Allegiance (20 page)

“I resent that, Mrs.
Grayson. Both Desantos and Gaines were deserving of their battlefield
promotions.”

“I’m not taking anything
away from
them
. It’s just that I’m still resenting Clay’s tactics. Using
Cade’s unwavering patriotism—which is his only true Achilles’ heel—to lure him
back to the teams. We had a great life before Omega, and very soon we will get
to enjoy that again.”

Nash shifted in her seat.
“You going to hide on a mountain top?”

“If we have to.”

“Gaines, Cade, and the
rest of the team are rested.”

“He turned in his
captain’s bars. Told me so himself. He’s out now.” Brook felt her resolve
beginning to crumble. Still she finished her sentence while trying her best to
sound convincing. “He won’t go.” Brook shook her head vehemently. “Not now...
not even if the President begs.”

There was a long stretch
of silence. Then the heavy sound of rotors beating the air usurped the low hum
of the A/C unit.

“I hate to burst your
bubble, but if I know Cade the way I think I do, he
will
agree.
Especially if I mention all of the times both Shrill and I have helped
you
along the way. Sneaking onboard with the Ranger chalk. Crafty, but dangerous.
Furthermore, you would never have had access to the medical gear you used to
deliver Mike Junior, and you mustn’t forget the antibiotics that saved your
brother’s life.” She paused as an aircraft passed nearby. Then they all sat in
awkward silence until she said, “And I’m sure there’s more Colonel Shrill can
add to the list if we’re keeping tabs. He’s on board with this. And this time
I’m certain he’s no ally of yours.”

Brook buried her head in
her hands. “That was
me,
not Cade. You can’t extort
me
like
this... and make him put his life on the line,” she mumbled.

“I have to,” Nash said
in a funereal voice. “And it doesn’t make me proud.”

Wilson sat slumped in
his chair, totally silent, the boonie hat pulled low over his eyes.

Brook looked at Nash
through red-rimmed eyes. “Why the big rush?” she asked softly.

“We’ve been moving
various surveillance platforms around the country since Robert Christian’s
terrorists struck and destroyed Fuentes’s hard work, and most of the sense of
security the people on this base had grown accustomed to along with it.
Replicating the antiserum has been priority one since. So we have been working
around the clock in order to find a facility similar to the CDC in Atlanta. Not
a far stretch, considering all of the different types of bio labs scattered
about the country... or so we thought. Every facility east of the Mississippi:
Fort Detrick, NIH—National Institutes of Health—in Bethesda, the CDC, of
course, and even Plum Island, as isolated as it was, have already been
abandoned or overrun. Two days ago—” she paused for a heartbeat, unsure if she
dared continue considering that the kid lacked a security clearance—“we finally
found what we were looking for. A bio-lab that was working with the CDC before
things got out of hand. And most importantly—the linchpin to the whole deal—it
appears there are still people trapped there. Living, breathing scientists, if
we are lucky. Come on
Brook,
work with me. You know as well as I do that
the data on this drive is worthless without the brainpower to decipher it.”

“So send General Gaines
and a couple of detachments of his 10th Special Forces,” Brook proffered.

“Not possible. Most of
the 10th is out in the field hunting NA stragglers.”

“Where is this facility
you want to send Cade?” asked Brook resignedly.

“Canada. Not too far
from here. Ten-hour mission there and back...
maximum
.”

Brook grunted. She knew
from experience how things worked in the Army, and she doubted the Air Force
was any better. Nash’s guarantee of ten hours could easily become twenty-four.
A day could devolve into two. Or worse, Cade wouldn’t come home this time.

“So call their
Premier
...
the President of Canada
... or whatever they call them up there,” Brook
said. She swallowed hard. Wanted to punch something in the worst way. “Why
don’t you have
them
rescue the scientists and deliver them here. I’d
call defeating this plague well worth them taking the initiative.”

“
Brook
... nobody
is answering the phone up north. The same thing down south... Mexico, Central
and South America. No one is picking up... there is nobody left
to
pick
up.” Silence dominated as the major’s profound words echoed to silence.

“We - are - all -
alone,” Wilson said softly, drawing each word out.

“From the mouths of
babes,” Nash said under her breath.

Brook looked away. Suddenly
she felt a familiar sensation that always originated behind her navel, then
spread from there like a multi-tentacled symbiotic creature probing her
insides. And at that moment, with that icy ball making her sicker by the
second, she knew there was nothing she could say or do to keep Cade—the Eagle
Scout, decorated former Ranger and motherfucking Delta warrior—from going down
range again.

“Tell the President I
won’t get in her way...
this time
. But if she ever comes between me and
Cade again, there will be hell to pay. And when Cade gets back from Canada I do
not want you to have contact with him. Leave us the
fuck
alone.”

One of Wilson’s mom’s
sayings spewed from his mouth. “Brook, you shouldn’t burn your bridges.”

“I didn’t ask for your
two cents, Wilson,” she said, glaring in his direction.

“It’s a deal,” Nash
said. “Your sacrifice won’t be forgotten.”

“And then we’re even,”
Brook said icily. She pushed the chair back, gripped her rifle, and strode
towards the door.

“You aren’t going to
wait for
President Clay
?” Nash said incredulously.

Pausing with one hand on
the door handle, Brook searched for proper words.
Fuck it
, she thought.
“I better go
now
. Because if I don’t, I have a feeling I’m liable to do
something I will regret later.” She turned away from the door and squared her
body towards Nash, who had gotten up and was standing beside Wilson. “Cade has
told me how much you care about him and the other operators, and I don’t have a
doubt that every word he said is true.” Brook ground her teeth and then went
on. “But if
anything
happens to my man, both you and the President are
going to have to answer for it.”

Wisely, Nash remained
quiet, and with mixed emotions watched Brook file out ahead of Wilson, who
glanced back with a sheepish expression on his face, shrugged his shoulders,
and mouthed a silent, “
I’m sorry
.”

The door slammed shut
behind Wilson. He pulled the floppy brim of his hat lower over his eyes to ward
off the sun, and hurried to catch up with Brook.
Damn
, he thought.
For
someone wrapped up in such a small package the woman sure had a hell of a
stride
. And when he finally caught up with her, he said, “Took a hell of a
beating in there—”

“She’s right, you know,”
Brook said without slowing or looking back at him. “I always tell Raven to do
the right thing even when no one is looking. I just went against one of my own
tenets.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nash had a
Helluva
point. If she’s that short on personnel, who am I to stand in the way... try to
change the outcome behind closed doors. Cade will do what he wants to do. He’s
a
fucking
only child. That’s all I need to say.”

Wilson glanced at his
watch. “What are you doing after you get Raven—you hungry? Because I’m sure we
can rustle up a Spam sandwich.”

Brook chuckled.

Mission accomplished
, Wilson thought to himself. “So do you want to
meet her?”

Brook shortened her
strides until he caught up. “Meet who?”

“The woman of the
hour... Taryn,” he said proudly.

“That would be nice.
Then I can thank her for opening this whole
saving the human race
can of
worms.” Brook’s smile was lost on Wilson. He made no reply and just stared at
some kind of noisy aircraft approaching from the southwest.

“Sorry, bad attempt at a
joke,” she proffered. “Sure, I’d love to meet Taryn... maybe I can rebuild the
bridge I burned with Sasha.”

Wilson shook his head.
“You got your hands full there.”

“I’m sure I do,” Brook
conceded. She looked into the distance and picked up something moving fast and
getting closer, barely visible over the top of the massive airplane hangars. In
just a few seconds the aircraft had gone from a distant black speck on the
horizon to a full size black airframe that had begun to slow, finally ending up
in a steady hover suspended under two wildly spinning rotors, both of which
looked to be the size of a backyard swimming pool. “That’s the President’s
Osprey,” she added.

“Let’s keep moving. I
don’t want to have to watch you kick her ass.”

Brook made no reply,
only thought how nice it would be to get her way once in a while. She was tired
of telling herself:
some day
. Then, as Marine One settled on the far
side of Schriever near where Desantos was buried, they reached the Quonset hut
that the deceased general’s family still called home.

Outbreak - Day 15

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

For a man with a wrenched
back and an ankle the size of a cantaloupe, Tran felt that he had negotiated
the last stretch of hillside like a mountain goat. Along the way he had been
forced to use his makeshift obsidian weapon against two more of his former
fellow human beings, crushing both of their skulls while they struggled
helplessly to extricate themselves from the brambles that had stopped their
initial free-fall. Killing them had gone against all of his pacifist beliefs,
but just the thought that they might somehow succeed and end up hunting him
overrode any feelings of empathy. Tran was in survival mode and had been since
the big blonde tried to sacrifice him to the dead.

He stopped short of the
gray, sun-splashed road which was barely visible between the aspens. As he stood
there and listened to his heartbeat and the blood rushing through his ears from
the added exertion, the wind set the trees quaking, bringing with it the rank
odor he had gotten to know all too well. Painful as it was for him to do so, he
eased down to a kneeling position and then to all fours. A wave of nausea
pummeled his body and his vision grew flat at the edges. He put his chin to his
chest and managed to overcome the urge to throw up by taking a few deep
breaths. He waited for his head to spin back to normal, and then slunk like a
dog to the road’s shoulder. Once there, he poked his head from the undergrowth
to see where the stench was coming from. He spied something very large and very
dead occupying the middle two-thirds of the road. Though the carcass seemed to
have been mostly stripped of its flesh, he counted half a dozen zombies still
working for a meal.

Tufts of fur still
clinging to scraps of the animal’s hide littered the road, and from his vantage
point he could clearly make out one of the demons furiously digging its
clawlike hands, trying to get at the meat sandwiched between the beast’s giant
ribs. The frenzied tugging and gnawing sent tremors through the dead animal’s
knobby vertebra, causing its elongated skull, complete with a full rack of
antlers, to rock back and forth on the roadway. Tran didn’t know an elk from a
deer, but judging by the looks of the elongated flat spot closer to the skull
and the stunted spikes on the upper ridges of the antlers, the remains on the
road had once been a very large bull moose. He truly felt sorry for the grand
creature, but at the same time he was thankful for the diversion its death had
created.

He supposed there would
be no better time than now to cross the road since the things had their heads
buried inside of every available orifice. He quickly stole one last sideways
glance at the grisly scene. Suddenly he had a feeling that the eyeless skull,
which continued to shimmy side to side, was an omen of some sort telling him
not to cross the road.

No time for
superstition
, he admonished
himself. His first few tentative steps went unnoticed by the hunched-over
creatures. But by the time he had limped to the yellow centerline, one of them
had gophered up. Its yellowed eyes peered at him from behind a blood-slickened
face. It tilted its head at an angle like a confused dog, staring like it knew
he was there, yet unsure of what it was looking at. He guessed the thing had to
be blind or somehow visually impaired. Either that or he had suddenly turned
invisible.

Ignoring the abomination
he continued on, shuffling his bare feet along the blacktop, focused entirely
on the tree line across the way.
Almost there
, he thought. Then, acting
against every instinct in his body, he stole one more glance to his left. The
sight that greeted him took his breath away. The creature that had been staring
at him had inexplicably gone back to mining meat from the road kill.

With a word of thanks to
his ancestors, he melted into the growth, intent on making it to the Teton Pass
highway without being eaten.