening a
couple of drawers in the ambulance he found a suture kit and set to work.
“This won’t be pretty,” he said as he worked. “Sorry, but I
don’t do this a lot. You’ll probably have a hell of scar, but at least I think
it will save the ear.”
I grunted, not really giving a damn about another scar.
It’s not like I could have ever been a male model to begin with. Not that I’m
ugly, but… hell, you get the idea. Anyway, it took him about 15 minutes to sew
me up, bandage the ear and treat the gashes on my face where the female
infected had torn me open. As he was finishing up, Sergeant Glendon walked up
to the back of the ambulance and looked in.
“Sorry, Major, but we’ve got to get our asses in gear, and
you’d better do the same. The Air Force has a big present on the way for the
herd of infected.”
“What’s happening?” A nuke was the first thought that went
through my head. God help us if we started popping those off on our own soil.
“They’re calling it Rolling Thunder.”