One of the two guards was a fairly good shot. He squeezed off several rounds and was rewarded when the first semitruck turned suddenly and jackknifed, its trailer flipping onto its side. He concentrated his fire on the second truck and managed to shoot out the left front tire. The first truck’s tractor went over on its side, pulled by the weight of the trailer, and slid fifty feet before grinding to a halt in the middle of the road. The second semi tried to avoid the first and lost control. It bounded through the median, much as the Yukon did. But when it came down, it swerved and ran into the gas pumps in front of the store.
Jon made it to his truck and jumped in. Gwenn was already sitting in the back seat. She handed him the keys as Tami ran past the open door. “Tami, get in the damned truck.” She never even slowed. As Jon watched her run out of the garage, he turned the key and started the truck. All the lights Ben had installed on the truck came to life with the engine. Both he and Gwenn stared out the windshield for a minute in disbelief. There, lit up by the lights, were Auddy and Jay, and Jay was naked from the waist up.
As Jon stared at Jay, a bright mushroom-shaped fireball blossomed in his windshield and then the shock wave of the explosion rocked the truck back violently.
The explosion killed everyone, and destroyed everything, within a hundred feet of the gas pumps. Of the forty gang members in the back of the two semitrucks, only one survived. He had been in the first semitrailer. The blast picked him up and threw him fifty feet, burned the clothes off his back, and consumed most of his hair.
Tami hadn’t made it into the building. She reached the back door and had her hand on the door handle when the semi struck the pumps. The blast wave demolished three quarters of Sparky’s, killing all of those inside and the two remaining guards on the roof. The door blew into Tami and shoved her halfway to the garage. Jay and Auddy were knocked to the ground and debris fell around them, some pieces still on fire despite the heavy rain.
The searing heat from the resulting fire was intense. Jay got to her feet, then helped Auddy up. They saw Tami lying twenty feet closer to the destruction. “Go get in the truck.” Jay pointed Auddy toward Jon, who was still seeing spots in front of his eyes and had not moved. Jay went back for Tami. The heat was almost too much to bear, but she made it to her and rolled her over. Tami blinked her eyes, which was a welcome sight to Jay. She bent and grabbed her under her arms and dragged her toward the garage. Auddy watched, then ran to help her mom with Tami. “Dammit Auddy, you never did listen worth a damn,” Jay said, but accepted her help. Together they got Tami to the truck, then into the cab with Gwenn’s help.
Jon, having recovered, put the truck in gear and pulled out of the garage, trying to avoid the larger pieces of burning building that had landed in his path. “Go to the car park, Jon,” Jay said, pointing southeast. “We can’t leave without getting our supplies.” Jon nodded, trying not to look at Jay. He turned down the jeep trail that led to the hidden car lot. Gwenn handed Jay a shirt. Jay looked at her quizzically for just a second, then turned bright red and groaned in the sudden realization she’d lost her towel.
As Jay struggled to get the shirt on, a secondary explosion made them all turn and look back at Sparky’s, only to witness the most morbidly brilliant fireworks show they’d ever seen. Every crazy for miles would be coming soon.
Chapter 36
Day 9
CDC
Atlanta, GA
Dr. Julian Ruegg
After another sleepless night, Julian was no closer to reversing the effects of the vaccine. At every turn, he ran into a brick wall. The groups that Brian had assembled to work on the various projects were getting nowhere fast as well. No matter how he crunched the numbers, or how he examined the data, there was no way the nanites should be mutating. The samples of the nanites he extracted from Simon had not changed one iota, nor had those he’d taken from the turned down in the sublevel of the CDC. It made no sense.
He sat back and threw his pencil across the room in frustration. Susan approached him from behind and began kneading his shoulders with a firm yet soothing grip. “You just need to step away from the problem and get some rest,” she said, bending forward. He turned his head to the side and breathed in her scent. Her dark hair tickled his neck and her closeness caused his heart to quicken.
Her right hand slid from his shoulder, under his shirt, down to his chest. She continued to rub, but now her touch was light as she traced a finger around his areola. Her left hand ran up his neck and through his hair. She gripped his hair firmly, squeezed his chest with her right hand, and pressed her lips to his. Gently at first, only slightly parted, then more forcefully as she explored him with her tongue. She pinched his nipple hard and his response was immediate. He backed away an inch. “Well, at least I know that this is not a dream. With that little pinch you have assuaged my fear that it was.”
He was suddenly aware that he had been wearing the same clothes and had not showered for two days. He pulled away further. “I must reek of body odor.” She pulled him back closer, murmuring, “You smell like a man.” She kissed him again. “But follow me and I’ll wash your back so that you’re less self-conscious.”
It was their first physical interaction since the kiss she had given him during his recovery from the CT scan. She crushed her ample breasts against his back, then turned, looked at him coyly, and led him to the shower in the next room.
He woke nine hours later in his bed, alone. Was that a dream after all? He heard Simon talking with someone in the next room. Then the door cracked open an inch. Susan saw that he was awake and came in and closed the door. She crossed the room and crawled onto the bed like a cat stalking its prey. She wore one of his shirts and her panties. The bronze skin of her bottom formed a beautiful heart shape from his view. She straightened her arms and arched her back, giving him an eyeful down his own shirt. He smiled and reached for her, but stopped before his hand touched her breast.
“Oh my God!” he exclaimed and sat straight up in the bed. He suddenly realized that that bastard Brian might have played him again. How could he have been so stupid? The data made perfect sense. The vaccine he had used on Simon and himself was not the same vaccine he had used on his wife, daughter, and assistant Eddie. Simon was with him at the lab the day after they’d finished the vaccine. Once he was certain the vaccine was safe, he’d taken a dose himself, then given one to Simon. He left that bottle of vaccine and a couple of syringes in his coat pocket to take home with him that night to inoculate both his wife and Angelina. The bottle had broken when he caught his coat in the car door at the house. They had already sent the rest of the samples on to the CDC to disperse to the manufacturing labs. He hadn’t been able to inoculate the rest of his family and Eddie until after they had gotten a batch back from the CDC. From Dr. Brian Pearson.
Brian had never intended that Julian should survive and make it to the CDC. He had willingly walked into the worst place on earth that he could have brought his son. The woman he had fallen for, was she also duped? Or was she Brian’s confidant? Working for him to monitor and control Julian? Was the mission they had spoken of really to save humanity, or was it something entirely unthinkable?
He backpedaled away from Susan, banging his head against the headboard in his hasty retreat. Her eyes clouded over. “What is it? What’s the matter, Julian?” She moved closer to him again.
“Stay away,” he hissed. “You fooled me. You seduced me on orders from Brian. In order to keep an eye on me, to make sure I did not succeed in finding a cure. Lana said it back in the lab that day, that it was ‘all for the mission.’ What is the mission, Susan?”
“Julian, stop it, you’re scaring me,” Susan said, her eyes welling with tears. “What are you talking about?”
“The vaccine, my vaccine, it was perfect, it worked as it was designed to. Until I sent it here, where you people changed it. I did not kill the world, you killed the world, and it was on purpose!”
“Julian, you’re wrong, I promise you.
Brian did tell me to seduce you, but he said I was to do everything I could to relieve your stress, to help you, that your role was vital to solving the problem. He told me that he had planned to have Lana do it, but that he could see I liked you, that I would be more natural. I told him that I would do it, not because he’d asked, but because I wanted to, because I wanted to be close to you and Simon.”
Julian spun away from her and out of the bed. He stood there naked, a wild look in his eyes. “You expect me to believe that?” he said incredulously. “That you are not part of this?”
“I swear to you. What you are saying may be true, but they told us that we were trying to find a way to kill all of those that had turned. Until you came. Then Dr. Pearson said it might be possible to reverse the effects of the vaccine. That our mission parameters had changed.”
“I do not believe you,” Julian said. He turned away from her, to the dresser, and retrieved a pair of underwear.
“What are you going to do?” she asked plaintively.
“I am taking my son and leaving here.”
“If what you are saying is true, then Dr. Pearson will never let you leave.”
“He will try to stop me, of that I am sure. He has already said as much. Nevertheless, I have to try. I am sorry, but I will have to secure you so that you cannot raise an alarm.”
“Julian, please let me prove to you that I had nothing to do with this. I can get you out of here. Take me with you.” Her eyes pleaded with him, tears now running down her cheeks.
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because I think I love you.”
Every fiber of his logical mind screamed at him to disregard her plea. How could she possibly love him? Yet he knew that on top of everything else he was feeling right now—the danger to his son, his hatred of Brian, the shock of his realization that his vaccine had been tampered with purposefully—was the fact of this tremendous hurt he felt at her betrayal. Why? Because he too had feelings for her.
“How would you get us out of here?” The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them.
“The tunnels. They expanded and improved the entire sewer system. When they did that, they dug two large tunnels under the city to carry excess floodwaters to treatment facilities before being released into the Chattahoochee River. The entire CDC campus is isolated from the new system, but I know where the old abandoned system junctions with the new one. I can get us out.”
Chapter 37
Day 10
Junction US 20 & 77
Columbia, SC
Jay & Auddy, Jon & Gwenn, Tami
They had traveled all night since leaving Sparky’s. Jay led the caravan in her SUV. Auddy’s truck didn’t have the fancy lights so she took up position between Jay and Jon’s vehicles. Once they’d gone fifty miles to the west on Route 76, the sky cleared and a full moon lit up the terrain well enough for them to run without the lights on. When they encountered any of the turned, they’d flip on the UV lights and close ranks around Auddy. It slowed them considerably, but the group was traveling away from disaster and not toward any goal other than immediate survival. Tami had suffered a few second-degree burns and got knocked on the head by a flying board, but she would be okay, physically. Mentally, the whole group was fighting off the depression that comes with being violated.
Tami wanted to return, but realized they were in no shape to take on the gang that attacked the compound. She would return, but it would be to seek revenge. She thought that both her husband and son had perished in the explosion that nearly took her life as well. She would be back, you could bet on that.
When Jay saw the eastern sky turn gray, she pulled the SUV over and retrieved her road atlas. They needed to figure out a way home.
They gathered around the hood of Auddy’s truck. Gwenn passed out water to everyone from the supplies they had in Jon’s truck. Jay gratefully accepted the lukewarm water and guzzled almost the entire bottle, drizzling the last quarter of it over her head. Auddy opened a can of Pringles, sat in the cab of her truck, and ate them mechanically one at a time. She stopped every third or fourth chip and drank some water. Jon looked at the atlas that Jay had laid on the hood. “What are you thinking? We go straight up 77 to Charlotte?” Jay shook her head. “I don’t think we should go anywhere near Charlotte. I think we head farther west. Then north through Tennessee and Kentucky, then head east toward home. I want to stay as far away from that gang as we can.” Jon nodded but had a frown on his face. “That’s going to take at least two extra days at the rate we’re going.”
They discussed it while the group ate. No one fixed a meal; they just poked around in the supplies and grabbed something.
Jay’s eyes were heavy. “I think we ought to rest here for a few hours, try and get some sleep before it gets too hot.” Jon agreed, Tami didn’t care, and Gwenn and Auddy were already lying down in their respective vehicles. Three hours later Jay woke up sweating.
She sat up and saw Jon had a cook stove out and was busy making some coffee. At least she hoped it was coffee.
“Hey,” he said as she climbed out of the SUV.
“Hey. You get any sleep?” Jay asked.
“A little. I don’t fit as well as you girls do in tight spaces.” Jon was six foot four and in decent shape for a fifty-two-year-old. His normally well-groomed hair was sticking up in places and his two-day-old beard gave his face a gray, gruff cowboy look. “Coffee?”
“That would be a ‘hell yes’ for me,” Jay said.
Auddy groaned as she lifted herself off the front seat of the pickup truck. “To think of all the little things I used to complain about. They seem laughable now. The traffic, the tourists, my job. I wish I could have those problems again.”
The conversation woke Gwenn and she climbed out of Jon’s truck. She stretched and looked around. “Anyone seen Tami?”
“Yeah, she’s behind the truck in the shade,” Jon answered from the tailgate of Auddy’s truck where he was pouring a coffee for Jay.
“That smells good. Can I have a cup?” Auddy asked.
Gwenn came back waving a piece of cardboard over her head. “Hey guys. You might want to read this.” She handed it to Jon.
A note written on the cardboard left them all wondering what to do. I can’t leave not knowing for sure what happened to Gerald and Ben. This is my home, I need to stay. I’m headed back to the store. I have taken a weapon from your box. I hope you can forgive me. Don’t come after me. It was signed Tammila.
“She can’t be far. We need to look for her,” Jon said, staring east as if he could spot her hiking down the road.
Jay disagreed. “She’s a grown woman; we have no right to chase her down. What are you going to do, force her to come with us?”
No one said anything for several minutes. “I guess we should pack up and move on,” Jon finally said, shaking his head.
Chapter 38
Day 11
CDC
Atlanta, GA
Dr. Brian Pearson
The phone rang on Dr. Pearson’s desk. He was meeting with Lana; he had her bent over that same desk. He stopped what he was doing for a moment. “Answer the phone,” he said, not moving from behind her. She reached over and picked up the receiver. “Dr. Pearson’s office,” she said, her voice cracking a bit as he thrust into her again with an unpleasant grin on his face.
She covered the receiver with one hand while leaning on her elbows. “It’s security, Dr. Pearson.”
“Put it on speaker,” he said, tightening his grip on her ponytail.
She did as he asked. “What is it, Phillip? I’m kind of busy right now.”
“Ah, we have a problem, sir.”
He swore and jerked Lana upright by her hair. She whimpered as he whispered in her ear, “We’ll finish this later.” He stepped back and she quickly pulled up her pants and left the room without ever making eye contact with him. He was tiring of her company. Maybe he would bring Susan in for a meeting.
He pull
ed up his pants and made no effort to hide the sound of his rearranging. “What the hell’s the problem, Mr. Smith?”
“We had an alarm on a secured door on the second level, sir. We went to the video and I think you’ll want to see this.”
“All right, I’m coming. But if this is bullshit and you’re wasting my time, I’ll have you cleaning shit out of the cages.” He punched the disconnect button, stormed out of his office, and headed to the security command center.
He swiped his key card on the security door and walked into the command center. Phil waved him over to his station.
“I thought you would want to know. I thought they might be sneaking off for a quickie, sir, but they have the kid with them.”
Brian’s face went red as he leaned on the desk with both hands and looked at the monitor. There was Susan leading Julian and Simon through the door. “Where does that door lead?” he said through clenched teeth.
“Nowhere really, sir. The air scrubbers are in there and the water storage tank, not much else.”
“Nothing else?”
“Well, you can access the old sewers from there, but they’ve been abandoned and sealed off since about 2005, sir.”
Brian whirled on him and cracked him with the back of his hand. Phil toppled over backward in his chair, wondering what the hell that was for. “Get a team down there immediately, you idiot.”
Phil rolled out of his chair, stood up, set the chair back on its feet, and returned to his seat. He put his headset back on and keyed his mic. “I need team Alpha to sector B level two, full battle rattle, this is not a drill.”
Apocalypse Family (Book 2): Family Reunion J Page 21
