Allegiance

by Shawn Chesser

  Brook couldn’t begin to fathom the importance of the item the kid had just handed her. She turned it over in her palm. PROPERTY OF THE CDC was etched into the aluminum case on one side. After a beat, which gave her mind the time to process the acronym, her jaw fell open.

  “What is it, Mom?”

  Brook’s eyes flicked to Raven and then over to Wilson, whose face was still plastered with that satisfied Cheshire Cat-like grin. Then, after she flipped the device over, it was she who nearly shit a brick. Because, scrawled there freehand in bold block letters in black sharpie, was the name FUENTES, and just seeing it nearly stopped her heart. “Where did you get this?” she gasped. But before Wilson could answer, Brook’s mind blazed through the ramifications—99.9% of them were good but the other one-tenth of one percent troubled her. And the root of that worry had to do with how Cade would react if the information that everyone had assumed was lost forever was actually stored on the thumb drive that she held in her hand.

  “My friend Taryn found it hidden away in her quarters. Which apparently is the same building that the medical personnel stayed in.”

  Brook nodded. “When did she find it?”

  “Three days ago after she got out of quarantine.”

  “What...” Brook cried. “Why did she sit on it for so long?”

  Obviously taken aback, Wilson paused for a tick. “She told me it was probably filled with MP3s... you know—music.”

  “I’m young enough to know what an MP3 is, buddy,” Brook shot back.

  “It’s not Taryn’s fault. She didn’t know what CDC stood for or who the hell Fuentes is... err... was.”

  “I can see how that could happen. The initials CDC didn’t ring a bell with me when I first saw them.” Brook made a face. She remained silent for a moment, turning everything over in her head.

  Raven had been following the conversation like a spectator at an Olympic caliber ping pong match, her head swinging to and fro after each verbal volley.

  Max, on the other hand, appeared to be oblivious to the conversation. He was curled up under Brook’s bunk, head tucked in with one brown ear probing the air.

  Brook cocked her head to the side and worked at taming her medium length locks. She wrapped a band multiple times around a thick shock of her brown hair, leaving it up in a high ponytail. “Raven, get your boots on,” she said. Then directing her attention at the dog, she added. “Max. You’re staying here... lots of golf carts and trucks zipping around out there.” The dog’s head gophered up. He fixed his bicolored eyes on Brook, wagged his tail as if in agreement, then reburied his head.

  Brook grabbed two loaded magazines from the metal table near the door, stuffed them in her side cargo pockets, and fastened the Velcro so they’d stay put.

  Finished lacing her boots, Raven pulled a tan ball cap low on her head, leaving her pigtails poking out the sides.

  “Where’s your sister?” Brook asked Wilson.

  “Sasha’s being a baby. She’s back at our trailer. And she’s pissed because Taryn stole a few hours of my attention.”

  “Who is this Taryn girl?” asked Brook.

  Wilson’s brow hitched up. “Your husband and his men saved her from an airport somewhere in western Colorado. I think Taryn said it was in Grand Junction. Anyway, she was the only one who survived the outbreak there. Nine days all by herself.”

  “How well do you know her?”

  Wilson nodded and a smile formed as he spoke, “Me and her are pretty close.”

  Brook noticed that same toothy grin again. How close? she wondered. “I’m taking this to Shrill. He’ll know what to do with it.”

  “Can I tag along?” Wilson asked.

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Brook said. She followed Wilson and Raven out the door and locked up.

  Chapter 25

  Outbreak - Day 15

  Jackson Hole, Wyoming

  Tran came to once again—only this time he knew without a doubt that he wasn’t one of them. Though he had no idea how long he had been unconscious, when he opened his eyes and sat up he was pleased to note that the pressure in his head as well as the sickening vertigo that had accompanied it had lessened somewhat.

  He had escaped the blonde brothers, this he also knew. He had tumbled downhill out of control and had been knocked unconscious somewhere along the way. And it appeared that miraculously he had come to rest on a shallow, but relatively flat shelf jutting out from the steep hillside.

  As he sat on the shelf taking inventory of his injuries, he caught a whiff of carrion and instantly remembered the one-eyed demon that had been stalking him. And as his vision sharpened, he realized that the answer to his most pressing problem was right there, protruding from the volcanic soil, staring him straight in the face. Reddish ochre-colored and shaped like a clamshell, the flat obsidian shard was roughly six inches long by four inches wide, thick on one end and tapered off to a sharp edge on the other. In another time and to another culture, after a certain degree of shaping and sharpening, the stone would have made a fine hide scraping tool. Or affixed to a hickory haft—a crude, but deadly hatchet. Tran needed it for one purpose and he hoped it was sharp enough to do the job.

  Meanwhile, just a few feet away, his one-eyed nemesis clawed its way towards him.

  Trying to decide which course of action to take, he shifted his gaze downslope. The zombies trapped in the brambles hadn’t forgotten about him. They eyed him raptly, their dry throaty moans carrying uphill, snapping the hair on his arms to attention. The amount of damage the vipers nest of thorns had done to their ashen skin was appalling. A road map of gashes crisscrossed their bodies, rivulets of red the highways and byways.

  Tran thought it through. He could fling himself over the edge, roll down the hill and risk ending up in the brambles with the struggling creatures. Or, he could cast aside his lifelong vow to shun violence, somehow get the rock and free himself, and then kill the one-eyed demon.

  Surely that wouldn’t be the same as killing a human. It wasn’t murder, he reasoned.

  With his mind made up, he pressed his cheek against the cool earth, summoned the needed strength, and flipped over onto his back. After catching his breath and then swallowing a great amount of pain he hinged up into a sitting position, (remaining conscious this time) and then scooted backwards on his butt to a spot where he could reach the rock with his numb hands. One look at the ghastly black and blue extremities caused him to wonder if there might be a couple of metal hooks in his future. Then, after fumbling the stone multiple times, he finally got it clamped between his trembling knees.

  The birds suddenly went silent as One Eye’s hissing morphed into guttural animal-like growls.

  Tran ignored everything around him, and with a laser-like focus worked his bonds back and forth over the rock. After a dozen passes the obsidian cut through the silver tape, freeing his deadened hands.

  He cast a sideways glance.

  One Eye was an arm’s length away.

  He folded his legs underneath him Indian style, nearly losing consciousness from the pain the simple action incurred.

  The demon lunged—displaying a quickness Tran hadn’t expected. Both clawlike hands scraped the earth where one second ago his battered feet had been.

  Tran grasped the rock as best he could and stared into the demon’s eyes. It continued to advance, snapping its yellowed teeth—wanting his flesh. It took a herculean effort from him to raise the two-pound hunk of volcanic glass overhead. His shoulders blazed deep inside where the ball rotated in the cuff. Millions of nerve endings flared to life as oxygen-rich blood coursed through the veins and capillaries servicing his hands. And as he held the rock aloft waiting for the demon to move a few inches closer, the opening words from a Mahatma Gandhi quote resounded in his still throbbing head: ‘Non-violence does not signify that man must not fight against the enemy, and by enemy is meant the evil which men do, not the human beings themselves.’

  His arms trembled, muscles threatening to
fail him. It is not man nor woman, he thought to himself. It is a monster created by the evil inherent in man. With that, he brought the rock down, adding what little energy remained in his muscles to gravity’s pull. A hollow thud resonated as the obsidian shard glanced off of the thing’s temple and struck the pliant ground.

  Undeterred, Tran wrapped one hand around its neck and straddled it, being careful to stay clear of its snapping maw. He felt the monster’s body compressed under his hundred-pound frame. The stench expelled from the demon’s lungs caused his eyes to tear. And as it lay on its back like a turtle, arms and legs rowing the air, teeth clacking out a soul-shuddering Morse code that he that would take to the grave with him, he gazed into its one good eye. He studied it momentarily, a little afraid but not terrified. He contemplated the skeletal face, wondering: Is this what my fate holds? To become a demon stalking the earth? Then he summoned all the strength he had left. He could feel the obsidian now, in his right hand, cool and smooth and wet. The hand was bleeding where it had cut in. It doesn’t hurt. The other hand still held the beast by the neck, firm to the ground. One hundred pounds worth of firm. He aimed for the spot where the upturned nose separated the creature’s one good eye from the wet socket full of splinters. For a moment he imagined the missing orb hanging from a slender switch somewhere upslope—like a lonely marshmallow waiting its turn in the campfire.

  He brought the obsidian down with all the force he could muster. He watched the demon’s one good eye roll back and track the crushing blow. Then Tran chopped away until the creature’s brains leaked from the fissure cleaved into its head.

  He stripped the clothes from the cadaver and realized after seeing the gaunt creature’s dehydrated breasts that he had killed a woman. How could he have known it was a woman? The wisps of hair remaining on its skull didn’t offer a clue. Nor did the cargo shorts and button up cotton shirt. Tran didn’t know which side the buttons rode up a man’s shirt, let alone a woman’s. That bit of sleuthing wouldn’t have helped. But now that he knew the awful truth, that the living corpse had been someone’s daughter and maybe even someone’s sister or mother, it caused him great anguish.

  It couldn’t be helped, he reasoned. He’d had to kill to survive, of that he was certain. He scraped the largest chunks of brain and hair-covered skull over the ledge, took one last look at the dead woman, and said a silent prayer asking for forgiveness before rolling the naked corpse into the clutching briars below.

  Chapter 26

  Outbreak - Day 15

  Schriever AFB

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  “Come in, Brook,” Major Freda Nash said with the charm of a bed and breakfast owner welcoming a new guest. She held the door to her office open and pointed the way with her free hand. “How have you been?”

  Brook nodded. “I’m getting along OK,” she said. Holy hell, you look awful, is what she thought. Standing in the doorway less than a foot away, Nash looked like she’d just returned from being out on tour with a hard partying rock band. The usual press to her uniform was gone. Dark circles hung like banners of mourning under her eyes. A royal blue Air Force ball cap with the angular eagle and star logo embroidered in silver on the front panel was pulled down low over her eyes. Sticking out from the back, her black ponytail showed streaks of gray. The only thing about her that seemed squared away was the way she carried herself. She had the attitude of a six footer despite her small stature and obvious fatigue.

  “Come on in out of the heat, young lady.”

  Brook smiled and said nothing as Wilson came ambling in behind her.

  She noticed the Air Force officer’s demeanor change and the smile go away at the sight of the young man with the sweat-stained boonie hat atop his head.

  “Wilson... I believe.”

  He removed his floppy camouflage hat. “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Sit down. Sit down,” Nash urged as she removed reams of paper from the two chairs fronting her desk.

  Still a little intimidated by anyone wearing a uniform, Wilson did as he was told, selecting the chair furthest from the door and nearest the buzzing wall-mounted A/C unit.

  “Flick that thing to low, would you Sir,” Nash said to Wilson. He reached a sinewy arm upward and punched the button marked ‘Night Mode’. The major nodded a thank you in his direction.

  Being fully aware that Nash and General Ronnie Gaines had gotten their noses out of joint because Cade had cashed in the capital that President Clay had offered him in exchange for snatching Robert Christian from Jackson Hole, Brook opted to remain standing. She wanted to retain any advantage she could in order to steel herself against the overtures Nash was about to throw at her. “I’m OK right here,” she said.

  “Suit yourself.” Nash worked her way around the desk and sat in her own high-backed leather chair. “So how’s Cade? Haven’t seen him around the last couple of days.”

  “He’s getting things ready. We’re heading to Utah tomorrow.” Brook smiled with her eyes. Her lips remained pursed, a thin white line bisecting her tanned features.

  Nash made a face. “He’s really going through with this... going to quit the Unit again?” she said, adding a slight tilt to her head.

  “Already has,” Brook countered.

  “How unfortunate for America,” Nash muttered.

  In an obvious attempt at cutting the tension between the two women, Wilson made his presence known by clearing his throat loudly. “Ahem... Brook... did you forget why we’re here?”

  “Wilson’s...” Brook furrowed her brow and looked at Wilson, trying to decide what to call Taryn. “His lady friend found this.” She placed the thumb drive on Nash’s desk. “This thing had been stashed in her bunk.”

  “What is it?” Nash asked. She picked up the device. Turned it over in her hand just like Brook had a few minutes prior. The reaction was similar and happened instantly. The color drained from the major’s face. She remained silent and wheeled her chair to the right, plugged the thumb drive into the USB port of the Panasonic laptop, and hinged up the screen. Then after a few seconds had elapsed, Brook noticed a stark glow illuminate the major’s face as the computer’s LCD screen lit up. She watched her jaw clench and the corded muscles running the sides of her neck bulge noticeably.

  “Does it have any of the doctor’s notes on it?” Brook asked Nash.

  Nash stayed quiet for a beat. Brook watched the color slowly returning to Nash’s face.

  “Brook... I know you are aware of the sensitive nature of this information. It got your brother killed, and for that I’m sorry.” She turned her gaze to Wilson. “I appreciate your vigilance in this matter, Sir, and on behalf of the President of the United States I want to thank you for bringing this to our attention.” Nash stared at him for a moment. He cracked a half smile as the importance of the information contained on the drive hit him. Nash cleared her throat. “But I have to ask you to leave my office so we can have some privacy,” she added with a firm delivery. Without hesitating, he planted his hands on the chair arms and rose up off of the seat.

  “You’re not going anywhere, Wilson,” Brook said icily. She gripped his forearm firmly but her gaze remained locked with Nash’s. The A/C warbled on. Nobody spoke for a minute, and Nash continued to stare. Her gaze passed from Brook to Wilson before finally settling back onto Brook.

  Finally Wilson nodded imperceptibly, swallowed hard, and settled back into his seat.

  “I have to make a call,” Nash stated. She plucked the handset from the brick red telephone that looked like it hadn’t seen action since the Cold War. The computer continued running through some kind of sequence which cast a green flicker on Nash’s stoic features as she waited for someone to pick up.

  Cheyenne Mountain Complex

  In the span of thirty minutes, the number of dead pressing the fence topside had doubled. Secret Service Special Agent Adam Cross’s hand hovered near the black phone. He was just about to call topside security and have them deal with the problem when the shril
l ring of the emergency hotline caused the usually unflappable man to visibly start. Without a second’s hesitation, he reached for the red phone that fellow agent Eckers had taken to calling the Bad Phone. It had earned the nickname for good reason. The throwback to the Cold War was connected to a fiber optic cable that ran underground from inside the Cheyenne Mountain Complex—also known as NORAD—to multiple identical red telephones in various locations at Schriever Air Force Base eighteen miles to the northeast. The phone had sounded off on three separate occasions since President Clay’s arrival in Colorado Springs, all in the last week, and coincidentally all on Cross’s watch. And not once had the news on the other end been good.

  As Cross enveloped the receiver in his massive left hand, he said a silent prayer. He wasn’t holding his breath, but he hoped that the old saying—bad news comes in threes—would hold true in this instance.

  “NORAD,” he said crisply, “Special Agent Cross here. The line is secure.”

  Cross nodded intermittently, phone pinned to one ear, his pen moving furiously over the yellow legal pad in front of him. After a few seconds he cracked a rare smile, slapped the handset down without a parting word and picked the sleek black handset off the phone next to it.

  “Madam President, this is Adam Cross speaking,” he said into the receiver. “Major Freda Nash just rang on the direct line. She wants your permission to initiate Operation Slapshot. She needs to reposition the remaining satellites immediately so she can start working up the pre-mission briefing. She indicated the entire package, men and assets, can be wheels up by zero six hundred.” He went on to inform the President how the thumb drive with Fuentes’s notes had been recovered. Then he went silent and listened to the President’s instructions. Finally, a couple of minutes and a half page of notes later, he covered the mouthpiece and looked across the aisle at Special Agent Lawrence Eckers, who had been sitting in front of a phalanx of flat-panel monitors, flicking through the video feeds transmitted from the many security cameras peppering the flanks of Cheyenne Mountain. “Eckers, get on the horn. I want Major Ripley and her crew topside ASAP. Have her spool up Marine One... the President wants to go visit Schriever.”