Moe released the man and danced back. “Consider yourself lucky,” Moe growled. “You do that to any of the military guys around here, they won’t put you in an arm triangle. They’ll fill you full of holes.”
When Cash only rubbed his shoulder with a dark look, Moe turned to the leader. The expression on the man’s face was friendly, though something dark swam behind his eyes.
“I’m Zane Carver,” the man said, though he didn’t offer his hand. “I’m the leader of the Light and Venom Commune.”
“I’m Moe Tsosie,” he replied. “Never heard of the Light and Venom Commune. Sounds sketchy. Where are you from?”
Carver gestured toward the east. “We’re just from the desert, man.”
One medic approached with his instruments in hand. He stood in front of the open emergency door and peered up at a dozen or more faces looking back at him.
The medic shook his head. “Uh, you folks have any wounded?”
Carver and the Amazon-like woman shared a sullen look before the leader stepped to the emergency door and gestured to the people inside.
“Just the one,” Carver said.
A half dozen hands pushed forth a dark-haired woman in sweat stained clothing. She couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, and her right arm had deep yellow and blue bruises, skin stretched to bursting.
Another medic joined the first, and together they lowered her down from the bus, careful not to touch her injured arm.
“What happened to her?” the medic asked, staring at her sausage-tight skin.
“Snake bite,” Carver replied.
Moe spied two tiny marks on her upper arm. “Strange place to get a snake bite.”
“She was lying down when it struck,” Carver said, shaking his head pitifully. “Crawled into her tent.”
“We have anti-venom,” a medic said. “Maybe we can save her arm.”
One medic got beneath the woman’s good arm and bore her weight, carrying her to the triage tents. Two commune members dropped down and stared after the medics.
“Let’s go, boys.” Moe gestured for the Chinle kids to follow him before offering Carver a brief nod. “See you around.”
“I hope so,” Carver said, his expression blank and smiling.
Moe walked away with a strange feeling in his gut. He had run into his share of hippies in his day, and most were cool. None of them had given him the creeps like Carver and his people. Remembering the man’s eyes sent a shiver down his spine.
Rex met him back near the tents, and together they prepared for the next wave of refugees.
“You talk to them?” Rex nodded at the hippies as they moved their bus over to the desert parking lot.
“Yeah. Interesting people,” Moe replied.
Rex scoffed. “Interesting? They seem weird to me.”
He glanced back at the bus. "Just keep the kids away from them.”
“No problem there.”
Moe nodded and held up his QLOG, double checking his numbers and adding notes he remembered from each case. He clicked “Update” and took a break, gazing south across the desert as the night wore on.
Chapter 25
Kim Shields, Zanesville, Ohio
Kim drove the wide bus at a barreling pace down an isolated back road, one of many she’d had to navigate to get them within a mile of Jessie’s GPS location.
“Are we close, AMI?”
“Stay on this road, and your destination will be on the left.”
“Thanks.”
She’d gotten used to driving the big bus through tight spots. She knew all its little quirks and shakes, how to work the sensitive breaks and anticipate the shifting weight of the vehicle.
“The mobile unit is amazing,” Kim said, “but I hope I don’t have to take it off-road to pick them up.”
“Our suspension is highly rated,” AMI replied, “but I agree with you. Take a left here.”
With a tense smile, Kim turned the bus down a blacktopped road barely wide enough to fit the massive vehicle. They passed homes set back off the road and sometimes nestled in the woods, though they were just black shapes in the darkness.
“You have arrived at the address,” AMI said, and Kim brought the bus to a stop near the end of a long, gravel driveway. She wasn’t sure if she should pull the bus in and risk getting them stuck.
“Can you flood the yard with lights?”
“Of course,” AMI said. A moment later, the running lights on the left side of the bus lit up, revealing a farmstead at the end of the driveway.
Kim waited for someone to come out, though the home remained dark.
“Doesn’t seem like they’re in there,” she said. “Can you call them?”
“I’ll do that now,” AMI said, and there was a moment’s pause as the artificial girl piped the call through the bus’s cabin.
On the seventh or eighth ring, someone picked up.
“Hello, this is Bryant,” came a muffled voice. “Is this Kim?”
“It’s me,” Kim said, nodding. “I’m here. Right at the end of the driveway. Can you come to me?”
“I don’t think so,” he replied. “My hip is screaming, and Jessie’s not doing so hot herself. There are still people in the woods, too.”
“Is Fiona okay?”
“She’s fine,” he said in a pained tone. “She’s right here beside me.”
Her heart kicked up a notch, knowing a significant key to solving the mystery of Asphyxia was within reach in the guise of an innocent little girl.
“I’ll come to you,” she stated. “Where are you?”
“In the barn.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll suit up and have AMI loop me into your suit’s radio signal so I can hear you. Then I’ll pull around the barn and block the barn doors. Sound good?”
“We’ll be ready.” Bryant sighed through his pain.
Kim went through the kitchen area and lab and stepped into the prep room. She took down a suit and put it on, working with AMI to check the suit’s functionality.
Once she had her hood on, Kim said, “They should be wearing military-grade protective suits. Can you patch into their radio signal?”
“Working on it now.” There was a moment of pause before AMI came back. “Done.”
“Bryant, can you read me?”
“Loud and clear now,” Bryant returned.
“I’m incoming,” Kim said, returning to the cabin and getting behind the wheel. She pulled the bus into the driveway, running over the leaning mailbox with a crunch. She carefully maneuvered the bus to the farmstead and spotted a barn fifty yards behind it.
“I see you,” she said, and she followed the gravel path around to the barn.
“Be careful,” Bryant grunted. “We haven’t heard from them for an hour. They could be anywhere.”
The big vehicle tilted and rocked as it crept over the uneven ground, and Kim’s shoulders clenched tight as she gripped the wheel. She pulled around to the back side of the barn, eyes scanning the edge of the woods for movement. She stopped so that the bus was blocking the barn entrance and killed the headlamps. Then she grabbed her pistol out of the passenger seat and headed back to the decontamination chamber.
Once there, she said, “Okay. Open the back door. Bryant, I’m coming out.”
The back door of the bus popped open, and Kim stepped out into the warm country air. She looked left and right, impressed with herself that she’d only left a few feet of space between the bus and the barn walls. If anyone came at them, they’d have to enter one at a time.
She lifted a flashlight in her left hand and guided the beam all around. The place was filled with old, broken down equipment and loose bales of hay.
“Where are you?” Kim asked.
“Up here.”
Kim angled the light upward at the loft. Bryant stood next to a ladder, half-leaning over with a rifle cradled in his right arm, blood splashed across his fatigues.
A little girl stood next to him, looking
down at her with a wary expression. She wasn’t wearing an air filtration mask, and she showed no signs of Asphyxia around her mouth and nose. There weren’t even any patches on her skin.
“Fiona?”
“Go on, Fiona.” Bryant leaned down. “That’s Kim. She’s here to help us. We’re all going to take a ride in her cool bus.”
The little girl’s eyes slid from Kim over to the bus.
Kim stepped forward and waved her flashlight for Fiona to climb down the ladder. At first, she thought the little girl would be too scared to come down, and the wooden rungs were rickety and splintered in the middle. However, Fiona turned, put her feet on the top rung, and descended. She took the steps one at a time, slow and careful.
Turning around, Kim raised her weapon and walked back over to the bus, looking back and forth to make sure no one was trying to slip into the barn with them. By the time she’d turned back to Fiona, the little girl had reached the bottom and stood there staring at her.
“This way, Fiona,” Kim said with a loud, firm tone as she gestured toward the bus. While she would have liked to make a gentler introduction, they didn’t have the time.
Fiona hesitated a moment but seemed to understand the urgency because she walked toward the open bus door and stopped with a look back. Kim smiled inside her hood and nodded, and the little girl stepped up and inside the safety of the bus.
Kim closed her eyes and sighed, but a crunching sound raised alarms in her brain. She spun to her right and saw someone squeezing between the bus and the barn wall. She caught a glint of light off a visor, raised her pistol, and fired. The person ducked and backed out of the gap, and she spun to check the other gap, but no one was there.
A groaning sound reached her ears, and Kim tilted her head. “Are you okay, Bryant?”
“That was Jessie,” Bryant said. “She’s not doing very well. The infection has gotten much worse.”
“Do you need help to get her down?”
“Negative. Watch the entrances.”
Kim did as she was told, checking the gaps as the shuffling and grunting continued in the loft. She only glanced back once to see Bryant coming down the ladder with Jessie thrown over his shoulder. The woman wore a military-grade protective suit complete with a respirator unit on her back. He grunted with every step, the pain in his voice barely held in check.
One slat snapped in two, and Kim gasped as Bryant’s foot dangled in midair. He let his boot settle on the next rung down and continued his descent. Once he reached the bottom, he placed Jessie gently on her feet and collapsed against her. It was Jessie’s turn to grab at the soldier’s suit, although her attempts to hold up the larger man were futile.
“Come on, Bryant,” Jessie rasped as she tugged and pulled. “We can’t quit now…Almost there.”
Kim had briefly spoken to her before and understood she was a young woman, though the voice coming through her earpiece sounded like some long-dead mummy they’d dragged out of an ancient tomb.
“Jessie, get inside the bus,” Kim urged. “I’ll get Bryant.”
The CDC field agent turned toward Kim, and Kim took a shocked step back. The woman’s eyes were bloodshot, and her umber-toned cheeks had gone ashy and dry. Fungal growth flecked the girl’s lips and nose. She was infected, though Kim couldn’t understand how she could be walking.
“Go on! Hurry!”
Jessie nodded and half-stumbled to the bus entrance before she stepped up and disappeared inside.
“I’m getting tired of rescuing you, Bryant,” Kim said, leaning down and pulling his arm over her shoulder.
“I’ll try not to make it a habit,” the soldier replied, gruffly.
Together, they rose and started toward the bus, Kim wincing as the strain stretched her bruised ribs.
Kim glimpsed movement to the right. Bryant’s rifle bucked against his hip as he fired several bursts into the gap on their right. She checked the left side and spotted someone coming through. Her gun was in her right hand and wrapped around his waist.
She turned to her left, spinning Bryant in that direction. Sensing what she wanted him to do, Bryant lifted his rifle and fired a burst into the gap. The visor of the person coming through exploded in fragments of flesh, bone, and plastic, and the others who’d been coming through behind them leapt back out of the kill zone.
Kim got Bryant straightened out and guided him into the bus, following him up into the decontamination chamber where Jessie lay on the floor with Fiona.
“Shut the back door, AMI.”
The door snapped shut behind them and she heard the motorized hum of the decontamination sprayers kick up.
“I need to get us out of here. Can we hurry it up?”
“There are no emergency procedures for decontamination,” AMI said. “The process will take a full ten minutes to—”
Kim had already stripped her suit most of the way off and stood there in her jeans and T-shirt. “Open the door to the prep room and clear me a path to the cabin. We need to be driving now!”
“I cannot open the door. You’ll contaminate the entire bus.”
Pounding on the door to the prep room, Kim shouted, “Engage override code 3-1-2-7-8 and open the damn doors!”
“Very well. Override code accepted.”
The doors to the prep room opened up, and Kim stumbled through and rushed toward the front of the bus. She fell into the driver’s seat and slapped on her seatbelt.
“Hit all the lights.”
There was a clicking sound before white runner lights lit the entire field around them. The headlamps snapped on, revealing three groups of people gathered in front of the bus. They had shaved heads and faces and all wore the same style of makeshift air filtration masks.
They were also all armed.
“Can they see me behind the wheel?”
“They cannot.”
As if to dispute that fact, a woman stepped in front of the bus and fired a pistol round point blank into the glass. Kim jerked back, expecting the entire front windshield to shatter. The round bounced off, leaving a slight mark where it had struck.
Taking that as a cue, Kim put the bus into drive and stomped on the gas. The bus lurched forward, narrowly missing the person who’d fired on them, although the crowd of five standing further up the gravel driveway took a fraction of a second too long to move. She slammed the bus through them, sending one person flying to the ground while the others dove off to the side.
She kept going, angling toward the house while small arms fire pounded the bus. Another big vehicle was pulling into the driveway ahead, and Kim recognized it as a moving truck.
“Trying to box me in?” Kim shed a fierce grin as she jerked the wheel to the left and took them through the yard. The moldy grass was softer than the gravel, and the bus leaned dangerously to the left as she spun the wheel back right to avoid the moving truck. They merged back onto the gravel driveway, and she gave the wheel another sharp jerk to the right, cutting through the yard once again to put them on the blacktop road leading out.
Kim had the bus on the main highway in a matter of minutes.
“Give me directions back to Yellow Springs,” Kim said, firm-lipped. “We should be close to the expressway, right?”
“Continue on this road for the next three miles,” AMI’s pleasant voice chimed, “and then go west on I-70.”
“Perfect,” Kim sighed and allowed her shoulders to slump.
“That was some driving.”
Kim jerked upright and yanked her eyes toward the passenger seat where Fiona sat with her seatbelt strapped across her chest and a serious expression on her face.
Clutching her chest, Kim laughed. “I didn’t even see you up here.”
“I’m sneaky,” Fiona responded with the faintest hint of a smile.
“Yes, you are.” Kim grinned, though her hands shook. She’d been shot at and run off the road, and the most critical part of their journey still lay ahead. Red lights blinked on the dashboard, and a glance back i
nto the living area showed another red light flashing next to the open door. Asphyxia contaminated the entire bus. “And I sure hope you have all the answers we need.”
If not, the world’s as good as dead. And I’m dead, too.
Chapter 26
Randy and Jenny Tucker, Indianapolis, Indiana
“I’m not saying the competitive part isn’t a good idea,” Randy said as he walked with his tray to one of the food court tables and sat down. “I’m just saying we missed a lot of stuff today because Kirk and Stephanie were in a race to bring back food and water.”
Randy had a tray with a plate full of chicken hash and three pieces of cornbread. He also had a full glass of milk and a big chocolate chip cookie.
“Says the man with a double portion.” Corporal Ames sat opposite Randy and let her hazel eyes fall upon him.
A part of him melted away. The strangest part was that his feelings for the corporal had come out of nowhere. He’d had girlfriends before, but there was something about Tricia that made him loopy in the head.
“You know what I mean,” he said, trying to sound cool. “You watched that idiot try to catch up to us and spill their supplies all over. And I almost punched him in the face.”
“You don’t want to fight with anyone,” Tricia countered as she dipped her cornbread into the hash juice and took a bite. When she finished chewing, she continued. “If Jergensen found out, she’d make an example of you.”
“Great,” Randy said as his shoulders slumped.
While he couldn’t complain about having a roof over his head and food in his belly, he agreed with Jenny that this wasn’t the civilization they’d hoped to find. Jenny sat next to her brother but remained quiet. She’d won a double portion of food, too, their reward for beating Kirk and Stephanie at scavenging.
“You think the Colonel would allow violence to stand?” Tricia challenged him.
“No.” Randy stared at her. He didn’t know if she felt the same way about him, though she hung around the twins a lot. Still, he had to be careful with what he said. “My point is that some people are taking the competitive part too seriously. We’re on the same team.”
Spore Series | Book 2 | Choke Page 15
