When he had lunged for the girl in the dark of the desert night, she had giggled provocatively and danced out of his reach. He cursed her under his breath.
“It’s wrong to deny the orders of a superior officer…” King tried to coerce her with a threat.
“Haystack is my boyfriend,” she had admonished him, still playful. “I don’t think he’d be happy if he found out you tried to put your hand up my skirt, Major King.”
He had stumped back to camp without her and turned his attention back to the mission. Now she was in his mind again, distracting him with wicked thoughts and temptation.
*
The southbound lanes of the highway had been blocked. Soldiers of the National Guard stood their post at a checkpoint. A couple of M2 Bradley fighting vehicles were parked on the shoulder of the road behind the barricade, shimmering in the heat haze of the day.
Since the border crossing point at San Ysidro had been closed, there was very little traffic. The only vehicles on the road were locals returning to their homes. Captain Ortiz yawned and stretched.
Army engineers had erected tents for the troops on a patch of scrubby grass beneath an overpass. For a few hours in the middle of the day the site was shaded. Through the heat of the afternoon, the soldiers in their bulky uniforms baked in the oven-like air.
Ortiz and Delta Company had drawn twenty-four hours of sentry duty, tasked with monitoring all southbound traffic. The Captain used the monotonous task for a chance to rest his men, manning the roadblock in shifts while flies buzzed in the air and thick smog smudged the sky.
The abrupt crackled call on his radio brought Ortiz fully awake and blinking from within the shelter of the tent. When he stepped out into the sunlight, the heat of the long afternoon struck him like a physical blow.
“Yeah? What have you got?”
So far ‘Operation Hold Firm’ had been a non-event for the men of the 160th. They had helped fortify a section of the border crossing point. They had pulled traffic duty. Now they were manning a roadblock. Ortiz felt restless, bitter and bored.
The lieutenant who had called him on the radio pointed into the shimmering distance.
A convoy of trucks approached the roadblock. Ortiz squinted into the glaring bright light. He counted six vehicles, shimmering and floating on the heat’s mirage. They were a dusty weather-beaten collection of pickups. There were men sitting in the cargo bed amidst piles of camping gear. As the vehicles approached, Ortiz stepped out into the middle of the highway with his hand raised. The trucks changed down through the gears and braked to a halt, engines still rumbling. Captain Ortiz strode around to the driver’s side of the lead vehicle. It was a dust-covered Chevy. There were two men in the cabin. The driver looked athletic and broad-shouldered. The man beside him was bearded and overweight. One of Ortiz’s men, his weapon held at the ready, sauntered around the back of the vehicle and saw a large man and a slim attractive young woman squatting in the bed of the truck.
The driver of the vehicle lowered his window.
“Are you a local resident in this area, sir?” Captain Ortiz asked.
“No, Captain,” Karl King said. “My name is Major King from the USBV.” He had invented the fanciful name on the long drive. “Me and my unit have come to lend the Army a hand protecting America.”
Ortiz arched his eyebrows. “USBV?” The military had an acronym for everything, but he had never heard this one.
“United States Border Vigilantes,” King explained confidently. “I’ve brought recruits from Texas.”
“You’re all armed?”
“Heavily,” King smiled. “We’re locked, cocked and ready to rock.”
Ortiz was not impressed. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Who authorized you to report to San Ysidro?”
“No one, Captain,” King said. “God sent us here. God told me to gather a force of fighting men and urged me to follow his path. The Lord told me we were needed here. We’ve answered His call.”
“Well, Mr. King,” Ortiz deliberately did not use the man’s assumed rank. “I’m afraid God’s not the one giving the orders here on the border. They come from a Colonel at command – and if he didn’t summon you, and if you don’t have the proper authorization to be here… well you’re just going to have to turn around and drive all the way back to Texas.”
“Son, I am ex-military,” King bridled irritably and lied. “I fought for this country in the dust and dirt of Iraq. My men are all fighting men, and you’re going to need all the help you can get once them Mexican beaners start trying to swarm over the wall. So why don’t you just step back, move your barricade aside, and let me and my boys do the work we’ve travelled here to do?”
Ortiz smiled tightly. “Private vigilante groups are not authorized by the government or the US military to be in this sector, Mr. King. This is an operation being conducted by the United States Army. Paramilitary groups do not have permission to operate anywhere along the southern border,” the National Guard Captain said, letting some steel and authority come into his voice. “I would advise you and your friends to turn around and drive back the way you came. If you fail to comply with my order immediately, my men will be forced to detain and disarm you all.”
For long tense seconds the two men stared at each other in a test of wills. Finally, Karl King revved the Chevy’s engine loudly and snarled through the open window.
“This ain’t over!” he warned. “It’s my constitutional right to carry arms and to defend my country, dammit.”
The truck swung violently onto the wrong side of the road in a screeching cloud of burnt rubber and went roaring away at high speed, engine howling. One by one, the rest of the weary vehicles in the convoy turned around and followed.
SOUTH OF MACEIÓ
ALAGOAS
BRAZIL
The two children stood at the edge of the beach and watched dawn’s light paint soft color across the ocean.
“There will be fish today,” Chico Coelho said with certainty. A wave came hissing up the sand and foamed around his feet. He tossed two fishing lines into the bottom of the rowboat and nudged his little brother to help him.
The boys bent to the boat and pushed. Young Luis grunted. Another wave came washing around their ankles. The boat slid forward reluctantly.
“Get ready,” Chico rested a moment. Off shore the third wave in the set began forming, seething into white foam as it crossed a coral reef and then broke apart. The surge of bubbling wash raced up the sand and splashed around their knees.
“Now!” Chico said. The boys pushed again and the boat slid out into shallow water, then suddenly became buoyant. Young Luis leaped aboard. Chico gave a final push and hauled himself over the gunwale.
The rowboat was very old, the paint flaked, her timbers split and sun-bleached grey. Chico fitted the oars into the rowlocks while the suck of the wave carried them twenty yards off shore.
Another surge broke across the reef. Chico settled himself on the thwart seat, facing the beach, and leaned against the oars.
“We will try the ‘cathedral’ first,” he called to Luis. He glanced over his shoulder to get his bearings just as rays of sunlight broke across the horizon, tinting the dawn in shades of gold and red.
The ‘cathedral’ was a deep hole in the coral reef that lay just beyond the headland of a nearby promontory. The boys named the fishing spot after the shape of the opening; from the boat it looked like the high arched door of their local church.
Luis nodded enthusiastically. He sat in the bow and watched the sunrise, marveling at the colors in the sky while the boat cut smoothly through the water, taking the hissing foam of each new gurgling wave on her shoulder so she rocked like a baby’s cradle.
Luis began to sing, his voice high and piping.
The canoe turned over,
Who let it turn?
It was because of Chico
Who did not know how to row
Siriri this way, siriri that way
He likes
her and wants to get married!
The young boy finished his song just as the boat rounded the promontory. Morning had come quickly to the Brazilian coast. Dark brown scars of cloud hung low in the sky, as if drawn with a careless crayon.
“Chico!” Luis cried suddenly. “Look!”
Chico let go of the oars and turned on his seat, peering forward over his shoulder. Two hundred yards beyond the bow hunched the bobbing hulk of another small boat, snagged on the jagged jaws of the reef. The stranded vessel was streaked and grimed with sea salt, its hull stained by brown rust-like scars.
Luis felt a sudden premonitory chill of superstitious foreboding. He shivered as he turned to his older brother. “I wonder who owns it.”
Chico gathered up the oars and bent his back. The strange craft was longer than theirs, and narrower in the waist. It looked unlike any other fishing boat the children had ever seen. Chico gave a final flurry of strokes and let momentum carry them closer to the stranded wreck.
INTERSTATE 805
SAN DIEGO
Karl King braked to a sudden skidding halt in the roadside gravel and sat fuming with indignation, his hands tight on the wheel, his jaw clenched.
“Fuckin’ National Guard pussies,” he seethed. He kicked open the driver’s door and jumped down into the dust. The other trucks in the convoy pulled up in a line.
“I ain’t quittin’!” King declared. “No one’s going to deny me the right to defend my country against invaders.”
He propped his hands on his hips and balanced his weight on the balls of his feet like he was spoiling for a fight. He caught sight of the girl in the back of his truck. He watched her from the corner of his eye as he addressed the rest of the vigilantes. She looked petulant and grubby with dust. She stared at him with glittering devilish eyes.
“What do the rest of you boys say?”
“Shit, Major. We just drove for damn near three days – and now we gotta turn around back to Texas? I didn’t join up to drive. I joined up to hunt down beaners,” one of the men said. King saw a couple of other heads in the crowd nodding agreement. He stared them down.
“Well I guess you’re either a wannabe, or you’re real military like me. Make up your minds. But I’ve got a new plan and a new destination. I’m heading west to Nogales, Arizona.”
“Arizona?” Haystack asked from the back of the truck. He sounded exasperated.
“Damn right,” Karl King said. “That place is like the wild west, boys. It’s a well-known drug route across the border used by Mexican cartels. Let the National Guard defend the wall they built – they can’t be everywhere at once. So I’m going to hunt and track cartel drug runners. How many of you are with me?”
BLACK SITE ECHO-59
GUAM
“What is Clarvfax?” Nathan Power sorted through the pages of seized research notes on the desk, picking one up at random and holding it out for Ju Young-sik to see.
“It is the contagion compound,” the North Korean said.
“What is Songun?”
“It is the militarized codename for the contagion.”
“Did you create another version of the virus – one that was not intended for use as a biological WMD?”
“The Russians…” Ju said. “Our research began with a strain of contagion the Soviets had created.”
“So the original contagion started with a Russian recipe that you and your research team modified?”
“We re-engineered the compound, genetically altering the base contagion to make it more resistant to the challenges of weaponization, and then propagated a variant of the strain that had entirely new capabilities.”
“Did the Russian scientists who worked on the project see the results of your research?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“They had already returned to Kazakhstan when the breakthrough at Aoji-ri was made.”
“Did you contact the Russians again?”
“No.”
“So they have no stockpiles of the Clarvfax contagion?”
“No. They do not know it exists.”
“What about the Chinese?”
“No.”
Nathan Power picked through another pile of scientific journals. Some were written in Korean, others in the Cyrillic script of Russia. Most of the notes, files and reports had been written in English – the language used by the majority of the worldwide scientific research community.
“What does the Pushchino Research Center in Russia have to do with your work?” Power asked suddenly.
Ju Young-sik shrugged. “Nothing.”
“But you have journals from their Academy of Science.”
“One of the Soviet chemists who came to Aoji-ri studied and worked at Pushchino. That is the only connection.”
Power sat back, his face expressionless, and for a long time the only sound was the far away muted growl of aircraft engines taking off from nearby Anderson Air Force Base.
“Tell me more about the prisoner camps where you tested the virus.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How many tests did you conduct?”
“Many,” Ju said. “I do not know exactly.”
“Over what time frame?”
Ju shrugged. “Three years?” he speculated, his voice rising so the answer sounded like a guess.
“Did the Russian scientists accompany you?”
“No.”
“How many strains of Clarvfax did you test on prisoners?”
“Perhaps ten,” Ju said. “But most of the experiments were to perfect the delivery system, not the contagion.”
“So you had the virus in its finished form? You knew what Clarvfax was capable of doing?”
“Yes. Our early program of experimentation was on prisoners in steel cages who were transported to us from a labor camp. We injected the subjects with the virus and monitored the results. Then we monitored their behaviors in groups who had not been injected to understand how the infection would spread through wounds. The greatest challenges were not with the Clarvfax, but rather with developing an aerosol version that could be successfully delivered by a missile.”
SOUTH OF MACEIÓ
ALAGOAS
BRAZIL
The sickly over-ripe stench of death reached the boys long before they could see into the stranded boat. The smell of putrefaction was nauseating. Luis retched over the side of the gunwale, tears streaming down his cheeks. His stomach heaved a second time. He gasped for air.
Chico stood up in the waist of the boat, balancing against the erratic rocking. He could see bodies lying across the stranded boat’s narrow plank seats. There were three men, stretched out on their backs, their faces lifted to the sky, unmoving.
The suck of the outgoing tide and the last of the boat’s own momentum carried the children close enough for Chico to reach out and pull the vessels together. Their timbers ground and grated harsh against each other.
“Puta merda!” Chico used the most venomous profanity he knew.
The three men had skin as black as coal. They had short wiry tufts of black hair, flat, broad noses, and large fleshy lips. They were dressed in tattered rags, and the soft flesh of their cheeks had been gouged at by birds. One of the men’s eyes was missing. Their mouths were open as if choking for air.
Luis stared at the bodies in horror. He had never in his life seen such foreign men. He turned and gaped at his big brother.
“Where are they from?”
Chico shrugged, frowning and disturbed. “They must have come from a place across the sea,” he said softly.
He used a length of rope to bind the two boats together and crept forward to the bow. He knelt beside Luis.
Two of the dead men in the wrecked boat looked as though wild animals had savaged them. Chico could see bite marks on one man’s swollen arm, and dried black bloodstains spattered across the planks. The other man’s head looked like it had been almost severed; bitten through at the neck. The clothing the
men wore was stained with deep patches of blood.
“What should we do?” Luis was fearful. His eyes were huge and terrified. Everywhere he looked he saw blood and horror.
“We must check to be sure they are dead,” Chico said.
“No!” Luis quailed. “Chico, no!”
“Yes,” Chico insisted bravely. He was filled with trembling fear, but also the macabre fascination of an adolescent boy. Already he was memorising everything he saw, fixing it in his mind so each gory detail could be faithfully retold to his school friends. “We must check the bodies.”
Luis started to cry.
“You can wait here,” Chico said.
“No!”
The two boys climbed carefully from one boat to the other, judging the moment when the gurgling surf was at its calmest. The stranded boat rocked precariously and ground itself deeper onto the jaws of the coral. The bottom of the boat was filled with slopping water, filthy with rubbish. Chico choked down the urge to vomit. The stench of death seemed to burn the back of his throat. He reached out tentatively for the nearest body and a cloud of flies buzzed into the air. Chico touched the man’s arm. The skin was warm but soft as wet clay. The dead flesh was covered in a rash of blisters.
“He’s dead.”
Luis sat hunched with his knees drawn up to his chin and a hand covering his mouth. The child was shaking with the fever of his terror.
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 68