by JE Gurley
Inside the shower stall, he set the controls for his preferred steamy hot temperature, and let the pulsating multiple jets hammer the tension from his muscles, while sluicing away the dirt and sweat. He used Karen’s shampoo on his hair and the fragrance that the memories evoked almost broke his heart. His longing for her became a mantra rolling in his mind to the rhythm of the pulsating shower jets – Save Karen. Save Karen. Save Karen.
After dressing, he reached onto the top shelf of the closet and brought down a wooden box containing his pistol, a Colt revolver. He kept it loaded, but locked, in case Josh found it. He stuck the pistol in the waistband of his pants. He didn’t like guns, but the concerned attitudes of Robert Hinds and Ben Reynolds had made him nervous. Having a weapon handy and not need it was better than the reverse option. He hadn’t fired it in years and suspected it needed cleaning, but he didn’t have time; besides, he didn’t really want to use it. Rummaging through his toolbox, he found a pair of wire cutters and shoved them into his back pocket.
Summoning his courage, he drove back to the FEMA camp, waiting impatiently as a long freight train destined for New Mexico blocked the road near the expressway. The train speeding past in the night, barely visible except for brief flashes of moonlight between cars, looked almost ethereal, a living creature, like a whale breeching the surface of the sea or an eagle soaring against the backdrop of a snow-capped peak. Then he noticed that much of the cargo was FEMA trailers like the ones at the camp in Marana. Some of the cars carried tanks and army trucks. He grimaced, remembering the military presence at a supposedly civilian facility.
He encountered a second, man-made barricade across the road almost a mile from the camp, made of razor wire supported by crossed metal I-beams. Three soldiers on duty glared at him as he sat there in his truck. Finally, he left the pistol on the seat and got out. As he approached them, he could not help noticing that they nervously clicked off the safety on their weapons. He held out his hands to show they were empty.
“No problems, guys. I just need to speak to whoever is in charge.”
A PFC stepped forward and shone a flashlight in his face. He looked no more than eighteen. “I’m in charge,” he said in a squeaky New Jersey accent.
Jeb shook his head. “No, I mean in charge of the camp.”
The men laughed. “Colonel Payne?” the PFC said with a sneer. “You gotta to be kidding me. He don’t talk to nobody. He’s got bigger fish to fry than you, Bub.”
“I’m looking for my wife. She’s in the camp, with my son.”
“That’s just too bad. We got orders to keep everyone out unless they look sick. Then we deliver them to the docs.”
“I’m sick,” Jeb lied; then coughed to emphasize his lie.
The PFC stared at him a moment, and then grinned. “Nice try, but no dice.” He waved the barrel of his M16 at Jeb. “Now, scoot before I shoot.”
This elicited more chuckles. Jeb returned the boy’s stare for a moment before turning and heading back to his truck. He heard the men laughing behind his back and his anger boiled.
“Damn idiots,” he cursed.
He knew any attempt to circumvent the barricade would only invite them to fire on him. He had one more chance. He turned the truck around and drove down the access road to the small city of Marana. At the city park, he pulled his truck out of sight behind a horse trailer near the arena, grabbed his pistol and began walking toward the bright lights of the camp two miles away. The night concealed him, but he knew patrols would be active, probably with night vision gear. He stayed low and used the cover of buildings to conceal himself. Once free of any structures, he waded along the concrete irrigation canals that ran alongside the roads to avoid the open fields. Once he reached the new neighborhoods slowly swallowing the farmland, he skirted the walls until he reached the Santa Cruz River. Like most rivers in Arizona, the Santa Cruz was usually dry except during the monsoon season when it became a raging torrent. He found a stream barely five feet wide and knee deep, crossed it quickly and hugged the opposite bank. He could see the fence surrounding the airport. Helicopters rose from the parking pads, but none came in his direction. Following the fence line would take too long and would expose him to both air and ground traffic. Cutting across the runways was tricky, but shorter.
A rustling in the brush startled him. He knew it was not an army patrol, but javelinas, a native peccary, roamed the area. Their large tusks and surly attitudes could pose a problem. He pulled out his pistol, hoping he did not have to use it to protect himself or all would be lost. He held his breath as the noise drew nearer. To his delight, it was merely a curious coyote. The coyote took a leisurely gander at Jeb, and then, unconcerned, turned and sauntered away. Jeb heard its brothers yelping in the distance and smiled. Their cries would distract from any noise he might make.
The fence wire was thick and tough. Cutting a gap would take time. He searched along the fence until he found where rains had eroded the ground beneath it, creating a small opening just large enough for him to wriggle through on his back. Patches of shoulder high saw grass and buffelgrass concealed his approach to the runways. He paused at the sound of a small jet taxiing down the runway preparing to take off, but its pilot did not see him. After it had passed, he sprinted across the asphalt strip, hoping any eyes in the tower would be on the jet. He held his breath waiting for an alarm to sound, but none did. A row of Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, bristling with missile pods and machine guns parked beside a hangar looked very intimidating, and gave him second thoughts about proceeding farther, but his need to find Karen and Josh triumphed over his fear. He crawled beneath one of a several armored personnel carriers and rested a few minutes to catch his breath. His twice-weekly visits to the gym had not prepared him for running and crawling.
He reached the southwest corner of the field safely. As Jeb began to cut through the wire, a jeep with two men drove slowly down the road, shining a spotlight into the desert. He hugged the ground until they had passed, but before he could cut through the wire; a second jeep came from the opposite direction. He hid and waited as a procession of jeeps made their rounds, passing his location every four minutes. He knew he did not have time to cut a gap in the wire large enough to crawl through and feared they might detect any cuts he had already made. He couldn’t wait any longer. He decided on a dangerous move. Waiting until no jeep was in sight, he began climbing over the fence. He knew he would be in full view of any passing vehicle. In his mad rush, he snagged his pants on the top of the fence and faced a moment of sheer panic as he struggled to free himself. He could see the spotlight drawing nearer and expected the sound of a rifle any moment. He jerked the snagged material, ripping his back pocket, and almost fell from the fence. He clambered down quickly, and threw himself facedown into a ditch just as the spotlight swept the fence. He waited until the jeep was gone and crawled along the ditch on hands and knees until he found enough cover to dash across the desert.
A helicopter passing overhead gave him one moment of fright. He threw himself prone on the ground beneath a patch of mesquite, the only cover available, his arms and legs folded against his side, trying desperately to look like a fallen saguaro. To his relief, it continued its journey and did not return. A small army camp on the eastern side of the FEMA facility was awash with light and a flurry of activity. He considered risking using the apparent confusion to work his way through the camp, but if discovered, he would have nowhere to run. The northern perimeter appeared to be a marshaling yard for trucks and shipping containers. The large metal building he took to be a medical facility lay just inside the fence. A single sentry guarded the rear entrance into the building, but the wide expanse of open ground provided no cover to approach unseen. He decided his best chance was in making his way through the maze of crates and containers nearest the fence. A few bored guards stood in small groups at one edge of the storage area, their attention directed inward toward the camp.
Jeb watched the men for a full five minutes, hoping they
would leave. He knew his limitations. He was no Daniel Boone or Natty Bumppo, able to sneak up on hostile Indians or move through a forest without stepping on a twig. He was a psychiatrist. He was glad he had waited. A guard appeared from the shadows, walking the perimeter of the fence. Jeb had not considered the possibility of guards patrolling the perimeter of the fence. On his earlier visit, he had been too distraught to pay attention to details, an omission he now regretted. If more than one guard stalked the fence, he could stumble right into them.
As he sat trying decide his next move, Jeb noticed soldiers loading a crowd of people into trucks and his heart sank. If they were moving people out of the camp, he was too late. Karen and Josh could be among them. He could delay no longer. He would have to chance it. He removed the pistol from his belt and reached into his back pocket for the wire cutters. They were gone. His heart sank. He realized he had been a fool for not checking when he had ripped his pants on the airport fence. Even if he went back looking for the cutters, it would be too late.
“Damn, damn,” he swore under his breath.
He was lost. He didn’t know what to do. He eyed the pistol and briefly considered waiting until his wife and son were in one of the waiting trucks and hijacking it, but dismissed the idea as absurd. If he managed to find the right truck, he would never make it past the first barricade, if a helicopter didn’t fire a couple of rockets into the truck just to be sure.
As he sat there, desperately trying to come up with a plan, he saw what looked like a welder’s torch flare into life along the fence and wondered what they were doing. Almost immediately, searchlights came on and bathed the camp in beams of white light. Was someone trying to escape? Two shots rang out and two of the searchlights went out. Whatever was happening, Jeb saw it as his chance to break into the camp during the confusion. Though his instincts said to run, he crawled toward the melee. A few minutes later, a fireball billowed into the night sky and several tents erupted in flames.
The guard at the rear door of the building left to join other soldiers headed toward the action, leaving the door unguarded. Taking a deep breath, Jeb rushed across the clearing, expecting a bullet in the back the entire distance. The door, a roll down door, was locked. He located a metal pipe, an unused fence post, and jammed it under the center of the door. Using a second pipe as a fulcrum and placing all his weight on the end of his makeshift lever, he forced the door up a few inches. His success spurred him on. He stood on the end of the pipe, balancing himself like a wire circus tightrope walker, and jumped up and down, moving the door a few more inches with each bounce. Finally, satisfied the opening was large enough to squeeze through; he tossed the pipe aside and entered the building.
He had expected to find a hospital filled with sick patients. Instead, he found a morgue. Scores of bodies wrapped in body bags lay stacked like cordwood along the walls and on wooden pallets on the floor. The room was refrigerated, but the cloying stench of death hung in the room like a miasma. He saw no beds, no labs or no medical equipment of any kind, only dozens of bare stainless steel tables with trays of hypodermic syringes and crates filled with body bags. The supposed medical facility was no more than processing plant, euthanizing the sick or dying and preparing their bodies for disposal. That explained the trucks outside. Ben Reynolds had been right. Cold chills climbed Jeb’s spine as he forced himself not to think about the possible fate of his son and his wife. They were still alive. They had to be. They were probably in one of the trucks filled with people outside, waiting for him.
The sound of many boots outside brought him back to the reality of the moment. They had discovered his forced entry. He searched frantically for a place to hide, but he saw no closets, doors, or furniture under which he could seek cover. He looked down at the pistol in his hand, feeling suddenly uncomfortably heavy. Before he would give himself up, he would fight his way to the trucks, hoping at least for one last glimpse of his family before dying.
No! He could not rescue his family if he were dead. His eyes fell on the stacks of bodies and quickly conceived a plan. He grabbed a body bag from the crate, rushed to the wall and climbed inside. He zipped it up and lay down beside the other dead bodies, willing himself to be still. His heart pounded so loudly he was certain they would discover him, but the soldiers made so much noise with their boots and conversation he began to relax. From snippets of their conversation, he learned that someone had destroyed a section of the fence and escaped into the desert with help from the outside – the explosion and shots he had heard earlier. The soldiers did not give the escapees much of a chance with roving patrols and helicopters circling the area.
“Besides,” commented one confident soldier standing only a few feet from Jeb, “they probably have the bug and won’t get far anyway.”
“Let’s get out of here,” another said. “The front door’s locked. The bodies must have spooked whoever jimmied the door and they left. Hell, these corpses give me the creeps.”
“Better than a bunch of walking zoms,” the first replied.
“I’m glad we’re bugging out of here for the coast,” a third voice spoke up. “We take the munies and leave the rest to zoms.”
“Christ! They’re still people, Bukosky.”
“They’ll be bouncing on the ground soon and getting up to eat your fat ass if you don’t shut the hell up.”
“Come on. Let’s get out of here and seal that door.”
Jeb heard their retreating footsteps, followed a short time later by the sounds of the metal door as they forced it back into place. He had gone undetected, but he was now trapped inside the building with a room full of corpses. The soldiers’ conversation had given him something to think about. What were munies and zoms? The munies were being taken to the coast, but for what reason. The ones loaded into the waiting trucks appeared healthy, so perhaps they were immune to the flu, or munies, but the term zoms eluded him. The dead getting up and ‘eating your fat ass’ comment sounded like some zombie reference, but was it said in jest? He had a bad feeling about what was going on. The army had been keeping the general populous in the dark more than he realized.
Now he found himself praying that his family were munies and in the trucks rather than awaiting disposal like fattened cattle. Gradually, the sounds of fervent activity outside faded. Jeb knew he had to exit the building before operations resumed and someone discovered him. The soldiers had temporarily barricaded the rear door until they could make permanent repairs. The only other exit from the windowless building was through the front door. He knew that a second fence separated the building from the trailers. He searched for something he could use to cut the wire, finally settling on a hacksaw he found in a toolbox.
The door locked from the inside. He pushed it open a crack to peer out, but saw no one nearby. He saw the gray coveralls they were wearing and knew his jeans and t-shirt would immediately mark him as an intruder. He looked around the death factory and found a pile of discarded gray coveralls in a large cardboard box. He shuddered as he thought of the fate of their former owners, but chose one that would fit and put it on. He rushed to the fence and, as quietly as possible, sawed through a section of wire using the noise of departing trucks to cover the noise. His second act of deliberate, malicious damage to private property in the last half hour, took him a long, nerve-wracking fifteen minutes and his hand ached by the time he was finished. Slipping inside the camp and forcing the wire back into place, he watched armed soldiers direct selected people to the appropriate trucks. The remainder, the sick and those who had given up hope, stood or sat on the ground and watched the procedure in silent apathy. Many of them were too ill to comprehend what was happening.
Jeb walked directly towards the group selected to try to infiltrate their numbers, the pistol securely hidden inside his gray coverall. He searched the line for Karen or Josh, noticing no children among them. He had no time to ruminate on this as two guards approached him.
“Name?” one asked indifferently, his eyes glued to the c
lipboard he carried as if a holy book.
“Stone,” he answered.
The soldier scanned the clipboard and glared at him. “Stone? Your name is already checked off.”
“There must be some mistake. I was in the can when you were calling out names. Someone must have taken my place.” He prayed his bluff would work.
He knew he had failed when the guard smiled. “You don’t look like a woman to me. The list shows a female.” His smile dropped. “Now, get out of line before I smash your face.”
Jeb reached up and touched the pistol inside his coverall, judging his chances, but the second guard stepped forward and jammed the barrel of his rifle in Jeb’s stomach.
“Move it,” he snarled and shoved Jeb backwards, laughing as Jeb fell down.
He lay there boiling in righteous anger as the last truck loaded its human cargo, desperately trying to conceive a plan for boarding one of the trucks to join his family. He watched in dismay as the gates swung shut with a defeating finality, sealing him inside the camp to await the fate of those remaining behind. His hesitation had lost him his last chance to free them.
8
Daylight filled the mouth of the mineshaft as Renda slowly regained consciousness. Her head throbbed unmercifully and her throat was parched. Beside her lay a plastic bottle of water. She fumbled with the cap and sipped slowly. The water was warm but it relieved her thirst. She sat up gradually, fighting nausea, and looked around. Because of the glare, she could not determine if Mace was one of the three men sitting in the mouth of the tunnel. Choosing her steps carefully, because of the uneven surface, she moved to the entrance. At the sound of her footsteps, Mace looked up at her and smiled broadly.
