Resistance: Pandora, Book 3

by Eric L. Harry

  In the quiet after the side door slid shut, Noah looked around. Something was wrong. Natalie one, Jake two, Chloe three, Isabel four, Townsend five. Me six. He counted again. One, two, three, four, five, six. “Where’s…where’s Margus? We’ve gotta go back!” Chloe broke down and sobbed. Natalie slid over and put an arm around her, but looked confused. “We left him there?” Noah cried.

  “He was shot, Dad,” Jake said in a quivering voice. Tears welled up in his eyes. “Bad. He couldn’t…he couldn’t breathe. He kept gurgling…saying….” Jake began sobbing.

  Chloe repeatedly banged the back of her head against the bulkhead—not gently—and stared into space, face glistening with tears. She completed her brother’s sentence in a drained monotone. “He kept saying shoot me. Shoot me. He was…drowning…in his own blood. His eyes were…bugging out. He was turning purple and shaking. He was so, so scared, Dad.” She collapsed into the arms of her mother, who looked in distress at Noah, then at Jake.

  “Jake,” Noah said, feeling a quiver ripple along his torso, “Jake, did… did you…?”

  Jake shook his head. Oh-thank-God! But his son stared down at his now wailing, twisting, squirming, kicking sister, who kept screaming into Natalie’s lap. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommyyyy! Make it stop! Make it stop!”

  “Chloe did it,” Jake whispered. “He kept telling Chloe you owe me. You owe me.”

  Chapter 22

  NEW ROANOKE, VIRGINIA

  Infection Date 84, 1200 GMT (8:00 a.m. Local)

  “They’re in here.” Dwayne nodded to the guard, who opened the door for Emma.

  Emma entered the hotel conference room to find a dozen U.S. Army soldiers in full combat gear, minus their weapons and radios, on the carpet sitting with their backs to the walls or lounging on the floor. All wore gloves and most wore masks, which one hurriedly slid back into place after taking a sip of coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

  Another rose. “This is Capt. Williams,” Dwayne said before turning to the officer. “Sir, this is our Chief Epidemiologist.” The man’s eyes flitted back and forth between Dwayne and Emma as if he had no idea what to do or say.

  “How do you do, Capt. Williams?” Emma said.

  He looked around at his men before replying, “I’m, uh…We’re fine. I guess.”

  “Is there anything we can get you? Have you been fed?”

  “Yeah. We got some chow.” Nothing seemed amiss in his response. “We’d like to get our gear back.”

  “First, I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “More questions?”

  Dwayne explained. “Samantha’s interviewers spent most of the night with them. They were uncooperative.”

  The army officer said, “They were asking things we can’t talk about. Our deployments. Missions we’ve been on. Engagements we’ve had and the casualty counts.”

  “They’re compiling a history of The Outbreak and The Killing,” Emma explained, hoping that would clarify things. “They weren’t asking for military secrets.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a protocol, when you’ve been…detained.” He turned to Dwayne. “You understand, don’t you?”

  Dwayne turned to Emma. He obviously did understand his fellow soldier.

  “What were you doing outside New Roanoke?” she asked the captain.

  “New Roanoke?”

  “That’s what we’re calling it. Why were you spying on us?”

  The army officer hesitated. He turned back around to his men. Dwayne had called them a “Special Forces A Team.” The captain said, “That’s a perfect example of what we’re not allowed to talk about. It’s in the Geneva Convention, Dr. Miller.”

  He knew Emma’s name. “Okay. But what did you see?”

  “We saw you murdering people.”

  Dwayne filled in the blanks. “They were on a hill observing the executions. When we started shooting the Uninfecteds who got convicted at trial, they fired on us. We lost twenty-nine dead from their attack, and from when we maneuvered against them.”

  “Some of your men were only wounded,” the captain said in a voice that rose nearly to a shout, “that you shot! Your own wounded, for the love of God!”

  “We don’t have good trauma care,” Emma explained. “How many did you lose?”

  “We, uh…. None. The Lance Corporal here had vehicles and numbers, and got around behind us. But listen. My men couldn’t just stand down and observe that…slaughter.”

  “They were executions,” Emma replied. “Those people broke the Rules.”

  “There were old women, and…and we saw at least two children. They were Infecteds, but still…”

  Dwayne noted, “You only fired on us when we started killing Uninfecteds.”

  “The Infecteds weren’t even complaining. They just stood there. The Uninfecteds were on their knees and begging you! How can you…?” He was suffering some distress. “You people don’t even get what I’m talking about, do you?”

  Emma and Dwayne exchanged a look. “No,” Emma replied.

  After a long silence, the captain asked, “So…what happens now?”

  His eleven men stared back intently, not moving a muscle, awaiting her answer. “If we let you go, do you agree not to come back again? A contract?”

  The captain said, “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Because if you do come back, you would be breaching your contract. Breaking the Rules. You understand the punishment for that?” Capt. Williams took a moment, then nodded. “Dwayne, get agreements from them individually and take down their names. And please tell your commanders, captain, that we are not hostile to your forces. We’re only trying to restore order and get the economy back on its feet to stave off mass starvation. If, however, they send more forces into our territory, and we capture them, we’re most likely going to execute them. Can you please pass that along?”

  “Well, yeah. I can. But are you sure that’s the message you wanta send?”

  “I thought, in the spirit of neighborliness, that it was preferable to warn them instead of demonstrating our intentions by executing you. But if you’re suggesting that the message would have greater impact if we returned your bodies with a note pinned to them—”

  “No. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that, if you haven’t noticed, the United States military has the ability to retaliate…massively.”

  “We have noticed. I’d prefer to use our resources to restore economic productivity and not make war. Ultimately, however, every contract requires all parties agreeing. I’ve made an offer—you leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone—and your commanders must decide whether to form a contract, or reject my offer and suffer the consequences.”

  “I’ll…pass that along.”

  “Thank you.” Emma instructed Dwayne to take the A Team to the current frontier between Community territory and the lawlessness beyond, and to return their equipment and weapons upon release. “Good luck to you, Captain Williams.”

  Although she had intended no humor in her farewell, the soldier snorted. “Same to you, I guess, Dr. Miller. I hope you can live with your conscience.”

  He means me, said the voice in her head. And I’m fine with the executions.

  Chapter 23

  ABOARD BLACK HAWK HELICOPTER

  Infection Date 84, 1415 GMT (9:15 a.m. Local)

  Their miraculous rescue from Bristol, Tennessee, had been no cause for celebration. Chloe lay curled up and blessedly catatonic after putting Margus Bishop out of his misery with a bullet. Townsend had whispered to the door gunner, “Do we have enough fuel?” The man had crossed his fingers in reply. They had no gear or weapons. If they were forced to put down, they would be at the mercy of soulless Infecteds and desperate Uninfecteds.

  “Those poor people,” Natalie said.

  “Who?” Noah asked.

  His wife seemed shocked by Noah’s ca
llousness. She must be referring to the abandoned defenders of Bristol. But his heartlessness was necessary. They were doomed, like everyone before them. All Noah could think was what happens if they run out of gas.

  Noah stared out the side windows as the dark wooded terrain slid by. The crew chief began visiting the cockpit. First, it was once every half hour. After one such trip, the noncom warned them the external fuel tanks were dry and being jettisoned to save weight. Even so, there were gasps when the helicopter lurched skyward.

  As time went by, Jake, Natalie, and Isabel fell asleep one after the other. “Mississippi River,” Townsend announced as a milestone. Its black water glistened in the moonlight. The crew chief’s visits to the front soon came every fifteen minutes, then ten, then five.

  “How’re we doin’?” Townsend asked him.

  The man in the oversized helmet waggled his hand. “If we run out of fuel and have to auto-rotate, it’ll be a hard landing. I’ll crack the door open so it doesn’t jam if the airframe gets warped. Give me a second to check on the rotors before we exit, then follow me out and get away. Even though there won’t be any fuel, there’s lots of other flammable fluids. Engine oil, hydraulic fluid, grease. And that engine, the main shaft, the exhaust—they’re all gonna be white hot.” The crewman returned to the cockpit, and stayed there.

  Noah listened to the sounds. The thrum of the engines seemed steady. But every time the pilot adjusted the throttle, or the whop-whop of the rotors chopped at the air differently, or an up or downdraft abruptly altered their straight and level flight, the breath froze in Noah’s lungs. Only when they kept flying did he resume breathing.

  When the sun rose, they were lower. They were losing altitude. Townsend noticed it too. He held a sleeping Isabel lovingly: one hand on her head; the other on her arm. With her head in his lap and her face relaxed, she looked much as Noah remembered her the day he went off to college and didn’t wake her from her nap on the couch. He always regretted not saying goodbye to her. She was napping from exhaustion at crying over him leaving home forever, fearing that to mark the end of their family. The real end came several years later with the death of their parents on a dark and icy road.

  Townsend turned from the window, where the treetops were sliding beneath them. “He’s staying low,” Townsend whispered to Noah, “in case he loses power. He’ll disengage the main rotor shaft so it’ll keep windmilling and provide at least some lift.”

  “Should we get them up and into seatbelts?”

  Townsend shook his head. “Better to be flat on the deck. Reduces spinal compression if we drop straight in.”

  The engine sputtered, but just once. Noah and Townsend caught each other’s eye but said nothing. The copilot was leaning sideways and cranking a lever back and forth while contorting himself to read a gauge. The pilot’s jaw was clenched into a grimace as he had one hand on the stick and the other on the throttle, feathering the blades’ angle to eke out the maximum lift possible from each rotation. The crew chief between their chairs was pointing and shouting. The engine sputtered again.

  Noah closed his eyes. Dear God, please!

  There was a bump, then another. Noah looked out the window. They were rolling…on the ground. His family was roused from their deep sleep. They were taxiing past aircraft of all descriptions when the engine spat and puffed and conked out. The spinning rotors wound down with a dying whine.

  “Where are we?” a bleary eyed Natalie asked, blinking to clear her vision while staring out through the grimy windows. The crew chief returned to the cabin…grinning. “Welcome to Texas.”

  The pilot and copilot high fived each other and the crew chief. But the slowly rising Millers were more subdued.

  “What’s that about?” Natalie asked as she watched the crew’s celebration.

  “We made it,” Noah replied.

  Natalie seemed confused. “Okay, but…was that ever in doubt?”

  Noah shrugged. They could see movement outside. A soldier in full protective gear—charcoal suit and hood, gas mask, gloves—appeared in the window and startled Chloe, whose eyes were puffy and red. “Dad? Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said, though he was beginning to wonder.

  Natalie and Isabel both started when a pelting spray lashed the window through which they peered. Suds followed, and long brushes on poles after that. Jake said, “Do they think helicopters can catch the P. or something?”

  The stench of scalding steam filled the cabin as water drenched the hot engine. Finally, there was a rap on the door. The crew chief slid it open. The air outside smelled of detergent. A soldier power washed the last suds from their aircraft’s decontamination off the concrete into a muddy pit half filled with blackish water.

  When everyone climbed down, they were ordered out of their gear. When it became clear that meant strip naked, Noah objected. “This is my wife and daughter and sister.”

  “Everybody! Now!”

  “Daaad?” Chloe whined.

  “Come on, Chloe,” said her mother as she unbuttoned her own trousers.

  Their embarrassment was short lived. The freezing spray almost knocked Noah to the pavement. Hands that had covered privates now protected faces from the powerful stream as bodies doubled over.

  “Fuck!” Noah shouted. “Take it easy!” He gasped for air. Soon, they were covered in suds and scrubbed with brushes, restoring a modicum of privacy before that was robbed from them again by the rinse cycle. As suddenly as the decontamination had begun, it was over.

  Chloe was crying, doubled over behind arms and hands. Noah backed up to her to shield her from prying eyes. Jake and Natalie did the same from the other sides. Noah didn’t look Isabel’s way but saw out of the corner of his eye that she hugged a naked Townsend. Rough towels were extended on the ends of poles. The cool air on their wet skin and hair left them shivering.

  There were no rides. The small bedraggled band of soaked immigrants, clad only in soggy towels, shuffled barefoot past crews and soldiers. Men arming and fueling fighter bombers, teams of heavily armed soldiers on one kneepad waiting on preflight checks, helicopters disgorging stretchers atop which lay wounded clad head to toe in plastic baggies pierced only by the mouthpiece of a snorkel on the inside connected to a cylindrical filter on the outside, and huge transport aircraft unloading artillery and armored fighting vehicles or loading cargos of supplies on pallets.

  “My feet hurt,” Jake said as he tried walking on the rims of his soles. Noah had tried first aid on the boy’s blisters, but they had all been bloody and burst when he last tried to unstick his socks from his skin.

  “Hang in there, buddy,” Noah said. “We’re almost there.” But it was Chloe that concerned him most. She was hunched over holding the top and bottom of her towel closed, shivering quietly, mouth ajar, face a blank, staring wide-eyed at nothing. Noah put an arm around her, but she didn’t even notice.

  They arrived at a tent outside a large hangar. There was a single gas heater like on a restaurant’s terrace. Noah and Townsend let the women and Jake huddle nearest to it. A female airman in full protective gear issued them jumpsuits that looked like prison wear and paper thin slippers. They were cheap, but everyone hurriedly scrambled into them with backs turned. The women began drying their stringy hair with their towels. It was then that Noah noticed the armed guards who had accompanied them at a distance. They held rifles at the ready.

  “Who’s first?” asked the African American woman who’d brought the prison wear.

  “Me,” Noah said when no one else spoke up. He followed her behind an opaque plastic curtain and sat in a folding chair. She settled behind three rough wooden planks spanning two rusty metal barrels. It looked less like a desk than a barricade. There was a pistol in a holster beside her hanging from a hook on the tent post.

  “Name.”

  “Noah Miller.”

  “Places you’ve
been in the last thirty days?”

  “Uhm, the Shenandoah Valley, in Virginia. I-81 down past Roanoke.” Her eyes darted up at him. “And Bristol, Tennessee.”

  “Have you had contact with anyone who might have been exposed to Pandoravirus?”

  She looked up when he snorted. “You’re serious?” Apparently, she was. She didn’t get how ridiculous her question sounded. And he didn’t realize until then that this was the old world, where encounters with homicidal Infecteds was still only as seen on TV. “Uhm…we had, I guess, what you’d call encounters. We killed a bunch of them.”

  “How close did they get to you?”

  Noah thought back to the landing zone. “Fifteen or so yards. Maybe ten.”

  She rose, strapped on her pistol belt and holster, rounded the barricade, and rolled a device across his forehead. She noted the results on a form before prying his eyes open with gloved fingers and flashing a penlight past pupils that responded, he hoped as he winced. She put a green ring binder on the planks and opened it to plastic, three hole punched sleeves.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  Noah leaned forward. It was a photo of a family laughing at a picnic. Paper plates rested atop a checkered blanket on a grassy hillside. All of the plates except one contained hot dogs and French fries. On the exception, however, were the smashed contents of a dead cat, whose entrails dangled off the plate like road kill.

  “Jesus Christ,” Noah replied, cringing and looking up aghast. “You want me to describe…?”

  She turned the page. “What about this?”

  He immediately searched for something out of place and disgusting. A family in church clothes singing from a hymnal in their pew. Nothing fucked up there. “Looks like an ordinary family at Sunday….”

  She flipped the page. Noah winced and turned away. “Jeez. Is that some kind of cannibal…kitchen or something?” She wasn’t interested in his answers. She stared at his face, which contorted with revulsion. One dismembered torso whose limbs and head had been stacked atop it, and one wedding cake being shoved into a pretty bride’s mouth later, he was through and wearing a plastic bracelet like when checking into a hospital.