Fulcrum: V Plague Book 12 (17 page)

We entered the outskirts of Kingman, Arizona about an hour
later, and though I’d never particularly cared for the town, I was very happy
to see it.  We’d driven about 60 miles, with a quick stop to dump the two
dead females, and the truck had consumed nearly all of the fuel in its
tank.  With the heavily modified engine and monster tires, I wasn’t
surprised.

“Are we getting gas, or changing vehicles?”  Rachel
asked as I slowed for a curve in the highway.

“Changing will be a problem, unless we find something with
the keys in it,” I said, stopping myself from mentioning Long.

“So is gassing this thing up, unless you’ve got a plan.”

I shook my head and looked in the rearview mirror at
Tiffany.

“What about you, MacGyver?  Any ideas how we can get
fuel out of an underground tank without a pump?”

“Who’s MacGyver?”  She asked.

I paused for a beat, looked at Rachel, then shook my head.

“Never mind,” I said with a sigh.  “Before your time.”

“Well, whoever she was, I don’t have any bright ideas,”
Tiffany said.

“He.”

“He?  He who?”

“MacGyver was a… aw, Christ.  Forget it, already. 
You’re making me feel old.”

There was quiet for a long beat, then Tiffany began
giggling.  Rachel glanced at her and after a moment started laughing,
too.  Shaking my head and grumbling, I ignored them and drove, keeping my
speed low.

Kingman is a small city that straddles Interstate 40 in
northwestern Arizona.  There is a ton of traffic that passes through,
heading to and from California.  Well, there used to be, but anyway, I
knew there were numerous large truck stops in town and felt they were our best
chance to find a different vehicle.  Or to refuel. 

“How far to the air base?”  Rachel asked when the
merriment died down.

“About 200 miles to Phoenix,” I said, hoping I remembered
correctly. 

“Can this thing make it on a single tank, before we hassle
with trying to fill it up?”

“Don’t think so.  We just used almost half a tank to go
60 miles.”

I slowed when I saw an abandoned wreck on the road ahead. 
So far, I hadn’t seen any infected.  We’d passed several small
neighborhoods with cheap, squat, block homes and a few businesses that looked
like they’d been hanging on by a thread.  They were all devoid of
life.  A steady wind blew dust and tumbleweeds down the empty streets.

I accelerated gently after steering around an overturned
school bus.  The pavement skirted another neighborhood to our left,
nothing but endless desert to our right.  Towering dust devils dotted the
horizon.

“This is really creepy,” Tiffany said in a quiet voice,
pulling Dog close as she looked around.

I had to agree with her.  But then, I’d gotten used to
the ghost towns that had been created after the attacks.  They no longer
made the hair on my arms stand up.  Much.

“No infected,” Rachel said after another half a mile.

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” I said.

A minute later we topped a small rise and got a good view of
the small valley where Kingman nestled between two rugged mountain
ranges.  A mile ahead were the twin ribbons of asphalt that were
I-40.  Beyond, the town stretched away to the southeast.  From our
vantage point, it looked perfectly normal.  If only…

At the bottom of the gentle hill we were driving down was a
massive truck stop.  An asphalt parking lot covered several acres of
desert, and I was surprised to see that it was packed with both 18 wheelers and
passenger vehicles.  With a quarter of a mile remaining, I pulled to a
stop.

“What are you doing?”  Rachel asked.

“Just want to watch for a bit.  See if there’s anyone
or anything moving.”

She nodded, staring through the windshield at the mass of
vehicles.  There had to be at least a hundred trucks, and three or four
times that many cars and pickups. 

“It was like that when we came through,” Tiffany said from
the backseat.

Her comment reminded me of the conversation I’d had with
Caleb.  They’d left Albuquerque, trying to get home to California, but the
Interstate was shut down.  That’s how they’d wound up near Vegas. 
Now I knew why there were so many vehicles that had congregated at this one
location, but that didn’t tell me if there was a whole bunch of infected, or
survivors, waiting for us at the bottom of the hill.

After five minutes, I hadn’t seen a single indication of
life.  No movement other than a tall, skinny dust devil that whirled
across the sand and into the parking lot before losing its energy and
disappearing.  Taking my foot off the brake, I let gravity do the work and
roll us down the hill. 

“Stay sharp,” I said to the girls.  “A maze like that
is prime territory for infected.”

Neither of them said anything in return, but I could tell
their attention was glued to the parking lot ahead.  Reaching an entrance,
I stopped again and sat for a few more minutes.  Even at idle, the truck
was loud as hell, and I was counting on it drawing out any infected that were
in the area.  When none showed, I pulled in and idled around the perimeter
of the paved lot.

It was apparent that people had been living in their
vehicles.  There were also a large number of tents crowded into the empty
spaces between parked cars.  Many were tied to bumpers, which was probably
the only reason they’d survived the wind and were still in place.  But
even the ones that had lasted were damaged and tattered from nature’s constant
assault.

Or the assault of females that must have raged through the
stranded people.  There were a lot of blood stains on the tent fabric, the
cars’ sheet metal, and in numerous cases the inside of vehicle windows. 
There were a lot of bodies, many of them savagely dismembered.  And the
ripe smell of decomposition was heavy in the air, even with the stiff, desert
breeze.

Just like in the
Last Stop
diner, the scene was made
even more surreal by the complete absence of flies.  I had convinced
myself they hadn’t been present in the diner because they couldn’t get inside,
but there was nothing here to stop them.  Glancing skyward, I looked for
vultures.  None to be seen.  That alone was disturbing, even more so
since there was a veritable banquet just waiting for them.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Rachel said as she stared at a
pile of corpses huddled against the side of a sedan.

“What do you mean?”  I asked.

“The state of decomposition.  If these people were
killed fairly soon after the attack, months ago, the bodies should be much
farther gone.”

“How much farther?”

“A lot, especially considering we just went through a
summer.  It’s very hot and dry here.  Right?”

“Yep,” I said.

“So, maybe that explains it, but it feels… I don’t
know.  Off.”

“You know what else is wrong?”  I asked.

Rachel shook her head after thinking about my question for
several seconds.

“No scavengers.  No insects.  They should be
carpeted with flies.  Vultures and crows should have been at them.  Rats. 
This is a feast for all of them.  Coyotes, too, for that matter.”

“But there’s coyotes around.  We heard them!” 
Tiffany protested.

“We did,” I said, nodding.  “And I don’t get it. 
They’ll eat anything.  Don’t understand why they’d pass this up.”

“The virus,” Rachel said.  “Maybe the bodies are contaminated,
and the coyotes can smell it?  The same way Dog reacts to an infected.”

“Maybe,” I said, unconvinced.  “But where are the
insects?  Maybe that’s what feels off.  The hot and dry environment
slowed decomposition, and there weren’t any scavengers feeding on the
corpses.  It is off.”

We fell silent at that point, each of us lost in our own
thoughts.  I circled the lot once, at idle.  There was still nothing
that caused me any concern.  Well, undue concern.  The whole damn
scene was a gut twisting reminder of what had happened to the world. 
Pulling to a stop, I took a final look around, then shut off the rumbling
engine.

The quiet was startling at first after over an hour of the
constant barrage of harsh noise.  Now we were left with the moaning wind
and the hiss of sand being pushed across the asphalt.  Several tents were
partially torn loose and flapped in the breeze, their ends occasionally
snapping hard enough to sound vaguely like gunfire.

“OK,” I said.  “We’re all getting out, and we’re
staying close together.  People were living in their cars, and that
probably means a lot of them will have the keys inside.  I hope.  You
two keep watch on our flanks and rear.  I’m going to look for anything
that will start after sitting in the heat all summer, and hopefully it’ll have
enough gas to get us to Phoenix.”

Rachel nodded and performed a quick check of her rifle to
make sure it was ready to go.  After a moment, Tiffany did the same
thing.  I remembered that she was dangerously low on ammo, and handed her one
of my full magazines.  Then I rethought things and told her to swap rifles
with me.

“Why?”  She asked.

Despite questioning my request, she was already working the
sling over her head.

“You’re on watch.  If you need to fire, I’d rather you
have a weapon with a suppressor so we don’t alert the entire town to our
presence.  I’ll take yours.  I’m going to be busy checking cars, so
if there’s more infected than you two can handle, it won’t matter much if I
fire an unsuppressed rifle.”

She nodded as we traded weapons.  Another slow look
around and I popped the driver’s door open.  Damn, it was a long way down
without a ladder.  Twisting around, I swung my feet out into space and,
tightly gripping the seat harness, lowered myself until I could drop without
worrying about injuring an ankle.

Immediately, I held up a clenched fist, telling Rachel to
stay in place as I scanned a full 360 degrees with the rifle.  Still quiet
as a tomb.  I spun another slow circle, then looked up.  I expected
to see Rachel staring down at me, but movement in the bed of the truck caught
my eye.  Stepping back, I could see both girls standing back to back,
keeping watch.  Dog hung his head over the side, panting as he watched me.

OK, so I don’t have the market cornered when it comes to
good ideas.  With the height of the monster truck they had a commanding
view of our surroundings, with the added advantage of it not being easy for
even a female to reach them.  I decided to leave them where they were, but
I wanted Dog’s nose and ears with me.

There was no easy way to do this, so I had Rachel lower the
tailgate as I came to stand below it.  Dog walked to the edge and looked
down, then whined and stepped back.  I called him, but he wasn’t
stupid.  It was a long way to the hard pavement below.  But, finally,
between my coaxing and some urging from Rachel, we got him to make the leap.

I caught him in my arms and can’t really say how I managed
to stay on my feet.  He weighs more than a hundred pounds and hit me
solidly in the chest.  I staggered back several steps, caught my balance
and squatted to put him on his feet.  He looked at me for a beat, then
trotted to the truck’s rear tire and lifted his leg.

“You would have left me down here by myself if you didn’t
need to take a piss,” I said to him when he was finished. 

He snorted, ignored me, and raised his nose to test the
wind.  It was coming from the west, out of the open desert, and he didn’t
detect anything that caused him to growl.  That was good, but the town was
downwind from our location and could be full of infected that he couldn’t
smell.

Nearly an hour later we pulled out of the parking lot in our
newly acquired vehicle.  It was a Chevy Tahoe, and Dog was taking full
advantage of the roomy back seat.  Stretched out on his back, he had his
head resting in Tiffany’s lap while she gently rubbed his belly. 

It had taken some effort to find the SUV.  The first
challenge had been to locate a vehicle that didn’t have a corpse inside, or the
interior wasn’t washed in blood.  Then I had to find one with keys in the
ignition.  The alternative was to start searching the dead, but I’m not
too keen on sticking my hands in the pockets of a body that has been rotting
for a few weeks.

Fortunately, I found the Tahoe without too much
difficulty.  To my great surprise, the engine had turned over and started
easily.  But the gas gauge didn’t deliver the same good news.  The
needle was below the big, red E, and a chime warning of low fuel began sounding
as soon as I started the vehicle.

Putting Dog inside, I cut away a couple of tents that were
secured to the bumpers, then climbed behind the wheel.  There were a lot
of corpses in the area, and I didn’t have any option other than to drive over
them.  I wasn’t happy about it, but I got it done and drove to park next
to the monster truck. 

Shutting off the engine, I told Rachel and Tiffany to stay
put while Dog and I went in search of a hose.  The best option I had was
to siphon gas out of the other vehicles to fill the Tahoe, and I planned to
start by emptying the truck’s tank into my new ride.

It took longer to find a hose than it had to procure the
SUV, but I finally located one.  I started by draining the truck, then
drove from vehicle to vehicle to continue the fueling.  It was a slow process
as the Tahoe’s tank was higher than most of the other vehicles to which I could
get close enough to siphon.

This meant I had to stop what I was doing and go find
something that could be put on the ground that I could drain gas into. 
Finally, I hit the jackpot when I came across a pickup with a trailer that held
four ATVs.  Four, red plastic gas cans were strapped down in its bed.

Using them, I was able to work much faster and soon had put
as much gas into the Tahoe as it would take.  Filling the cans, I stacked
them on the carpeted floor behind the rear seat and drove back to the monster
truck.  Parking beneath the open tailgate, I got on the roof and helped
Rachel and Tiffany climb down.

The Tahoe was running, but it sounded like shit. 
Modern gasoline, with all of the environmentally mandated additives, doesn’t
store well.  It will quickly start losing its octane, which is simply the
measure of how much compression a fuel can withstand before igniting.  The
higher the octane rating, the less likely the fuel is going to pre-ignite at
higher pressures and damage an engine. That’s why performance cars with higher
compression engines require higher octane fuel.

So, as the fuel we were burning had sat for several months,
it had degraded and was igniting much too early for the Tahoe’s engine. 
This throws off the delicate timing balance of when valves open and close, and
will destroy the engine.  Hopefully that wouldn’t happen before we got
where we were going.  

Now, we were on I-40, heading east, the engine making a
horrible pinging sound as it labored with the old fuel.  It wouldn’t be
long before we’d reach the turnoff for the highway that headed down to
Phoenix.  There were only a few small towns to go through, and I was
slightly optimistic that we were finally going to start making good time.

The day had warmed up, the sun coming through the windows
almost hot on my skin.  Rachel was apparently feeling the heat, too. 
She adjusted the air conditioning and leaned back in the leather seat.

“Maybe we should just keep going in this,” she said.

“Not if we can get a Humvee.  Or better,” I said.

“What’s wrong with this?  Besides the noise from the
engine?” 

“It’s made for soccer moms.  That’s what’s wrong with
it,” I said.  “The windows are regular glass and the sheet metal wouldn’t
even stop a pellet rifle.  We don’t know what’s ahead.  And it may
decide to die on us at a really inconvenient time.  Besides, if we can get
onto the air base, there're a few other things we lost that I’d like to
replace.”

Rachel thought about what I said.

“And what if we get another Hummer and a Russian plane spots
us?  Didn’t you say they probably attacked the dam because it was military
vehicles that were moving?”

I thought about that for a moment.  It’s always
annoying when someone is right, and they’re right because they’re using your
logic against you.

“We’ll see what we find when we get there,” I finally
conceded.

“What about an octane booster?”  Tiffany suddenly asked
from the back seat.  “Pretty much any auto parts store, or even a truck
stop, should have some bottles of it.”

I looked at her in the mirror and shook my head.

“What?”

“You’re just not what I remember teenaged girls being,” I
said with a smile.

“I’m 20,” she said, sounding slightly offended.  “And
besides, why the hell wouldn’t I know this stuff?”

I wasn’t about to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. 
She glared at me for a few seconds before her face split open into a big smile.

“I’m just screwing with you,” she said.  “Caleb’s into
cars, big time.  He’s got this Honda he built into a street racer and it
takes really high octane fuel or it won’t run.  He can either buy racing
gas for ten bucks a gallon, or regular gas and throw in some bottles of octane
booster.  It’s not perfect, but it will work if you don’t have a lot of
money.”

I ignored the smile on Rachel’s face and kept my mouth
shut.  Hitting the brakes, I turned hard for an off-ramp.  There was
another truck stop at the exit, and I was willing to try Tiffany’s suggestion.

The scene was mostly identical to where we’d stopped and
changed to the Tahoe.  A parking lot full of vehicles that had been lived
in.  And died in.  There still weren’t any infected, and within a few
minutes I’d found a whole case of octane booster and added a couple of bottles
to the tank.  Tossing the rest into the cargo area, I got us back on the
freeway.  Within a few miles, the pinging from the engine stopped.

I looked at Tiffany in the mirror and she smiled at me, then
rested her head on the seatback.  Soon, Dog was snoring like a wood
chipper.  When I looked around, Tiffany was sound asleep with her hand
still on his belly.  I started to say something to Rachel, remaining
silent when I saw that her head was tilted to the side, eyes closed and lips
parted as she dozed.

Other than occasional drifts of sand, the freeway was
clear.  I pushed our speed close to 100, not comfortable going any faster
in a high-profile vehicle.  We had quickly left Kingman behind, and I
hadn’t seen any sign of infected or survivors.

The wind picked up as I drove, blowing hard enough to
occasionally shove the Tahoe around.  It also brought dust with it,
reducing visibility, but not by enough to cause a problem.  Besides, I’d
lived in Arizona for a lot of years and was used to driving in dust storms.

Our turn came quicker than I remembered, but then I’d never
driven this route at nearly 100 miles an hour.  Slowing to make the
transition, I pushed our speed back up as soon as we were on the new
highway.  The road was every bit as rough as I remembered, but the softly
sprung SUV made for a comfortable ride.

The miles, and a few towns, rolled by quickly.  I
slowed for each outpost of civilization, not wanting to be blasting through at
a high rate of speed and have an infected suddenly stumble into my path. 
But as we progressed, and drew closer to the Phoenix metropolitan area, I had
yet to see a single infected.  I hoped it would be the same in the city.

The Phoenix area, prior to the attacks, was home to about
five million people.  Even with the Russians using their sound control to
attract and direct the infected, I’d learned from experience that it wasn’t
effective on all of them.  Too many cities that had supposedly been
emptied still had large contingents, just waiting for a warm meal. 

I knew where Luke Air Force Base was, and at one time it had
been well removed from any population.  But Phoenix and its surrounding cities
had experienced explosive growth over the past couple of decades.  Now,
Luke was more of a suburban air base than one out in the desert.  That
meant a higher probability that we’d encounter infected as we approached. 
Finally reaching the first, far-flung edge of town, I dropped our speed to
navigate around abandoned vehicles and the occasional downed utility
pole. 

Phoenix sits in a massive valley, surrounded by desert
mountains, and we were coming into the extreme northwest corner.  The
thought went through my head that I should go to my house.  Years ago,
Katie had claimed a shelf in my large gun safe, filling it with things like our
passports, marriage license and stacks upon stacks of photos.  I knew our
house had burned, but that safe had cost me an arm and a leg and was rated as
fireproof for up to three hours.  Those pictures were probably still in
it, undamaged, and I knew there were a lot of Katie.

“You OK?”

Rachel’s voice startled me.  The last time I’d checked
on her, she’d been sound asleep.  I hadn’t realized she’d woken up.

“Fine,” I said.  “Just thinking about Katie.”

She reached over and gently took my hand.

“What were you thinking?”

I took a deep breath, trying to get my emotions under
control.

“Wish I could go by my house and find a photo of her,” I
finally said.

“Then let’s do that,” Rachel replied immediately.

“No time,” I said.  “It’s all the way on the far side
of the city.  Would probably take at least 90 minutes to get there, if
there were no problems on the way, then we’d have to backtrack the same
amount.”

She was quiet for a few moments, and I became aware that she
was intently watching me.

“What?”

“You’ll probably never have another opportunity,” she said.

I nodded.  She was right.  But the round trip drive
and time spent while we were there would easily add four hours to our
trip.  Possibly much more if we ran into infected or survivors.  That
was time the pilot didn’t have.  His life was worth more than a photo of
my dead wife.

“Maybe someday,” I said, making my decision.  “Right
now, the pilot is our priority.”

Rachel squeezed my hand and didn’t say anything else. 
She continued to surprise me as I kept waiting for her to press the issue and
want to have a discussion about what the future might or might not hold for
us.  I was thankful she hadn’t done that because I didn’t have any answers
for her.  There wasn’t much I could think about until after I’d stared
into Barinov’s eyes and watched the life depart his body.  Slowly and
painfully.

I headed deeper into the city, then turned south on one of
the giant freeways that looped around the metro area.  We were now moving
no more than 30 miles an hour, driving a slalom through the wrecked and burned
out cars that had been left behind.  More often than not, I had to drive
in the median to pass.

Some time later, I slowed even more for the exit to Luke Air
Force Base.  It was to our right, but the sight out of the left side
windows drew my attention.  The giant enclosed stadium where the Arizona
Cardinals football team had played.  It had burned, or partially burned,
and the roof and most of one of the sides had collapsed inwards onto the field.

In the acres of parking lots that surrounded it, thousands
of cars baked in the midday sun.  There were half a dozen large trucks
with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) painted on the sides, a
veritable forest of tents surrounding them.  Stepping on the brakes, I
came to a stop on the elevated ramp and stared.  Nothing moved. 
There was no sign of life, infected or otherwise.

“Think it’s going to be like what we ran across in
Kingman?”  Rachel asked.

“Maybe.  Too far away to tell.”

Shaking my head, I accelerated down the ramp and turned onto
the broad street that would take us to the air base.  From the back seat,
I heard Tiffany yawn, then a moment later Dog snorted before letting out with a
sneeze so violent he startled her.  She squealed in surprise, then began cooing
to him and rubbing his head.  I could see him watching me in the mirror as
he soaked up her attention.  Any second, I expected him to smile and wink.