He got control of himself after a minute, wiped his eyes, and got up. He moved forward and leaned in over Colbert.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“We’re driving through pouring rain in a zombie-filled wasteland. What could possibly be wrong?”
“Just give me an update, private.”
“Engine’s running a little hot, and we’re down to a quarter tank.”
“How far?”
“Maybe 70 miles? Eighty if we’re lucky. We haven’t been very lucky so far.”
“Tell me about it,” Cobb agreed. The drove on down the farm road for some miles and eventually slowed as they passed a sign, “Kendalia – Population 459.” As they’d gotten in the habit of doing, Colbert slowed as they went through town. There was a lot more chance of road obstructions in any town. Abandoned cars, concentrations of infected. Cobb guessed in a town this small, there wasn’t much chance. The infected seemed to migrate toward larger towns or concentrations of their own kind. Sure enough, the town seemed abandoned.
As they passed Crabapple Road, the engine started to miss.
“Umm,” Colbert said, examining his gauges, “it’s possible the fuel level isn’t reporting correctly.” Cobb leaned further forward; there was no sign of a gas station. The engine sputtered. They didn’t have long. Then he saw it.
“Turn right there?”
“What?” Colbert said, “A fire station?”
“Do it,” Cobb ordered. The private mumbled under his breath but spun the wheel. It was a rural fire department, made of tan corrugated steel. The American flag was flying in the rain, and “Kendalia VFD” was painted on the wall. The driveway and parking lot was gravel, a big cistern sat to one side, and a number of older broadleaf trees provided a nice shady place for a pair of picnic tables. No one was in sight. The Stryker slowed. “Pull right up to the bay door,” Cobb ordered. The vehicle came to a stop, and Cobb clambered out of the hatch next to the driver. Colbert handed him his rifle.
Cobb stood on the nose of the Stryker and scanned the area. The rain had slowed to a light mist, though he was still soaked so it made little difference. He used the rifle’s EOTech scope to scan the area. Nothing moved. He ground his teeth. Was it too quiet, or was he just being paranoid? He decided the latter and swung down to the ground.
The personnel door wasn’t locked, and he slid inside, turning on the flashlight mounted to his carbine. The space was clean, dry, and empty. Good. He cut through the office to the big bay where the fire engine would be stored. He was hoping for some fuel and was surprised to find the bay empty. It was also longer than he’d expected, probably used to store both a fire engine and ambulance. Cobb moved over, flipped the release on the bay door, and slid it up.
“Bring it in,” Cobb yelled. Colbert’s head popped up from the driver’s hatch, a surprised look on his face. “Come on, before someone or something sees us.” He dropped back down, and the Stryker growled to sputtering life. Cobb moved aside as Colbert put it in gear and it shuddered into the bay. The engine coughed and died, the vehicle coasting to a stop just a few feet inside.
Cobb pulled the door back closed, then sighed. The Stryker’s back door hummed down, with Colbert on it. “Now, we can get some rest.”
* * * * *
Chapter Ten
Afternoon, Saturday, April 30
The Flotilla, 150 Nautical Miles West of San Diego, CA
Jeremiah Osborne came running around the corner of the radio shack and almost crashed into the wall. One of the men already standing there caught him and kept him from wiping out. Jeremiah had been fast asleep after talking with his people late into the evening. He’d been dreaming about a big fat steak when his phone started blaring. He’d grabbed the offending device and listened, then rocketed out of his couch and raced down to the shack.
“You still have them?”
“You bet,” the technician said. He flipped a control and spoke. “This is OOE support platform calling Azanti.”
“Azanti here,” a voice responded immediately.
“Yes!” Jeremiah yipped and did a little dance. “Where’s the microphone?” One of the other men handed him a headset and showed him how it worked. “This is Jeremiah, how are you? Where are you? Who is that?”
“Morning, Jeremiah, we’re good, but looking forward to terra firma again. To answer your other questions, we’re about 300 miles west of your beacon, descending from 50,000 feet. And this is Alex West.”
“Mr. West,” Jeremiah said, “how’s your crew?”
“Alison McDill is fine. Lloyd Behm didn’t make it.”
Jeremiah looked shocked. “What happened?”
“We’ll be there in about five minutes. If you can prepare us a place to land, and something to eat, we’ll be happy to tell you all about it.” Jeremiah made urgent motions to the people standing around, who began to run out of the room.
“We’ll be waiting,” he said, and started to throw the headset down, them remembered protocol. “Oh, OOE out.” He ran again.
Up on the platform, the ground crew had just managed to move some equipment out of the way as a sonic boom rolled across the water. A dark spot in the sky was arrowing toward the flotilla, which was bobbing in the early morning waters. In just a minute, it grew to full size. The craft swung around the platform, flying as silently as an owl, lined up, extended stubby landing gear, and lowered itself to the deck.
As it came in, Jeremiah immediately noticed things. Scuffs on the paint. Scratches. The heat shield was scored heavily from reentry. As it turned to land, he saw the aft docking collar looked…wrong. What the hell happened? The ship was immediately secured to the deck by the ground crew, and the hatch started to open, but then it stopped. The ground crew moved a ramp over and began to examine it.
“It’s fucked,” one of the mechanics said. “We’ll either need to blow the emergency bolts or cut it.”
“Cut it,” Jeremiah ordered. Someone got a radio and warned the crew inside. A moment later a plasma cutter was rolled over, and the carefully-engineered doorway sliced in two. The super-heated cutting torch made short work of the expensive alloy. A crane moved in and the cut section was removed, revealing two very tired and dirty looking crew. “Welcome home!”
“Good to be home,” Alex West said. “Zombie apocalypse or not.”
“So you heard?” Jeremiah asked. A pair of the crew were covering the red-hot edges of the door with flexible sheets to protect the two. Alex moved aside and helped Alison out first, then followed.
“Hard to miss it,” Alison said. “We saw a couple nuclear blasts from space.” Jeremiah gawked.
“Well, we have food waiting. It’s all canned, and some fish paste. But it’s hot.”
“We’ll take it,” Alex smiled. “We can talk while Alison and I stuff our faces.” Ground crew was inside the Azanti already and going through the post-flight checklist.
Jeremiah and the flight engineers decided to let the two hungry, exhausted astronauts eat for a few minutes. They acted like they hadn’t eaten any real food in days, and Jeremiah realized they probably hadn’t. Finally, they both sighed and began to slow down. Alison was examining some of the fish.
“It’s all…over cooked. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”
“It’s the zombie thing,” Jeremiah said, and took a minute to explain Strain Delta. “You have to cook stuff at a really high temp to kill it.” They both nodded. “What happened up there? How far out did you go?”
“Oh, maybe as far as Mars?” Jeremiah’s eyes bugged, and Alex began to explain. He started with how the ship had accidentally exceeded the speed of light, something they neither knew it was capable of, or intended. It was supposed to be a simple trip around the moon. They’d then had to fight the craft, which seemed to want to only go in one direction. The head of Jeremiah’s team working on the alien craft was excited by this.
“I think this supports the lifeboat theory,” he said.
“Life boat?” Alex
asked.
“Later,” Jeremiah said and urged him to continue.
Alex did. He told how eventually Alison found the right signals to tell the alien drive to allow them to make a new course. He and Behm then did a dead reckoning flight and got them back to Earth.
“What happened to Behm?” Jeremiah asked.
“We’re getting to that.” He went on to explain that when they reached orbit, they saw the nuclear explosions in Europe and Asia, and how they were running low on consumables. They couldn’t raise OOE, so they eventually found the ISS and the commander allowed them to dock. After just a day there, one of the ISS crew had become infected, and it had turned into a fight for their lives, including how Lloyd Behm was murdered by one of the ISS crew members.
“After the station broke up, and I managed to get separated from the docking module, we made reentry, and here we are!”
“Mars,” Jeremiah said again. It was at least the third time he’d said it. “But you said the drive only had you FTL for a few minutes at a time?”
“Yes,” Alex confirmed, “Lloyd and I ran a clock. It’s all on the tablet in the ship.”
One of the two astrophysicists at the meeting was extremely excited. “Even at light speed, it should have taken you hours to reach Mars! You were traveling many times the speed of light. I need to see the logs, and I’ll know.”
“Sure,” Alex said, “but I’d like to know about this lifeboat thing.”
The team, who’d made progress with the alien radio and put forth the lifeboat theory, spent several minutes explaining what they’d found. Since initially telling Jeremiah about it, they now had a PowerPoint presentation. When it popped up on screen, both the Azanti survivors grinned hugely.
“Makes me feel like I’m back at NASA!” Alex West said.
“I feel like I’m back at MIT,” Alison agreed. By the end of the presentation, both astronauts were convinced, and Jeremiah was even more so.
“Good,” Alex agreed. “So what do we do?”
“We go get a couple for more experiments.”
“Jeremiah,” Alison said, “there’s a zombie apocalypse underway!”
“So?” he asked. Even the techs looked at the owner of Oceanic Orbital Enterprises askance. “Think about it,” he said. “Aliens, a plague, everything! These lifeboats are part of it.” Dumb stares. “We need to go get more and maybe find some clues how all this happened.”
“Or how to stop it,” Mary Merino, one of the propulsion experts agreed. Jeremiah pointed a finger at her, as if to say “See?”
“Okay, fine,” Alex said, “It’s better than sitting around waiting to get eaten. But how do we do it?”
“Get some rest,” Jeremiah said, “and we’ll put together an expedition by tomorrow morning.”
“Won’t the military have something to say about it?”
“Actually,” a man said who’d come in while they had been talking, “there’s a call for the boss. Someone on a carrier wants to know what the fuck landed here.”
The Navy ensign grilled Jeremiah for over an hour before leaving in his inflatable boat. The whole experience was giving him a negative opinion of the military. Of course, their curiosity was genuine. He wasn’t entirely certain his story about a planned high-speed test went over well. Especially since the ensign insisted they hadn’t seen the ship take off.
“Well, how about you let us know before you go pulling a stunt like this again, Mr. Osborne?” He’d mumbled something in assent then headed down to his team. They were already in Hangar Three, where two Bell 206 Jet Ranger helicopters rested opposite from the Azanti. The ground crew was busy working on them.
“Haven’t flown one of these in quite a while,” Alex said when he spotted the boss.
“You’re the only other helicopter pilot I have,” Jeremiah said.
“You talk the Navy out of being too nosy?”
“For now,” he said. On the wall of the hanger was a huge map of California. There was a green pin marking their location, and two red pins with a string linking all three in a triangle. “Tomorrow morning, first light.”
“We’ll be ready,” the crew chief said. Jeremiah nodded. He’d worried for days when he hadn’t returned two of the four helicopters as planned after he’d conducted the search NASA paid him for. Now he was glad he hadn’t. He didn’t know how he was going to get any sleep.
* * * * *
Chapter Eleven
Evening, Saturday, April 30
Near Tarpley, TX
Despite it being the closest actual town to his retreat, Vance Cartwright had visited Tarpley only a few times. It hadn’t had anything he’d needed. A tiny gas station/convenience store, a roadside restaurant called Mac & Ernie’s Roadside Eatery (their brisket wasn’t bad), the post office, one Baptist church, and a strange little music venue called the William Creek Depot. The Ford was smoking and backfiring by the time the tiny convoy rolled into Tarpley. It was pitch black, without street lights or any sign of life from the homes. The scene gave him the shivers; they lived in a society where normally everything was lit up like Christmas, even a tiny little Texas town. Tim killed the motor and coasted the truck into the gas station.
“Ann, Belinda, Nicole, cover us!” Vance barked as they all bailed out. “Tim, start on the radiator.” His friend was already popping the hood, stepping back as a plume of steam erupted from the engine compartment. Meanwhile, Harry had climbed out of the cargo compartment and was stripping off his desert BDU shirt. Vance had just walked over, and he saw the ugly burn on the man’s abdomen, shaped just like the flash suppressor on the full auto M4 he’d loaned the Marine.
“Burned right through the fucking shirt,” Harry hissed, examining the wound. “Thank God the fabric was fire resistant.”
“Looks bad,” Vance said, looking closer. He could see fat and muscle. It looked really bad.
“Belinda can clean it up in no time,” Harry said.
“She’s on security,” Vance told him, “can you hold out for a few?”
“Sure,” Harry said. He leaned against the side of the truck, dug out a wound dressing from his belt pack, and pressed it over the burn. “Go help Tim,” he said, hissing from the pain. Vance couldn’t imagine how badly it hurt. He watched the other man for a moment, then went to help Tim.
“It was close,” Tim said as Vance come over to look. “Another five minutes probably would have blown the engine.” He pointed through billowing steam at the little LED light they’d added under the hood flickering in the plume. “The expansion tank blew, and we lost a hose.”
“Parts cover it?”
“Yes,” Tim said, “but we only have one tank, and two of those hoses.”
“We’ll hit an auto parts place, if we can.” Tim nodded as Vance scanned the area. The replacement radiator was sitting on the ground nearby, along with one of their two sets of rechargeable tools. “I’ll pitch in and help with overwatch.”
“How bad is Harry hurt?”
“Pretty badly.”
“Take over for Belinda so she can help her husband.” Vance looked at the ruined radiator and the tools. “Go. I got this. I’m a better mechanic anyway.” Vance laughed and moved over to the shadowy figure of Belinda. He could only tell it was her in the gloom because her dark skin didn’t show in the meager starlight.
“Belinda,” he said quietly. She glanced over at him. “Go help Harry, he’s hurt.” Her eyes became big circles of white in the dark.
“What? How bad?”
“Burn from the rifle, happened after you guys pulled out. Go, now.” She didn’t say another thing, just turned and left. Vance raised his M4 and started keeping watch.
Tim was the better choice for the work. In minutes he’d removed the grill, detached the ruined radiator, and was installing the new one. His movements were quick and sure, as if he’d done this a dozen times before. Of course, he knew the trucks better than anyone except possibly the manufacturer. After all the modifications they’d done, he knew it
better.
“Where are all the people?” Ann stage whispered.
“I don’t know,” Vance said. Cordless tools buzzed as the new radiator was bolted in.
“Hundreds attacked the retreat,” she said. “Hundreds and hundreds. But no one is here?” Vance nodded; it didn’t make any sense. The sound of a man gasping and hissing against pain came from the other side of the truck. Harry was getting his wound cared for. Maybe some stitches. “If this is nationwide,” she continued, “that means millions of infected.” Vance didn’t want to say he thought those numbers were way low. Harry grunted again, and the dogs growled.
“Lexus, shhh,” Vance hissed at the dogs. Tim had the new radiator in, and the hoses attached. He was using his booted foot to bend the grill back into a shape which closely approximated the original, while a gallon of antifreeze drained into the radiator. The sound of tape tearing came from Belinda and Henry as she continued to administer to her injured husband. Tim had the grill back in place and was securing it as another gallon glugged in. There were too many things going on; he didn’t hear the feet pounding toward them until it was too late.
“Shit!” Harry bellowed as an infected crashed into Belinda from behind, sending her flying face first into the door of the pickup and knocking her out.
“Contact!” Vance yelled, moving around the front of the pickup to get a sight picture. Harry was rolling on the ground, struggling desperately with a mostly naked man almost as big as himself. Vance pulled the stock up and welded it to his cheek, using the holographic sight to get a clean shot. It was dark, and they were a spinning flurry of violence. He took a couple hesitant steps toward the fight before he saw the others. A dozen more were just breaking from behind a line of trees and sprinting toward them.
“Firing!” Vance yelled, swept the safety off, and squeezed the trigger. The M4 banged against his shoulder, and the first sprinter went down in a tangle.
Turning Point (Book 2): A Time To Run Page 14