Caldera Book 2: Out Of The Fire

by Stallcup, Heath

  She watched the captain’s mouth move, but nothing came out. He slumped his shoulders and his hands came up to remove the helmet. “Sorry. We’ve been having trouble with the helmet coms since we got here.” She found herself staring up at the bluest eyes she had ever seen. He was a ruggedly handsome man, and not one she would consider a ‘science nerd’ as the colonel had warned her.

  Maggie cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “Your report, captain?” Her voice all business once more.

  “Ah, yes,” the captain said, turning to set his helmet aside. “Well, major, the preliminary subjects we’ve studied have all been deceased. As I’m sure you’re aware, the recon unit has done a remarkable job of tracking them down and bagging them, but unfortunately, they’re killing them all.” He frowned. “What I really need is to get my hands on a living, breathing specimen.”

  “That won’t happen, captain,” she stated unequivocally. “Our orders are quite clear.”

  Captain Andrews stared at her for a moment and she felt her insides quiver. It was as if he could see inside her and she didn’t like it. He leaned in close and lowered his voice. “That’s not entirely true, now is it, Major?”

  She took a half-step back and cocked her head slightly, measuring him. “What are you getting at, captain?”

  He cut a slight smile and nodded toward the Sheriff’s Department Mobile Unit, which had been cleaned out. “I mean that,” he said. “Aren’t we supposed to be using that for the colonel’s little special operation?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She put on her best poker face and looked him square in the eye.

  “Then I guess I better close my trap. If you’re not in on the game plan, then…” He turned and picked up his helmet again. “Best not say anything to the colonel about what I just mentioned. If you aren’t in the inner circle, then you might end up next to one of my specimens. Maybe a casualty of the operation?”

  She reached out and grabbed his arm. Hard. “Pretend for a moment you are supposed to know…” She began to twist his arm. Andrews tried to resist at first, but soon found his knees folding as she bent his arm behind his back. “If I find out from the colonel you aren’t in the inner circle, then rest assured, I’ll be back. And I’ll have a bullet with your name on it,” she whispered in his ear.

  Andrews hissed through gritted teeth. “Relax, major. We’re both on the same team here.” He slapped at her arm, effectively tapping out. She eased her grip on him and allowed him to regain his footing. “The colonel informed me of our real orders.” He stood and rubbed at his arm.

  “And?”

  “And like I said, I need living breathing subjects.” He glanced to the side to ensure nobody was within listening range. “We’re wanting to time the infection rate if we can, so if you can find any non-infected, that would be nice, too,” he added sarcastically.

  She tried to stifle her surprise. “You intend to infect them on purpose?”

  “Only in the name of science,” he argued, a smile crossing his face. “We need to know how fast the infection spreads if we hope to weaponize this thing.”

  “Shouldn’t that be done at a real laboratory and not here in the field?” She did her best to stifle her shock.

  “Yes, it should. But the orders already came down that there are to be no survivors. We can study this thing before it gets a chance to mutate,” he said emphatically. “All viruses mutate over time.”

  She looked at him cautiously. “So, this is a virus?”

  “Yes, of course it is.” He rubbed at his arm and gave her a dirty look. “It’s the one we’ve been playing with for nearly three years, but this…THIS, is the real thing. In its natural state. This is the untainted original, not some engineered shadow of the real thing.” He seemed nearly giddy. “No, this is a real Picasso, not some cheap art store print put in a gaudy frame.”

  She took another half-step back and stared at him. “You’ve seen this before?”

  Andrews nearly laughed. “Now who isn’t in the inner circle?” He shook his head and chuckled. “Of course I’ve seen this before! I’ve been working on perfecting it!” He tossed his hands out to the side to wave at all the activity going on. “This is all here for me! I’m the reason we’re here. This is my baby.”

  “You created this?”

  “What? No, I didn’t create this. Only nature could create something this perfect, this…this…pure,” he nearly whispered due to his perceived awe of the bug. “No, I found an article written by a couple of hack academics in some lame periodical about what they thought killed off Neanderthal man. We connected the dots, stole their research, stole some of the DNA, and, I’ll admit, the idea was brilliant, but the DNA was simply too old. It wasn’t truly viable anymore.” He sighed as he recounted the story. “Anyway, we went to work trying to repair the broken strands, and we were really this close to having it.

  “But now…NOW we have the real thing. This is the original in its purest form,” he declared. “How it survived all this time, I’ll never know.”

  “So, all of this is in order to weaponize the virus?”

  “What rock have you been living under?” He stared at her as though her nose had just fallen off. “What do you think we do at Ft. Collins?”

  She suddenly stiffened and stared blankly back at the man. “Frankly, captain, I don’t care what you do or where you do it at. I’m simply to take the report back to the colonel.”

  “Then go. I’ve got work to do.” He reached for his helmet again, then froze. “But tell your goons out in the woods to try to bring me a living, breathing specimen, please. Oh, and an uninfected specimen, too, if you please,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  Maggie didn’t stifle the shudder this time as she stepped away from the captain. She questioned her sanity and her judge of character as she marched away. How could she have ever looked at those dead eyes and ever found anything attractive about that man?

  Chapter 5

  “Okay, so the military are here, but it’s not a rescue,” Mitch reiterated. “They’re using helicopters, most likely with infra-red to track down ‘the infected,’ and then sending in ground troops to round them up?”

  Hatcher shook his head. “I don’t think they’re rounding up anybody with automatic weapons and night vision,” Hatcher replied softly. Both kids groaned and went limp as if the wind had been knocked from them.

  Candy dismounted and went to comfort Skeeter, but Buck seemed to shrink into the shadows farther behind Daniel. “There must be something we can do?” Candy said as she stroked Skeeter’s hair. “We have people out there, too.”

  “The colonel was quite clear. Anybody who wasn’t already back at the station and ready to be checked out by their medical personnel by the time they got here were to be written off,” Hatcher stated. Skeeter let out a small, muffled cry when he said that and buried her face into Candy’s chest. Hatcher gave them an exasperated look, but shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know how else to say it. “Look, just because he says that, doesn’t mean we can’t keep looking for—”

  “No,” Mitch interrupted. “They have hunters in the woods that will most likely be shooting anything that moves.” His eyes focused on something far off, his mind obviously hatching a plan. “I know from my own experience with those things that they’re burning hotter than normal people. Like they have fever or something.” He remembered the EMT’s comments when he found Darren. “They’ll light up real easy for the chopper boys to find, even in this dense foliage. It will be as simple as directing the ground crews to where the densest groups are, then they march in and clean them up.”

  Hatcher shook his head. “So what do we do?”

  Mitch shot him a serious stare. “We infiltrate the base, take the colonel and redirect traffic.”

  “Do what?” Hatcher wasn’t sure he heard him correctly.

  “We take over their command,” Mitch restated. “We don’t need a large force. A two- or t
hree-man team could easily slip in and take him. You said he took over your office, right?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And there’s a back door, right?”

  “I don’t have the keys anymore, Mitch. They took everything when they ran me through decontamination.”

  Mitch smiled. “Who needs a key? I ain’t met a lock yet I couldn’t pick.”

  Hatcher studied the large man sitting across from him and shook his finger at him. “What exactly did you do before you were a ranger?”

  Mitch smiled again. “I was a Ranger. Worked with SOG for a while before I decided to support the Arbor Society.”

  Hatcher’s brows knitted as his mind connected the dots. “You were military…” He finally figured it out.

  “Something like that,” Mitch said as he straddled his four-wheeler again. “We need to find a safe place to ditch Fisher and the kids.”

  Buck leaned off the side of the ATV. “No. I’m going with you.”

  Hatcher shook his head. “I don’t think so. This will be dangerous.”

  “I can help,” he argued. “I helped get Skeeter out of the woods!”

  “And you only wrecked one motorhome and a pickup doing it,” Skeeter joked. Buck shot her a withering look and she quickly ducked back behind Candy’s protective arm.

  “Look, I’m good with a crossbow, and it’s a quiet weapon. They’ll never hear me coming. I’m small and I’m fast,” Buck said.

  “I said ‘no’ and I meant it,” Hatcher said.

  Buck squared his shoulders and stuck out his chin. “You can’t stop me. I’m my own man. I can do what I want.” He pulled out his father’s 9mm and racked the slide.

  Hatcher quickly grabbed the weapon and pulled it from his grip. “First off, in this operation, I’m the senior officer. Second, I need you to stay behind and keep an eye on Fisher. He’s hurt and drugged up. The guy can’t even stay awake.” He pointed to the man drooling on himself and slowly sliding from the back of Candy’s ATV as she wasn’t there for him to lean on. Hatcher leaned in close and lowered his voice, “And third, I need you to keep an eye on the girl for us. Keep them both safe in case we don’t make it back. If those military creeps are out there hunting for anything that moves, I need you to have eyes in the back of your head.” He slowly handed the pistol back to Buck. “And be willing to take the first shot. Crossbow or pistol.” His eyes met Buck’s and there was a silent communion between the two.

  For the slightest of moments, Buck understood what Hatcher was truly asking him and he nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said solemnly. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do it.”

  “Kid, we all do things we don’t like,” Hatcher said, starting the ATV. “That’s what being a man is all about.”

  The group rode in silence as Hatcher directed them to a point close to the station. They ditched the ATVs in a thick stand of brush and laid Fisher out in a pile of leaves to sleep off the shot.

  “Remember, don’t shoot the pistol unless you have to, kid,” Mitch warned. “It will give away your location and they’ll be on you like ducks on a junebug.”

  Buck nodded even though he had no clue what Mitch meant by ‘ducks on a junebug.’ He wasn’t stupid and had seen enough movies to realize that if they stuck their heads out, they’d be easy to spot to anybody with night vision. He just prayed that the thick canopy of limbs overhead prevented the choppers from picking up their body heat.

  “If they get close, I’ll use the bow first,” he whispered.

  Hatcher patted his shoulder and whispered back, “Good luck, kid.”

  “Same to you guys,” Buck replied as Hatcher, Mitch, and Candy slipped along the tree line up the ridge.

  They followed the trees until they reached the top then belly crawled to the edge. Looking out over the compound, Mitch tapped Hatcher. “It will take a long time to get around all this.”

  “Any way through it all?” Hatcher asked.

  Candy pointed to the Mobile Unit. “They’re gutting the MU.”

  Mitch squinted against the slowly brightening sky and nodded. “Probably have plans for it,” he said. “Maybe if we can skirt down to the backside of it, we can use it as a block. Stay low and go tent to tent until we’re close to the station, then just bolt for the front doors?”

  “Full frontal assault?” Hatcher considered the idea. “Three against…how many?”

  Mitch shook his head. “Most aren’t even armed, buddy. My guess is the real threats are already in the woods.”

  “So, we have to hope that the few that are armed don’t notice us,” Hatcher said. “Sounds like a hell of a plan.”

  “It’s either that or spend the next hour and a half slinking through the woods, hoping we don’t bump into a kill squad, and praying we reach the back door,” Mitch countered.

  Hatcher sighed. “You were ex-military. Whatever you think gives us the best shot.”

  “If I had my way, we’d have a sniper up here on this ridge with a suppressed rifle covering our asses, but we don’t have that option.”

  “Whatever we do,” Candy piped in. “We better hurry. It’s starting to get light.”

  “Agreed,” Mitch said. He tapped Hatcher and pointed to the left. “That side. We’ll skirt along the trees, then slip down behind the Mobile Unit.”

  Mitch took off along the ridge, staying low and using the brush as cover. Hatcher and Candy fell in behind him and followed suit. When Mitch positioned himself behind the MU, he paused and studied the area. “Looks like the area is clear.”

  He slipped out from the brush, slid down the rocky hillside, and rolled along the ground until he was under the MU. Belly crawling to the edge, he scanned the area for any alarmed soldiers, then twisted and waved his arm for the others to follow. Hatcher shook his head and motioned for Candy to go next. She did her best to emulate Mitch’s movements, but landed square on her ass at the bottom of the rocky hill. Slightly stunned, she crawled on all fours until she, too, was under the MU trailer.

  Mitch continued to watch the area and whispered for her to motion to Hatcher. She leaned out the backside and waved for him. Hatcher fought the urge to yell, “Geronimo!” as he dove out of the bushes and slid down the rocky hill. He could feel the dirt and rock slide up his pants leg and could almost swear it was embedded in his shorts by the time he reached the bottom of the hill and he began to roll under the MU.

  As all three came together again and caught their breath, Mitch crawled to the rear of the MU and scanned the area again. The compound was nearly silent.

  “Let’s get ready to move,” he said. “The shortest distance to the station is to scoot to that big white tent, then the two shorter ones. After that, we can slip in beside the station and the maintenance building.”

  “There’s an alleyway behind the maintenance building,” Hatcher said. “It shouldn’t be locked, and we can reach the back of the station from there.”

  Mitch smiled and nodded. “Then that’s the goal,” he turned back to scan the area, “On my mark.”

  A figure in a white HAZMAT suit burst from the large white tent next to the MU and removed his helmet. “We got live ones coming in! Prepare the trailer!”

  Bill still carried the bloody tire iron in his hand as they walked up the paved road to Richard’s house. Richard held Jason’s hand the entire way while the youngster hummed to himself. On more than one occasion, Bill wanted to ask Jason not to hum from fear that it might attract more of the ‘zombie people,’ but he held his tongue. The kid seemed to have some kind of precognitive ability to know what was about to happen, and if he seemed to feel safe humming, then who was he to ask him to stop?

  Bill was feeling twice his age as Richard’s mailbox came into view. He knew that Richard must be feeling both physically and emotionally drained after everything he had been through this night. As the trio approached the driveway, Bill noticed the sky growing paler, and turned to look back at the horizon. Great, he thought, we’ll be driving right into the rising sun. />
  “Grandpa, I’m thirsty,” Jason said as they turned and started up the driveway.

  “I’ll get you a bottled water,” Richard replied absently as they trudged up the driveway.

  “And a Pop-Tart?”

  Richard nodded gently. “And a Pop-Tart.” As they reached the top of the hill, Richard fished in his pocket and handed Bill his keys. “Take your pick,” he muttered as he released Jason’s hand and went in the back door.

  Bill watched him a moment, unsure if the old man would actually return. He looked at the Buick SUV sitting in the driveway and turned to the garage. Lifting the door, he saw Richard’s pickup inside. It was a standard cab and both vehicles were two-wheel drive. Considering they would be traveling on paved roads and away from this mess, he figured the larger cabin of the Buick would be much more comfortable. Maybe they could take turns riding in back and catching a nap while they drove Jason home.

  Slipping in behind the wheel of the maroon Buick, he slipped the key into the ignition and turned it. It chimed at him and purred to life. The digital dash came on and he smiled at the site of the gas gauge. Three-quarters of a tank. They wouldn’t have to stop for gas anytime soon.

  Jason crawled into the back seat and had already buckled up. He stared at Bill who hiked a brow at him. “Are we going to hit any more ‘zombie mans’?”

  “Not if you keep your eyes on the road,” Jason said, his eyes never leaving Bill’s. Bill felt a cold chill run up his back, and he honestly didn’t think it was the air-conditioned leather seats.

  The passenger door opened and Richard got in. He handed Bill a bottle of water and handed Jason a box of graham crackers and a small ice chest. “There’s extra water in there, in case you want more later.”

  “Grandpa, these are cinnamon,” Jason said as he looked at the box.

  “Sorry, buddy. That’s all I could find.” Richard laid his head back and closed his eyes.

  Jason laid the box in the seat next to him and stared out the window. Bill studied the two of them and put his foot on the brake. “Are we ready?” he asked. Neither said anything as he pulled the shift lever into drive. “Let’s try this again.”