by JT Sawyer
“Maybe, but once they work out their internal rivalries and become more organized, they will be a force to be reckoned with. Especially if they possess knowledge of military tactics and have greater firepower than us. With the cartels involved—most of whom are former military and have years of experience running raids—they are going to be a serious threat.”
He looked out over the landscape that he knew so well and thought of the Apache campaign against Geronimo that been waged in the Southwest, along with his years of running counter-insurgency operations in other parts of the world. “This type of war has been fought here and in other places before. The tools may have changed but the strategies haven’t. The big difference is that we have a whole lot of people to train in a short period of time. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through my years of combat, it’s that in order to conquer, you must destroy your enemies and do so devastatingly. The faster and more efficiently you kill, the longer you live. I fear that the time will come when we must undertake such actions to the north or suffer that fate ourselves. ”
She placed her hand on her husband’s shoulder and thought back to their former ranch house, which was now gone. “All of those generations that both our families worked to hack a life out of the wilderness and now, here we are again, at the mercy of forces beyond our control.”
“For now, maybe. We will overcome this as we have with everything else hurled at us, my dear. This time, we just have a little bit bigger spread of ranch land to subdue.” He smiled. “Besides, it’s like you always used to tell the kids, ‘If life were fair, snakes would have legs.’”
Down below, the six members that made up Crawford’s Alpha Team of top shooters were walking in through the front door of the hotel entrance. “Time to get to work on being pioneers again, I reckon,” she said as they strode off the balcony into the former living room.
Chapter 12
The sun was cresting the gray limestone rim of the canyon when Travis returned from the morning check of the deadfalls. He place three rock squirrels and one packrat on the large sandstone boulder under the lip of the alcove and glanced over at the figures sleeping on the cottonwood-bark mats. Evelyn and Becka were huddled beside one another while LB was snoring a few feet away, curled in a ball.
Travis grabbed a handful of pine nuts from his vest pocket and scanned the canyon to the left. A hundred yards down from the alcove, Katy was hunched over, washing her face by the river. Beads of water, illuminated like glass in the rising sun, trickled down her slender neck and around the contours of her soft shoulders.
He was about to walk over when he noticed Jim upstream, in the other direction. He was leaning over, looking through his red daypack. Travis walked down, hopping on rocks, until he came up behind the older man. As Travis approached, Jim hastily zipped up the pack and feigned washing his hands.
“You know, Jim, we haven’t talked in a while and there’s something that’s been bothering me like a tick in my ear.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that, Travis?”
“Your strange mannerisms have stuck in my craw since we first shook hands. I can usually get a pretty good fix on people but you…you are a mystery. And I don’t like mysteries. They give me a bellyache.”
Jim wiped his hands on his shirt and turned his head slightly towards Travis. “Do you always talk this way to your clients on trips?”
“If you were a client of mine, I would have flown your ass out on day three. Something occurred to me last night as I lay I staring up at the cave ceiling—why would a guy pay big bucks to join a river trip at the last minute and then hang out by himself most of the time, not muttering more than a few sentences during the entire three weeks? I thought, ‘either he’s a social misfit or he’s running from something.’ While I’m certain of the first, it’s the second part that’s baffled me.”
Jim lowered his head into his trembling hands. His hunched-up body and strands of gray hair magnified his frail persona. Travis glanced at the red pack. “Is what’s in that pack worth dying for…worth the lives of the people around you?”
Jim was silent and his eyes were locked into intense concentration on the boulders in front of him. “Travis to Jim, do you copy? Hello,” said Travis, waving his hand. “I was there yesterday, if you remember, and I’m pretty sure you would be taking a sand nap right now if it weren’t for LB and me yanking your boney backside out of the mud. So, is what’s in that precious pack of yours worth a person’s life…worth anything in this world now?”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Jim said through clenched teeth. His sullen eyes were aglow and his face tightened as he looked up at Travis. “What’s in here is all that matters, in this very moment, and what future moments humanity has left. Nothing else matters, not me, not you—only the vaccine in here. For now, the devil owns the world and what I hold here may be all that matters.”
Travis placed his hands on his hips. “Vaccine, what vaccine? What the fuck are you talking about, Jim?”
“Your mind is too simple to understand the implications of what I have in my pack. Men like you are on autopilot, programmed by a government that has shaped you into an organic asset for removing roadblocks that obstruct their global agenda. My research in New Mexico, along with that of my colleagues elsewhere, was meant to provide hope for the human race, not plunge it into darkness,” Jim seethed as he clenched the shoulder strap of the pack.
Katy walked up to the two men and shot a puzzled glance at Travis. “Everything alright? What’s going on?”
“I’d like to know myself,” he shrugged at Katy. “Why don’t you start from the beginning, Jim, before this organic asset gets angry.”
Jim rolled his shoulders back and held his chin up, gazing at the trees above. He exhaled and began twitching the fingers on his right hand like he was trying to remove a sticky substance. “We never intended for the pathogen to spread the way it did.” He paused looking down at the river. “I was one of six researchers brought in to design the virus and then formulate an antidote to mitigate any damage such a deadly bioweapon could cause in the wrong hands.” He leaned forward and dipped his fingers in the water below, swirling them back and forth as if painting. “They said we would be saviors and the world would be beholden to the brilliant minds that averted extinction,” he muttered, while his lips contorted in a half-smile. “Instead it was these very hands that cleaved the world in two, fracturing for all time the glorious achievements of our race.”
Travis leaned forward. “You mean you’re one of the architects of this disease that’s crippled the world? What the hell were you doing hiding out on our river trip when you should have been combatting this? You thought you’d just drop off the radar for a while until you could return, with no one the smarter?”
Jim dropped his head between his knees, grinding his palms into his temples as if trying to erase his memory. “History will show that I wasn’t a coward, though, but a scientist of principal.”
Katy lunged forward, kicking Jim in the back. “You should die right here…you bastard…you…” Travis grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “Easy…easy, Katy.”
“Our friends are lying dead on the beach, and Becka’s whole family is gone because of this monster. Don’t tell me to go easy on him,” she said, jerking her arm free. “I’ve got a father back home…he’s all I have left, and I don’t even know if he’s alive.”
“Get in line behind me if you want to kick in his front teeth, but right now we need more information, so I’m asking you nicely to back off,” Travis said.
Katy huffed out a deep breath and paced from left to right with folded arms.
“Jim, you’ve got a lot to spill tears over. Maybe you should’ve found religion or gotten a conscience by now. Why don’t you let us in on your little science-fiction plot to end the world, and tell me what the hell is in your pack. Because if it’s something that can turn things around, I’d sure like to know.”
Jim stroked the top of the dusty pack repeatedly
, as if he were petting a beloved dog. He stared ahead into the cottonwood grove with swollen eyes. “Like any virus, there are three ways to battle such a contagion. You get inoculated before the event, you get an antidote during the event before the terminal stage” —he paused—“or you are born already immune which, statistically, is very unlikely. With every viral contagion there are those who are the two-percenters and unaffected, to put it in a way you would understand.”
“What good is the vaccine in your pack if you only have a few vials?” said Katy.
“There are more located in a safe place. These represent half the equation. The vials here need to be combined with the other formula stowed away at the secondary sites that each of us were assigned.”
“But, by now, hasn’t the initial virus run its course? I mean, won’t it burn out once these creatures are all dead?” said Katy. “If we hide out here for a while longer, we can avoid becoming infected until those things die off, right?”
“No. You see, we created the bioweapon to have three waves, each being more virulent than the ones that preceded it, much like the original 1918 virus but with one difference. The reanimation of the deceased is not something that was in the strain we created. That is nature’s cruel handiwork spitting back in our faces. The next wave will produce not only an even higher mortality rate, but who knows what will happen with the reanimation effect.”
Jim looked up at Katy and Travis and quickly back down at the river. “Each successive viral wave has a shorter incubation period. With the first wave, viral onset until death is usually six to eight hours, as you’ve witnessed. With each wave that terminal rate is cut in half. You may not even have to be bit to have the next wave spread. Anyone who has been in airborne contact with the virus already is most likely an asymptomatic carrier and will suffer the effects.” He kicked a pebble into the river with his boot and then looked up. “Probably even you two and everyone else here.”
Travis shot a glance at Katy and then clenched his fist while squatting down next to the cowering figure. “Not you though, eh, Jim? You’ve probably already been vaccinated, I’m guessing. How long before the next wave hits?”
“You must remember that the initial testing we did was on monkeys under controlled laboratory conditions and….”
He was cut short by Katy. “Spare me any more lectures, Spock. How long, dammit?”
“The models indicate that we have six months until the next wave strikes, with the third wave following in another six months, as per the 1918 pandemic. Anyone left after that will truly be the next Adam and Eve.”
Katy’s face went from flushed red to a buttermilk color. She sat on the rocks behind Travis and gazed down-canyon.
Travis’s mind flashed to his son, Todd. Was he alone, fending for himself in some godforsaken burnt-out house in what was once Denver? Maybe he had made it out with his mom? Was he even alive? What if….he immediately forced the images away and resumed his laser focus on Jim’s words. “Solutions…options; let’s discuss those,” Travis said. “You are carrying those vials for a reason so you must have hope that something can be done to stem the tide of further infection. Let’s talk about that and why you thought hiding out with us was ‘humanity’s best course of action.’”
“I was told to join this particular trip by my handler—the only person I trusted. He arranged everything and said that I would be safe until the first wave had passed. Then he would come for me, but something must have gone wrong.”
“Define ‘safe,’ you bastard,” said Katy, who was standing again and motioning her fist at Jim. “Those fucking creatures on the beach didn’t make me feel too safe.”
Travis wedged himself between the two and then turned towards Jim. “You said there was a site where the other vials were kept. Where?”
“I only have the coordinates for the secondary site. Whether that is the location of the laboratory is unknown but….” Before he could finish, Pete emerged from across the river, leaping from rock to rock while pushing past tree branches. He was panting, his face red and sweaty.
“Trav, I was down-canyon about a half mile, scouting the area for springs, when I heard some people talking. It looked like some of those bikers by the way they were dressed. There were three of them, and they had two women tied up on their motorcycles.”
“Were they headed this way?” said Travis.
Pete leaned on an overhanging branch and paused to take a breath. “I don’t think so. They were parked on this one-lane bridge talking about what to do with the women. These looked like some bad dudes, Trav.”
“Yeah, seems like those are the only kind to be found these days. Doesn’t anybody take a break from killing?” he said, smirking in Jim’s direction.
“Alright, I’ll grab LB and we’ll head down. Stay here with the others. If you hear any movement other than ours, head up-canyon and disperse amongst the boulders by the rim. That will at least give you the advantage of having the high ground until we return.”
Travis retraced his way up to the alcove, racing over the rock-strewn path.
“I am going with you,” said Katy from behind.
“Like hell! You’re staying here with the others. LB and I will handle this.”
“Is this a boy’s club now? I can fight! You guys aren’t the only ones who know how to use a gun.”
He stopped and turned. “Katy, I don’t have time to give you a crash course on combat tactics. Just stay here.”
“I’m coming, Trav. My dad was a police officer and I grew up hunting. I sure as hell ain’t no stranger to pulling a trigger. Besides, someone skilled with a gun needs to stay here in case there are more bikers in the area,” she said, glaring back at him.
God damn civilians—they never did as they were told. He turned towards her, his face taut. “The way this works then, is you follow my lead and do exactly as I say. You got that, Xena?”
He sped up to the alcove. The others had already risen and were moving around. “What’s going on?” said Evelyn.
“There are some bikers down-canyon. Katy and I are going to head there. For now, grab your stuff and wait here. Pete will explain the rest,” he said, donning his gear and grabbing the lever action rifle, which was resting on a small shelf of sandstone. He did a partial chamber check of the Glock and then took off down the trail while Katy followed behind with the shotgun on her shoulder.
Chapter 13
As they neared the location Pete described, they could hear the men’s voices faintly resounding off the tight canyon walls. He stopped and crouched in a thick undergrowth of bushes, listening for any movement while he scanned the boulders to either side. About a hundred yards ahead was a single-lane bridge which spanned forty feet and was six feet off the streambed. Three motorcycles were parked in the shade over to the right. Two young women were handcuffed to the back bars of the bikes they sat on. One looked to be around twenty, with her hair in a jumbled ponytail. She wore jeans, a western-style plaid shirt, and cowboy boots. The other one, who bore a resemblance, was about sixteen and dressed similarly. Both women had bruises on their cheeks, and the older one had a smear of blood on her lower lip. Slung next to bulging saddlebags on two of the bikes were AK-47s. Beside the younger woman was a skinny biker who was running his fingers through her hair and laughing. The two other heavier-set men were standing a few feet away, snorting something out of a small tin.
Travis scanned the rocky stream bottom leading to the bridge. The area didn’t make for a quick rush or offer any chance of stealth.
He looked back at Katy. “You’ve got seven rounds of buckshot in that shotgun. If this turns ugly, just put the front sight on what you want to hit and make damn sure that ain’t me.”
She lowered the weapon and looked it over, keeping her finger indexed above the trigger. “Got it!”
“I only see one way for this to go down without those ladies getting shot, so just play off me and follow your gut if things turn south. No plan survives contact with the enemy so
stay fluid, alright.”
He turned and surveyed the bridge one more time. He clenched his left fist into a ball, stood up, and took a deep breath. The two of them emerged from the bushes and proceeded to the bridge, walking on the grapefruit-sized rocks with as much grace and silence as possible while keeping an eye on the men. As they neared a dirt slope that went up the opposite side of the bridge from the bikers, the scrawny man by the women turned, wide-eyed, and shouted to the others. “Boss, looky here, we got some visitors.”
The two portly men looked up from their tin of white powder and both took deep snorts before the darker-skinned man put the container on a stump. Each man placed a hand over their pistols and walked a few feet down the bridge.
They all looked to be in their early twenties. Travis could tell the burly man with the dark complexion was clearly the alpha dog. He had a pistol on his right hip and a machete on the left. He sported a silver nose ring and his toxic eyes had the look of someone who had killed for pleasure many times before. The second man next to him was tall and skinny with a chipped front tooth. He wore a partially unbuttoned leather vest which revealed knife scars on his chest. He was no stranger to pain, but was clearly the leader’s lapdog from the nervous way he kept looking at the larger man. The last biker was pear-shaped and had a neatly shaven head with a red spiderweb tattoo on his right side, just above the ear. His fat, banana-like fingers were fingering the wood handle of a machete on the side of his leather chaps, while the other rested upon an AK slung over his chest. The three of them had the shakes and the bloodshot eyes that come from being hyped up on amphetamines.
Travis stopped for a moment at the bridge’s halfway point. “Say, can you guys tell me what’s going on? We just came off a long hunting trip and it seems like the whole world has gone to hell. Is there anyone alive in the outlying towns?” he said, then continued inching towards the men, steadying his breathing.