Fulcrum: V Plague Book 12 (11 page)

A few minutes later we were seated on several large boulders
at the side of the road.  Dog had decided that Tiffany was his new friend
and sat at her feet with his chin in her lap as she ruffled his ears and talked
baby talk to him.  He has this uncanny ability to spot a dog person
immediately and uses it to his full advantage.

“The girls are all part of a softball team,” Caleb began
speaking.

Chelsea was squeezed close to her brother on the same
boulder.

“Are you from Vegas?”  Rachel asked.

“No ma’am.  Thousand Oaks.  Right outside of
LA.  Anyway, our Dad is the coach.  We were at this big tournament in
Albuquerque when the attacks happened.”

“Where’s your dad?”  I asked.

“Wasn’t with us.  He came down with the flu the night
before they were leaving and couldn’t make the trip.  I’ve been helping
him coach for years, so when he got sick, he asked me to drive the van and
coach the girls during the tournament.”

“How many girls?”  Rachel asked.

“Eleven,” Chelsea spoke up.

Caleb looked at her and nodded.

“Eleven girls on the team, plus me.  And two little
sisters tagged along to help with the equipment, water during the games, stuff
like that.”

“Fourteen of you?”  I asked.

Caleb and Chelsea both nodded.

“Tell me about the six that are missing.”

“We were on our way home from New Mexico after the
attacks.  Things were going crazy in Albuquerque.  Fortunately, I’d
filled up the van the day before when I made a run for water and snacks. 
We got the hell out of there, but heard that southern California had been
attacked.”

“How’d you wind up here?”  I asked.  “Vegas is
kind of out of the way if you were on I-40.”

He nodded.

“We made it to Kingman, Arizona, a little before the state
line.  The police had closed the freeway and were forcing everyone
off.  They said that the military was at the border to stop infected from
coming out of California.  We tried to get a motel room in Kingman, but
they were all full, so we just found a place on the edge of town.  All of
us slept in the van that night.

“The next day, we went into town for some food.  There
were mobs at every store, looting the shelves.  The cops weren’t anywhere
around.  Don’t know if they left, or were all at the roadblock, or
what.  People were shooting other people, setting buildings on fire and we
saw a couple of women get dragged away by groups of men.

“I figured it was a good idea to get the girls someplace
safer.  Saw a road sign for Vegas and thought a big city would be better
off.  You know.  More cops.  So we headed north.  Rolled
into town on fumes and it was worse than Kingman.  The strip was
burning.  People were going crazy.  I had to run down a guy that was
trying to take the van.  We made it out of town and up into the hills,
then ran out of gas.”

“How have you survived?”  Rachel asked.

“We didn’t eat for almost a week.  I’d just bought a
bunch of water for the tournament, and it was still in the van, so we had
that.  When we couldn’t stand it anymore, we walked down to town one
night.  There were still fires burning in the distance, but there’s a
sub-division at the bottom of the first hill. 

“There were lots of empty houses.  We broke in and
stole food.  Took as much as we could carry.  We go back when we
start running low, or if we need more water.  There’s still some gas
stations with bottled water.  Just gotta be careful an infected doesn’t
get you while you’re gathering supplies.”

“So how did the girls get taken?”  I asked.

“A few months after we started hiding in the hills, we
headed into town for supplies.  By this time there was nothing left but
infected, and we’d figured out how to get around them.  The males are
easy.  The women?  They’re dangerous as hell if you’re not really
careful.”

I nodded in agreement, encouraging him to continue.

“So we were in a new neighborhood.  The one we’d been
raiding was picked clean.  No food, or anything worth taking, was
left.  Anyway, we’d split up into a couple of groups so we could go
through the houses faster.  There were six girls that were kind of their
own little group inside the team, if you know what I mean. 

“They were trying to break into one house while the rest of
us were going through the kitchen in a little restaurant.  First, we heard
a bunch of vehicles coming.  We tried to get to our teammates, but there
were at least twenty men, and they all had guns.  They rounded up the
girls and loaded them in their trucks.

“I could hear them talking.  Bragging on a radio about
having captured a bunch of women.  They were kind of dressed like soldiers,
and one of the trucks was flying a big, black flag that said they were the
Nevada Militia.  Had a snake on it.  There was nothing we could do
other than watch them drive off with the girls.”

The pain and anger in Caleb’s voice were clear to
hear.  I didn’t blame him and was regretting not having put a bullet in
the heads of the militia members we’d captured.

“You didn’t have the rifles then?”  I asked.

“No,” he shook his head.  “We hadn’t even thought about
finding guns.  But after that, we found a police station.  Didn’t
even have to break in.  The doors were unlocked.  Found plenty of
guns and ammunition.  Took us a while to figure out how to load and use
them, but we’ve got it down, now.”

“What’s with the flashlights?”  I asked.

“We took radios from the police station, but the batteries
died pretty quick, and we didn’t have any way to charge them.  So Chelsea
came up with the idea of the lights.  Use Morse code to talk to each
other.”

I looked at Chelsea, and she smiled in embarrassment.

“Where’d you learn Morse code?”

“I’m kind of a geek,” she said, shrugging and looking
down.  “I’m a math major.  I saw a movie a few years ago where they
were using it and looked it up on the internet.  Learned it in an
afternoon.  Remembered it, and taught it to the others.”

“You learned Morse code in an afternoon?”  I asked,
more than a little surprised.

No, Morse code isn’t rocket science.  But to look it up
and learn it on your own, in a single afternoon, is pretty damn impressive.

“She’s a genius,” Caleb said when she didn’t answer. 
“Without her ideas, we’d either be dead or captured by now.”

I looked back at the young woman and for about the
thousandth time since the attacks, reminded myself to never underestimate
anyone. 

“I’ve seen this militia,” I said after a few moments of
silence.  “We had a chat with a few of them out in the desert. 
Earlier tonight, saw a whole bunch of them raiding the armory at an Air Force
Base.  They’re going to be well armed now.  And probably have night
vision and a few other things that will help them hunt you down.”

“I don’t think they know about us,” Caleb said.

“You don’t think the girls they captured told them?”

“I do!” 

Chelsea answered before her brother could speak.  He
looked at her for a moment before meeting my eyes and nodding agreement. 
I was glad to see these kids weren’t viewing the world through rose-colored
glasses.

“Can you get them back?”  Tiffany spoke for the first
time.

Dog had pulled his trick of slowly lying down while being
petted.  When his victim of choice leans down to keep rubbing him, he rolls
over and suckers them into scratching his belly.  Invariably, they wind up
seated on the ground next to him, and he’s on his back soaking up every ounce
of attention.  It had worked on Tiffany, who looked up at me from where she
was sitting in the dirt.

“There’s only four of us,” I said.

“Five!”  Rachel corrected me.

“OK.  Five,” I conceded.  “And there’s hundreds of
them.”

I kind of felt like a heel, making excuses.

“Why couldn’t the SEALs have found us?”  Tiffany
pouted.

“Young lady,” Rachel said, her tone stern.  “That man
right over there
is
a SEAL.  And that one’s a Ranger, and he’s a
Delta Force trooper.  And that one up there in the rocks?  He’s
Russian special forces.  This isn’t a video game or a movie.  This is
reality.  I’ve seen these guys do some absolutely amazing things, but you
don’t put four against four hundred.  That’s not how things work.”

I appreciated Rachel jumping to my defense, but it didn’t
make me feel any better.  Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that Sam was
close enough to have heard our conversation.  From the look on his face,
he wasn’t feeling any better about it than I was.

Tiffany didn’t flinch under Rachel’s glare, and I had to
give the girl credit.  She had some iron in her spine.  But then, these
kids had managed to survive all this time on their own.  You don’t do that
if you’re not made of some pretty stern stuff.

“Look,” I said, cutting off the retort that was about to
come out of Tiffany’s mouth.  “There’s bigger things going on in the world
than six girls captured by the militia.”

I held up my hand to forestall the angry protests that
started to come from all three kids.

“Let me finish.  I’m not saying those girls aren’t
important.  But, here’s the situation.  The world as you know it is
gone.  I know you’ve been pretty isolated, so you may not know what’s
happened over the past several months.

“The US is dead.  The whole world is dead, for that
matter.  All except for Australia.  The man who started this is
hiding out there, and I plan to do something about that.  First, I’ve got
to get to Mexico and try to rescue a downed pilot.  He’s adrift in the
Gulf of California right now and probably won’t survive another day if we don’t
get to him.  That’s where we’re headed.

“But, we’re coming back.  We have friends not too far
away that we have to pick up.  When the pilot is safe, and we get back,
I’ll do everything I can to rescue those girls.  You have my word.”

I stared into each of their eyes to see if what I’d said had
registered.

“Why not now?”  Tiffany asked, not willing to give up.

“How long ago were they taken?”  I asked.

They all thought about that for a minute, Chelsea finally
answering.

“Seventy-three days,” she said, surprising me that she was
so precise.

“Math major.  Remember?”  She grinned at my
expression.

“That’s a long time,” I said, turning to face Tiffany. 
“I understand how you feel, but two more days will almost certainly mean the
pilot will die.  Two more days after seventy-three for the girls? 
I’m sorry, but they’re going to have to wait.”

Tiffany glared back at me and started to open her mouth, but
Caleb reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder.

“Tiff.  I don’t like it either, but the man’s right.”

She stared at him for a long time, her hand never ceasing
its rubbing of Dog’s belly.  Finally, she looked down.  Her hair fell
and hid her face, but not before I saw a tear trickle down her cheek. 
After several quiet moments, Rachel stood and motioned at Caleb.

“I’m a doctor.  Let’s take a look at that arm. 
And is there anyone else that needs medical attention?”

Fifteen minutes later we were all crammed into the three
Humvees.  The kids were coming with us.  It had actually taken some
convincing, but not that much.  They were tired, hungry, dirty and
scared.  I wasn’t surprised that the final holdout was Tiffany. 
She’d moved away from the group and crossed her arms over her chest.

First Caleb, then Chelsea tried talking to her, but she was
having none of it.  They’d signaled the remaining girls who had come
running, but Tiffany wasn’t listening to any of them, either.  Finally,
Rachel walked over and put her arms around the girl, speaking softly to
her.  They stayed that way for several minutes.

“One of the girls the militia took is her sister,” Caleb
said to me in a quiet voice.

That explained a lot, but we didn’t have time.  I
wasn’t going to force Tiffany to come with us, but I also wasn’t going to stand
around in the middle of the Nevada desert with my thumb up my ass while people
tried to convince her.  We’d already lost too much time and needed to be
back on the road.  Finally, whatever Rachel said worked, and she escorted
the girl to our Hummer.

Now, as we drove down the backside of the mountains, our vehicle
was full.  Caleb and Tiffany, apparently a couple, had stayed together and
elected to ride with us.  Dog was thrilled, planting himself between them
and resting his head in the girl’s lap. 

Behind us, Long and Igor had Chelsea and another girl with
them, the remaining four riding with Sam.  With all the gear, food and
water we’d brought along it was a tight fit, but the kids were hungry and very
quickly started going through our supply of MREs.

None of us were much in the mood to talk, and it wasn’t long
before Dog’s snores turned contagious, and our two passengers were sound
asleep.  How they could sleep with Dog doing his best to imitate an
asthmatic steam engine, I’ll never know, but somehow they did.  Rachel
turned around in her seat to check them, then looked at me with a smile on her
face.

“How tired do you have to be to sleep through that?” 

She hooked her thumb at Dog.  I grinned and shook my
head.

“You think you’ll be able to get those girls back?” 
Rachel whispered some time later.

“Maybe,” I said after glancing in the back to make sure
everyone was still sleeping.  “But I doubt it.  Seventy-three days is
a long time.  And that’s just one thing that’s bothering me.  The
militia guy I interrogated said they’d only started coming out of their bunkers
a couple of weeks ago.  I’m pretty sure he was telling the truth. 
So… who really took those girls?”

“He could have been lying.”

“Sure, he could have.  But why?  Why lie about
something like that?  It doesn’t make sense.”

I shook my head.

“How many people did he say were in the militia?”

“Four hundred.  Why?”  I asked.

“Maybe they weren’t all in bunkers.  Maybe some of them
stayed above ground.  Or came out earlier than he knows about.”

I thought about that for a minute.  Rachel was right,
at least about the possibilities she had suggested. 

“We may have other problems, too,” I said.

“What?”

“The voice we heard on the radio.  Maybe that was the militia,
and the guy didn’t know about it.  Maybe not.  Then there were the
lights we saw up in the mountains not long after we left Groom Lake.  I’ve
got a bad feeling there’s a lot more going on here than we’ve realized.”

“Why here?  What’s special about this place?”

“Hot, dry and isolated.  Maybe the virus died out
quickly here, and there’s a whole lot more survivors out there than we thought.”

“What about where we’re going?  Arizona and
Mexico.  Just as hot and dry?”

I nodded, not liking what Rachel was thinking.  The
infected were bad enough.  We didn’t need a bunch of post-apocalyptic
assholes running around thinking they were some kind of end of the world
warrior like on a bad, made-for-TV movie.

We each lapsed into our own thoughts as I drove.  The
road curved gently, descending, then after twenty or so miles it dead-ended at
a T intersection.  I thought I knew which way to go but took half a minute
to double check the map.  It was a good thing I did.  I would have
turned in the wrong direction and wound up somewhere in the middle of nowhere
on the north side of Lake Mead. 

Heading the right way, the road narrowed as we moved through
some particularly rugged terrain.  On the right were steep, rocky
slopes.  To our left, I could see the dark, calm waters of the massive
lake through my night vision.  That was a good sign.  At least Hoover
Dam was still standing.

I had worried about the dam having failed.  Right off,
I couldn’t remember how much water it held back, but did know it was the
largest reservoir in the United States.  The bridge we needed to cross was
no more than a quarter of a mile downstream, and in the event of a failure at
the dam, there was no way it would survive the flood that would be released.

We followed this route for several miles until reaching US
Highway 93.  Now I was at least somewhat familiar with the area and didn’t
need to check the map to know which way to turn.  Of course, the road sign
pointing the way to Arizona didn’t hurt, either.

The highway was clear of any abandoned vehicles, and perhaps
that should have encouraged me.  It didn’t.  This was the only way
across the Colorado river for a very long way in either direction, and it
didn’t make sense to me why it wasn’t clogged up with cars and trucks.

Braking to a halt a few dozen yards short of the bridge, I
saw why.  It was gone.  A hundred feet out into the river gorge, the
bridge deck ended in a twisted mass of steel and concrete.  It had been
dropped into the river, 800 feet below.  This had probably been an effort
by the authorities to prevent the infected from easily crossing in large
numbers.  The road had been clear because there’d almost certainly been a
road block stopping traffic before it could even get close.

“What’s wrong?”  Caleb asked from the back seat.

He didn’t have the benefit of night vision and couldn’t see
what I was looking at.

“Bridge across the river is out,” I said.

“Are there other bridges to the south?”  Rachel asked.

“Yes, but they’re a long way, and if this one got destroyed,
they’re probably down too.”

“What do we do?”  Caleb asked.

“Try the dam,” I said, cranking the wheel and making a
U-turn.

We’d passed an access road for the Hoover Dam a couple of
miles back, and that might be our best option.

“What dam?”  Caleb asked.

I glanced in the mirror and sighed.  Almost said
something about the public school system he’d been educated in, but bit my
tongue.  It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t been taught some of the basics
about the very country where he’d been born.

“Hoover Dam,” I said patiently.  “It’s what creates Lake
Mead out of the Colorado River.  Built in the 1930s, if I remember right.”

“Oh, yeah.  I saw some signs for it when we were
driving up from Kingman.  I just figured it was an old monument or
something.  It’s still there?”  Caleb asked in surprise.

Rachel and I exchanged glances, then both of us shook our
heads.

“What?”  He asked, sounding slightly miffed.

I slowed and turned onto the access road, which at one time
was the only highway across the river as it wound along the top of the
dam.  Keeping my thoughts to myself, I drove slowly, glancing at the
mirror to make sure Sam and Long were staying close.

We passed several large signs that warned we were entering a
secure area where vehicles were subject to search.  Not a bad thing. 
I’m glad we never got to find out what a few hundred pounds of plastic
explosives in a terrorist’s truck would do if detonated on top of the dam.

Slowing more, I drove through a chain link gate that had
been violently ripped aside and torn from its hinges.  Around a sharp
curve, the road narrowed, and I stopped.  Just ahead, a jacked-up Chevy
pickup lay on its side, blocking the way.  Beyond, I could see where the
asphalt transitioned to the concrete road surface on top of the dam.

“Everyone stay put,” I said, opening my door.

Long, Sam and Igor didn’t need to be told to join me. 
As soon as I stepped out, their doors popped open.  The four of us spent a
couple of minutes scanning the surrounding canyon walls but didn’t see anything
of concern.  Igor used the thermal scope on the sniper rifle, and I waited
to get a final
all-clear
from him before turning my attention to the
crashed truck.

Walking closer, I could see the sheet metal was riddled with
bullet holes.  The glass was blown out of all the windows, and three of
the four tires were flat.  I leaned down and looked in the cab, spotting
two bodies.  I think they were both men but couldn’t tell for sure.  The
decomposition was significant.

“We can move it with my Hummer,” Sam said, standing next to
me.  “Got a winch on the front bumper.”

“Let’s take a walk and check the dam, first,” I said. 
“If it’s not passable, there’s no point in wasting time on it.”

I called to Igor and Long, telling them to stay with the
vehicles.  Moving around the truck, Sam and I spread apart, our rifles up
to our shoulders.  The first thing we encountered, no more than thirty
yards on, was a dual line of thick bollards that stuck up several feet from the
road’s surface.  These were just like the ones that had protected the
entrance to the lab in Los Alamos where I’d met Irina and Igor.

Sam walked up to one, which was nearly as thick as he was,
and placed his hand on the rounded top.  It was above his waist, and the
two rows of them effectively blocked any vehicle traffic from making it onto
the dam.

“Shit,” he said quietly.  “No way we’re moving these
things.”

I looked at him, remembering how Tech Sergeant Scott had
been able to lower them in Los Alamos.  They’re hydraulically controlled,
and he’d found a maintenance hatch where he could access the system and release
the pressure.  They’d retracted most of the way under their own weight, at
which point we’d been able to drive across them.

“Know anything about hydraulics?”  I asked Sam.

He looked at me, then turned back to look at the bollard he
was touching.  After a beat, he shook his head.

“No, but how complicated can it be?”

“Let’s check the dam,” I said, waving him forward.

We moved past the barricades and out onto the top of the
dam.  To our right was the downstream portion of Black Canyon.  Sheer
rock walls and 700 feet straight down to the river.  To our left, the
contained waters of Lake Mead.  I glanced at the lake as we walked, then
slowed and looked closer.  After a moment, I moved to the railing and
looked down the upstream side of the dam.

“Something wrong?”  Sam asked, coming over to stand
next to me.

“The water,” I said.  “It’s way too high.”

“How much too high?”

“Been here a few times,” I said.  “Never seen the water
even close to where we’re standing.  It was always at least 60 feet below
the top, usually more.  That’s what?  No more than 5 feet?”

Sam looked down and nodded agreement with my guess.

“OK, but what’s your point.”

“Don’t know that I’ve got one.  But think about
it.  If the lake is this full, probably because there’s been no one to
monitor and operate the spillways, that’s a hell of a lot of pressure on the
structure that it may not have been designed to hold.  Besides. 
We’re standing on almost one-hundred-year-old engineering.”

“You’re not giving me a warm fuzzy,” Sam said.  “Are
you saying we shouldn’t try to drive across?”

“No,” I shook my head.  “I’m saying we’d better get our
asses across before it fills up anymore.  If this dam goes, there won’t be
a bridge across the river left standing, even if there is one that didn’t get
blown.  And, I’m worried about coming back.”

“You’re just a cheery fucking soul, aren’t you,” he said
with a grin.

I shrugged my shoulders, and we walked the rest of the
roadway.  On the Arizona side, we found another set of bollards blocking
the way.  Taking a few minutes, we scanned the surrounding cliffs, then
turned and headed back to rejoin our group.

“So what do you want to do?”  Sam asked as we walked.

“The bollards aren’t part of the dam.  They’re in the
approaches.  They were added sometime after 9/11 happened.  That
means there’ll be maintenance hatches we can access without having to go inside
the dam.  We’re going to see what we can do to release them.”

Sam was starting to say something when we both froze as a deep,
mournful groan sounded from all around.  We looked down as vibrations
traveled from the concrete up through our boots.  It only lasted for a few
seconds, but it spooked the hell out of both of us. 

“Look at that,” Sam whispered, pointing at the water.

I turned and caught my breath.  The formerly calm
surface of the lake, where it met the dam, was distorted by millions of tiny
ripples.  It reminded me of how water looks when it vibrates in a sonic
cleaner.  This continued for almost half a minute, then quickly
dissipated, the water returning to a smooth, reflective surface.