by Bradley West
Tien’s relief drained out when he heard the door handle rattling and then a fist pounding on the door. “Open up in there or we’ll knock the door down!” a deep voice demanded
* * * * *
“Jaime and I are inside,” Travis said. “I’m close to Tien’s room and he’s safe. Jaime will cut the power soon. Two guards took Carla north toward the main entrance. What’s your sitrep?”
“SUV’s blacked out and parked near the broken window,” Melvin said. “Arkar is out scouting. The convoy drove off and headed to the Oasis. We’re supposed to meet them there. Three trucks just dropped off eleven men. I’m sorry, I can’t murder no one else,” he added in a quavering voice.
“Dammit! Those men are here to kill us. Set up and when the power dies, open up. Over.” Travis switched off before Melvin could reply.
Melvin stared at the walkie-talkie readout showing “Low Power.” That’s where he was, at a low ebb. By rights he should be behind the bipod-mounted SAW standing in pickup’s bed and filling the new arrivals with steel-jacketed zombie killers. Instead, he sat petrified in the SUV awaiting capture or death by men he refused to shoot. His mind urged his body to act before it was too late. Two more vehicles roared up and men rushed into the building. He knew he was dooming Travis and Jaime, but he couldn’t force himself to move.
Travis used the prybar to vent his anger on a locked clinic door and was inside in seconds. He just needed a minute to strip off the boilersuit and clear his head.
* * * * *
Tien cowered in the Oncology Lab, awaiting the inevitable and hoping to make a good show of selling the beaker of the first decoy vaccine before his captors discovered the second ersatz batch taped to his lower back. Maybe his subterfuges would also buy enough time for Travis to find him. If all else failed, he’d unplug the jammer and alert Travis over the radio. The pounding on the door had morphed into a clanging of heavy metal, the knob seconds away from dropping off.
It had taken Jaime longer than he’d hoped, but he’d found the plant and equipment room undetected. The hallways had undisciplined militia bouncing about. He hadn’t heard gunshots, so he figured they were still in with a chance. Like Travis, he’d ditched his hazmat suit, gaining combat efficiency while exposing himself to death by microbe if his face mask failed him. This rescue mission was shit-or-bust: Either they’d emerge with Carla and the vaccine, or within the next week they’d be dead of gunshot wounds or Covid-20. He found the UPS room and saw there was a bypass hole in the doorknob. He used a long probe from his lockpicking kit and was inside in seconds. It was too damn quiet and time to turn the tables. He pulled on his night-vision optics, unplugged the master UPS cable and powered up his night eyes as the building plunged into darkness.
The hammering on Tien’s lab door stopped when the lights went out and the cursing started. Then came two gunshots and silence. A few seconds later came Travis’ welcome voice. “Tien? Open the fucking door.”
Tien raced over but he couldn’t unlock the ruined mechanism. “It’s stuck on this side.”
“Goddammit. Stand back and I’ll hit with the fire extinguisher. Pack your shit.”
In dismay, Tien realized that retrieving the vaccine from behind the HVAC grill would take more time than they had if they were to rescue Carla. He folded flat the dozen arms on the jammer and stuffed it into a box that once held a pair of Erlenmeyer flasks. “I’m ready! Let’s roll,” he said as Travis’ second blow sheared off the lock and the door burst open.
Ninety feet away, Carla and Jeanie sat in an office arguing with Eric Long.
“Did you see the first Terminator movie?” Carla asked.
“Yes,” Long said. “What does that …” He trailed off as he fumbled for a head lamp he’d stashed somewhere in his web gear.
“Do you remember the police station after Arnold drove through the front window and cut the power? That’s what will happen here. A group of former SEALs with night-vision optics and automatic weapons is in this building. If you take me away, they will hunt you down and kill you. Do you understand?”
* * * * *
Arkar had taken the SAW out of the SUV and left a distraught Melvin behind. Arkar hustled the squad machinegun out of the windowsill and into the med center when the lights went out. In the hallway he made brief, fatal contact with a lone sentry. Spray from the hapless man’s severed carotid splashed over Arkar’s face and nogs. He moved the SAW into position just north of the intersection of two hallways. From behind he could see a four-eyed ally advancing and waved him forward: Travis now covered his six. As Travis and Tien advanced, Arkar seated the ammo belt and said, “Melvin no good,” without turning around.
Jaime joined them at the double. “There are groups moving this way up a parallel hallway. I’ll go back to the last intersection and keep them off our flanks.”
“Carla’s up there,” Tien said. “We can’t shoot.”
“If she’s still here, they’ll have her under guard in an office and not the hall,” Travis said. “Arkar, on my order fire all two hundred, fifty on full-auto and the rest with controlled bursts.”
As Jaime moved off, Travis addressed a nervous Tien: “You need to get outside. Go down this side hall and turn left, then take the first right. Use your penlight to find Room 108. The door’s unlocked, the window’s broken out and we parked the SUV straight across. Get a weapon from Melvin and protect the SUV. You’re driving—prepare to move out.”
* * * * *
“You can’t intimidate me!” Long yelled. “I have thirty men here. What do you have? Three or four?”
When the lights went out, cries of “What the hell?” rang up and down the hallway as a phalanx of militiamen reacted to the intimidating dark. Calls of “Where’s my light?” and “Who has night-vision?” blended with saltier, less-specific declarations.
With a roar equivalent to the world’s largest chainsaw, a machinegun opened up. For the twenty-five seconds the firing lasted, Long flattened himself on the floor with his hands over his ears, eyes squeezed shut. The ensuing silence was short-lived as wounded men cried out for help or moaned in pain.
“Eric, let me go and you can get out of here alive. You have one minute to decide whether everyone in Gardnerville dies of Covid. If your men wound or kill one of my friends, it will be a massacre. Decide.” Carla was furious for several reasons, but mostly with herself.
* * * * *
In the middle distance a familiar voice sounded: “Carla! Carla!” She got a chill hearing the urgency in her Spider-Man’s voice. Farther away came two pairs of shots and then silence. Outside in the hallway, a single pistol shot sounded, answered by a burst of M-4 fire. The same horrible M249 opened up for ten seconds more, but from outside. When the firing stopped, a medley of car alarms hinted at the carnage.
Long got up from the floor, switched on his headlamp and pointed his pistol at Carla.
She stared into the muzzle with disdain. “Are you kidding me?”
Long lowered his pistol at once. “Can you stop this?” he asked in a soft voice.
“Use your walkie-talkie to tell them to stop shooting. Then put your hands on your head and walk with me down to my men. Order everyone you see to drop their weapons and I’ll do my best.”
Carla followed Long to the office door. As Long repeated her message on two channels, she spoke to Jeanie: “As soon as the firing stops for good, get across the street and wait for me behind the firehouse. I won’t be long. Without electricity, the Dark Cure will spoil and we need to get Kyle and the plasma out of here.”
The hallway was full of plaster dust and smelled of gunpowder. “Speak loud and clear to your men and I’ll call out to my people,” Carla said.
“Listen up! This is Eric Long. We have a ceasefire in place. Don’t point your weapons at anybody. Aid our wounded and clear this hallway. Tell everyone you see to stay out of the building unless they’re a doctor or an EMT. Keep your weapons holstered or slung.” In response, several cries rang out for
medics and mothers.
Carla stepped into the hallway and slipped on a blood-soaked floor, catching herself on Long’s shoulder. “Travis! It’s Carla! Don’t shoot! I’m with their leader and he’s coming with me. We’re turning on a flashlight.”
Long’s powerful beam illuminated a scene from a Syria mosque bombing. Arkar had fired for a total of less than thirty seconds, but two hundred 5.56 green tip bullets had wreaked havoc. A man lay with his right arm hanging by a tendon as blood poured out of his shoulder stump. Several blood trails ended in inert forms displaying ugly exit wounds and heads lying face down. Three of the wounded were beyond help. It was all Carla could do to stay on her feet as she crept across the gore. Long stopped to gape at the devastation, but Carla urged him on. “The sooner the ceasefire is in place, the sooner you can look after your own.”
From the smoke, two aliens emerged with strange eyepieces above their heads. “Carla! It’s me and Jaime,” Travis said. She let go of Long and ran the last few steps to Travis, nearly doubling him over in pain when she grabbed him by his holed left shoulder. “What’s the deal?” he asked.
“Eric Long is in charge here and already told them to cease fire. No one will oppose our departure. Can you call the others and tell them to stop too?”
Arkar’s fusillade had almost completely deafened them. Even now, Travis couldn’t hear properly, but he worked out what was happening. “Okay,” Travis said and made a brief transmission that Arkar acknowledged. Travis looked at Long. “Remember, I still have Hugh’s walkie-talkie and can monitor your comms. When we’re ready, I’ll need you to instruct everyone to stand down. We’ll treat anyone on our tail as hostile.” What he failed to mention was that Vargo’s battery had died hours ago.
“You have my word,” the chastened man said. “I need to get outside and do a quick circuit to solidify the ceasefire. Many of my people don’t have comms, and some of those who did are dead or wounded.”
Jaime emerged from the smoke. “No one left standing in my hallway. How about you?”
“They’re combat ineffective up that way, Travis said. “Outside, I’m not certain though Arkar laid on a beating just now. Jaime, can you walk out with Eric and see how our men are doing? Carla and I have to collect something but should be ready to roll in five.”
Outside, shots rang out followed by two bursts of SAW fire. “Get on your radio and move out before more people die,” Jaime said to Long. The two men left at a run with Long fumbling for his handset. Carla noted that Jaime kept Eric in front of him with the business end of his rifle pointed at his midsection.
“I left a medical researcher locked in the OB-GYN lab with the Dark Cure,” Carla said to Travis. “The processing isn’t over and it needs to stabilize for several hours under proper refrigeration before the last steps. We’ll need to give Kyle a ride to a place with a working fridge. Otherwise, the plasma antibodies won’t attain potency.”
“I know how these people think, and once the shock wears off, ceasefire or no ceasefire, they will be out for blood,” Travis said. “We need to leave ASAP. First, I have to get to the lab Tien and you used. He hid the vaccines you made and left decoys in the open.”
Travis spoke just above a whisper. “If I stop or move suddenly, drop flat on your stomach. We only have one hundred feet to go, but there may be gunmen down here.”
Now that he’d turned his nogs back on, she felt his limp become more pronounced as her hand clung onto his shirttail for guidance down the pitch-dark hallway. Had he been shot again? “What will you do if we see someone with a gun?” she asked.
“Either they disarm or they’ll die.”
Carla had other ideas. “State Line Militia! Eric Long has declared a ceasefire! Don’t shoot! We need everyone up front and outside to treat the wounded.”
Travis dragged her down and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Goddammit!” he swore.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Double Jeopardy
Thursday, July 16, 2020: Douglas County, Nevada, before midnight
Ample gasoline and diesel gave the 3M an operational advantage. The convoy would loop south, then east and finally north on Highway 95 toward Oregon. Since the militia didn’t know their destination, they had no choice but to follow them until they ran low on fuel and either had to turn back or make their move.
As per prior arrangement, three hours into the caravan’s loop, the lead tractor trailer driven by Yonten pulled off onto the shoulder a half-mile (0.8km) before a turnoff on a quiet section of Route 95. The two RVs passed the semi and halted a quarter-mile farther up. Greg stopped the supply truck fifty yards behind the semi, where Yonten and Derek wrestled open the rear door. Less than a quarter-mile behind them, two pickup trucks stopped and cut their headlights. Tom Strub used the deceased Maung’s night-vision spotting scope to see two men get out and lie prone on the shoulder, their rifles pointed at the convoy but fortunately lacking night-vision scopes.
Yonten assisted Dr. Tina Francisco as she climbed up to make a rapid examination of the Covid-felled Johnny Gratton. He had deteriorated and lay semi-conscious with a high fever. Sal and the others stood next to the RV’s opened door, ready to depart at the first shot.
Derek cut the zip ties and helped the hazmat-suited prisoner out of the container. “I have three important things for you to remember. I even wrote them down.” Derek inserted the folded paper into the youth’s shirt pocket. “You’re likely to be Covid-20 positive, so self-quarantine and get tested. Second, I hooked up Hugh Vargo to a fake bomb at the DOT complex. If he hasn’t been freed yet, you can clip the wires and cut him loose. The orange explosive bricks are actually expensive cheese, which is my gift to you. Questions? How do you feel? Take this.” Derek pressed a flashlight into the teenager’s gloved hands.
“I’m thirsty,” said the teenager.
“Drink this when I’m far away.” Derek handed the youth a half-bottle of water. “Once I turn back, take off your headpiece and shine a flashlight onto your face. The third point is the most important one: We don’t have more of your people and don’t want more trouble. You tell those men down the road to take the exit up ahead, turn around and get back on Highway 95 South. If you follow us up 95, expect fully automatic weapons fire supplemented by hand grenades. Got it?”
“I got it.” The young man tenderly touched his burned chest where Jaime’s taser had raised ugly welts earlier in the day. These people had better weapons, that was for certain.
Derek turned and jogged back toward the 3M caravan. He turned and saw that the Boy Scout was a decent interval away and he hollered at him it was okay to pull off his hat.
Next stop: Depot #1 outside Winnemucca, almost a hundred and fifty miles away.
* * * * *
Back at the medical center, Travis and Carla fought yet again. “Shut up or I’ll gag and zip-tie you,” he hissed. He cared deeply for this remarkable woman, but she followed orders worse than anyone he knew.
Before Carla could respond, voices sounded in front of them: “Who are you?”
“I’m Carla Maggio, the scientist who made the Covid cure here tonight. If you don’t screw up, you’ll have a dozen doses ready tomorrow and from there, you should be able to create more on your own. I’m going back to the lab to check that everything’s all right and I brought a bodyguard. I can’t do my job if you’re blocking my way.” She pulled off her headpiece to emphasize her non-threatening nature but left her N95 in place.
“All right. There are three of us and we’re turning on our lights,” said the disembodied voice. “No tricks!”
Travis turned off his nogs in time to save his vision as flashlights powered up. He sat motionless with Carla with their backs against the wall as the beams made their way toward the couple before illuminating them. Travis should have leveled his tactical rifle at the trio, but following her lead, he pointed it at the ceiling and kept his finger outside the guard. As the men passed, one of them said, “We could always split the difference and shoot G.I.
Joe but keep Emma Stone.” A maskless companion sniggered.
Travis waited until the trio was fifty feet past before he powered up his nogs. They rose and double-timed it down the hallway to the turnoff for the Oncology Department. Travis was furious. “You endangered both our lives when you took the weapon out of my hands. I spent a dozen years in dangerous places. My training and experience are our edges and you unilaterally surrendered them.”
“There were three of them waiting for us, two of them with rifles. What was to stop them from killing us as we approached?”
“My night-vision goggles would have picked them out well before they detected us, and I’d have shot them if they had posed any threat.”
“That’s not honoring the spirit of a ceasefire, is it?” she countered. “You may not realize it, but I can be persuasive and non-threatening, a pair of traits that—”
“We’re here,” he said as they skirted two corpses. Travis switched off his nogs and turned on his Maglite as they entered the Oncology Lab. “Tien said he hid the vaccine behind the aircon duct up in the corner. The tiny screws are a bitch to get out. I have a sore foot, but you’re as tall as I am. Use my multi-tool and see if you can reach it from on top of the table.”
Carla wasn’t done with their interrupted discussion, not by any stretch. A default setting of lethal force was too easy, but for now she kept quiet.
Not having to worry about disguising the hiding place by avoiding scratches expedited screw removal. The pouch containing the 350ml of vaccine was where Tien had left it. “There’s enough here to vaccinate everyone in our group. We should do it tonight before we leave.”
“The convoy’s gone to the Oasis.”
“All the more reason to collect Kyle and the Dark Cure and drop them off somewhere cold before we leave. I don’t share your paranoia, but the three men who passed us may have second thoughts once they see the bodies up front.”