Redaction: Extinction Level Event (Part I) (50 page)

Latching onto the handles of the wheelchair, Manny slowed Henry’s descent.

Falcon and Papa Rose jogged by. “We’ll report back in thirty minutes. If you don’t hear from us in forty-five, you know we’ve found what we’re looking for.”

***

Manny huffed up the incline. His thighs burned and trembled. When did the valley get so many hills? With a grunt, he pushed Henry’s chair up the last bit and nearly cried at reaching level ground.

“If there hadn’t been so many cars, I would have been able to pick up some decent speed and that hill wouldn’t have been such a terror.” Henry wiped his arm across his forehead.

Gulping air through his mask, Manny fought the urge to rip off the stupid thing. Talking was beyond him. Doubling over at the waist, he clutched the pain in his side. Far behind him, a small crowd had gathered at the park near the rocky stream bed. More people funneled through the rows of cars and stumbled into the group. Rini waved from the middle of the mass, her white-blond hair snapping in the wind. Four men on horseback broke free of the group and galloped up the banks of the trickling river.

Falcon sprinted over, stopping by Henry’s chair. Sweat beaded the black man’s forehead. “The Mission looks deserted.”

A hundred feet away, Papa Rose lay on his belly. The muzzle of the rifle rested on a pile of discarded garbage and a plastic bag fluttered above his bald head.

Manny swallowed. The men must have had some military training to use rubbish as camouflage. No wonder the old man had given them the rifle.

Still breathing hard, Henry rolled forward until he reached the driveway. “Usually there are a few homeless hanging about.”

Manny groaned at the rock and asphalt parking lot. That was going to be a bitch to get Henry across. Near the long metal warehouse sat a dilapidated car slowly decomposing. The place did look deserted but he knew from first-hand experience that didn’t mean anything. Especially when the Aspero were about. Taking a deep breath, he grabbed the handles and pushed. The chair bumped over the hard packed ground. At least the wheels didn’t dig in and stick.

Just as he cleared the fence, a shot rang out.

“Shit!” Falcon dove for the refuse.

“The shooter is in the third window from the right!” Papa Rose shouted.

Manny skidded on the ash-covered rocks, landing hard on his butt with one foot under Henry’s chair. Crap. They had to get out of here. He yanked on the handles but they slipped out of his grip.

Henry rolled toward the building.

“Stay away from here! Do you hear me?” Another shot pierced the ground about two feet away from Henry. Rock rained against metal.

Manny scrambled to his feet. Hunched over, he darted after Henry. Didn’t the old man know that female gangbangers were just as dangerous as the men?

“Beth?” Still coasting toward the building, Henry shielded his eyes with one hand. “Beth Goodman? Is that you?”

“Mr. Henry?” The woman’s voice trembled.

Manny leapt forward, grabbing the back of the chair. Digging his heels in, he tried to stop Henry.

Hooves pounded behind him. Four horsemen thundered across the parking lot. Clouds of ash exploded in their wake. Riding low in the saddle, the people charged the building.

Manny felt his jaw drop open. Jesus Christ. People still rode like that?

“Yeah, it’s me.” Henry raised his hand. “Stand down everyone. I’m all right. We’ve come to check on you and your dad, Beth.”

The riders reined their animals to a stop in a plume of dust and ash. In one motion, they hit the ground and raised their rifles.

The door to the building slammed open.

In a blur of black fabric and white limbs, a girl raced outside. “Mr. Henry.” Her bare feet flew over the ground. Launching from the gravel parking lot, she threw herself onto the old man’s lap.

Her landing shoved the chair backward and Manny again fell on his behind. Rocks sifted through his fingers. He might as well stay here. The girl looked like she was about to settle in for a good cry. How they found the energy, he’d never know.

She wrapped her pale arms around Henry’s neck and buried her face. “I didn’t know what to do. Daddy’s dead.”

Manny squeezed his eyes tight. Images of his father crowded in, his usually healthy tan skin had a gray cast, illness hollowed out his cheeks and burst blood vessels had changed his eyes to red. Manny sucked in a ragged breath.

“Dead?” Henry stroked her dark hair. Red winked from the roots. “How?”

“The sickness. He died from it.” She raised her head. Snot glistened in silky strands from her nose. “So did practically everyone else. They’d been sick for days.”

Manny hissed. A bruise covered half her face and her lip was swollen.

Henry pinched her chin and angled it so he could see her better. “What happened to your face?”

“Some douche bag thought...” She shook her head. “He stabbed Gabriel. I think... I think he’s dead.”

Manny shivered. Not the Aspero. Somehow knowing that an ordinary person tried to rape her made it all worse. Shouldn’t disaster bring out the best in people? Make them stop killing and raping each other?

“Don’t worry. You’re safe with us.” Henry tucked her back under his chin. “We’re going to see the soldiers.”

“And my dad?” Her fingers clutched Henry’s flannel shirt.

“We’ll tell them where to find him. They’ll bury him with his followers. I think he’d like that.”

Manny climbed to his feet.

One of the horsemen cantered over to them.

He blinked as she pulled her blue mask down. Not a man, but a woman.

“Hey, Beth. Do you remember me?” The woman reached out to touch the girl but drew back her hand at the last minute. “I stopped by once a week to give your dad eggs.”

Beth pushed her dark hair out of her eyes and stared at the other woman. “Ms. Hernandez?”

“Yes, that’s right.” Ms. Hernandez extended her hand again. “Why don’t we go gather up some of your favorite belongings?”

“Oh.” Beth blinked, then took the proffered hand and climbed off of Henry. “Yes. Okay.”

Manny watched them leave while Cowboy walked up.

“They’re all dead. One was knifed in the chest. The others...”

“The Redaction?”

“Could be. The eyes are red, but it seems so fast. Most of them didn’t start coughing until three or four days ago. Now this...” Cowboy adjusted his facemask. “My wife and daughter started coughing the day before.”

Henry nodded. “We need to get to the soldiers. Fast.”

Manny swallowed hard. If this new Redaction killed in days, then most of those coughing would be dead soon.

Chapter Forty-One

David blew his nose into a napkin. Damn fires. Wadding up the paper, he stuffed it into his pocket along with the handful of others and watched the large bellied C-17 cargo plane taxi down the runway of Luke Air Force Base. The rows of grounded F-16 Raptors wavered in the hot exhaust. In the smoke clogged sky, he picked out the slim-lined Sentry ‘eye in the sky’ and its company of F-35 Lightning fighter jets circling the valley.

“You getting sick, Big D?” Standing on the tarmac beside him, Robertson leaned against the back of their empty supply truck.

“Sick of breathing in all this crap.” David shrugged. He knew better than to wave his hand. The smoke from the fires raging around the base interpreted the action as an invitation to invade his lungs. “Thought I was done with this shit when I left Iraq.”

Across the tarmac, Air Force ground crews in uniform waited for the cargo plane to get close enough to direct it to its appointed spot.

Robertson crossed his muscular arms across his chest. “This is worse than the fires in the Sandbox. Here we have to deal with Zipper-Suited-Sun-Gods on a daily basis.”

“The pilots aren’t too bad.” David rolled his shoulders inside his ACUs. Once he and his men loaded Monday’s delivery onto the trucks, he could take a drive to see Mavis. She’d sounded sick on the phone. That wasn’t allowed. He needed her alive, wanted her to stay alive.

“That’s cuz so many of them are sick in their beds.” Robertson shoved off the back of the truck and paced. “It’s weird, Big D. I think we’re the only group left that isn’t sick. And while my sparkling personality would explain why God spared me the uglies, I can’t account for the rest of you.”

Leave it to Robertson to make the Redaction’s return into an ego stroke. Still... The private had a point. One that had been bothering David for a day and a half. Should he mention it to Mavis? She might have an explanation. Then again... “Not everyone caught the Redaction at the same time.”

That could explain why his men remained healthy. For now. He checked the fit of his face mask.

“Maybe, but we could see the sickness moving through the base, tent by tent. People got sick practically overnight.” Robertson stopped pacing and threw open his arms. “This feels different.”

“People are recovering.” At least, that was the official word from the governor. Did he believe it? David wanted to. God knows he wanted to. But his gut remained in a hard knot. He pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and checked the readout.

No missed calls.

Robertson resumed his pacing. “Still no call from Wheelchair Henry?”

David strained to hear the words above the screaming engine of the cargo plane before stuffing the spongy orange plugs into his ears. Shaking his head, he dropped the phone in his pocket. In his last message, the old soldier had said they’d be heading for Mavis’s at first light. He hoped nothing had delayed their departure. According to the infrared maps, their neighborhood had been surrounded by fires at noon.

Gears groaned as the back of the plane opened. Ground crews streamed around the plane. Two Airmen driving forklifts shot out of the metal hangar.

David waited by his truck and felt his men gather behind him. At least this part was routine—unload the supplies from the plane and parcel them out for the week’s delivery. Since they wouldn’t be returning to their base camp, they’d commandeered space in Hangar Foxtrot to stage the rations.

With a handheld tablet in his hand, a pilot in orange earmuffs bounced down the cargo plane’s ramp. He paused at the bottom to bend over and cough before striding across the blacktop. The C-17’s engines whined then faded into silence.

Walking away from his men, David marched to meet him halfway. Despite the protection of the face masks, he wanted the sick airman away from his healthy soldiers. He was ten yards away when David noticed a jeep racing toward them. The weak afternoon light bounced off the brass on the men’s collars and hats.

Officers. David’s steps faltered. He recognized General Lister’s square jaw visible under his blue face mask. Despite being partially covered, the elongated face of the other man in the backseat must be the base’s commanding officer. Now what shit storm was headed his way?

David reached the pilot first and held out his hand for the tablet.

The airman held on to it while facing the incoming brass.

The Jeep screeched to a halt so close the engine heated David’s leg.

His attention shifted from the officers to the tightly packed cargo. Damn! The two were connected and his gut told him his rations were about to be confiscated.

Lister hopped over the side of the Jeep. With a predatory gait, the Marine marched around to meet David. The dark screen of the computer in his left hand reflected bursts of sunlight. “Sergeant Major Dawson. We would like a word with you.”

Luke Air Force Base’s commanding officer walked with the loose-hipped stride of crowned Zipper-suited-sun-god. He reached his subordinate and held out his hand, palm up. “I’ll take that, Captain.”

“Aye, Sir.” The airman handed over the tablet with the ration details to his superior officer before jogging back to his plane.

The base’s CO handed it to Lister.

Blue tinged the Marine’s features when he started the tablet. His steel gray eyebrows migrated up his forehead as he peered at David. “Tell me, Sergeant Major, do you believe this latest round of illnesses to be harmless or the beginning of something else?”

David eyed his superiors. Poker faces looked back at him. Sides were being drawn. His gut told him the military was about to take down the government for the survival of the people. He stifled the thought. No, not take down the government, take down the politicians. It was the people who were the government. Politicians had held themselves so far above the people that they might have been living in different plane of existence.

The two commanders remained still, predators waiting to strike.

Robertson’s laughter drifted on the smoke tainted air.

He owed to it his men and folks like Wheelchair Henry and Manny and the hundreds of thousand like them who were fighting for their survival to stand against a political agenda. The people were his real commanders. Those were the true America.

Not everyone would see it that way. God knew, Mavis had taken knocks for overreacting and panicking from the governor during her public address of reassurance and platitudes. David cleared his throat. If he sided with the losing team he’d be shot without a trail while the country remained under martial law.

Maybe even after.

He squared his shoulders. “I believe this is the beginning of the end of our way of life, possibly mankind.”

Lister smiled, deepening the grooves around his mouth. “Excellent! Because when those Jackasses woke up, they put the kibosh on supplying the evacuation routes.”

David eyed the pallets of Meals-Ready-to-Eat being unloaded from the cargo hold. “You want the rations.”

A statement not a question.

Lister nodded, turned the tablet around and flashed the screen at David. Triangles and dots marked the red paths snaking through Arizona and ending in the Southwest corner of Colorado. “Not all. Just most.”

“And the civilians?” He was disobeying orders for them too.

“The fire will work in our favor there. We’re relocating the civilians to Mavis’s neighborhood as well as fall back points in the East Valley. It will make it easier to evacuate everyone.” Lister called up a map of Mavis’s neighborhood. “We’ve created a fire break around the area as well as along the evac routes.”