Wincing at the pain that shot up from his wrist to his elbow, he levered himself up and pulled a mini-mag light from the cargo pocket of his pants. Switching it on
to see what he tripped over, he could see a blood wet, tousled mass of blond hair sticking out from the end of a sleeping bag. Crouching down next to the body, he pushed a glob of wet, stringy hair out of the way and felt for a pulse. Feeling a weak but steady beat, he started pulling more of the wads of stuck together hair apart as he searched for a wound. Finding a large crease in the scalp near the top of the skull, he grabbed a pack that was lying nearby and rummaged through it. Finding a pair of socks, he used them to apply pressure to the wound.
This caused his patient to shudder once and try to get up. Pushing down on his chest, Tick-Tock
told him to calm down as he rolled him onto his back and asked, “Are you hit anywhere else?”
“I can’t see,”
the man replied.
“That’s because you’ve got blood in your eyes,” Tick-Tock explained. “You got a cut on your scalp, and
wounds like that bleed like crazy. Anything else hurt?”
The man thought for a moment before saying,
“My ribs hurt something bad.”
Recognizing the man as one of the people he had trained, Tick-Tock
didn’t want to explain how he had run into him by accident, so he laughed and said, “That’s because I kicked you for being dumb enough to get shot in your sleep. Now reach up here and hold this tight until the bleeding stops completely. I’ve got to check on the others.”
***
Heather pulled the blanket up over the dead woman’s face before turning to Linda and saying, “She never had a chance. Two in the chest, one in the hip.” Looking at all the blood sprayed across the area, she added, “The one in the hip must have hit her femoral artery.”
Linda nodded and pointed to where
Steve crouched over another of the wounded as she said, “I think that’s the last of them, though.”
Looking around, Heather could see that of the
six people wounded in the cross-fire, all of them were being treated or had been covered with a blanket if medical aid was no longer an option.
Rising to her feet, she started to tell Linda that they would make one more circuit of the camp to
ensure everyone was accounted for. Before she could start off, though, a low, whining noise made her freeze. Twisting her head from side to side, she tried to determine from what direction the sound had come. She heard the noise repeated, this time joined by what sounded like a dozen more dead voices calling out for food.
Without hesitation, she echoed the orders
already being issued by Steve and Tick-Tock as they alerted to the sound of the dead, “Everyone grab your gear. If the wounded can walk, get them up. If they can’t, carry them. Grab all the weapons and ammunition of the three people that died. Move, move, move.”
CHAPTER NINE
Russellville, Arkansas:
When Cain brought him the news of their delay in moving the facility to Virginia, Professor Hawkins threw his coffee cup across the room to shatter against the wall.
“What are those idiots in D
.C. doing?” he asked venomously as his eyes darted over the shattered porcelain. “They promised that my Malectron would take priority over everything else.”
Cain
took a deep breath and said, “They told me that it has something to do with the electrical grid and the wiring. They don’t have enough power to keep your lab running.”
Trying to calm himself,
but not having any luck, Hawkins asked through gritted teeth, “So the free world has to wait for the fucking cable guy to show up?”
“It’s a little more complex than that,”
Cain explained.
“Complex
, my ass,” Hawkins retorted. “My Malectron is complex, the double helix is complex, but electrical wiring is simple. If the Joint Chiefs had half a brain between them, they would reroute all the power to my new facility and use slave labor to finish my lab so I can move in.”
At the words
‘slave labor’, an evil grin crossed Cain’s lips. He could think of quite a few people he would like to see breaking rocks until they dropped. He had hitched his wagon to Hawkins’ star, and that star was on a steady rise to the top, so it was only a matter of time until he was in a position where he could use his power. With glee, he knew that once there, he would run things the way they were supposed to be. Shaking off these thoughts, he tried to console Hawkins by saying, “It’s only a few days, Doctor.”
With a deep sigh, Hawkins said, “
I know, I know, but with only two working units, and one of them being used to keep the dead away from the camp. We’re so close that I worry something will happen. I want you to put someone we trust in the radio room. I want them listening to every incoming and outgoing communication. I also want to know the whereabouts of Cage and his sidekick. I don’t need them screwing anything up.”
Reaching out to pat Hawkins on the shoulder,
Cain said reassuringly, “Don’t worry, Doctor. As long as I’m around, you and the Malectron are safe.”
***
Major Jedidiah Cage finished reading a copy of the communique Fagan had taken from the radio room and breathed a sigh of relief. He was aware of the imminent departure of the people living in the farmhouse, but now it looked like they had a little time before they moved to Washington, D.C. Time was what they needed.
Shortly after returning
from Mount Nebo, he had gotten word that Hawkins and his people were being ordered to leave immediately for a facility near the capital. Once there, they could start wholesale construction of the Malectron. His first thought upon hearing this was to order his people to storm the farmhouse to keep them from going, but when this initial flash to use force abated, his rational mind took over as he realized that the only way to do this would be to find someone that was immune. He knew that if he tried to stop the Professor with force, it would be met by force from his guards, so that was out of the question. In addition, since the disappearance of Lieutenant Randal, they were obviously being watched, so sabotage was also out of the question. On top of that, they would be using helicopters from another base to move, so this threw a wrench in any plans of disabling their transport. Their only option was to find an alternative to the weapon that the government thought would be the final solution for the reanimated corpses walking the Earth by the hundreds of millions.
W
ith the departure of Hawkins and his people being held up by some kind of electrical glitch, this gave them some time to come up with a plan. They had to work out some way to slow down the doctor for at least a week, since this wasn’t the only good news they had received. There had also been word from General Eastridge about intercepted radio traffic between two groups of survivors.
O
ne of them claimed to have a person with them that was immune to the HWNW virus.
The only bad news of the day was that after the last intercept, all contact had been lost. The General had relayed that he had people listening for contact and that when it was
re-established, he would send two Blackhawk helicopters to bring them directly to the base outside of Russellville. Once here, Doctor Connors could study the patient to help determine a cure. More good news was that the group was located in southeast Texas, a short helicopter flight from their base.
Laying the
communique on his desk, Cage said, “This might be the break we’ve been looking for.”
Fagan nodded and said, “It buys us a couple of days, but if we do get someone here that’s immune, how long will it take Connors to come up with
a vaccine?”
“She told me she can have something in as little as twenty
-four hours,” Cage replied. “She said that she needs to isolate some kind of enzyme or bacteria or something in their spit, shit or blood that was corrupt in the first test subject.”
Fagan raised his eyebrows and asked, “Corrupt?”
Cage nodded and said, “The lady they’re working with used to drink heavily. She is immune to the virus, but because of her drinking they can’t find the right thing they need for a foolproof vaccine.”
Fagan looked wistfully at the ceiling as he said, “So
if drinking makes you immune, and with as much as I drink…”
Cage laughed and said, “I don’t think it works that way.”
Snapping to attention, Fagan said in a brisk manner, “To be on the safe side, sir, I think we need to have a few doses of that zombie-bite medicine you keep in your desk.”
Cage chuckled
as he shook his head. Looking at his friend with an amused expression, after a few seconds he opened a drawer and extracted a mason jar of clear fluid. Setting it on his desk, he asked with mock sincerity, “Do you really think it will help, Staff Sergeant?”
Coming
to parade rest, Fagan replied, “It can’t hurt, sir. And besides, we can’t do anything except sit here with our thumb up our ass until we hear from the General.”
Reaching back into the drawer, Cage retrieved t
wo jelly glasses as he said, “And I hope it’s soon.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Firebreak:
Steve Wendell crouched in the waist high grass of the firebreak as he watched the first rays of the sun filter through the trees on either side of him. In the gathering daylight, he could now see that the firebreak was also used as a right of way for power lines, the string of power poles holding their useless wires running off into the distance before disappearing into the morning mist. Laying his rifle across his thighs, he cupped his hands behind his ears and slowly twisted his head from side to side, listening for any trace of the group of dead that had been on their trail for most of the night. Hearing nothing, he felt relief that they had finally shook them. They had alternately used the firebreak and cut into the woods in their effort to lose the Zs, and it appeared to have worked. Looking down at himself, he saw he was a mess. Grasping his rifle in one hand, he used the other to try and brush away the chaff and dirt clinging to the front of his pants. With his jeans soaked from the dewy grass he had been wading through for the last few hours, it was hopeless.
Giving up, he checked his watch and saw that the ten
-minute break he had called was almost up. Now that it was light enough to see, they could send a scout ahead of them to check the area. In their flight from the camp, they’d had to trust in luck that they didn’t run into anything, but today it would be different. Today they would move cautiously, since while they could see the dead approaching in the light of day, the dead could also spot them.
Turning, Steve called out softly for Tick-Tock. The grass was so thick that even though his friend was only feet away, he was invisible.
“What’s up?” Tick-Tock asked.
“
Almost time to move,” Steve told him, then added, “We need to do a quick head count to make sure no one fell asleep and gets left behind.”
“I already did it,” Tick-Tock answered. “
We’ve got fourteen adults, one child and one dog. All bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
“You counted yourself as an adult?” Steve asked.
Tick-Tock chuckled and said, “I took some liberty in that.”
“How’s Denise
?” he asked.
“Groggy as hell
, but she’s hanging in there,” Tick-Tock told him. “We need to find a place to hole up for a little bit.”
Pulling out his map, Steve
studied it for a moment before saying, “We should be north of the lake by now, so unless the big group from the east radically changed direction, they should miss us. There’s another lake a few miles ahead of us and to the north with a small town and a marina on it.” Holding the map out so he could read the small print, he said, “Sam Rayburn resort. We could make it in a couple hours.”
Seeing him squint and try to focus, Tick-Tock asked, “
You getting old? They say the eyes are the first thing to go.”
“Getting old doesn’t worry me,” Steve replied as he folded the map. “
My hair starts falling out, they’ve got a pill for that. My energy gets low, they’ve got a pill for that. My dick stops working, they’ve got a pill for that. My worry is getting it bit off if I pop a Viagra.”
Tick-Tock laughed softly as Steve readied his M4 and
slowly rose until he could just see over the top of the river of grass. Turning in a full circle, he spotted nothing. Dropping down, he said, “We need to send a scout out ahead of us like we planned.”
“One of my people
already volunteered,” Tick-Tock replied.
“Good,” Steve said. “
Find another one to go with them. I was thinking that it might be a good idea for two people to be out front. That way, if they run into something and one of them gets fucked up, the other one can still come back and warn us. Get them started. We’ll give them a five-minute head start. As for the main group, I’ll take point, you take drag, and Heather can walk trail.”
“Good plan,” Tick-Tock said. “I like walking
right behind you.”