Payload (12 page)

“Why the hell would a Sherriff’s Department put up a roadblock on a gravel road in the middle of Georgia?” Dyson wondered out loud as he slowed the RV to a stop two hundred yards short of the roadblock.

“I don’t think they did,” Marv shook his head. “Those are ordinary license plates on those trucks, and I don’t think county governments have to pay taxes on vehicle registration. They sure don’t in Texas.”

“You’re thinking FASA?”

“I’m not sure what to think, but we’ll either have to turn the RV around or move one truck in order to get through. I’m thinking we might as well do our civic duty and take out those zeds.”

“”I’m tired of running from those bastards,” Bear nodded, sliding his roofing hammer into his belt.

“Two of us stay on board the RV as insurance. Captain Jack and JD? Good. Doc, watch where you’re waving that damn sword or I’ll shove it up your ass. Let them come to us.”

Marv led the way out of the RV, pistol in hand, moving to a point on the edge of the ditch and waiting.

Doc, katana overhead, leapt off the step and raced toward the nearest zombie, screeching a war cry. Swinging with both arms, he landed a powerful cut on the infected man’ neck, slicing deep, the blade audibly hitting bone. The zombie collapsed sideways, its entire left side limp, and immediately began clutching at the medic’s legs with its right arm. Doc screeched even louder and flailed wildly at his attacker.

“So much for waiting for them,” Marv shook his head.

“And for the magic power of gook swords,” Bear barked a laugh. “Looks like we do this the hard way.”

“Always.”

A hatchet spun end-over-end to
whack
into an infected woman’s skull, dropping her in her tracks. Addison pulled its mate from his belt and balanced as Marv and Bear opened fire. More zombies were spilling out from shady places around the vehicles but their numbers were nothing as bad as the Gnomes had encountered on the Interstate.

Doc managed to hack the crippled zombie to death and stumble back to where Addison, Dyson, Marv, and Bear were on line, firing steadily.

Without numbers or cover for their approach the infected were cut down before they could close. Marv inserted a fresh magazine and checked that his two empties were in his goggle pouch. Bear was reloading, and Dyson was gathering up his empty speed loaders as the big Ranger darted back and caught Doc’s shirt collar as the medic trotted towards the parked cars.

“What did I tell you about following orders? I said let them come to
us
.”

Wriggling in the larger man’s grip, Doc gestured towards the vehicles. “There’s a lot of
stuff
.”

“Not for you. You clean off the blood and go relieve Captain Jack, tell him I want him standing watch.” Marv wrenched the sword, already clean and back in its scabbard, from Doc. “Maybe you’ll get your toy back. Maybe you won’t.”

“That’s
mine
!” Doc yelled, face flushing.

“Do as you’re told, then.” Marv held the sword toward the medic, but did not release it. “Got it?”

“Yeah,” Doc muttered.

“Weird little bastard,” Dyson observed as Doc ducked into the RV.

“If he would just stay out of the way,” Marv shook his head, then grinned. “That was something when he hit that zombie. Bone’s a lot tougher than Hollywood suggests.”

Bear laughed, slinging his stubby weapon. “Nothing’s like Hollywood. If it was, half of this group would be beautiful women.”

“Don’t I wish. OK, Bear and Dyson, take a look at the bodies, and then check out the trucks, move ‘em too. Addison and I will take a look at the vehicles in the pasture.”

Marv waited while Addison scrubbed his hatchets with handfuls of grass, and then led the way to the long horse trailer. “What the blazes were they doing here?”

“Recruiting,” Addison mumbled. Seeing the Ranger’s puzzled look, he jerked a hand towards the roadblock. “They’re pretending to be government. They knew that there were vehicles coming this way, from one of the directions. They have an infected with them, and make more infected.”

“Huh.” Walking around the rear of the horse trailer, Marv stopped and picked up a rifle. “Oh, you little beauty,” he grinned, carefully brushing dust and grass from the weapon. “A semi-only M-4, Colt no less, with an ACOG sight and tactical light.” He pulled the magazine and eased the bolt back. “One in the tube, looks like five or six gone from the mag.” Inserting a full magazine into the weapon, he settled the weapon into place on its three-point sling. “Man, I feel whole again.”

The Gnomes gathered in the RV. “Addison called it,” Marv observed, tossing a pager and some notepaper to the table. “Those FASA assholes reported a fake emergency of some sort and grabbed volunteer firefighters and Red Cross types on their way to the station to gear up. They handcuffed them inside the horse trailer and brought an infected in on a catch pole to spread the virus. Looks like they over-estimated the strength of the chain they strung, because the zeds got loose.”

“Irony or justice?” JD chuckled.

“We found this rifle, and not a lot else.”

“There were six FASA guys,” Bear spread a map of Georgia out. “See, this looks like the fifth time they’ve done this.” He held up a notebook. “They got the specs on a dozen volunteer fire organizations here. Pretty smooth operation. I’m guessing this is where they got the zeds like we saw in the Wal Mart truck. This bunch gathers, another delivers.”

“What a bunch of low-lifes,” JD shook his head in disgust.

“Aryan Circle, from their tattoos,” Dyson observed. “Looks like we’re up against fanatics and fringe types, with hired criminal muscle.”

“Find anything interesting?” Marv asked.

“We found four handheld CB radios, two pairs of binoculars, one rifle, two shotguns, and four handguns. The rest of the weapons are in the tall grass someplace, I suppose. Lots of boxed ammo, some bottled water. The rifle is a stainless Mini-14 with five mags, the shotguns are Remington 870 riot guns, three of the pistols are Glock 17s, and one H&K USP,” Bear read from his notes on the back of the map.

“I’ll take the Mini-14,” Dyson offered. “I imagine you’re more comfortable with the M-4.”

“I am, thanks.”

“I’ll take the USP if no one wants it,” Bear held it up. “No? OK, Dyson, you want a Glock?”

“No, I’ll stick with my Colt.”

“OK, anybody else want something?”

“I’ll take a Glock,” JD held up a hand.

“That reminds me, I’ve got three USP mags in my pack,” Marv told Bear. “OK, let’s test-fire the new hardware and get rolling. Captain Jack, can you and Doc…where the hell is Doc?”

“Installing his construction on the roof,” Captain Jack pointed up.

“OK, get him back down and top off the tank with the fuel cans. Too bad nobody was driving a diesel.” Marv stopped, frowning. “How did these nimrods communicate? They weren’t setting up their meets over hand-held CBs.”

Bear shook his head. “Its always something. C’mon, Dyson.”

“I want to finish my TV hook-up,” Doc complained.

“Shut up and concentrate,” Marv snapped. “Or I’ll pitch the sword out the window. Tell me about this phone.”

The medic sighed. “It’s a sat phone, encrypted, made in China, and I mean made
for
China, as in their military. You don’t see many on the open market.”

“Who does it communicate to, or with?”

“I don’t know. Its got four numbers programmed in, but the readout is encrypted. The whole thing is a sealed system.”

“So what good is it to us?”

“Not much.”

“Could they track it, like a regular cell phone?” JD asked.

“No. That’s been deactivated.”

“So we can’t find out who they are calling?”

“Nope.”

“Pull the battery, dump the rest,” Marv was losing interest. “Speaking of which, could we use the battery in my phone?”

“Nope.”

“Crap. OK, work on your TV.”

“About time.”

Marv sat in the passenger seat watching the road roll towards them at sixty miles per hour, the lengthening shadows prompting them to drive a bit faster as they wove their way across back roads. JD was driving, Addison was taking a shower, and the rest were watching HBO on the TV. Doc’s interaction with CNN had lasted for the few seconds it took Bear to pry the remote from the medic’s hands.

Lifting his jury-rigged sat phone, Marv checked the bars and hit Dial. Colonel Nelson picked up on the second ring.

“Fastbox Two reports, sir.”

“Glad to hear you, Sergeant. Status?”

“We just crossed into Alabama, sir. I think it’s better I don’t tell you our exact location until we’re ready to set up the extraction.”

“Understood.”

Marv described the FASA roadblock. “We’re better armed and still rolling, sir. They ought to have lost any ability to track us. How did Fastbox One turn out?”

“Delivered and disbanded. It wasn’t easy-they threw every asset they had on hand in an effort to capture or at least stop it. But the payload is in a secure facility and work on it began some hours ago.”

“Good news, sir. Sundown is less than an hour away-we’ll start looking for a place to make camp in about forty.”

“Fine. I am finalizing the assets to pull you out, and I will contact you as soon as I have a fully developed plan.”

“That’s good to hear, sir. Fastbox Two, out.”

“We hit Alabama over two hours ago,” JD observed.

“Yeah. Which means if FASA is listening in, they think we’re a hundred miles further east than we really are. Alabama’s one hundred ninety miles across, east to west; since we’re sticking to back roads I figure two-fifty actually driven. With luck we’ll be around one-fifty in by the time we make camp. FASA knows where we are coming from and they know where we’re heading to in Texas, but we can do what we can to keep them off-balance in between.”

They rolled on in silence for a while. “What are your plans, you know, once we deliver the payload?” JD asked.

Marv shrugged. “I’m a Ranger, so I’ll end up fighting zombies. What about you?”

“I don’t know. If Belize is safe, I’ll have to find some work-I doubt pro wrestling is going to have a good year.”

Dyson stepped between the seats with the cover-less road atlas in hand. “Found a RV campground a little less than an hour from here,” he pointed it out on the map.

As the Ranger bent over the map, JD glanced up at the Georgian. “What’s your plan, post-mission?”

“Get to Maine and find my girl,” the martial artist shrugged. “After that, who knows?” He looked over his shoulder. “Bear, what are your plans?”

“Get to Texas, find another bike,” the big man said laconically.

“Doc? Captain? Addison?”

Addison shrugged, uninterested.

“Get back to the CDC,” Doc said, still bent over his latest project. “Where I can perform my
research
.”

“Back to the Regiment,” Captain Jack adjusted his beret. “Thereafter my time is not my own.”

“It’s good to have a plan,” Marv said absently. “Yeah, let’s try this RV park. Why is it out away from everything else?”

“State park,” Dyson tapped the map. “They don’t have very good facilities, it’s a primitive park. Hence the business opportunity just outside the state-owned area.”

“ ‘
The Mighty Quinn RV Park’
,” JD read out loud. “Funny name.”

“I don’t care I they call it Graceland,” Dyson shrugged. “It beats parking in the open.”

Chapter Five

The sun was on the horizon when they rolled up to The Mighty Quinn RV park and shadows were deepening under the surrounding trees. The park was ten acres of cleared ground in a sea of tall pines, encircled by a tidy waist-high split-rail fence. The arching gateway spelled out the camp’s name in unfinished limbs, with an Indian tribal mask as a centerpiece at the high point of the arc.

Inside, a gravel circular drive provided access to the parking spots, each with a graveled RV parking area, a covered concrete picnic table with a grill, a car-sized secondary parking position, and electricity and water hook-ups. Set square with the gate was a white double-wide trailer with a redwood deck. Signs proclaiming OFFICE and VACANCY hung on the deck’s railing, and an older, solidly-built woman wearing white crop pants and a floral stop sat at round table with a tall sun shade, reading from an electronic tablet. She stood as the RV rumbled through the opening.

Marv grounded his weapons and MOLLE vest before stepping out. “Good evening,” he smiled. “We need an RV spot.”

“Got one left,” the woman stepped to the deck’s rail. “You in the Army, son?”

“Yes, ma’am. Hitching a ride back to my unit. There’s six more on board, all adults, all well-behaved. They’re civilians.” He noticed that the woman’s top was slightly askew, from a pistol tucked in the rear waistband of her crop pants, he figured. There was a long gun’s wooden stock peeping out from beneath the rail where she was standing, the weapon likely resting on hooks just out of sight.