Joseph smiled at her. “I don’t know, but he’s right. We have to keep it cool. Real smooth like. Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke.” He nodded at the thought of himself emulating the handsome, suave, and resilient prisoner.
“What’s a Cool Hand Luke?” Desai asked.
“What is Cool Hand Luke?” He shook his head. “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
She stared, unknowing of his movie reference.
“You’ll have to watch it.”
“Okay, Joseph. I will.”
“Promise me?”
She laughed, her nerves a little less strained. “I promise.”
Joseph checked his watch. “It’s been about five minutes. Let’s go.”
He stepped into the hallway with Desai on his tail. Two figures in all-black military gear patrolled in their direction. He felt his glute muscles involuntarily tighten at the sight of them. Act normal. His hands fumbled with his keys, but he managed to get it locked. He gave Desai a nervous glance. “Shall we?”
“Yes,” she uttered.
The doctors paced forward and crossed paths with the ammunition- and gun-clad soldiers. They both eyed Joseph and Desai, and the soldier on the far left nodded to them as they passed.
After a few feet, Joseph glanced back at the retreating men. Neither soldier considered them again. He let out a heavy breath.
“Did you see the one on the left?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, what do you think it meant?”
“I don’t know. Do you think he’s part of the Sons and Daughters?”
“I don’t know.”
They reached the lab and passed the observation room, entering the locker room. Desai went to the women’s side and Joseph to the other. A normal shift for the doctors minus two members of their team. He lifted the handle while unbuttoning his shirt with the other.
The metal clanged as the locker slid open. A small envelope was taped inside the door. Instantly, his heart sped up. He looked around the empty locker room to see if anyone noticed. Could this be a trap? Unsticking the envelope from the door, he ripped it open. He unfolded the letter and read the words carefully.
If you want to know what happened to Byrnes, you must go to where the first one fell at 2200. - Sons and Daughters of Liberty
“The first one fell?” he said to himself. He tucked the paper into his pocket. His heart pounded his rib cage without mercy. “First one fell?”
“Are you ready?” Desai said from on down the row of lockers.
“Jesus,” Joseph said. He ran a hand through his hair.
She wore light blue scrubs with a blue cap covering her head. She frowned at him. “What is it?”
He took a step closer. “This was in my locker.” He handed her the letter.
She gulped and took it. “Who’s the first one?”
“I dunno.”
“Patient Zero? He’s the first one.”
“Could be? Wouldn’t that just be in the other lab?”
“Yeah, where he succumbed to his illness.”
Her coal-dark eyes read him. “What if they meant Weinroth?”
Joseph stared back. “Weinroth?” The name stung him. She was his match across the board: intellectual, beautiful, and driven. She had been taken by the virus like so many others. His voice eked out a whisper. “Weinroth?”
“Her room?”
“Nobody’s been moved in there.”
“Could be.” He breathed hard. He hadn’t even looked inside since they had gunned her down like an animal in the hallway. “I’ll go there.”
Desai reached for him. “I’ll go with you.”
He smiled at her. “Thank you.”
“Together, remember?”
He nodded. “Together.”
***
Desai and Joseph sat in his room watching the clock. The clock face glowed a red 9:53 p.m. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
“What if it’s a trap?” he said looking at her.
“Then we made a mistake and MIM is out of doctors.”
“If we pick the wrong side, mankind loses.”
“We haven’t picked the wrong side.”
Joseph breathed hard. “What if we’re wrong?”
“Then we did it in good faith, and we pay the price.”
“Then we pay the price.” Joseph nodded. Her confidence calmed the waves of nervousness crashing in his gut. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
They walked down the hallway toward Dr. Rebecca Weinroth’s old room. Turning a corner, they continued on. They stopped at a sign near the side of the door.
“This is it.” It was a plain door. Nothing conspicuous about it. Nothing to indicate the woman that resided here and her death.
Joseph twisted the knob and the door opened. It was dark inside. There were no windows in the deep mountain compound, something that unsettled Joseph’s nerves when he thought about it too much. Made him wonder if the outside still existed or if they were in some sort of controlled experiment like mere rats in a maze.
With an air like he was deciding his fate, he walked through the door followed by Desai. The door gently closed behind them. His fingers fumbled for the light switch.
“Leave it off,” came a man’s voice.
Joseph’s heart leapt in his chest, and his hand hovered near the switch, the temptation to flip it and reveal his co-conspirator egging him on. His voice cracked, “Why?”
“Light switches set off sensors in the security system. They’ll know someone was in here when they weren’t supposed to be.”
“Who are you?” It was uncomfortable speaking to a man he didn’t know in the dark. It was odd addressing a general area.
“We don’t do names although I know who you are. Byrnes spoke of you with high praise and you as well, Dr. Desai.”
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“We do not meet in person unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
A small flashlight flicked on, illuminating a man with close-cropped reddish hair. He wore a light blue Air Force uniform with the gold oak leaves of a major on his shoulders.
“There were many of us, but someone got scared and flipped. Now they’re rounding us up one by one. I fear it’s only a matter of time before my name is brought under suspicion and I disappear as well.” His words weighed the air. “You read Phase II of Operation Homefront?”
“We did.”
“You and who else?”
“Dr. Desai and I,” Joseph said quickly. If they were in a trap, best to avoid implicating Hollis. She glanced over at him and he ignored her.
“Let me see your ID card,” the airman asked.
Joseph unclipped it and handed it to him.
The major pulled out a laptop and stuck the card inside. “Byrnes is in grave danger. We have to get him out and soon.” He hammered away at the keys on this laptop. “I’m updating the certificates on here for access to level -4.”
“I thought Cheyenne only went down to -3?”
“No, there are more layers inside this complex that I don’t even know about, but level -4 is where Byrnes and the others are being held.”
“What are we supposed to do?”
The man glared at them, irritated. “Get them out. I can’t. It’s too hot where I am.”
“How are we supposed to do that?”
The major’s eye twitched like he’d been under too much stress for weeks. “I figured you were more resolute.” Running a hand over his face, he stared back at his screen. “I have no reason to go down to that level. I’m merely glorified admin.” His fingers clicked on the keyboard. “However, you have the perfect excuse to go down there.”
Joseph gulped trying to soothe his drying throat. “What’s that?”
“You’re a doctor. You have plausible deniability. You know what’s at stake here?”
“I do.”
“Let me refresh your memory. These people will be executed if we don’t get them out. If we lose
Byrnes, the movement will collapse.”
He handed Joseph his ID card back and took Desai’s. “You should have access now to the level. The rest is up to you.”
Keys tapped away. “This is the best I can do. Good luck. We’ve dallied too long already.” He slammed his laptop closed and slipped it back into a bag. “I have to get out of here before someone notices I’ve been gone for too long.” He flicked off the flashlight, slipping into the hall without a word.
They stood quiet in the darkness. Only the sound of their breathing in the air.
“He wants us to break them out,” Desai said.
“How the heck are we going to do that? I’m a doctor not a covert operative.”
“We’ll think of something.”
They felt their way to the door and opened it. Joseph peered out either way. No one in sight. They left Weinroth’s room, walking in silence as Joseph tried to create some sort of plan in his mind. “What’s the first step of any prison escape?”
“What’s that?” Desai asked.
“I was hoping you would know.”
Their footsteps were soft but echoed down the empty hall.
“We’re scientists. We don’t have big brains for nothing. Where do we start?”
“Scientific method. We know the question. How do we break them out?”
“Yes.” Joseph smiled. “Then we do our background research.” He held out his ID card. “We find out where they’re being held.”
STEELE
Camp Forge, IA
Steele swung hard into a maple tree wide enough that he couldn’t wrap his arms all the way around. He reset his feet, his breath fogging like cold smoke. He nestled his chin inside his green-and-black shemagh he was using as a scarf. Breathing in the warm air, his lungs thanked him for the blast of warmth in the cold.
A thin layer of snow dotted the forest. The trees were leafless and dormant. Steele’s men, armed with axes, slew them by the dozens on a daily basis. At first, he had felt guilty cutting into the Reynolds’s forest, but now it was commonplace. They needed wood for fires to keep people warm and to build the fortifications higher.
He adjusted his grip on the wood axe and cut deep into the tree’s trunk, revealing its almost white interior. He swung again harder, his left arm doing a disproportionate amount of the work. His right arm grew stronger by the day, but his hand still didn’t function like it should. He wondered if a doctor could have fixed that in the old world. Best not to think too much about the old world. The thudding of axes and the grating of saws echoed in the forest around him.
Big Garrett stopped nearby as he caught his breath. He was over six-and-a-half-feet tall with the look of a man who used to be muscular in his twenties and thirties but now in his forties was just big. Can’t teach size. “Looks like you need some help,” Garrett said through his more salt than pepper beard.
Steele wiped his forehead. “Ha. A little more than that. At this rate, I’d be out here all day.”
“Let’s speed that up.” They took turns, slamming axes into the tree like a strongman competition. After what seemed like the entirety of the day, the towering maple started to teeter on itself.
“Timber!” they shouted.
Together the men gave the tree a shove and ran to the sides. The big tree crashed through the smaller saplings and thumped the ground.
Steele’s breath steamed in the brisk winter air. “Time for a break. I’m going to check on John.”
“Eh, I don’t need your help anyway,” Garrett said with a grin.
“Anyone ever tell you you look like Paul Bunyan?”
Garrett’s smile twisted nasty. “You want to be Babe?”
Chuckling to himself, Steele navigated his way through a field of stumps and broken branches. Every day, the men from Camp Forge cut farther and farther into the timber, and the walk got a bit longer.
His feet cracked the brittle undergrowth battered by the feet of many men. Van Fogerty, one of the neighboring farmers, hitched two powerful draft horses to a felled tree. Steele gave him a nod as he passed. Earth and snow alike had been churned up here as trunk after trunk was dragged toward the homestead.
They’d labored almost continuously night and day to harden their position. The wall grew taller around the homestead, encompassing the cabins and barns. Where two walls met, an elevated tower was erected and sandbagged to form a fortified machine gun nest.
John was directing Larry and a few other men from Sable Point in stripping the wood for use. Steele made his way to them. The logs were set up between shorter upright logs in a V-shape so they wouldn’t roll while they were prepped for building. Shavings fell to the ground as they chiseled away at the wood although those would not be wasted. They would be used as kindling for the camp.
The elder farmer directed the novice carpenters and engineers at their work like an old-time foreman. He gestured at Larry and adjusted his grip on the curved drawshave.
“You have to pull back like this.” The old man took the double-handled tool with a rounded sharpened piece of metal in the middle. “And angle it down. It will shave the wood better.”
“How’s it coming?”
The old man wrinkled his rosy nose at Steele. “Well, it’s colder than the dickens out here, but these tenderfoots are picking it up pretty quick.” He smiled broadly. “Got an extra bark spud over there if you want to help.”
“I have to speak to Thunder, but I will come back later and lend a hand.”
“Sounds good, son. I know you’re busy planning your military actions, but we can always use an extra hand.”
“I know you can.”
A few of the men dragged a log over to the fortification wall. Thunder and his group would load the log atop the others.
“Thunder.”
“Steele.” The heavyset biker with a long gray beard grinned at him. Eight men heaved the log and placed it atop the one beneath it. Then they would lash it down. Spaced out every ten yards was a thick post supporting the structure. The biker panted as he joined Steele.
“The wall is coming along.”
“It is. Another couple weeks and it’ll be tall enough.”
“Then maybe we can relax for Christmas.”
Thunder, who already doubled as a biker Santa in his workshop, scratched his red bandana. “Damn, it is the season, isn’t it? Kind of lost track of time.”
“Everything seems like a lifetime ago.”
“May as well be a different planet.”
Steele motioned toward the wall. “Show me the progress.”
“Sure.” The two men dipped down through a trench and walked near the wall.
Thunder inspected the interior. The other side of the log wall was filled with sand and dirt that stretched four feet to another log wall. “This should prevent any bullets from penetrating.”
“You sure?”
“It worked for the pastor’s men along the hills, except we are putting an extra foot of earth between the walls. Here.”
“Look.”
Thunder gestured between the logs. “You see? If a bullet penetrates the wood, it’ll have to get through another four feet of packed soil then another log before it has access to anyone inside.”
“God, that’s great. It’s like our very own HESCO bastion they use in military bases.”
“It is. Not quite as uniform, but it will definitely do the job.”
Steele studied the elevated machine gun nest. “Is that fortified enough?”
Thunder scratched his beard. “Should be. We have layers of sandbags inside up to chest level for protection.”
“That should do.” The Reynolds Farm was transforming into an apocalyptic fortress with enough protection to ward off the living or the dead. He surveyed the trench and knew the two-foot drop was not enough. Flashes of the dead crawling over the wall at Quarantine Base Cobra stung his memory. He pointed at them. “I want these deeper.”
Thunder cocked his head to the side. “Not sure about that, the ea
rth is freezing. Hard to dig when it’s cold.”
“Then we need to go faster. I’ll grab some of Ludlow’s men.”
“All right. They can work the areas we’ve already done so we don’t need to traverse as big of a trench.”
Steele nodded to the biker. How could this man be up to no good? Tess can’t be right. He jumped down into the hard-soiled trench. He bounded the entrenchment and cut through the hole in the unfinished wall. Inside the homestead, the heavy smell of burning wood cloaked the camp.
He passed through the cabins and made for one of the new barns that held the soldiers. A few stood outside the barn in soiled Army Combat Uniforms, easy to tell them from the other members of Camp Forge. Between their disheveled appearance and violent desperate gazes, it was clear they were men grasping to their last thread of humanity. He hoped he could give them something to fight for again, something that kept them from gunning him down instead of the infected.
A short Latino private inspected Steele up and down. “Steele.”
Steele eyed his name tag. “Private First Class Campos. Can you find Major Ludlow for me?”
Campos stared at him for a moment, his jaw working a piece of chewing gum. “It’s Sergeant Campos.”
The markings on his uniform indicated otherwise.
“Sergeant Campos?”
The soldier’s jaw continued to work the gum. “Promotions come quick nowadays.” He spit on the ground with disrespect in his eyes. “I’ll get him.” He dipped back inside the barn. A minute later, he returned with Major Ludlow.
“Captain, you needed to see me?”
Steele judged the major for a moment. Can I trust you? “I wanted to thank you for the fortification recommendations. The walls are coming along nicely.”
A thin beard masked Ludlow’s face. Steele didn’t know if he grew it in an attempt to stay warm or out of laziness. “I want to be protected from the dead as much as the next man.”
“We need more help deepening the trenches.”
Ludlow glanced over his shoulder. “We already have almost a hundred men either chopping wood or digging.”
“We need everyone. Those trenches have to get deeper. I was at the quarantine base when we were almost overrun.”
The End Time Saga (Book 5): The Holding Page 14
