Extinction Level Event (Book 2): Immune [The Hunted]

by Newman, AJ

  The greatest surprise was that Marcie had found box after box of antibiotics, most of the maintenance medicines, and several cases of synthetic blood.

  After unloading all of their new supplies, Jon went back to his new home weary but happy. He walked in the door and saw Barbara looking out the window. He put his arms around her, and she said, “Those kids are immune.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I can’t. I just know it. The kids' dad was severely injured and trapped under a bulldozer. His leg was cut off during the accident. Their mom told them it was a car wreck. The EMT’s must have used synthetic blood to save him. After the poop hit the fan, he told them to clean up …”

  “Hold the phone! My darling potty mouth said poop instead of shit. We’ve had a breakthrough.”

  “We have kids in the home. Now, their dad let them be around sick people, but they had to wash up before coming back around their mom. He knew they were immune. I believe the ones who took the synthetic blood are immune against most viruses. He must have been immune to all of those Chinese viruses that swept the planet back in the twenties before the rest of the world quarantined China when that new strain of smallpox was rampant.”

  “Will you put them in quarantine?”

  “Oh, yes. I can’t chance the others asking too many questions.”

  Jon rubbed her shoulders. “Speaking of kids, does this mean there won’t be any …?

  “The house has paper-thin walls.”

  “Poop.”

  “Jon, Marcie told me something that’ll make your jaw drop.”

  Chapter 15

  Preston Smith International Airport

  Five days later, Froggy took Jack to the airport. Jack instructed the men on how to refuel the plane while he performed a pre-flight check. The aircraft was new and had just passed mandatory inspection, so it was in great shape. Jack was surprised when Froggy loaded his weapons into the plane and sat in the co-pilot’s seat.

  “Should the leader of this large group fly out on a dangerous mission?”

  Froggy chuckled. “Yes, normally it would be a foolish thing to do. I have a very competent second in charge, and the family we’re going to get is my family. My daughters’ families went to Disney Land and an RV tour of the West Coast. I couldn’t go with them. The RV broke down, and they’re stranded with small children in a small town out in Prescott, Arizona.”

  “Crap. Why didn’t they just find a vehicle and drive home?”

  “The short story is they tried twice. My son-in-law was killed, and a gang captured them after first contacting me. They escaped and borrowed a big SUV but were attacked again outside of Prescott. A family took them in, and the man’s hobby was communicating over a short wave radio. My young daughter was wounded in the fight, and my grandson broke a leg.”

  “Oh, my God, they have suffered enough. Let’s go get them.”

  Froggy said, “They’ll be ready when we get there.”

  Froggy hadn’t flown much before the ‘event’ as he called the collapse of the world. He’d been looking out the window from the co-pilot’s seat. “Hey, what’s that round thing on the ground up ahead?”

  “That’s the Trinity site.”

  “The place where the first A-Bomb was detonated?”

  “Yes, Nevada has a bunch of them where the ground fell in and formed a crater when an underground bomb exploded, formed a huge chamber, and then the ground above fell into the chamber.”

  Jack hoped the trip would be a load ‘em up, fuel it up, and get the hell up in the air. Nothing was easy anymore, but Froggy had talked with his family the night before, and they promised to be at the airport and ready to go. “Froggy, are you sure they’ll be ready?”

  “They had everything ready to head to the airport and were supposed to spend the night at the airport waiting on us to land. When we get about a hundred miles out, I’ll try to contact them on the radio.”

  They were still over ninety minutes away from Cottonwood airport. Jack knew he could swoop in, load them up, and fly out but couldn’t make it back to Lubbock. The round trip was about thirteen hundred miles. The aircraft’s range on full tanks was twelve hundred and fifty miles. Jon had told Jack to fly over the Albuquerque airport to check on its runways and told him to note if the Porsche was still there.

  Jack flew much lower than a plane was typically allowed. He figured nothing in this area was over a thousand feet and flew at two thousand feet for a bit of safety margin. He hadn’t seen any aircraft flying since they’d seen the helicopter and Navy jet over the Gulf of Mexico. He saw something flash several miles ahead of him and then saw a shiny dot hurtling toward them. The ‘something’ was a fully armed Navy fighter flying east. The fighter waggled its wings as it passed.

  “Pilot in the Cessna, do you read me?”

  “Yes, I hear you.”

  “What are you doing in the air? All non-emergency flights are grounded on the West Coast.”

  “We’re picking up family stranded in Prescott and getting our asses back to Texas.”

  “Have a good flight but watch for low-level flights. Land quickly, get up to at least five thousand feet, and haul ass.”

  “Roger.”

  The jet was long gone before he could say roger. Jon said, “The GPS says we’re about fifty miles out, and I’m reducing altitude.”

  Froggy tried the radio, but no one answered. He waited a couple of minutes and tried again. “Cobra, this is Viper. Cobra, this is Viper.”

  They heard, “Viper, the airport is hot. I repeat hot. We’re hiding close by. The enemy convoy is on the main road to the airport about a mile west of the terminal.”

  “Damn, Jack, what do we do?”

  “Go to the back and move those cartons close to the door. You’re going to open the door, and you’re going to bomb that convoy. After we have them on the run, call your crew and tell them to be on the west end of the airport.”

  Jack had made bombs out of six-inch plastic sewer pipe with a dynamite stick in the middle surrounded by bolts and nuts. The things looked like rockets with a nose cone and fins.

  “Good, now get the two M4s and the extra magazines. Be ready to shoot if you have to. Only drop the bombs when I say. The first two will be warning shots. They’ll have to be several miles away when I land so they can’t get back and attack us.”

  Froggy opened the rear door and received a blast of air, which would have knocked him down if he hadn’t been braced. He looked down and had a bit of vertigo, but fought it off.

  “Okay, I’m lining up and will count down. Hold, hold, three, two …one, drop one! Drop two!”

  Jack turned the plane around and saw the bombs hit about two hundred yards from the vehicles. The bomb exploded hurling plastic bits and a thousand small nuts and bolts for hundreds of yards around the blast. He saw men scrambling, but none of the vehicles moved. “Froggy, put some glasses on them.”

  “Doing that right now. Shit, they’re trying to shoot us down. They don’t know how to shoot. Thank God.”

  Jack said, “I’m going in a bit higher, and when I say drop, keep dropping until you’ve dropped five bombs.”

  Jack lined up on the street and saw the vehicles in the distance. He waited and then said, hold, hold …one … two, three, drop!”

  The first bomb hit two hundred yards from the vehicles, the next about seventy-five yards from the lead vehicle, the third, and fourth hit the ends of the column of five trucks. Froggy yelled, “Bingo! We nailed them! They’re jumping in the trucks as fast as they can. No one‘s shooting at us.”

  The bombs had ten pounds each of hardware nuts, bolts, and screws packed around a stick of dynamite. The effect was like shooting a shotgun machine gun in a three hundred and sixty-degree circle filling the air with double ought buckshot. Every vehicle was hit a half dozen times, and all of the truck’s windows were shattered. Nothing escaped the wrath of the steel projectiles.

  Jack made a wide circle and buzzed the vehicles twice before he f
elt safe to land. Froggy gave warning to his family, and Jack prepared for landing. Jack had checked the runway out on his first pass, and it was clear. He brought the turboprop plane in, taxied to the end of the runway, and turned the plane around. Froggy dropped the stairs and helped his family into the aircraft while Jack checked the plane for any damage. There wasn’t any damage, so Jack entered the plane last and closed the door.

  “Hi everyone, I’m Jack, and I’ll talk with you in a few minutes. We need to get out of here before those rascals come back.”

  Jack took off at full throttle and banked left then right as he gained height. No one shot at him, but he didn’t want to take a chance. The plane quickly arrived at the prescribed five thousand feet, and Jack put the aircraft on autopilot. He looked back into the passenger cabin and saw two young women, one young man, and five kids of varying ages. One of the women was recounting their harrowing experiences since the crap hit the fan. Jack stayed several feet away and wore his mask and gloves. He listened quietly.

  Jo said, “Our RV broke down on the way south from Northern California the day after we heard about the virus. We cut our trip short to get home. No one knew it would get this bad, so we got motel rooms while the mechanic worked on the RV. The next day, the mechanic said he had to order a part from Michigan where the RV was manufactured. The part arrived, but by then, everyone was panicking. Jacob, sorry, Jacob was my husband. Anyway, he rented a large SUV, and we lit out for home.

  We stopped in Barstow on Highway 40 where some thugs robbed us and took the vehicle. We didn’t have any money, so no one took us seriously about renting a vehicle. The news was getting very bad, but we were stuck there a couple of weeks while the world fell apart around us. We all had to sell our wedding rings and jewelry just to eat. It seemed the whole town took pleasure in our suffering. I hated that the kids had to sleep in a barn with those smelly cows.

  Jacob was tired of the crap and snuck out one night to break into a used car lot. He borrowed a Suburban, and we left just after midnight to avoid any police issues. Everything was okay until we arrived in Kingman, Nevada, to fill up.

  Several trucks rolled up, and men piled out with guns. Jacob told us to drive away while he held them off. Dave, Grace’s husband, floored the gas pedal and the SUV launched out of the parking lot to the street. We heard gunfire and then silence behind us. We got to the on ramp to the highway when we ran into a roadblock. Several men and women with guns stopped us. Their leader stomped on my nephew’s leg and said, “That will keep you from running.” Then they forced us into the back of an old army truck. We found out later they killed Jacob.”

  Jo sobbed for a few minutes and then continued talking. “The leader of the small group had our hands tied and taken to an abandoned hotel. They were open about their plans for us. Grace, her young daughter, and I were to become prostitutes, and Dave was to become a field hand. They didn’t say what would happen to our boys. That night, they locked us in one room on the third floor so we couldn’t escape. The leader and another man snuck into our room that night and dragged Grace’s teenage daughter and me out to have their way with us. I had a knife. I had my way with them and then freed the others. We stole one of their trucks and the two guards’ weapons and left before dawn.

  We ran into this great family above Prescott, and here we are. Oh, I forgot. While the leader bled out, I told him the knife deep in his gut was for breaking my nephew’s leg.”

  Jack wiped his brow. “I’m so sorry y’all had to go through all that. Your life will be better in the future.”

  “I hope so. I’d never harmed anyone before, much less killed anyone. I’ll never leave home again without my knife.”

  Froggy visited with his two daughters and their families while Jack tended to the plane. He told them he’d have to land to take on fuel in Albuquerque.

  The refueling was a nonevent in Albuquerque. Jack had the plane back in the air in less than an hour. The aircraft was at two hundred feet in altitude when there was a sudden whoosh below them, and the plane shook violently. Four Navy fighters blew past them, hugging the ground. Froggy’s daughter Grace yelled, “What the friggen hell was that?”

  Jack yelled back at her, “It was the US Navy.”

  ☣☣☣

  Southeast of Lubbock, Texas – Walt’s ranch - October 2038

  The land between Lubbock and Walt’s ranch was flat. Ironing board flat. So flat that if there weren’t any homes or telephone poles, you’d just see dirt and grass meeting the sky on the horizon. Yes, there were a few trees, but they were far and few between. The ground was dotted with those green circles where the farmers used those fancy watering devices that roamed around in a circle, spraying water on the crops. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and it was warm for October. The tanks, or as most people call them ponds, were half-empty thanks to it being dryer than usual in the spring and early fall. Jon looked across the plains and wondered how far he could see.

  Jill took Jon, Barbara, and Bob southeast to her dad’s ranch. Barbara had brought several bottles of the synthetic blood with the labels removed. She’d collected blood from all of the immune team members to add to the artificial blood. She planned to tell Walt the blood was spiked with synthetic blood to enhance its long-term effectiveness. Betty and Barbara were to finish training Walt and Meg on how to perform the transfusions. Jon and Jill were to gather the rest of their belongings and snoop around to see what they could learn.

  Jill didn’t see her dad’s truck in the driveway. She climbed out of Samantha and walked over to meet her mom. They hugged, and tears flowed. “Mom, how’s Dad doing? Will he come home to learn how to perform the transfusions?”

  “I called him on the walkie-talkie, and he should be here in about fifteen minutes. Why don’t y’all come into the house and have some lemonade?”

  Jill noticed her mom was uneasy and hadn’t looked her way even though they’d hugged. “Mom, look me in the eyes. Will Dad bring his friends with him? Will he try to capture us?”

  Her mom wouldn’t look at her. Jill held her at arm’s length. “Mom, he’s going to ambush us! Isn’t he?”

  Before Meg could answer, Samantha’s speakers blasted. “Get in and strap your asses in for a rough ride. Three vehicles are approaching from behind the barn. They’re talking about capturing all of you.”

  Meg broke into sobs. “Yes! Go!”

  Jill yelled, “Load up! It’s an ambush! Mom, go to hell with Dad.”

  Jon and Barbara were still at the truck, and Bob came running from the barn. “Deactivate the booby traps!” Jon yelled and told Samantha to get the hell out of there. “Samantha, go back to the Naval Air Station! Go fast!”

  Samantha spun tires swinging around in the driveway. “Hold on. We’re going to take some short cuts. Jon, I won’t be as pretty after this ride.”

  Samantha went straight across the front yard, through the electric fence, and across the pasture. Jon instantly knew she was keeping the barn between them and Walt’s men. Samantha traveled at sixty miles per hour across a cow pasture when she broadcast, “Hold on. Bump!”

  The brakes pumped to slow the truck down, and they hit the shallow ditch before the road. Their seatbelts kept them from breaking their necks, but they were still thrown around like rag dolls. The airbags didn’t inflate because Samantha calculated that her humans would only be jostled about but not severely injured. Bob recovered and yelled, “Open the back window, so I can get a shot off at the asshats.”

  Samantha firmly said, “I would recommend not shooting. They want to capture you alive. They won’t shoot. We can lose them. Trust me.”

  Jon was in a quandary. “Bob, don’t shoot. Give Samantha a chance!”

  “Brace yourselves. Their trucks are all pre-AI, and we’ll lose the remaining two on the next bump. Get ready. Brace yourselves. One … two …. Bump!”

  Samantha made a hard turn off the road and across a shallow ditch, that would barely be noticed at ten miles per hour, but at sixty, it w
as like hitting a wall. They all bounced around in the truck as Samantha speeded up to a hundred miles per hour across the pasture. She dodged a few cows but kept going.

  Jon recovered and saw the first truck sliding in an attempt to stop, but it hit the ditch hard. The airbags deployed, and the driver lost control. The truck flipped over, and the second truck plowed into the lead truck. Samantha slowed. “The danger is over. I’ll get back on the road now and drive safely home. Jon. You need to be more careful in your choice of friends.”

  “Samantha, was that sarcasm?”

  “Does a wild bear crap in the forest?”

  Chapter 16

  Reese NAS - October 2038

  The bright yellow Lubbock City school bus stopped beside the plane, and Froggy said, “Please gather your possessions and load up on the bus. It’ll take you to the Reese Naval Air Station and your home for two weeks. After that, we’ll show you your new homes inside the base. They’re nice newer homes, and by the time you move in, they should have electricity and running water.”

  Froggy’s older daughter, Jo, asked, “Dad, who'll watch over us and feed us? Won’t you’re team be afraid we have the virus?”

  “Jack’s son and daughter-in-law will be in charge of the quarantine area from now on. Barbara is a doctor of immunology. She’s convinced me they have the skills and, most importantly, the desire to place themselves in harm’s way.”

  Froggy had borrowed a small school bus for transporting any outsiders to the quarantine area at the Naval Air Station (NAS). The driver’s area had been sealed off from the passengers in an abundance of caution. Social distancing didn’t work with the virus because it could travel a long way in the air and live for several days in the water droplets and vapor from a human or animal’s breath. Jack and Froggy led the convoy over to the NAS.