The Survivalist - 02 (30 page)

“President of . . . ?”

“You know . . . bum bum babum bum babum babum babum bum.”

“Was that supposed to be ‘Hail to the Chief’?” Tanner asked, laughing.

“You try it. It’s not that easy.”

“Wait, wait,” Ava said, holding up her hands. “Are you saying that you’re the daughter of the President of the United States?”

Samantha nodded. “You’d probably recognize me if I wasn’t so dirty. Before I met him, my mom made me take baths every day, sometimes twice.”

“My word,” said Father Paul, clapping his hands together. “Tanner, the Lord has really placed a great responsibility on your shoulders.”

“Father, you have no idea.”

“Hey, I got that!” Samantha said, pushing him lightly.

Tanner turned back to Ava.

“What do you think about the tracker? Can you remove it?”

“Well, sure.” She pinched the skin around it. “It’s just a subdermal implant. It wouldn’t take but a minute to remove.” She looked at Samantha. “What do you think? Should we take it out?”

Samantha wrung her hands together as she considered the question.

“Will it hurt?”

“Not much. I have a local anesthesia that I can give you. The shot will pinch a little, but only for a second. Then I’ll make a tiny cut, and it should pop right out. After that, I’ll use a drop of Dermabond to glue your skin back together.”

Samantha perked up. “No stitches?”

“I don’t think they’d be necessary. In a few weeks, you won’t even know it was ever there.”

“And you could do it? I mean, you have real credentials and all. You’re not a horse doctor or something?”

Ava laughed. “Do you want to see my license to practice medicine?”

Samantha thought about it for a moment before answering.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I think I would.”

Tanner felt powerful emotions stir as he turned up the dirt driveway to his cabin. He hadn’t been home since before his incarceration, and memories of times gone by with his ex-wife and son nearly overwhelmed him. Good times. Bad times. Life’s moments that were not to be forgotten.

He pulled through the metal gate and proceeded on up toward the cabin. The first thing he noticed was a bright red Hummer sitting out front. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if Mason might have returned from Glynco. Or perhaps someone else had discovered the cabin and taken refuge. He parked the Escalade about fifty yards away and grabbed his shotgun.

“Sit tight while I check it out.”

Samantha picked up her rifle, careful not to disturb the small bandage that Ava had put over the incision on her arm.

“I’ll come too,” she said.

“Suit yourself.”

They stepped out and slowly approached the cabin. It was dark, and there were no sounds of movement coming from inside. A large bloodstain covered the bottom stair of the porch.

“You circle right,” he whispered, “and I’ll go left.”

She nodded.

Tanner walked around the left side, peeking into the kitchen window as he passed. The cabin appeared to be empty. When he got to the back, he saw a large contraption consisting of a burn chamber, turbine, and a maze of metal piping. A thick bundle of electrical wires routed out one side and into the cabin’s junction box.

“That’s new,” he mumbled to himself.

Samantha tiptoed around the other corner, holding her rifle like Elmer Fudd out hunting wabbits.

“See anyone?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“All right then. Let’s go inside and get cleaned up.”

“I can hardly wait for a hot shower,” she said with a dreamy smile.

“Who said anything about hot?”

“You want us to take cold showers?”

“Not necessarily. But if you want it hot, we’ll have to fire up the burn box.”

“And what’s that exactly?”

He pointed to a large iron box built into the back of the cabin.

“We put wood in that box, and it heats water in the boiler.”

“Did you make that?”

“I did,” he said, swinging open the heavy door and looking inside.

“Can it heat the house too?”

Tanner was surprised by her question.

“Is there some sort of punch line coming?”

“What?” she said. “Can’t I be curious?”

He tilted his head, suspicious of her motives.

“The box,” he explained, “is surrounded by masonry that goes inside the cabin. The wood burns in the box, and the masonry warms up to radiate heat into the home. It basically acts as a kachelofen.”

“You made that word up,” she said, laughing.

“Call it a masonry heater if you want. The only difference is that I burn the wood out here rather than inside. It can heat the cabin for hours, and, like I said, it also provides heat to the boiler.”

“Which will give us hot showers.”

“Exactly.”

She eyed him with a new measure of respect.

“That’s pretty cool.”

“You want to go inside and rest while I get it ready?”

She shook her head.

“No, I can help.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Samantha?” he said, chuckling.

She shrugged. “I was just thinking that I should help out more. We’re a team, right?”

“Since the day we met.”

“That means that you’re depending on me as much as I’m depending on you. Besides,” she said, turning toward the woodpile, “it might be awhile before we get to my home. I don’t want you getting tired of me.”

“Too late,” he said, chuckling again. “I wake up every morning wondering if I should leave you somewhere.”

“No, you don’t,” she said. “Even with all your talk, I know that you love me.”

Tanner stood there for a moment, watching Samantha walk away with the rifle slung over her shoulder. He replayed the violence and struggles of the past days, the close calls they had shared, the fear and horror that had always brought them back together.

He didn’t have any idea what would happen next. The only thing he could say for sure was that she was absolutely right. He did love her.

CHAPTER

28

The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia, was a sprawling complex spread across nearly a full square mile. Before becoming a training center in 1970, it had been a Naval Air Station, and many of the buildings, hangers, and runways still looked the part. Since its inception, it had grown into a huge interagency training center for ninety different government agencies, including the US Marshals. The compound consisted of large office buildings, dormitories, shooting ranges, several driving tracks, and full-size mockups of homes and businesses that allowed realistic urban warfare training. Adjacent to the north side of the training center was the Brunswick Golden Isles Airport, which dated back to the 1940s when it had served as an operational base for blimps.

By the time Mason arrived at the main gate on FLETC Avenue, the sun was just beginning to dip behind the thick western tree line. The gate allowed for four lanes of traffic to enter and exit the facility and had a large guardhouse centered between the lanes. He pulled up to it and gave the horn a short honk. No one came out. He hadn’t really known what to expect, but he was hoping that the center had somehow survived the pandemic. Apparently, it had not. If they no longer maintained even basic perimeter security, it could only mean that the center had been evacuated.

He put the truck in park and stepped out. Bowie rested on the seat, looking out at him. He still seemed tired from his fight back in Allendale.

“Just take it easy,” he said. “You’re good.”

The dog yawned and laid its head back down.

Mason approached the guardhouse with a hand on his pistol.

“Deputy Marshal. Anyone in there?”

No one stepped out to challenge him.

The doors to the guardhouse were constructed of tinted bulletproof glass, and he couldn’t make out anything except the blurry shapes of furniture inside. He pulled on the handle and was surprised when the door swung open.

Inside, two men were lying on the floor. Unlike the countless decomposing corpses that now littered the planet, these men looked more like they were taking an afternoon siesta. He stepped in and let the door swing closed behind him. Neither man moved. Both wore black fatigues, bulletproof vests with US Marshal insignias, and gun belts with Glock 22s, handcuffs, and pepper spray. Wet stains covered the crotch area of each man, and the room stunk of urine and feces. The rest of the room looked completely undisturbed, with clipboards, radios, and pens all sitting ready to be used.

Mason stepped over the closest guard and squatted down to take a look. The man’s mouth was wide open, and his lips were blue, like someone had smothered him with a pillow. Both hands clutched at his throat. Rigor mortis had started to set in but hadn’t yet peaked, which meant that he’d been dead for less than twelve hours.

Using his thumb and forefinger, Mason pried open one of the man’s eyes. The pupil was constricted, and the white of the eye was laced with a cobweb of burst blood vessels. Asphyxiation appeared to be the likely cause of death, but what actually suffocated him was not obvious. The Superpox-99 virus certainly hadn’t killed these men. Nor were there any signs of forced entry or a violent struggle.

Mason rolled the man over, unhooked his bulletproof vest, and removed his gun belt. He did the same to the second man and carried all of the equipment to the door. When he stepped out, he was surprised to see Bowie standing a few feet away. He was resting weight on the injured leg, which Mason took to be a good sign. The dog was also no longer yawning or sleepy-eyed. His full attention seemed to be on their surroundings.

“You sense it, too. Something’s not right.”

The dog sniffed him a few times, as if detecting a new odor, and then went back and climbed into the truck. Mason followed after him. He stowed the gun belts and body armor in the back of the truck.

The bulletproof vests in particular would come in handy. It was only a matter of time before an enemy’s bullet found its mark. Wearing a vest could mean the difference between lying in a pool of blood or living to fight another day. They were a bit too hot and heavy to wear around the clock, but he could slip one on quickly enough before a gunfight. Using paracord, he thought he might even be able to string together a harness to protect Bowie. That, however, was a project for another day.

Looking over the top of the steering wheel into FLETC and then back at the guardhouse, Mason paused, unsure how to proceed. His inner voice warned him not to enter the facility, but raw curiosity beckoned him to go in and check it out.

He glanced at Bowie.

“We’ve come a long way. We should see this through, right?”

The dog sniffed him again and then sneezed violently, trying to clear the smell from its nose. Mason leaned down and smelled his shirt. He didn’t detect anything unusual. That wasn’t too surprising, given that a dog’s sense of smell could be up to ten million times more sensitive than a human’s. There was no way he would ever understand the world of odors in which Bowie lived. And that, he thought, might be as much a blessing as a limitation.

“Let’s go take a look,” he said, making up his mind. “I want to know just how bad this is.” He started the truck and proceeded slowly into the training center.

Glynco was a huge compound, but Mason figured that, if anyone were still alive, they would be at the Registration Center. The three-story building abutted a long row of dorms that would enable survivors to bunk within close proximity of one another. Fortunately, it was only about a quarter of a mile inside the main gate.

He slowly cruised past several unmarked cars, the radio antennas on their trunks giving away their use in law enforcement. The driver and front passenger doors of one of the cars hung open, and two men lay dead on the pavement. Both men had marshal badges hanging from chains around their necks. Mason eased up next to the bodies. Like the two guards, neither had any visible signs of injury. A large puddle of vomit sat beside the driver’s face, and both men’s clothes were soiled where they had lost control of their most basic bodily functions.

Mason continued on without getting out of his truck. As soon as he turned onto Registration Road, he was forced to brake to a stop. The road ahead had collapsed into a small crater, as if a sinkhole had opened up and swallowed a ten-foot section of the asphalt. There was no way to get the truck across or around it without taking the chance of becoming stuck.

He and Bowie both climbed out and cautiously approached the crater. All around the hole were small pieces of sheet metal panels and remnants of electronic assemblies. There was nothing at the bottom of the crater, except for a white cone with four brass plugs that had once held it to something larger.

He rubbed his chin and studied it. There was something familiar about the shape of the cone and the color of the paint, but it had been too long ago to pull from memory. Bowie walked around sniffing the pieces of metal housing, sneezing every few seconds as if he had suddenly developed an allergy to aluminum. Mason followed behind, finally reaching down and picking up a panel that had writing stamped on the inside. There were several block numbers that looked like some kind of serial number. They meant nothing to him. He flipped the panel over and saw a single word that caused the breath to catch in his throat.
Weteye
.