Plague Planet (The Wandering Engineer) (52 page)

Jerry made it back to Hazard near noon and told the authorities.
Coltrain shrugged it off. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Go rescue them!” Jerry said waving his hand. The sheriff snorted
and waved him away as if he was a child. Furious Jerry went in search of help
from other sources.

...*...*...*...*...

Nohar worked with the elephant gang and other Neo leaders to get
the Neo community organized. He was seriously tired of the self-pitying
attitude some were spouting though. “Mark my words, we'll be last to be treated
if there is even a cure. The humans won't care,” a Neolion with a purple mane
snarled.

“Irons will. I heard he's in charge,” Jerry said from behind them.

“Irons?” Nohar asked. He turned to the know it all chimp. The
little shit could be cocky but he was useful, both as a runner and occasional
assistant. He had a brain, unfortunately it lacked control of his mouth. “Fleet
admiral?”

“The very one,” the chimp replied with a grin. Nohar snorted.

“That one,” Rajar snorted. Ragnar the elephant blew a raspberry.

“He's good. If anyone can get us out of this it's him.”

“He's got Hank working with him,” Jerry said, shrugging. He like
all the other Neo's were stressed to the point that their fur was on end. Being
a chimp he was smaller than the other patrons of Kong's bar and grill.

“You heard that?” Rajar asked, eying the little runt.

Jerry waved a dismissive hand. “Nah man, I was in Sin City with
Hank. Hank and I made a drone to help out before heading here. Hank told me the
admiral made a replicator with Hank's replicator and some other stuff. Hank was
sent to Sin City with the drone pieces. We were sent back here but the buses
ran out of fuel. Hank and a team of doctors are stranded,” he said jerking his
thumb to the east.

“Shit.”

“Sergeant, can you lend a hand?” a voice sounded over the jukebox.
Everyone went quiet and turned in astonishment to the music machine.

“What the hell? That ain't ever done that before!” Kong growled,
raising a fist to the thing.

“Nah man, don't break it! Unplug it!” Jerry said, reaching for the
cord.

“Sergeant yellow tiger, we need you to report to the sheriff. We
need your help,” the voice said again. Nohar raised a hand as others looked to
him.

“Wait, I know that voice,” he said. Listening to it he realized it
was artificial, it lacked a moist organic sound. “You the admiral's AI?” he
asked.

“Sorry, you'll have to speak up or get close to this machine,”
Sprite replied. “Wait, accessing your implants. Go ahead.”

Nohar cleared his throat as he got up and came over. As he did he
felt his wireless implant tingle. After a moment words came onto his HUD. “Yes
sergeant, we need your help. Sorry for the intrusion but this is an emergency,”
Sprite reported. Quickly she dumped the summary onto his HUD.

Nohar waved Jerry away with an impatient hand as he scanned the
text. After a moment he grimly nodded. “What do you want us to do?”

“We need everyone to remain calm and remain in their homes. It's
imperative that we don't spread the pathogen.”

“Understood,” he grunted.

“What the hell? He's talking to himself now?” Jerry asked. Nohar
turned a glare on the chimp who reared back and pretended to zip his lips shut
and throw an imaginary key away.

“Sorry, motor mouth here, you were saying... um...”

“Lieutenant Commander Sprite Navy. I'm the admiral's adjunct I
guess you could say. We don't have a lot of time. I need you and any others to
aid in security and technical matters. Are there any healers or doctors
available?”

“A few Neo ones. Neos prefer their own,” Nohar growled. “Jerry
here was just telling us Hank and a bunch of doctors are stranded outside of
town.”

There was a long pause. “Lovely,” Sprite finally drawled. “To each
their own. Fine then. We need you to get the word out.”

Nohar nodded curtly. “Understood.”

“Report to the sheriff's office in one hour. We've got the first
shipment of medical supplies and materials coming in shortly. Spread the word.”

“I'll do that,” Nohar turned smartly as the AI clicked off.

Rajar and Jerry cleared their throats. “What's up?”

“Work. Trying to save the world,” Nohar growled, not even feeling
any trace of humor in that. The others looked at each other.

“That bad?”

“Bad enough.” He turned to the chimp. “Jerry you want to help get
fuel to Hank and lend a hand,” Nohar said, now all business. Jerry nodded,
reaching for a beer. “I mean now,” Nohar said, slitted eye catching the chimp's
gold eyes. Jerry gulped and then scurried off.

“What about me? I want to help uncle Nohar,” Rajar said raising a
hand paw.

“Fine,” Nohar said turning. “You all want to help get to security.
They need all the hands they got. But tell people to stay put. Only healers,
techs, and people who can keep order are to be on the street. They need to keep
people from running and spreading this crap.”

“Is it as bad as they are saying?” Kong asked, voice trembling.

Nohar turned to look at the silverback. “It's not good,” he
finally said after a long moment. “Not as bad as a lot of people are making
out, but not good. If we can keep calm they can work something up. Irons is
working on that with the doctors now. What we need is everyone to keep cool,”
he said, voice dropping into stern lines. He knew what the AI had meant about
keeping people from panicking. Unfortunately people were people, they were
sheep in a group. Even the gene engineered predators in this room.

“I'll help,” Rajar said again.

“Fine then. Follow my lead kid.”

...*...*...*...*...

Nohar arrived to chaos at the sheriff's office. Coltrain was still
trying to manage the evacuation of people to Sin City. But some like Nohar had
decided for whatever reason to stay behind, either because they refused to
leave their holdings, or to maintain order. People who stayed behind looked
like bandits with bandanas tied over their mouth and nose. Some soaked their
bandanas in alcohol but got dizzy and drunk from the fumes. Nohar got the
warning to Hodges and Coltrain about the shipment. Hodges grinned and organized
an unloading party.

...*...*...*...*...

The first flight from Landing arrived forty five minutes after
Sprite contacted Nohar. He heard it with his newly repaired enhanced hearing
before he saw it. Scanning the skies others took note of what he was doing and
then the sound. They too looked. A few pointed and cheered as the silver plane
came into view. It was a small plane, a copy of a Douglas DC-1. Do to the
extreme range the dual prop aircraft only carried fifteen hundred kilograms of
precious cargo.

The zeal to unload it took a sinister turn, only half of the
contents of the plane made it to the doctors and Hazard city hospital. Hodges
wrung his hands and cussed out Rosco for not putting more security on the
shipment and its' transfer. Rosco threw his hands up in the air and lamented
that had he known sooner he would have.

Doctor Asir the Hazard City General's chief medical officer had a
nurse swab the aircraft. When each swab was tested clean the refueled plane and
her pilots were allowed to return to Landing for a second shipment.

“And this time...” Hodges warned, waving a fist at Coltrain as the
aircraft took off.

“Yes, yes, make sure it gets into the right hands,” Rosco sighed.
“What do you want me to do? I can't be everywhere at once boss!” he said,
tired. Hodges glared at him and he flinched. “Oh, oh, don't look at me that
way, don't, don't you do that,” he said pointing a finger at the Commissioner.
Hodges had his bulldog expression on, a sure sign of his anger. Hodges however
knew the sheriff was being pulled in every direction and relented. But he
didn't let the sheriff eat or sleep, he pushed him back out his office door and
back onto the street.

...*...*...*...*...

A pair of black and a white gentlemen and their retinue arrived
from the south in a wagon selling snake oil. They promised a sure fire cure,
drawing dozens and then hundreds of people who had remained behind. Some
desperate and foolish people flocked to them, but when Doctor Asir the Hazard
city chief of surgery heard about it he came out of the hospital furious. He
ranted that they hadn't finished analyzing the pathogens and were a day or two
away from getting a vaccine. The outer edge of the mob heard this and turned
ugly.

Before he could do anything though the mob of people realized it
was all a hoax and had taken the law into their own hands. They formed a posse
to run the group to ground before they could get out of town, and then turned
into a lynch mob and hung the bastard, his 'cured' wife, and supporting cast.
Jackson and McCartney were hauled off struggling to the nearest tall oak.

...*...*...*...*...

Nohar watched as a yellow air bus landed near sunset. A white and
blue one landed behind it a few seconds later. The door to the first opened and
Hank got out and waved urgently to them from just inside the bus. Nohar trotted
over with Kong and others. “What the hell are you doing here? Aren't you
breaking quarantine you big blue fuzball?” Nohar asked.  Hank held up a finger
and then tossed him a cell. Nohar caught it and looked at it. “Cute. Again...”

Jerry caught his and then started mumbling about how cool it was.
His simian fingers started looking for ways to tear it apart. Hank took a small
crate of the cell phones out and set it down and then another crate that said
tower on it. “We need to set the tower up on the city water tower. It's old,
but it's the highest point in town,” Hank said.

“I know about cell phones Hank,” Nohar growled. “What gives?”

“We need Hodges,” Hank said as a second air bus landed. Nohar felt
his fur ruffle up as the vehicle's turbines kicked up the air and dirt. He
squinted with the others, instinctively crouching until the windstorm passed.
“Doc!” Hank said waving to the crew. Nohar turned and saw the air bus had
already opened up and was spilling people. All of them were in yellow pressure
suits. Yellow suits with black gloves and clear face masks.

“Hank...”

“Virology team,” Hank explained. “We've all been inoculated for
the current stuff going on.” He didn't mention the lingering crap they had yet
to find. Nor that the vaccines were for the native version of some of the
viruses... and not
all
of the viruses.

“Okay...”

“We're setting up shop here. We've got about a day before another
follow up team comes in. Maybe less. So we've got to get the equipment set up,
run power to them, and get people organized,” Hank explained. He sighed,
rubbing the small of his back. “Sorry, I've been in Sin City managing tech
stuff there and then this came through.”

“Irons?” Nohar asked.

Hank shook his head. “Actually Doc Richards. She wants Hazard as
the point of contact. We're the finger in the dike whatever that is. We're
supposed to find all the strains and make vaccines and transmit our data to
others who will also be making vaccines.”

Nohar grimaced. He'd heard that phrase about dikes, but not in
centuries. He'd had a dutch buddy in the war who loved to say crap like that.
“I get it. We're the tip of the spear. We're going to try to stand in the way
of the viruses and kill them.”

“Forward Recon I think Irons called it. Though he wanted us to do
this in Sin City. Sin City is nice and all, but doesn't have the airport and
industry Hazard has. It's all casinos and hotels.”

“Gotcha,” Nohar replied with a nod. He turned, people were milling
about in confusion. “Come on folks! Someone call Hodges, we need an empty
warehouse! Until then we'll put this in the bingo hall! Jerry, quit screwing
around with that thing and go find us a decent truck or two!”

“Yeah man,” Jerry said, still looking at the device. He turned and
bumbled into Kong before he put a hand up to ward off other obstacles. He
didn't look up, but he did mumble an apology as he went on his way. Kong
snorted as the chimp left.

“What do you want from me?” The silverback asked.

“We need the bar. I need the stuff in my room. If those damn
otters didn't steal everything,” Hank replied.

“I'll see what I can do.”

“And we need help unloading. We left the pallet jack in Sin City
to pack everything in.”

“Sure. Stereotypical bull, all the big ape can do is do heavy
lifting,” Kong muttered, reaching into the bus for a load.

...*...*...*...*...

Hank called in to Landing an hour after they were set up. “We made
it,” he said tiredly.

“Good for you,” Helen replied. “Took you long enough,” she said.

“Don't get me started,” the Neolion growled.

“Must have been an adventure.”

“Yeah, you could say that,” he replied.

He opened his mouth to fill her in but she sighed. “But I've got
to go. Glad you're up and running. Get to work,” she said. “Break time is
over,” she said hanging up.