by JE Gurley
Elliot slid his .45 from his back pocket. “I’ll help.”
“Good. Renda has gone to inform Jeb about Harris and Mendoza. I hope to God that we have a few hours before they come. Billy says maybe a day, but who knows.” He sighed heavily. “I wish Vince was here. I’m worried about him. He should have been back by now.”
“Vince can take care of himself.”
“That’s why I wish he was here.”
They came to a junction in the corridor. The lagoon lay in one direction; the rain forest in the other. From either, Harris had access to the underground maze of corridors and pipes that was the heart of Biosphere2.
“Do we split up?” Elliot asked. Personally, he preferred that the two of them remain together. Against both Harris and Mendoza, a man alone could run into trouble.
“No. Together is better. I would ask for volunteers, but they would just get in the way.”
Elliot suspected that he knew the answer to the question he was about to pose, but asked just to be certain. “What do you intend to do with them?”
Mace’s eyes narrowed. “Kill them, of course.”
Elliot nodded. “Just checking.” He did not bother trying to dissuade Mace. In this instance, Mace was right. Elliot knew that they would never take Harris alive and he would be too dangerous to hold as a prisoner. His power of persuasion was too acute. “He could be anywhere. It’ll be like finding a needle in a three-acre haystack. He might have left already.”
Mace smiled. “Not in his Mustang or in any of our vehicles. I disabled the ECUs.”
Elliot applauded Mace’s quick thinking. Without the Engine Control Unit’s constant minute adjustments of the engine’s idle speed, air/fuel ratio, ignition timing and valve control, the cars were effectively immobilized. Without supplies, walking into the desert would be foolhardy. Unless, Elliot considered, he headed toward the approaching Hunters.
“He might head out on foot to meet his friends.”
“I have people watching the perimeter for him and for Sikes. He’ll know that. If he tries to shoot his way out, we’ll have him. I think he’ll hide out, wait for reinforcements. In the confusion of battle, he could create a lot of havoc from within.”
“Then it’s the basement,” Elliot suggested. “There are a thousand places to hide and he could shut us down – power, water, A/C, the sprinkler system. It’s awfully hard to fight when you’re hot and wet.”
“That’s my bet,” Mace agreed. “He could disable the lungs and this whole thing could collapse around us.” They looked at one another for a moment. Then Mace motioned down the corridor ahead of them with his rifle. “You want to lead?”
Elliot smiled and raised his .45. “Your AK has a little more kick. I’ll watch our asses.”
Mace returned Elliot’s smile and broke into a trot. Elliot hurried to catch up.
* * * *
Jeb knew it was a race against time as he rounded up people to man the berms and search for Sikes. They held a couple of emergency drills over the past three months, but things were beginning to look like utter chaos. Sikes could easily slip through the holes they were leaving in the perimeter. He had sounded the alarm upon first learning of Sikes’s escape. Given sufficient provocation, Jeb knew Sikes could kill, and with Sikes, any provocation was sufficient. He was friendless and frightened – a combination that made him especially dangerous.
Escaping had been a stupid idea, but then Sikes was not a bright man. Everyone would take his guilt for granted now, and people would shoot to kill. Jeb hoped that Sikes somehow managed to slip through the guards and escape. It would solve one problem.
He was more concerned with Harris. Harris’ knowledge about the problem with the Blue Juice disturbed him. Harris had a penchant for trouble. Since his arrival, discipline, never a strong point among the refugees of Biosphere2, had gone to hell. His romance with Janis Heath was no secret. Jeb’s money was still on Harris’ involvement in her murder.
Jeb stopped for a moment to clear his head. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The excessive heat did not help. The sun beat down on his unprotected head like a ten-pound sledgehammer. He had admonished everyone else to drink plenty of fluids, but had been too busy to heed his own advice. If the hunt for Sikes went on too long, he would have to make certain everyone had ample water and breaks from the heat.
He saw Renda hurrying toward him down the sidewalk. He was preparing to scold her for unnecessarily exposing herself and her unborn child to the heat, when he saw the look of fear on her face and immediately went tense. He knew this was not about Sikes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
When Renda had finished relaying Billy Idol’s story to him, he felt a chill crawling up his spine, and his chest felt tight and cold despite the heat.
Harris was a Hunter. Jeb wasn’t sure why that surprised him. He had tried not to allow his instant dislike for the man to color their relationship, but Harris had seemed determined to instigate trouble from the beginning. Even Karen had slapped him upon his arrival. Jeb stopped in his tracks. Why had Karen attacked Harris? He had given it no more thought since then.
“I have to go see Karen.”
“Karen?” Renda questioned. “Now? You have to help Mace.”
“It’s important. See that everyone is prepared.” He eyed the two machine guns. “Get someone on the roof.” His eyes fell on Renda. “Let someone else carry the messages. You stay inside where it’s cool.”
She gawked at him as if he had brought up her hormonal imbalance. “I’m only three months pregnant.”
“And we have no obstetrician,” he reminded her. “Try to take it easy.”
He didn’t have time to discuss it. He pushed past Renda, ignoring her protests, and sprinted for his and Karen’s quarters. He found her asleep, as she so often was. In spite of his careful monitoring of her, she still managed to find sedatives from sympathetic residents with drug stashes of their own. He tried to rouse her. Her eyes opened to mere slits and she stared at him with no comprehension of who he was.
“Karen, do you know Nick Harris?”
She attempted to fight him off, but was too weak. He raised her from the bed and shook her gently.
“Karen. Answer me. Did you know the man you slapped?”
“Slap?” she responded dreamily and started to drift off again.
Jeb became more insistent, raising his voice to break through her lethargy. “Karen. Listen to me. The man you slapped. Did you know him?”
Her eyes narrowed and her lips curled. “Red hair,” she mumbled. “He was there.”
“There where?”
“In the hospital.”
Jeb cursed, lowered her to the bed and let her slumber. It was best if she stayed in her room anyway. If the Hunters got in... He didn’t want to dwell on that possibility. So Harris was not only a Hunter, he had been in San Diego as well. That meant he had ties to the military rather than just the loose network of Hunter mercenaries who captured munies and delivered them to collection centers. Their unwelcome visitors might not just be Hunters. The military might be involved.
A scowl of animal rage spread across Jeb’s face. His fists clenched in rage. He was not a violent man. Indeed, his entire life had been a devotion to the aid and comfort of others, but since the apocalypse, survival had changed everyone, including him. So much death and destruction left its mark on the body and the soul. He had thought he could lay aside his rage and concentrate on helping Karen, a kind of personal redemption. He had lost himself in her despondency, almost becoming a victim himself. Now, he needed that anger, that rage that had propelled him into the heart of the enemy in San Diego.
He had no trouble finding his rage. It seemed to lurk just beneath the surface, eager to escape. He had used his concern with Karen to bury his rage, but now it flowed through him like a river bursting its banks. Hunters were the lowest form of life, preying on others to prolong their lives and to provide for their own comfort. The military was worse. It had
reneged on its vow, and its responsibility to protect the populace. Even before the zombie apocalypse began, the military and the politicians had formed tight ranks to ensure their survival – the country and the civilians be damned! Finding a cure took precedence over protecting those needing the cure.
Elliot had once explained the Judgment Day Protocol.
“In 2005, Homeland Security, the Defense Department, and FEMA devised a plan where, in the event of a national pandemic, steps would be taken to curtail the spread of the disease by any means necessary. The military and civilian authorities could seize and detain anyone for an undesignated period without warrant or cause. All commerce, transportation and communication, including the World Wide Web, would come under military jurisdiction.
“When the Avian Flu dead began resurrecting as zombies and devastating entire cities, the government produced a relatively unknown protocol, or at least unknown to any but a select few – the Judgment Day Protocol. Under this directive, FEMA, all health services, and the CDC became military assets, whose goal was to find a vaccine. Someone in Europe produced a temporary vaccine, the Blue Juice. Since then, half the military has been producing Blue Juice for its surviving troops and the other half searching for a permanent vaccine. Erin and her people refused to cooperate. Once I learned the full scope of the military’s power, I helped them escape.”
Jeb, Mace, Renda and Vince, the only ones Elliot had confided in, had been stunned and angered by his revelation. They had witnessed the apparent depravity of the military, but had not suspected it had come from the top down, at least Jeb hadn’t. It baffled him that Mace took the news in stride.
“Sounds about right,” was Mace’s only comment.
Mace was hunting Harris and Mendoza. He should be helping, but the defenders had to have someone that they could see, someone that they respected, giving the orders. Eli Collier and the action committee couldn’t cope with the normal day-to-day routine of the group, much less an armed assault. Mace had been right about that. The time for democracy was over. Jeb knew that he had to take charge, ruthlessly if necessary. The alternative was too horrible to contemplate.
He didn’t know if the residents of Biosphere2 were up to repelling an armed invasion. Most of them had always assumed zombies would be their immediate problem. Shooting zombies was easy when one forgot that they had once been human. Shooting a living human being would be difficult for most of them. He wished that he had backed Mace’s insistence that they make the sandbag wall their first priority. He was sure they would come to regret their lack of foresight.
He oversaw the distribution of ammunition to the berm positions and set up a fallback position inside the habitat. The complex was too large to defend the entire building from attack. They would have to seal the doors and guard points of entry. He brought Erin’s people inside the dome and had her set up a first aid station in one of the labs. Dale Cuthbert looked around as if he expected soldiers to drop from the roof any minute. Ang Lee was angry, complaining about some test or other in which he had been involved. The oriental immunologist seemed always angry, but his single-minded dedication to duty had earned Jeb’s respect. He doubted even a pitched battle would have interfered with Lee’s work if he had not ordered the labs evacuated.
Renda approached him as he was counting out clips for the M16s. The varied types of weapons they had was a hindrance, requiring three different kinds of ammunition, a logistics nightmare.
“What?” he asked, a little more curtly than he had intended.
“Since you seem determined to keep me off the front lines, I suggest that I and a few fellow noncombatants prepare some sandwiches for everyone.”
He stared at her without comprehending for a few seconds, slightly miffed by her emphasis of the word ‘noncombatants’. Then he realized he had been so involved with the ammunition that he had forgotten food. The defenders might have to remain in position for a long time. He mentally chastised himself for his lapse. The devil is in the details.
“Yes, please do. Can you make some soup as well? I know it’s hot, but something hearty might help.”
She nodded and turned to leave.
“Wait,” he called out to her.
“What?” she snapped.
“Look, I just don’t want anything to happen to you or to your child. You’re the future. I know you’re a better shot than I am and a better fighter, even pregnant.” He smiled. “One weapon more or less won’t determine the fate of this commune. The world doesn’t need a washed up psychiatrist as much as it does mothers.”
Renda softened her face and smiled at him. “I know, Jeb. It’s just frustrating. And you’re not washed up,” she added as she turned and walked back to the habitat.
Of the almost fifty individuals at Biosphere2, Jeb figured less than twenty were competent with a weapon, five of them women. Another fifteen could shoot at something and keep an enemy’s head down but probably couldn’t hit anything. The remainder was more dangerous to their fellow defenders than to the enemy. He tried to place at least two good shots with a less experienced marksman, but until the fighting actually began, he had no idea how his untested fighters would cope with the situation.
Vince was away, long overdue. Samuels was injured and out of commission. Mace was busy searching for Harris and Sikes. Jeb realized how much he depended on Mace’s steadying presence. Nothing seemed to faze him, while Jeb always overanalyzed every situation. He had long ago symbolically tossed his books on psychiatry and traded them for a rifle. Life had become event driven since Judgment Day, leaving little need for complex explanations or justifications. One survived or died. If someone tried to kill you, man or zombie, you killed them first. When a can of potted meat or a bottle of clean water became more valuable than a human life, people became hardened to death. Such a loss lessened mankind. This was his main reason for keeping Renda out of harm’s way. She represented hope for the future.
He glanced up at the nervous men and women manning their positions on the berm and atop roofs, and he wondered if they were as frightened about their futures, as he was the future of mankind.
At first, he thought the booming sound he heard was thunder. He looked at the sky, hoping to see the first signs of the summer monsoon. Heavy rains might impede their attackers as roads flooded and washes overflowed giving them needed time to prepare. When he recognized the two black dots rapidly approaching, he got a sinking feeling in his stomach.
Black Hawks!
19
With no window or watch to tell the time, only the growling in Vince’s stomach told him that several hours had passed since the Gray Man’s visit. While his companions paced nervously or fidgeted in their seats, he took advantage of the time to rest and recover from his bruises. He nibbled on a piece of bread to quiet his noisy stomach, but even that small effort hurt his cracked lips. He had quietly used the time to appraise the three men sharing his cell. He had already ascertained Amanda’s value. He had seen the look she had cast in the Gray Man’s direction, the narrowing of her eyes, the tightness of her lips. Hatred was a good motivator. She would not freeze or hesitate when the chance for freedom came. However, he might have to keep her focused on escape rather than on revenge.
Dennis would be the weak link in their chain. He appeared physically fit, but by his own admission, he had never even held a gun. His job as a sales rep had kept him confined to the office. His intelligence was a plus, but his usefulness in a fight was doubtful. Mike and Roy were laborers and both looked as if they had survived several barroom brawls. Roy had resisted capture by the Hunters, resulting in his missing tooth. He didn’t know if they could shoot straight, but their size and strength was a plus.
His own condition worried him. He had rested, but his body still ached, especially his right leg where one of the guards had repeatedly kicked him. He massaged the large, purple bruise, wincing at the pain. Footsteps outside the door roused him from his thoughts. Every eye turned to the door. It was the Gray Man.
&n
bsp; “Time to go,” he said. He held a rifle and a second pistol in his hands.
Amanda tensed.
“Amanda,” Vince called to get her attention. When she was looking at him, he shook his head.
The Gray Man stared at her for a moment and then brushed past to hand one of the weapons to Roy. The Gray Man kept the second pistol.
“It’s almost midnight. The New Apostles have scattered into the mountains. Only Corzine and his three men remain. We can’t let him get to the chopper.”
Vince didn’t rust the Gray Man any more than he trusted Corzine, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. One must use the tools on hand. The Gray Man was using him; he would use the Gray Man and then kill him.
Most of the lights were out. They moved quietly in the shadows. The Gray Man cautioned them motionless at a door.
“One of the guards is outside by the chopper. The second is in the lobby. Corzine is in his room. I don’t know where the pilot is. Maybe he’s sleeping.”
Vince wondered how Brother Malachi had slipped his New Apostles past the guards. Part of him wanted to dispose of the Gray Man and follow the New Apostles into the mountains. There was always an inherent risk in tackling armed guards. Some of his companions could die. He sighed silently. He had given his word. In a world gone crazy, his word was all he had of value, even to a monster like the Gray Man.
“Get these people past the guards,” he said. “They’ll be no help. Your men can keep the guards occupied while you and I find Corzine.”
The Gray Man smiled. “Nice try. With them safe, you’d put a bullet in my head in a second. No, they stay with us until it’s finished.”
“Where are your men?”
The Gray Man frowned. “Atkins high-tailed it out of here with the New Apostles, the dirty coward. Ahiga is using his Dine` skills to sneak up on the guard by the chopper as we speak.”