Transmission: Voodoo Plague Book 5 (2 page)

“Major?”  I had already started walking to the elevators
when he called.  I stopped and turned to look back at him.  “There are no
weapons allowed in the hospital.  Sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be sorry, Airman.  But I’m going up, and I’m not
leaving my weapons behind.  And if you don’t have a weapon, you should.”  I
turned and strode briskly to the elevator. 

There would either be a pissed off senior officer and a
squad of Security Forces waiting for me when I came back down, or the Airman
would ignore my breach of policy and take my advice.  I didn’t really care
which at the moment.  I stepped out of the elevator on the third floor, checked
the sign to see which way to go, and then whipped my rifle up when I heard the
scream of an infected female.

The screams were coming from my left.  Opposite the
direction to Scott’s room.  Rifle up and ready, I started moving in that
direction, confused when I could see hospital staff moving about like nothing
was wrong.  Three nurses were seated at a round workstation, writing in
charts.  An orderly was pushing a linen cart down the hall and a doctor stood
at an elevated counter, typing into a tablet computer.  The orderly was the
first to notice me and he froze in place, staring. 

One of the nurses looked up at the orderly, followed his
gaze and stood when she saw me pointing a rifle in her general direction. 
“What are you doing with that in here?  No weapons in the hospital!”  She
shouted at me.

Thoroughly confused, I slowly lowered the rifle, looking
around for the source of the screams.  The doctor had heard the nurse’s shout
and turned from his work.  He smiled a weary smile when he saw me.

“It’s OK.”  He said, raising his hand, palm towards me. 
“She’s restrained.”

“Excuse me?”  I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. 
Restrained?  What the hell were they doing with a live, infected female in a
hospital?  If she got loose in their ‘gun free zone’ she’d rip through the
staff and patients in minutes.  “What the hell are you doing?”

“We’re trying to treat her, Major.  These people are just
sick.  We shouldn’t be killing them because they have an infection.”  He had
approached me as he spoke.  He was wearing a white coat over blue scrubs with a
Lieutenant Colonel’s oak leaf embroidered on the chest above his title and
name.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”  I was too surprised to worry
about rank.  What the hell was this idiot thinking?  “Have you seen what they
do?  One thing and one thing only.  They kill us.”

“Major.  This isn’t your concern.”  He gave me a look that I
knew well.  It was the look I usually gave to people that just didn’t get it. 
I started to get more than a little irritated with this guy.  The infected were
dangerous as hell.  Yes, I understand there’s a need to study them and possibly
come up with a treatment or a cure.  That would solve many of our problems, but
a patient floor in a hospital is sure as hell not the place to be doing that. 
The female I could still hear screaming should be safely locked up in a secure
facility where the researchers themselves were the only people at risk.

“Well, sir, I’m making it my concern.  What happens if she
gets free?  There’s no guard in the hall.  Do you at least have one in the room
with her?”  I asked, peering over his shoulder in the direction of the noise.

“I assure you, there’s nothing to be concerned about,
Major.”  He put a heavy emphasis on my rank, reminding me who was who in this conversation. 
Maybe I had been out of the Army too long, or just gotten old enough, but I
didn’t give a shit if he outranked me.  He was putting a lot of people in
danger and as far as I could tell wasn’t even taking basic precautions to
safeguard them.

“Colonel,” I said, stepping close and looking him in the
eye.  “We are going to go make sure that infected is properly secured, then I’m
going to get a couple of Rangers up here to guard her until she is either moved
to a secure location or is put down.  Sir.”  My tone and body language didn’t
leave any doubt that I was absolutely serious.

He frowned and took a step back away from me.  “Where’s your
commanding officer and what’s his name?”

“His name is Colonel Crawford, and you’ll be meeting him
soon enough.  Now, you can either walk me to the room the female is in, or I’ll
find it myself.”  I moved forward into his personal space again.  He looked me
in the eye and I could see the anger and resentment in his, but also recognized
he was smart enough not to keep pushing back.

“Fine.  Follow me.”  He said, spinning on his heel and
heading down the hall. 

I noticed a small gesture to one of the nurses as we passed
their work area.  I had little doubt it was a ‘call security’ gesture.  OK.  We
can play it that way.  I reached to my vest and activated the radio that was
connected to my earpiece.  Blanchard answered almost immediately and I told him
to grab the Colonel, a couple of Rangers and meet me at the hospital.  He had
gotten to know me well enough to not ask why, just promised they were on their
way.

The doctor led me down the hall, stopping in front of a
closed door at the very end of the corridor.  I could hear the guttural snarls
and screams coming from inside the room, the heavy wood of the door doing little
to muffle them.  He stepped to the side and made an ‘after you’ gesture.  I
reached out with my left hand and pushed on the handle that released the door’s
latch, placing my right hand on the hilt of my Kukri at the small of my back.

The door opened easily and the sounds from the infected
ceased the instant the latch clicked open.  I only had the man’s word that the
female was restrained, so I carefully continued to open the door, stepping
forward as it swung into the room.  There wasn’t an immediate attack, so I kept
moving forward, adjusting my grip on the Kukri and wiggling it slightly to
ensure it would draw smoothly if I needed it.

Pushing the final few inches I stepped through the opening
into a normal looking hospital room.  Normal except for the woman lying in the
bed.  She was young and attractive with long, brown hair.  Dressed in a blue
hospital gown, she was restrained across her chest and at each wrist and ankle
with sheepskin lined leather cuffs.  The kind of restraints normally used in a
psychiatric ward to prevent the patients from hurting themselves or others.

I stood staring at the woman, and she stared back at me with
her intelligent, blood red eyes.  If not for the eyes and restraints she would
have looked like any other patient, but the eyes had locked onto my face as
soon as I came into view.  And they were coldly calculating how to get to me. 
This was one of the smart ones.  I had no doubt.

There was movement behind me and I turned in time to raise a
hand and grasp the doctor’s wrist as he tried to stab a needle into my neck. 
Applying pressure and twisting his arm I watched the loaded syringe fall out of
his hand to the polished floor.  Then his arm went limp as he collapsed to his
knees and began sobbing.

“She’s my wife.  Please.  Don’t kill her.  I can help her.” 
He cried.

Scooping up the syringe I turned to look at the woman.  She
just lay there, staring back at me.  I glanced at her left hand and saw a
distinctive wedding ring, looking down and seeing a matching ring on the doctor’s
finger.  His emotion and the whole situation took the anger out of me like it
had been doused with a bucket of cold water.

What would I do if I found Katie and she was infected?  I
didn’t know the answer to that, but I certainly understood the emotions this
man was dealing with.  Releasing his wrist I pushed the plunger on the syringe,
shooting a stream of whatever was in it onto the wall of the room before
snapping the needle off and tossing the whole thing into a trashcan.  Bending
over I grabbed his upper arms and lifted him to his feet.

“I’m sorry.”  I said, looking him in the eye.  “I truly am,
but she’s too dangerous to keep here.”

“She’s my wife.”  He said again, a pleading tone in his
voice.  “This just happened last night at dinner.  One minute she was fine,
then…”  He gestured helplessly at the infected.  She chose that moment to
scream again, loud enough to make me involuntarily put my hand on my holstered
pistol.

“No!”  The doctor said, reaching out and grabbing my gun
hand.  Normally that would get someone hurt or killed.  But in this case I just
looked at him and nodded as his wife let out with another ear splitting scream.

From the hallway I heard the sound of heavy boots running in
our direction.  A moment later Colonel Crawford burst into the room, pistol in
hand.  Blanchard was on his heels, also with a pistol out and ready, two
Rangers pushing in behind them.

“We’re under control.”  I said calmly, raising a hand to
slow down the charge.

“What the hell is this, Major?”  Crawford asked, holstering
his pistol and looking at the infected.

There was more noise from the hall, more running boots, then
excited shouting.  Air Force Security Forces had arrived.  The two Rangers had
spread apart and had their rifles up.  It was the new arrivals doing all the
yelling.  I know they train cops to do that as it is a great way to create a
moment of panic in suspects you’re trying to capture alive.  But Rangers aren’t
taught that.  They’re taught to shoot and get on with their day.  Blanchard
stepped into the hall to defuse things before some Air Force personnel wound up
dead on the floor.

“This is the doctor’s wife.”  I said, turning back to the
Colonel.  “And she turned when they were having dinner last night.  I think
that confirms what the Russian told me.”

Crawford just stood staring at the female.  He nodded and
let out a long sigh.  The infected was silent again, watching us with those
eyes.  Eyes from a nightmare.

I left the whole mess in Colonel Crawford’s capable hands
and went down the hall to check in on Scott.  He was propped up in bed, arm in
a fresh plaster cast, a thick, white bandage wrapped around his head.  He was
sleeping, and not wanting to disturb him I turned and started out the door,
pausing when I spied a black, felt tip marker clipped to a chart.  Grabbing the
marker, I crept to the edge of the bed and left a calling card on the pristine
surface of the white cast.

Back in the hall I held back when an Air Force Brigadier
General, with half a dozen aides in tow, stepped out of the elevator and looked
around.

“That way, sir.”  I pointed down the hall where Crawford
stood talking on a satellite phone. 

The General nodded and strode off.  Captain Blanchard
spotted me and trotted up before I could board the elevator.

“Your Black Hawk is ready.”  He said.  “Waiting where you
landed this morning.”

“Thanks.  What’s he going to do?”  I asked, nodding towards
the Colonel.  The General was standing looking at him as he continued his phone
conversation.

“He’s talking to Admiral Packard right now.  Recommending we
immediately start producing and administering the vaccine.  If that woman
turned last night, there’s surely others that have turned as well, we just
haven’t found them yet.  And there may be more that are about to turn.”  I
nodded, thanked him again for arranging the helicopter and stepped into the
elevator.

When I walked out the front doors of the hospital there were
three Hummers angled into the curb, obviously parked in a hurry.  They all had
Security Forces markings on them.  Looking around I didn’t see any other
transportation, so said the hell with it and got behind the wheel of the
closest one.  I was sure someone would be pissed off when they came out and
found it missing, but annoying an Air Force cop was at the bottom of my list of
concerns at the moment.

It only took a few minutes to drive to the waiting helo, the
pilot leaning against it when I pulled up.  I recognized him as the pilot that
had plucked me out of the Mississippi and participated in the dogfight with the
Russian helicopters.  He was twenty years older than me, if he was a day, but
still looked in good shape.  Tall and thin with a full head of iron grey hair;
he was dressed in cowboy boots, jeans and a white T-shirt, wearing mirrored
aviator sunglasses.  If the guy hadn’t been on a recruiting poster when he was
younger, he should have been.

“Major,” he stepped forward and stuck his hand out.  “Tom LaPaige.”

I shook his hand and followed him around to the far side of
the Black Hawk.  He introduced me to an Air Force Staff Sergeant who would be
coming along to man the door mounted minigun.  Meet and greet out of the way,
we all climbed on board.  There wasn’t a co-pilot available so I settled into
the right hand seat, strapping in as Tom hit the starters for the two engines. 
They spooled up quickly and as I got my helmet and settled in place he scanned
the instrument panel to make sure everything looked good.  A minute later,
satisfied with what he was seeing, we lifted off.

Tom was a retired Army CWO4, or Chief Warrant Officer 4.  A
warrant officer is the typical rank for Army pilots.  The Army wants them to be
officers, but doesn’t want them burdened with the administrative duties of say
a Captain or Major who commands a lot of soldiers.  A warrant officer is typically
only in command of his aircraft and whatever crew is assigned to it.  Actually,
a pretty sweet deal.  The pay and benefits of officer rank with only a fraction
of the crap that comes along with management.

He had learned to fly his father’s helicopter in the oil
fields of west Texas when he was growing up, volunteering for the Army as the
US was just starting to escalate its involvement in Viet Nam.  By the time the
war was in full swing in the late 60s, he was flying 20 medevac missions a
day.  He did that for two years before rotating back home and training new
pilots.  I wasn’t surprised at the amount of combat flights he’d made.  The way
he’d flown when we fought the Russians had told me this was a guy who had been
there and done that.

We talked for the first hour of the flight, then ran out of
things to say as we kept making our way east.  Tom followed Interstate 40 and
we flew at 1,500 feet.  High enough to let us have a great view for miles in
every direction, low enough to see details that we might want to investigate. 
We flew slow, cruising at about 100 knots, and I had too much time to think.

Captain Blanchard had told me that Jackson, Rachel and Dog
had gone to help with loading evacuees onto the train when they had to move
because of approaching storms.  They had then gone into town, West Memphis, for
reasons he didn’t know.  The last communication he’d had with them was when
Jackson called to say he was coming back with a total of three souls and was
ten minutes away.

They hadn’t been able to wait.  A massive storm was bearing
down directly on the area and they had to get the civilians and all the
aircraft out of its path.  Jackson was supposed to drive to Little Rock where
the Colonel had ordered a Black Hawk to wait for them at Little Rock Air Force
Base, but they never showed up.  That was all that was known about their fate.

I was heartened by the news that Rachel and Dog had been
found both alive and well.  Part of me had been preparing for them never being
found, or worse, being found dead.  In the last calm moment we’d had together,
Rachel had professed her love to me, asking if I felt the same.  My head
started going down the path of exploring my feelings for her, but I quickly
shut that down.  The last thing I needed right now was emotions clouding my decision-making. 
I just wanted her and Dog safe, then I’d worry about what I was or wasn’t
feeling.

It’s about 300 air miles from Oklahoma City to Little Rock,
and we covered that in just over four hours.  There had been numerous vehicles
we’d slowed to check out.  Vehicles that were either moving along the freeway
or showing some indication of life.  Whenever we’d see one, Tom would swing
wide to the side, drop to 100 feet and roar past to give us a good look. 

We saw frightened families crammed into cars and trucks,
couples ranging from teenagers to elderly, and the occasional single traveler. 
All were heading west to the supposed safety of Oklahoma.  None of them were a
large, black soldier traveling with a pretty woman and a dog.  Lacking a photo,
that was the description of our search target I’d given to Tom and the door
gunner. 

When we reached Little Rock, Tom contacted the base on the
radio and received permission to approach and land.  We were carrying external
fuel tanks, but he wanted to top us off to maximize our time in the air.  Our
expectation was that if Jackson, Rachel and Dog were alive, we’d find them
somewhere between Little Rock and the Mississippi River.  We knew they hadn’t
made it as far west as Little Rock.  If they had, there was no doubt Jackson
would have gone straight to the base and from there would have found a way to
contact the Colonel.  And that call had never been made.

While Tom oversaw the refueling, I wandered off in search of
a latrine.  That’s the Army term for a restroom.  Right off I couldn’t remember
if the Air Force had felt it necessary to change that as well.  Regardless,
when I found it, I must say it was the nicest, cleanest, shiniest latrine I’ve
ever been in.  One thing about the Air Force, they live in luxury compared to
the rest of the services.  I still harbor resentment for time I spent in
Panama. 

My entire company was housed in tents at the bottom of a
large hill.  Being at the bottom of a hill means you damn near get washed away
every afternoon when it rains.  You live in mud, mosquitoes and whatever shit
trickles down from above.  At the top of the hill sat a large, modern brick
building, complete with running water and air conditioning.  This was where the
Air Force was housed.  Every night we’d go to sleep hearing their AC units
humming away and boom boxes blasting.  If one of them had been dumb enough to wander
down the hill I doubt he would ever have been seen again.

Needs taken care of, I headed back to the Black Hawk and
kept an eye on the ground crew while Tom and the door gunner took their turn. 
While I waited, I spread out a map of the area.  West Memphis was 133 air miles
east of us.  The terrain was so flat and the freeway so straight it was only 142
road miles.  There were two other helos out searching, one to the north of
I-40, the other south.  I didn’t see Jackson leaving the Interstate without a
compelling reason, but I was still trying to figure out why the hell they’d
gone into town in the first place.

“That is the fucking cleanest, fanciest, five-star shitter
I’ve ever had the pleasure of smelling up.”  Tom said when he walked up.  “Knew
I joined the wrong goddamn service.”

“Hell, I hear they have some openings.  Maybe you should
re-up and try life as a wing wiper.”  I said with a grin, not looking away from
the map.

“Fuck that.  I can’t drink tea with my little bitty pinkie
sticking out.”  He said, moving in next to me to see the map.  “So, what’s the
plan?”

“We know they went into West Memphis.  First stop is town. 
A couple of days ago there were still three cops left alive and working.  I
want to find them and see if they know anything.  We’ll follow the Interstate
and keep checking vehicles.  After that… let’s see what we find out when we get
there.”

By now our door gunner was back and we mounted up.  Tom had
us in the air a few minutes later and we picked up I-40 and resumed our
eastward path.  A few miles to the north a blot of greasy, black smoke stained
the sky and I asked Tom to take us closer.  As we flew over I could see heavy
equipment carving deep trenches out of the ground.  A few hundred yards to the
west was another, larger excavation which was where the smoke was coming from. 

Tom went into a hover, positioning us in clear air with an
unobstructed view into the pit.  At first it looked like deep piles of tree
limbs were being burned and I couldn’t understand why they were doing that. 
Then I made out more of the flaming shapes and realized it was human bodies. 
Thousands of human bodies.

“Christ on a cross!”  Tom breathed.  “What the hell are they
doing?”

“Infected.”  I answered.  “Probably the best thing to do
with the bodies.” 

A small group of figures dressed head to toe in white,
bio-hazard suits was standing at the edge of the pit watching the fire consume
the dead.  One of them held what had to be a bible and looked to be praying
over the departed. 

“Let’s go.”  I said, snapping Tom back to the mission at
hand.  He nodded and spun us around to head back to I-40.