Transmission: Voodoo Plague Book 5 (3 page)

Rachel had been in shock after shooting Jackson.  Yes, he
had turned and tried to kill her, but she had felt a small part of herself die
when she pulled the trigger.  She hadn’t known him long, but he had become a
friend.  A friend that deserved better than to turn into one of the raging
infected and get shot in the head.  She couldn’t even bury him.  He was still
strapped into the cab of the pickup, sitting in the bottom of a flooded ditch. 
Not a fitting way to go out.

She didn’t know how long she stood in the water in the bed
of the truck after firing her pistol and ending his life.  It was a long time,
based on how high the sun had gotten in the sky.  Slowly coming out of her
shock, she looked around.  It was a beautiful day after the storm.  The air had
been scrubbed clean, the temperature down after all the rain.   It was deathly
quiet, the violent winds having denuded the countryside of all life. 

Dog sat at the lip of the ditch, looking off into the
distance, watching over her as he patiently waited.  She forgot she’d left the
Bronco running, and it idled away, waiting as patiently as Dog.  Forcing
herself to move, Rachel stepped over the tailgate and started wading through
the water toward the earthen ramp.  She had only covered a few feet when she
stopped and turned to look back.

Her rifle and pack were in the cab, next to Jackson’s body. 
The last thing in the world she wanted to do was go back down into the ditch
and climb into that cab, but the weapon and supplies meant a chance at
survival.  She knew she was extremely lucky to have survived this long, and
didn’t want to go on with only a pistol and the clothes on her back.

Heaving a sigh, she holstered the pistol and trudged back
through the water, climbing over the tailgate again.  Reaching the back of the
cab, Rachel bent and looked through the window she had broken out.  Jackson sat
lifelessly in the driver’s seat, seat belt holding his corpse upright.  Her
pack was next to him, sitting in close to a foot of water.  Cautiously, she
reached into the cab.

 Rachel’s skin broke out in goose bumps as she extended her
arms into the space next to her dead friend.  She imagined him suddenly
reaching out and grabbing her in his iron grip.  Pulling her all the way into
the cab before tearing into her throat with his teeth.  Heart pounding, she forced
her body forward, grabbed the pack’s straps and yanked it through the opening. 

Adrenaline gave her a boost of energy and the pack came
easily and quickly.  But, it was heavier than she remembered, and the fear-induced
adrenaline didn’t help her manage the weight when she straightened up and it
struck her in the stomach.  Rachel let out a whoosh of breath as she was
knocked onto her ass in the bed of the truck.  Sitting with the pack on her lap
she looked hard at the cab, but the body hadn’t moved.  It wasn’t coming after
her.

“Stupid.”  She muttered to herself and spun up onto her
knees to see through the window.

She couldn’t see her rifle, but knew it was in there.  It
must have slipped onto the floor and was under the muddy water.  The only way
she could retrieve it was to climb all the way into the cab and feel around in
the water.  Moving before her courage could falter, Rachel stood and slipped a
leg through the opening, gently placing her foot on the submerged seat. 
Quickly working her other leg through, she followed with her hips and splashed
onto the seat. 

A quick check of Jackson, who thankfully still hadn’t moved,
and she started searching for the rifle.  It only took a moment to find, and
she was concerned when she lifted it and water started running out of every
opening.  Would it still fire?  Of course it would.  John had swum across a
lake with a rifle strapped to his body when he’d rescued Dog back in Georgia. 
But had he stopped to dry something out or clean something when he’d reached
the shore?  That she didn’t know.

Steeling herself, Rachel squirmed through the window into
the open air.  With every movement, her skin crawled, expecting Jackson’s
corpse to suddenly reanimate and attack.  But it didn’t.  He was dead and
nothing was going to change that.  This wasn’t a cheesy TV show about zombies,
she reminded herself.  This was real, and nothing’s more real than death.

Back at ground level, Rachel went to the rear of the Bronco
and lowered the gate.  As the sun warmed her chilled body, she opened the pack
and spread its contents out to check and start drying.  Her eyes fell on a
plastic encased MRE and her stomach grumbled so hard it nearly cramped.  Using
one of her precious bottles of water, she prepared and wolfed down the meal. 

It was tuna with noodles, and nothing had ever tasted as
good.  She’d heard John and Jackson and a few other soldiers grumbling about
MREs and how bad they tasted, but she was hungry enough to eat anything and
enjoy it.  Dog had joined her as she prepared the meal and she shared with him
as she tried, and failed, to not eat too fast.  Apparently he agreed with her
assessment.  The food was good!

Next she set about trying to figure out how to dry out the
rifle.  The damn things came apart.  She knew that.  She’d seen John with one
stripped down to more parts than she could count, but she couldn’t figure it
out.  She settled for removing and unloading the magazine and shaking all the
water out of it.  Then pulled the bolt open and shook the rifle hard before
holding it to her mouth and blowing into the opening to force out any trapped water. 

Magazine reloaded, she pulled the charging handle and a
round went into the chamber as smoothly as ever.  So far, so good.  Stepping
away from the idling truck, she held the rifle out at arms length, aimed into
an empty field, and pulled the trigger.  It fired and cycled, loading a fresh
round.  Best of all, it didn’t blow up.  Satisfied with the results, Rachel
worked the sling over her head and let the weapon hang down her back as she
inventoried her supplies.

Finally satisfied, she loaded everything back into the pack
and deposited it between the Bronco’s front bucket seats.  All she had to do
was gesture and Dog leapt up into the truck and moved onto the passenger seat. 
Climbing behind the wheel she checked the gauges and looked up when Dog growled
softly. 

A vehicle was approaching.  It was far in the distance,
coming from the east, and had just come over the horizon.  Rachel’s heart
immediately started beating faster.  Her experiences with other survivors did
not have a good track record.  They might have seen her, but then they were far
enough away that if her vehicle wasn’t moving it should just blend into the
environment.  Did she start driving and try to outrun them, or was it better to
hide until they went past?

Rachel only thought about it for a moment before shutting
the engine off, grabbing her pack, taking the keys out of the ignition and jumping
down to the pavement.  Dog followed her out of the truck and she ran in a
crouch for the rice paddy on the north side of the road.  The ground gradually
dropped away from the Interstate at first, quickly transitioning to a short,
steep embankment down into the flooded field.

Rachel ran until her feet were in the water, then turned and
threw herself onto the mud.  She was facing the truck, 75 yards away and well
concealed by the terrain.  Raising the rifle, she looked through the scope. 
She had intentionally left the door swinging open on the driver’s side of the
Bronco, and it made it look more like an abandoned vehicle.  As long as no one
stopped and felt the heat from the recently running engine, it would seem as if
the truck had been sitting there for weeks.

The hiss of the approaching vehicle’s tires finally reached
her ears.  It seemed to take forever before she also heard the engine and
exhaust, then an old station wagon flashed by without slowing.  Rachel let out
the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, listening to the car speed
farther and farther away.  The farther the better, as far as she was concerned.

After a few minutes she could no longer hear any sound from
the vehicle and decided it was safe to move.  Picking herself up out of the mud,
she glanced around and walked back to the Bronco, Dog staying close to her
side.  Behind the wheel, she inserted the key into the ignition and reached out
to ruffle Dog’s ears.  He dipped his head toward her, enjoying the contact. 
With a wan smile, she grasped the key and turned it to start the engine. 
Nothing happened.

We were following I-40 again, nobody in a talkative mood
after witnessing the communal funeral pyre outside Little Rock.  Each of us was
lost in our own thoughts as we flew.  I was scanning through 180 degrees to our
front, my head on a constant swivel.  Other than a very occasional car fleeing
to the west, nothing moved.  There weren’t even any birds flying below us. 

The thought occurred to me that maybe the virus had jumped
from humans to birds.  Why couldn’t it?  How many times had there been bird flu
scares over the past several years?  Obviously that virus could mutate and
infect humans. I wasn’t a scientist but I was pretty sure the eggheads that
were working on this had already thought to check.  Even so, I made a mental
note to ask the question.  All I needed was a bunch of enraged ravens attacking
when I least expected it.  And I wasn’t talking about the football team from
Baltimore.

I dismissed the thought, not sure whether to chuckle or get
really concerned.  Maintaining my scan, I let my mind drift, and it went right
where I didn’t want it to go.  Rachel.  OK, fuck it.  Time to deal with this. 
I missed her.  Very much.  With a start, I realized that maybe it was more than
just missing her.  Something was missing without her around.  The same thing
that was missing when Katie wasn’t around.  Then why was I out looking for
Rachel instead of heading for Arizona?

Because I didn’t have a clue where to start looking for
Katie when I got there.  The only shred of evidence I even had that she might still
be alive was my truck missing out of the garage of our burned out house.  But,
so what?  It could be missing for a hundred reasons.  If one of those happened
to be that she had taken it and escaped, then where had she gone?  It had been over
a month since the attacks by the Chinese.  In that amount of time, she could be
anywhere. 

A thousand miles to the south, safe on a white, sandy beach
in Mexico.  She could be holed up in a cabin somewhere in the Arizona
mountains, or could have headed north into Montana or Canada.  Hell, enough
time had gone by that she could be almost anywhere in the world by now.  And as
I thought about it, I remembered that three doors down the street lived a
retired airline pilot that had his own twin-engine plane.  If Katie had gone
with him, she could truly be anywhere in the world.

Was I making excuses?  Justifying my decisions?  No.  I was
just trying to analyze what I knew.  If she was even alive, my wife could be
anywhere on the planet and I didn’t have the first clue where to even start
looking for her.  On the other hand, Rachel had been alive less than 24 hours
ago, and I had a very good idea where to start looking for her.  That didn’t
mean Rachel meant more to me than Katie.  It just meant I had a reasonable
chance of finding and saving one of them.

Sitting there, looking out the Black Hawk’s windshield, my
heart ached.  It ached deep and hard.  For Katie, and for Rachel.  I made a
conscious effort to not hit something in my frustration, clenching my fists
tightly in my lap.  Hitting things inside the cockpit of an aircraft in flight
is generally not a good idea.

“You OK?”  Tom asked over the intercom.  I glanced over and
noticed him looking at my fists.

“Fine.”  I answered, forcing my hands to relax and making
myself think about anything other than the two women I cared about.

“Good.  Don’t need you losing it up here.”  He said, then
pointed out the windshield to the east.  “Another car coming.”

Spotting it, I nodded.  Tom followed his normal pattern and
swung us off to the side and descended.  Turning when we reached 100 feet he
flew by the car that was speeding west.  It was an old Oldsmobile station
wagon, originally blue but now mostly rust.  Three small, white ovals stared
out of the back windows.  Children looking up at us.  A man and woman were in
the front seat.  He wasn’t Jackson and she wasn’t Rachel.  Tom didn’t need to
be told the vehicle was a negative.  He climbed back to our previous altitude
and got us back on our heading.

We had only been flying for another few minutes when an
alarm started sounding, accompanied by two red lights on the instrument panel. 
Tom reached forward and silenced the alarm and cycled the power to the warning
lights.  They blinked out, were dark for a couple of moments, then one after
the other started flashing red again.  He thumped an analog gauge a couple of
times, but the needle was in the red and didn’t move.

“What’s wrong?”  I asked.

“Over temp warning from the rotor shaft.  Lots of false
alarms in these things.  We’ll just see what happens.”  He answered, but didn’t
sound as confident as I would have liked.

When Rachel and I were fleeing from Atlanta we’d encountered
a downed Air Force flight crew and their crashed Pave Hawk helicopter.  I was
almost sure they’d told me that there had been an over temp warning from their
rotor shaft that the pilot had ignored.  Then they’d crashed.

“Put us down, now.  Let’s check it.”  I said.  Tom looked
over at me to protest, but saw something in my eyes that made him bite back his
words and start descending.

He landed on the eastbound lanes of I-40 a minute later, the
big rotor spinning down as we unbuckled and got out.  The door gunner was still
strapped in and I told him to grab a rifle and get out to keep watch while we
were on the ground.  Tom was already climbing up the outside of the helicopter
to reach the rotor shaft maintenance access panel.  While he worked, I circled
the area, making sure there weren’t any infected about to crash our party.

“Told you!”  Tom shouted a moment later.  I looked over my
shoulder to see him holding up a part of the helicopter that was connected to a
thin electrical cable. 

“You could show me that all day and I still wouldn’t know
what it is.”  I shouted back.

“It’s the primary temperature sensor for the shaft housing. 
It came lose and was lying next to where the exhaust pipe is routed.  It was
reading the heat from the exhaust, not a hot rotor shaft.”  He said, turning
back to presumably return the sensor to its correct location. 

He never completed the turn.  The smooth, leather soles of
the cowboy boots he was wearing slipped as he shifted his weight.  A Black Hawk
has shallow foot and handholds made into its surface, but they weren’t intended
for maintenance crews wearing shoes with slick soles.  When Tom’s foot slipped
his hands weren’t gripping anything other than the temperature sensor, and he
fell, his other foot’s purchase causing his body to rotate.  He hit the
pavement head first, and from 40 feet away I heard his neck break.  I rushed to
him, but knew he was dead before I touched the body.

The door gunner ran up behind me and looked down.  “Oh my
God!  Please tell me you know how to fly this thing, sir.” 

“No such luck.”  I replied.  “Keep an eye out.  I’ll see if
I can raise anyone on the radio.”

Leaving Tom where he lay, I climbed into the Black Hawk’s
cockpit and slipped on a headset.  The radio was still set to the frequency
that had been dialed in when he contacted the Little Rock air controller, and I
wasn’t surprised when I couldn’t get a response.  The radio antennae in
aircraft are designed and located to optimize the ability to reach other radios
at a lower altitude, or at best, the same altitude.  With the helicopter
sitting on the ground, I didn’t expect our signal was getting out very far.

Switching to the guard channel, reserved for military
emergencies, I tried again.  I hoped I would have success in reaching one of
the other Black Hawks that was searching for my missing friends, but again I
only received silence in response to my hails.  Checking to make sure the
Sergeant was watching the surrounding terrain for any approaching threats, I
powered up the internal navigation systems to find out where we were.

It only took a few seconds for the system to lock onto
enough GPS satellites to accurately pinpoint the spot where I was sitting. 
Being an aviation system it didn’t show roads and cities, but did show major
geographic features as well as both military and civilian airports.  Little
Rock Air Force Base was 115 miles to the west.  West Memphis airport was 18
miles to the east.  Powering the Black Hawk completely down, I climbed out and
buttoned up the aircraft as tightly as possible.

“Looks like we’re walking.”  I said to the Sergeant as I
moved to stand next to him.  I couldn’t remember his name and took the
opportunity to glance at the tape on his uniform.  Gabbert.

“Where are we going, sir?”  He looked and sounded
frightened.  I reminded myself that he was just a regular Air Force Staff
Sergeant.  His world had been inside aircraft up to this point, and being on
foot in hostile territory was probably terrifying for him.  I’d give him a
little latitude so I didn’t wind up with a basket case on my hands.

“West Memphis.”  I said, pointing east down the perfectly
straight blacktop.  “Little Rock is 115 miles behind us.  There’s still a few
civilians in West Memphis, plus there will be plenty of abandoned vehicles for
us to choose from.”

“How far is it?”  He asked, swallowing nervously.

“A little over 10 miles.  Not far.  We should be there well
before dark.”  I smiled, trying to exhibit some confidence for the man to pick
up on, but I didn’t think it worked.

We started walking, leaving Tom’s body where it was.  There
wasn’t anything else I could do with it.  Putting it inside the helicopter
would have prevented scavengers from feeding on it, but would also have made a
hell of a mess as it started decomposing.  I didn’t have an entrenching tool –
small folding shovel – with me, so digging a grave wasn’t an option either.  So
I regretfully decided to leave him where he was and try to get to West Memphis
so I could do something to help those of us that were still alive.