Spore Series | Book 4 | Exist

by Soward, Kenny

  Melissa shot Moe a glance and then slid her eyes sheepishly to the colonel. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to complete my mission before reporting back.”

  The colonel regarded her with a wary expression. “And what do you consider your mission?”

  “To help the people of Chinle,” Melissa repeated. “Once things are secure, I’ll head home to Edwards.”

  The colonel studied her with her dark, intense eyes. “You’re afraid Walsh might order you back right away if you report in. And, at the moment, you don’t want to return.”

  Melissa’s gaze fell to the floor in response.

  Her sense of duty touched Moe, and he felt proud to know the woman. She was risking her life to help his people, all with the knowledge her husband was alive somewhere out east. Most others would have quit on the Chinle residents, abandoned their duties, and went in search of their loved one.

  Moe wouldn’t have blamed her, though he was happy she remained on his side.

  “And now here the two of you are, looking for supplies.” Her eyes moved back and forth between the two. “I’m sorry to hear about your people, Mr. Tsosie. And I’m glad you’re not part of some rogue faction. I think we can dismiss any sort of punishment for your indiscretion. You couldn’t have known the warehouse was the property of Nellis Air Force Base.”

  “Thank you, colonel,” Moe said, gratefully. “Can you spare some goods for us?”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t,” she replied tersely. “We’re barely holding on to what we have.”

  Moe’s breath came faster, his blood pressure rising as he studied the Las Vegas map. The lines and pins meant nothing to him. All he could think about were the tons of stores inside the warehouse. “But you’ve got truckloads of supplies here. We’re begging for one load of essentials and would be on our way.”

  “I’ve got over ten thousand people on base to feed, Mr. Tsosie. Many of them are military families with kids. I can’t afford to give up a single morsel of food.”

  “But you’ve got the weapons and resources to take what you want from the city,” Moe pressed.

  “It’s not that easy,” the colonel said. She stepped out from around the desk and walked to the map. Melissa and Moe followed her over, studying the map more intently.

  Lopez-Reyes gestured to the warehouse on the map, circling other parts with her finger while she talked. “We currently control North Las Vegas and Nellis Air Force Base as well as several distribution centers in Sunrise Manor. The rest of the city as far south as Seven Hills is in some degree of chaos. No one is in charge, as far as we can tell. It’s just factions of people grouping together for survival.”

  Her eyes fell on Moe, and she pointed out a part of the city south of Sunrise Manor. “We tried to insert here once to help the residents of a subdivision. They thought we were there to steal their dwindling supplies and attacked the troops. A thousand people versus a hundred trained soldiers. I lost six good soldiers before we fought back. We had to shoot our own citizens, Mr. Tsosie.” She shook her head. “Do you know what that’s like?”

  “I don’t.” Moe cast his eyes down.

  “It’s estimated we killed a hundred and fifty people before we extracted. So, we can’t just waltz through town and take what we want. Plus, a sliver of government still sits at City Hall, and they’ve asked us to show restraint while they try to organize and keep peace. I don’t think it’s working.” Lopez-Reyes lowered her tone. “I’m sure you saw the smoldering buildings on the way into the city.”

  Moe nodded, his hope dwindling.

  “So, I’ve got half a million people out there tearing themselves apart. And when they’re done with everything out there, they’ll come here. That’s tens of thousands against us.”

  “I can see why you’re playing conservatively,” Moe said with pursed lip, his heart sinking as the plight of Las Vegas, and of his own people, grew abundantly clear.

  “I recommend you return to Chinle or look for an alternate city to scavenge from. There are many towns to the south, all fairly large. Boulder City, Phoenix, and several others.”

  “The routes will take too long, and we’d need a lot of fuel.” He shook his head, eyes searching the map. “Is there someplace else we could try? Perhaps another warehouse you can’t go to, but a smaller group might get in and out quickly?”

  Lopez-Reyes pointed to a pair of green pins near the city’s center. “Here. Two more Amber Hill Distribution Centers. One of them is well-guarded by one of the stronger factions. The other is slightly east. We held it for three days before being ordered back by the Mayor, concerned about civilian casualties. Now two rival groups fight over it constantly. I wouldn’t stop you from hitting that. I’m not going to lie, you’d be playing with fire.”

  Moe winced at the warehouse location. It lay east of the McCarran International Airport, deep in the center of the city. His eyes scanned the roads and highways, looking for a quick and easy way in.

  He thought about the kids with him. Josiah, Tyler, and Zoe. It wasn’t fair to drag them into the jaws of death. He could leave them at the military warehouse and pick them up if they returned.

  But what if they didn’t return? What if they failed? The town of Chinle didn’t have anyone with the driving experience or equipment to range very far. They’d be trapped in the canyon with nothing gained.

  Thousands of people would starve.

  He stared at Melissa to gauge her thoughts. He couldn’t pull it off without her and her two soldiers. The captain raised her eyes and bowed her head slightly.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Moe said. “We have to go in.” He squared up to Colonel Lopez-Reyes and leveled his gaze. “Thank you for the information. I understand you have your own responsibilities, and I wouldn’t ask you for anything else if not for our desperate straits. Just one small favor.”

  “Go ahead, Mr. Tsosie. Tell me what you need.”

  Chapter 30

  Jessie, Yellow Springs, Ohio

  Jessie stood in the storeroom with her left arm folded across her chest, fingers fidgeting with her sling. Weissman had patched up her wounded head, redressed her leaking shoulder, and given her a reasonable dose of pain killer. Just a standard NSAID to take the edge off and help her think clearly.

  Bryant stood to her right, quiet and reserved. He held his rifle close to his chest, almost reverently. He squeezed the grip and released it. He tensed his shoulders and sniffed.

  “We should bury him,” the soldier said in a quivering voice.

  Jessie rotated her head slowly toward him. Bryant’s attempts to remain stoic had failed miserably. His eyes were puffy and red, his nose raw from constant wiping. He wasn’t taking Paul’s death well. None of them were.

  “Not yet.” She ground her jaw. “We’ve still got something to do.”

  Jessie turned to regard the others in the room.

  Burke sat trussed to a chair against the back wall with blood dripping down his chin. They’d acquired some stainless steel handcuffs from a wrecked police cruiser to bind his wrists, and they had chains from a previous hardware run to lock down his hands and feet.

  Masterlocks sealed the configuration, so Burke couldn’t move without sounding like a clattering ghost. Bryant and Jessie held the keys to two locks each, so the man would need to injure or kill them both to collect them all. His right hand was bound in gauze and medical tape to cover the stumps of his middle and index fingers.

  Garcia had blown them off with one shot.

  Dex sat on a stool in front of Burke, grinning contemptuously at the man with a pistol resting in his lap. He enjoyed this specific guard duty immensely, playing the unhinged soldier to perfection.

  Weissman stood quietly behind Dex, holding a bowl.

  Paul lay on the floor in nearly the same spot he’d died. The men had helped her flip him over and clean him up. They’d placed his hands across his portly belly and combed his hair back from his forehead. Weissman had stuffed the caved-in part of his
temple with gauze and a thick bandage to ease the sight of him. He looked like a wounded man resting rather than a bloody pile of flesh.

  The cause of death was certainly acute head trauma. They estimated Burke had knocked him down, climbed on the mycologist, and smashed his forehead into the concrete floor repeatedly. A fate Jessie might have faced if the madman had not been so eager to destroy the lab.

  Bryant leaned in close. “Should we tell him about the extra case of serum we found in the fridge?”

  She shook her head, thankful and sad. Overnight, Paul had created enough serum to last them a few days but had run out of room in his laboratory to store it. She figured he must have taken it upstairs while they slept, placing it inside the standard side-by-side refrigerator in a metal case before he fed Burke.

  “No,” Jessie whispered. “Don’t mention it.”

  Bryant nodded and backed off to give her some room. She approached the stool, and Dex promptly stood.

  “Did you find it?” she asked the medic.

  “Right here.” He held up a bloody tooth. “It’s a communications device all right. But one way only.”

  The soldier tossed it up, and Jessie snatched it out of the air. She held it between her index finger and thumb with a grin. Then she put it in a cotton-stuffed tin and placed it in her jeans pocket.

  “It took me ten minutes to find it,” he said, “and Weissman a minute longer to extract it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any painkillers for him.” He glared at the prisoner. “But he was a real trooper.”

  “Good work.”

  Jessie had to admit it was a genius move, and Burke had almost gotten away with it. But he’d underestimated Paul’s ability to develop more serum and bring the soldiers back from the brink of death. His last mistake had been miscalculating Garcia’s shooting skills.

  “I should have known he had something up his sleeve.” She shook her head.

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” the medic said. “No one would have figured it was his tooth. We sure didn’t.”

  “Makes me wonder what else he’s got hidden,” Jessie frowned down at Burke. “I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

  She plopped down and stared into the former CEO’s eyes for a long ten seconds before she began.

  “I want to know where the Arkansas facility is,” she said.

  Burke smirked glumly. “What does it matter? The formula was on those computers I smashed. It’s gone. Not even Kim can match Paul’s skill. She’s a hack. He was an actual scientist.”

  “Only partially correct,” Jessie pointed out. “You did make a big mess, but it’s a bump in the road. Kim Shields is on her way back to Yellow Springs right now. She’s done the same work as Paul. In fact, she even managed to recreate the serum herself. Plus,” she gestured behind her, “we’ve recovered all these puppies.”

  Bryant pulled four hard drives from his pocket and held them up for Burke to see. They held what remained of Paul’s most recent data and what she hoped would be directions for creating more serum and a path to the cure.

  “They're broken.”

  “Maybe some are,” Jessie sighed, “but I’ll bet at least one of them still works. I’m sure your bigger plan was to set this place on fire and burn it to the ground like you did the CDC lab, but we stopped you.”

  Burke clamped his mouth shut.

  “Now, tell us where the Arkansas lab is. I want to know how many people you have there, what types of defenses are there, and all the passwords and clearances required to get inside.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Burke’s sneer widened behind his visor. “I don’t need the serum. All we have to do is wait for you to die. You have no leverage to make demands. I’m the one with the leverage here.”

  “I want to know where the plant is,” Jessie said, getting up. “And I’m finished playing with you. Weissman?”

  “On it.” The big medic assumed her spot on the stool before Burke.

  He produced a small bowl he’d been holding and held it up in front of the man’s visor. A tuft of gray Asphyxia rested inside, appearing harmless. Weissman reached up and lifted Burke’s mask in a single sweeping motion, leaving his tousled hair sticking almost straight up.

  His eyes grew wide and crossed as the soldier brought the bowl closer to his face. The gray matter sat there like lifeless Brillo.

  “It’s dead,” Burke chuckled. “It’s not producing enough spores anymore. It won’t infect me.”

  Weissman produced a stopper of water and held it over the fungus. He squeezed the tip, dripping the full amount onto the gray bundle. The tuft simultaneously darkened and expanded, deepening in color and shape. The soldier shook the bowl, and spores leaped from the surface in thin tendrils, swirling and coalescing like fingers.

  He moved the tendrils closer to Burke’s face. The man jerked back, but the chains fixed him in place. He took a quick breath and held it, head twisting left and right, cheeks puffed out as the spore tendrils drifted over his chin and up around his lips and nostrils.

  His squirming only stirred the spores into a cloud which wrapped his head and lay gently on his sweaty skin. Finally, face red and lungs screaming for fresh air, Burke let out a tremendous whoosh of air, trying to blow the infection away from his face.

  But when he drew in more air again, Weissman lifted the bowl conveniently in front of his nose, and Burke got a breath of it. He choked, coughed, and sputtered, finally swallowing down the medicine Jessie had so long wanted to give him.

  Satisfied, Weissman stood and removed the bowl of actuated Asphyxia.

  “Isn’t that better?” Jessie stepped forward and placed her foot on the stool. “Now that we’re on equal ground, you need the serum as much as we do. And, believe me, it’s a slow and terrible way to die. Anything would be better.” She let her words sink in before she repeated her request.

  “Now. Tell us all about the Arkansas facility.”

  Chapter 31

  Moe, Las Vegas, Nevada

  On the north edge of downtown, Moe turned his rig eastward on I-515 to skirt the most dangerous areas and approach the Amber Hill Distribution center from the east.

  Josiah and Tyler had declined to stay behind, insistent they come to help secure supplies. The more Moe tried to argue with them, the more they fought back until he finally relented.

  They rode in the cab with him along with the girl, Zoe. Despite their collective demand that she stay at the warehouse, she had refused, too. She was convinced the military would kick her out anyway, and she’d be right back where she started. She argued how she was a hard worker and hadn’t missed a shift in two years, and that had only been because she’d broken her arm skateboarding. Plus, Zoe pointed out, they could use the extra hands.

  Moe suspected his sister had left an impression on the girl. They’d become fast friends in their few hours together, so he’d agreed to let her come. Both Zoe and Waki joined the boys in the rig as part of the loading crew.

  Rex, Casey, Aponi, Melissa and her two soldiers, Johnny, and Ron would make up the defensive crew. Moe checked his side mirror to see everyone hunkered down in the pickup bed, not a weapon or head in sight.

  Colonel Lopez-Reyes had provided Moe with a standard layout of all Amber Hill Distribution Centers. They’d gone over the location of the fork lifts and pallet jacks, too. As long as no one had moved the product around, he’d know exactly where to go to grab items quickly.

  They had eight defenders and five loaders, enough to do the job in an hour if everything went as planned. The rest depended on how fast the warring factions reacted to their intrusion.

  The smoldering fires of Las Vegas burned to their right as they skirted downtown.

  Moe counted the exits. “Three more to go,” he announced. Everyone in the cab nodded, bathed in nervous tension.

  Waki and Zoe sat shoulder-to-shoulder while the boys leaned against the rear of the truck with their eyes barely open. He supposed it must be like game time for them, that mo
ment of quiet before the tip off.

  They passed sporadic traffic, a car or truck here or there, drivers with their heads down and eyes pinned forward as they rushed to where they were going. Moe figured they were leery of being pulled over or trapped on the road by marauders. One vehicle he saw was peppered with bullet holes on the left rear quarter panel. Another’s front end was dented in and stained with a dark substance that could only have been blood.

  Moe took a deep breath and let it out slowly as they approached their exit. He angled down the ramp, slowing but not stopping at the end. He looked both ways before making a sharp right onto Tropicana Avenue.

  They passed a resort complex with palm trees standing in the yards. People watched them drive by from the high balconies, waving or shouting at them to stop. At least one person aimed a pistol at them but didn’t fire. Moe assumed they weren’t tourists but locals who’d taken over the place.

  They pulled past the resort and its palm-style decor and continued down the road. Moe’s ankle ached slightly as he worked the clutch and gas, shifting the big truck through its gears.

  Fine homes with pools and more palm trees lay along one stretch of road. He caught glimpses of people running amok in the yards or splashing in the pools, though he didn’t spare them a thought. He didn’t care if they were gangs partying in stolen homes. He didn’t care if they were the actual owners taking one last dip as the world collapsed around them.

  He couldn’t fathom the level of lawlessness that had befallen the city.

  Moe kept his head down and drove. He drove for himself and everyone with him. He drove for the people of Chinle who waited for them to return home triumphant.

  A beat-up sedan pulled out of a pharmacy parking lot and blocked their path. The man inside waved at them to stop, and Moe saw others creeping out from behind parked vehicles and pouring from the store. A mob.

  Moe shifted higher, hit the gas, and blew his horn. When the person realized he wasn’t going to stop, they shot forward in a squeal of tires to get out of his way, raising their middle finger to him has he passed.