The Fracture - The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: No Sanctuary Series - Book 3

by Mike Kraus

  “Linda…”

  “Frank. Don’t you say it.”

  “Maybe we should take a break from this.” He turned and gestured to the dark room. “Nobody’s here. And despite whatever protestations you may make you are not doing well. I can go back into town and try to find some medicine for you, some antibiotics of some sort maybe?”

  “No.” Linda shook her head. “Not happening. We can’t stop. Omar—”

  “Omar what?” Frank licked his lips, not wanting to get into another argument but tired of following Linda into hell with nothing to show for it. “This guy you’ve been chasing isn’t going anywhere in the next few hours. We should just—”

  It was Linda’s turn to interrupt Frank as she jerked forward, her pants still halfway down and sweat pouring down her face. Strands of blonde hair that had come loose from her ponytail were stuck to her forehead and cheeks and her eyes were full of a fiery passion that both inspired and terrified Frank. Linda grabbed Frank by the shirt and pulled him forward, whispering to him as she spoke slowly, over-enunciating every syllable.

  “Frank. Listen to me carefully. I did not survive all the shit I’ve survived, get shot multiple times—the latest by a fucking meth head—break multiple laws and risk life in prison just to give up when we’re so close.” Linda wheezed slightly and sat back, releasing Frank’s shirt as she started to topple over.

  “Jesus…” Frank muttered as he stood up and grabbed Linda to keep her from falling over onto the hard floor. “Dammit, Linda, this is why I said you need to take it easy.”

  Frank looked around the room for a few seconds before easing Linda down out of the chair and over to a rug nearby. “Come on. This isn’t going to be comfy but it’s better than cracking your skull on the tile.”

  “Whuh?” Linda’s eyes were fluttering open and closed as Frank helped her down. He pushed her backpack under her head and stood up over her, wondering what to do. Her fever worried him and without a thermometer he was at a loss for what to do. “Need to cool you down somehow…” Frank whispered to himself before reaching for her jacket and unzipping it. He pulled her arms out and slid her shirt up a few inches, exposing her stomach. He glanced at the half-dozen scars on her abdomen before unzipping his backpack and pulling out a spare pair of socks and a bottle of water.

  “What the hell have you gone through, lady?” Frank quietly talked to himself as he soaked the socks with water and placed one on her stomach and one on her forehead. Linda’s eyes flew open at the feel of the cold cloth on her body and she reached for Frank’s arm and grabbed his wrist with a vice grip as she stared at him.

  “Up two flights. Three eight seven’s the door number. I don’t know the code to get in. If it defaults to locked on a power outage you’ll have to break in somehow. Hopefully the doors auto-unlocked, though.”

  “No,” Frank started, “I’m not going anywhere except to get you help.”

  “Other than you, Sarah’s the only person I trust to help right now. You need to find her. If she’s not in her office then I guarantee you she left a clue about where she is.”

  “I thought you said you know where she lives.”

  “She’s far more clever than you or I, Frank. She might have gone somewhere else. Or she might be hiding in the basement. You need to go up there and grab everything you see. Every scrap of paper, every hard disk. Everything. You understand me?”

  “What about you? We have to get you something to treat this infection!”

  “This is way more important than me.”

  “I don’t know anything about all of this grand conspiracy bullshit!” Frank gesticulated wildly. “You’re the person who has all the information!”

  “Twenty minutes, Frank.” Linda’s voice began to waver. “If you hurry it’ll take you twenty minutes. Then we can find Sarah and she can help us with all of this. Including whatever’s wrong with me.”

  Frank clenched his jaw until he was certain he was about to chip a tooth. “Dammit!” He slammed his fist down on a nearby table, immediately regretting the decision as pain shot through his hand. “Three eight seven, right?”

  Linda nodded weakly as she put her head on the backpack again. “Remember to grab everything. Just in case she couldn’t take something with her. We may need it.”

  Frank stood up and took his knife out of his bag and stuck it between his belt and pants. He pulled out his pistol and adjusted his grip on his flashlight as he looked down at Linda. “I’m looking for twenty minutes. If I don’t find anything then I’m heading straight into town and finding someone to take care of you.”

  When Linda didn’t respond Frank shook his head and cursed silently as he headed toward the doors behind the registration desk.

  We are so fucking screwed.

  Chapter 14

  The original run from the park to the house took less than a minute all those years ago. Linda walks slowly now, though, ruminating on the past as she traces a path to the park. She didn’t need directions from the woman in the house but asking for the directions and a drink of water gave her a chance to look around the building and confirm she was in the right place.

  Even with the distraction provided by the woman and her daughter, the house felt uncomfortable for Linda. The scent of death pushed at her again and she could hear screams in the background as the woman spoke to her. The beeping of gas masks alerting to filter failures was more than she could handle and she had ended her conversation with the woman abruptly just to get out of the building as quickly as possible.

  The jumble of thoughts and emotions is more than Linda expected to deal with. Outside, in the street, she pauses and leans against the side of a building with her eyes closed. She takes a deep breath and steadies herself. The screams slowly dissipate and the smell of death recedes. She opens her eyes and pulls the shemagh back up over her mouth and nose. She notices that the sun is hot and bright out in the street and she slips on a pair of reflective sunglasses as well.

  Beneath the face and head coverings and the loose fabric she wears over her long-sleeved shirt and jeans, Linda blends in surprisingly well. From a distance she looks like a man who is protecting himself from the elements and thus avoids most stares and questions from those passing by. The westernization of Ahvaz and the country in general has proceeded rapidly in the years since the ill-advised invasion but there are still many who resist change and are happy to see those representing the change “disappear.”

  Linda continues her slow walk until she finds the place she was searching for. The park, like the house, has changed greatly over the years but it is obviously still the same place. The playground equipment, benches and many of the plants were replaced but there are still remnants of it that line up with Linda’s hazy memories.

  She walks the edge of the park slowly. Each time she nearly puts a foot onto the prickly green and brown grass she stops. The fresh memories from the alley and the house burn inside her and she doesn’t want to relive the memories from the park as well.

  No matter what, though, she has a job to do.

  Linda reaches inside a pouch beneath her robes and pulls out a small glass sample container. Using a small removable piece of her belt buckle she scrapes a piece of bark off of a tall tree and deposits it in the container. She carefully uses the sharp edge of the metal to carve out a sizeable chunk of the tree beneath where she stripped the bark. The second tree sample goes in a new container. The next three sample jars are filled with dirt and stone from several inches below the topsoil from different areas of the park. The final container is filled with trimmings from bushes and other small plants.

  When the sample jars are filled, sealed and slipped back into her pouch Linda exits the park. She heads away from the area in a different direction than she arrived. The possibility of her being followed by someone is slim but she doubles back on her path more than once to ensure that no one is tailing her.

  Twelve hours later, after slipping the containers into an international shipment sent by
a private courier, she arrives back in the United States. The containers take several days to arrive and thankfully they pass through customs. When Linda picks them up she guards them carefully as she drives to a laboratory three states away.

  She visits the laboratory after hours, when two technicians stay after everyone else closes. She enters through a back door in the building and greets the pair with a nod as she holds out a padded bag containing the samples.

  “You got everything?” The shorter of the two technicians asks her the question as he takes the bag.

  “Everything I could. A lot’s changed over there.”

  “And you’re sure it’s from the site?” The taller technician reaches into the bag and pulls out one of the sample containers.

  “Everything’s from the park. The house changed way too much. There’s no way there’s any residue left there.”

  “Mm.” The shorter technician shakes his head. “You’d be surprised.”

  Linda shrugs. “There were people there. I wasn’t about to start drilling core samples of their walls and floor with them watching.”

  “You got bark and wood?”

  “Soil from three separate spots, too.”

  The taller technician nods approvingly. “This is excellent. We can work with this.”

  Linda rubs her arms and looks around, finally noticing the low temperature in the building. “It’d be better if the bodies were still here.”

  The technicians glance at each other, shuffling nervously. “We’re really sorry about that. The cameras never caught who it was, though. And we still haven’t gotten an answer from upstairs.”

  Linda shakes her head at them in an understanding gesture. “Yeah, yeah. I know. You won’t get an answer, either. Believe me.” Linda sighs and nods at the containers. “Just do what you can with these. I need as much information on whatever was used in the attack.”

  “We’ll try. Finding chemicals from years past is tricky but these look like good samples.”

  Linda nods. “How long do you figure?”

  The taller technician checks his watch. “We’ll have the soil samples analyzed right quick. Couple hours max. The plants and tree will take longer. Probably tomorrow night.”

  “I’m still good to camp out here?” Linda throws her thumb in the direction of a back room of the lab.

  The shorter technician nods. “Good to go. You don’t have to stay, though. Really. We’ll keep this under lock and key.”

  Linda gives the two men a wistful smile and pats them both on the shoulder as she heads to the back room. “I trust the pair of you. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. But everyone else? No. Not a chance.” She stops at the door to the back room and looks back at them before going in. “I’m going to grab a couple hours of shuteye. If you find anything out of place you’d better wake me up.”

  The two technicians nod rapidly. “We will.”

  ***

  The soil sample results are completed in one hour, though the technicians wait until a total of three hours pass before they wake Linda. At first she is angry over the delay but their explanation rapidly cools her temper and her attitude turns into concern and fear.

  “I’m sorry.” Linda puts her head in her hands and sighs. “I’m jet lagged to hell and back but this still doesn’t make sense.”

  The two technicians look at each other nervously. “What doesn’t make sense?” The taller one asks nervously.

  “If I understand what you told me correctly, you’re saying that you’ve never seen some of these chemicals before. Right?”

  “The spectrograph identified a few. But there are several that are mysteries. Their masses aren’t something we’ve come across before.”

  Linda sighs and sips on her can of iced coffee she got out of a vending machine. “What’s it going to take to identify them?”

  Both technicians look down at their feet. The answer to Linda’s question is not one they wish to speak out loud for fear of her response.

  “Well? Come on, I won’t bite your heads off.” Linda forces a smile to try and coax them into speaking.

  “We don’t have the tools required to analyze these samples here. And based on what little we can tell about them… well…”

  The shorter technician jumps in to take over for his taller comrade. “They would probably trigger alarm bells at whatever lab took a look at them. You’d need a very sophisticated setup to pull them apart and figure out what they are since there’s not much left of whatever they are. Any setup like that’s going to have protocols requiring them to report stuff like this to the CDC and who knows how many other agencies.”

  Linda flexes her toes in her shoes as she tries to restrain herself from showing any outward signs of anger. “So this is another dead end?”

  “I’m afraid so.” The taller technician shuffles papers on his desk and passes a stack to Linda. “The one thing I can tell you is that the bodies of your team contained chemicals that look very similar to the ones in the soil. They’re most likely identical.”

  Linda snorts. “That doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. What about the tree and plant samples?”

  “It’ll take a while more for those but I can tell you already that we won’t get anything useful out of them.” The taller technician’s face is crestfallen. “I am very sorry. And we’ll keep doing the tests just to see if we can find anything else out. But just… I wouldn’t hold out much hope. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” Linda takes a sip from her drink. “Don’t worry about the rest of the tests. You two have done more than I deserve.”

  The shorter technician goes to a filing cabinet, pulls out a thin folder and returns to Linda with it. He pushes his glasses up on his nose as he passes it to her. “Since you’re here and we’re already giving you bad news I might as well save a few stamps and give this to you in person.”

  She looks at the label on the folder and raises an eyebrow at the technician. “A final report on the disappearance of the bodies, eh? I’m surprised they bothered after all this time.” Linda touches the folder to her forehead and closes her eyes. “Let me guess: an unknown intruder broke in and absconded with the bodies, likely for illegal body part harvesting or other purposes.” Linda cracks open the folder and skims the top page, laughing as her guess is confirmed.

  “What a bunch of bullshit.” Linda closes the folder and throws it onto the table. “Body part harvesting. What kind of idiot decides that should be the official excuse?”

  “We’re still trying what we can, but…” The taller technician trails off and shrugs.

  “I appreciate that. Don’t worry about it, though. If their official line is that the bodies were stolen by someone wanting to sell their months-old livers and lungs then we won’t find anything else out.” Linda taps the folder on the table and shakes her head. “This is a message, you know. Whoever’s behind this cover-up is sending me a message. They think they can make up whatever they want and get away with it.” She pauses for a second and shrugs with reluctant acceptance. “And you know what? They can.”

  Linda closes her eyes and leans back in her chair. Her mind is tired and her body is weak. She has spent years chasing her tail around in circles, trying to track down every lead possible. Each one that she finds holds enormous promise but is eventually extinguished. Sometimes time is the enemy. Sometimes the enemy is some unknown adversary, like whoever absconded with the bodies of her fellow Marines before they could be fully examined.

  The ultimate enemy, in her mind, is still at large. And she will continue to do whatever she can to find him.

  Linda finishes her drink and crushes the can before throwing it into the trash. She stands up and gives a hug to each of the technicians. “Thank you both. I know you risked a lot to do this. If you ever need anything you know how to reach me.”

  The technicians nod and smile at her. She gathers her things and departs from the lab to head home and lick her wounds of defeat. She needs a long rest and so
me time to think about her next move. Being repeatedly forced back to square one after years of effort is exhausting and she is tempted yet again to give up. The memories of that day so many years ago haunt her every step, though, and she can not—will not—give up.

  Chapter 15

  Frank found it odd that the annex building was completely deserted and the feeling that there might be someone else inside with him made him exceptionally nervous. Traipsing around in old barns had its own dangers including the possibility of being shot by the owner. Had he been wandering around the CIA-run building before the attacks when it was staffed, though, he would have most certainly been shot, arrested or—in his imagination at least—taken to some black site in some foreign country to be interrogated for years.

  Fortunately, though, while the empty building did have an exceptionally eerie feel about it he hadn’t heard or seen any sign of anyone else around. In fact, as he whipped his flashlight back and forth along the main corridor on the first floor, he noticed that each room he walked past appeared exceptionally empty. A few of the rooms were conference rooms while others looked like supply rooms or offices but all were both unlocked—a fact he was relieved to discover—and devoid of both people and all but the most basic of office equipment.

  Frank stepped into one of the offices and pointed his light at the desk, a small side table and then at a filing cabinet in the corner. Each of the cabinet’s drawers were open and a key was still inserted in the lock at the top. Instead of being filled with paperwork, though, the cabinets were utterly empty. As Frank glanced around further he noticed that there wasn’t a sign of paperwork or personally identifying items anywhere else in the room, either.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” He pulled open each drawer on the desk, finding only a few pencils and pens rolling around inside. He went across the hall to the next office and found it to be virtually identical to the first. All of the drawers and cabinets were empty, nothing identifiable was visible and it had the look and feel of a room that had been systematically cleared out.