V Plague (Book 16): Brimstone

by Dirk Patton

  Lost in thought, she nearly squealed in surprise when two figures suddenly appeared out of the darkness on the path she was following. Even though she was on base, her heart rate shot up in fear until one of them spoke.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you, Chief,” Master Chief Gonzales said.

  Jessica recognized him and relaxed, smiling at Nicole who had her arm circled through his. Even though she knew the woman wasn’t a threat, it still gave her the creeps to see those blood red eyes.

  “No harm done, Master Chief,” she said. “But isn’t it a little late, or early, to be taking a walk?”

  Gonzales gestured at his bandaged face.

  “Lots of pain,” he explained. “Hard to sleep and I don’t want any of the damn drugs the docs keep pushing on me.”

  She remembered that while he was rescuing Nicole from a locked building in Seattle, an infected had bitten a large chunk out of his face. She’d never seen him without the bandages, but if the stories were true, he was one tough bastard to be turning down pain killers.

  “Walking helps him relax and control the pain,” Nicole said, her eyes boring into Jessica.

  Jessica began to wish them a good night and move on, but a memory of a report she’d read caused her to pause.

  “Ma’am,” she said to Nicole. “I mean no disrespect, but may I ask a personal question?”

  Nicole appeared surprised, but nodded permission. Jessica took a breath, hesitated, then plunged ahead.

  “The infected. They’re really strong. And they heal really fast, right?”

  Nicole blinked in surprise.

  “That’s what I’ve seen,” she said, sharing a glance with Gonzales.

  “What’s your point, Chief?” he asked.

  “What about you, ma’am? Do you heal faster?” she continued, ignoring the Master Chief.

  “I do,” Nicole said after a pause. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just an idea,” Jessica said distantly, already lost in thought.

  Abruptly, she thanked her, wished them a good night and hurried past.

  55

  Arriving at her assigned work area, Jessica rushed through security and rode an elevator down to the sub-level. When she walked into the room, she was momentarily taken aback by the level of activity. People were shouting questions back and forth as several alarms sounded. Lieutenant Hunt, appearing haggard, was trying to help each person at the same time and as a result was being of assistance to no one.

  “Sir, what’s going on?” Jessica asked, dropping into her seat and logging into her terminal.

  “We’ve got unidentified aircraft in western CONUS,” he said, obviously relieved by her presence, “our Russian friends were just extracted from a beach in North Korea and that damn Aussie is calling every five minutes.”

  Jessica’s fingers were flying as she listened. Her first task was to silence the motion alarms that had detected aircraft in flight outside the routine patrol area of the Russian occupiers in CONUS, the Continental United States. Tasking one satellite to track each of the helicopters, she turned her attention to the waters off North Korea. Before she could zero in on the RHIB, a comm line on her console began softly beeping.

  “About bloody fuckin’ time!” Lucas said when she answered.

  “Hello to you, too,” she said, working on spotting the RHIB as she spoke.

  “It’s been… BLOODY HELL!”

  Jessica’s full attention turned to the call when she heard the sounds of a phone being dropped. A straining engine was clearly audible, followed by multiple impacts on the outside of a vehicle. The scratching of the handset being dragged across fabric, then Rachel spoke in her ear.

  “Sorry,” Rachel shouted over the noise on her end. “We just ran into a group of infected. Do you know where John is? Can you see him?”

  Jessica glanced at a mission clock, noting the RHIB was still nearly an hour from reaching the sub. She had time. Quickly, she changed satellites and within less than a minute had spotted the battered Rover that Rachel was in.

  “Okay, I’ve got you,” she said, then her eyes widened in concern. “Why the hell are you going back into Sydney?”

  “We’re not,” Rachel shouted. “South of the city. Trying to get to Lucas’s plane. Roads to the west are blocked.”

  “Okay, give me its location and I’ll find you the easiest route.”

  “What about John?”

  “First things first,” Jessica answered impatiently. “Doesn’t do any good to know where he is if you’re taken out by infected.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Rachel gave her the name of the airfield. It was only a matter of a few seconds to find it, but much longer to plan a route that avoided the worst of the infected. She listened to frequent curses from Lucas and the occasional squeal of tires as she worked.

  “Alright, sending a route to your phone,” she said when it was done. “There’s some infected, but if you don’t mess around and give them time to collapse in on you in numbers, you’re less than forty minutes away.”

  “And John?” Rachel asked immediately.

  “I had the system auto-tracking him. I’ve been working on other things and didn’t realize it lost targeting. I’ll have to restart a search. It’s going to take some time, unless we get really lucky.”

  There was a mumbled conversation from the other end, then Rachel came back on.

  “Where did you have him last? We can start looking there once we get the plane.”

  Jessica mentally chastised herself for not having thought of that and quickly accessed the data and relayed the location where John and Mavis had stopped the previous night.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I’ve acquired him again,” she said, breaking the connection to deal with a new aircraft alarm.

  The system had locked in on an area that encompassed southern Nevada and Utah. As she worked, Hunt came to look over her shoulder.

  “That’s part of it, sir,” she said, pointing at a satellite view of two helicopters that were transiting from east to west, to the northeast of Las Vegas.

  “Ours?” he asked, leaning closer.

  They could only see the helos from directly overhead, a difficult angle to identify them if one wasn’t intimately familiar with the airframe. Jessica entered some commands and the system generated a 3D-wire image of the aircraft. It was based solely on the software’s best guess of what it should be.

  “Ninety-five percent probability they’re Black Hawks, sir. But no way to know who’s flying them.”

  “That’s got to be Eagle Team,” Hunt said, earning a curious look from Jessica. “Sorry, you weren’t briefed in. They’re infiltrating Groom Lake. Apparently, the Major found something there that piqued someone’s interest.”

  “How’d I not know?”

  “You’ve been busy and then with the Admiral... Okay, what about that other alarm?”

  Jessica worked for a few seconds, confirming whatever had caused the alert was no longer in the air. Working backward, it didn’t take long to spot a Black Hawk resting in the middle of nowhere in southern Utah, less than sixty miles north of Eagle Team’s route. There were also two figures, moving away from the helo and she smiled.

  “They landed and got out,” she said excitedly. “Let’s see where they went and maybe we can get a good look.”

  Three minutes later she was following the path Titus and Martinez had taken. Jumping forward, there were now five people, walking south in single file. Three miles away was a small encampment that had been well camouflaged against aerial surveillance. Jessica had been unable to spot it until she switched to thermal imaging.

  “Okay,” she said to herself. “Let’s see who’s flying around in one of our helicopters.”

  The view of the people on the path zoomed smoothly. They had a perspective that was slightly from the side, giving them a good look at each person’s profile as the orbiting camera brought them close enough to see the dirt ground into the people’s skin.

&n
bsp; “Civilian,” Jessica said after checking the girl in the lead.

  Titus came next, but she’d didn’t recognize him and moved on. When Anna’s face appeared on the screen, both her and Hunt stared in disbelief.

  “She was killed in Vegas,” Jessica breathed. “She saved everyone that escaped, but her helo was shot down.”

  “We sure that’s her?” Hunt asked, but he was just covering his bases.

  Jessica quickly brought up an archived file and after some searching, put a confirmed image of Anna on the screen next to the live feed.

  “That’s her, sir. No doubt.”

  Hunt nodded and Jessica manipulated the live feed to the woman walking next to Anna. She paused when Martinez’ face filled the screen.

  “She’s really familiar,” Jessica said, trying to remember where she’d seen the woman.

  “Agreed,” Hunt said, “but I can’t place her.”

  Nodding, Jessica captured a still image of Martinez, loaded it into a program and hit enter. The software went to work, searching every available archived image that contained a human face. There were a lot to check and it took nearly ten minutes before a soft chime sounded.

  A shot of Martinez popped up, standing a few feet away from Major Chase. They were facing a group of attacking infected, the scene frozen like a classic battle mural from the past. Behind the image was a folder with every photo of her that existed in the system.

  Jessica stared at it a few seconds, then frowned and opened the folder. It didn’t take her long to find the shot she was looking for. Katie, Martinez, Rachel and Irina, shackled to the winch cable of a Russian helicopter sitting in a park in Mountain Home, Idaho.

  “This can’t be right,” she mumbled, telling the system to retrieve the video that accompanied the still image.

  The scene began playing and she watched as a Russian Spetsnaz colonel stumbled away from Martinez, cradling one hand in the other. A second later, she spat out what appeared to be some fingers. He stared at her a beat before drawing his pistol and shooting her in the head. Jessica traded a glance with Hunt, who looked as spooked as she felt.

  “Are we sure it’s the same woman?” he asked gently.

  Jessica typed a few commands, then looked up at him when the system came back with an answer. Ninety-eight percent match.

  “It doesn’t get better, sir,” she said. “That’s the same woman.”

  “How? Did the bullet not kill her?”

  Jessica rewound and replayed the moment Martinez was shot, enhancing the image. This time, they could see the hole that was punched into her forehead and a clear plume of bloody brain matter jetting from the rear of her skull. They looked at each other again, then turned back to the real-time image of Martinez walking through the snow in southern Utah.

  “What do we do?” Jessica whispered, her skin crawling at the possibility of someone coming back from the dead.

  “I’d better call Captain West,” Hunt said as if in a daze. He turned slowly, then suddenly rushed to his station and snatched up the phone.

  Jessica went back to watching Martinez, reviewing the footage of her being shot, just in case she’d missed a clue that was a better explanation than reincarnation. She was quickly interrupted by an alert and switched views. She zoomed and smiled when she confirmed the system had found Major Chase. Picking up the phone, she quickly dialed the number Lucas had called from.

  “We’re pulling into the airport now,” Rachel said when she answered. “Did you find him?”

  “Got him,” Jessica said. “Location’s coming to your phone.”

  “He’s okay?” Rachel asked, a slight tremor of worry in her voice.

  “Seems to be.”

  There was a big sigh of relief.

  “Thank you, Jessica. Thank you!”

  Jessica hesitated before responding. Weighing the consequences of what she was thinking about doing. For all of two seconds, then she decided the hell with it. The world was dying. If she could give someone some good news about a friend…

  “Rachel.”

  “I’m here.”

  A car door slammed in the background immediately followed by several gunshots.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  56

  Within a few seconds, one of the females leapt across the ditch and raised her face to scent the air. We were downwind and I could smell an animal musk coming from them. Could tell that several of them were ovulating. This should have totally freaked me out, but at the moment it seemed perfectly normal.

  The female lowered her head and appeared to be scanning the ground, but I knew she was still sniffing for a sign of their prey. Jaw set, my teeth ground together as I prepared to fight. I could feel my body tensing and swore I heard an eager chuckle from the berserker as he anticipated spilling more blood. Eyes locked on the lone female who had crossed the road, I put my hand on the hilt of the knife and gripped it tightly.

  “We need to run!” Mavis whispered to me, tugging on my arm.

  My head snapped around in surprise. For a moment, I’d forgotten she was there. I was so focused on the prospect of a battle that my mind had pushed everything else aside. But that brief contact with her brought me back to the present and I released the knife in favor of my rifle.

  “Can’t run,” I mumbled to her, making sure the other two understood what I was saying. “They’ll see us and we can’t outrun ‘em.”

  “We made it to the tree before and we was bein’ chased,” Chain Man said.

  “Have a big head start?”

  He stared at me for a beat before nodding and looking away.

  “We don’t,” I said. “We wouldn’t make it a quarter of a mile before they ran us to ground. Now, be quiet before they hear us.”

  Turning away, I brought the rifle up, an elbow braced on one knee for support. The female’s face was clear in the scope, but I didn’t dare take the shot. Not yet. We’d be detected and immediately attacked if I did.

  Go kill them all!

  The berserker’s voice in my head. And it was tempting. Just stand up and start walking forward. Shoot as many as I could as I progressed, then switch to the blade and kill the rest. Taking a breath, I pushed down the impulse and focused on the task at hand. Keeping Mavis safe. I didn’t really care about the other two, but they’d protected her so I owed them.

  It was only a few seconds before the female threw her head back and screamed. She’d found the scent of our passage. The infected on the road answered, rushing to join her as she moved forward. They didn’t worry me. There were only a handful. What did were the screams that sounded in the darkness from every direction around us.

  Exhaling, I pulled the trigger. An instant later, the lead female’s head snapped back and her corpse collapsed to the ground. There was more screaming, answering calls approaching swiftly, but I ignored them for the moment and kept pulling the trigger.

  Methodically, I targeted and killed the infected as they began to charge our position. When there were only two remaining, I leapt to my feet and drew the knife.

  “Let’s go!” I shouted, running for the road.

  A big part of me would have been content to stand and wait for the arrival of the females responding to the calls of their sisters. I’d wade in and finish them like I had those who’d treed Mavis and the bikers. But Mavis was the reason for discretion. I couldn’t fight and protect her at the same time. We needed to reach the truck before we were overwhelmed.

  The two that were still charging in were separated by slightly less than twenty yards, but it was enough. Reaching the first, a small woman in her early twenties, I met her embrace and used all my momentum to bury the knife into her throat. She was bulled aside by the brutal impact and I ripped the blade to the side, severing arteries and cutting deep into her spine.

  “Keep moving!” I yelled when Mavis faltered.

  The two bikers each grabbed one of her arms, propelling her forward as I met the final female. She was older and he
avier than the first, but I hit her like an all-pro linebacker. Flying back, her limbs went loose for a moment as she tumbled across the ground. I dropped a knee on her chest, feeling her ribcage collapse under the brutal force an instant before I rammed the blade into her eye. Without a second look, I stood, tore the knife free and charged after the rest of my group.

  More screams were swiftly approaching as I pounded across the field, quickly catching Mavis and the bikers. I urged them to run faster as I was hearing screams from the direction of the truck. We still had forty yards to cover to reach the edge of the ditch, a long leap to the pavement, then a dash to the safety of the truck. Ten seconds. But it didn’t sound like we were going to make it before being cut off.

  “Stop!” I shouted, well short of the ditch.

  A large group of females, too many to count, had just emerged from the field on the far side of the road and completely blocked our path. It took them all of a fraction of a second to spot us and charge with eager screams.

  “Make a circle, Mavis in the middle!” I yelled.

  The men did as I said without hesitation. Shoving my pistol into Nigel’s hand, I raised the rifle and started firing. I wasn’t concerned with kill shots, just wanted to slow the bitches down. If I could disable their legs, we could either move around them or finish them off at our leisure.

  Females started to fall, instantly using their arms to drag themselves in our direction. The magazine ran dry and I wasted too much time changing it because I wasn’t intimately familiar with the Russian-made rifle. During the stress of combat, the last thing you want to deal with is a weapon platform you don’t know even better than the back of your own hand.

  But I got them swapped, released the bolt and got off three more shots before several females leapt the ditch. They were coming fast and I started to step forward to meet them with the knife, but held myself back so the wall protecting Mavis didn’t open.

  Bracing myself, I met their attack with an extended blade. A body slammed into me, but it was already dead or dying and I shoved it aside as I heard the sickening crunch of a skull cracking. Chain Man was in the fight. I stabbed, slashed and punched. Snapped necks with my free arm and broke knees with my foot. Pistol shots sounded from behind as more females charged in.