by Mike Kraus
Jane shrugged and took a step back. “Sounds good to me. I’m going to stay over here out of the way until you tell me what to do.”
“All right, then.” Rick nodded. “Let’s do it.”
While the idea of rolling the car onto the barge and back off again on the other side sounded simple enough, the execution was decidedly not. The risk of losing their only method of fast transportation caused Rick to lapse into his risk-avoidance mode where he triple-checked every possible outcome of everything they were doing to make sure nothing bad would happen.
The loading process itself took a good forty-five minutes. Once the car was aboard it took another twenty to get across to the other side and secure the barge and boat in relatively the same location they had originally found it. The denseness of the trees and slope of the eastern bank of the river made the offloading process substantially riskier than the loading process had been. After a few close encounters—including one where one of the planks slipped and fell into the water—Rick breathed a huge sigh of relief as he felt the back wheels of the car hit the grass and dirt and keep moving forward.
He drove the car slowly through the trees as Jane and Dr. Evans helped guide him from alongside the vehicle. When they arrived at the edge of a road that ran alongside the trees on the bank of the river Rick stopped the car and the trio headed back to the boat to make sure they weren’t leaving anything of value behind.
While Dr. Evans and Jane were keen to get moving as quickly as possible again, Rick insisted on staying a few extra minutes to put the boat back the way they found it—minus the broken lock on the cabin door. When they finished, they stood on the shore taking a final look at the boat before heading back to pile in the small vehicle.
“I can’t believe that worked.” Jane smiled as she spoke. “You two did a good job.”
“Nah,” Rick shook his head. “We all did. Excellent work all around. And yeah, I’m a little bit surprised that worked as well as it did.”
“I rather enjoyed it.” Dr. Evans replied. “It was better than riding in that car for the last few hours.”
“Very true.” Rick sighed. “Unfortunately I think that break’s just about come to an end.”
Chapter 12
Blacksburg, VA
Dianne’s first stop in her search for Jason’s medication was the welcome desk near the door where she entered the building. A large poster hung from a stand behind the desk with a floor plan of the facility. Labels were printed over each section of the building, showing where everything from the main cafeteria to the surgical suites were located. Most of the building was taken up by single-occupancy rooms on every floor but the top that were used for housing and treating patients. Exam, surgical, administrative and other rooms and offices were primarily located around the edge of each floor with three elevators and three sets of stairs—one at each end and one in the middle—acting as the means to traverse through the different floors of the building.
Dianne studied the poster for a few minutes as she looked for any mention of a pharmacy or other section of the building but discovered nothing. Maybe it’s not labeled for security purposes? She decided to head up two floors to the main nurses station where she hoped she’d find a lead that would point her to where the medication was stored.
As Dianne moved through the facility she was struck by the realization that the place looked remarkably clean in spite of the destruction surrounding it in the city. None of the windows or exterior doors had been broken, there was no sign of looting on the ground floor and she had seen no sign that there were other people in the area. The oddity of the place being both untouched by the fire and left alone by any survivors was a good thing but it was also slightly nerve-wracking.
In an effort to ensure she really was alone Dianne didn’t take the stairs near where she came in nor did she take the set in the middle of the building. Instead she walked all the way down the length of the atrium, checking the windows and doors along the way, until she reached the far staircase.
Why would anyone leave this place alone? Maybe they didn’t realize this is basically just a hospital. The sign out front indicated that it was a long-term care facility and she assumed that anyone looking to loot medical supplies would put two and two together and realize the place could be a goldmine. Apparently they didn’t.
She looked up the stairs, took a deep breath and ascended slowly. As it was located at the end of the building the staircase was surrounded on three sides by tall, wide panes of glass. The stairs themselves were wide and deep, though they were only a few inches high and covered with slip-proof carpet to help accommodate the needs of the older patients. The stairs looped back on themselves twice for each floor with a wide landing after each loop. Dianne paused on the first landing and looked out through the window, shielding her eyes from the glare as she marveled at the beauty of the building.
The effect of the sun coming through the glass box on the stairs was almost enough to keep her from noticing the city that stretched out as far as she could see. The longer she looked, though, the more its destruction began to overwhelm her. Fire had consumed huge portions of the city, swallowing Virginia Tech, the Blacksburg Zoo and many of the new apartment complexes that had been built over the last several months.
In areas where the fires hadn’t completely destroyed the buildings there were hundreds and thousands of destroyed vehicles along with shops and homes that had been broken into and looted. The city resembled something out of a zombie or disaster movie, though all Dianne could think about was how much worse it could potentially be in other areas of the country—like wherever Rick was.
***
“You’re spilling it!”
“How is that my fault? My arm’s broken!”
“You couldn’t do anything with it if it was broken. It’s probably just fractured.”
“Isn’t a fracture a break?”
“Just shut up and give me the jug.”
The man with the injured arm passed the jug of water over to his companion, intentionally spilling some of it on the ground in the process. The uninjured man growled but decided not to escalate the situation. He grabbed the jug and took a long drink before wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve and sighing.
“How are we supposed to find her in this mess?”
“I don’t know. Why would I know?”
“I’d rather find a needle in a haystack. At least then I could sit down while searching.”
The injured man slid off of the hood of the hatchback where he had been resting and pulled back his coat to look at his arm. He had used a strip of cloth to fashion a makeshift sling but keeping it immobilized had done nothing to dull the pain or reduce the swelling that was still growing around his elbow, wrist and shoulder. He could still move his fingers, but doing so caused a tremendous amount of pain to shoot up through his entire arm and down the side of his chest.
“You should call in. Tell him we haven’t found anything.”
The uninjured man shook his head. “What good will that do? He’ll just get even more pissed off.”
The injured man picked up a pair of binoculars off of the hood of the car and looked out across the city. “I don’t see how that’s possible. He’s already… wait. What’s that building up there?”
“What building?”
“That one, up there, with all the glass windows.”
“Nursing home, I think. My grandmother was there for a few months before she died. I went there once. The cafeteria had good food.”
“Look at the end of the building on the right. Second floor. Do you see what I’m seeing?” The injured man held out the binoculars. His companion took them and focused on the location, studying it closely for several seconds. The faint image of a figure wearing a white and green jacket was just barely visible through the heavily tinted glass. She was standing still, looking out on the city for a moment before she turned away and vanished from sight.
“Well I’ll be.” The uninjured man l
owered the binoculars and grinned. “She went to a nursing home? What the hell for?”
“You really want to look a gift horse in the mouth?” The injured man walked around the car and opened the passenger door before reaching in to get the radio sitting on the seat. “Base, unit three here. Put him on. We’ve got something.” He looked at his companion as he lifted his finger off of the transmit button. “You sure it’s a nursing home?”
“Pretty sure. They call it something else but yeah. That’s what it was.”
“Hm.” The injured man waited a few seconds until the man with the red shirt came on the radio.
“I hope you have some good news.”
“We found her.”
“Have you apprehended her?”
“No, but we know where she is and she’s currently cornered in a building. We need some backup here, though. It’s a big building.”
“Where at?”
“In the city. It’s a bigass glass complex sitting on a little hill surrounded by trees and stuff. Sticks out like a sore thumb. Have them come in off the first exit and keep heading straight. They won’t be able to miss it.”
“Get inside and make sure she doesn’t escape. They’ll be there shortly.”
The radio went dead and the injured man tossed it back in the car. He pulled his pistol out of his waistband, wincing as he bumped it against his arm. “You ready?”
The uninjured man lowered the binoculars again and nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter 13
Twenty Minutes North of Washington, D.C.
“Derr’mo!” Isayev curses in his native tongue as he fights with the Bear’s controls, desperately trying to keep them level and on course. Without a functional long-range radar system on board the aircraft, the storm cell had appeared almost without warning. The storm buffets the aircraft, causing the metal to groan and strain as opposing air forces stretch it to its limits. Hail beats against the metal and the windows, the ice still soft enough to be chopped up by the propellers but hard enough to put dents in the roof.
Designed for high-altitude flight, the Tupolev Tu-95 is a long, narrow cylinder with wide wings and four super-sonic propellers. It is designed for smooth sailing high-altitude flight, not for low-altitude work in the middle of a thunderstorm. Isayev and Aliyev work in unison, trying to respond to the changes in wind speed as they pass through the storm without losing too much altitude.
Blov and Yermakov sit behind Isayev and Aliyev, their eyes closed as they cling to their seats and harnesses, trying desperately not to throw up. Their silent prayer is that the turbulence they experienced earlier in the flight will return to replace the storm that feels like it will yank them out of the sky and throw them into the ground at any moment.
“Engine three is out! That makes two!” Sitting in the co-pilot seat, Aliyev shouts at Isayev through his headset. “How close are we to the destination?”
“Not close enough. Besides, we can’t bail out in the middle of the storm!” Isayev shouts back.
“If we lose another engine we won’t—” Aliyev’s reply is cut short by a deafening crack of thunder. The sky directly outside the plane is, for a brief instant, illuminated like the surface of the sun as a bolt of lighting appears directly off the starboard side of the plane. The two technicians who had been holding themselves together admirably in the face of the storm have now resorted to shouting into their headsets, trying desperately to tell the two Spetsnaz officers that they should land the plane as quickly as possible. Aliyev merely rolls his eyes at the technicians’ hysterics and switches off their headset microphones remotely, focusing back on the task of keeping everyone alive.
“As soon as we get clear of the worst of this storm we’ll need to jump, okay?” Isayev doesn’t look up from his controls as he yells at his co-pilot over the noise.
“You want me to get them ready now?”
Isayev nods. “Yes. We’ll have to be fast about this; we’re nearly out of fuel anyway.”
Aliyev groans as he unbuckles his harness, a particularly brutal piece of wind nearly tossing him out of his seat and onto the floor. He holds tight to straps hanging from the ceiling and sides of the aircraft as he moves back until he’s face-to-face with the technicians. Both of them have their eyes screwed shut and he taps them on the chest until they reply.
“Gentlemen!” Aliyev crouches down, keys his microphone and shouts into it. The technicians look at him, their eyes wide with fear.
“Your parachutes are still on, correct?” Both men nod.
“You remember how to use them, yes?” Both men nod.
Aliyev points at a hatch on the side of the plane, behind the right wing. “We’ll be jumping as soon as we clear the storm. I will go first, then you two will go, then Isayev will go. Do you understand?” Both men nod.
“Good. Be ready! We jump soon!” Aliyev starts to move back to the front of the plane when the craft violently shudders. He stumbles, loses his grip and slams into the side of the craft before pushing himself back upright. He ignores the pain in his arm and side as he stumbles back to his seat. “What happened?!”
“Engine one is out! Number four is the last one!”
“That’s the one leaking fuel, isn’t it!”
Isayev nods. “We have to jump soon; I won’t be able to maintain altitude much longer!”
“The storm’s still terrible!”
“We won’t have much of a choice! We can keep her up for a few more minutes at most, then we must go otherwise we’ll be too low!”
Isayev and Aliyev work the controls of the aircraft furiously coaxing every bit of power they can from the leaking engine as they fight against the storm. They hold their own for another two minutes, enough to bring them closer to the edge of the clouds, when the final engine coughs and sputters. Aliyev glances out the window at the engine and shouts at Isayev.
“We have to go! Altitude is dropping fast!”
Isayev is about to answer when a blinding light fills the cabin. He throws his hands up in front of his face until his eyes adjust to the sunlight. From outside, the plane looks like some sort of dying monster as it bursts forth from the storm, ribbons of cloud rippling off the tips of the wings. “Go! Go!” Isayev shouts at Aliyev and reaches beneath the controls, pulling a lever to lock them in place. With the worst of the storm behind them the plane can glide for a fair distance, enough to put it several miles or more away from where the four men will land.
Once the plane is set Isayev climbs out of his chair and into the back compartment where Aliyev and the two technicians are waiting. Aliyev raises his thumb into the air and the gesture is returned by Isayev. Aliyev turns, pulls the emergency lever on the door and it falls off the plane, spinning violently as it disappears behind them. Aliyev walks up to the door, braces his arms against his chest and steps out without hesitation, disappearing for a few seconds only to show up again once his parachute deploys.
Belov and Yermakov stand at the edge of the door, neither of them wanting to be the first out when Isayev walks up behind them, braces himself with two leather straps and kicks them out through the door one after the other. He shouts at them as they go, reminding them to pull their cords and sure enough he sees two more parachutes open up. With one final look around the cabin Isayev straps himself to a large canvas bag filled with supplies and pushes it out the door as he jumps into the unknown.
The Bear flies for nearly fifteen more miles, its fourth engine occasionally sputtering back to life along the way, but it eventually crashes on the far western side of the capital, far from where its four temporary inhabitants eventually land. The eyes that see the plane crash are few and far between and the mission, as far as the two Spetsnaz officers can determine, is still successful. Whether it will remain so is anyone’s guess.
Chapter 14
Blacksburg, VA
What on earth is that smell? Dianne wrinkled her nose as she ascended to the second floor of the building. When she had first walked in she had dismi
ssed the faint foul odor as coming from rotten food in the café, but the deeper she walked into the second floor’s hallways the stronger it became. Without the benefit of direct sunlight to penetrate into the inner halls, Dianne was finally forced to switch on her flashlight. She scanned back and forth with it, looking down the hall and at the rooms around her before panning down to the carpet. She held the beam on the carpet for a second before kneeling down to get a closer look at it. What on earth…
The carpet was dark grey in color but it looked like there was a pattern on some parts of it that made no sense. When she walked on the pattern the carpet felt different, like it was stiffer than the parts that were plain grey. Dianne swallowed hard, fighting back against the rising bile in her throat as the smell continued to grow stronger with each step she took down the hall. Finally, as she reached a large open area where the main nurses station was located, she realized that the smell wasn’t coming from rotten food. “Dear sweet merciful…” Dianne’s eyes opened wide and she pressed her arm up against her face, swallowing the saliva that felt like it was pouring into her mouth.
When she was in college all those years ago her roommate had been a fan of horror movies. She was a particular fan of horror movies that relied on gore and on-screen violence to induce fear in movie-goers. While Dianne had never been a fan of such films she had agreed to watch a movie simply titled The One with her roommate late one October evening. The first twenty minutes of the movie were tense, but bearable. The remainder of the movie left Dianne with nightmares for days on end and cemented in her mind the fact that she was not a fan of the gory horror movie genre.
As Dianne’s eyes flicked across the scene laid out in front of her she couldn’t help but think back to that night with her roommate and the nightmares that had followed. The same surreal, visceral fear gripped her stomach, twisting it into knots and sending more bile rising up her throat. Her brain felt like it was short-circuiting, simultaneously telling her to run and fight and hide all at the same time. Her limbs felt frozen as she stepped back, nearly falling over as she reached out and grabbed the wall for support.
