The infected dead book 8.., p.42
The Infected Dead | Book 8 | Returned For Now, page 42
part #8 of The Infected Dead Series
The Chief said, “Listen up, people. There was a time when the world said America will help them, and sometimes we stepped up and told dictators that we weren’t going to stand by and watch them violate the rights of other humans. Sometimes we didn’t, maybe because we had to pick our fights. I’m not saying it’s our job now that the country is gone, but this guy’s in our back yard. It’s only a matter of time before he sends troops to Guntersville.”
“Okay,” said Hampton, “but I’m curious about the space program part. There were people who didn’t understand that before the infection. My guess is that the space program has suffered a pretty significant setback, so how is this place supposed to help?”
Gentry said, “That’s right. You couldn’t possibly know what this place is. Do you have communications at all these other shelters? Mud Island, Fort Sumter, Ambassadors Island, Guntersville? Did I leave any out?”
“The oil rig,” said Colleen.
“And Columbus, Ohio,” said Kathy, “but I don’t think that one will be opened for a long time. It’s sort of a tomb.”
“Okay,” said Gentry, “do they have communications? We might not be able to send anyone back up there for a long time, probably not in our lifetime, but we need to get as much of the space hardware operating as soon as possible, and there’s a damn lot of it. People don’t ever think about how much we need that stuff so businesses can coordinate with each other. Governments, hospitals, and the internet need the space program. Am I the only one that misses online shopping? I’ve got my shopping cart full on Amazon!”
“This place can improve that?” asked the Chief.
“That and more,” said Karen. “Wait until Gentry shows you her office.”
Karen had to give her shelter roommate some credit for what she represented. There were people who wouldn’t get it, but this shelter could be part of bringing people back together. It might even become the central communications hub that lets labs coordinate on a cure for the infection.
“Gentry’s office?” asked Kathy.
“Yep. The tour isn’t over. Gentry has a whole gymnasium sized office full of sophisticated equipment that didn’t start working until today when the Soyuz showed up. We don’t have a clue why, and we haven’t even had a chance to test everything to see what else we can do in there.”
Everyone waited expectantly for Gentry to give the invitation, and even she was surprised by how protective she was about the mission control center. She gestured with a hand toward the door as if to say, “After you.”
They used the stairs to descend from the living levels to the control center, but along the way they stopped by the armory to drop off their weapons. Both Gentry and Karen were surprised when Kathy and the Chief walked along the rows lifting rifles and handguns. They ejected magazines, racked weapons, checked the actions, and inspected them for cleanliness. They were at home in the room the way MC had been.
“This place was where we lost two of our people,” said Gentry. “Manuel Calvo and Lieutenant Wanda Kearns. The four of us came into the shelter together. They fell in love with each other, and when MC decided he wanted to do more than spend the rest of his life underground, he figured out how to open a hidden door over here, and they left.”
She walked over and put a hand against the wall as if they were right on the other side of it.
“Maybe they made it,” said Colleen.
Even as she said it, she knew from their lowered eyes that they knew more.
“We opened it,” said Gentry. “If there’s a way to open it from the other side, they couldn’t find it to get back in.”
“We’ve seen that before,” said the Chief. “The entrances and escape doors of all of the shelters are tricky at best. How do you know they tried to get back in?”
The Chief saw Karen turn away, and Gentry sniffed and dabbed at the corners of her eyes before answering.
“We don’t know what happened to MC, but we saw Wanda. She was one of them.”
Gentry shook it off and said, “You’re welcome to arm yourselves. We never saw much reason to carry guns with us. Besides, there’s too much important equipment in mission control for me to trust carrying a gun in there.”
Karen said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you, Gentry. I’ve had your back in there.”
She pulled a semiautomatic pistol from her lower back.
Gentry managed a small grin and said, “That’s comforting.”
The Mud Island group wasn’t shy about the invitation to arm themselves. They gathered around the racks like kids in a candy store. They each found at least two handguns apiece and loaded up on extra magazines. Back pockets and cargo pockets were stuffed full, and ammunition packs were loaded with boxes of 9 mm ammo. They all went with the same size ammo to be able to carry as much as possible.
Gentry said, “You guys look like you’re getting ready for war.”
The Chief nodded, “We have at least two enemies out there, maybe more. Ready to show us your office?”
On the stairs Kathy and the Chief noticed the dark stains that had never completely faded after being washed repeatedly. They exchanged an understanding nod that it must have been bad when Gentry and Karen arrived at the shelter, but it would be a conversation for another time.
There was no way for them to prepare themselves for what they found beyond the door at the bottom of the stairs. Technology in the shelters had always been sporadic. It would work fine for a short time but then quit. There was even a time when they had tapped into a satellite and watched in real time as Cuban gunboats had entered their territory.
The room was immense, but it had to be big to accommodate the massive view screens at the front of the room. Everywhere there were monitors with data streams just waiting for someone to read them and pass the information along. Everything was working, and the prospect of working technology and the ability to communicate over long distances gave the Mud Island survivors hope.
“Imagine,” said Tom, “being able to talk with all of the shelters at one time.”
Hampton added, “We could have caravans of supplies and raw goods on the roads again and opening trade routes between cities.”
“I hate to put a damper on the good things you’re realizing,” said the Chief, “but Gentry can probably tell you what the first application of this technology has to be.”
Gentry nodded. Being a scientist, she had witnessed firsthand the way science had to bow to military application as a means to protect the merchandise because that’s what it was. It was a precious piece of merchandise that could be used as a weapon. Therefore, it had value that meant it could be bought and sold.
“Right now it’s working,” she said, “but it isn’t doing everything it’s supposed to. We still can’t establish communications with anyone.”
Kathy said, “That might be a good thing. The Sheriff’s people have had plenty of time to reach the reentry vehicle you described. If they heard you calling out over the radio in the Soyuz, then they’ll be searching for you next.”
“Do you think they’ve taken the ISS crew?” asked Karen. “They’ve been in space a long time. They should be under medical observation.”
“We’ve seen the Sheriff’s operation,” said the Chief. “He could give them adequate medical care, but I doubt he would. The last thing he needs is a real American hero winning over the military from him. Isn’t the ISS Commander still a commissioned officer?”
Gentry nodded again, and they could read the worry on her face. The ISS crew was in danger, and they needed to find them if they hadn’t been caught by the Sheriff already.
“Where do we start? I mean how can we help?”
The Chief gave Gentry and Karen his best reassuring smile and said, “If I know my friends as well as I think I do, we have help outside. Now all we have to do is make contact with them to see how prepared they are. Let’s start by doing a quick check of everything you have in here. If we can open a line of communication with someone in the Sheriff’s military support, maybe we can start a little mutiny.”
******
Sim thought about how he had hidden in cars, under cars, in dumpsters, hotel rooms, and an RV. It seemed like he was always hiding somewhere. More recently it was on the roof of a mall and then inside the service bay of an electronics store. The cemetery wasn’t so bad. It was creepy, but he had even been in worse cemeteries since hooking up with Cassandra and her friends. Still, nothing compared with the dark corridors of these shelters.
At the moment Sim was expressing in a low whisper his preference to be elsewhere.
“Right now I could be on an island in the middle of a lake just north of the Canadian border. I could be surrounded by friends with fishing poles instead of guns. I could be fishing for pike and bass and whatever else they fish for up there. But no, I’m crawling around in the dark in some kind of tomb, and there’s something out there that’s hunting for me. I’m the pike.”
“Right now you’re a bigmouth bass,” whispered Cassandra. “Don’t you know we’re surrounded?”
“That’s my point. Why are we surrounded? We’ve got guns. We’ve got knives. We’ve even got these fancy short stabbing poles you made us bring along. Why aren’t we fighting our way out of here?”
For the last two hours they hid under furniture in a room that seemed to be attracting more and more of the infected. They didn’t know what was drawing them into the room, but whatever it was, it was still doing it. The reason the two survivors were able to talk in a whisper was because of the racket being made by the infected. Something was making them moan and grown like nothing Cassandra or Sim had ever heard before.
Something bumped against Sim’s leg, and he involuntarily jumped. His head hit the underside of the table making a sound like a dull gong. He immediately crawled through the legs of infected that tripped and fell like dominoes. That was what saved him. The infected couldn’t tell each other from the living as long as he moved like them and didn’t make any noise.
Cassandra was close enough to see the pileup, and she recognized a new strategy. Sim was already using it without even trying. She only hoped he would catch on if he saw through the crowd what she was doing.
She wriggled out from under the desk and reached through the legs of an infected that was facing away from her. She grabbed its right ankle and pulled hard enough to make it tumble over to the right, and it took several others with it. Even though it was dark, she could see the infected around her turn in the direction of the disturbance. The groaning increased as they dragged their weak legs toward the infected that were flailing around on the floor. Like magic they formed a dogpile a few feet from her. She laid flat out and didn’t move, and the infected that tripped over her and fell began their slow crawl toward the commotion.
Sim was only about six feet away, and he had adopted a similar pose on the floor. He kept his head turned toward Cassandra and was amazed at the calm way she kept her eyes on him. Her mouth was moving, though, and he focused on what she was telling him.
Cassandra knew she had to get Sim away from the room and moving again. The flow of infected from other rooms into theirs was slowly decreasing, and as they came in they were drawn to the ruckus where they were piling up. Without words, she shaped her lips and said, “Go. Move now.”
Sim understood, and he also understood she didn’t mean to get up and run. Using just his legs, he pushed himself along the floor. The infected crawled by in front of him, but even when they seemed to groan right into his ear, he kept his head flat to the floor and pushed with his knees and feet. He felt his ear fill with something warm and wet and almost panicked at the thought that one of them had just drooled into his ear. Even though Cassandra saw the revulsion and fear in his face, he managed to stay down. When his shoulder bumped into the wall at the corner of the door, he finally felt like he might make it.
There was a tug on both of his legs near his feet, and his eyes went wide when he saw one was an infected dead, and it was poised to bite. He waited for the sharp pain that would follow and wanted to scream, but the tug on his other foot was Cassandra using him for leverage. She pulled hard to give herself the force she needed, and her blade sliced neatly through the skull of the infected dead with the open mouth.
Now it was time to go.
With no words needed, they both sprang to their feet and charged forward. There were only a few of the infected ahead of them, and Sim was grateful that Cassandra had gotten the lead because his own legs felt numb. He forced himself to follow her and was careful not to collide with her back when she stopped to eliminate any that got in their way. Even though it was almost pitch dark in the narrow corridor, she kept them moving toward a light up ahead.
There were two last huddles of the dead in the room where the lights were on, and they were focusing their attention on bloodstained and slime smeared pieces of furniture about the size of recliners. One of the recliners was in the middle of the room covered by the infected that were biting at the tough material. One recliner was in a corner, and it was occupied by six more of the biting and snapping dead. Both of the recliners moved on their own.
Cassandra was like something from a movie script. The moves she made as she unsheathed her new machete were practiced and accurate. Sim would have been happy to watch, but he didn’t have time to be a spectator, and neither did the person inside the spacesuit who was unable to get free from the weight of so many infected.
He drew his own machete and buried it deeper than he had meant to into the top of a dirty mop of hair, but he remembered what Cassandra had told him. If your blade gets stuck in a head, use the machete to move the infected before you try to free the blade. He gripped it with both hands and pulled the heavy infected away from the corner. In the open he was able to plant his foot on the back of the infected and yank the machete away. He immediately swung a backhand at the second one and made it more of a glancing blow on purpose. His target fell away, not eliminated but out of the way for now.
By the time Sim finished the remaining four infected and turned to the one he had knocked away, Cassandra was standing over it. She wiped her blade across it and put it away. They both turned their attention to the astronauts who were still down. There was no time to check them for injuries. There was only enough time to get them on their feet and to move as a group away from the scene that was likely to become crowded again.
Another level had proven often enough to be the only way to escape. Once inside stairwells they always seemed to have two options. Up or down, sometimes they were both possible. Cassandra was afraid to go up because there was always the chance of running into a search party. Going down seemed to mean going into unsafe country belonging to the dead. The third option was to at least take a few minutes to recover, and that’s what they decided to do.
Some of the stairwells were labeled with the signs that said shelter and level numbers on them, so they picked the first one they came to. It was a bad choice because there were infected dead on the landing.
“I’m not in the mood for this,” yelled Cassandra.
She leaned her astronaut against the frame of the door and pushed the whole crowd of reaching arms and faces backward until some tumbled down the stairs, and some went over the railing. She rammed the remaining two and sent them spinning to the floor. Then she grabbed the closer one by the back of the collar with one hand and the belt by the other. She lifted it in the air and tossed it over the railing like a sack of potatoes. Without watching her handiwork, she did the same thing to the second one.
The astronauts watched from inside their helmets as they were rescued, and as they were helped to sit in their bulky suits, they wondered about the two people who had saved them. “Where did they come from? Who are they, and why do they seem to almost have super strength?”
The dim light of the stairwell came from small lights embedded behind steel wires. They were typical military issue and impossible to break. They shone down on the four people and gave enough light for the astronauts to see the smiling faces of the man and woman who rescued them. As for their own faces, they had streaks of sweat running into their eyes, and the dark circles and puffy eyelids made them look like two fish that had jumped out of their aquarium.
Cassandra worked at the collar of the helmet over Natalia’s head and finally got it to rotate. Sim was doing the same for Henry, but they were interrupted by the smell in the stairwell as it hit Natalia in the face. She had already lost her stomach once after the reentry, so there wasn’t much else to lose, but the sour bile had to come out. Years of smelling the stench of decay had desensitized Cassandra and Sim, but this was something entirely new to the astronauts. Cassandra held her head for her as spasms racked Natalia. She used her other hand to reach inside a cargo pocket, and she produced a small pony bottle of water.
A few sips seemed to help, and as the spasms passed Henry said it was okay to take off his helmet.
“Are you sure, love?” asked Cassandra. “Are you ready for what it smells like in here?”
Henry gave her a weak grin.
“I could really use a swallow of that water.”
“Okay, but let’s leak a little of this fragrant air into the helmet first. If you start to do what she did, I’ll pull the helmet off the rest of the way, and we’ll get this over with.”
Cassandra took over for Sim after transferring Natalia’s head to Sim’s hands. He held her cradled against him and reassured her that they were safe now. He didn’t bother to explain just how much trouble they were in. That could wait until they knew if the astronauts had any bite wounds that had gone through their suits.
Cassandra talked Henry through opening the helmet locking ring, and Henry was sure he was prepared, but he had been breathing recycled air for years, and the stench was a shock to his system.
