Redaction: Extinction Level Event (Part I) (45 page)

“Kind of miss the old gal.” Private Robertson crossed his arms and stared across the empty field. The tattoo of a naked woman danced on his bicep.

David used his teeth to free the fork from its plastic shroud. “How come you’re not with the others?”

“Someone had to chauffeur the gimp around.” The private jerked his head to the Humvee at the front of the line of parked vehicles.

“You sure you didn’t stay behind so you could play with the Marine Corps computer?” David spat the thin plastic covering onto the ground then walked toward the Humvee. Marines lounged on the folded up tents stowed in the back of the trucks. A few of his men guarded the ranges and serving stations.

Robertson shook his head. “You know, Big D, no one sunbaths naked anymore.”

Christ, the visuals were that good? The Marines always got the fun stuff.

The private opened the door before crossing to the driver’s side.

David set the hot meal on his lap then cut it open and chased a pea around the makeshift bowl. “Any problems?”

“Yeah, but not like you’d think.” After starting the engine, Robertson shifted into gear and aimed the Humvee toward the exit.

Damn, get forty winks and he’d missed all the fun. Not that he didn’t know the President was going to speak. Spearing a piece of chicken and a dumpling blob, David waited a moment for it to cool down. “What did the President say?”

Robertson waved at the Marine motioning them forward with his SAW. “He spoke about a limited outbreak of plague and the continuing problem of the Ash Pneumonia. Then before he could fuck up any more shit, he collapsed.”

“The President collapsed?” David squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. Who wasn’t sick?

“Yeah. Coughed a lot, showed everyone the broken blood vessels in his eyes and then keeled over.” Robertson turned right onto the street. A news van pulled along the curb in front of the camp. “He’s not dead, but the word is it’s just a matter of time.”

The door to the van opened and the cameraman spilled out, aiming at the trucks. God only knew what the vultures wanted to misreport this time.

David stirred his food. Should he force down the rest? His stomach wasn’t trying to roust the current occupants, but that might change. He scooped up a carrot and tucked it into his mouth. He couldn’t do anything to help the politicos in Washington. “Anyone else come down sick?”

“The whole fucking world is coughing and shivering.” Robertson braked as they approached the freeway. “Last I heard, the Secretary of Education is about to be sworn in as temporary President. After that, I forget the order of succession but I think it’s the President’s dog.”

David drank the rest of his meal then dumped the plastic into the garbage bucket. It just didn’t seem real. Even through the Redaction, the government had kept pointing the finger of blame, kept going, kept being there. And now... He swallowed the lump in his throat. “And our men? Is anyone in our unit sick?”

“Nope.” Robertson eased onto the interstate on ramp. “No one can figure out why.”

“Thank God.” Although the why might be relevant. David shrugged it off. Maybe he should call Mavis? Check on her and Sunnie. God, the morphine had turned him into a pansy. The next time he saw her he was going to state his objectives and see how she reacted.

If this really was the end of the world, there was no point in wasting time.

And it certainly looked like the apocalypse. The road before them was empty. The same could not be said for North-bound traffic. Cars were bumper to bumper. Unfortunately, many in the queue had their doors open. Some were empty. Too many owners coughed as they trundled their belongings while wide-eyed children shuffled behind.

Here and there, a motorcycle weaved through the mass. Half a mile up the road, a truck pushed a Honda into a Toyota as it worked its way toward the shoulder. Sick people coughed in the packed bed.

“Poor bastards. They ran out of gas before they could get out of town.”

Poor bastards? They were going to make it nearly impossible for him and his men to evacuate the city. Of course, he hadn’t told anyone about the nuclear power plant ticking toward melt down. Towers of black smoke infiltrated the space between the skyscrapers of downtown Phoenix. “What’s burning?”

“The city. Thanks to the President’s announcement the good citizens are burning their trash, which then catches the houses on fire, which then catches their neighbor’s house on fire. Repeat until said neighborhood is charred rubble.

That sounded familiar. He cracked the window and strained his ears. No sirens. “How many units have responded?”

“None, Big D. There’s only five firemen in the state not sick and even if they could show up, most of the city doesn’t have any water on account of there being no one able to run the treatment plants.”

Shit. Shit. Shit! David shook his fist out, ignored the pain in the other. Did the nuclear facility’s cooling rods depend on city water? He licked his dry lips. “Any word on Mavis?”

Robertson gripped the steering wheel. “The Doc has a sore throat and a cough, plus a mild fever. She’s on antibiotics since the General had to fork over the last of the antivirals to our cowardly leaders.”

Thumbing his cell, David bounced his head against the headrest. He should call her? And say what? I want you. What would that accomplish? If Mavis had the influenza she was going to die and there wasn’t a damn thing he or his desires could do to stop it.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Mavis popped the lozenge in her mouth—the third in an hour. She’d have the trots if she kept this up, but she’d pay that price to douse the fire in her throat. Standing on her front porch, she watched Marines, Soldiers and Airmen unload their sick comrades from the trucks in the smoky haze.

All of them coughed.

All of them were infected.

It just didn’t make sense. She was missing something, something important. How could so many of them become infected in so short a period of time? She could see it if someone had pneumonic plague. One cough or sneeze would infect a tent full of men, but this...?

She compressed the cough drop wrapper into a tight ball.

And she still hadn’t found Patient Zero.

The infection had practically sprung up everywhere at once.

What had she overlooked? She coughed into a handkerchief as Captain Doom-and-Gloom lumbered up to her.

With his black hair and blue eyes, he’d be nice looking if he weren’t such a sourpuss. The creases on his Air Force ACUs were tucked in just so and his hat firmly on his head as he strode over to her. He ran his thumb over the bridge of his nose, no doubt checking to see if his mask was still in place. “We’ve got an unknown subject with what appears to be farm animals approaching from the west. What are your orders, Ma’am?”

Mavis blinked. Farm animals? Farm animals. Doh! The fresh milk her neighbors had talked about.

“Let them into the park.” She raised the handheld computer and indicated the green zone bisecting her neighborhood. “Post guards near the drainage ditches. I don’t want any coyotes munching on our livestock.”

Above the mask, Captain Doom-and-Gloom’s eyes narrowed so much they practically disappeared. “It would be better for my men to set up the tents in that area, Ma’am. Keep the sick away from the healthy.”

Mavis counted to three. This wasn’t her first picnic, yet the man acted like she’d never made a sandwich before. So different from David. David. She sighed. Lister had said he’d been grazed but that he’d recover. She turned her cell phone over and over. Should she call and check on him and... And what? Just because she thought they had something didn’t mean he reciprocated.

But the next time she laid eyes on the man, she’d definitely find out. One way or another.

Captain Doom-and-Gloom cleared his throat.

She swallowed. The pain caused by the simple act scattered thoughts of her army liaison. What had she and the Airmen been talking about? Two Marines carried an occupied litter into the house across the street. Right. Bivouacking the troops.

“You have neither the man power nor the equipment to level the ground to erect the tents. Plus, the sick should not be out in the cold when the homes have some semblance of heat and protection from the elements.”

The captain opened his mouth.

She raised a hand to forestall his arguments. “Furthermore, we’re going to have to bug out of the city in the next few days and there’s no point putting the tents up only to bring them down again.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Sequester the sick in this row of homes.” Angling the map so he could see it better, she pointed to the strip of houses running parallel to her street. “Use these five for the kitchen and mess halls.” She indicated the cul-de-sac that backed up to hers. “We need to consume the perishables first. Save the MREs for the trip out of town.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Doom and Gloom about-faced with military precision.

“Oh, Captain.” She waited until the airman stopped. “Send the farm animal lady to me, will you?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” He muttered something under his breath as he stalked away.

With her ears clogged, she couldn’t make out the words but it was definitely unflattering. Oh well, she was here to keep them alive so Sunnie had a chance to live.

She checked the handheld again and backed the map out until the interstate came into view. The screen blanked as the information updated in real-time from the satellites. When the images returned, the display was still the same. The roads out of town were jammed with cars that were out of gas and abandoned.

They needed a route from the city big enough to allow vehicles. A convoy of vehicles. Yet, gas was limited among the military as well. And the big vehicles didn’t get very many miles to the gallon. This meant they wouldn’t get very far.

Could they make it to Campe Verde? If so, they would be able to jog east and maybe make it to the Rim before the nuclear power plant melted down. Following the map north along the interstate, Mavis felt her heart sink at the packed column of cars. Even if they started clearing the vehicles now, they wouldn’t have a clear route for days, maybe even a week.

Shoving aside the abandoned cars and trucks would use up fuel they couldn’t afford to waste.

Mavis crunched on the lozenge and gasped at the explosion of eucalyptus essence. Shuddering, she swallowed the goo down.

“You wanted to see me?” The woman before her was dressed in a paisley blouse and worn, blue jeans. Scuff marks dulled the tips of her brown cowboy boots. In her arms, a baby goat fed from a pink bottle. With her elbow, she pushed up her floppy straw hat and peered at Mavis from behind wire sunglasses.

“Are you the...” Mavis groped for the woman’s name.
Nada
. The fever was a curtain rising and falling on her thoughts. “... the goat lady?”

“Yep. That’s me.” The kid goat tugged on the nipple until she tilted the bottle higher. “I’m the goat lady. I was told to bring them here for grazing.” She glanced over her shoulder. More servicemen and women crawled from the trucks to make their way to the abandoned houses. “Didn’t realize this was where the military had relocated to. The news just said they were abandoning their posts.”

Mavis closed her eyes for a moment. Crap! She’d forgotten the stupid media. Leave it to them get things wrong. No doubt a few good citizens were panicking and looting and... She shut the thought down. One thing at a time. Anything more and her head might explode.

“Say, are you okay?” Tucking the baby bottle under her chin, Goat Lady reached for Mavis’s forehead as if to take her temperature.

Mavis stepped back. “I’m sick, and you should be wearing a mask. Many of the soldiers have symptoms of Ash Pneumonia.”

Goat Lady shrugged. “I’ve been outside since the Redaction started. Haven’t gotten sick yet.” She juggled the baby goat in her arms. “Neither have my animals, but then again, I’ve been giving them antibiotics every day.”

Antibiotics only worked on bacteria. The influenza was caused by a virus. Not the same thing at all. Mavis shook her head. That didn’t matter right now. The animals were important, although her brain stuttered over the reason why. She coughed and her throat caught fire. She reached into her pocket for another lozenge. Empty. Darn it!

“What did you want to see me about?” Goat Lady adjusted her hold on the kid.

What indeed? Mavis cleared her throat, stoking the fire. After she found her missing thought, she’d go inside and make herself a cup of tea with honey. Then she’d write everything down on sticky notes and plaster them to her forehead so she didn’t have to depend on her brain.

“Dr. Spanner?” Goat Lady pushed the brim of her straw hat up again.

The kid goat eyed Mavis.

Why, by all that’s holy, had God given the creatures square pupils? It was downright spooky. She shook her head. “Animals.” Yes, that sounded right. That was what she wanted to talk about. “How many animals do you have left in your neighborhood?”

“Aside from my personal stock, there’s probably twenty or so horses that I’m taking care of, chickens, roosters and, of course, the peacocks. Not that I take care of them. Mean buggers. They can fend for themselves.”

“Horses?” That could be useful. They could pull wagons of people and supplies. No gas required. Hope rioted in Mavis’s gut. People didn’t need cars to cross the country. And the animals should be able to move faster than people walking, especially, if they were sick.

“Yes.” Goat Lady’s brow furrowed. “Twenty or so that I’m taking care of.” She repeated slowly. “There are more in the neighborhood, maybe another dozen or so. But their owners are still alive.”

“What about wagons?” Mavis licked her lips. She really needed a drink. Brandy in hot tea would quench the fire in her throat. Maybe she’d skip the tea and use the alcohol to combat the fever.

“I don’t think we have any wagons.” Goat Lady settled the kid over her shoulder. “But there are plenty of horse trailers.”

“There’s not enough gas or vehicles.” Mavis refused to be defeated. There was a solution somewhere. “We’re going to need the animals to help us evacuate.”