The Plague Years (Book 1): Hell is Empty and All the Devils Are Here (33 page)

“I can only guess sir,” said Dr. Grieb.

“Then guess,” said General Buckley. “I need answers today if I am going to make this work. These folks have run three operations inside my base and half a dozen that we know of off base. I want to know my enemy so I can kill him.”

“Yes sir,” said Dr. Grieb with a gulp. “I have some squirrelly ideas but they are just theories …”

“Out with it,” interrupted General Buckley.

“OK, but you’re gonna think I am nuts,” said Dr. Grieb shaking his head. “I think that this organization is made up of people who are immune. Based on the evidence, I think they are … well … trying to rule the world. It sounds like the plot from some science fiction story but … well anyway, they are recruiting. They apparently have a very robust intelligence network and every time they hear of someone going into remission, they grab them.”

“Gentlemen,” said General Buckley resignedly. “To use your phrase, a month ago, I would have thrown you out the door for wasting my time. Now, I believe you. I can’t fathom this ‘Call’ or why on earth someone would tear down civilization just to rule the ruins but it’s not up to me. It seems like they are doing it. I aim to stop them.”

“Andy,” said General Buckley resignedly, “as of today, you report directly to me. None of the other half a dozen flag officers on post will have any authority over you. If anyone demands that you provide information or support to what they are doing in any way, frog march them in here to me. It doesn’t matter what day or night.

“Grieb and Whipkey, you will keep your nominal positions but from now on, you work for Colonel Antonopoulos. Frankly, you know too much and I don’t want this information leaving the room.

“If they have gotten to one of my staff, I want not only the bastards behind this but I also want to hang high any officers who would wear the uniform but profane their oath. FIND THEM!”

June 1
st
, Monday, 5:21 am PDT.

The planning meeting the night before had gone very late. Chad was still tired but someone had to be on watch and he was the morning person so he volunteered for the graveyard shift.

In the end, they had decided to head for Moscow. The hints given by the folks at Ft. Lewis were just too strong to ignore. He planned, at some point to go to Phil’s one last time to tell his brother over Skype that their mom had passed away. If any place still had regular internet service around here, it would be at the University. Chad hoped the message about their already deceased mother would give him warning enough to do any political maneuvering he might need to pave the way for their entry. It would also place them at home if they really were following their intercepts closely.

Their plan was to take Dave’s truck, Chad’s Subaru Outback, and the Camaro as they were the most reliable vehicles in the group. If one failed, in a pinch they could get by with either of the other two, though it would be crowded if it was the truck that they had to abandon.

Heather’s Camry was rode hard and put away wet after her divorce and so was not mechanically reliable. They also had decided to leave Mary’s 2003 Subaru Impreza as well. It had been their first Subaru and had served them well, but after the incident at the police station, the engine had a tick that Chad didn’t trust even though it had been in the shop twice. He couldn’t find the problem and neither could their regular mechanic. It was still fine for back and forth to work, but long distance travel was risky in his opinion. Another of his chores today was to siphon the gas out of the two cars they were leaving into jerry cans. 

They also planned to put kit in each vehicle that would allow the drivers and passengers to survive if they became separated. Each car would have tactical food like granola and protein bars, a substantial first aid kit, water, basic tools, and weapons along with as much long term gear as they could safely carry. Even with the truck, there were some things they were going to have leave behind.

The generator was one, along with some of the water and bulk food like flour and split peas and Chad was already agonizing over which pieces of his rather large collection of automotive repair implements and spare parts to take and which to leave. It was clear that they wouldn’t be pulling out today. With Dave’s explosive’s class and the booby trapping of both homes and all the cross loading, it was going to take a long time, maybe too long. Chad was worrying about getting hit while they were packing. He hoped the maintenance and additions that Macklin’s gang was making to the MRAP would take longer but they couldn’t count on it. In the end, it was Mary’s idea that gave him the most comfort.

After their meeting broke up a few minutes after midnight, Mary went house to house to the neighbors she trusted and told them what they had planned.  She also invited all that were willing over for Dave’s class and asked their help. Soon, at about 6:00 am, they would start arriving. Heather and Mary had stayed up most the night baking bread, croissants, and making a ginormous pot of split pea soup, the primary constituents being items that they would have to leave behind anyway. The thought was that free food would motivate the fence sitters.

The end result was that there would be lots of armed people around taking the class, helping them load and removing those supplies that they couldn’t take. With all the help, they could have two people on the roofs all day long with long distance rifles. They were also making arrangements with more distant neighbors to take shifts being at home with some hand held radios that Heather had for skiing with her kids to act as lookouts. There were only a few ways into the neighborhood for something as big as an MRAP. It was hoped that thirty seconds of warning would get non-combatants to cover and get the shooters set to open fire.

Dave was still up in his basement making things that go boom. It was his plan to have some homemade electrically fused claymore mines and napalm ready at sunrise. Chad knew that they hadn’t thought of everything, he only hoped that it was enough.

June 1
st
, Monday, 4:58 pm PDT.

Daniel Bury, known by his road name of ‘Rugrat’ was out on his Harley. The guys in his motorcycle club had given him the name because at 5’2”, he was the shortest guy in the club and at seventeen was also the youngest. Most of the women in the club were taller than he was. Kevin Erwin, who was supposed to be higher than a kite but in fact, had given most of his Slash to his technicians said that someone ought to run by this Strickland place real casual like to see what’s going on. Dan admired Kevin because he stood up to that ex-fed Macklin and also because he had seen him play football with the Seahawks on TV.

He had spent the last forty minutes cruising this way and that trying to be nonchalant, but everywhere he went, people stopped and looked at him. There weren’t many vehicles on the road and even fewer Harley Hogs with straight pipes. It was clear that he couldn’t just casually drift by.

He decided that maybe he could come by fast and hard, get a quick look and then be gone before anything happened. He got on it and heard the delightful sound of the Harley engine winding up. He was soon doing at least fifty through the residential portion of Kennewick; this was going to be easy.

June 1
st
, Monday, 5:02 pm PDT.

Kathy Bassman was sitting in her living room. All of her kids and grandkids had gone off to help the Stricklands pack up. They had promised to bring her some soup and any other goodies they could. Food was a little scarce but she had grown up in the area and still home canned some the abundance of the local orchards and truck gardens that they bought at the local Farmer’s Market, so they were better off than most.

Over twenty years ago, she and some of the other wives in the area had welcomed the Stricklands to the area. In the intervening twenty years, she and Ray had retired and then tragically, Ray had been killed on a fishing trip in Alaska.

Mary Strickland had been kind to her, bringing over food and sitting with her when she was lonely. Fiona had been just a little sprite then, and she had tagged along with her mom. Her enthusiasm for everything had been infectious and Kathy was first her babysitter and later her friend. She still got pictures every school year from her and cookies at Christmas.

Kathy didn’t like the fact that the Stricklands had to move and had badgered her son-in-law to stand up to these thugs. Only Mary’s gentle persuasion that they had a safe place to go and that the neighborhood would be safer when they were gone had convinced Kathy that this was the best option. She was determined to do her part though, so she had volunteered to stay home and watch the road in case those juvenile delinquents on motorcycles came by again.

She had sat in her living room peering through half closed drapes for most of the day when she heard rather than saw an outrageously loud motorcycle heading up her street. Then she saw a small man on a very large motorcycle going very fast.

She had been sitting there all day with the radio in her hand waiting for just such a moment and now she used it.

“Connor, can you hear me?” said Kathy keying the mic. At first she heard nothing and then she remembered to release the microphone key.

“Yes Mrs. Bassman,” said Connor.

“There was a biker going by here very fast and he made the turn onto your street. You should see him in a couple of minutes.”

June 1
st
, Monday, 5:0
2
pm PDT.

Connor was on the roof of his parents’ house on watch and despite everything his uncle Dave told him about being a sentinel, he was bored and daydreaming. As a result, when Heather’s ski radio beeped, he nearly dropped it.

“Connor, can you hear me?” said the voice from the radio.

“Yes Mrs. Bassman,” said Connor.

There was a pause and then Mrs. Bassman replied.

“There was a biker going by here very fast and he made the turn onto your street. You should see him in a couple of minutes.”

Connor looked out over the front lawn and there were neighbors helping them load cars, plant explosives, carting away supplies and generally milling around. His mom had him move the picnic table to the front lawn where they were dispensing soup and bread to all the people who had come to help. They had worked out a procedure so he followed it. He took the air horn that was attached to a can of freon and let loose with a loud blast.

“There is a biker coming!” shouted Connor into the silence following the air horn blast.

Dave had tried to organize some sort of defense response but there had been so many ideas and arguments that, in order to get something constructive done towards packing, he had given up and said do the best you can, so some people sprinted toward home. Others pulled weapons and found cover. Mothers hustled kids into the backyard and a group of junior high kids, Heather’s son Jason among them, fixed a rope across the street. One end was tied to the trailer hitch of Dave’s pickup truck and the other end was looped through the door handle of Heather’s Camry and over the roof.

Things were still in pandemonium when the biker came down the street. Some people started firing but he was doing at least sixty miles an hour and most of the fire was from inexperienced marksmen so all of the shots were going where he had been and were not taking into account his motion. The big bike hopped the curb as the biker swerved to avoid the pile of bodies at the end of the street. Then he opened the throttle wide and came down the street with the thunder of the big bike’s motor in his ears.

Jason and his friends pulled hard on the rope so it popped up right in front of the biker. The rope came up so suddenly that the biker had no time to avoid it and probably didn’t even see it. Danny was clotheslined going at least sixty miles an hour. The rope pulled taught and the first thing to give was the door handle on Heather’s car which popped out and flew away at a crazy angle. Then the combined momentum of the bike and rider pulled the rope out of the hands of Jason and his friends, but not before it had unseated Daniel. The bike, somewhat stabilized by the force of the spinning wheels carried on for a hundred feet until the reduction in power and the lack of steering control caused it to flop over in the yard of one of the neighbors down the street.

Daniel fell over backwards and lay there in an awkward heap right in front of the Stricklands’ house. The biker was not moving much as the fall had knocked the wind out of him. Chris Vaughn was the first to recover. He ran over to the man on the ground and with his shotgun aiming at the hapless biker.

“Stay down!” shouted Chris.

Then Chris looked up and saw the neighbors closing around the pair with weapons and menace in their eyes.

“Stay back everyone!” shouted Chris at the gathering crowd. “He may be infected.”

“Why don’t we just shoot him and pile him up with the rest?” shouted someone from the crowd.

“Because there are some questions we should ask,” Dave in a more reasonable tone. “He talks better when he is alive, don’t you son?”

Daniel brushed the hair out of his face and looked up at the shotgun. He hadn’t planned on being captured; all he wanted to do was ride by, tell Kevin what he saw, and then be, at least for a little bit, a hero with the gang.

Meanwhile, Connor watched from his perch above the street. Something was familiar about the biker. Then he recognized him. It was Danny Bury. They had been really close through junior high as his parents had lived just down the block. Danny was a nice kid that got picked on because he was small and had very little self-confidence. In the seventh grade, Connor had shot up to six feet tall and was able fend off the worst of the bullies. Then Danny’s folks got a divorce and he moved across town to live with his mom in the middle of their eighth grade year. They had stayed in touch for a while, but Danny started running with a faster crowd in his high school, and then he dropped out altogether, so they fell out of each other’s lives completely until now.