Zompoc Survivor: Odyssey (19 page)

“Homeland, this is Niobara,” he said calmly. “Agent Coffey is dead. We have a rogue survivor heading east, Coffey thinks he was the two of spades. I’m requesting a drone overflight.”

“Negative on drone overflight, Niobara,” another voice came back a few moments later. “Two of spades is confirmed to be out of your area, negative on ID. Return to base, conserve your resources. Outside patrols are suspended for the next forty-eight hours to protect your teams. Do not venture outside your perimeter.”

“Understood, Homeland. Heading back now.” When the bigger radio squawked but the smaller one didn’t, I braked to a stop and pulled it out of its case.

“Hightower, this is Homeland,” I heard. “Task Overflight one-two Alpha to Niobara Safe Zone to ping an agent’s sat-comm.”

“Homeland, acknowledge, Overflight one-two Alpha retasking. ETA to target zone, ten minutes.”

“Stagecoach, find cover,” I hissed into the radio. “Drone incoming in ten. Find cover immediately and go radio silent.”  Without waiting for an acknowledgment, I turned my radio off and frantically checked the agent’s radio. Its interface was very similar to a smart phone, and a minute or two later, I was scrolling through subscreens to find what they might be pinging. I killed the GPS feed but I suspected there was more. On the security screen, I found what I was looking for: an internal security monitor. The screen instructed the user to set it on the base unit, and I grabbed that from the tank bag.

“Not found,” the screen reported when I plugged it in a few seconds later. I briefly wondered if taking it off the bike had shut down the part they were going to ping, if it was somehow separate from the radio mount, or if the phone would be able to respond to the security ping on its own. As the clock showed the drone getting closer and closer, I made a decision and opened the back of the phone and pulled the battery. Finally, I dumped the other radio and its components back into the map case, then hauled ass back to the overpass.

Chapter 9

Unknown Territory

~ Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy ~

Rudy Guliani

I waited half an hour before I put the battery back in on the bigger radio. While I sat under the bridge, I went through the map case and the deck of most wanted cards. My face was on the jack of spades, and Amy was the three of hearts. Nate was the king of spades, and Col. Shafer made the ace of spades. Both Amy’s card and mine had red X’s drawn across them. There was also a small user’s manual for the PC9 IntelSat interface I’d taken from Coffey’s body. He’d scrawled his login and password inside the manual, and looking at the random series of numbers and letters, I couldn’t blame him. Evidently, the system scanned for words or common number combinations and wouldn’t let you use them in your password or log-in ID. Skimming through it, I developed a new level of respect for whoever had made this thing. Half cell phone, half computer and a hundred percent leading edge, the damn thing was smarter than I was. The ironic thing was that it was so smart that it was easy to use. Once I plugged the battery back in, I walked through the menu to put it in passive only mode, and started scanning the different data streams.

In passive mode, it accessed and decoded satellite feeds without showing up in their systems. After a few minutes of searching, I found the stream for drone one-two Alpha. It showed Niobara from above, and the thinning column of smoke from Coffey’s wrecked bike. The view zoomed out and I could see that the drone was quite a ways from town.

“Homeland, nothing on eastern quadrant either,” someone was saying. “He’s gone, whoever he is.”

“Affirmative, Hightower,” another, deeper voice replied. “ELINT isn’t picking up any radio traffic, either. This guy bugged straight the hell out. Return to Niobara, brass wants you to put ordnance on the bike.”

“What about the zone?” the first voice asked.

“Negative on the safe zone. Just the bike.”

“Affirmative. Launching Griffin.”  Seconds later, an explosion rocked me as the Griffin missile hit its target and threw dirt and debris into the air. Rock and soil pelted the ground for several seconds, then the voice on the radio came back

“Confirmed hit, Hightower. It’s toast. Return to sector patrol.” Hightower confirmed the order and started away. Once the GPS locater put it far enough out for my comfort, I turned my radio back on

“Stagecoach, this is Roadrunner, you got your ears on?” I said.

“Roadrunner, this is Stagecoach, we read you,” McGregor’s voice came back.

“Got some new intel. Drone’s gone. I’m heading south, see you there.” I started the bike and pulled out from under the bridge. The graying sky looked more ominous and there was a damp feel to the wind in my face as I hit the roadway and sped along the main street. Stagecoach was waiting for me near the county fairgrounds on the south side of town, and I pulled up beside the lead vehicle. The vehicle commander’s hatch opened on the roof and McGregor’s head popped up as I put the kickstand down.

“Stow your bike and get in. The boss wants you on board,” he said.

With the help of two other agents, I got the bike loaded back onto the truck, and crawled into Stagecoach One. “You rang, Madam Prez?” I said as I took the seat across from her.

“Tell me what happened,” she said simply. As much as I wanted to start with a snappy one liner, I figured it was bad form to give the President any more attitude. For about half an hour, I was as boring as I’d ever been as I related the events back to her and showed her the PC9. That got taken from me the moment I pulled it out of the bag.

“I’ll need to find someone who can do a more thorough analysis of this,” she said as she went to hand it off.

“Like a Communications Signals Intelligence Specialist?” I asked while I pointed at myself. “That’s pretty much my job description, ma’am. If you’re going to draft me, you might as well let me do what I was trained for.” She turned a narrow eyed gaze on me for a few seconds before she gave a speculative “Hmmm,” and handed the device back to me.

“Are you always this insubordinate with your superiors?” she asked coolly.

“Only when they need to hear it, ma’am,” I said.  She smiled and leaned back.

“So, what is your take on this group at the prison?” she asked.

“Basically, they’re a bunch of regular folks just trying to be good citizens, ma’am,” I said after a moment. “They want to do the right thing, and I figure Shaw’s telling them what they need to hear. The drone operator asked about hitting the safe zone, so I figure that’s happened more than once when someone got out of line or something.”

“Why haven’t we heard about it?” Morris asked.

“Probably because there’s no one left alive to say anything,” I offered as I pulled out the Most Wanted deck. “They also have their own little hit list.” She took it and flipped through it.

“I see you and Amy made the list,” she said while she was looking through the deck. “I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t, but I can only guess that’s because they think I’m dead.”

“They’ll come out with a new one the moment they find out different,” I said. “Poor Col. Shafer is likely to get demoted to King of Spades to make room for you.”

“I’d pass on the honor if I could,” Morris said. She turned to the bespectacled doctor in the seat beside her. “Anita, do you have any questions to ask Sergeant Stewart?”

“Well, there is the obvious,” Parsons said as she pushed the narrow lensed glasses up on her forehead. “Did you sense any infected while you were in town?”

“Not that I noticed, but I was a little distracted,” I said. “One of the local men said they had rounded them all up at the local fair grounds. I got the impression they had killed them all after that.”

“Hmm…well, with the results I got from your tests, I wanted to see if there was a chemical component to your abilities.”

“What results?” I asked.

“I exposed your blood to the Asura virus samples we got from Miss Bach,” she said with more emotion than I’d seen from her since I’d met her. “The results were…dramatic, to say the least, but inconclusive on a fresh sample. That, of course, was also against a sample from an alpha level subject. I’d like to see what kind of reaction I get from a first or second stage subject, and see if my theory about the virus is correct.”

“Do you know what caused it?” I asked.

“No,” she laughed. “I don’t have nearly enough data for that. But based on the results of the tests I ran, I think it would take a little longer for the Asura virus to turn you.”

“How much longer?” Amy asked from her seat at the back.

“Maybe six hours,” Dr. Parsons said with a shrug. “Though that is the most optimistic guess. Four hours would be more likely. All I had was equipment that was outdated in the Sixties. There were no living cells left in the samples I used, and I don’t know what the effect against a stage one or two bite would be. But I do have to ask, have either of you been exposed to the virus in another way? Scratches, blood splatter from infected or even close physical contact?” We both nodded.

“This morning was a pretty good example,” I said.

“That might explain it. You both have elevated white blood cell counts, indicative of an immune response. I don’t know if it’s your body’s response to limited exposure to the Asura virus, or if it really is something in your genetic makeup that is causing the response. Either way, it’s intriguing.”

“You say intriguing, I say scary as shit,” Amy said.

“I suppose so,” Parsons said. “Once we stop, though, I’d like to get some more blood samples.” I shrugged. If Morris gave the word, technically, I didn’t have a choice. My oath of enlistment was less than forty-eight hours old, and it was already becoming a bigger pain in my ass than I liked.

We headed west from Niobara, taking side roads to Highway 25, until we were back on the vast empty plains, bare of all but the scarcest signs that mankind had even walked the world. For once, we rode safe and secure, and I wasn’t driving. But relaxing was not the first thing on the agenda. It was time for me to do what I’d been trained for. The comm-sat’s interface was pretty intuitive, and before long, I was able to tap into Homeland’s signal again. For half an hour, I monitored radio traffic, but nothing seemed to have them too concerned. With nothing out of the ordinary to worry about, I sat back, pulled The Fuzzy Files from my right cargo pocket and took advantage of the first chance to read that I’d had for almost three weeks.

I barely noticed when we skirted a little town called Wheatland, and only emerged from Piper’s world of Zarathustra when we pulled to a stop at the junction of state highway 287.  The rear end of a blue sedan stuck up from the far side of the railroad tracks, leaving a trail of tire ruts and debris where it had left the road.

“Okay folks, let’s stop here for a few, stretch the kinks out and grab a bite,” McGregor said. He turned to me and gestured for me to lean closer. “Can you use that sat-comm to see where their drones are?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah, I can pull up their individual feeds and ping a GPS position from their telemetry,” I said. “But they’re always moving, so anything I get is going to be a rough guess.”

“We just need to find out if they have anything moving our way.”

“That, I can do,” I said. It only took a few seconds to tap back into the network while the rest of the team secured the area to find what he needed. He frowned when he saw the expression on my face.

“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like what I’m about to hear?” he asked.

“Because you’re right,” I said as I brought up the feed. “There is a drone headed this general direction. If we try to head west and go through the National Forest, odds are good it’ll pick us up. But…” I showed him the drone’s camera feed. Clouds piled high on one another, and the view shifted as the camera focused on something else.

“They’re heading west to avoid the weather,” he said. As if to agree with him, a low rumble of thunder came from the south. “So we’ll head south to take advantage of it. Grab something to eat and then get your gear under a tarp or in the truck.” Everyone was lining up at the back of the truck, and I went to check it out. Caldwell and Armstrong were handing out box lunches. Amy was near the front of the line, and I saw that she grabbed two, then came back to me.

“There’s ham and cheese or cheese and ham, take your pick,” she said, thrusting one of the boxes at me.

“So much for the kosher menu,” I said as I took the box. “Damn, this is cheese and ham…I wanted the ham and cheese.” Amy took a big bite out of her sandwich then looked at me with her mouth full.

“T’ff rookk,” she mumbled around her food.

“Big bully,” I said.

“You know what I’d love more than anything right now?” she asked as the wind picked up and chilled our exposed skin. “A bowl of Mom’s chili.”

“I’d settle for just seeing her again,” I said as I looked west. We ate quietly, then went to the vehicles and made sure our packs were under the tarp before we loaded back up. Half an hour after we had stopped, we were headed south on 287 toward Laramie. Ahead of us, the sky was getting darker, and we could see gray sheets of rain angling toward the ground. Lightning turned the clouds yellow inside, only occasionally escaping to lance toward the earth.

As the leading edge of the storm got closer, we started to see bright points of light that started to resolve themselves into headlights.

“What the hell?” Armstrong said as they got closer. I punched the radio to the citizens’ band and started scanning. Seconds later, channel nineteen blared to life.

“..head south. Do
not
head south. This is Uncle Fester on highway two-eight-seven. If you’re anywhere near Laramie, Wyoming, you gotta head north, east west, it don’t matter. Just don’t go south.” I handed Armstrong the mic.

“Uncle Fester, what’s going on?” he asked.

“There’s a fuckin’ wall of fuckin’ zombies headed north. I was in Denver, and I never saw nothin’ like it. They’re all just walkin’ north, even the fast ones. If you know what’s good for you, get the fuck outta here. That ain’t the half of it. They flushed a prison gang outta Greeley, bastards got a shitload of guns and rocket launchers from some damn place.” By then, we could see the first of the vehicles coming toward us. Wet with rain, it passed us without slowing down. Further ahead, we saw a flare of yellow and then the black and orange blossom of a fireball floated up.

“Copy that. Listen, there’s a safe zone north of here, little town called Niobara. Head to the Women’s Correctional Center on the northwest side of town. You might be safe there.”

“Ten-four,” Uncle Fester said. If there was anything else on his mind, Armstrong didn’t seem interested, since he switched to the Secret Service frequencies.

“Stagecoach One and Three, break west on…County Road 51. We have incoming tangoes, dead and alive. The live ones are well armed and willing to fire.”

“Acknowledged, Stagecoach Two,” McGregor’s voice came back. “Break west on county five-one. All vehicles go weapons hot.” Inside the vehicle, the agents reached for the black vests under their seats and grabbed P90s. Armstrong pointed to a sign on the right, and the driver pulled wide to the left and stopped with the truck across the road, nose pointed to the right. The turret servos whined as the gunner traversed left to cover the approach from the south. Through the small window in the door, I could see the supply truck and Stagecoach one turn down the road we had just passed.