One by one, the commandos squeezed through the door and took the lead as they headed down into the dark building, activating their night-vision goggles as they went. They quickly found another locked door, and just like before, the suit worked his magic on the door. They were then inside a large warehouse with several dozen rows of metal shelving stocked full of valuable antiques from all over the world.
The commander and the suit took the lead, shining flashlights up and down at the marker cards at the end of each row until the suit found the one he had been looking for. “Here,” he said as he turned down the long row scanning for his prize.
He searched for a few minutes before he found what he was after. He reached up and grabbed a large box on the top shelf and slid it down onto the floor with a thud, surprised by its weight. He pulled out his pocketknife and cut off the straps holding the lid in place and peeked inside. “This is it,” he said as he motioned to two of the commandos to come and retrieve it.
As they picked up the box, they heard the sound of a door opening at the far end of the row they stood in. They looked up to find two bodies coming through the doorway. Immediately, they dropped the box and raised their silenced rifles and fired two rounds each at the new arrivals and watched as each of them dropped to the ground—dead.
The suit grabbed both of the soldiers who had dropped the box and fisted his hands in their collars. “Get that box to the roof and know this, it is worth more than your lives if you dare to drop it again.” Then he moved past them to check out the bodies. As he carefully approached, he was startled momentarily by the arrival of two more coming through the door. As he drew his sidearm and aimed it at the newcomers, one of them shouted to him.
“We’re human!”
The suit continued to draw a bead on the two very malnourished and disheveled people as they came closer in the beam of his flashlight. Years of training saw him aim, shut his eyes against the muzzle flash, and pull the trigger. Even in darkness, with his eyes closed, he still managed to drop both of the survivors. He then turned and gave the command to exfiltrate the rest of the team as he looked at his watch and confirmed they only had two minutes to get back to the roof.
One by one, the team fell into place behind the two mercs carrying the cargo, and they started their trek back up to the roof. As they made it to the doorway of the storage room, they heard more doors opening and the sounds of several people shouting there were survivors in the building and they needed help. The highly trained commandos didn’t hesitate on their orders and did not stop to offer assistance.
Each man blinked rapidly as they reached the roof to prevent sudden blindness as the light of day once again greeted them. Man by man they took up defensive positions aiming at the door as the last of their team cleared the stairs and shut the door behind him. The sounds of the approaching helicopter told them they were mere moments from evacuation, but they didn’t know how many survivors might be coming up the stairs at any moment. Suddenly, the helicopter appeared from below the roofline and slipped over the edge of the roof before it touched down. The CIA spook was the first one in, and the commander was right behind, ready to receive the box from the two soldiers who carried it. As it was handed off to him, the door to the stairs burst open. Several survivors clamored out onto the roof, stumbling and falling as they were blinded by the sunlight they had been deprived of while inside the airtight building for weeks.
As the soldiers prepared to open fire, the sound of the helicopter’s mini Gatling gun whirled to life behind them. The gun continued until all the survivors were cut down right in front of the commandos in a hail of bullets. Before any of the soldiers could question why they simply hadn’t taken off and left the survivors alive, they, too, were targeted, with each commando promptly killed. In a matter of a few seconds, the gun went silent and every single person who had been standing on the roof was eliminated.
The commander slid away from the gun and leaned back into the helicopter seat. He buckled his seatbelt as the suit reached over and slid the door shut as the chopper took to the skies once again and made the turn toward the base. “No witnesses.”
CHAPTER 41
Kyle and Hope
The sun had risen over the camp, but it was hard to tell with the storm clouds above that kept the sunlight at bay. Kyle left the armory and made his way home, exhausted from a full night involving a burial and preparations for the coming stormHe quietly entered the house and made a quick stop by Hope’s room. He peeked inside and found her still bundled up and sound asleep, so he quietly shut her door and made a beeline straight to his bed. He gently moved Patch over to one side and then collapsed onto his spot, not even bothering to take his boots off. In a matter of seconds he was out cold.
A loud clap of thunder awakened Kyle, and he rolled over to look at his watch. He’d been asleep for four hours, but it felt as though he had only just closed his eyes. He slowly pulled the pillow back under his head, when suddenly the bedroom door flew open and he was lept upon by a scared little boy.
“Daddy, did you hear that one?” Patch asked as he buried his head into Kyle’s chest.
“Yeah, I heard it big guy.” Kyle tried to fight off his sleepiness.
“I got up and went to get something to eat and tried to be quiet so you could sleep, but they’ve been getting louder and louder.”
“It’s okay. The lightning can’t get you inside, though, buddy.” Kyle pulled him as close as possible.
It was moments like this that reminded Kyle why he fought so hard everyday to keep them all safe. He figured it was only a matter of time before the slabs started to die off as their food supply eventually had to grow smaller and smaller. Unfortunately, to that point, the slabs had not yet showed any signs of slowing down. After what they saw near Columbus, they looked just as deadly as they had been in the beginning of the outbreak. What did surprise him, especially after what he had seen last night with Rico, was the speed with which the virus took over and turned someone. In the beginning, a person could survive for several hours after being bitten, and even then, once they died, it took the body at least an hour to turn and come back, if not longer. The attack on Rico last night should not have killed him that fast. And then according to Hope, he came back within just a scant couple of minutes. That bothered him. He shoved all of his concerns to the back of his mind, and tried his best to stay in the moment. Right then all he cared about was how much he enjoyed the fact that his little man still needed him.
As Kyle settled back onto the bed, he heard a new scream come from the front of the house.
“Dad!” Renee yelled. “Get in here! Something’s wrong with Hope!”
Kyle quickly scooted out from under Patch, and ran down the hallway. “What is it?” He pushed Renee to the side, who stood over Hope as she tried to wake her up.
“I don’t know. But feel her. She’s burning up, and she won’t wake up.”
Kyle was shocked when he touched Hope’s skin. He’d dealt with many fevers over the years, but Hope was hotter than any of the kids had ever felt in the past. “Get me some rags and some cool water,” he barked at Renee. “And keep your brother out of here, too,” he said as he eyed Patch peeking into the room.
Kyle rolled Hope over and pried open her eyelids, but found nothing but the whites of her eyes. He fought off the panic that seeped its way in and stayed in control for the moment. Renee came back with a couple of rags and a bowl of water and quickly got to work soaking them one at a time before handing them to her dad.
“Go get Josey. Tell her it’s an emergency. Take your brother and drop him off with Christi, and grab some ice out of one of the freezers when you do,” Kyle instructed Renee. “Be careful, it sounds like the rain is getting bad out there. Now go!”
As he heard Patch throw a fit about going out in the rain, he watched as Renee picked him up and took off without bothering to listen to a word he had to say.
Kyle dripped the water on Hope’s head and tried to cool her down as bes
t as he could. He then ripped the few covers off of her and found that they were completely soaked in sweat from her fevered state. He then rolled up her sleeves, in a vain attempt to get as much skin exposed to the cool morning air as possible, when he discovered a gauze bandage wrapped around her forearm. Kyle peeled the gauze back and found the distinctive markings of a bite on her forearm. The area around the tooth marks was slightly swollen and very red, indicating an infection had already set in.
Kyle felt his heart shatter and stop completely for a moment as he looked at his daughter lying in that critical state. He had a flashback to the night Sam came home on the eve of the outbreak and had collapsed in their bedroom. He had to make one of the toughest choices a husband could ever have to make shortly after her collapse. The only thing that got him through the days following that tragic night was the thought of their children and how much they would come to need him from that moment on. And with the world having already gone to hell, it had been months before he even had a spare moment to grieve.
Now Kyle sat in dreadful silence wondering if he would have to make another tough, life altering decision. In the far recesses of his mind, he heard the words that could give him that one small glimmer of hope he needed. One tidbit of information he’d never shared with anyone that might be enough to offer that one tiny bit of hope he desperately craved. One chance in a thousand, maybe even a billion, he calculated silently in his head. He shoved the panic aside and began to plan in that brief moment of hope. Kyle grabbed another long-sleeve shirt out of Hope’s closet and sat her up to change her out of the soaked shirt. He had to act fast before Josey arrived.
In a few tense moments, Kyle struggled to get a completely limp body changed from one shirt and into another and then put his daughter back into the bed. Just as he finished laying Hope down and made sure that the new, tighter-fitting shirt sleeves couldn’t roll up to the reveal the bite mark, he heard the front door fling open.
“Kyle, where are you?” Josey yelled out.
“Hope’s room.”
Josey entered the room and saw Hope passed out on the bed. She quickly went into rapid-fire question mode. Kyle did the best he could and answered most of the questions, but for the most part, his answers were, “I don’t know.”
“Jesus Christ! She is burning up. Hand me a thermometer out of my bag,” Josey barked at Kyle, forcing him to get up and out of her way while he fetched her bag that she’d dropped by the door on her way in.
Kyle fumbled through the bag until he came up with the old-style mercury thermometer and quickly handed it to Josey. After a few tense moments waiting for the mercury in the thermometer to steadily go up, it stopped, and Josey gasped at what she saw.
“This can’t be right,” Josey said, as she looked quizzically at the glass tube.
“What is it?” Kyle asked as he tried to keep the panic from his voice.
“A hundred-and-six,” Josey said. “We have got to get her cooled down now or she is in serious trouble.” Without hesitation, she leaned down and scooped up the teenager as if she weighed nothing. “Outside in the rain, that’s our best bet.”
Kyle cleared a path to the back door and grabbed a sunning chair that had been largely untouched for the last year, and positioned it for Josey to lay Hope on. As he felt how cold the rain was, he realized why Josey thought this would be a good idea. He also noticed how much the wind had picked up since the previous evening. Instead of the occasional gust, it had turned into a steady wind in the neighborhood of 20- to 30-miles an hour, he guessed. That meant whatever storm was bearing down on them was getting closer. He wondered just how strong and how close the storm would get.
Josey situated Hope in the chair and began to remove her clothing to allow her to soak up as much of the cool rain as possible. She quickly removed the soft cloth pajama bottoms, and as she reached up to remove her shirt, Kyle inserted himself into the process as casually as he could manage.
“I got this. Why don’t you go get some ice from the kitchen house?” Kyle said as he tried to wedge himself in between the two girls.
“Renee said that’s where she was going,” Josey responded. But she thought she understood what Kyle was doing. She thought his offer to help was because he worried it would embarrass or humiliate Hope if she found out she had been stripped down to her underwear on the back porch. “Why don’t I go see what’s taking Renee so long,” Josey said as she gave Kyle the benefit of the doubt and left father and daughter alone.
Kyle breathed a small sigh of relief as Josey left, but he knew it would only be a temporary victory in keeping Hope’s secret. He rolled her sleeves up to the point of the bite and hoped it was enough to keep Josey from wanting to remove more clothing when she returned. Kyle also ripped her shirt down to her bra and rolled up the bottom and revealed her stomach to the cooling rain. He then stood back up to allow as much rain as possible to soak his daughter.
The seconds ticked by and Kyle stood over Hope, not sure what else he could do for her. As he watched over his oldest child, the entire world seemed to melt away. He felt in his gut that the situation with Hope would certainly be the deciding factor on how he continued his fight in a world that had gone mad. Zombies, he thought, even though he hated that term, as it indicated a supernatural enemy, roamed the lands, while humans fought one another for supplies and food, that just a mere eighteen months before could have been acquired at any corner grocery store. Every day was a struggle to provide for his family. On the night of the outbreak, he’d made a promise to his wife to keep the children safe, and until this mess with Hope, he’d thought he’d done all the best possible things. At this moment, however, he felt as if he had failed miserably. He looked down at Hope, who could very well be turning into one of the creatures he had fought against with every fiber of his soul, and he knew he had failed. He hadn’t even realized he had been crying until one of the tears mixed with the driving rain made its way into his mouth and he tasted the saltiness. Of all the crap he and his friends and children had been through, he knew he hadn’t cried since that fateful night so long ago. He hadn’t had time to cry or mourn or even regret anything that had happened since then. Every day since had been about the kids and helping them through their own grieving. Even though he had built a community and had become a de facto leader for over two-dozen people, every bit of it had been for the kids and his promise to his wife.
Standing over Hope, he was brought out of his deep thoughts as a loud noise banged against the back door. He spun and saw Storm scratching and jumping against the window of the steel door. He reached over and opened the door to let the dog out. With the door slightly opened, Storm pushed it even wider and ran over to Hope’s side, and nudged her nose into Hope’s arm.
Kyle was a little shocked by her actions, as Storm had always had a severe hatred of the rain. Ever since they’d had her, even as a puppy, she would hesitate to go outside if there had been even a slight mist in the air, and would usually hide if she heard thunder. Her rain phobia had been so bad that she’d broken the window on the back door once when she was left outside and it suddenly started to rain. She had tried to climb through the window and earned herself a visit to the vet for stitches when she’d cut herself on the broken glass. Yet, there she was, outside in a complete downpour, with thunder and lightning in the background. She’d always had a sixth sense when the kids were sick, though. Storm would stay by the side of whichever kid was ill and not leave them until they’d recovered. He supposed with how sick Hope was, it wasn’t in the realm of fantasy to see Storm outside in the rain as worried as she must have been for her human pup.
Kyle leaned down to Storm and petted her wet fur. “It’s going to be okay, girl, just keep an eye on her,” he said, as he heard the front door of the house slam shut, indicating Josey had returned.
Within moments, Josey burst through the backdoor with two pillowcases filled with ice. “Here, set these on her belly and legs.” She put them down at Kyle’s feet and took off back in
to the house.
With the ice packs placed on Hope, Kyle stood back and watched his daughter, hoping to see some sign of life return to her. Josey returned with Renee following close behind her this time. She removed her medical bag from over her shoulder and set it down just inside the door to keep it dry. She then produced a vial of epinephrine. She carefully drew a full syringe, moved over to Hope, and searched for a vein in her arm to inject it into. Kyle watched closely as Josey tried unsuccessfully a couple of times to find a vein in her wrist. As she looked further, she moved up to the top of the forearm. Before she could slide up the tightly-rolled sleeve any higher, Kyle abruptly interrupted her before she made it up to the bite mark.
“Here’s a good vein,” he said, pointing to the one on her left wrist.
“Good eye.” Josey dropped the right arm and leaned across Hope to insert the syringe into the bulging purple vein in her wrist.
“This might help get her system charged up,” Josey said. “Or at the least get her to wake up, and maybe then she can tell us something that might help me treat her.” She removed the needle and stood back up to watch her patient.
After a few long seconds, Hope suddenly took a big gasp of air and opened her eyes for a few moments. Both Kyle and Josey leapt to her side with a little hope that she might come to. However, Hope just as quickly closed her eyes and slumped back down, dislodging the ice pack on her belly .
Humanity's Hope (Book 1): Camp H Page 17
