Medora Wars (30 page)

Chapter Twenty Six: Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

It was after Douglas stopped getting updates that he knew they were on their own. It had been twelve hours since someone sent him an intended, coherent order. Every time he flicked on the radio it was desperate screams of unit leaders asking for backup or flummoxed senior officers giving advice over stuttering lips. He didn’t know the extent of the battle, but he guessed at this point that it was the most devastating military ground attack in the history of the country. He himself had stopped giving orders to his squad, only telling them to keep a holding pattern, which he left to their own interpretation.

Dave and Michaels often left their catwalks of the warehouse where the squad had holed up and wandered into the rest of the power plant, looking for food. Room by room they searched for anything, but only found blackened control consoles, and blood-splattered walls. They had stumbled into a far away utility warehouse and stopped when they discovered that a constant stream of the infected had burrowed their way through one wall and out another, crisscrossing into the building in a crowd several shoulder widths thick. It was a train of the infected that moved in a continuous line, jogging with their heads down, ignoring any sound or movement around them. Dave accidentally tripped on a large monkey wrench as they backed out of the room, without a single of the infected looking up at them.

“Robots,” Michaels said as they walked out “They’re like weird, human robots now. That crowd would’ve ripped us apart before, now they just go on their busy way like they have some sort of agenda.”

They found a break room stocked with hundreds of cans of soups, beans, and meatballs, which the entire squad eventually brought back to their main wing of the power plant. They periodically looked out the windows as they choked down cold soup. It was an endless whirl of the infected that flowed around the building, never breaking through, but never backing away.

Stark had mostly retired to a corner of the large warehouse, where he had stacked dozens of bodies after performing their autopsies. He wasn’t learning anything new and was only getting discouraged. He knew there was only one person in the world that could help, but that man was chained away somewhere in a federal prison. It had been twelve hours since he had talked to Rambert, who mumbled something about Medora, and how he was going to ‘figure it all out.
’ The crazy bastard cares more about figuring out some fabricated mystery than the beast at his doorstep. He’s turned crazy from cabin fever just like I’m about to do
, he thought.

It was exactly with this thought that Stark was staring at one of the stacked bodies that he saw an arm twitch. He prodded the single arm that extended out of the heap of bodies and waited. After several seconds, the thumb flinched, and then relaxed. Quickly, he fished around for a lumber saw that he found a few hours prior and removed the forearm from its body.
No, no, no,
he thought frantically as he peeled the skin off the tendons. Not only was the thin metallic mesh surrounding all the muscle groups in the forearm present, but also thick metallic cords had attached onto silvery muscles in the hand, which had replaced the tendons themselves. He dropped the arm and ran out.

“We need to get out of here,” Stark announced to the squad. “I need to get out of here.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Douglas said. “Do you see any extraction choppers floating around us?”

“No,” Stark said with one exhausted breath.

“Then, we’re not going anywhere.”

“We walk out.”

“What?” Michaels yelled out from the catwalks above them.

“What’re you talking about?” Douglas sat down on a steel grate and bowed his head to his knees.

“I think we can walk out of here. The hordes don’t notice us,” Stark said.

“Oh, they notice us. They keep circling around the building. They know damn well that we’re in here and that we’re the enemy.”

“No, no, not exactly. I think the horde is aware that there was an attack that originated at the power plant—the original pulse that we sent through the power grid. But have you noticed anything? You can walk right up to any one individual of the horde and simply grab them and kill them. They don’t recognize us as
individuals.
The horde now only behaves as one entity—it can’t recognize just a few foreign individuals. It’ll just think that we’re one of them if we integrate ourselves into the horde, one at a time.”

“That is so insane,” Michaels yelled again from the catwalks. She now was looming directly overhead of them. “We’ll get torn apart in seconds. I am not dying that way. I vote for suicide pact, who’s with me?” She raised her hand and gave a forced laugh.

“Michaels, shut up,” Douglas interjected and pointed at Stark. “You can do whatever the hell you want but none of my men… or one woman is going to join you. We wait for extraction.” He looked out over the thirteen members of their once elite squad.

“I’m walking out those loading bay doors. Anyone who wants to join me, can. I’ve got way too many things I need to do than to wait for some imaginary extraction from a losing Army.” Stark went back to his autopsy corner, and started collecting canned food.

Dave, who had remained quiet around a corner during the whole conversation, emerged behind Stark, who was holding the metallic severed forearm, and probing it with a screwdriver.

“You look like a mad scientist,” Dave said, drawing Stark’s attention away from the arm.

“Are you coming with me, Tripps?” Stark asked monotonously.

Dave paused. “I think I am.”

“Well, get ready.” Stark wrapped the arm around with a few dirty rags, wound several large rubber bands around it, and put it in his bag.

“There’s not really anything here for me anymore,” Dave said.

“I don’t need to hear the story, go get your stuff.” Stark turned from him and checked his ammunition.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Dave said, turning from him.

Dave went back up to the catwalks to pack his gear and saw Michaels walking up to him. “What’re you doing?” she asked.

“I’m going with Stark,” he said.

“You really think you’re going to just walk through the horde?”

“No, I no have idea.”

“Then why are you going?”

“Because I’m not like you,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re so certain that everything is over. You just give up.”

“It’s not giving up. I don’t want to die on
their
terms,” she said. “My own death is the only thing I have control over any more.”

“I get that,” Dave said. “It’s just not what I want for myself. I’m going to try to claw my way out of here. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I want to find out. I need to be a part of it. Everyone out there is going to move on to the next thing, and I’m going to be with them.”

“I understand.” She put her hand on his arm and squeezed.

Dave looked over at her and smiled. “Good luck,” he said. “I might miss you.”

She smiled, leaned in, and gave him a small kiss on his cheek. Dave turned his face and met her lips with his. She let go. “In another world,” she said. “Remember?”

After packing his gear and borrowing an extra rifle from Michaels, Dave joined Stark at the closed loading bay doors, and removed all the heavy pallets and sand bags that they had placed in front. Surprisingly, Douglas didn’t say a word about Dave leaving, and even helped them clear the doors.

Michaels hadn’t come down from the catwalks and only watched silently as the loading bay doors finally opened.

Outside, the horde circled in small eddies, constantly moving in a slow jog. They streamed around the shock tanks with none of them looking up as Dave and Stark stepped out onto the concrete bay. Although they moved at random, Stark could see distinct patterns of motion that cycled over and over again in the crowd. The patterns reminded him of viscosity fluid laws or constantly moving magnetic field lines. He suspected there was some sort of mathematical formula that could be applied to their movement, as he was convinced that the horde was now only ruled by the laws of nature and statistics.

They stepped forward, only feet away from the horde that moved like an indifferent riverbed. Dave looked back into the warehouse and saw Michaels in the back, looking out at him. She gave a small smile, which he returned with a wave. He tried to feel sad but realized she was just a remnant of life that he could have wanted, but now couldn’t exist. Dave looked back down at the throng of infected at his feet, whose heads bobbed up and down as they moved.

“Well,” Stark said, patting him on the shoulder, “don’t swim against the current.”

Chapter Twenty Seven: Albion, Nebraska

Easily, and without much resistance, the small group of the brotherhood had gained one hostage for each one of them. Malik held onto Elise from behind as they advanced farther into what she now understood was an old hydroelectric power plant. They had duct taped all the soldiers’ mouths shut and made them walk in front of the group as they snaked through narrow hallways and up through catwalks above large, empty vats that once churned with water. They killed very few as they moved along, knowing that the guards were now backing away from the group for fear that the hostages would be killed. The classified, nuclear warhead facility was slowly watching and waiting to see where the group of terrorists would hole themselves up so that they would finally be able to attack once they were cornered.

Calmly, Atash led the pack, commanding his men to fire when needed, and to move when there was a break in enemy bullets.

Malik watched the back of Atash’s head as they moved, wondering what was going through his mind, and if he really were the same person that he had grown to love over a year ago in Tajikistan. The sparkling waters beside the Nurek dam sprouted up in his mind as he remembered the relief he found in seeking out nothingness with Atash.
These things are illusions
, he heard Atash’s voice next to their small fire as they fasted.
Would he say that now?
Malik thought.

There was a constant image attached with a catastrophic feeling that was tethered deep down within him. He had held it in the catacombs of his mind for several weeks now, but he could feel it rising. A flood of guilt was about to come bubbling up from within him as he grasped at the edges of his small son, lying in bed with a black, plastic bag over his face.

He thought of the poem that the Sirr had told him:

As the riverhead fractures,

So must we.

It is the pooling waters,

We will preach.

Malik wondered if they were the words of an inspired man or those of a demagogue only seeking to recruit vulnerable men.

“Malik, soon your greatest task will be before you. Do not turn from it now,” Atash’s voice echoed as they moved along. “The Sirr will be here soon, and we will follow his every command.”

“That is correct. He will guide us,” Malik responded.

In front of Malik, Elise breathed through a hoarse airway from Malik strangling her earlier. She coughed with a barking sound as she struggled to shuffle her feet in front of Malik’s constant pushing on her shoulder blade. She now folded her left forearm in front of her as if it were injured, concealing the box cutter in her armpit. She didn’t speak anymore, only waited.

Malik was convinced that Atash knew where he was going because he was constantly looking down at a smartphone that he had taped to his forearm. They stopped at a fork in the hallway and waited while Malik watched the screen on his arm. After a moment, he pointed in a direction, and they followed until he received the next instructions from his phone.

“Is it the Sirr?” Malik asked, pointing to Atash’s phone.

“Please don’t distract me right now, Malik,” Atash said, typing something into the phone.

The soldier guards of the plant had stopped firing at the group altogether, after an hour of trading gunfire back and forth in a rusted room full of bulky computer monitors and switchboards. The guards now stayed back from the brotherhood as they moved, constantly notifying of their movement and direction into radios, and silently watching their every move.

One brother from the group quietly doubted about how they could possibly seize all the warheads, being so few in numbers. Atash had heard the complaint and shouted back at them. “You don’t understand at the moment, but you will soon see the wisdom of the Sirr.” He looked down again at his phone and proceeded up a dark staircase. “Please be patient and undoubting, my brothers, we are in the eleventh hour.”

They had come to a long hallway that led to a darkened dead end. For a brief moment, Malik hoped that this hallway would be the end of their journey, that there would be no way out at the end, and they would get swarmed by the guards and shot to death. He held to this thought for a moment longer until he saw the pale blue paint of a metallic door at the very end of the long hallway.

“Perfect,” Atash said under his breath as he led the brothers away from the squad of soldiers that paced behind them. As Atash walked up to the door, he looked down at the screen on his arm, and waited without attempting to open the door. “It’ll be just about thirty seconds more.” They waited in silence until the door stirred from the other side and the handle turned. Most of the hostages stood quietly, offering no resistance.

It opened inward, revealing a large man in Army fatigues pointing a rifle at them. His shaved scalp beaded with sweat as his chest heaved with a heavy breath. “Atash,” he said quickly.

“Brother Carter! You have done very well. Thank you for the guidance.” Atash gently touched his shoulder. “Please point that rifle away from your brothers.”

“Uh, uh, yes. Right this way.” Carter pointed his rifle down. “Let’s go, quick! We’ve got to run or they’re going to figure out where I’ve got it hidden away.” He turned and bolted down the long hallway with the rest of the group running behind him. “It’s not too much farther!” Carter turned his face toward them as he spoke.

Malik looked behind them and saw that they were no longer being pursued. “They’ve stopped!” He yelled out, “they’re not following us anymore.”

Carter yelled back, “No, no, I just heard it on the radio, everyone is super paranoid that we’re going to try to seize the main cache of warheads, which is actually about twenty stories below us. It’s all being guarded like Fort Knox down there.”

“Isn’t that where we’re going?” Malik asked.

“Uh, Brother Atash, have you explained to them…” Carter trailed off as he turned a corner into an open warehouse that was swamped with spider webs and dried mud all over the floors.

“We don’t need all of the warheads, Malik, only one,” Atash said.

“Oh,” Malik said, growing in frustration after being kept in the dark about every single plan with which Atash had ever included him.

“At the end of this warehouse, The Sirr told me about an old maintenance garage that leads outside to a small airport. I think they used it to repair old helicopters. Not a single soul here knows about the garage.” Carter urged the group along as they were finally able to disperse from out of the narrow hallways and into the wide space. Each of the brothers kept their hostage close in front of them, with one arm around their necks, and their other hand with a gun digging into their heads.

Atash grabbed Private Patel and forced her to walk in front of him. “I’d like to thank you again, Private Patel, for cooperating. This really will all be over soon.”

She said nothing but continued to bow her head toward the floor as Atash steered her direction with her cuffed wrists.

At the far end of the warehouse, Carter stooped under a swinging gutter that once attached to a large vat, and disappeared behind a long row of pallets. “Right in here, my brothers.” They came to a padlock garage door set inside the wall. Carter knelt and fumbled with a set of keys.

“Is he here?” Atash quietly asked Carter.

“No.”

Atash was silent for a moment. “Do you know when he’ll be here?”

“He was supposed to be here twelve hours ago.”

“That is what I understood as well.”

“Have you heard from him?” Carter asked, finally finding the right key, and unlocking a padlock.

“Brother Carter, are you honestly leading me to believe that you are keeping a nuclear warhead guarded by a mere bicycle lock?” Atash asked.

“I was lucky to manage to smuggle in even the lock. Anything that isn’t military issued is immediate contraband. The security in this place is extremely tight.”

“Evidently not tight enough.” Atash laughed, looking back at the scared faces of their hostages.

“But, sir, have you heard from the Sirr?” Carter asked.

“Only a few messages that he was held up, but that was hours ago. He didn’t give any details, only that he needed to take care of something first.”

“Okay.” Carter unlatched a handle and lifted the door. “So what are we supposed to do now with this?”

Inside the small maintenance garage rested a single, wooden crate the size of a coffin. Atash walked forward into the garage and rested his hand on the wooden planks of the crate. The brothers scrambled in from behind with their hostages. Malik closed the garage door behind them and sat Elise down in a corner next to a row of empty, plastic crates.

Atash put his hand on Carter’s shoulder while signaling to Private Patel to sit on the ground. “Brother, open your radio to all frequencies of this compound, and give it to me.”

Carter flipped on the radio switch on his belt and handed it to Atash.

“Now we paralyze them,” Atash said, bringing the radio to his mouth. “Attention, Army personnel. This is the brotherhood of the Sirr. We have infiltrated your nuclear warhead facility and currently have ten hostages in an undisclosed location. If you have done your inventory lately of the over five thousand nuclear warheads that you have stored away, you have discovered that you are missing exactly one warhead, which is now in our possession. We now hold this entire compound hostage. If we discover that even one nuclear warhead is removed from these buildings, we will detonate the one that we do have in our possession. Please do not underestimate the influence of the brotherhood of the Sirr. Our spies are among you and will inform us if there is any movement of the warheads. Any attempt to find our location or to attack us will result in the death of our hostages. We will come forth with more demands within the hour.”

Atash put the radio on his belt and turned it off before he could hear a reply. “Malik, come this way with me, my friend.” He put his arm around Malik’s shoulder. “Everyone, please secure your hostages, while Malik and I go and have a chat.” He took Malik to the corner of the garage and sat cross-legged on the ground, where he waited for Malik to join him.

“Thank you, Malik for your patience,” Atash said.

“You’re welcome.” Malik looked at Atash’s eyes, which were looking down at the concrete floor.

“You’ve been patient in your ignorance.”

“Yes.”

“How are you feeling right now?”

“I’m not feeling anything.”

“Malik let us be honest now. Neither one of us is entirely devoid of emotion. I know that, and I know you know that.”

“I suppose that is true.”

“So, tell me what you’re feeling.”

“I’m happy.”

“Are you only telling me what I want you to hear?”

“No.”

“I trust you. I’ve grown to trust you over the last two years, and I now know that I can trust you with one more thing.”

“What?”

“I’m afraid that our purpose here has been delayed for reasons that I don’t understand.”

“How?”

“The Sirr should be here, and he is not,” Atash said flatly.

“He will come.”

“Yes, I believe he will, but we cannot wait much longer for him. The American soldiers will find us and kill us. Quickly comes the time that they will value our deaths more than the lives of the hostages.”

“You’re right.”

“Fortunately, we do not actually need the Sirr here to complete our final mission, but I know that he wants to be here to rightly claim is place after this life. If he isn’t here to die with us, I sincerely fear what will be kept for him after his death.”

“What do we do?”

“We will wait for the Sirr and see if he comes. We owe him that. We will wait for one hour more.”

“How could he possibly get in here in such a heavily guarded place?”

“The Sirr moves like a specter. I wouldn’t worry.” Atash sighed deeply.

“What is it?”

“I need you to keep a code in your mind, very closely for the next hour. This is the final thing that I will trust you with.”

“Tell me.”

“The code is H-thirty-eight-pound sign-O-J-W-H-asterisk-X-zero-zero-O. Repeat it back to me ten times.”

Malik repeated the code quietly, with Atash helping him until he could repeat it ten times in a row. “Is this the warhead code?” Malik asked.

“Yes. You and I are the only ones here who know it. I give it to you in case I die before you die in the next hour. If I can’t do it, you must detonate the warhead in one hour.”

“I understand. You can trust me.”

“I know I can.” Atash got up on one knee. “Come on,” he said while standing. “We go back to wait.”

Atash and Malik returned to the group, who were now sitting in a semi-circular pattern around the warhead crate with their hostages lying on their bellies.

Carter walked over to Atash, a frantic look on his face. “Hey, hey, what are we doing here? What is the plan?”

Atash looked into Carter’s eyes, and said, “In one hour, we will detonate our warhead, destroying every warhead in America’s possession.”