Turning Point (Book 1): A Time To Die

by Wandrey, Mark

  “And if it’s thousands?”

  “I’d say close to zero. I went through about a third of the M240 ammo, and all the Claymores. Our Mexican allies used half their ammo as well. Unless we can get some help…” he let the last part hang.

  “Where’s my bag?” she wondered. He got up and brought it to her from the closet someone stuffed it into. She fished around and brought out her laptop, which still had over 80 percent power. That was a good thing, since her solar charger was with her condoms. She swallowed and tried not to think about it. She settled down with the computer and her box of SD cards and began backing them up to the laptop. Cobb watched her for a time, then headed off to do something else. She knew she should be doing something too, but what else was there but to wait and see if the enfermo left them alone?

  The computer’s USB3 allowed her to upload the many gigabytes of video in minutes, even when she got out her hub and had three cards dumping at once. The machine possessed a four-terabyte drive. There were files from a dozen stories archived there and room for a dozen more after she finished.

  Once done, she started sorting. She created a file folder labeled Enfermo, which seemed apropos, to hold all the files. They were all time-stamped, so she knew which ones went into the archive and which ones to review. The laptop had a power video editing suite that allowed her to rapidly move through a video by sliding her finger along the glide point. Using mouse clicks, she could mark beginning and ending points, creating a video clip. She then dropped the clips into new video files, or saved them on a background clipboard. It took only a few minutes before she had 20 minutes of footage assembled, representing her trip.

  The footage began with her talking into the camera as she set the mount on her ATV, a few miles from Cobb’s farm. “This is Kathy Clifford in Texas, and I’m about to break the law to try and find out the truth.” Her self-interview was short. She pulled out her Bluetooth mic and headphones and slipped them on, and she began adding commentary as the story quickly came together. At the start of her career, she’d spent two years as a stringer producer. She’d been good at it. So good, a major network had offered her a job. She’d passed. Reporting was her passion.

  The story continued with some shots of rugged desert. Next was the border fence, rusted and broken, where she’d easily found a place to ride through. “Now I’m in Mexico,” she said into the mic, dubbing it over the sound of the ATV motor. “The truth is just ahead.” The clip showed another minute of rugged arroyos, dry creek beds and distant mountains, then the road and signs of civilization.

  “There’s nothing as far as the eye can see,” she dubbed. “Everything I come across is abandoned, even this gas station.” She pulled into the station, then the camera caught her going inside. She cut the clip and showed herself coming back out, arms laden with supplies. “I left payment, even though no one was there. It’s an eerie scene that reminded me of Pompeii. The grill in the restaurant attached to the station was still hot.” Then the camera showed the Army truck approaching. “I’m relieved to find signs of life, but my relief is short-lived.”

  Here she mulled over what to show. The bike was in the right location to catch it all. She chose a clip of the Mexican officer attacking her, followed by the machine gun blowing him away. It was brutal and would have made her violently ill only a day ago. She mechanically edited the footage into the story. “This was my first encounter with what the Mexican people call the enfermo. If the soldiers hadn’t been there, the enfermo would have killed me.”

  The next scene was of the men mounting up, their commander asking her to come along, and her refusing. It was off-camera. She left it untouched, because the audio relayed her decision, while the visual showed more army trucks arriving. Soldiers passed by the camera, arms loaded with energy drinks and snacks. Then the bike roared to life, and she turned down the road.

  “I saw what I came to see. I needed to get out of there alive, but that would prove harder than I believed.” Next came her desperate flight from the enfermo, the battle on the hill, and her panic as they began overtaking her. It shocked her to see it all play out in a couple of hours; it felt like a lifetime. The segment ended with Cobb riding in like the storied cavalry. “Major Cobb Pendleton, U.S. Army, retired,” she said. “He is a friend I made before crossing into Mexico, who decided to follow me. Whether out of attraction or curiosity, it doesn’t matter. For the second time in as many days, a U.S. soldier saved my life.”

  She added a few cuts of them riding, some recorded while she slept, and their arrival at the house. “These are some of the millions of refugees fleeing from Mexico ahead of the human wave of horror.” She showed her and Cobb meeting and speaking to Enrico and Manuel. “They didn’t come to break the law, they came trying to survive. The house is on property belonging to Mr. Pendleton, and he offered them his hospitality.” She cut to a scene inside the house showing the vast number of people. Then, she began the interviews.

  “I had the opportunity to speak with these brave people about their experiences fleeing the enfermo.”

  “It was my cousin,” a woman said. “He went enfermo while we were eating dinner. He went to the bathroom, and when he came back…he bit his own baby on the neck!”

  “My wife tried to kill us,” a man said. “My son hit her with a shovel, and we ran.” Tears streamed down his cheek as he spoke. “I never saw her again.”

  “The government came into the village. I watched from the hill of our vineyard. Everyone gathered in the town square. Then, they started shooting!”

  The interviews went on, including the woman who described how it started in the north, went south, and changed to cannibalistic behavior. She included the observations that those who were bit became enfermo, and that some seemed to change without reason.

  “Many were eager for the chance to tell their story during the respite,” she dubbed. “Unfortunately, that respite didn’t last very long.”

  “Here they come!” someone yelled. You could tell she snatched up the camera and ran until she got to the window. She set the camera on its tripod, and the rifle barrel appeared. Outside, the enfermo came in a human wave. She’d decided to leave out the earlier attack on the boy. It didn’t work without showing the boy’s mother holding him, and that was an affront to her grieving. Kathy knew she was somewhere in the house, still feeling her little boy in her arms, still hurting, still wishing it was her instead of him. “Fire!” she yelled, and the footage ended.

  Kathy set the camera to live feed and pointed it at herself, checking the focus through the computers. She gasped at how gaunt and wretched she looked. Her appearance reminded her of the women she’d seen in Chechnya and Yugoslavia during the war, torn, beaten, and defeated. “That attack lasted several minutes. As you saw, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of them. They are the enfermo, and you cannot reason with them. They have no compassion; they have no mercy. All you can do is run or fight.” She had a slightly out-of-focus cut of the bloody aftermath, and the stragglers feeding on their slain brethren that she would add later.

  “It is an unspeakable horror we face. What is this disease? Where did it come from? Does our government understand the magnitude of the tragedy coming our way? Or that there are already enfermo in our own country? That the government tried to detain me and suppress this story speaks volumes about the truth. It is frightening, horrifying even, if you consider it.”

  “If you encounter a crazy person, I beg you to avoid them at all costs. Call the police, run away, and defend yourself. This is life or death. They’re in the United States, but in what numbers? Our soldiers have faced them and, in at least one incident, they died fighting them.” She’d cut in the downed and burning chopper, but left out the soldier. She owed him that much, and she was afraid of showing her talking to him about the machine guns and explosives. Even now, she was afraid of the government. “This is Kathy Clifford, coming to you from somewhere in southern Texas.”

  Another few minutes of work, a high-speed
run through, and she finished. The total run time was 25 minutes. Perfect, she thought. She brought her last burnable asset out of her bag. Unfolding it, she pressed the power button. The LCD screen came alive with an animated Earth. Across its surface, a meteor traced the path of stars around an orbit, the stars spelling the word Iridium.

  Kathy linked the phone with her computer via a special USB cable, then extended the big antenna and waited. “Acquiring satellite,” the phone displayed. “Ready,” it said after a minute. The data connection wasn’t great by modern standards, especially when uploading. But, she didn’t dare risk sending the story directly to a news service. Instead, she uploaded it to a prepared Dropbox account. Her phone showed 50 percent power when she started. Twenty minutes later, when she’d uploaded the story, it read 15 percent. “Damn, that was close,” she said, and started typing an email. That, thankfully, only took a minute. Then she sent it to a preset group of accounts. Twenty news agencies, stringers, and freelance aggregators. “Done.”

  “They’re poking around closer to the house,” Cobb said from the door then stopped when he looked over her setup. “Is than an Iridium satellite phone?”

  “Yep,” she said, “don’t ask me where I got it.”

  “Jesus girl,” he said and ran over, “why the fuck didn’t you tell me you had one? I’ve been checking my cellphone every couple of hours praying I’d get a signal!”

  “What difference does it make?” she asked. “It’s not like a few cops could help us. Besides we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  “There are always options,” he said. “May I?”

  “Sure,” she said and handed it over. “They might turn it off, once they find out what I just did. And there’s only 15 percent power left.”

  “Better than none,” he said and accepted the phone. He pulled his own cellphone out and looked up a number. Once located, he punched it quickly into the satellite phone and pressed the transmit button. The phone rang for a moment before someone picked up.

  “Fort Hood, Third Corps Ops,” she heard a woman’s voice answer. “Authentication please.”

  “Thank you. Authentication follows: Victor, Charlie, Romeo, Tango, Tango, Zebra, one, three, niner. Pendleton.” He spelled his name using the same lingo.

  “Thank you, please stand by.”

  “Army Fort Hood?” Kathy asked. He nodded, listening for the controller to come back, and hoping against hope.

  “Major Pendleton,” a gravelly-voiced man came on the line. “If this is you, care to tell me where I caught one?”

  “Left ass cheek, General Rose, sir. Your favorite cocktail party conversation topic.”

  “Cobb, you motherfucker!” the man laughed. “Where the fuck are you, and why the fuck are you using the secure ops line?”

  “Just across the border from Mexico, east of Monterrey. That should answer both questions.”

  There was a long silence. “Jesus jumping Christ, Cobb. I could lose my star if you’re involved in what I think you are.”

  “So, you know about it?”

  “Only a little bit. Were you near Monterrey when it went?”

  “Went? What do you mean, general?”

  “You don’t know? It’s all over the news, son.”

  “Sir, we’re so deep in shit, a snorkel would feed us more shit.”

  “I see.” Another pause. “Well, it’s on the God-damned news. Officially, I can neither confirm nor deny that Monterrey, Mexico, was destroyed by a nuclear weapon.”

  Kathy’s hand went to her mouth and her eyes went wide. “Oh, no!”

  “Who’s that with you, Cobb?”

  “Girlfriend, sir,” Cobb said.

  “No shit? First good news I’ve heard in a couple of days.” Still digesting the news of Monterrey’s fate, Kathy felt a flush on her cheeks. “Ann has been gone for years.”

  “Who dropped the bomb, sir?”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that the Mexican government nuked their own city.”

  The phone beeped and vibrated. He looked down and saw the power bar was red and showed 10 percent. “General Rose, I’m going to give you some information. What you do with it is up to you.”

  “Proceed,” the man said.

  “I’m on my property in Texas, coordinates are—” and he reeled off a series of numbers from memory. “In addition to me and my girlfriend, we have in excess of 100 Mexican nationals, refugees from the incident, who are requesting asylum.” The phone beeped, 5 percent remaining.

  “Son of a bitch, Major, what are you doing to me?”

  “Asking you for help, sir. We have hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hostiles here, and we cannot hold out much longer. When we are gone, they will head north. I repeat, they are in the open in our territory, behind the wire.”

  “Okay, I’ll see what—” The phone buzzed and displayed “Battery Depleted, Shutting Down.” Cobb shrugged, and handed it to her.

  “For what it’s worth,” he told her. “Thanks.”

  “Thank you for trying,” she said. “Girlfriend, eh?”

  He blushed and rubbed a hand over his short hair. “It seemed the thing to say at the time.”

  “I’d be happy to be your girlfriend,” she said, a little surprised at herself. She hadn’t had a boyfriend in years. Her life as a big-time reporter left no time for that. Neither did her life as a fugitive from justice, for that matter. “In fact, I’d say I have been for a while. No other man has invaded a country to rescue me.”

  “You take care of yourself pretty well,” he said. “If you’d had some better firepower, I might not have needed to rescue you.”

  “Daddy didn’t raise no fool,” she said with a wry smile. “So, what now?”

  “We wait.”

  * * *

  Aka Sushi on Madison Avenue, just south of 79th Street in New York City, was one of the newest and trendiest sushi shops on the island. A Japanese sushi master, or itamae, named Koru Akahori set out to create a shop that served the best traditional sushi Japan had to offer and kept up with the latest trends. Koru received daily air shipments of Bluefin tuna and Norwegian salmon, caught the day before and packed in ice. People said his sashimi was the best sushi experience of their lives.

  Just before noon, Koru parked his Aston Martin in his private space and entered the shop. His assistants had been hard at work for hours, cooking rice, hand-pressing seaweed, chopping vegetables, and setting tables. The restaurant boasted a 20-stool sushi bar and 40 tables. There was already a line outside the restaurant, and they wouldn’t open for another hour.

  His first assistant chef, or wakiita, bowed and greeted him, then gestured at a cutting table. On it sat a particularly fine acquisition, half of a 950-pound tuna caught between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia 26 hours earlier. Koru took a razor-sharp filet knife and, with surgical precision, made several quick cuts, extracting a triangular wedge of tuna. His wakiita held out a plate, and Koru placed the wedge on it, and cut it into four pieces. Another assistant brought a selection of sauces, and Koru tasted the sashimi with each. Satisfied, he nodded, and the chefs proceeded to cut up the incredibly expensive fish.

  The doors opened on schedule, and the restaurant soon flooded with hungry customers devouring plate after plate of delectable sushi and tempura. With guests frequently waiting more than an hour to get in, the staff was diligent about quickly turning vacated tables so they could seat the next party.

  The midday rush over, Toru retreated to his office for a few minutes. He reviewed some invoices, checked the Asian market for fish prices, and drank an extra cup of ginger tea. His stomach was a little upset. When he finished his paperwork and stood up, he nearly fell over. His head was swimming, and he was having trouble concentrating. He pressed the intercom and told his wakiita to come, intending to ask him to take over as the itamae for the dinner shift. Heading home seemed like a good idea. The wakiita was finishing the dinner prep, and said he’d be there in 15 minutes. Toru said that was acceptable.

  Fift
een minutes later, the assistant knocked on Toru’s office door. There was no answer. Confused, he knocked again, with the same results. He scowled. Barging in on your employer was a major disruption in harmony. One simply did not do such things in Japan. Even though he was Nisei, not born in Japan, he was always conscious of propriety. But Koru had not sounded well. After one more knock with no answer, he opened the door slowly, announcing himself in Japanese, and apologizing for his intrusion.

  Toru was face down on the desk, twitching uncontrollably. The assistant bolted over and reached out to place a hand on Toru Akahori’s forehead. Toru suddenly sat upright, saliva and blood dripping from lips pulled back in a snarl. The assistant took a half step back, and the master sushi chef launched himself over the desk and tackled him. When nearby kitchen staff came running, they found horror waiting.

  * * *

  Inside the San Francisco Christian Academy bus were 71 twelve-year-old boys and nine teachers, fresh from a camping trip at the beach, 24 miles down the California coastal highway at Pescadero State Park. They’d camped in the park and roasted marshmallows and hot dogs all weekend. They sang religious songs and enjoyed Christian fellowship. On the last night, they took surf rods and went fishing. Luck was with them, and they caught a variety of fish which they roasted for dinner. There were a few fish left at breakfast, so one of the teachers took some rice and veggies, and made ad hoc sushi. About half the boys tried it, with varying degrees of like and disgust.

  Driving the twisty coastal highway was slow in the older school bus. It took more than two hours to get from breakfast to the edge of San Francisco. By the time the Pacific highway changed to a multi-lane freeway outside Daly City, 20 of the boys were violently ill, and the teachers were panicking. Thoughts of mercury poisoning or worse were racing through their minds, and they ordered the driver to divert to the nearest hospital. The other boys watched their classmates with apprehension as they went from ill, to near catatonia, to delusional barking and rambling. As the driver pulled up to the emergency ramp of San Francisco General Hospital, just off Route 101, a boy snapped out of his delirium, looked around, snarled, grabbed a teacher around the neck, and sank his teeth into the man’s flesh.