At the bottom of the fax was a paragraph from some lieutenant colonel. In it he recommended physical destruction of the central nervous system as the best way to handle infected patients. Incineration of the remains was highly recommended. And then, almost in what looked like an afterthought, the colonel added that variant Z and its sub variants were highly likely, over ninety percent in his estimation, to end up being a PK.”
“What’s PK?” asked Uncle Andy.
Sam looked around the room and said, “According to the fax, PK means planet killer.”
Chapter 7
Nobody said anything, I think we were all too shocked—I know I was. The sun was just starting to set as Sam finished up. “Al looked at me after reading the faxes and said, ‘What are you gonna do, Sam?’ I probably thought it over without answering for a good five minutes before I told him that I was going to ‘Keep on doing the job I loved until it killed me or I found something better.’ He smiled, because that’s the same thing we used to say to each other every day during our undercover biker sting. I asked him what his plans were, and he said he was going to try and grab his family and head to their hunting cabin over near Devil’s Lake. Then he picked up the shotgun and said, ‘Central nervous system, huh?’ We walked back to the hallway and opened the door; Captain Reynolds was still alive. He wasn’t moving much, but we could see him quiver as we got closer. Al said, ‘Oh yeah, there was another fax that came in while you were on patrol. It said that confirmed routes of transmission have been by bites and open wounds exposed to infected bodily fluids like blood and tissue, so try not to get anything on you.’ We stepped over Captain Reynolds, and Fernandez shot to the front of his cell, unsuccessfully trying to squeeze between the bars to reach us. I changed mags in my SIG and told Al to hold off on the shotgun. I could see the front of Fernandez’s head through the bars from my angle and I lined up the sights. I almost couldn’t do it, but I kept hearing one word repeat over and over in my head—the word was ‘None.’ I pulled the trigger and Fernandez went down. We stepped back over Captain Reynolds; his body still quivered. I looked at Al, silently asking the question; he nodded his head, so I backed up as far as I could and put a round through Captain Reynolds’s head. He stopped quivering.”
“The rest, as they say, is history. I looked at the duty assignment roster from HS and they had me farmed out to the Border Patrol up in Carson where route 403 crosses into Canada. We went down to the armory and loaded up—that reminds me, I might have a few things you could use. Anyway, we locked the station house down after broadcasting the new duty assignments over the radio. We didn’t get any response. I can tell you this, the interstates are jammed packed with people leaving the cities. There are accidents everywhere and cars stalled left and right, a lot of them out of gas. People were walking, whole families. I don’t even know if they know where they’re heading, and I have a feeling this is only the tip of the iceberg. I took a lot of back roads on the way here, probably why I ran out of gas.” Sam looked at his watch and said, “I’ve got to be heading out. Eric, why don’t you and Michelle follow me out to my car?” He shook hands all around and told us to be safe, and then Michelle and I walked him out. Uncle Andy followed as well. We walked around to the trunk of his patrol car and he used a key to pop it. Inside I could see several firearms—AR’s, shotguns, and several handguns, along with boxes and boxes of ammo.
“You need any of these?” he said.
The words “Damn straight” were almost out of my mouth when Uncle Andy cut in.
“No, we’re good to go, besides where you’re going you’ll probably need them more then we will out here in the boonies.”
I looked at Uncle Andy questioningly, but he ignored me.
“You sure?” asked Sam.
“Yep,” said Uncle Andy, “and just so you know, if you’re ever in this neck of the woods again, and in need of gas, we’ll take care of you. Thank you for sharing the information and,” he added, “putting up with that miserable SOB that owns the marina.”
Sam smiled his gap toothed grin again and turned to Michelle and I and said, “Well, if your uncle won’t let you play with guns, maybe he’ll let you have these.”
He pulled out a large nylon duffel bag marked “North Dakota State Police” and opened the zipper part way. I could see it was stuffed full of the heavy duty zip tie handcuffs, probably several hundred pairs of them.
“Those I will definitely take,” I said.
“One more thing,” Sam said as he dug around underneath the guns in his trunk. “I never tried them, but the German police swear by these,” he said as he handed us a leather bag with the words “Homeland Security Riot Control” stenciled on it. Inside it were half a dozen pairs of Kevlar and carbon fiber riot gloves. They came up to midway between your wrist and elbow and supposedly could stop knives and broken bottles.
“Wow, thanks,” Michelle and I echoed.
“No problem,” said Sam.
Sam used one of the pairs of the zip cuffs on the guy in the Tahoe, giving us back our duty ones. I noticed he wasn’t too gentle stuffing the guy in the back of his Crown Vic. Given what he’s been through, I could imagine he wasn’t in a very happy go lucky mood.
I shook his hand again and wished him well. He kept his right hand clasping mine and used his left hand to grip along my forearm. “Central nervous system, head or neck,” he said.
I nodded.
Sam got in to his patrol car, cranked the engine a few times until it caught, and then sped off.
Michelle leaned her left hand on top of my right shoulder and said, “Eric, I’m scared.”
“Me too,” I mumbled.
Just then Marty trotted up to us and said, “Walter needs you in the office, he said there’s a problem at the campground.”
I shook my head to clear out the thoughts of gloom and doom that had been circling there and walked back toward the office, Michelle and Uncle Andy beside me. Walter was sitting at his desk, speaking into a microphone of the marine radio base station he keeps there.
“Sally, they’re back inside now but the state trooper’s not here anymore, over,” he said.
A voice came out of the speaker. “What about the other two, they’re lawmen as well, right? Over.”
“Yes ma’am they are, let me talk to them and get back to you, over,” Walter replied.
“OK, I’ll keep this channel open until I hear from you, over, out.”
Walter hung the microphone on the little Y-shaped metal bracket mounted on the side of the radio. I didn’t say anything; I just waited for him to speak. Francis beat him to it.
“Are mom and dad OK?” she asked.
Walter nodded his head and said, “Yep, they’re doing fine—far as I know. Why don’t you and your brother go get your stuff together and I’ll run you back to the campground.”
“Can we take the Mule?” Marty asked.
“Nah, it’ll do you youngen’s a bit of good to walk around once in awhile,” Walter said with a smirk as Francis and Marty left to gather their things.
A few seconds later Walter mumbled to no one in particular, “Plus it’ll give me time to talk when you’re not around.”
“What’s going on?” Michelle asked.
Walter looked up at all of us; we were still standing. He stood up, walked over to the refrigerator, and took out a few beers . . . holding several in his hand and extending them out to us. I shook my head no, so did Michelle, but Uncle Andy took one. Walter rubbed his eyes and motioned for us to sit down.
“I know I don’t have any right to ask this of you, but would one or the both of you mind taking a ride up to the campground to see if you can get some things straightened out there? I’d be much obliged,” he said.
Michelle repeated her question. “What’s going on?”
Walter took a long swig of his beer before replying. “Ravenwood, the RV campground northeast of here, has about one hundred and twenty slots for campers, I think about eighty of them are designed for
RV’s, maybe fifty of those eighty are the larger pull through types. The remaining forty or so slots are the ones set aside for tent camping. Eric, you’re probably aware that the campground is run by the state Natural Resources Department.” I nodded. “However,” Walter continued, “they don’t have a resident park ranger; all they got is what’s called a campground host. Someone they let stay there for free in exchange for collecting fees and issuing camping permits. Once a week or so a state park ranger will swing by to make sure everything’s OK and collect the revenue.”
“Yeah, a lot of the more out of the way campgrounds use that type of system,” I said.
“Uh Huh,” Walter replied, “for the last . . . oh, I guess about five months or so, the campground hosts have been Doc and Sally Collins. Sally is my baby sister.” He paused before continuing. “Sally’s had some . . . issues . . . with alcohol in the past. Her husband’s a good guy; Doc Collins, retired orthopedic surgeon. Anyhow, after Sally’s last bout with rehab, he decided to move them up here for a spell to get her away from all the high society cocktail functions and champagne brunches she was always attending. Things have been working out pretty well I suppose. We get together once or twice a week to play dominoes or cards; sometimes Bernice and Sally take turns cooking up some fancy feast for a picnic, and like I said things had been going pretty well. Francis and Marty are their kids, well, Sally’s from a previous marriage. No matter which way you slice it though, they’re my niece and nephew. They’re pretty good kids really—that Francis has eyes like an eagle and could spot somebody trying to swipe a pack of gum by looking in the curved security mirror while handling a whole line of customers. And Marty, he don’t talk too much, least wise about things that he’s not interested in, but get him talking about fishing and the boy won’t shut up, he’s pretty dang good at it too. Bernice and I have several empty rooms up at the house since our kids moved away, and it just worked out better for everybody to give Sally and Doc some more space in their RV and the kids their own rooms away from mom and dad.” Walter tipped the beer back for another sip. “Like I said, Ravenwood has room for about one hundred and twenty, but right now they’ve got one hundred and eighty-some squeezed in there, with more lined up outside. A lot of fights, a whole lot of pushing and shoving, and Doc and Sally don’t really know what to do.”
I nodded my head. “I’ll go.”
“Not alone, you won’t,” said Michelle.
I thought about her answer for a few seconds, convinced myself that it wasn’t worth a fight trying to get her to stay here before saying, “I better put my uniform on, and let’s take your Tahoe for the effect. You got gas in it?”
“Quarter tank of gas and about a pound of broken glass,” Michelle said, reminding me about the busted window.
“Uncle Andy, I’m gonna leave Max here with you. I’m also gonna leave the Fish and Wildlife radio with you so we have a secure line of communications; I’d rather not use the marine frequency for anything important.”
Michelle chimed in, “I’ve got the mobile and another portable in my truck so we should be good to go.”
Uncle Andy nodded his understanding and said, “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
“What about Marty and Francis?” I asked.
“I’ll tell them that we’ll run em’ up to the campground when you two get back, after things settle down,” Walter said.
I nodded and went out to my truck to change. A couple minutes later I was ready to go, duty dress with a level II-A vest underneath. I handed Uncle Andy the radio, gave Max a quick wrestle and hug, and then walked out to the Tahoe; Michelle was already inside. She pulled out of the parking lot and took the highway east; a quarter mile later, just as the sun finished slipping below the horizon, she made a left onto Ravenwood Campground Road.
We had gone less than a mile when we saw a series of headlights coming our way. They passed by us, traveling at a rate of speed that was probably fifteen or twenty miles per hour faster than the posted limit of thirty-five. It was a line of four RV’s with a few trucks and cars mixed in. The next five miles saw several repeats of that convoy, some larger, some smaller. A mile out from the campground entrance Michelle hit the red emergency lights. I looked at her with my eyebrows raised.
“If the natives are restless, this will give them a little bit of time to calm down before we get there,” she said.
Personally, I’d rather go in quick and quiet, but her federal law enforcement training was kicking in, and in general they like to announce themselves. I could see the merit of that in certain situations, I just didn’t know if this was one of them. About 200 yards from the entrance we saw a line of RV’s pulled off on both sides of the road; the lane between them was currently occupied by a pickup truck with a pop-up camper towed behind it. The truck was trying to back up between the rows of parked RV’s, apparently unsuccessfully, judging from several gashes on the side of an Airstream RV. A small gathering of about a dozen men, women and children were engaged in a heated discussion in the illumination of multiple headlights. Michelle pulled the
Tahoe into a diagonal road blocking position, left the lights and engine running, and locked it up.
I smiled and said, “Are you going to lock it up with the window busted out?”
She laughed and replied, “Crooks are dumb; I once answered a call about a stolen car that was sighted at the trailhead parking area of a federally protected wetland. Turns out the crackhead had been sitting there for over two hours because he locked himself ‘in’ the car.” I shook my head and laughed along with her.
OK, long story short here, we spent the next three hours getting things straightened out at the campground. Most of the people at the RV sites were more than happy to pull forward and make room for another camper; there was also a large field used as a group camp area that we let about thirty more people with tents set up in, after we had given them a makeshift “site number” to pin onto their tent. One of the first things we did after simmering down the people arguing out front was to get a rope and hang a “campground closed” sign across the road down where it meets the highway. I met Doc and Sally Collins about five minutes after we got there. I don’t know what I was picturing, but they weren’t anything like I had imagined. Sally was a bleached blond lady of about fifty-five, a little on the chunky side and constantly smoking a cigarette. Doc Collins, on the other hand, was Asian, or partly so. Slim, fit looking, he probably could have passed for late forties, but I found out he was sixty-two. They were both a great help to Michelle and I. Doc was more than accommodating to as many of the campers as he possibly could; his concern was not necessarily the double capacity per se’, but the potential for the water, electricity and sanitation facilities to be overtaxed with that many people. Michelle made a suggestion that he make up a flier and use the little campground office’s copy machine to make enough of them to distribute to each campsite. We spent about fifteen quick minutes deciding what would be on the flier, and after hashing out a bunch of ideas, we decided it would be easier to just write down the ideas and have the flier announce a campground wide meeting the next morning at 10:00 AM in the little amphitheater. The traffic jam outside the gate had worked itself out by the time we were done. I shook hands with Doc as we were leaving, and Sally came up to Michelle and gave her a big hug like they were long lost relatives. Doc stopped me with a “Hey Eric . . . one more thing . . .” I waited, but he pursed his lips, shook his head and said, “Never mind, it can wait until tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “I’m sure. I’ll get right on the flyers and have them posted before I turn in tonight.”
Sally added, “And tomorrow morning I’ll ride around on the golf cart and announce over the PA about the meeting.” Each word was accompanied by a small exhalation of cigarette smoke.
We said goodbye again and got into Michelle’s still idling Tahoe. She put it in gear and we drove away. Three miles down the road we ran out of gas. Cra
p.
I looked at Michelle and said, “Miss Owens, I don’t know what kind of a boy you think I am, but the old ‘running out of gas trick’ is not going to work on me.”
She laughed out loud and said, “Really . . . well what if I did this . . .”
She slid over next to me and planted a long, slow soft kiss on my ear. A wave of shivers raced from my ear down to my ankles and back up again.
“Wow, that was . . . interesting . . . but I’m still not going to succumb to your feminine wiles. I’m made of stone, you can’t tempt me,” I said.
“Is that what you think?” She lifted her left leg up and over, straddling me. Her hands grasped the back of my hair and she tilted my head up, crushing her lips into me, her tongue searching, twining around mine. She ground herself into my lap, slowly gyrating her hips. “You are made of stone after all,” she purred.
“This is Marina one calling Fish and Wildlife two, this is Marina one calling Fish and Wildlife two, over,” her dash mounted radio blared into the night.
We both froze, muscles clenched, locked in a kiss. The call repeated.
Michelle let out a deep sigh and reached behind her to grab the microphone.
“Fish and Wildlife two, go ahead, over.”
“Just calling in for a status report, everything OK?”
Michelle replied. “We were just about to call you.” I slowly slid my hand up the outside of her thigh, climbing higher and around . . . She un-keyed the microphone, swatted at my hand and giggled. “Requesting you meet us three miles from the campground, fuel status bingo.”
“Understood, en-route.”
Michelle climbed off of me, got back in her seat, and turned the key to accessory. She hit the radio’s search button on FM, got nothing, switched to AM and had a few minutes of reception with a French speaking Canadian station. Neither of us understood it. We sat in silence and watched a few scattered snow flurries ricochet off the windshield. About ten minutes later, Walter and Uncle Andy showed up in Uncle Andy’s truck. Max was riding in the bed, and Marty and Francis were in the second row of seats. Uncle Andy rolled down the window as he pulled up beside us.
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