As the evening wore on and the fires cooled off, they were able to speak without yelling over the din. They brought each other up to date on their various adventures while roiling clouds of smoke reflected the marching inferno's orange light as far as the eye could see. When it came time to turn in, they agreed that they would lie as a group on the one gravely portion of the rocky beach and snuggle up for warmth. The pilot’s emergency foil blanket was laid over the children in an attempt to deflect the now cooling breeze.
By four AM a steady drizzle began to fall. It was still dark, but the growing dampness precluded further sleep. Ben, Jon and Tran stepped into the now smoldering tree line and grabbed various pieces of still glowing wood. They built a fire up near their camp and the group stayed warm as best they could around its flames.
When dawn finally broke, everyone was eager to move and get their blood flowing. They shared the pilot’s rations, taking the edge off their hunger. Since Ben knew the route to Moscow, he naturally took charge. “The mainland shore is just south of this here island. It’s maybe seventy-five yards away. Unfortunately, we’ll have to swim it. From there, we work our way south along the shore. There should be a boat ramp after a way, and there’ll be a road leadin’ inland. That road hooks up with a larger one that crosses the firebreak. From there it’s hilly country, but a fairly straight path to the Moscow Dam.”
“So we’re talking how far?” asked Nikki.
“Roughly fifteen-miles as the crow flies. Maybe seven, eight hours - maybe.”
“Fifteen miles of hilly country will feel like twice that.”
“Well then, we better get a move on,” said Susan.
The scientists had broken down their lab equipment so that all they needed to carry was two sample cases and a smaller briefcase holding their data, backed up on two portable hard-drives. Though painful to leave behind, the rest of the equipment would hopefully be replaced in Canada.
When they got to the island’s shore and faced the mainland across the water, Teddy Costas tried to be helpful, noting, “It doesn’t really matter that we’re going to get wet swimming.” He looked at the sky. “This drizzle’s gonna turn to rain.” Most of them nodded politely at the boy as they waded out into the lake. Teddy pushed his voice to sound stronger than he felt. “The one good thing about the rain is that it doused the flames.”
His father put a loving hand on his boy’s shoulder, and while holding his daughter’s hand they waded out with the rest. Amanda turned to her brother and said in a low voice, “It’s gonna be okay, Teddy. Don’t be afraid.”
He looked at his sister as though she was mental, and chose to ignore her. They were eleven people in the middle of a burned down nowhere, with no real way to call for help, no food, no shelter, a handful of weapons and the potential for lots of virulently crazy people trying to eat them. Everyone was terrified out of their wits.
They were greeted on shore by voluminous thick steam and white smoke rising steadily from the burned down forest. While Steven helped his children, Jon knelt in the shallow inlet filling their water bag. He had cut a slit in the top of Poole’s lifejacket and filled the volume with water instead. When it was nearly full, he stood and put it on like a yoke. It would be all of their water until they found the next fresh source. Then he thought about the flock of birds back in Teddy’s inlet - and dropped in a few of the dead pilot’s water purification tablets.
Lining up single file, they had barely taken ten steps when they all pulled up short. There was a mass just beyond the tree line, a pile of human remains, burned nearly beyond recognition; limbs and faces were twisted into various forms of agony. Amanda hid her eyes against her daddy’s shirt while Teddy glanced, but only out of the corner of his eye.
Ben said, “It’s God’s providence.” He looked at the scientists, “You folks could have just as well landed on this shore and been devoured instead.”
Aaron quipped. “If we’d landed on this shore, we’d have been fricasseed like this infected bunch.”
“Don’t doubt the way of the Lord, son. It were His hand that kept your helicopter from landing right on top of us. His hand that brought you to us to help guide the way. He has a purpose for us all.”
Aaron smiled and cocked his head, pointing a finger into Ben’s chest, “Let’s just get something straight. It was you and your ilk that helped get us into this mess. Mumbo jumbo about demons and the devil, Armageddon and what not. It’s types like you that deny what’s right in front of your own eyes, keeping people ignorant, helping to spread this thing.”
“Suit yourself, friend. But I think it’s you who are blind to your own good fortune.”
“Friend? Listen, jackass, if the Lord wanted us home, we would have landed there safely last night and gotten back to work trying to find a cure for this thing.”
Susan broke in. “All right, all right, enough! Concentrate on the task at hand. We survived this fire. These infected didn’t. That doesn’t mean others aren’t out there.” She gave Aaron an admonishing look and said, “Mr. Watson, please lead on.”
Aaron let himself fall to the back of the group, muttering under his breath, “Merciful deity, my ass.”
Ben took point followed by Tran. Nikki and Jon took up the rear; the more likely point of attack if they were followed. Both ends of their single file line were covered by their handful of weapons. They looked extraordinarily weak given the circumstances. They might as well have been a band of lost settlers in the middle of Apache territory. The depths of the foggy forest could be hiding dozens of eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Traffic Team
The CDC scientist’s absence was noticed immediately. No more than an hour after the loss of communication, Director Louis-Gelding was scrambling to put together a search mission. Her people, the six people on this earth with the key to a potential cure for this horror, were down in that hell somewhere with all of their samples and data with them.
One helicopter was offered up for the mission. The major general leading the Northern Command could spare nothing more. He had other “immediate” issues taking priority over the “chance” of a cure. There was an invasion to still mount as well as numerous outbreaks within Canada to either contain or destroy. The armed services were already stretched beyond their ability to function efficiently.
The slapped together SAR (search and rescue team) wasn’t military, not even paramilitary private contractors. They were a pair of civilian volunteers: Toronto’s most popular weather and traffic gal, Kelly Stormberg (originally Stromberg, but how could she resist?) aka - Kelly Storm and her pilot Samantha McNeil (a hotshot who had cut her teeth flying stunts for “Hollywood North” Vancouver). They had signed up for aerial reconnaissance work, tracking down concentrations of infected and were prepped for takeoff on yet another search and report mission, when a last minute order drafted them to go find some poor bastard eggheads who had lost their way.
Defoliated by fire or not, Central Maine was a huge area of mostly forested land. Sam McNeil gave their odds at a million to one. Kelly was more of an optimist; she put it at half that. They had a general notion of the Black Hawk’s flight plan: pretty much a straight shot from The Vineyard to the big French-Canadian city, with a third of the flight taking place over the Atlantic. Assuming that the Black Hawk had made it to shore, the scientists would have crossed somewhere just south of Portland; approximately two hundred and fifty miles as the crow flies from Quebec. Their Eurocopter AStar had a range of five hundred and ninety-one miles; enough for the trip down and back with a little fuel to spare. They drew a grid on a map, with the idea of moving south to the sea and then turning back north to Quebec - like mowing a giant lawn in the sky. They’d have to land and refuel each time, but even with that, they could make five, maybe six trips in a fourteen-hour period, give or take. Thank God for long summer days. They were given seventy-two hours. After that they were to return to recon duty.
Their bird was equipped with all of the lates
t gadgets. It could broadcast everything from major weather events, to tire factory fires, to multi-vehicle pileups and car chases. Prior to the pandemic, they figured they’d pretty much covered it all, even a stint in Alberta on Antelope migration back in ‘09.
They had fully integrated, high-definition, gyro-stabilized, camera systems (front and tail), a customized aerial microwave antenna, infrared cameras, HD and SD monitors and digital scanners, even internally mounted talent cameras and lighting. The external cameras would be especially helpful; they arranged for their signal to broadcast back to the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) Quebec, where two young volunteers would sit and pore over the footage. This way, even if the two in the helicopter missed something, there would be two more pairs of eyes back home looking at every frame. One search helicopter would become the equivalent of perhaps two. It was that caveat that kept Director Louis-Gelding’s mouth shut rather than her demanding more and still getting nothing.
A second mission to Florida was of course out of the question. They were on the eve of D-Day minus one. There would be no Ranger platoon with two Chinook helicopters available. If her people were alive, she had to find them. To her profound frustration, even drafting a fixed wing private pilot to pitch in was out of the question. All aviation fuel was directed to the war effort. Traffic Maven and Stunt Girl were it.
Storm and McNeil would leave from the CDC headquarters itself and then vector south in the direction of Biddeford, Maine. The poor visibility that would normally keep another helicopter grounded was not a problem for their AStar. The infrared cameras would actually help them separate the wheat from the chaff as it were. Of course the freshly burned and burning forests would offer innumerable hot spots, but they would still be able to pick out human movement.
To the weather woman and her pilot’s frustration, they picked up lots of human movement as they flew south. The massive bombing campaign had surely killed thousands of Fiends, probably tens of thousands, but what they observed below was truly disheartening. New England was still filled with infected. With the exception of a distinctive arm wave or some other thinking man’s signal, there was no way to distinguish between a Fiend and the healthy. They saw no such signal.
The eleven refugees found the initial going pretty easy. Once they had made their way along the shore to the boat launch ramp, it was a simple walk - to begin with; the dirt road was well maintained. But as they moved into denser woods the true value of burning the forests of New England became obvious; even the most basic path was littered with fallen trees, many of which were still smoldering despite a steady drizzle. The seven or eight hour walk seemed a fanciful concept as they skirted the debris, climbing over and under and working their way around while getting coated with damp charcoal and ash. This was looking like an epic walk for fifteen miles of progress. When they finally reached a paved road, the challenge became even greater; the fire had been so hot that it melted the asphalt. Fallen trees were glued to the ground and the terrain resembled hardened lava. To make matters worse, as the ground fog became even denser, their visibility was shortened to perhaps twenty-five yards. The dying forest dropped constant debris as weakened limbs and ashen leaves rained to the ground. Each sound was a jolt as the party reacted to the potential charge of voracious death. To top it off, they were all hungry, as expressed thoroughly by Amanda to her father, “Daddy. My tummy hurts and my legs are tired.”
“I know Sweetie, but you have to keep being strong. Daddy will give you a piggyback in a little awhile.”
Aaron quipped, “I’ll take a piggy back when you’re finished.”
Everyone chuckled at this until Nikki spoke up. “Okay, folks. I know we’re all a bit punch-drunk, but let’s keep ourselves quiet and alert.”
“It would do to tighten up a bit too,” said Jon, “We don’t want to get too spread out. Strays make easy targets.”
The single file shrunk up after that and they continued to listen to the sounds of the forest, occasionally getting spooked and unconsciously reaching out to make contact with the person in front.
They stopped every mile or so to take a breather and sip some water, until three hours later when they reached the firebreak. This zone of low scrub was perhaps 50 meters wide and though it offered the southern forest a reprieve from a fire from the North or visa-versa, the nature of the fire bombing campaign insured that both sides of the border were equally destroyed. Nevertheless, the path itself was relatively free of fallen debris; the low grasses and shrubs had burned but didn’t act as an obstruction. Nikki decided to show the team a different pace of walking, one that had found efficiency with foot travelers over the eons and long success for marathoners; they would run-walk-run.
“In this scrub we can make an eighteen minute mile by jogging for thirty-seconds followed by walking for sixty then jogging for thirty more and so on. We’ll take a break every mile.”
Ben said, “Twelve miles or so from here to the Moscow dam.”
“That’s four to five hours,” added Tran. He looked at Teddy and then Amanda.
Teddy whispered to his sister. “I’ve seen you run around for ten hours straight when you’re excited about something.” He glanced at his father. “Dad’s already pretty pooped from carrying you for the last mile. You can do this. I know it.”
Amanda turned to her father. “Daddy, are you tired?”
“I’m okay, Doll.”
“I can make it on my own. I’ve got stronger legs than Teddy.” Teddy started to challenge that notion, then realized that he’d won his argument.
Nikki said, “Okay, Amanda sets the pace with me out front. Mr. Tran, you take the rear with Jon.”
They hadn’t even made the first mile before Nikki quickly held up a hand to halt them. Twenty yards in front of them was a paved road running north/south. In the middle of the road was a loan Fiend kneeling amongst a small herd of deer. The deer were all dead, their body positions suggesting that they were cooked alive. The Fiend, a skinny looking middle aged male covered in several nasty burns itself, was tearing into the roasted flank of a young buck with the edge of a sharp hunk of rock. A dozen crows stood nearby. One was brave enough to hop forward and stick its beak in at the fresh kill before the Fiend barked at it like a jackal.
Ben stepped to the front of the group and leveled his shotgun.
“No,” whispered Nikki, pushing the barrel down, “Fire that thing… Who knows how many are out there.”
Everyone glanced at the misty woods without taking an eye off the Fiend. The wounded creature looked up and hissed at the sound of Nikki's voice, then feverishly dove back into its meal, pulling off a hunk with its teeth and chewing loudly with a lip smacking open mouth.
Jon said, “Clearly it’s more interested in that dead deer than us. I say we cut off some meat ourselves and skirt our way around the thing. It looks like it’s in pretty bad shape. Its left leg looks mostly cooked too." Jon realized that he was reducing the infected man to the level of some asexual alien creature. "I bet he can barely walk, much less run.”
They steered a wide path around the savage looking man. Tran, Nikki and Jon kept their guns trained on it, while Steven, Ben and Christie cut off thigh meat from two of the dead animals. The meat had been baked as though in an oven and came away from the bone with the ease of a rotisserie chicken. The Fiend continued to ignore them as it feasted away. Jog-walk-jog was suddenly energized with more incentive.
When they had put at least a mile between them and the Fiend, the small band stopped again and ate. Despite the way it had come off the bone, the meat was lean and a bit tough to chew. No one complained. Even the children gorged themselves. None of them had had red meat of any kind in some time.
With bellies full, they continued on. The firebreak revealed all manner of burned animals that had run to it for refuge. Using the foil blanket for a cache, they collected more meat to provision themselves for later. There were several human remains as well. Everyone prayed or hoped in their own way, that they
had been infected people and not the healthy.
The food gave everyone new strength. The only person having trouble was Rick Decker. His shoulder was back in its socket, but the ligaments were still bruised. For him, each landing on his right foot in particular was an agonizing jolt.
They stopped at a brook for water. It was coated in ash and floating bits of charcoal and other debris, but by spreading the ashes way from the surface they were able to get to it. Crouching and kneeling over the water, they looked like apes on the veldt, repeatedly looking up, glancing around. They refilled the lifejacket/canteen and decontaminated it with the last of the pilot’s emergency water treatment pills and moved on.
After five hours, they reached a clearing with a view of the Kennebec River and the northwest side of Moscow. The bulk of the village was obscured by burned forest, but a small hydroelectric dam stood out below. It had a single generator building, which appeared to be still intact on the far side of the river. The river continued to flow through the dam’s sluice and they could hear the sound of the generator working all by its diligent self. High-tension wires led out from it, north and south, and Nikki and Jon found their thoughts racing back to their incarceration and escape from the fools back in Stratton.
Of Sudden Origin (Of Sudden Origin Saga Book 1) Page 25
