“Copy that,” Eckers said. He seized the black phone nearest him, punched a three-digit code, and rattled off a series of orders to someone on the other end. He then replaced the handset and addressed his boss. “You can let President Clay know Marine One can be wheels up in five.”
Cross removed his hand from the mouthpiece, relayed the message, and ended the call.
“Let’s go,” he called out. He took one last look at the large TV monitor, noting the zombies were only two deep and posed little threat to the President’s safety. Still, he made a mental note to self to have them thinned out before she returned. Then he jumped up and snatched his ballistic vest from the swivel chair next to him, slipping it over his head and fastening the Velcro as he walked towards the massive steel blast door. He collected his weapons which had been hanging next to the foot-thick slab of metal. Still on the move, he donned his Secret Service-issued sidearm, chambered in .357 SIG. The semiautomatic Sig Sauer P229 always rode under his left armpit, easily accessible in a Gould and Goodrich shoulder rig. Then he threw the single point sling over his head, letting the small MP7 machine pistol dangle where it was within easy reach on his right side. Under normal circumstances he would have donned a lightweight windbreaker to conceal the armament, but these were different times and being discreet was no longer tantamount to the job.
With Special Agent Eckers in tow, Cross escorted the President from her quarters to the topside entrance, donning a pair of black Oakley sunglasses during the short elevator ride up. In less than four minutes, all three of them were onboard the Osprey that had been assigned the call sign Marine One shortly after the former President had gone missing and Clay had been sworn in to succeed him.
Agent Cross leaned in towards the President. “I brought your go bag. In case you have to pull an all-nighter,” he said, loud enough to be heard over the aircrew’s pre-flight chatter.
She simply nodded in return. Considering the nature of the information Nash had relayed, time was not on their side. Getting the mission spooled up quickly had to be priority number one, she reminded herself. Therefore, if an all-nighter was what it was going to take, then it made no sense to waste valuable time ferrying POTUS back and forth between Schriever and the Cheyenne Mountain Complex.
By the time Cross had briefed the other four Secret Service agents in the detail and strapped himself into a seat nearby, Major Loretta Ripley had finished the pre-flight and coaxed the dual turbine engines to near maximum RPMs. The airframe groaned slightly as the rotors punished the air overhead. The whine from the engines grew to a crescendo and the massive tilt rotor aircraft freed itself from gravity’s strong pull. The ship had gained a hundred feet of altitude by the time Ripley set the twin nacelles rotating forward and the craft began switching from vertical to horizontal flight mode. And as the airspeed swiftly picked up, the seasoned aviator banked Marine One hard to starboard, making the Rockies disappear behind them and putting the bird on a course that would deliver them to the sprawling Air Force base just over the eastern horizon. “Two mikes out,” she announced over the ship-wide comms.
***
Schriever Air Force Base
Brook’s eyes followed the handset as Nash replaced it in the cradle. Here it comes, she thought to herself.
“President Clay is on her way here,” Nash stated in a low voice. “In a few minutes I’ll be briefing her, and I hope I’ll be able to tell her what she expects to hear.”
“Goddamn it,” Brook said, shaking her head. “I knew I should have taken this thing to Shrill, because I know what you’re thinking and I don’t even want to go there.”
Nash removed her cap, plopped it on the desktop. “Are you sure you want your friend to sit in on this conversation?”
Brook had a feeling it would be better to hear Nash out sitting down, so she took a seat next to Wilson. Once she had settled she regarded Nash with a bland look but said nothing.
The petite major took the silence as permission for her to continue.
“I am going to be forthright with you Mrs. Grayson. I will make an appeal to your husband that under normal circumstances he’d probably rebuff. But nothing is normal about the hand we have been dealt.” She paused for a moment. Her eyes flicked over at whatever data was displayed on the laptop screen. “It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that only two weeks into this shit show and Omega is already well on its way to erasing humans from this rock forever. Brook... time is precious. Every day, untold numbers of humans are falling and joining the ranks of the dead. I’ve spent nearly every waking hour watching it unfold in real-time through satellite imagery. If we don’t act on this newfound gift soon... the human race may not recover.”
“Nice speech, Major, but Cade will not be swayed this time... even if the President tries her fast-track promotion to General bullshit,” Brook stated defiantly.
“I resent that, Mrs. Grayson. Both Desantos and Gaines were deserving of their battlefield promotions.”
“I’m not taking anything away from them. It’s just that I’m still resenting Clay’s tactics. Using Cade’s unwavering patriotism—which is his only true Achilles’ heel—to lure him back to the teams. We had a great life before Omega, and very soon we will get to enjoy that again.”
Nash shifted in her seat. “You going to hide on a mountain top?”
“If we have to.”
“Gaines, Cade, and the rest of the team are rested.”
“He turned in his captain’s bars. Told me so himself. He’s out now.” Brook felt her resolve beginning to crumble. Still she finished her sentence while trying her best to sound convincing. “He won’t go.” Brook shook her head vehemently. “Not now... not even if the President begs.”
There was a long stretch of silence. Then the heavy sound of rotors beating the air usurped the low hum of the A/C unit.
“I hate to burst your bubble, but if I know Cade the way I think I do, he will agree. Especially if I mention all of the times both Shrill and I have helped you along the way. Sneaking onboard with the Ranger chalk. Crafty, but dangerous. Furthermore, you would never have had access to the medical gear you used to deliver Mike Junior, and you mustn’t forget the antibiotics that saved your brother’s life.” She paused as an aircraft passed nearby. Then they all sat in awkward silence until she said, “And I’m sure there’s more Colonel Shrill can add to the list if we’re keeping tabs. He’s on board with this. And this time I’m certain he’s no ally of yours.”
Brook buried her head in her hands. “That was me, not Cade. You can’t extort me like this... and make him put his life on the line,” she mumbled.
“I have to,” Nash said in a funereal voice. “And it doesn’t make me proud.”
Wilson sat slumped in his chair, totally silent, the boonie hat pulled low over his eyes.
Brook looked at Nash through red-rimmed eyes. “Why the big rush?” she asked softly.
“We’ve been moving various surveillance platforms around the country since Robert Christian’s terrorists struck and destroyed Fuentes’s hard work, and most of the sense of security the people on this base had grown accustomed to along with it. Replicating the antiserum has been priority one since. So we have been working around the clock in order to find a facility similar to the CDC in Atlanta. Not a far stretch, considering all of the different types of bio labs scattered about the country... or so we thought. Every facility east of the Mississippi: Fort Detrick, NIH—National Institutes of Health—in Bethesda, the CDC, of course, and even Plum Island, as isolated as it was, have already been abandoned or overrun. Two days ago—” she paused for a heartbeat, unsure if she dared continue considering that the kid lacked a security clearance—“we finally found what we were looking for. A bio-lab that was working with the CDC before things got out of hand. And most importantly—the linchpin to the whole deal—it appears there are still people trapped there. Living, breathing scientists, if we are lucky. Come on Brook, work with me. You know as well as I do that the data
on this drive is worthless without the brainpower to decipher it.”
“So send General Gaines and a couple of detachments of his 10th Special Forces,” Brook proffered.
“Not possible. Most of the 10th is out in the field hunting NA stragglers.”
“Where is this facility you want to send Cade?” asked Brook resignedly.
“Canada. Not too far from here. Ten-hour mission there and back... maximum.”
Brook grunted. She knew from experience how things worked in the Army, and she doubted the Air Force was any better. Nash’s guarantee of ten hours could easily become twenty-four. A day could devolve into two. Or worse, Cade wouldn’t come home this time.
“So call their Premier... the President of Canada... or whatever they call them up there,” Brook said. She swallowed hard. Wanted to punch something in the worst way. “Why don’t you have them rescue the scientists and deliver them here. I’d call defeating this plague well worth them taking the initiative.”
“Brook... nobody is answering the phone up north. The same thing down south... Mexico, Central and South America. No one is picking up... there is nobody left to pick up.” Silence dominated as the major’s profound words echoed to silence.
“We - are - all - alone,” Wilson said softly, drawing each word out.
“From the mouths of babes,” Nash said under her breath.
Brook looked away. Suddenly she felt a familiar sensation that always originated behind her navel, then spread from there like a multi-tentacled symbiotic creature probing her insides. And at that moment, with that icy ball making her sicker by the second, she knew there was nothing she could say or do to keep Cade—the Eagle Scout, decorated former Ranger and motherfucking Delta warrior—from going down range again.
“Tell the President I won’t get in her way... this time. But if she ever comes between me and Cade again, there will be hell to pay. And when Cade gets back from Canada I do not want you to have contact with him. Leave us the fuck alone.”
One of Wilson’s mom’s sayings spewed from his mouth. “Brook, you shouldn’t burn your bridges.”
“I didn’t ask for your two cents, Wilson,” she said, glaring in his direction.
“It’s a deal,” Nash said. “Your sacrifice won’t be forgotten.”
“And then we’re even,” Brook said icily. She pushed the chair back, gripped her rifle, and strode towards the door.
“You aren’t going to wait for President Clay?” Nash said incredulously.
Pausing with one hand on the door handle, Brook searched for proper words. Fuck it, she thought. “I better go now. Because if I don’t, I have a feeling I’m liable to do something I will regret later.” She turned away from the door and squared her body towards Nash, who had gotten up and was standing beside Wilson. “Cade has told me how much you care about him and the other operators, and I don’t have a doubt that every word he said is true.” Brook ground her teeth and then went on. “But if anything happens to my man, both you and the President are going to have to answer for it.”
Wisely, Nash remained quiet, and with mixed emotions watched Brook file out ahead of Wilson, who glanced back with a sheepish expression on his face, shrugged his shoulders, and mouthed a silent, “I’m sorry.”
The door slammed shut behind Wilson. He pulled the floppy brim of his hat lower over his eyes to ward off the sun, and hurried to catch up with Brook. Damn, he thought. For someone wrapped up in such a small package the woman sure had a hell of a stride. And when he finally caught up with her, he said, “Took a hell of a beating in there—”
“She’s right, you know,” Brook said without slowing or looking back at him. “I always tell Raven to do the right thing even when no one is looking. I just went against one of my own tenets.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nash had a Helluva point. If she’s that short on personnel, who am I to stand in the way... try to change the outcome behind closed doors. Cade will do what he wants to do. He’s a fucking only child. That’s all I need to say.”
Wilson glanced at his watch. “What are you doing after you get Raven—you hungry? Because I’m sure we can rustle up a Spam sandwich.”
Brook chuckled.
Mission accomplished, Wilson thought to himself. “So do you want to meet her?”
Brook shortened her strides until he caught up. “Meet who?”
“The woman of the hour... Taryn,” he said proudly.
“That would be nice. Then I can thank her for opening this whole saving the human race can of worms.” Brook’s smile was lost on Wilson. He made no reply and just stared at some kind of noisy aircraft approaching from the southwest.
“Sorry, bad attempt at a joke,” she proffered. “Sure, I’d love to meet Taryn... maybe I can rebuild the bridge I burned with Sasha.”
Wilson shook his head. “You got your hands full there.”
“I’m sure I do,” Brook conceded. She looked into the distance and picked up something moving fast and getting closer, barely visible over the top of the massive airplane hangars. In just a few seconds the aircraft had gone from a distant black speck on the horizon to a full size black airframe that had begun to slow, finally ending up in a steady hover suspended under two wildly spinning rotors, both of which looked to be the size of a backyard swimming pool. “That’s the President’s Osprey,” she added.
“Let’s keep moving. I don’t want to have to watch you kick her ass.”
Brook made no reply, only thought how nice it would be to get her way once in a while. She was tired of telling herself:
some day . Then, as Marine One settled on the far side of Schriever near where Desantos was buried, they reached the Quonset hut that the deceased general’s family still called home.
Chapter 27
Outbreak - Day 15
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
For a man with a wrenched back and an ankle the size of a cantaloupe, Tran felt that he had negotiated the last stretch of hillside like a mountain goat. Along the way he had been forced to use his makeshift obsidian weapon against two more of his former fellow human beings, crushing both of their skulls while they struggled helplessly to extricate themselves from the brambles that had stopped their initial free-fall. Killing them had gone against all of his pacifist beliefs, but just the thought that they might somehow succeed and end up hunting him overrode any feelings of empathy. Tran was in survival mode and had been since the big blonde tried to sacrifice him to the dead.
He stopped short of the gray, sun-splashed road which was barely visible between the aspens. As he stood there and listened to his heartbeat and the blood rushing through his ears from the added exertion, the wind set the trees quaking, bringing with it the rank odor he had gotten to know all too well. Painful as it was for him to do so, he eased down to a kneeling position and then to all fours. A wave of nausea pummeled his body and his vision grew flat at the edges. He put his chin to his chest and managed to overcome the urge to throw up by taking a few deep breaths. He waited for his head to spin back to normal, and then slunk like a dog to the road’s shoulder. Once there, he poked his head from the undergrowth to see where the stench was coming from. He spied something very large and very dead occupying the middle two-thirds of the road. Though the carcass seemed to have been mostly stripped of its flesh, he counted half a dozen zombies still working for a meal.
Tufts of fur still clinging to scraps of the animal’s hide littered the road, and from his vantage point he could clearly make out one of the demons furiously digging its clawlike hands, trying to get at the meat sandwiched between the beast’s giant ribs. The frenzied tugging and gnawing sent tremors through the dead animal’s knobby vertebra, causing its elongated skull, complete with a full rack of antlers, to rock back and forth on the roadway. Tran didn’t know an elk from a deer, but judging by the looks of the elongated flat spot closer to the skull and the stunted spikes on the upper ridges of the antlers, the remains on the road had once been a very large bull
moose. He truly felt sorry for the grand creature, but at the same time he was thankful for the diversion its death had created.
He supposed there would be no better time than now to cross the road since the things had their heads buried inside of every available orifice. He quickly stole one last sideways glance at the grisly scene. Suddenly he had a feeling that the eyeless skull, which continued to shimmy side to side, was an omen of some sort telling him not to cross the road.
No time for superstition, he admonished himself. His first few tentative steps went unnoticed by the hunched-over creatures. But by the time he had limped to the yellow centerline, one of them had gophered up. Its yellowed eyes peered at him from behind a blood-slickened face. It tilted its head at an angle like a confused dog, staring like it knew he was there, yet unsure of what it was looking at. He guessed the thing had to be blind or somehow visually impaired. Either that or he had suddenly turned invisible.
Ignoring the abomination he continued on, shuffling his bare feet along the blacktop, focused entirely on the tree line across the way. Almost there, he thought. Then, acting against every instinct in his body, he stole one more glance to his left. The sight that greeted him took his breath away. The creature that had been staring at him had inexplicably gone back to mining meat from the road kill.
With a word of thanks to his ancestors, he melted into the growth, intent on making it to the Teton Pass highway without being eaten.
Chapter 28
Outbreak - Day 15
Schriever AFB
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Allegiance Page 18