A Time to Die (3 page)

Chapter 3

Tuesday, April 10

Andrew sipped a canned sweet tea and watched as the Skycatcher came around on final approach two miles from the airport. This was one of his advanced students and he’d advised against the man taking his final solo today. There was a seventeen knot crosswind and the temperature was hovering around ninety. Not ideal flying weather. The wind was from a storm blowing in from the west that threatened to bring hail and probably a lot of sand out of western Texas as well. The man had been recalcitrant. He wanted his license and didn’t want to wait any longer. The conditions were borderline, so Andrew signed off and up he went.

He’d made his two previous approaches perfectly, and this was the last one. If he brought this one in, he was home free. Now the wind was picking up another notch and Andrew eyed the radio on the patio table, half expecting him to call in for advice. He’d been a capable student but leaned towards uncertainty and indecision in difficult situations.

The chirp of his smartphone made him jump slightly in surprise. Aside from his mother, who rarely called because she hated ‘those damn cell things’, and an ex-girlfriend who’d last called to tell him she was getting married, there was only one person who’d be calling. He glanced up at his student’s approach, decided he had a minute and snatched the device from its belt holster and flipped up the cover.

As he’d hoped, there was an email from his commanding officer. He was to report for a readiness assessment at the base on Thursday, April 11th. A posting was being held open for him in the wings CAS unit currently stationed in Riyadh airbase. If all went well, he’d be on a transport to the sandbox in seventy-two hours. His heart was racing and he felt light headed. Back in the cockpit again after all these months? He was so caught off guard that when he remembered what he was supposed to be doing, his student was taxiing towards the hangars, having already landed safely.

His fellow ex-military buddies took him out to dinner that night, all toasting his good fortune and seeing if they could get him drunk. With a fitness evaluation in only two days, Andrew kept it to three beers for the entire night. The next morning he was in his skivvies doing calisthenics for a bored army physical therapy specialist and answer inane questions like “Do you ever wish you hadn't been wounded?”

“No shit, Doc,” was the answer he wanted to give, “I wish at least twice a day that some damn eighteen year old kid hadn't crushed my leg with a JDAM.” Instead he shrugged before he spoke. “What happens is often outside of our control.”

The doctor nodded and made a note. “Ever think about ending it?”

“Never.” The doctor regarded him with his dark eyes and Andrew stared right back. That thought had never entered his mind, even as he lay in the hospital bed and a German doctor was telling him he'd lose his leg.

The questions went on as a nurse came in and Andrew went through the grinder. Up and down steps for ten minutes as fast as he could. Jumping jacks. Lifting a ten kilo weight from the floor and putting in on a table as many times as he could in five minutes. After, as he sweated and controlled his breathing, they removed his prosthetic and examined the stump.

“A little irritation,” the doctor noted and typed on his tablet.

“Almost gone now,” Andrew admitted. The doctor gave him 'The Eye' once more but Andrew stood his ground.

“Okay,” he said and typed. Andrew tried not to sweat any more. Hey, it's only your life, right flyboy?

An hour later he was buttoning up his shirt in the examination as the doctor walked by to attend another patient. Andrew knew better but he spoke up anyway. “So, Doc, did I pass?”

“You'll hear by tonight, Lieutenant,” the doctor said without stopping.

A cute redhead nurse came in a minute later to pick up one of the testing instruments. She saw the frustrated look on his face and paused for a minute then caught his eye. He looked up and she winked. Andrew drove back to his apartment and started to pack.

* * *

The clerk glanced at his watch, only fifteen minutes to closing. Outside San Antonio, the life in a big-box store could often be crazy on a Tuesday, and he had no idea why. The other clerks all claimed Sundays were the worst, but many of them didn't work Tuesday. He hated Tuesdays. This one, though, looked to be ending on a high note. Then the clerk spotted 'him'.

The guy was a nondescript white dude, in his late forties, wearing his typical faded blue jeans and camo pattern tee-shirt. He cleared the door ten minutes before it was to be locked, and he had a massive list dangling from one hand. And he was a regular. “Fuck.”

Vance caught the look from the clerk as he stopped to orient himself in the discount store and smirked to himself. He always did his bulk item shopping on Tuesday because the coupons came in the mail on that day.

A few minutes later, two shopping carts in tow, Vance was in the bulk commodities isle and had his list in one hand as he moved down the row. Beans, he’d circled on the list, kidney beans were on sale and he possessed two combinable coupons. He stopped to scowl at the stock, there were only forty five-pound bags left on the shelf. With a sweep of the arm, they went into the first cart and he quickly moved on.

The clerk glanced at his watch again, forty minutes later (half an hour after closing) as Vance deftly maneuvered his two carts up with a smile. The manager spotted his arrival from the office and came out to assist. “Afternoon Mr. Cartwright,” he smiled.

“And to you too, Mr. Owens.” Vance liked the older man, he ran a good store. He only wished the guy would hire more amiable cashiers. The young man glared at him as Vance began unloading his heavily laden carts.

Twenty minutes into ringing up the load and scanning coupons, curiosity got the better of the kid. “What do you do with all of this stuff, anyway?” The store manager grinned as he placed a huge bag of rice into an empty cart. He knew what was coming.

“Tee-aught-wawki!”

“Huh?”

“T-E-O-T-W-A-W-K-I,” Vance spelled out the acronym. “Stands for the end of the world as we know it.” Another blank look. “The government is conspiring with foreign mega-corporations to strangle our food supply and kill 99% percent of all humans on the planet.” The kids look turned from confused to bemused, then horrified.

“Oh, man, really?!”

“Without a doubt,” Vance says and fished in his pocket for a card. On it was printed an endorsement to support Ron Paul for president, and a number of internet links that would educate the kid. The store manager just chuckled and kept the goods moving. He'd taken a card that first day Vance came in during an After-Christmas sale. Within a few minutes of checking links he'd realized the 'prepper' was as crazy as a loon. But his money was just as green as any other big customer’s, so he made sure to stay open for him whenever he showed up.

Vance whistled as he loaded his ten year old Jeep Grand Cherokee, emptied of most of the usual accoutrements of his lifestyle just for this trip. The clerk was finishing locking the door and trying to not glare at Vance as he grumbled and headed for his car, a full hour after closing time.

The drive out of suburban San Antonio in the early spring evening was enjoyable. The weather was clear and the temp under eighty degrees. Vance had a well-played cassette of Boston, Don't Look Back playing on the venerable Jeep's stereo and the back of the car was stuffed full of what he estimated to be three months’ supplies.

The sun was getting low to the horizon when he glided down the exit off Hwy 90 just west of Hondo. Another twenty minutes brought him to within view of Flag Mountain off State Road 462, he turned into an unmarked dirt road. His retreat driveway.

The cabin had been originally built in the 1930s. Abandoned in the 1960s, his father had bought it for next to nothing in 1982. Over the intervening decade the elder Cartwright spent many weekends restoring, upgrading, and loving the four room, seven hundred square foot cabin. The three hundred surrounding acres were partially wooded and teamed with wildlife. However, just as he was finishing his restoration, Vance's father had succumbed to a sudden heart-attack. His mother had left years ago, so Vance inherited the cabin.

Vance had left Texas and made a success of himself by selling software in California, but when he sold the company five years ago he found himself back in Texas, and began spending way too much time on the internet. A few conspiracy theories later, and he was a born-again doomsday prepper.

Now, five years later, and considerably poorer than when he started, Vance had recruited a small number of like-minded families, expanded his once small cabin, and stocked it with everything he would need to survive the end of the world, as he knew it anyway.

He gave a little honk as he pulled into the covered space next to the cabin. Lexus, his five year-old Doberman/Shepherd mix came running from the woods, tail wagging and tongue lolling. “Hey girl,” he said as he climbed out and got a face licking for his effort. “You ever catch that rabbit?” Lexus didn't have anything to say, and promptly went running off again.

“How'd the sale go?” asked a familiar voice from the cabin door. Ann stood there with a coffee cup in one hand and brushing her long red hair from her face with the other.

“Good, you ready to help with the unload?”

“Tim and Nicole will be here in an hour,” she reminded him, “be easier with four hands.”

“True,” he agreed and shrugged, “got any more of that joe?”

“Sure thing, sailor.”

The trees shaded the cabin well and the coffee was good, as usual. In the years Ann had shared the cabin with him, they'd grown into something more than friends, but less than husband and wife. He'd been within an inch of asking her to marry him more than once, but something always stopped him. Maybe his own short marriage twenty years ago, or her long but equally doomed one that ended just before they met. She was a longtime friend of the Prices (Tim & Nicole) and that had led them to introduce her. Along with Lisa and Brad Hopkins, they finished up the group he'd built around The Retreat.

“I love coming up here,” Ann said as she sipped her coffee and watched Lexus sniffing around a tree a hundred yards away.

“You should stay more often,” Vance suggested. Was this one of those times when he'd almost ask, only to lose his will at the last moment. He pretended to study the bottom of the heavy ceramic mug through the dark brown liquid.

“I'd like that,” she said. Something more was unsaid there and Lance looked up. Sure enough, she was staring at him. He lifted and eyebrow in an unspoken question. She opened her mouth to speak, but took another drink of coffee. To his surprise, a tear formed in the corner of her eye.

“Shit,” he said and moved closer. “I'm sorry I never… you know…”

“It's not that,” she sniffed. “I mean, sure, I'd like to be an honest girl... it's just...”

“What then?”

She pushed the coffee mug away and looked him in the eye. Something said 'uh oh,' in the back of his mind just before she spoke. “I'm late.”

A part of his mind laughed. No, you were right on time for a change. Another part recoiled in instant horror. The confused look on his face must have been obvious because Ann reached into her pocket and produced a tiny plastic appliance and slid it across to him. On its side was a little window where a red “+” was clearly visible.

“Oh,” he said, and promptly fainted.

Chapter 4

Wednesday, April 11

Lisha watched the wind and rain lash at the window pane and tried to concentrate. The rocking of the converted oil rig didn't help her attempt to get some work done. The early April gale was only a Category Two in the Saffir-Simpson scale, or so said the crew. To her, born and raised in New York's Bronx, it was damn near the end of the world!

“Just a little storm, Dr. Breda,” a lilting feminine voice laughed from the corner of the lab. Lisha glanced over to where Assa, her young Irish redheaded lab assistant, worked away on the spectrograph, one ear sporting a compact Bluetooth set that no doubt pumped non-stop techno music.

“Little storm to you maybe,” Lisha grumbled and popped another anti-nausea pill before turning back to her computer, “crazy Scottish bitch.”

“Crazy Irish bitch!” Assa reminded her. Of course Lisha knew where she was from, it was part of their banter. “The sequencer finished its run.”

“Thanks,” she replied to her assistant and checked the computer. Once she'd returned from New Mexico she'd turned over the samples of the unusual fox to another team and went back to work on The Project. However, now she was seeing the first results from the bio-genetic workups come onto her large plasma displays and it made her lean in closer. “What the hell,” she mumbled as she looked at the genetic sequencing.

“Problem, Boss?”

“The protein sequences are all messed up.” Assa was there in a moment looking over her shoulder. The small girl pushed her mop of red hair back over one shoulder as she read the data and nodded. “Polluted, is all I can think.”

“Look at this,” Assa said and pointed over Lisha's shoulder, “and there.”

“I know, it's very unusual.” She sighed and leaned back, scratching her chin unconsciously. It would take days to order another sample be prepared and run. And budget constraints were already bad enough on The Project. After that expose last month, a lot of their Euro funding had dried up. A new super race, indeed. Idiots. She was about to order it to be run again when her phone rang. Assa went back to her work and Lisha picked up the receiver. As her luck, or lack of it would be, it was one of the directors calling from San Diego.

An hour later she hung up, her ear sore from all the time holding the handset and listening to him complain about her leaving the site for a week and how far behind schedule they were.

“There is no such thing as a schedule for what we are doing,” she tried to remind the annoyed idealist, who proceeded to soldier on with his complaints regardless of what she said. So in the end Lisha sat and endured the verbal assault, assuring the director that they would continue to make progress as quickly as possible. She also tossed in how the trip to New Mexico would garner some positive press from the university department she'd visited. She didn't think he was convinced, but he was eventually placated, and she was allowed to get back to work.

It was two hours past dinner when a lab technician came in and asked her what she wanted to do with the fox samples. “Do you have the ones I just saw the results on? Sorry, I forget your name?”

“Grant Porter,” he said with a shrug. “Here are the results. I was going to toss them in the burner before cutting out for the day.”

“Can I see them?” She followed him back to the prep area of the lab and he removed three glass slides from a container marked with red tape and the writing 'contaminated'. She put on a pair of nitrite gloves and examined them. The microscopically thin slice of animal flesh was visible, dyed a shade of green. “You using a new dye?”

Grant glanced at the supply shelf then shook his head. “Nope, same stuff for years.”

“Then why is the sample green?”

The man opened his mouth to comment, and then shut it and cocked his head. “You know, I really don't know!” He picked up one of the other two samples, also both a nearly bright shade of green. “All I can guess is there was some sort of a reaction to the reagents.”

“But why not those samples?” Lisha asked and gestured to another rack of slides on a nearby counter. They were all the normal color tint to them.

“I’ll run some tests and see what I can figure out.” Lisha nodded and returned to her work. Grant picked up a green tinted sample slide and eyed it suspiciously. He reached for another sample without looking and suddenly jerked back his hand with a hiss. He’d caught the corner of the slide, and of course wasn’t wearing his nitrite gloves outside of the lab. “Damn it,” he said and squeezed a drop of blood from the nick. He grabbed a bottle of hand sanitizer off the shelf and spread a liberal amount of it on the wound, ignoring the flash of burning pain from the alcohol based goo. Wiping it clean on a paper towel, he tossed it in the flash burner and headed back to his lab, the incident forgotten.

* * *

Lisha didn’t know why she got up in the middle of the night. She’d worked fourteen hours in the lab crunched genome numbers and running simulations, the last thing she needed was to be up at three A.M. staring at her dimly lit compartment roof and wondering why she was awake at all.

“Might as well go to the bathroom,” she mumbled to the darkness. A minute later she had her robe wrapped around her and was stumbling out into the corridor and trying to remember if the head was to the left, or the right.

A muffled cry rang out from her left. Lisha rubbed her eyes and looked that way. “What the hell?” Another, this one quieter and followed by a thump, like someone punching the wall. Was someone having some late sex with a coworker? The married quarters were one deck down, but it wasn’t unheard of for the younger staff to ‘hook up’ as they called it. Such fraternization was against the rules, yet it still happened all the time. She’d remembered the bathroom was the other way.

Lisha turned towards the bathroom just as a door opened in the direction of the sound. She glanced over her shoulder. The hallway was only dimly lit, the rig on nighttime power saving mode. The figure that stood there was still familiar. She tried to remember his name.

“Up late?” she asked. He seemed to sway slightly, his eyes glowing slightly in the dimly lit corridor as they locked on her. “You okay, Grant?” She’d finally recalled his name.

“Gnaaaah,” came the guttural reply. The man took a halting step and Lisha beheld horror. It was Grant Porter all right, only he wasn’t the same man. Bright red blood covered the front of his T-shirt and his teeth were pulled back in a rictus of animalistic rage. And she had no doubt she was the source of that rage.

“Oh God,” she cried out, and the man began to shamble towards her. Lisha began to run, and instantly tripped over her robe and sprawled painfully to the floor. The door to her right opened and one of the German scientists stepped out.

“Dr. Breda?” he asked, rubbing his eyes, “are you okay?” Grant Porter launched himself at the man with a primal scream that made Lisha cover her ears and moan.

“Gott in himmel!” the man screamed as the Grant bore him to the ground with his weight. “Was machst du, ahhrgh!” His complaint was cut off as teeth tore into his throat, fountaining blood in a crimson arc along the walls and almost to the ceiling.

“Noooo,” Lisha moaned, “this isn’t happening!”

The Grant stood up unsteadily leaving his victim on the floor. The hapless man lay on his back, hands grasping at his ravaged throat, gurgling as blood spurted between his fingers in ever slower pulses, his thrashing gradually slowing. Lisha crawled backwards on her hands and feet like a crab and began to scream. All along the hall doors opened. The technician chewed a bloody mouthful of flesh and swallowed as he surveyed all the stunned faces, coming slowly to his feet. With a snap of his jaws and a snarl, he attacked.