Infection Z [Books 1-3]

by Chesla, Gary

  “That satellite link you have is a good tool to have,” Pete said. “I’m surprised that you never detected us doing our own search for survivors. We were quite active in our searches. We had a chopper in the air just about every day looking for some sign of life.”

  “Our methods were not as efficient as we had hoped. Even with a satellite, we soon found out finding survivors was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. When Doc discovered the helicopters that we have only had a few hundred-mile range, he decided to narrow our initial search efforts to the area around Granite Mountain.” Davis replied then smiled. “Besides, you were in West Virginia and we didn’t want to waste our time looking there. Everyone knows there was never any life in West Virginia even before the infection.”

  “That must be Navy humor,” Pete smiled.

  “Sorry, I forgot that you Marines don’t have a sense of humor,” Davis grinned. “Let’s go see Chervy.”

  Pete, Davis and Rogers walked into the control room to find Chervy holding a piece of dried beef in the air.

  Snoop sat attentively in front of Chervy, lifting his paw when Chervy commanded, “Shake!”

  Rogers laughed as Chervy gave Snoop his reward.

  “Not bad Cherv,” Rogers said, “But watch this.”

  Rogers pointed his finger at Snoop and said, “Bang!”

  Snoop dropped to the floor, rolled on his back and stuck all four feet in the air.

  “Good Boy!” Rogers said as Snoop got to his feet and ran over to Rogers and looked up expectantly.

  Rogers put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a snack and handed it to Snoop.

  “I see the mutt has you guys trained pretty well,” Pete laughed.

  “Food is a big incentive around here,” Davis said. “In fact, that’s how we trained Rogers to fly our helicopter, now if we could only teach him how to play dead it would be a whole lot quieter around here.”

  “Snoop was a lot easier to train too,” Chervy smiled, “He’ll do anything for food.”

  “He is a lot smarter than Rogers too,” Davis laughed.

  Rogers rolled his eyes.

  “I tried to teach George some tricks, but the cat is too independent for that,” Chervy added. “He just walks away and goes down to mess hall and helps himself.”

  “What can I do for you men?” Chervy asked when the laughter died down. “I’m sure you didn’t come down here to discuss training pets.”

  “The guys were telling me you might be able to give us a close up look at the Salt Lake City airport,” Pete replied.

  “Is there something at the airport that you are looking for?” Chevy asked.

  “The fuel we have here for our helicopters won’t work in the turboprop,” Davis replied. “We were hoping that you could give us a look at the airport to see if we could find fuel for the plane.”

  “The way you found that airport for us to land and refuel on our way out west,” Pete added. “We were hoping that you might be able to save us from making an unnecessary trip to the airport and save us some time.”

  “I’ll give it a try,” Chervy said as he walked over and sat down at the computer.

  When Chervy hit the enter key on the keyboard, the screen lit up.

  On the screen was the familiar scene of the farmhouse in Stone.

  “Still looking for Fran’s friend, John, in Stone?” Davis asked.

  “Yeah,” Cherv replied. “Fran comes down and spends an hour or so every evening looking for her friend to arrive in Stone. I feel bad for her, but she keeps hoping to find him and won’t give up looking for him. She said John wouldn’t give up on her. I just don’t think there is any way he could still be alive, but Doc said it is good therapy for her.”

  Chervy began to type instructions into the computer and the scene on the screen began to change.

  Soon Salt Lake City came into view.

  Chervy began to zoom in to get a closer look at the city.

  “That looks a lot easier than going out and flying over the city,” Pete said, then added. “It also saves a lot of time. We spent weeks flying around trying to spot someone that was still alive. It seemed to take forever to go out and check out the area around our facility.”

  “This is a lot safer too,” Chervy said.

  “Well, there isn’t anything out there now,” Pete replied.

  “Nothing that you can see,” Chervy said. “Doc has been taking soil and air samples around the area. He says the air and soil in the valleys are too infected for anyone to survive. Doc might want to send you out to take an air sample around the airport before you try landing down there.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Pete replied. “The Captain was worried about us getting infected when we were out looking for survivors back east. He didn’t have any way to analyze air or soil samples, but he just told us to fly over the cities and look. He didn’t want us landing and going in to any of the cities.”

  “You probably wouldn’t be here if you did,” Chervy said as he moved in for a closer look at the city.

  “Salt Lake City looks like every other city we’ve seen,” Pete said as the men studied the screen.

  Salt Lake City was as they expected.

  It was a dark dead city. The streets were darkened by the abandoned vehicles and the dead decaying bodies that were everywhere.

  The only things that moved were the birds and wild animals, who were unaffected by the virus that had destroyed humanity, as they roamed through the remains searching for food.

  Finally the satellite image moved to the northwest side of Salt Lake City.

  Next to the shores of The Great Salt Lake, the airport’s runways began to become visible.

  “Being outside the city near the lake, hopefully the area may not be as heavily contaminated as the city itself,” Chervy said, “but I’m sure Doc is going to want to test the air before you go out.”

  Chervy zoomed in on the runways.

  “I don’t think you will be able to land the plane at the airport,” Chervy said. “The runways look impassable.”

  “It looks to me like all those planes tried to get away from the airport in a hurry all at the same time,” Pete said. “With the number of burnt out shells on the runway, it must have been total chaos down there.”

  “I wonder if they realized that even if they got off the ground that there wasn’t anywhere to go?” Davis asked.

  “They would have been better off going over to the lake and getting on a boat,” Rogers added.

  “We can say that now,” Pete said. “But at that point, no one knew what we were facing. We all lived through it and I’m not sure I still know what it was we managed to live through.”

  “There looks to be a fuel truck parked next to the terminal,” Chervy finally said after studying the layout of the airport.

  “Yeah, we could put the helicopter down right next to McDonalds,” Davis said pointing to the screen. “We should be able land right there. If Doc sends us out to take air samples, we can fly over this spot to check it out to make sure we can land there before we go back out.”

  “How much fuel are we going to need to find?” Rogers asked.

  “Round trip to Cheyenne Mountain is about 1200 miles,” Pete replied. “That plane burns about seventy-five gallons of fuel per hour and it will take us about two hours one way. That means we would need at least three hundred gallons of fuel to make the trip. In case we run into any strong head winds, and in case the engines start to run rough, we should at take at least five hundred gallons to be safe.”

  “If we strap two fifty-gallon barrels to the skids that would mean it would take us five trips to bring back that much fuel,” Davis said.

  “Lucky the airport is only thirty miles away,” Rogers added.

  “Can you pull up a picture of Cheyenne Mountain?” Pete asked. “I guess we better make sure there is somewhere we can land once we get there. From what the Captain told me, they don’t have an airport at the facility. All they have is a
small area for helicopters to land. You should find the facility a little west of Colorado Springs.”

  “No airport?” Rogers asked.

  “Not at the facility,” Pete replied. “The airport is fifteen miles away. It’s at the Petersen Air Force Base in Colorado Springs fifteen miles away. The Air Force landed planes there and shuttled the personnel to the facility by helicopter.”

  “Do we have to walk fifteen miles after we land the plane?” Rogers asked.

  “I hope not,” Pete smiled. “The turbo prop doesn’t need much of a runway to land. Hopefully we can land on an access road like we did here at Granite Mountain.”

  “Cherv, please find us an access road,” Rogers sighed.

  Chervy adjusted the satellite’s camera and soon located Colorado Springs, then slowly panned west until he found the facility at Cheyenne Mountain.

  After zooming in on the area around Cheyenne Mountain he looked up.

  “It looks like NORAD Road, the access road that leads into the facility, is fairly straight,” Chervy replied then did a few calculations. “It also looks to be about two-point eight miles long.”

  “That should work,” Pete said. “All I need to land the turboprop in about half a mile of straight roadway.”

  “Thank God,” Rogers breathed a sigh of relief.

  “What’s that on the road?” Davis asked. “It looks like there is something blocking the road near the entrance to the facility.”

  “I think you’re right,” Chervy said as he adjusted the screen and began to zoom in on the area just outside the facility. “I think it looks like a plane.”

  “I think there is more than one plane down there,” Pete added.

  “I think you’re right,” Chervy replied.

  As the image grew larger, the large mass began to become clearer and soon the shape of three distinct planes came into focus out of what had been a large mass.

  “Those are some big ass planes,” Rogers said as the image on the screen grew larger. “The wings extend way off each side of the road. Why would planes that size be landing on that small road? That couldn’t have been easy.”

  “Can you get closer?” Pete asked as he stared at the screen more intently.

  “I think I can get a little closer,” Chervy replied and began typing on the keyboard again.

  When the image stopped moving and began to focus, Pete’s mouth fell open.

  “Holy shit,” Pete said. “I think that first plane is Air Force One!”

  “The President’s plane?” Rogers asked.

  “Yeah,” Pete replied.

  “What the hell is the President doing there?” Davis asked. “When we didn’t find anyone here at Granite Mountain, we assumed that the infection spread so fast that no one from the government was able to escape and make it here to Granite Mountain.”

  “If that is the President, why did he decide to go there instead of coming here?” Rogers asked then thought about what they were seeing. “Does this mean that the government survived and is operating from Cheyenne Mountain?”

  “It could be,” Pete replied. “According to the Captain, that facility is more than ten times larger than Granite Mountain. By looking at the size of those three planes, the government may have been able to bring around three hundred people from Washington and decided to use Cheyenne Mountain instead of here because of its size. Another reason they could have gone there is because the access road there was long enough to be able to land their large jets. Those jets are too large to land here at Granite Mountain.”

  “That sounds logical,” Rogers said.

  “If that was the case,” Chervy said then asked. “Why didn’t either of our groups pick up anything over the radio from Cheyenne Mountain? We broadcasted trying to find survivors. Your group was trying to make contact, I would assume they would have done the same. If they were able to establish a working base at Cheyenne Mountain, they would have been trying to establish contact with what was left of the country or they would have been at least trying to direct and stay in contact with the military units out in the field. Back at Fallon, the Captain never said anything about getting orders from Cheyenne Mountain.”

  “Good point,” Pete replied. “There could be a lot of reasons why we never heard anything over the radio. But it does appear that the President made it to Cheyenne Mountain.”

  “Could the President still be there?” Rogers asked.

  “If that facility is anything like what we have here,” Chervy replied. “We’re still here and we have enough supplies to live here for the rest of our lives. If they actually made it there, and it looks like they did, I would say there is a good chance that they are still there.

  The point that we never heard anything from them afterwards is what bothers me.”

  “You have a nuclear generator here that will run for a hundred years,” Pete said. “Cheyenne Mountain is a lot older. I assume they had an older diesel generator like we had at Greek Island in West Virginia. Maybe their old power plant died on them or their fuel had turned bad and they don’t have power to run the radios, so they couldn’t communicate with anyone on the outside.

  Whatever the reason, I’m sure the Captain is definitely going to want to check this out.”

  “Cherv, could you print us out pictures of what we are looking at to take down to the Doc,” Davis asked. “I hope Doc doesn’t have a heart attack when he sees this.”

  “Let’s go down and tell Doc and the Captain what we found,” Rogers said. “This is big. Something like this is what the Doc has been searching for ever since we got here.”

  Chapter 3

  May 10th, Cheyenne Mountain

  Johnson left the control room and began to walk down the tunnel.

  After walking about a quarter of a mile, he took the side tunnel that turned to the right. The side tunnel would take him to the transportation bay.

  The transportation bay was a massive natural cavern where all the busses, trucks, jeeps and electric golf carts were stored.

  The engineers didn’t have to do much to build the transportation bay except for leveling out the floor of the cavern so the vehicles could drive around easily.

  After building a repair shop and an office building, then mounting a few spot lights to light up bay, it was ready for business.

  The last few days, except for the golf carts that were used by the officers to travel to different sections of the facility, the transportation bay had been mostly quiet.

  Since Johnson’s unit was the next to last group to arrive at Cheyenne Mountain and no other units had departed, the buses used to transport large groups had been sitting idle.

  Johnson hadn’t seen any one going to work outside the facility for the last few days, so the trucks had also been sitting quiet.

  The facility had been a hot bed of activity when Johnson arrived with people coming and going, but the last few days everything had seemed to come to a stop.

  If he didn’t know better, no one had said anything officially, but he would swear the facility was on lockdown.

  No one entered or left the facility.

  The only place that showed any signs of normal activity was the hospital and the command center. But the more he thought about it, the activity down there seemed to be more than normal, they had been working around the clock nonstop.

  This was Johnson’s first deployment to Cheyenne Mountain, so he couldn’t say for sure, but this didn’t seem normal.

  Especially after talking with Larsen down at the radar room, he was certain this wasn’t normal.

  Something was happening, and he knew it wasn’t good.

  The rumors, the President and men from the Pentagon were on their way, the power plant down in Colorado Springs going down, only three planes showing up on the radar screen, all this didn’t add up.

  Well, maybe it did add up, but Johnson didn’t like what it was adding up to be.

  On top of all of that, the silence coming from the men in command made him angry.r />
  He knew the military mentality of being informed on a need to know basis only, but normally the higher ups would be running around where everyone could see the look on their faces that said I know something you don’t need to know.

  The smugness of superior officers had almost vanished.

  The last few days it was almost like the higher ups were hiding from the regular enlisted men, over in the command center, to keep what they knew a secret among themselves.

  At least that was the way Johnson felt.

  But again, Johnson knew it could just be his paranoia making him imagine things.

  He didn’t know how his dad and family had been able to stand working in a coal mine for all those years and maintain their sanity.

  He had only been in this damn cave for a few days and he was ready for a mental hospital.

  The loud droning sound of the generators died down as Johnson walked down the side tunnel.

  “Thank God that sound isn’t as bad down this way,” Johnson thought. “If I have to listen to that sound for six months, I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

  Johnson chuckled to himself, another sign of insanity he thought, as he arrived at the transportation bay and entered the large cavern.

  But as he entered the bay, he was surprised to see the sudden flurry of activity.

  Staff Sergeant Daniels from squad “A” was standing next to a six-man golf cart giving orders. Squad “A” had been the last group to arrive, but they had been quartered off by themselves away from everyone else.

  Seeing them at work in the transportation bay was the first sign or normalcy that Johnson had seen in three days.