by Brian Parker
“When you arrive in America, use the serum. Do not let yourself be arrested.”
“We are ready, Major Shaikh,” the man designated to go to New York said. “Trust in Allah. We will defeat the godless.”
Shaikh’s lips thinned. He’d discovered that the men chosen to be the carriers were religious fanatics—probably how the Facilitator had convinced them to infect themselves. Allah’s wrath would flow through them.
As the men stood to disembark the plane, Shaikh’s thoughts turned once more to his family. Rabbia said the children were fine and that she’d bonded with the other captive women. All he had to do was ensure the curse destroyed the entire non-Muslim world and he could see her again. Just a small task, he mused.
They filed past him, each carrying a small backpack and a suitcase. Care had been taken to ensure that none of them had the same bags or anything that would raise suspicions. The security was laughable in the Brazilian airport, but they couldn’t afford any slip up.
The carriers were booked on different flights throughout the day, spreading them amongst several airlines as well. Across the Atlantic, men were leaving from Tehran, flying to Europe, Africa, and Asia. There was even a plan to send a carrier to Australia and another to New Zealand. Once again, he decided that the Council had thought of everything.
Shaikh watched through the cargo plane’s windows as the men loaded onto an airport shuttle that would take them to the terminal and begin the Day of Resurrection. Several emotions welled up inside of him. None of them was happiness.
Instead, Taavi Shaikh felt an immense sadness settle into his chest. He had helped to destroy the world today.
SIXTEEN
* * *
NEAR ARTYOM, RUSSIA
ONE WEEK BEFORE THE OUTBREAK
The plane bounced roughly as it hit another patch of turbulence and Grady gripped the armrests tightly. He wasn’t afraid of flying, far from it, but the Brits had put his team on a commercial carrier, Aurora Airlines, for the flight from Tokyo to Vladivostok. The only thing flying to that frozen hell was a Bombardier Dash-8 propeller passenger plane. The small plane seemed to excel at plowing into every pocket of turbulence and dropping several feet each time, all while providing a spectacularly cramped ride, making him think it wasn’t designed for American-sized passengers.
The flight might not have even been as bad if the pilots would have warned of the impending turbulence, or if the stewardesses would have given any indication that it was occurring. They didn’t, however, and the idea that these civilians were completely fine with the flight made him question his manhood.
The nose of the plane dipped noticeably and Grady assumed that they were on final approach—not that the pilots said anything to the passengers. He set his vodka down on the small tray in front of him and brought his wrist to his face so he could see his watch in the cabin’s dim interior. The Bombardier dropped a good two feet as it hit another section of rough air and he had to fumble for the shot glass so its contents wouldn’t be spilled all over his lap.
He tipped the glass, downing his second vodka in one long gulp, and then crammed in the nasty excuse for a pickle that the stewardess had given him when he’d asked for a drink, which of course, the only thing they had was vodka or water. He glanced back at his watch. They’d been in the air for two hours and twenty minutes of a two-and-a-half hour flight, so they were definitely on the approach. Looking out the window, all he saw was a forest of evergreen trees and patches of white snow underneath—lovely from the warm cabin of an airplane, but he knew it was bitterly cold down there and didn’t relish the idea of humping across the terrain.
No annoying flight attendant told him to lift his tray table. He did it out of habit, though, and craned his neck to see anything besides the trees. There was nothing out there except misery and frozen earth. The stewardess, a petite blonde, appeared and gestured for his shot glass, which he handed over, admiring the view as she turned to collect the glasses from Carmike and Knasovich in the next row over.
Hannah Dunn pushed his shoulder from behind. “Get an eyeful?” she asked.
“I’d like to get a lot more than that,” he muttered, winking at her over his shoulder. They’d gotten along splendidly over the past few days as she backed off her full-court press of trying to develop something more than a professional work relationship with him. Secretly, he thought it was because she’d found her way into the bedroom of one of the Brits, but he didn’t have anything to go off of besides a complete one-eighty in her attitude. What else could it be?
“Well, you had your shot and you blew it,” Hannah replied, laughing as they bounced their way through more turbulence.
Grady looked back at her and she raised an eyebrow at him playfully. “Ah… Are you really comfortable with all this turbulence?” he asked, changing the subject.
“It’s fine,” she assured him. “I’ve flown through worse. It’s completely safe as long as we don’t lose altitude rapidly when we’re only a few feet off the ground.”
“What happens then?” He already knew the answer, but felt it was the appropriate response. He was also questioning his own order to restrict the in-flight drinking to a two-drink maximum.
“Boom!” she laughed, spreading her fingers from a close grip to wide open and apart.
“Fucking pilots,” he grumbled and turned back to the window just in time to see a fence pass quickly underneath the plane.
The Bombardier landed smoothly on the Vladivostok International Airport runway, belying the mounds of snow piled up alongside it. Grady breathed a sigh of relief and glanced over his shoulder at Hannah once more. “Looks like we made it.”
“There’s still time to wreck the bird,” she assured him.
Contrary to her apparent death wish, the plane taxied up to the terminal and the members of his team exited the aircraft, walking different directions to reach the exit where their ride was located. Hannah and Grady once again played the couple for the sake of airport cameras.
McCormick and Bazan, both being persons of color, had flown over the night before with the Brit, Major Alcock, on a cargo plane full of mail packages and legitimate trade goods. The three of them had switched out with men in the warehouse to ensure the Russian immigration authorities didn’t question why they’d stayed when the cargo plane took off on its return trip. They unloaded the boxes from the cargo plane and filled it with new boxes for the return trip. Of course, one of those cargo containers that they unloaded happened to include the team’s gear. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an easy way of getting the equipment and the team members who stood the highest chance of being questioned onto the continent without a lot of hoopla.
As they stepped outside, Grady pulled his coat closer, thankful that he’d upgraded to the heavy parka instead of his normal Carhart jacket. Beside him, Hannah wrapped a heavy scarf around her face, and then tucked the running ends deep inside her own parka before zipping it all the way up.
“I’ll need to find a facemask,” he muttered, his lips were already numb. It looked like Hannah nodded her head, but it was hard to tell with all of the clothing—and, it was entirely possible that Grady’s eyelids were freezing shut. “How the fuck do people live here?”
Beep-beep! A weak car horn sounded from a few feet away, causing Grady to turn his entire body to see where it originated. If he’d turned his neck, more of the arctic air would have flowed down his jacket. It was a prospect he couldn’t support.
Major Alcock sat behind the wheel of a small box truck parallel parked about a hundred and fifty meters away. Beside him, Grady could see one of his team members, but not which one. Whoever it was had been smart enough to bring a facemask.
He tapped Hannah’s side. “Let’s go.”
“Mpfh,” she replied as she turned to follow him.
When they got closer, Alcock pointed a thumb toward the back and Grady led the pair around the truck. The back door rolled open, revealing the rest of his team. Rob Carmike reached down a
nd helped Hannah into the truck and then Grady before Bazan rolled the door back into place. Knasovich pounded on the cab of the truck and it lurched into motion.
Grady sat down heavily against the side. “How—How the fuck did you two get here first?” he asked, stuttering slightly from the cold.
“We walked out of them doors and the truck was right there waiting for us,” Carmike replied. “Just the luck of positioning, boss.”
“Ugh,” he grunted and looked over to Bazan. “We got all of our gear?”
“Yeah,” the team’s demolitions expert replied. “It’s all in the hangar. We should be there in about ten minutes.”
Bazan closed his eyes and tilted his head back. Grady knew he’d be out before long. The man had the uncanny ability to fall asleep anywhere and come awake, fully alert, the moment the situation required it. He often wondered if Baz simply pretended to sleep so that others wouldn’t talk to him or if he actually had the mental ability to switch gears faster than most.
The normal rocking motion of the truck gave way to the gradual deceleration of a vehicle preparing to turn, and then they turned right. Bazan’s eyes shot open as he pressed his legs down firmly into the floor for support. “We’re here,” he said with a smile, lifting his parka’s hood into place over his head.
Two doors opened and slammed shut in the front of the truck. Then the latch holding the door closed unleashed outside and the door rolled up. “Good morning, chaps,” Alcock stated cheerfully. “Let’s go inside.”
The newly-arrived members of the team followed the other three dutifully through a service door into the hangar. Inside, the remains of open shipping containers littered the floor, leaving a trail of evidence even a moron could follow.
“Are we going to clean this shit up?” Grady asked, pointing to the crates and bags of military gear.
“Of course,” Alcock replied jovially. “We just wanted to wait until you got here so we could all enjoy a nice bit of work.”
“What?”
The Brit handed him a claw hammer. “We’re going to break those crates down and take them with us for firewood.”
“Seems a little—”
“Nope,” Chris, the big mechanic, cut in. “You ain’t gonna believe what the hell we’re taking across the border, Harper.”
On the far side of the hangar, two white trucks sat loaded with supplies. It was a stretch to call them white, but Grady wasn’t sure what color rust and sadness equated to, so he settled on white. “What the hell are those things?”
“They’re the standard North Korean Army truck,” Alcock replied. “Up to three people can fit in the cab, another ten in the back—if we were the size of North Korean Army soldiers. As it is, we’ll need the two trucks to carry our current seven men and then the translator that we’ll pick up at the labor camp.”
“Standard?” Grady asked in disbelief.
“It gets better, chief,” McCormick laughed. “These damned trucks are powered by wood. The Norks figured out a way to power their trucks by burning wood in stoves in the cargo area.”
“They’re steam powered?” he asked, once more in disbelief.
“Nope,” the Kentuckian replied again. “They have a stove that burns the wood, rubber, paper, sawdust—basically anything you can throw into it—and the gases released run through a converted carburetor to power the engine. I saw some of these on old, backcountry trucks and some tractors back home, but I would have never thought an entire fleet of vehicles could run on something like that.”
Grady nodded his head, understanding the concept of it, if not the mechanics of how it was done. One thing was certain: the North Koreans had once again proven how ingenious they could be in order to overcome adversity.
He wondered what else their devious minds had come up with.
Hannah’s entire body shook uncontrollably and she huddled closer to the stove in an attempt to capture any heat that radiated from it. She thought all the cold weather gear she’d purchased on the company card at REI would have kept her warm, but it wasn’t rated for minus seventy degrees, with a wind chill of negative ninety—all while traveling eighty-five kilometers an hour down an abandoned stretch of highway in the bed of a pickup truck.
She looked into the cab of the truck where Grady and Bazan sat in the luxurious heat and a pang of jealously crept over her that she immediately regretted. She and Knasovich, her partner in the tortuous wind, had been inside the cab only ten minutes ago. It was simply her turn to be outside.
Grady ordered a strict twenty-minute rotation policy for the people in the back. Every twenty minutes, the two trucks would stop and whomever was outside in the elements would go inside and vice versa. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any other way to feed the stove that powered the engines.
Hannah craned her neck to look beyond the cab at the lead truck’s taillights. The first truck only held three members of the team, so their rotation schedule wasn’t as bad as Truck Two’s. A person got to stay inside the cab for two rotations before going outside versus the every other time that she had to endure.
“Shoulda picked Truck One,” she mumbled, digging her gloves into the pile of chopped up shipping container. She quickly opened the door and warmth blossomed across her face. She closed her eyes, allowing herself to believe she was somewhere else—literally anywhere except the desolate wilds of far southeast Russia, barreling deeper into Siberia toward a remote logging camp.
The truck’s engine sputtered and Knasovich slapped her back. She turned to him and he shouted, “Put the fuel in and close the damn door.”
She nodded, and tossed in the three chunks of wood she’d picked up. The small door clanked loudly as she threw it closed and rotated the handle, sealing as much of the heat as she could.
Knasovich leaned close to her hood so she could hear him. “If the fire goes out, we’re good as dead,” he yelled. “What the hell?”
“I got distracted,” Hannah admitted.
“Hmpf,” the sniper grunted and sat back on his rear. “Don’t do it again.”
She stared daggers at him. What was it about the man that rubbed her the wrong way every time she had to interact with him? Why did he have to be an ass all the time? She knew that she wouldn’t get any answers. It was the same question she’d asked herself many times. The guy was just flawed somehow.
Hannah tried not to let Knasovich get to her. The guy was a jerk to everyone. But, it seemed like he especially had it in for her for some reason. She wasn’t sure if the reason was that she was the new kid on the block or whether he was a misogynist asshole—probably both.
To ease her mind and help pass the time, she tried to see the beauty in the land around her. It should have been easy to do since she truly enjoyed winter back in the States, what with her love of skiing, sledding, sitting in a hot tub surrounded by snow, and having drinks by a fire. Thinking of those things brought the hint of a smile to her lips. The passing terrain certainly looked postcard worthy with the pristine white pillows of snow on evergreen branches, the occasional forest animal popping its head up, and snatches of birdsong that could be heard over the chugging of the trucks’ engines, but she couldn’t find a way to feel a connection to her surroundings. She was borderline freezing and far too pissed off about Knasovich to enjoy the moment.
After several more miles, the whine of the truck’s engine changed pitch and Hannah’s body began to lean toward the cab as Grady slowed down behind Truck One. She wasted no time in climbing out to stamp her feet on the pavement, bringing the sharp pinpricks of pain as circulation slowly returned. The sound of boots hitting the ground behind her told her that Knasovich had jumped down as well. How the North Koreans used these contraptions as their main mode of troop transport was beyond her.
The driver’s door opened and Grady stepped out. He nodded to the sniper as the two of them passed one another. “How are you doing?” he asked, genuine concern in his voice.
“I’m okay,” she lied.
“You’re
shaking like a fucking leaf,” he countered.
“I’m just a wimp when it comes to the cold.”
“You picked the wrong mission to come on then,” he laughed through his baklava. His eyes searched her up and down as she continued to stomp her feet. “It’s my turn to come outside, but I doubt that Baz would mind switching with you. You know, to let you warm up.”
She shook her head violently. “Absolutely not! I’m not going to be treated special. Yeah, I’m fucking cold, but I’ll deal with it.”
“Are you sure? I mean, no offense, but you probably don’t have a lot of body fat on you. There’s just—”
“Oh, shut up, Grady. None of you guys have any body fat either—well, maybe McCormick, but that’s beside the point. I’ll make do. Don’t worry about me.”
“I do worry about you,” he replied, causing her heartbeat to quicken slightly. “I worry about all of my guys.”
“Oh,” she answered. “Even Knasovich?”
“Yeah. Even that guy.” He stepped closer to her and reached out to grasp her shoulders for a moment before running his hands rapidly up and down her arms.
“I feel like you’re about to give me some type of junior high school locker room pep talk.”
He stopped abruptly at her words and backed off. “I was just trying to help. We may need to do whatever we can to stay warm out here—especially once we cross the border and have to hole up each night in the open.”
“I’m big spoon,” she sniggered.
“What?”
“When we’re doing whatever,” she said, making air quotes with her gloved fingers, “to stay warm, I’m big spoon. You can be the little spoon.”
“I—”
“Yeah,” Hannah grunted like one of the guys. “You like that, don’t you, bitch?”
Grady shook his head. “Just get in the truck.”
She stomped her foot one more time, then reached for the tailgate. Pulling herself up, she was almost to the top of the tailgate when her foot slipped on the icy bumper. For some stupid reason, she let go of the truck as she fell, letting out a muffled squeak of fear.