Transmission: Voodoo Plague Book 5 (17 page)

Roach was in a near panic as he drove away from the water
treatment plant.  His heart was racing, hands were shaking and a cold, greasy
sweat covered his face.  He hadn’t planned.  Hadn’t prepared.  Had killed too
close to home and had gotten sloppy.  He’d been seen.

He’d taken care of the witness, but what would he have done
if the man had been armed and willing to fight?  What if there had been two men
there working?  Slamming his palm on the Humvee’s steering wheel he screamed in
frustration at his own weakness.  Weakness that had led him to get rid of
Synthia without thinking it through first.

Yes, she was a liability.  She had known things that could
send him to the gallows, but had he really needed to kill her?  Yes.  He had. 
He had needed to correct his mistake of bringing her along.  She had seemed
like a good partner at first.  Mature beyond her years.  Then the immaturity of
the teenager had revealed itself when she didn’t get what she wanted when she
wanted it.  Why had he been so stupid?

Roach suddenly slammed on the brakes, bringing the Hummer to
a shuddering stop in the middle of the road.  What would he tell people?  Not
that he and Synthia socialized, but people knew about her.  How would he
explain her disappearance?  There was no logical way off the base, so he
couldn’t say she left after an argument.  If she left him, she’d still be
somewhere on the base.

He sat there, staring out the windshield.  Trying to solve
the problem of what lie to tell that would be accepted without question.  The more
he thought, the more angry and frustrated he became as he realized there wasn’t
any lying his way out of this.  If someone looked closely enough at him and
Synthia, and couldn’t find her, there would be questions asked he couldn’t
answer.  Sure, they couldn’t prove anything, but…

A sudden rapping on the window next to his face startled
him.  A young female Airman stood there wearing a Security Forces badge on her
Air Force uniform.  Then Roach noticed the idling Hummer sitting behind him
with Security Forces stenciled across the base of the windshield.  Shit, he’d
been sitting in the road and drawn the attention of a cop.  He popped the door
open, rather than rolling the window down, and stepped out onto the pavement. 

“Are you OK, sir?”  The Airman asked, taking a step back. 
“Are you hurt?”

“Hurt?”  Roach was confused, looking down at his body where
her eyes were focused. 

He was covered in his second victim’s blood.  He had thought
he was being careful to stay clean, but he hadn’t been careful enough.  Looking
up he met the young woman’s eyes and saw only concern, not suspicion.  Glancing
to his left he confirmed she was riding alone before turning back to face her.

“No, I’m fine.”  He said in a pleasant voice, shuffling a
step closer to her.  “I was just over at the…”  Roach lunged.

The woman was young, barely 19, and had only become an Air
Force cop a couple of months before the attacks.  She wasn’t experienced. 
Wasn’t hardened by the job and most definitely wasn’t prepared for Roach’s
lunge.  As he had started shuffling forward, he had reached into his pocket
looking for a weapon.  The first thing his fingers had found was the pair of
pliers he’d taken out of Synthia’s purse.

Now he wrapped his hand around them and punched the side of
the woman’s head with all his strength.  She didn’t even have time to scream
before the strike and was knocked unconscious, collapsing to the pavement. 
Returning the pliers to his pocket, Roach scooped her up and placed her on the
rear floor of his Humvee.  Looking around he spied a small parking lot adjacent
to the base chapel and hopped into her vehicle and drove it into the lot where
he parked it behind the building so it was hidden from the road.

Running back to his Hummer he jumped in, took a deep,
calming breath and started driving again.  Slowly.  He couldn’t afford any more
attention from the Security Forces right now.  He knew how lucky he was that it
had been a young, inexperienced woman that had come across him.  A cop that had
been doing the job for a few years would have had their weapon out and ready as
soon as they saw the blood on his clothing.

Quickly reaching the house he had shared with Synthia, he
pulled into the driveway and shut down the engine.  Taking a minute to look
around he was thankful to not see any neighbors.  Getting out of the Hummer he
slowly walked to the front door, still looking around, and opened it.  Walking
back to the vehicle he did a final scan, still seeing nothing.  If anyone on
the street was home, they were occupied with something indoors.

Grabbing the young woman he lifted her and quickly carried
her into the house, kicking the door shut behind him with his foot.  He went
straight to the small bedroom where he dropped her on the bed.  Removing her
weapon he also used her handcuffs to secure her to the headboard, then walked
back out to the living room and locked the front door.  Stepping to the window
he checked the street again, but still saw no one moving.

Excitement mounting he returned to the bedroom and stripped
the woman naked.  He had to unlock the cuff on her wrist for a moment to get
her vest and uniform blouse off, relocking both hands over her head with the
cuff chain looped around a bolt he’d secured in the headboard for when he tied
up Synthia.  The woman was still unconscious, so he gagged her then tied each
foot to a bedpost with strips of a sheet.

Looking her over, he frowned when he saw the tattoo on her
right hip.  It was large and multi-colored and he couldn’t tell what it was
supposed to be or what it represented.  But it was distracting and he decided
to do something so he wasn’t bothered by it when they began playing.  In the
small bathroom he began looking for something to cover the tattoo, glancing up
into the mirror and seeing the blood on himself.  He took a few minutes to
clean up, changed clothes, then grabbed the pancake makeup Synthia had used to
cover her ink and set to work.  A few minutes later he stepped back to survey
the results.  It wasn’t a perfect job.  He could still faintly see the tattoo,
but it was good enough.

Roach liked his women conscious and aware of what was
happening to them.  That was the excitement for him.  The fear in their eyes. 
The terror as they realized what he was about to do to them.  The resignation
when they finally accepted their fate.  The final moment when the light in
their eyes blinked out, which if his timing was good was at the same moment as
his release into their body.

Hoping she would wake soon, Roach moved back into the
kitchen and set about preparing a meal.  He had already killed twice today, and
was about to indulge in the pleasure of a third, and he was ravenous.  Laughing
to himself as he worked, he soon had a large steak and baked potato ready and
took the plate into the bedroom to watch the woman while he ate.  Sitting on a
small chair, he balanced the plate on his lap and cut into the steak.

Roach sat and ate the entire meal without taking his eyes
off the woman’s face.  Several times he had drifted into fantasy, and the face
morphed into Katie Chase.  The thought of her made him think of the Major,
which soured his mood and dampened his excitement.  Why was he spending time on
this whore when it could be the beautiful redhead tied to his bed?  He’d made
another mistake.

Standing he walked to the kitchen and washed the cooking pan,
plate and utensils he’d used.  Putting them neatly in their place, he walked
back to the bedroom and looked at the woman who was just starting to show signs
of regaining consciousness.  Yes, he’d made another mistake taking this one and
he needed to correct that error.  Retrieving a thin bladed dagger from a
dresser drawer, he stepped to the side of the bed, placed his hand on the
woman’s chest to make sure he had the right spot, and plunged the blade
directly into her heart.

She died instantly, and there was very little blood.  Roach
knew that once the heart stopped, bodies didn’t bleed, despite what Hollywood
like to portray.  Dead bodies might seep blood, but it didn’t come flooding out
of them in great gushes unless an expert was draining the corpse with the right
equipment.  Wiping the dagger clean, he returned it to its place and from a
different drawer pulled out a sheet of painters plastic.

In only a few minutes he had un-cuffed the body, placed all
of the woman’s clothing and equipment on top of it, and had worked an edge of
the plastic under her hips.  Moving quickly, he wrapped her up like a mummy,
using duct tape to secure the bundle tightly.  Corpse ready, he stepped into
the bath to check himself in the mirror.  No blood this time. 

Leaving the body lying on the bed, he walked into the small,
untended back yard.  The previous occupant of the house had left some cheap
garden tools leaning against the back fence and Roach made use of a shovel to
dig a grave.  The Oklahoma soil was dark, rich and soft.  Easy digging for the
first four feet, then he hit rock.  Deciding four feet was good enough, he went
back into the house and got the wrapped body.

Some men like Roach will stop to say a prayer over their
victims.  Some will thank the victim for their sacrifice.  Others will even cry
for the dead.  Roach was none of these.  Walking up to the hole he’d dug he
unceremoniously dropped the woman’s corpse into the ground, and without a
second’s pause began shoveling dirt in on top of it. 

He worked for close to an hour.  Filling the hole, then
stamping on it with his boots to compress the dirt.  He repeated the process
several times, finally finishing with a pile of dirt that was smaller than the
space the body occupied in the ground.  There was also a rake resting against
the fence and he quickly spread the dirt across the entire surface of the yard,
ending at the narrow concrete pad that served as a back porch.  Looking over
the area, he was satisfied it would pass a casual inspection.  Leaving the rake
against the back of the house he headed inside for a shower and to figure out
how he would take Katie.

The males stood there for what seemed like forever, but
couldn’t have really been more than a couple of minutes.  Try lying perfectly
still and silent with a corpse on top of you and blood pooling in your ear. 
One minute feels like an hour.  Eventually they started moving away, but I
couldn’t relax.  More males were falling into the wash as they moved across the
desert.

There was now a nearly constant parade of infected moving
through the wash and I hoped everyone in the cave would stay absolutely quiet. 
Of all of them, I was the most worried about Irina.  When I’d first met her in
Los Alamos she had not seemed to be used to seeing or dealing with the
infected.  I was concerned she would panic and make a sound that would draw the
attention of the passing bodies.

I was lying there, concealed by the dead female, worrying
about the group compromising their position when a male stepped off the edge of
the wash directly above me and crashed down on top of the corpse that was on
top of me.  Shit, that hurt, and the son of a bitch wasn’t in any hurry to get
up. 

He finally started moving, reaching down to push himself
up.  His hand pressed on my left arm and he paused for a moment.  Then he
actually squeezed my arm.  What the hell?  I’m not a goddamn roll of Charmin! 
What was he doing?  Could he tell by feel that I wasn’t dead and wasn’t another
infected?

His squeeze became a grip that tightened enough to hurt and
a gurgling snarl burbled up out of his throat.  Somehow he knew that he had his
hand on an un-infected arm.  Or perhaps he wasn’t sure, but would just react to
anything that felt like a meal.  He started pulling, trying to drag me towards
him, his snarling growing louder. 

It was time to do something before his agitation drew the
attention of other infected.  Working my right arm through the sand and out
from under the corpse, I stabbed with the Ka-Bar at where I thought his head
was.  I felt the tip of the blade penetrate flesh, then skitter across bone
without hitting anything vital.  His only response was to grip my arm even
tighter and crawl fully on top of the female.

She was lying across my body at a slight angle, shoulder at
my chin, and in his squirming he wound up with his face directly over mine. 
For once I wasn’t thankful for the night vision that let me clearly see.  He
had apparently turned some time ago.  His lips and most of his nose were missing;
exposing teeth and cartilage that made him look like something out of a macabre
nightmare.  My stab with the blade had torn a long gash in his cheek and left a
flap of skin hanging down, blood from the wound dripping onto my face and beginning
to cover the NVG’s lenses.

Pinned under the weight of the two bodies, all I could do
was stab with the knife again.  This time I could partially see my target, and
aimed for his ear.  The razor sharp steel met some resistance, but I put every
ounce of force I could into the strike and it pushed through, the hilt coming
to a stop against the side of his head as the blade sliced into his brain.  He
went limp and I cursed as more blood dripped out of the new head wound and
completely covered the NVGs.  Now I had two corpses on top of me and was blind
as a bat.

I had some limited movement with my right arm, but other
than that I was stuck.  I couldn’t reach my head to remove the goggles, but
maybe that was best.  There was still an occasional drop of blood splattering
onto them from the dead male, and they were all that was protecting my eyes. 
Sure, I’d had the vaccine against the Voodoo Plague, but there were any number
of other nasty viruses that could be transmitted by body fluids. 

Forcing myself not to think about HIV or Ebola or Hepatitis,
I concentrated on listening to the feet of the infected moving in and near the
wash.  It was easy to tell the males from the females.  The males constantly
dragged one or both feet, routinely stumbling on the uneven footing.  The
females sounded just like a normal, uninfected person.  Their steps were quick
and steady.  And what the hell was that sound?

At first I thought I was just imaging it, or it had
something to do with over 350 pounds of corpses piled on top of me.  But soon I
realized it was coming from each of the infected.  It was a low pitched humming. 
Not constant.  They would stop making the sound to snarl and gurgle, and
several times I heard one stop humming to sniff the air.  Why were they doing
that, and why hadn’t I noticed it before?

With nothing but time to think, I realized that I’d never
been close to them with my ears as my primary source of sensory input.  Maybe
they’d been doing it all along.  I didn’t know, and didn’t know if it meant a
damn thing.  It just seemed odd.  I kept listening and noticed something else. 
All of them were humming almost exactly the same note.  I’m not a musician and
couldn’t begin to guess what that note was nor what key it was in, but it
struck me as very odd that all of them would choose the same note.  I suspected
the probability of that was less than I had the patience or ability to
calculate.

The volume of infected moving across the desert continued to
increase until it sounded like I was submerged in a sea of them.  Males were
constantly bumping into and tripping over the bodies on top of me.  Fortunately
I was covered well enough that they didn’t notice me.  The occasional female
walked by, but they were rare.  I assumed they were avoiding the wash that was
mostly full of the uncoordinated males.

Then as quickly as the volume had grown, it began
diminishing.  This made sense.  The herd had been traveling in a direction 90
degrees opposite their current movement, and had spread out into a long,
relatively thin line.  When they made a left turn to head for the location of
the nuclear detonation there was only the narrow width of the mass to pass by,
even though the length most likely stretched for miles to the north and south.

Close to 15 minutes later I listened as the last footsteps
within range of my ears slowly shuffled away to the west.  I lay there,
breathing as shallowly as I could, listening.  Five minutes went by and I still
hadn’t heard anything, so I decided it was as good a time as any to move. 

First I had to get the corpses off of me.  I tried pushing
up, but nearly half an hour of dead weight resting on me had caused one of my
arms and both legs to fall asleep.  I was reaching for the male’s body with my
free arm when I heard a bush rustling.  Was it Igor, moving a branch to peer out? 
My NVGs were covered with congealed blood and I couldn’t see a damn thing. 
Soon the bush rattled again and I heard the faint scrape of someone or
something moving through the sand on the floor of the wash. 

“Viyebnutsa.”  I recognized the big Russian’s voice, but
didn’t understand what he’d said.  At the moment I didn’t care, as I felt the
weight on my chest lessen when he hauled the male off of me.  A moment later he
lifted the female and I was able to take the first deep breath I’d had since
killing her.

Ripping the NVGs off my head I looked up at his smiling
face, his hand extended to help me to my feet.  I gratefully accepted the
assistance, nodding my thanks to Igor and raising my rifle to scan the area. 
Nothing moving other than the people crawling out of the cave. 

“That was horrible!”  Irina said softly when she stood up
between Igor and me.

“It could have been worse.”  I said.

“No.  I don’t mean the infected.  That damn dog of yours has
gas.  Bad gas.  I thought I was going to be sick.”  She said, waving a hand in
front of her face to emphasize her point.

I watched Martinez reach fresh air and take a big breath,
then Dog came running out, happy to be back in the open.  He looked around, ran
down the wash with his nose to the ground until he found the right spot and
squatted.

“What the hell did you feed him when I wasn’t looking?” 
Rachel asked in an accusatory tone when she got to her feet.  “I was almost
wishing the infected would find us just so we could get out of there.”

I tried not to laugh.  I really did.  But I couldn’t help
myself.  The teenage boy part of my brain still finds fart jokes hilarious, and
the thought of all of them jammed underground with Dog ripping one after
another for half an hour just about put me back on the ground.

When I regained a degree of composure I looked up to see
Irina walking away, shaking her head.  Igor was scanning with his rifle, but I
could see a huge grin on his face.  He could smile.  He’d been right at the
entrance and able to get fresh air.  Rachel stood staring at me, hands on her
hips.  Dog had finished his urgent business and was back by my side looking at
Rachel with his version of an innocent expression.  I glanced down at him, up
at the look on Rachel’s face and had to turn away before I lost it again. 

“OK, we need to get moving.”  I said, trying to be serious
again. 

At the edge of the wash I started walking until I found a
spot where the bank had collapsed and a couple of small boulders were half
covered in sand.  Cleaning my NVGs with some water from a canteen, I pulled
them on and stuck my head above the lip of the wash.  The good news was there
weren’t any infected in the immediate area, immediate being defined as within
50 yards of us.  The bad news was that even though the bulk of the herd had
passed us, there were still what appeared to be several hundred stragglers
coming towards us. 

But they were moving slower than the majority of the herd
and, while I was concerned about them, I wasn’t too worried about being able to
fight our way through.  Climbing out of the wash I turned and helped Dog
scramble up, Igor pushing from below, then helped Irina.  Everyone else climbed
up without much effort and as soon as we were all clear of the wash that had
saved our lives, I started us running to the northeast.