Turning Point (Book 3): A Time To Live

by Wandrey, Mark

  * * *

  County Courthouse

  Junction, TX

  The howls and barking calls of the infected never stopped, day or night. Colonel Cobb Pendleton woke and stretched, ignoring the dozens of minor aches and pains. They reminded him he was alive and not a snack for the crazies, like the ones below.

  “Morning, Colonel.”

  Ann Benedict was standing outside the office Cobb had chosen to bunk in. She held two steaming cups as she observed him. Her long, dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she looked tired, just like the rest of them.

  “Good Lord, is that coffee?” he asked.

  “Indeed, it is,” she said and held out a cup. He climbed off the less-than-comfortable Ikea couch and reached for the cup.

  “Hot and black, just the way I love it. What?”

  Ann was chuckling. “That’s what all you military guys say.”

  Cobb shrugged. “A lot of my men in the ‘Stan preferred energy drinks. I’m one of the old-school types. The kids gave me a lot of shit over it.” He blew on the brew and took a sip. Tasted like Starbucks. Eh, better than nothing. “How are the others?”

  “Tim and Vance are downstairs, checking on the barricade. Belinda is changing Harry’s bandages. He’s got a low-level infection. Nicole is doing inventory.”

  “You guys have been through the shit,” Cobb said. “You didn’t have a Stryker, either.”

  “No, we didn’t have an armored car. Might have been nice.” She took a sip of her coffee. “We wanted to let you get some sleep, then maybe talk about our situation.”

  “Sounds great. Any chow to be had?”

  “MREs?”

  “Yum,” he said. The look on his face made her laugh. Cobb could see why Vance liked her; she was a straight-up kind of gal. Vance Cartwright was their leader, which he hadn’t quite figured out. While the man wasn’t a slouch with a gun or basic leadership, Harry Ross was a former Marine, and you’d expect him to be in charge. Weird situation.

  “We’re one floor down in an old courtroom, and we have hot water ready for MREs.”

  “Be there in a few minutes,” he said. She nodded and left. Cobb walked out into the hall and over two rooms. This space, like several others, was pretty fucked up—a 12-ton armored personnel carrier was wedged in the wall. He’d jumped it over from the adjacent parking garage. A desperate and stupid maneuver. The four survivalists holed up in the courthouse had thrown a rope across to him, but he hadn’t seen it.

  In the office next to his former APC, half the wall was collapsed. The hole gave him a good view of the neighbors—at least a couple thousand screaming, insatiable infected. As soon as he came into view, they began to cry out, growling and gnashing their teeth at him. Hundreds were on the parking garage he’d jumped his Stryker from. Dozens fought for the privilege of leaping toward him through a hole in the concrete retaining wall, only to fall three stories to the ground. Many were injured when they landed on other infected. They were set upon and, often, devoured.

  “It’s like something out of Dante,” he said aloud. He moved to the edge and looked down. It was like a mosh pit at Hell’s gates. They were hundreds deep, surrounding the courthouse on all sides. Some tried to climb on top of others, but they didn’t seem to be cooperating. Such attempts ended in bites and, sometimes, gruesome dismemberments. Damned good thing they don’t get along.

  “Hey, Colonel,” Harry Ross called out as he entered. Cobb turned around. When he saw the other man, he could see Ross’ restrained temptation to salute.

  “Just Cobb is fine,” he told the man. “I suspect you got your DD-214 some time ago.” Of course, I got my release form some time ago as well. Yet here I am.

  “Just over ten years, sir.”

  Cobb admired the man’s build—he was still thick necked and relatively fit. You could usually spot the leathernecks who’d done more than a term or two. They never quite let go of the lifestyle. Harry looked like he’d gone to seed a little, but who didn’t when they passed 40? He had almost ten years on the Marine, and his stomach wasn’t flat anymore.

  Harry’s wife, Belinda, was just finishing with his bandages and helping him back into his shirt. The man looked like someone had taken razors to his abdomen. He saw Cobb looking.

  “Infected,” he explained. “Fingers, not teeth. Good thing, too. I suspect getting bitten might be a problem.”

  Over to one side, Nicole Price, Tim Price’s wife, was going through packs and bags. Cobb had learned, after they’d been cornered by the mob downstairs, that the survivalists had been forced to abandon their vehicles, taking only what they could carry. He had to admire their survivalist mentality; they’d grabbed quite a bit. Nicole waved him over.

  “Can I help, ma’am?”

  “I was hoping you would let us salvage what we can from your tank,” she said.

  “APC,” he corrected immediately. “Sure, help yourself.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” she said and pointed to a pile by the door. Standard military ammo cans were stacked neatly, by caliber, next to other ordnance and his three surviving M4 carbines. “I’m afraid those automatics will come in handy.”

  “Trouble?”

  “You looked outside lately?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said and half grinned at the memory of relieving himself. She narrowed her eyes at his expression, no doubt wondering if the army guy was all there.

  The door to the courtroom opened, and Vance Cartwright and Tim Price entered. Tim was tall and muscular, with thick shoulders, whereas Vance was more of the stereotypical accountant type. The two moved together with a sort of familiarity that spoke of long-time friends. Both had AR10s, the .308 caliber version of the AR platform, cradled in their arms. The ARs had a lot more stopping power but were heavier and sported smaller magazines.

  “Morning, Colonel,” Vance said. Tim just nodded.

  “Cobb is fine,” Cobb replied. “We’re all in this shit together.”

  “That’s true,” Tim said.

  “We’re good for a bit, so let’s get some chow. Afterward, I’d like Cobb’s input on our situation.”

  “You bet,” Cobb said. They took seats at the long counselors’ table below the judge’s bench, and Nicole brought in a pan of boiling water. Belinda retrieved seven MRE breakfast packets, and soon they were all tearing plastic and pouring water. In no time, the courtroom was filled with the smell of military maple sausage and French vanilla cappuccino.

  “I kinda miss the old veggie omelet,” Harry mumbled.

  “I always thought you Marines were crazy,” Cobb said. “Now, I know it.” There was general laughter as they ate.

  “I like eggs,” Tim admitted. “But that veggie omelet wasn’t what I’d call eggs.” Cobb nodded and Harry shrugged. “We have two cases of Mountain House eggs with bacon in my truck.”

  “You feel like going to get them?” Vance asked. Tim shook his head. The group was quiet for a time as they ate.

  Cobb noted that two women gave Ann their toaster pastries, which she quickly devoured. He wondered if they were a favorite of hers. She didn’t offer them anything in return. He filed the information away for later.

  “Okay,” Vance said when he was done eating. “Give me a hand?” he asked Cobb.

  “Sure, let me grab my gun.” He’d left his rifle by the door when he’d come into the courtroom. He still had his personal M9 in its holster. He had no intention of ever being more than arm’s length from a gun again. He checked the condition of his M4 and followed Vance down the stairs.

  “We checked your APC while you were sleeping,” Vance said as he descended. “Thought maybe we could get it into the action somehow.”

  “It wouldn’t survive the fall,” Cobb said.

  “Yeah, we came to the same conclusion. Tim is a fair mechanic. We’re also afraid it would act as a ramp for the infected. We’ve seen them do some crazy things.”

  “Crazy how?” Cobb asked.

  “Olympic athlete c
razy. Sometimes more.” They reached the bottom of the stairs. The double-wide staircase was somewhat ornamental with a carved, wooden banister and polished steps. It was entirely blocked between the second and first floors by a dozen benches from the courtroom arranged in an ingenious interlocking pattern. Growls and pounding came from below. “I’ve also seen them…change.”

  “Huh?”

  Vance grabbed the closest bench and gave it an experimental pull to make sure it was still lodged in place, then turned to face Cobb. “When we were trapped in my bunker—”

  “You had a bunker?”

  “Sure, don’t you? Anyway, the bunker had a three-inch-thick, wooden door. I wish I’d had the metal one put in, but three inches of wood was pretty damned good. Well, the infected were pounding on it to get through. They’d figured out we were inside. Just when we started using the escape tunnel because they were getting through, I noticed that several had beaten all the flesh off their hands.”

  Cobb shuddered. He’d seen the horrible injuries some of the infected had, sure. But the thought of a human being continuing to pound on a door when their hands had been beaten to bony messes made him swallow hard.

  “But there’s more.” Vance seemed to consider how to explain. “It was almost as if the bones in their hands had reformed into chisels.”

  “What? That’s crazy.”

  “Yes, it is. Doesn’t change what I saw. I’m the only one who saw it, so I don’t know what to think.” He looked at the barricade. “I’ve been checking the barricade every hour on the hour, waiting and hoping I was imagining things. So far, so good.” He looked at the barricade and gave a little shudder. “Anyway, you got any ideas to improve it?”

  “Did I see metal grates on the courtroom’s exterior windows? We could put those under a layer of these benches.”

  “Damn, that’s a good idea.”

  “Thanks,” Cobb said. “Even if they can…mutate.” He tried to wrap his mouth around the word but didn’t do a good job. “Even if they can mutate their hands to chop through wood, metal is stronger than any bone.”

  “Right you are,” Vance said. “Next, I was thinking we could dismount the radio from your APC and see if we can get it going.”

  “They’re tricky to work with,” Cobb cautioned.

  “We’ve got some experience with military surplus,” Vance said and winked.

  “I bet you do,” Cobb said and winked back. Yeah, he liked these people. Besides, you fought your battles with what you had, not what you wanted. The two turned to head upstairs but only made it two steps when they heard a splintering sound from the barricade.

  Both men turned around, staring first at the barricade, then at each other. Another crunching sound came, only this time it was followed by deep growling noises.

  “What the fuck is that?” Vance wondered.

  “I have no clue,” Cobb said. “But we’d better expedite the metal grating. I fear our barricade won’t survive whatever that thing is.” The two men ran up the stairs, the sounds of splintering hardwood and growling echoing in their ears.

  * * *

  Joint Combined Evacuation Fleet

  Panama Bay

  “Dr. Bennitti, please report to conference room #3. Dr. Bennitti, please report to conference room #3.”

  The blaring PA system shut down, and Theodore Alphonse Bennitti, III, shook his head. The military didn’t do anything quietly. He saved his work on the computer and got up, stretching and listening to his bones creak. At 62, he wasn’t a spring chicken anymore. Getting up and down decks on the 25-year-old USS Bataan wasn’t easy.

  Outside his suite of offices, through the watertight door, a pair of young Marines waited. As soon as they saw him, both came to rigid attention. Al could almost see their desire to salute him, to salute anything. He walked past, and they fell in without comment. “You don’t have to follow me everywhere,” he said over his shoulder. Neither replied, so he kept walking.

  Learning your way around a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship was challenging enough without two gung-ho Marines following you everywhere. As a senior director at NASA, he wasn’t used to asking simple questions such as ‘where is the bathroom.’ He learned such things for himself. The trouble was, he didn’t have time for trivialities.

  He went down a deck, moving slowly and carefully along the nearly vertical ladders topped by a big steel hatch. Al understood the need for watertight doors, but every single damned door?

  “Are you okay, sir?” one of the Marines asked.

  “Fine,” Al grumbled as he hobbled away from the stairs.

  “Sir?”

  “What is it?” He turned around, and the Marine was pointing the opposite way down the corridor. “Oh.” He found conference room #3 a short distance farther down the hall. Two Marines were guarding the conference room door, and the pair who’d followed him stayed. Maybe they can all play cards or something. He entered the room.

  “Dr. Bennitti, about goddamned time!”

  “Admiral Kent,” Al said as he examined the other people in the room. Dr. David Curie, Chief Immunologist at the CDC, and his boss, Dr. Theodor Gallatin, Director of Immunology. Off to the side, as if she were afraid of the brighter light in the center of the conference room, was Dr. Wilma Gnox. She had a paper notebook in her lap and was mumbling as she wrote.

  “Get lost again?” Dr. Curie asked.

  “Piss off,” Al replied and took a seat. “I was working. Why did you call me?”

  “Because we’ve entered the Bay of Panama,” Admiral Kent said.

  “And that means what to me?”

  “The USS Stout, one of our Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, was the first to leave the canal yesterday. They detected two deep-moving contacts. We’ve got helicopters following up.”

  “I’m still confused about what this has to do with me and what it means?”

  “Submarines,” Admiral Kent said. “Two submarines in the bay. They’re not ours; we don’t have any. Even if we did, we can’t talk to them because your people haven’t been able to break the jamming signal.”

  “Admiral,” Al said. “We had 11,000 people working for NASA before this alien plague hit. You managed to rescue 591 of our personnel from a surprising cross section of our specialties from Kennedy Space Center. However, only nine are the kind of computer experts who would have a chance in Hell of cracking the bug which has infected your global communications network. I have two of them working on it.”

  “What about the other seven?” the admiral demanded.

  “They’re on another project.”

  “What other project?” he demanded.

  Al glanced pointedly at Dr. Gnox, then back at the admiral.

  “Shit,” Admiral Kent cursed.

  “Why are you worried about a couple of submarines?”

  “Because, if you find two, it means there are a lot more. Think of it as shaking a haystack and three needles falling out.”

  “Aren’t you being paranoid?” Al wondered.

  “My job is to be paranoid. How do you think things worked out when we passed through Gamboa?”

  Al hadn’t been on deck or anywhere he could watch when the two supposed yachts suddenly attacked a frigate which was scouting ahead of the fleet. He’d seen footage of the aftermath, including the burning yachts and the damaged frigate. The admiral had ordered all ships to implement combat conditions from the moment they’d entered the canal.

  “Can we get back to why the subs are a problem? You do have all kinds of...anti-sub stuff?”

  “We have substantial ASW capabilities, yes,” Admiral Kent agreed. “However, employing them to sweep for subs is going to slow us down quite a bit.”

  “Another day, one way or another, to reach this Flotilla shouldn’t be a problem,” Al said. “Once there, when we have the president on board—”

  “That won’t happen,” the admiral said. “The president is dead; her plane collided with a navy fighter and went down.”

  “Th
ere were multiple outbreaks on some other naval and civilian ships,” Dr. Gallatin added.

  “At least one carrier is believed to have sunk, taking with it the senior admiral on site, Admiral Hoskins,” Kent finished.

  “Which makes you senior?” Al asked.

  The admiral nodded. “But not if you can help us get the goddamned GCCS up,” he said, referring to the US Military’s Global Command and Control System, an interconnected data system linking all the armed forces in all the theaters of operations and DC. It was supposed to be uninterruptable, even by a nuclear war. So much for that idea. “And, the favorable atmospheric conditions allowing us to talk with the Flotilla have become less favorable. So, we’re cut off by radio too.”

  “Even if we could communicate, it doesn’t mean there’s anyone else out there,” Dr. Curie pointed out. “Based on our most conservative model, Strain Delta reached 100% worldwide exposure 92 hours ago.”

  Admiral Kent’s jaw muscles clenched, and the grinding of his teeth was audible over the constant thrumming of the assault carrier’s steam-driven turbines. “Look, people, we left Miami with three fleet oilers. We emptied one just after we made it through Aquas Clara. Now, we have two. Every goddamned ship we have is drinking bunker fuel at a frightening rate, and these skulking subs are not making things go any faster. If we don’t make it to the San Diego area in 70 hours, we’ll be leaving ships behind.” He looked at Al. “Have you made progress with the alien stuff?”

  “Not much,” he admitted. Admiral Kent looked ready to pop. Al raised a hand. “This isn’t like the movies, where you can conveniently grab a part off a shelf and have it instantly interface with the aliens’ tech. These things use superconducting properties we don’t understand. They transmit anti-gravity fields through ferrous metal. Any ferrous metal. Do you want a carrier to accidentally float a hundred feet up, then come crashing down?”

  “That would be sub-optimal,” Kent said.

  “Slightly more than sub-optimal if you’re on the boat,” Gnox said, the first indication she’d been listening to the conversation.