-6-
Four weeks later
Jill hugged Owen first, looking into his bright inquisitive eyes. “Be good, little brother,” she said.
“You too, Miss Jill,” he responded shyly. “Thanks again for letting me out.” She knew what he meant; out of the prison of his body, and his brain’s broken biology.
Jill said her goodbyes to each in turn: dour Sarah, smiling more now as the age lines fled from her face; gentle giant Big Jim, looking more like his dead son Jimmy every day; Jane, seemingly the least affected by the Plague, though at seventeen she had little to rejuvenate.
“Clayton.” Jill shook hands with the man who, with four of his fellows, formed the nucleus of a resistance cell in this area. They struck from the high hills and hidden valleys, stealing supplies, damaging military equipment, and infecting everyone they could.
“Reaper.” He smiled, his eyes less haunted now that he had come to terms with what he’d done, and Sarah had explicitly forgiven him. In fact, he seemed to be doing his best to be the son she had lost. “We’re going to miss you.”
“Me too, but I can’t stay. I know it makes no sense up here,” she tapped her head, “but it makes sense in here.” She patted her heart. “I have to find out what happened to my family.”
“I know.” He squeezed her hand one final time and let it drop. “Good luck, and good hunting.”
“Not me,” she replied grimly. “I’ve killed enough for one lifetime. Anyway, I’m a cop at heart. I’m not cut out to be an insurgent. All I want to do is go back to being a cop, in an America that isn’t murdering its own people.”
“Too late, I think. We’ll have to fight the Unionists to bring the real USA back. When you’ve found out what you need to know…remember us, all right?”
“Yeah,” Jill replied. “I’ll do what I can, from wherever I’m at. And remember to get in touch with the contact I gave you. The person on the other end of that email is completely trustworthy. Helped me escape. Just remember what I said about avoiding keywords that the NSA might pick up on. They can’t read everyone’s email, so the trick is never to get flagged.”
Clayton nodded. “I got it. We got it. Now you have to get going, before these folks start bawling.” He looked a little teary himself.
Jill smiled one last time, hoisted her rucksack, and walked out of the cave into the Tennessee Appalachians. She consciously resisted the urge to look back, but sensed their loving eyes upon her until she was down the trail and out of sight.
Night fell as she walked, the sun lingering below the mountainous horizon, shedding a long twilight. After dark, the moon allowed her to see well enough, perfected Eden eyes picking out every root and rock. Eden ears heard every night cry, the hoot of owls, the piping of bats that normally only children could. Fully fuelled, her body felt like a smooth-running machine.
The trail she had planned took her through a series of lightly populated areas, many of them state parks – Cove Lake, Frozen Head, Obed, Cumberland Mountain – eventually debouching near Huntsville, Alabama, nearly two hundred miles on foot. As long as she had food, though, she should be able to make twenty to forty miles a day, assuming she didn’t run into any trouble.
A stolen GPS would keep her on track, and a faked Security Service ID card should get her through anything but a high-level database check. She had food, fluids, and camping gear, and the burner phone she had bought so long ago.
The one thing she didn’t have was a gun. With her cover as an SS trooper on vacation, she might have been able to get away with it, but she had decided it was more risk than it was worth. Her combat knife would have to do.
She’d learned one lesson at least during the long swim from the cruise ship. Now her ruck and her pockets were packed with high-nutrition items – protein powders, nutrient bars, MRE packets, home-jerked deer meat, smoked fish and duck. She sincerely hoped that she would never feel that gut-ripping hunger ever again.
As she hiked, Jill wondered about the rest of the world. Apparently whole nations had embraced the Eden Plague, or at least, didn’t have the security apparatus to keep it under control. The poorer they were, the more likely that it spread like wildfire, becoming accomplished fact. Now formerly corrupt and terrifying places like the Congo and Zimbabwe, Sudan and Colombia and Rwanda, nearly overnight had become functioning nations. Without the load of medical costs, and with the Eden Plague’s virtue effect dramatically reducing corruption and crime, the only problem many countries now faced was food supply.
However, the world had always produced enough food. In most cases it was transportation, distribution and economics that caused shortages, and those issues remained. The world was still a long way from perfect, but it seemed like it was getting better, despite the tremendous disruptions, and resistance from the fearful elites.
They’re afraid of change, Jill realized. Afraid that disruptions in the markets and healthy, long-lived populations would erode their traditional power bases. Like the Unionists, reactionaries throughout the world are exploiting fear to maintain power.
She camped that day in an out-of-the-way nook in the mountains, with no fire and no tent, just some brush to hide her. Insects seldom bothered her, and she wondered if that was a Plague effect as well. Even if she did get bitten, the bites healed so fast they were no trouble.
Traveling by night and sleeping by day gave her a lot of time for similar thoughts. An earbud and a radio no bigger than her thumb let her pick up a lot of information, though most of it was obviously censored. Even so, some things leaked through.
The USA, even under the Unionists, still claimed to be a republic. The Constitution might be getting trampled, but it was not yet completely gone. Courageous judges, statesmen, clergy and legal organizations fought rearguard actions, trying to limit the tide of lies and fear sweeping aside citizens’ rights.
They seemed to be losing.
In the past months, tensions with the Chinese had run high, and the paranoid North Koreans launched a missile at Japan. Though shot down by interceptor missiles, Tokyo immediately revealed that it was even now assembling one hundred atomic warheads from secretly prepared components, and would defend itself with nuclear weapons if necessary.
Shortly after, seven more nuclear detonations occurred on American soil. Though blamed on terrorists, speculation ran rampant that some enemy state had supplied the bombs – China, Russia, or North Korea being the usual suspects.
The Unionists pushed for more Federal police powers, and the rump Democratic-Republican coalition, now joined out of sheer political necessity, was happy to oblige. More surveillance, more arrests without charges, more curtailment of rights naturally followed.
By the time Jill got to Huntsville, the USA had become a police state. Less than one year from Infection Day, the world had convulsed and remade itself, and most Americans didn’t care. They were too busy trying to keep food on the table, money in the bank and themselves above suspicion to be courageous.
Most people were sheep.
Jill remembered a resistance training exercise she had participated in. She and the rest of her MP platoon had been run through a prisoner-of-war scenario for three days.
Despite briefings, despite education, and despite knowing full well it was only a training exercise, many if not most of the troops had found themselves complying with their “captors” instructions in all things, with little question or resistance. Videos shown afterward had been eye-opening and embarrassing, as Marines seemed to make statements denigrating the United States, their officers, and everything they had sworn to uphold, with just a bit of trickery, persuasion, and selective video editing.
Why? Afterward, she had deduced the answer, the same answer: most people followed authority figures, especially if backed up by force and even the veneer of legitimacy. Add fear and misplaced patriotism and the recipe was complete, and no one was more susceptible to this seductive stew than young military troops, trained to follow orders.
In fact, i
n the exercise, she’d seen junior personnel ignore the lawful orders of their own officers and NCOs in favor of the “captors’” instructions, completely ignoring the Code of Conduct that they should have internalized. How much more likely was it they would follow despicable orders that proceeded from those same officers, whose careers, whose lives, or even whose families were threatened?
Jill understood. If the Corps was your family, what do you do when your family betrays the very things it is supposed to uphold and defend? Without another family, some kind of support system, what could one poor Marine, or soldier or sailor or airman, do?
Now she realized that, although she loved the Corps, the Corps did not love her. God might love her, if He existed the way Chaplain Forman believed. Her family might love her, and her new family, the McConleys, certainly did. Beyond that…she just didn’t know.
She made it two hundred miles in five days without trouble, traveling from sundown to sunup and a bit more. Park rangers generally did not walk trails at night. At most they might drive around and check campgrounds and scare the bears away. They were easy to avoid.
But near Huntsville, her luck ran out.
Jill had planned to make her way west by hitchhiking, by bus, or even perhaps by “borrowing” a government vehicle if she thought she could get away with it. The corridor between I-20 and I-40 seemed ideal; smaller state highways that would be watched less, perhaps, but still with a heavy presence of truckers.
This time she resolved not to let anyone get the drop on her. This time she was ready.
As so often happens, it was just bad luck that tripped Jill up. She’d made it to Monte Sano State Park overlooking the Rocket City of Huntsville – home of both the Marshall Space Flight Center and the Army’s Redstone Arsenal. As the sun came up over the Von Braun Astronomical Society’s observatory, a pickup truck with Alabama State markings came into view on the forested road.
Perhaps if she hadn’t been tired, been more alert, or if the park ranger had had her lights on, Jill would have had time to dash into the woods and hide, as she usually did. Then again, what was one more hiker in a state park?
Jill kept cool, nodding as the truck passed her going the other way. Her heart dropped and her adrenaline surged as it swung around to pull up next to her.
“Mornin’, ma’am,” called the middle-aged female ranger out her passenger window. “Can I ask what you’re doin’ here?”
Jill put on her best clueless smile. “Hiking?”
“The park is closed right now, ma’am. Been closed to the public for almost a month.” The woman stared at Jill with a strange mixture of suspicion and concern.
“All right. I’ll go back.” Jill made as if to turn around.
“Wait a minute, please,” the ranger called with a hint of authority in her voice. “Can I see some ID?”
“Sure,” Jill said with false cheerfulness, and dug out her fake SS card, handing it in the window across the passenger seat.
The park ranger looked it over front and back. Her face twisted sourly. “Would have thought you’d have heard the advisories, Ms. Clayton. Or did you think just because you people control the processing center, you have the run of the park? Closed means closed.”
Jill hid her confusion. Obviously something was going on of which she was unaware, and she found herself in the middle of it. In any case it appeared the woman did not like the SS, which was a plus in Jill’s book.
“I’m really sorry, ma’am,” Jill replied. “I promise I’ll head right back out the way I came in.” She held out her hand for the ID.
“And what way was that?” The ranger’s face sharpened suspiciously, holding onto the card.
Jill realized she’d made an error, and tried to cover it with as much truth as possible, which she knew was always the best way to lie. “I’ve been hiking and traveling on leave, and my GPS led me to your lovely park. I’m sorry I intruded.” She changed her tone from apologetic to matter-of-fact. “Now I’m going to go. I don’t like to throw my weight around, but I am a federal agent and I don’t have to put up with harassment from fellow officers. Feel free to file a report. Now please return my ID card.” She gave the ranger her best no-nonsense stare, the one she reserved for stupid suspects who couldn’t follow simple instructions, holding out her hand insistently.
Instead of returning it, the woman’s face soured even further and she barked a vulgar expletive. Then she put the truck in gear and roared off, leaving Jill standing by the side of the road without the fake ID.
Shit. She’s going to take the ID card straight to her office, maybe her superiors, and report me, and it won’t be long before they figure out it’s a fake, but my picture is real. Then they’ll match biometrics and might come up with who I am…
It had been a calculated risk putting her own picture on the fake ID but she had seen no way around it. The photo they had used was as low-resolution as they could make it without arousing suspicion, and maybe that would slow them down, but she had to assume they would come up with her identity eventually, and her status in the federal military databases would change to “Deserter.”
With little idea of the park’s layout – the GPS did not provide much detail on such installations – Jill just had to make a judgment call. She wanted to go west down the mountain, to lose herself in the city of Huntsville, and she saw no reason to change that goal, except that she would have to somehow get past the closed park to do it. Skirting it north or south would lengthen her travel time. Unfortunately she had only a hazy idea of where she was and what the terrain looked like between here and there, so she decided to head straight on through in minimum time. With her triathlete’s fitness and Eden strength and speed, she could cover a lot of ground in under an hour; probably a lot more than the park ranger would expect.
Tightening the backpack’s padded hip belt and shoulder straps, she began to run as fast as she could down the road the truck had taken. She kept her eyes open for signs or buildings, and at the first fork in the road she kept right, away from where the signs indicated the park was. Presumably the park ranger had taken that road and even now had begun the process of petty revenge upon the uppity SS agent she’d accosted.
If she only knew.
Two minutes and half a mile later, Jill passed a road and a sign marking an exclusive mountainside housing tract. A late-model high-end SUV turned out from the drive and accelerated away in front of her. Already sloping slightly downward, the grade steepened, and soon she ran as fast as she ever had in her entire life, on the smooth asphalt surface. Only the pack thudding on her back hindered her, and that not very much.
Two more cars passed her, and the second driver slowed to take a look in its rear-view mirror. Jill realized that she must seem rather odd, running flat out with a backpack full of gear. She had to get off the main road.
At the next curve she spotted an access road to the right and a water tower thirty yards back in the trees, so she slowed down and took it at a jog, making sure no cars were in sight when she did so. The driveway led to a chain-link fence, but also continued around the enclosure as a partly overgrown graveled track. Following it, she was happy to see it twisted and turned down the mountainside, perfect for her purposes.
A half mile later she came in sight of another stand of homes, and looking out from the hillside she could see Huntsville spread out before her. She was running out of rough country to hide in. Soon suburbia would be her jungle.
Finding a place among the bushes with cover in all directions, she dropped her pack and stripped out of her hiking boots, shorts and shirt. She put away the dusty ball cap that held her pony tail, and then donned tightish jeans, walking shoes and a clean t-shirt. A windbreaker and a large leather handbag completed the ensemble, and she shook her dark brown hair out, letting it cascade around her shoulders.
After putting a selection of essentials into her pockets and bag, and sliding her sheathed knife into the small of her back, she drank as much water and ate as much food
as she could wolf down, then buried the backpack in a shallow hole.
Then Jill simply walked out of the woods and onto the sidewalk, past people beginning their days – driving away to work, starting sprinklers, sending their children to school. She looked like one of them now, perhaps a college student on her way to the bus stop, or an employee of someplace local enough to walk to.
Eventually she came in sight of a divided highway, and what she really needed: a bus stop. Once on the vehicle, she was able to pay the driver for a transfer ticket to the main station downtown, which shared space with a long-haul passenger line.
Looking around the local terminal, she could see a couple of SS guards, but they just seemed there to show their presence. On the other side of the busy yard, though, she watched as uniformed officers checked IDs and tickets as passengers boarded each long-haul bus.
They sure aren’t making it easy, she mused, and sat down on a bench to survey their routine. As a cop herself, she was naturally familiar with the theory and practice of securing a transportation hub, and so she figured she might be able to spot a hole to exploit.
She found it.
As usual, it resulted from the simplest of things: human boredom, complacency. The long-haul company’s uniforms were all similar, porters and maintenance workers and drivers, with only some minor differences. Everyone had photo badges clipped to their chests or on lanyards around their necks, but the busy maintainers generally had them tucked inside their shirts or into pockets so as not to get caught on things as they scurried around performing their duties.
These men and women fuelled and serviced the vehicles, cleaned them and dumped the sewage from their tiny restrooms, invisible and ubiquitous. The SS guards ignored them even as they slipped on and off the buses, doing their jobs.
Bingo.
Jill marked the “Authorized Personnel Only” door that many used. It probably accessed the break and locker area. While most of the workers going in and out wore the uniform, a few did not, and no one paid them any mind either. With at least a hundred employees on duty at the terminal, not counting the drivers, any thought of checking each busy person’s badge every time had long ago broken down.
Getting up, she went into the local terminal gift and sundries shop, buying a navy-blue lanyard. She put it around her neck and slipped its badgeless end clip inside her windbreaker.
Resolutely she strode across the wet October tarmac, skirting the line of buses, walking as if she belonged there. An SS guard glanced at her briefly, but his eyes lingered more on her tight jeans than her face. Straight toward the door she marched, timing her entrance to follow a uniformed employee in. The woman didn’t even glance behind her.
Still walking as if she knew where she was going, Jill quickly found the women’s locker room. Happily, it contained full facilities including showers, and there were a few empty lockers.
Slowly she began undressing, watching for her opportunity. It took almost fifteen tense minutes, hoping no one would notice her dawdling, before a woman roughly her size came in to change out of uniform. Luckily she did not shower, but threw on a sweat suit and left quickly.
Using an abandoned towel she found to hide what she was doing, Jill took out her knife and slipped it through the cheap padlock on the woman’s locker. A careful steady twisting popped it open, and in moments Jill pulled the stolen uniform coverall over her clothing. Her lanyard end, stuck into a zipped upper pocket, simulated possession of a badge, and her handbag she wrapped in the towel, and then jammed it under her arm. Hopefully no one would question the bundle.
It was the work of a moment to select a bus going west, with “Memphis” on its electronic display, and slip aboard, ignored by the ticket-checker and the SS guard nearby. Only a few passengers had boarded so far, so Jill stepped into the tiny restroom near the back and stripped off her coverall, rolling it up in the towel, leaving herself back in her street clothes.
Taking a seat far to the right rear, she stuffed the bundle far underneath and then ate a protein bar and drank some water from her big handbag. She slouched down against the window and closed her eyes. Most people didn’t bother the sleeping.
It was only when there came a commotion at the front of the bus that she began to worry. A middle-aged woman was holding a heated conversation with the bus driver. Looking down the long aisle, Jill could see the bus was now packed full, and in a flash she realized what must have happened.
While passengers were not assigned seats, the total number of tickets sold would not exceed the number of places. The woman was complaining that she had no place to sit.
Jill knew the next thing that would happen was a person-by-person check of tickets, possibly with the SS watching closely.
Trapped! Every nerve screamed to get off the bus and run, but she kept outwardly calm and casually stood up, slipping into the restroom again. If only no one noticed…
Though she hoped her ploy would work, inside the restroom she prepared to be taken, the way she had rehearsed many times. She’d already pre-concealed many useful items about her person, such as hobby knife blades sewn into her collar and other seams, and notched fine piano wire that would slice through wood or flesh inside her shoelaces. Now she took out a handful of tied-off condoms containing other things, and swallowed them. If they did not perform an X-ray, she should be able to recover them later. She also dumped her knife in the trash slot. Then she started eating and drinking everything she had left.
A knock on the door dropped her heart into her stomach, and as she finished the last of her food, she put on her best smile and waited, on the off chance they would go away. The knock came more insistently, then a curse and a rattling. Eventually the door opened to show a maintenance worker and an SS guard, with two more visible behind.
“Come with me, please,” the hard-faced man said, and Jill sighed and shrugged.
“Okay,” she said brightly in her ditziest voice.
He snapped handcuffs on her wrists in front, then used them to pull her along off the bus.
“Come on,” she whined, “I’m broke and trying to get to Memphis. It’s not a federal offense.”
The three SS officers took her into a holding area, one small bleak room of two, and fastened the cuffs to a lock in the middle of a bolted-down steel table. Then a woman wearing latex gloves searched her and took all the obvious things from off of her, but none of her well-concealed items. No body cavity search yet, but she was ready for it.
Then they left her there for an hour.
When they came back in, Jill knew she was done. The cat-cream smile on the hard face of the female SS captain, the smirks displayed by her muscular sergeants, and the nervous look the technician gave her as she took a blood sample gave it away. “Positive,” the man said after three awkward minutes.
“Take this Sicko to the processing center,” the captain snapped. “Standard protocol.”
One sergeant lifted a dart gun and shot Jill in the neck. She jerked with the pain, but did not resist. Her vision tunneled and she felt dizzy, and then someone threw a hood over her head. She blacked out.
Reaper's Run - Plague Wars Series Book 1 Page 16
