Ever Onward (4 page)

Lieutenant Waterson was having one
hell of a time fighting down the panic. Outwardly calm, his stomach
kept wanting to throw up. Twenty minutes into the flight he left
the co-pilot’s seat, nodded to Squadron Leader Hymus, and went back
into the belly of the B-17.

The boxes were unpacked now, and the
Chemical Warfare people were hard at work at whatever the hell it
was they do. Lights were flashing and scopes were whirling, but
these all dimmed by comparison to the red rage on Colonel Carter’s
face. He was literally punching a portable console, and getting
anything but satisfying results.

Waterson walked over to Major Chino
Fetti, an old friend and one of the colonel’s aids. Fetti saw him
and leaned forward, their faceplates almost touching. Waterson saw
sweat beading the other man’s face. The skin-tone looked
gray.

“It looks
bad
, Sam. The old
man’s about to bust a gut!”

“How bad?” Waterson didn’t miss the
catch in his voice.

“No answer at
any
base in the
south-west,” Fetti replied nervously. “None of them! What’s more,
it’s been confirmed now. Chemicals were used! Somewhere in southern
Cal. Looks like we’ve been caught with our fucking pants
down!”

Waterson’s mind seemed to have slipped
into neutral. The words didn’t quite register. “We
what?”

Fetti’s voice grated on his ears.
“Somebody’s shoved a grenade full of fresh new
bio-germs
up
our ass and pulled the fucking pin!” His suited hand stabbed at on
of the B-17’s round windows. “There dying by the
millions
out there! L.A.’s out! So is Frisco! The old man’s trying to raise
Miramar, but getting
jack shit
!”

Years of training suddenly kicked in.
Waterson’s befuddled mind conjured up a picture of the White House.
“What about
Washington
?”

Fetti’s helmet nodded. “Airforce One
is already in the air.”

Waterson sighed with relief. Fetti,
however, had more ‘jolly news’ to impart. “It gets worse, Sam.
Everything west of the Continental Divide
is gone
! Colorado
Springs was on line, but then we just lost contact. Now Omaha’s
out!” He scrubbed at his helmet as though his gloved hand could
reach his hair. “Whatever the fuck this is, its moving east a hell
of a lot faster than
we
are!”

Just then the plain banked sharply to
the right and Waterson bumped into Fetti. Both of them went down.
Several of the Germ Warfare boys also fell. Equipment tipped and
shattered. Waterson scrambled to his feet. Fetti didn’t. Waterson
staggered towards the cockpit. He didn’t notice that the others
still lay where they had fallen, or that Colonel Carter now sat
slumped over his blinking console.

What he found in the cockpit did
little to ease his troubled mind. Squadron Leader Ben Hymus sat
half in, half out of the pilot’s seat, his gloved hands still on
the controls as the plane began to spiral downward. Leaping into
the co-pilot’s seat, Waterson righted the plane, got it back on
course and flipped the Auto Pilot switch. Then he turned to check
on Hymus. What he saw filled him with terror. Where the body of his
friend had been just moments before there now remained only a
sagging Contamination suit. Through the faceplate Waterson saw what
looked like a crumbling wasps nest.

Someone screamed. A long,
piercing wail that chilled him to the bone. A part of his mind knew
it had come from himself, another part kept right on screaming. For
an undetermined length of time Lieutenant Sam Waterson just sat
there, silently screaming into the wild blue
yonder.

Jocco walked out of the Officer’s Mess
and watched as the heavy B-17 came around for its final approach.
China Lake had a lot of runways, the only problem was that precious
few of them were clear. Besides various planes, most runways had an
assortment of trucks, jeeps and cargo loaders scattered about like
giant Fisher Price toys after an especially hard day in the
sandbox.

Jocco’s cruel smile creased his
handsome face. Whoever was flying that baby was going to have to
really shuck and jive to make it down in one piece. Jocco didn’t
much care one way or the other.

Lieutenant Walter J. Pinkton of
Personnel however, seemed to care one hell of a lot. Walter J. sat
in his jeep, his hands white on the steering wheel, his eyes glued
on the plane, a half-remembered prayer on his pale lips.

Seconds after the B-17’s wheels
touched down, smoke trailed out behind as the brakes were applied.
The massive bird slowed, swerved to the left, straightened, and
clipped the top of a cargo loader with its right wing. Metal
screamed. Fuel began to spill out. The plane spun thirty degrees to
the right, passed over a jeep, plowed through two parked trucks and
proceeded on, at least two of the three vehicles now wedged under
the fuselage. More metal screamed. Sparks flew. The trail of
aviation fuel pouring out the right wing caught fire. Flames raced
alongside like a hungry beast. The front wheel missed a parked
truck but not the jeep just behind it. The tire blew, dropping the
nose down on the runway. More screams. More sparks. Then the entire
right wing exploded. The force of the blast shook the B-17 like a
rag doll in a dog’s mouth. In what seemed slow motion, the remains
slid directly towards the Officer’s Mess.

Pinkton, his eyes wide, sat in his
idling jeep as a wet stain spread rapidly over his crotch. A small
part of his brain told him to react, to do something! The larger
part, the part that had been forced to cope with a morning filled
with horror upon horror, wanted only to curl up and die --- like
the hundreds of brittle, gray bodies that reminded him of the pages
of a burnt bible.

Jocco, however, was a creature cut
from a different cloth. Years of fighting and scrounging on the
sharp, knife-edge of existence, had honed his senses. Reacting with
a predator’s swiftness, he leapt into Pinkton’s jeep, shoved his
.45 in the startled man’s ear and stepped down hard on the
accelerator.

“Clutch!
”, Jocco
screamed.

Walter J. may not have been as
street-wise as his saintly mother might have liked, but neither was
he as stupid as his unsaintly father had thought. He popped the
clutch and the jeep peeled away, just as the nose of the B-17
slammed into the Officer’s Mess. The plane demolished the right
side of the building, continued lazily on its way, finally coming
to rest alongside an empty hanger.

“Stop!”, Jocco said,
smiling.

Brakes squealed. Jocco lowered the .45
and looked back at the demolished building. Private George Sampson,
still holding his bottle of Scotch, staggered out onto the runway,
seemingly oblivious to the fact that a wall had just been
removed.

“Hey, man! What’s going
down?”

Just then the eject-bomb on the B-17
blew the cockpit cover sky high. The pilot, a very shaken
Lieutenant Waterson, still wearing his plague suit, scrambled out.
Jocco motioned for Pinkton to drive over.

“Who
ARE
you?”, Pinkton asked
the handsome soldier sitting beside him. “And where is General
Bremen? He told me to meet him here.” Walter’s voice was a strange
mixture of indignant-whine.

The .45 and the smile were back. “I’m
God’s little helper. As for the General, he’s like all the others
--- gone. Now
move it
, asshole, we’ve got to pick these two
boys up before the rest of that plane blows!”

Lieutenant Walter J. Pinkton’s momma
had always told him to listen to ‘God’s little helpers’ ---
especially if they whispered in your year while holding a Colt
.45.

Moments later, with both Lieutenant
Waterson and Private Sampson bundled in the back, the jeep tore
down the runway. They’d gotten about two thousand yards when the
remaining tanks on the B-17 exploded. The blast rocked the speeding
jeep.

“Sheee-it!”, Sampson yelled. Grinning
from ear to ear, he passed the bottle around. After taking a long
pull, Lieutenant Waterson looked at Jocco. “What the Christ
happened here?!”

Jocco’s broad smile flashed. “Welcome
to the end of the world, soldier. Ain’t life a bitch?”

Chapter 5
: A SAD AWAKENING

High Peaks Region

New York. June 23

(2 days after C.D. let
loose)

Josh Williams lay in his mummy bag
looking up towards Haystack’s rounded, rocky summit. Still almost a
thousand feet above him, all he saw was a blanket of wet, white
mist. He hoped the sun would burn it away by the time they reached
it.

Unzipping his sleeping bag, he glanced
at the other two members of the tiny party. His seventeen year old
son, Jessie, was curled up in a ball, his tousled blond head
sticking out of the down-filled bag.

Bob’s bag, still in the shadows,
appeared rumpled and empty. Frowning, Josh looked around for his
brother-in-law. It was not like Bob to rise early, especially after
lugging a heavy pack up four thousand feet.

Answering the call of the wild? No.
The toilet paper was still on the branch. A walk? Maybe catch the
sunrise? Josh swore. One of the first rules about hiking the High
Peaks was never go anywhere alone. Bob could be a real asshole at
times, but he wasn’t stupid. As Josh pulled on his boots, a shiver
of fear coursed up his spine. His son’s voice made him
jump.

“Hey, Dad. What’s up?”

“Probably nothing, Jess, but Uncle
Bob’s gone off somewhere.” He then called out loudly. The only
reply came from a chattering squirrel.

While Jessie scrambled into his
clothes, Josh walked over to his brother-in-law’s bag. Now that the
light was better, he could see that there was something in there.
Too small to be Bob. A raccoon? He poked it with his walking stick
and heard a faint crunching sound. Nothing moved. Whatever it was,
it was dead. Pulling back the cover, Josh saw what looked like a
squashed wasps nest spilling out of Bob’s red longjohns.

Father and son stood in the early
morning light looking down at the remains of Robert Fuller. Jessie
turned to his father. “It’s a joke, right? Uncle Bob’s idea of a
joke?” The hopeful tone of his young voice was overlaid with
fear.

“I hope so, son, but I don’t find it
very funny.” They both called out, then began searching around the
camp, yet all the while Robert Fuller lay where they had found him.
Twenty minutes later, Jessie went back to his uncle’s bag and
stirred the remains with a stick. What he saw caused his to jump
back screaming. Shaking like a leaf in the wind, Jessie began to
cry. Josh held him tightly, saw what had so startled his son and
choked back tears of his own.

By the time they were packed, the sun
had indeed burnt off the mist surrounding Haystack, yet neither
father nor son had any interest now in climbing. One of their group
was dead. Not only dead, but gone as well! All that remained of
Uncle Bob was his deflated thermal underwear and dental bridge
Jessie had found in crumpled gray ashes.

Jessie moved about like a robot long
overdue for a tune-up, his movement stiffs, his expression blank.
The boy was in shock. His father wasn’t a hell of a lot
better.

While Jessie silently packed their
gear, Josh disposed of the body by rolling the remains in the
sleeping bag and placing several large rocks on top. Jessie joined
his father at the make-shift grave. As he looked away, he spied
something glittering in the morning light. A gold band. Robert
Fuller’s wedding ring. Picking it up, Jessie handed it to his
father.

“Aunt Doris will want this.” The boy’s
voice was distant and dream-like.

Josh handed slipped the ring in his
pocket, then hugged his son. Several minutes later they were on the
long trail back down to the lodge.

John’s Brook Lodge was well over a
hundred years old. Over the decades it had been added to and
refurbished many times, but for the most part it still looked like
what it was, a rambling old log cabin beside a gurgling stream,
nestled between the High Peaks, some three and a half miles from
the nearest road.

When Josh and his son reached it, the
sun was a little past noon. The trek down had been a silent one.
Josh had tried to get Jessie to open up, but the boy had only
retreated further into himself. Josh decided not to press him for
now, believing that time would work its slow but sure healing
process. Once they were home, things would somehow sort themselves
out. Heart attacks happened. People died.

Neither of them wanted to discuss the
fact that Uncle Bob’s body had somehow turned to brittle, gray
ashes.

Lost in his own thoughts, Josh paid
little heed to the fact that they hadn’t met any other hikers on
the trail. When no-one answered his call as he entered the lodge,
however, his guts did another flip flop. Where was the pretty young
girl who was usually baking bread? Where was the grizzled old coot
who always greeted them from his rocking chair on the front porch?
Where the hell were the other hikers who had either spent the night
or stopped in for tea or warm lemonade before going on to the
various trails?

Josh, his head suddenly pounding, went
into the back room. Row upon row of rough but sturdy bunkbeds
greeted him. Most were still made, the top of a faded sheet folded
neatly over a warm blanket. Some, however, were occupied. Several
packs leaned against walls. Clothes and raingear hung from pegs.
Pairs of boots sat patiently waiting for their owners to
awake.