Of Sudden Origin - Part 4 The Crucible

by Harwood, C. Chase

  Decker huskily whispered, “Okay, that hurts more.”

  Susan stepped back out of the way. “Now, Robert, you’re going to keep the elbow bent and open the arm as though you’re opening a door. Ready? Now slowly, slowly.”

  Tran twisted Decker’s arm out and away from his body. Decker howled in agony.

  Susan said, “If it worked, you should feel relief.”

  Decker gritted his teeth, “Didn’t work, didn’t work.”

  Robert looked helpless. "Sorry, man. Sorry."

  “Robert, close and open the door again. Keep it real slow”

  Robert did as instructed and then yelped, “I felt it!”

  Decker sighed with relief and carefully took his arm back from Tran.

  Susan said, “Good, now Rick, slide your hand in between the buttons of your jacket like Napoleon and let it rest. Robert, is there some pain medication in that survival vest?”

  As Jon participated, he noted how fully distracted everyone was with the procedure. The world was burning down around them and the small group was fixated on a dislocated shoulder.

  Tran searched the vest, which had auto inflated when Poole had hit the water. There was a small radio, various signaling devices, flashlight, water dye/shark repellant - which got a few smiles of amusement - and assorted other small utilities. The emergency food and water rations noted that it could be stretched into a five-day supply for one person. There was a basic first aid kit and a compact foil blanket.

  Tran gave Decker two ibuprofen. They would husband the rest.

  Surprisingly, given the nature of their meeting, there was little chitchat. Perhaps all of them had witnessed so many things out of the ordinary, that this was just one more instance; no more worthy of comment than any other fantastical moment during these hysteria filled months. They also knew something else – they were a long way from being done with it.

  When the fierce flames had reduced the island’s timber to a low and even blaze, they waded back to shore and warmed themselves by the fire burning at the edge of the southern woods. Noxious gases had them all breaking into coughing fits and they mostly breathed through their wet shirts.

  When the flames died down further, Susan explained who she and her fellow scientists were and their mission. Nikki and Jon offered a few words on their history, as did Steven for his family. Ben kept to himself.

  Aaron spoke up, “You think we could get somebody on that radio?”

  Nikki recognized the model, “Standard military issue, waterproof, good for maybe five miles depending on what ground you’re on.” Her instinct and training subconsciously directed her speech toward Susan. As the lead government scientist, she was sort of the default leader for all of them. “We’re best off keeping the battery fresh until we find ourselves in a situation where we might use it. I’m a recently decommissioned, well, actually re-commissioned Marine, ma’am, that’s why I’m offering my opinion.”

  “Call me Susan. It’s good to know that we have your skills among us, Nikki.” She looked at the others. “Anyone with an opinion on how to get ourselves out of this, is welcome to speak up. As far as we know, we are all that’s human between here and Canada. Any idea how far we are from the border?”

  Ben said, “About a hundred and sixty miles to Quebec. Border’s closer of course, but the new wall is across the Saint Lawrence.”

  “That’s better than I hoped. There will be a search and rescue operation. Our absence has, I’m sure, already been noted.”

  Nikki looked down at the ash-coated water then returned her gaze to Susan. "Forgive my pessimism, Ma’am, er, Susan, but I can say from experience, that unless they’ve got an idea of where you went down, we’re but a few specks in a sea of burnt trees. In Sudan, if a plane went down and the whereabouts was sketchy, just as often as not, the JEM or ICU would nab our pilots before we could find them."

  “So what are you saying?”

  “Don’t count on a ride. We don’t know how many infected may have survived this fire, but we’d be smart not to draw too much attention to ourselves. We keep a low profile; try to walk out of here. We find a highway - a hundred and sixty miles is a seven, eight day hump on a flat road.”

  Ben said, “Route 201 is just east of here. Probably take us a day, day and a-half’s walk to get to the Moscow dam. Firebreak’s not far. Leads right to it. Dam’s right next to 201. The other way is to follow the Dead River north, but that’s iffy country. There’d be a lotta places we’d have to swim for it. Can’t say how long it would take.”

  Jon said, “What happened to not drawing attention to ourselves? We’ve been avoiding the highways. The Fiends are all bunched up there.”

  Nikki said, “It’s a matter of weighing odds. I think this fire has changed that equation. Besides, we’re more likely to get spotted by friendlies walking on the highway. We take the woods, assuming the fire dies down, and we’re exposed for another week, probably two with little chance of being rescued. Heck, on the highway maybe we’ll find a working car or two.”

  They looked at their food situation and found that their catch of the day lay burnt and black on the rocks near Ben’s camp. It was still edible and would at least provide dinner. The rest of the food cash had been consumed in the boat fire. They would share the pilot’s survival rations in the morning before they headed out, and hope that the town of Moscow could provide something for the rest of the trip. Assuming that the huge forest fire surrounding them had moved on and would allow for foot travel, they would begin their journey at first light. For clothes, they had what was on their backs. There would be no blankets or shelter for the night. They had four weapons between them: Poole’s Beretta with a spare clip of ammo, Jon’s Smith & Wesson with two clips, Nikki's SCAR L with a second 30-round magazine taped to the one mounted to the gun, and finally Ben’s Remington twelve-gage with five slugs and six rounds of buckshot.

  As the evening wore on and the fires cooled off, they were able to speak without yelling over the din. They brought each other up to date on their various adventures while roiling clouds of smoke reflected the marching inferno's orange light as far as the eye could see. When it came time to turn in, they agreed that they would lie as a group on the one gravely portion of the rocky beach and snuggle up for warmth. The pilot’s emergency foil blanket was laid over the children in an attempt to deflect the now cooling breeze.

  By four AM a steady drizzle began to fall. It was still dark, but the growing dampness precluded further sleep. Ben, Jon and Tran stepped into the now smoldering tree line and grabbed various pieces of still glowing wood. They built a fire up near their camp and the group stayed warm as best they could around its flames.

  When dawn finally broke, everyone was eager to move and get their blood flowing. They shared the pilot’s rations, taking the edge off their hunger. Since Ben knew the route to Moscow, he naturally took charge. “The mainland shore is just south of this here island. It’s maybe seventy-five yards away. Unfortunately, we’ll have to swim it. From there, we work our way south along the shore. There should be a boat ramp after a way, and there’ll be a road leadin’ inland. That road hooks up with a larger one that crosses the firebreak. From there it’s hilly country, but a fairly straight path to the Moscow Dam.”

  “So we’re talking how far?” asked Nikki.

  “Roughly fifteen-miles as the crow flies. Maybe seven, eight hours - maybe.”

  “Fifteen miles of hilly country will feel like twice that.”

  “Well then, we better get a move on,” said Susan.

  The scientists had broken down their lab equipment so that all they needed to carry was two sample cases and a smaller briefcase holding their data, backed up on two portable hard-drives. Though painful to leave behind, the rest of the equipment would hopefully be replaced in Canada.

  When they got to the island’s shore and faced the mainland across the water, Teddy Costas tried to be helpful, noting, “It doesn’t really matter that we
’re going to get wet swimming.” He looked at the sky. “This drizzle’s gonna turn to rain.” Most of them nodded politely at the boy as they waded out into the lake. Teddy pushed his voice to sound stronger than he felt. “The one good thing about the rain is that it doused the flames.”

  His father put a loving hand on his boy’s shoulder, and while holding his daughter’s hand they waded out with the rest. Amanda turned to her brother and said in a low voice, “It’s gonna be okay, Teddy. Don’t be afraid.”

  He looked at his sister as though she was mental, and chose to ignore her. They were eleven people in the middle of a burned down nowhere, with no real way to call for help, no food, no shelter, a handful of weapons and the potential for lots of virulently crazy people trying to eat them. Everyone was terrified out of their wits.

  They were greeted on shore by voluminous thick steam and white smoke rising steadily from the burned down forest. While Steven helped his children, Jon knelt in the shallow inlet filling their water bag. He had cut a slit in the top of Poole’s lifejacket and filled the volume with water instead. When it was nearly full, he stood and put it on like a yoke. It would be all of their water until they found the next fresh source. Then he thought about the flock of birds back in Teddy’s inlet - and dropped in a few of the dead pilot’s water purification tablets.

  Lining up single file, they had barely taken ten steps when they all pulled up short. There was a mass just beyond the tree line, a pile of human remains, burned nearly beyond recognition; limbs and faces were twisted into various forms of agony. Amanda hid her eyes against her daddy’s shirt while Teddy glanced, but only out of the corner of his eye.

  Ben said, “It’s God’s providence.” He looked at the scientists, “You folks could have just as well landed on this shore and been devoured instead.”

  Aaron quipped. “If we’d landed on this shore, we’d have been fricasseed like this infected bunch.”

  “Don’t doubt the way of the Lord, son. It were His hand that kept your helicopter from landing right on top of us. His hand that brought you to us to help guide the way. He has a purpose for us all.”

  Aaron smiled and cocked his head, pointing a finger into Ben’s chest, “Let’s just get something straight. It was you and your ilk that helped get us into this mess. Mumbo jumbo about demons and the devil, Armageddon and what not. It’s types like you that deny what’s right in front of your own eyes, keeping people ignorant, helping to spread this thing.”

  “Suit yourself, friend. But I think it’s you who are blind to your own good fortune.”

  “Friend? Listen, jackass, if the Lord wanted us home, we would have landed there safely last night and gotten back to work trying to find a cure for this thing.”

  Susan broke in. “All right, all right, enough! Concentrate on the task at hand. We survived this fire. These infected didn’t. That doesn’t mean others aren’t out there.” She gave Aaron an admonishing look and said, “Mr. Watson, please lead on.”

  Aaron let himself fall to the back of the group, muttering under his breath, “Merciful deity, my ass.”

  Ben took point followed by Tran. Nikki and Jon took up the rear; the more likely point of attack if they were followed. Both ends of their single file line were covered by their handful of weapons. They looked extraordinarily weak given the circumstances. They might as well have been a band of lost settlers in the middle of Apache territory. The depths of the foggy forest could be hiding dozens of eyes.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Traffic Team

  The CDC scientist’s absence was noticed immediately. No more than an hour after the loss of communication, Director Louis-Gelding was scrambling to put together a search mission. Her people, the six people on this earth with the key to a potential cure for this horror, were down in that hell somewhere with all of their samples and data with them.

  One helicopter was offered up for the mission. The major general leading the Northern Command could spare nothing more. He had other “immediate” issues taking priority over the “chance” of a cure. There was an invasion to still mount as well as numerous outbreaks within Canada to either contain or destroy. The armed services were already stretched beyond their ability to function efficiently.

  The slapped together SAR (search and rescue team) wasn’t military, not even paramilitary private contractors. They were a pair of civilian volunteers: Toronto’s most popular weather and traffic gal, Kelly Stormberg (originally Stromberg, but how could she resist?) aka - Kelly Storm and her pilot Samantha McNeil (a hotshot who had cut her teeth flying stunts for “Hollywood North” Vancouver). They had signed up for aerial reconnaissance work, tracking down concentrations of infected and were prepped for takeoff on yet another search and report mission, when a last minute order drafted them to go find some poor bastard eggheads who had lost their way.

  Defoliated by fire or not, Central Maine was a huge area of mostly forested land. Sam McNeil gave their odds at a million to one. Kelly was more of an optimist; she put it at half that. They had a general notion of the Black Hawk’s flight plan: pretty much a straight shot from The Vineyard to the big French-Canadian city, with a third of the flight taking place over the Atlantic. Assuming that the Black Hawk had made it to shore, the scientists would have crossed somewhere just south of Portland; approximately two hundred and fifty miles as the crow flies from Quebec. Their Eurocopter AStar had a range of five hundred and ninety-one miles; enough for the trip down and back with a little fuel to spare. They drew a grid on a map, with the idea of moving south to the sea and then turning back north to Quebec - like mowing a giant lawn in the sky. They’d have to land and refuel each time, but even with that, they could make five, maybe six trips in a fourteen-hour period, give or take. Thank God for long summer days. They were given seventy-two hours. After that they were to return to recon duty.

  Their bird was equipped with all of the latest gadgets. It could broadcast everything from major weather events, to tire factory fires, to multi-vehicle pileups and car chases. Prior to the pandemic, they figured they’d pretty much covered it all, even a stint in Alberta on Antelope migration back in ‘09.

  They had fully integrated, high-definition, gyro-stabilized, camera systems (front and tail), a customized aerial microwave antenna, infrared cameras, HD and SD monitors and digital scanners, even internally mounted talent cameras and lighting. The external cameras would be especially helpful; they arranged for their signal to broadcast back to the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) Quebec, where two young volunteers would sit and pore over the footage. This way, even if the two in the helicopter missed something, there would be two more pairs of eyes back home looking at every frame. One search helicopter would become the equivalent of perhaps two. It was that caveat that kept Director Louis-Gelding’s mouth shut rather than her demanding more and still getting nothing.

  A second mission to Florida was of course out of the question. They were on the eve of D-Day minus one. There would be no Ranger platoon with two Chinook helicopters available. If her people were alive, she had to find them. To her profound frustration, even drafting a fixed wing private pilot to pitch in was out of the question. All aviation fuel was directed to the war effort. Traffic Maven and Stunt Girl were it.

  Storm and McNeil would leave from the CDC headquarters itself and then vector south in the direction of Biddeford, Maine. The poor visibility that would normally keep another helicopter grounded was not a problem for their AStar. The infrared cameras would actually help them separate the wheat from the chaff as it were. Of course the freshly burned and burning forests would offer innumerable hot spots, but they would still be able to pick out human movement.

  To the weather woman and her pilot’s frustration, they picked up lots of human movement as they flew south. The massive bombing campaign had surely killed thousands of Fiends, probably tens of thousands, but what they observed below was truly disheartening. New England was still filled with infected. With the excepti
on of a distinctive arm wave or some other thinking man’s signal, there was no way to distinguish between a Fiend and the healthy. They saw no such signal.

  The eleven refugees found the initial going pretty easy. Once they had made their way along the shore to the boat launch ramp, it was a simple walk - to begin with; the dirt road was well maintained. But as they moved into denser woods the true value of burning the forests of New England became obvious; even the most basic path was littered with fallen trees, many of which were still smoldering despite a steady drizzle. The seven or eight hour walk seemed a fanciful concept as they skirted the debris, climbing over and under and working their way around while getting coated with damp charcoal and ash. This was looking like an epic walk for fifteen miles of progress. When they finally reached a paved road, the challenge became even greater; the fire had been so hot that it melted the asphalt. Fallen trees were glued to the ground and the terrain resembled hardened lava. To make matters worse, as the ground fog became even denser, their visibility was shortened to perhaps twenty-five yards. The dying forest dropped constant debris as weakened limbs and ashen leaves rained to the ground. Each sound was a jolt as the party reacted to the potential charge of voracious death. To top it off, they were all hungry, as expressed thoroughly by Amanda to her father, “Daddy. My tummy hurts and my legs are tired.”

  “I know Sweetie, but you have to keep being strong. Daddy will give you a piggyback in a little awhile.”

  Aaron quipped, “I’ll take a piggy back when you’re finished.”

  Everyone chuckled at this until Nikki spoke up. “Okay, folks. I know we’re all a bit punch-drunk, but let’s keep ourselves quiet and alert.”