Extinction Level Event (Book 1): Extinction

by Newman, AJ

  Bo watched Jill struggle to move the woman to the ditch and only yawned. Jill saw him and said, “You could have helped me, you know.”

  The sun hadn’t peeked above the horizon to the east, but daylight was only an hour away. Jill opened the back door and tried to wake the man. Jill’s flashlight found the cause of his stupor. There were two empty syringes on the floorboard, and the mysterious woman had drugged the man.

  “Crap, he’s too big to drag to my truck.”

  Before Jill could run to her truck, a voice blared from the front seat. The voice was garbled. Jill found the handheld radio and heard, “Are you there? Turn on the runway lights.”

  “What the fu…,” Jill started to say when she heard the airplane’s engines circling above her. She remembered the black boxes and replied. “Sorry, I had an intruder to take care of.”

  Jill knew she could run for it, but she couldn’t leave the man. She ran to the first of the black boxes and found the switch to activate the lights. The lights were actually strong strobe lights. She ran to each one, and soon there was a string of lights stretching about a half-mile with brilliant flashes marking the improvised runway. The plane circled one more time and lined up with the road to land. It flew over the SUV and floated down to earth; there was a short screeching sound followed by dark puffs of smoke from the tires. It was a medium-size twin engine plane that looked like a box with wings and a tail.

  The plane taxied away from the SUV and turned around before heading back toward the SUV and Jill. Jill hid the woman’s pocket size .380 in her waistband in the hollow of her back and kept her 9 mm on her hip. She grabbed the woman’s carry bag and quickly sifted through it while the plane taxied to her. She finished her preparation just as the aircraft came to rest. A door lowered from the fuselage and steps unfolded for entry. Two men came out of the plane and swiftly came to her.

  One said, “What’s up with the truck?”

  “I guess it was a friend of his. She tried to take the subject from me and paid for it. She won’t be anyone’s problem in the future."

  The second man asked, “Are you sure he’s the right man? The one on the radio?”

  “I know he is immune. I followed him long enough to see him exposed without getting sick,” Jill lied because she was afraid they’d kill both of them if they were useless to them. “I also saw him talking on a radio to someone.”

  “Okay, we’ll get him on the plane. Get your stuff and board the plane. Our boss will give you your reward and a safe place to live in. This man could be the solution to finding an antidote to this plague.”

  Jill told Bo to follow her, and the man said, “We’re not taking a mangy mutt on my plane.”

  Jill put her face close to his. “The mangy mutt is going with us, or the man and I don’t go. That’s my puppy, and he goes where I go.”

  The man threw his hands up. “Okay, but he’d better behave.”

  Jill grabbed the woman’s bag and walked to the plane with Bo at her side. Bo climbed the stairs and found a seat. Jill went up the steps only to be confronted by two men with sidearms. “Lady, raise your arms. We need to search you for weapons.”

  Bo saw the men touching the nice woman and growled. Jill waved at him and said, “It’s okay. I’m all right.”

  Bo laid down and closed his eyes.

  The frisking was bad but expected. Jill raised her arms, and the shorter of the two frisked her. Her 9-mm was openly displayed, and he took it before running his hands over her body. He found the Ruger LCP in her waistband and her Leatherman before running his hand up the middle of her thigh to the top. Her hand moved swiftly, grabbed the man’s wrist, and bent it backward.

  She barked, “If you do that again, I’ll kill you.”

  Bo jumped off the seat and barked at the short man. Jill waved him off again.

  The other man raised his pistol. “Stop, or I’ll …”

  “Frank put your weapon down. Jim, if you ever grope a woman again, I’ll pitch you out of the plane at twenty thousand feet. Lady, you can release him. I’ll keep him in check.”

  Jill shoved the pervert away and said, “See that you do. I will kill him and with a knife, slowly.”

  “I’ll bet you would. Sorry, but I need the bastard. I see I need to housebreak him, but he comes in handy. I’m Sergeant Bill Caster.”

  Jill didn’t know the name of the other lady, so she used her own. “I’m Jill Scott, and I don’t like perverts.”

  “I’m in charge of the transportation of the subjects to the lab in Atlanta. I work with a few headhunters like yourself to find immunes and get them to Atlanta. Obviously, this just started, and I hope they find a cure quickly. I don’t like taking people against their will, but they tell me it’s necessary to help find a cure.”

  “Same here. I hate having to trick people into getting into the plane.”

  Bill’s eyebrows rose. “So, you’re not doing this for the safe housing and being one of the first to get the shots?”

  “How do you know I need the shots?”

  Bill whispered. “Don’t say that out loud. They’ll be draining your blood instead of helping you.”

  “Okay, I was just kidding. You should see all of the masks, gloves, and hazmat suits I have to use while searching for these people.”

  Jill’s face turned ashen white. She sat down and buckled up for the flight to Atlanta. The words ‘draining your blood’ scared her to her core. She saw the man they called the subject lying across two seats. He started to wake up but was very drowsy. She watched him when the others were busy and wondered what kind of man this was for her to have risked her life to save him. She saw his eyes open for a second and then watch his surroundings through mostly closed eyes. She placed her finger over her lips and waved to get his attention. When she saw he watched her, she placed her palms against her cheeks to signal for him to continue pretending to be asleep.

  The three men were at the front of the plane playing cards and drinking some kind of liquor. She took a pen and paper from her pocket and wrote a note to the man. She wrote, We have to escape before we get to the lab in Atlanta.

  He shrugged his shoulders, which, to her, meant why. She wrote, Drain our blood.

  The man’s eyes grew in size, and he nodded his head.

  ☣☣☣

  “Barbara, get George and meet the plane. It should land in about an hour. We have a bonus today. The headhunter is also an immune person. This is the first time we get two in one flight,” said a jubilant Doc Green.

  Barbara replied, “I haven’t been outside since the complex was secured. Can I go to my car and get some much needed personal items?”

  “Yes, on the personal items, but they’ll have to go through decontamination and the military inspection.”

  Barbara’s hopes for an escape slid backward. “I’ll get George and bring my personal stuff back in the containment pods. How many more do we need? Oh, not a problem with the rules for personal items.”

  Doc Green’s eyes dropped to the floor. “I don’t know how many. We’re making progress as you know, but have a long way to go.”

  “Doc, what if we sacrifice the only one hundred immune people in the world to save a few survivors? That would kill our only chance of human survival?”

  “You worry too much. Now, on to the plane and let me handle the planning and strategy.”

  Barbara and George suited up and walked from the isolation chamber to the airlock to the outside world. Two armed men wearing hazmat suits met them beside an armored vehicle that had been converted to ambulance duty. One of the soldiers helped them into the back. The ambulance was sandwiched between two Humvees with more armed guards. They left the complex on the way north to DeKalb Peachtree Airport. This was Barbara’s first trip out of the compound, and she was shocked at the amount of destruction and rotting corpses as far as she could see.

  She had hoped she’d once again smell the spring flowers and pine scent from the many trees, but instead, her nose was blasted
with the smell of decaying bodies and raw sewage. Her face scrunched up, and she pulled her anti-contamination headgear over her head and breathed through the filters until they were away from the piles of putrid bodies.

  She was surprised by the smell of raw sewage since that should mean large concentrations of people. Doc had told them many times, there were very few survivors outside the government's safe zones around the country plus many of the military installations. She wondered what other lies were told to the team. She was deep in thought when there were several loud bangs against the hull of the vehicle.

  The driver yelled, “Hold on! The natives are restless today!”

  The other soldier said, “Stay calm in the back. This happens every time we go out. The natives hate us because we are in a safe zone.”

  Barbara spoke before her brain caught up to her thoughts. “But, these are Americans just like us. They obviously aren’t infected.”

  The driver barked back at her. “Shut up. Your beloved Doc warned us all to stay away from them because they are carriers and will pass the infection on to us and still live on to pass the infection again.”

  Barbara looked George in the face and mouthed, “Oh, my God, what have we done?”

  When word leaked out that the CDC had locked down and was a safe zone, thousands of people flocked to the many CDC buildings around Atlanta. Most of the people went to the wrong buildings, which were empty. Only the large research building was in the safe zone. Only the senior leaders were escorted to the safe zone before the compound was secured. There were riots, fighting, and attempts to overpower the soldiers guarding the compound. The soldiers used water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets before firing machine guns above their heads. This still didn’t stop the frightened hordes of citizens. The soldiers began firing the machine guns directly into the crowds as a last resort just before being overrun. Later, bulldozers were brought in to clear the dead from the streets.

  The carnage and burned buildings tapered off the further they moved from the CDC research center. The airport was soon in sight, and Barbara saw a plane landing as though it were in trouble. It bounced twice and veered left and right before taxiing to the terminal.

  Barbara whispered to George. “Can you fly a plane?”

  “No, but don’t worry. I’ll find a way to get us to your parent’s home.”

  “George, I’ll take the help, but that doesn’t change anything between us, and you won’t be able to stay with us.”

  George muttered, “We’ll see about that.”

  Chapter 14

  The DeKalb Peachtree Airport – July 2038

  Jon woke up with Bo licking his face. He told Bo to sit, and Bo jumped back in the seat and watched. Jon continued to act as if he was still drugged as the pretty raven-haired woman had warned him to do. He didn’t know whom to trust because he knew he’d been knocked out and was now on a plane with three soldiers and the pretty dark-haired woman. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he didn’t knock himself out, so, which one of these yahoos shanghaied him? He hoped it wasn’t the woman because he’d regret killing her, but he knew he had to get away from these people.

  He closed his eyes when he heard footsteps. One of the soldiers spoke. “What’s a beautiful woman like you doing in an apocalypse like this?

  The raven-haired woman asked, “How many immune people does the lab process? I don’t know much about immunology, but I would think a few volunteers would be enough.”

  “We can’t get volunteers because those damned Russian generals who took all the blood from immune people to give themselves transfusions. They thought the immune blood would keep them safe from infection. I’ve got my doubts, but the rumor spread over the short wave crowd, and now most of the living people hiding out in the woods and boonies are trying to find immune people,” the man said.

  The lady asked, “What’s to keep us from keeping the guy ourselves and slowly draining his blood, so he stays alive?”

  “The Doc says that won’t work. He indicated it might work if the blood type matched, and you had a hell of a lot of blood.”

  The woman said, “Thank God, this man is knocked out, or he’d be trying to escape.”

  “Yep, I have to get back to my poker game. Maybe we can hook up after we land.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The man’s footsteps indicated he had gone back to the front of the plane, so Jon opened his eyes. The woman had a pocketknife in her hand and moved toward him. He flinched, but she motioned she was going to cut his bindings. Jon stuck his hands up behind the seat in front of him. She cut the rope binding him and gave him the knife. He cut the cord securing his feet and stretched his legs to regain circulation. She motioned for him to wait. Jon wondered what she wanted him to wait for.

  Jill walked up to the front of the plane and whispered in the romantic soldier’s ear. He excused himself and followed Jill into the bathroom. Jon heard some bumps and muffled cries for help, and then the door opened a crack. She motioned for Jon to join them. Jill came out while watching to make sure the soldiers up front were still playing cards. She whispered to Jon to go into the bathroom and change clothes with the soldier.

  Jon was confused at first, and then her plan became clear. He went into the bathroom and struggled in the small space to take the soldier’s clothes and put them on. A few minutes later, he opened the door a crack and whispered, “I’m ready. Let’s roll.”

  Jill whispered, “Stay behind me, so they’ll think you’re their friend. We’ll attack when I distract the two. Follow my lead.”

  They walked to the front with Jill in the lead. A few steps before reaching the other men, Jill laughed. “I need another of you to go to the bathroom with me. Your friend only got half the job done.”

  The two men started pushing and shoving to get out of their seats. Jill flashed a knife in the air and stabbed the man beside her. Bo ran between Jon and Jill and bit Jill’s target on the thigh. Jon grabbed the man facing away from him and yanked his head back. He tried to slash the man’s throat, but the knife struck the guy’s collar instead. Jon raised the knife, stabbed the man in the throat, and drew the knife sideways. Blood gushed, and the man fell to the floor with his friend.

  Jill ordered, “Grab one of their pistols,” as she checked to make sure one of their guns was loaded.

  Jon pulled the Sig 9-mm from the soldier’s holster and made sure it was loaded. “Lady, ain’t it dangerous to shoot a gun in an airplane?”

  “Yes, so don’t do it unless …Damn, tuck the gun in your pants, and let me handle the pilot.”

  “Okay, but do I get a vote on the safe place?”

  Jill ignored the question. “Your dog jumps right in and helps, doesn’t he?”

  “He’s not my dog. Bo is his own dog.”

  Jill said, “He saved me from the woman who captured you. That’s enough chatter. Let’s force the pilot to take us away from here. I’ll kill him only if he tries to crash the plane.”

  “Great idea! I’m glad you’re a pilot,” he said.

  “Huh? I thought you were a pilot. You were behind the wheel of that single engine job at the airport.”

  “Oh, hell, no! I had hit my head in the crash was and behind the controls for the first time in my life. Well, a real plane anyway. I’ve flown pretend aircraft on my computer for many hours,” he replied.

  Jill said, “Thank God we didn’t kill the pilot. Follow me. I’ll make him fly at gunpoint.”

  Jill knocked on the pilot’s door, and the latch opened. She stuck her head in and said, “How close are we?”

  The pilot wheeled around with a pistol pointed at Jill’s chest. “Dumbass, I have a camera set up to watch the cabin. I saw you kill the soldiers. I should shoot you now.”

  The pilot pulled the trigger just when Jill ducked and sprang at him. The bullet barely creased her arm, and she hit the floor in the doorway. The aircraft was on autopilot and flew as instructed while Jill wrestled the man to keep him from shooting her or
taking control of the plane. Jill’s body blocked Jon from helping her. Bo ran over the top of Jon and Jill and clamped his jaws down on the pilot’s gun hand. The gun barked again, and the bullet only missed Jon’s ear by a hair. Jon seized on the opportunity and rushed the pilot, slashing and stabbing like a pirate of yesteryear. The pilot’s face was slashed and then his chest. He dropped on the controls, and the plane bobbed. Jon unbuckled his seat restraint and shoved him to the floor on top of Jill. The aircraft recovered and flew along as it had before. Jon didn’t know who the woman was, but he helped her dig herself out from under the dead pilot.

  Jon sat in the pilot’s seat, studying the controls. “Lady, are you okay? Please tell me what the hell is going on.”

  Jill said, “I’m Jill Scott, a policewoman from Boulder, Nevada. I saved you from the woman who captured you. The CDC was going to drain your blood to make a vaccine to stop the virus or whatever the hell this plague thing is. We’re in deep doo doo. Now, you’ll have to fly this plane, or we die.”

  Jon stared out the windshield, trying to remember what his favorite hero had done in a similar situation. “Hey Jill, hand me the pilot’s headset. I’m Jon Stone from Alabama, and I’m sick and tired of people trying to kill or infect me.”

  He placed the headset on and keyed the mic, hoping the radio was on the right channel. He said, “Mayday! Mayday! This is the CDC plane, and the pilot had a heart attack or something. We’re screwed if you can’t tell me how to land this plane. God, please answer!”

  The radio clicked. “This is Robert at the DeKalb Peachtree Airport. Soldier, have you flown before?”

  “No, sir.”

  Jon clearly heard, “Oh shit! He’s screwed,” then he heard, “I’m a grunt like you and don’t need to be addressed as sir. Contrary to what most folks believe, flying a small fixed wing plane is a piece of cake. Now let’s start with familiarizing you with the controls and gauges. The steering wheel is …”