Allegiance (39 page)

Outbreak- Day 16

Winters’s Compound

Eden, Utah

Gus put his eye to the
scope atop his Les Baer AR-15, aimed for the spot where the road cut into the
forest, and braced his arms on his knees. He was sitting Indian style amongst
the short scrub brush just inside the tree line, seventy-five yards uphill from
the spot where earlier he had buried the canisters on the side of the road.

He could hear some type
of vehicle approaching, and, judging by the high performance whine of its
engine, he guessed it was either an exotic supercar or one of those Japanese
made-crotch rockets; considering the fact that he was in Utah and not Southern
California, his money was on the latter.

“Stand by,” he said into
the two-way. He listened intently and still couldn’t determine what was
approaching. “I’ve got at least one vehicle coming our way from the west.”

Duncan swiveled the
turret-mounted gun to the right a few degrees so that it was trained down the
westernmost stretch of 39. He remained still, peering through the camouflage
netting, and contemplated the possible scenarios. His first inclination was
that his gut instinct had been right and the plan he had set into motion the
previous day was about to pay off in spades.

Releasing Chance on his
own recognizance had been a gamble that most everyone in the compound had not
agreed with. However, Duncan thought fighting a large hostile group out in the
open with the element of surprise and the luxury of preparation was preferable
to adopting a defensive posture and eventually be forced to engage them, and
possibly more rotters, in the woods.

“I want
everyone
to hold fire until I give the word,” said Duncan. He figured it was about to go
down one of two ways: whoever was approaching could just be a neutral survivor,
however unlikely, and would pass on through, or, the interlopers would prove
him right by either storming the compound or cutting the fence and once again
letting the rotters in.
Either action in the latter category
, he
thought,
will justify springing the ambush on them
.

In no time the source of
the noise, a neon-orange motorcycle with black tiger stripes and a piercing
blue headlight, rocketed from the forest’s embrace. Wide and low and riding on
fat performance rubber, Gus pegged it as one of the 1200cc models. He watched
it crest the rise at high speed, jink around a shambling rotter, and then
suddenly the front end dipped and the engine howled in protest as the rider
simultaneously braked and rapidly downshifted, bringing the fiberglass-clad
bike to a standstill fifty yards short of Duncan’s
pet
zombies.

Balancing the idling
bike between his legs, the rider, who was wearing a full-faced helmet painted
to match, produced a pair of binoculars from inside his jacket, flipped up the
mirrored visor, and glassed the entire valley. As the rider panned the field
glasses over to the area where the Chance kid had been conducting his
surveillance the day before, Gus noticed scraggly twists of blonde hair darting
snakelike from under the bottom of the helmet.

Gus keyed his mike and
said, “That Chance kid is back and I’ve got a clean shot on him.” He tensed his
finger on the trigger, drawing up a few pounds of pressure.
Come on Duncan,
make the call,
he thought to himself.

“I’ve got him bracketed
as well,” said Logan, who was positioned the farthest away due east, and save
for the Turret-mounted M2, wielded the most powerful rifle in the group. His finger
also was itching to pull the trigger and send a .50 caliber projectile through
the big Barrett sniper rifle and downrange through the rider’s facemask.

“Stand down. He’s just
probing us,” Duncan blurted. “I’d bet the rest of his posse is within spitting
distance. Hold your fire Gus. Hold your fire Logan.”

In fact, unbeknownst to
the kid on the bike, he presently had seven sets of eyes and the same number of
weapons trained on him. Jamie and Chief were on the high side of the hill, a
little west of Duncan and not too far from the hidden entrance leading to the
compound. And secreted in the tree line on the compound side of 39, at an
oblique angle from the planted IEDs, Phil and Lev waited patiently in the low
scrub.

Unaware that his life
had just been spared for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Chance
stowed the binoculars and spun the bike in a tight one-eighty on the center
line, leaving a half-moon of burnt rubber behind. In seconds the bike became an
orange blur speeding away, its exhaust note taunting the hidden shooters.

Outbreak - Day 16

National Microbiology
Laboratory

Winnipeg, Manitoba
Canada

The small Asian woman
was first to venture from inside the gore-spattered glass prison. She took a
few tentative steps onto the carpet, looked over the men clad in camouflage and
body armor who towered over her. Then a tear traced her cheek and she rushed
Cade and threw her arms around his neck. She planted a peck on his sooty cheek
and broke down sobbing, clinging firmly to his MOLLE gear.

The others exiting the
room at a slow trickle seemed to be in a state of shock. Cade had seen the
reaction many times before, but it wouldn’t take long for their brains to
process what their eyes were seeing.

“Who is in charge here?”
Cade asked as he looked over the disheveled group.

Silence.

A round and
matronly-looking woman stepped forward. Gray hair clutched in a large plastic
clip positioned at the rear of her head and a pair of bifocals perched on her
nose, she looked like she’d be at home herding kindergartners for a living. She
put her arm around the Asian lady and eased her away from Cade. She bent to the
petite woman’s level and looked her in the eyes. “Mary,” she said softly. “This
man has some questions for you.”

“Screw that,” said a man
in the back. He was African American, and stood a head over the others. “I only
listened to her cause she had a Level 4 clearance. I’m not even in her work
group.” He shook his head and his face tightened. “I shoulda left with the
others when I had the chance.”

“The others are dead,
Andy
.
Don’t you get that yet?” said a woman dressed in light blue hospital scrubs.
“They were attacked before they even got out of the building, and they are
still walking around down there.”

“You guys are Americans,
aren’t you?” asked another man who was also dressed in utilitarian blue
hospital-style scrubs. He furrowed his brow and stabbed a finger at Tice’s
chest. “It’s all your fault... you didn’t shut down air travel soon enough. And
now look what we’re facing.”

Tice took a step back
and let the man continue his rant.

After getting the lady
named Mary seated and allowing her a few moments to collect herself, Cade asked
her to start from the beginning.

Five minutes into her
story, Cade had gathered that Mary’s group had been composed of virologists and
microbiologists who had been working to get a handle on the Omega virus in
conjunction with the CDC in Atlanta up until the phones and the Internet went
down. All of the bio level 4 personnel had been in the process of evacuating
from the below-ground containment facility when the perimeter fell. She
mentioned seeing the glass on the ground level implode from errant gunfire.
Then the resulting tide of dead that had poured into the building split her
group and she and two others had been forced to take to higher ground.

“Only the three of you
worked with the Level 4 bugs in the bio containment facility in the basement?”
Cade questioned as he pointed at Mary, the schoolmarm-looking lady named Rita,
and a white man who appeared to be in his fifties and was wearing a name tag
that read
Virgil
. “Where did the rest of the people on your team go?”

“The others followed the
soldiers outside... we were right on their heels, then we got cut off and had
no choice but to duck back into the stairway.”

There was silence for a
moment, then Cade hailed Gaines. “This is Anvil Actual, sit-rep to follow. How
copy?”

Gaines answered at once.
“Good copy, Anvil Actual. Go ahead.”

Cade took a moment and
explained the situation in detail.

“
Twenty-one
... did
I hear you correctly, Anvil?”

“Roger that. Three
principals. Eighteen survivors.”

“Wait one while I
consult with Ripley,” Gaines replied.

“Roger that,” said Cade.

“So you escaped the
mayhem on the ground level and then you all made it back to the stairwell...”
Cade took a second to think. “Are you certain you closed the stairwell door
behind you?”

“Of course. I’m no
dummy,” Mary said. Virgil nodded in agreement. “Because the windows were shot
out, the lobby has got to be filled with dead by now,” he added.

“Ten of our group went
out three days ago...” said Mary.

Cade pointed to the dead
Zs on the floor. “And these ones?”

“Those are some of the
ten that originally tried to run for it,” Mary said as she rubbed her temples.
“Three minutes... less than three minutes and they were back banging on the
door.” She broke down, sobbing.

“And you let them back
in?” said Lopez incredulously.

Andy piped up. “We
didn’t know they were bit. No way to know that. And once they were back inside
and seemed OK, nobody knew what to do.” He shot an indicting glare at Mary.
“And no one took
charge
.” Heads nodded in unison.

“It was my idea to go
into the conference room,” Mary proffered.

“You mean you got us
trapped
in the conference room,” said someone from the rear of the group.

“I didn’t want to let
them back in,” said Andy in a melancholy voice.

“Can’t change the past,”
said Cade coolly.

“Don’t have to make the
same mistake twice either,” Andy spat. “I’m done taking orders from her.”

As some of the other
survivors tried to calm the tall man, even tugging on his arms to encourage him
to sit, Cade issued a couple of orders. “Cross, take a look outside, tell me
what you see.”

Cross made his way to
the windows and looked down at the entry, which was flanked by a carpet of
colorful flowers and cement planters with short well-manicured shrubs growing
from them. The landscaping had been trampled and at least two dozen dead seemed
to be able to enter and exit the building at will. Though he couldn’t verify if
the windows and doors below had been compromised, the movements of the Zs all
but confirmed Mary’s account.

“What do you need me to
do, Captain?” Tice asked. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his M4
resting across his knees.

“Go scope the door to
the stairwell,” Cade replied. “I’m hopeful the Zs found the fifth floor door
Lopez left ajar and are hunting for fresh meat up there.”

“I’m going to have to
use the low-light mode,” Tice said, thinking out loud.

“Whatever it takes, make
it happen,” said Cade. Then he eyed Mary and fired a couple of questions at
her. “From the air I saw a glass sky bridge attached to the east side of the
building. How do we access it from here and where will it take us?”

“Second floor, northeast
corner,” she said, pointing towards the far end of the expansive room near
where the Delta Team had emerged onto the third floor. “That stairwell lets out
pretty close to the bridge off of the second floor mezzanine, and it’s used
mostly to access the parking lots without having to deal with the cars coming and
going during a shift change. There are several hundred people who work in
different buildings scattered all over the campus. The NML, in the
sub-basement, where me and Rita and Virg worked, employs just a fraction of the
workforce.”

But your jobs are the
most important, and the most dangerous
, Cade thought. He suddenly realized that he was faced
with a serious moral dilemma. One that no amount of extra training could have
prepared him for. The cold, indifferent decision would be to leave most of
these Canadian citizens to fend for themselves and hustle just the three
scientists up to the roof and spirit them away in Jedi One-One.

But the
right
decision, which he had embraced almost instantly, would be to see all
twenty-one of the survivors to safety. Though it was going to be difficult to
pull off, and he doubted everyone was going to make it out alive, to make it
happen he had to find an LZ—landing zone—where both the Ghost and the Osprey
could land safely and exfil
all
of the workers.
Two birds with one stone
,
he thought.

Outbreak - Day 16

Winters’s Compound

Eden, Utah

Duncan glanced at his
watch. Less than fifteen minutes had passed, and by his estimation the people
who had passively attacked the compound days ago should be rounding the bend
down the hill at any minute.

He’d allotted five
minutes for Chance to motor away and tell the rest of the group that he had
taken a long hard look (a lie on the kid’s part) and that the coast was clear.
Then he gathered that another five minutes would probably be burned as the
brain trust argued over who was going to do what, when, and to whom. And then,
finally, Duncan presumed it would take at least three hundred more seconds for
whomever the leader was to give a short pep talk, rally the troops, and make
their way east towards the compound all full of piss and vinegar and ready to
unleash hell.

Exactly sixteen minutes
and thirteen seconds had gone by before Chance and his shiny motorcycle
returned.

But this time he was not
alone.

With the noon sun flaring
from the flat windshields, two tan Humvees emerged from the forested stretch of
road. Next, three large SUVs still sporting dealer plates materialized behind
the former National Guard Hummers.

Duncan guessed the five
vehicles were maintaining about a thirty-five mile-per-hour clip while keeping
bumper to bumper in a single file column.
Looks good in the movies
, he
thought darkly.
Deadly as hell in real life
. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan,
or ancient Carthage, it didn’t matter where, the tactic of ambush—attacking
from concealment and with an element of surprise—hadn’t changed much over
thousands of years. And travelling so close together, whether on foot,
horseback, or in a modern vehicle was, for the people being ambushed, a recipe
for disaster.

Duncan kept the field
glasses trained on the convoy until the kid on the bike pulled off the road in
virtually the same place as he had before.

The plan was coming
together
, Duncan thought. The
zombies on the road near the compound’s hidden entrance had precisely the
effect on the bad guys that he was hoping for.

The lead Humvee stopped
abreast of the motorcycle just as Chance dismounted.

Through the binoculars,
Duncan watched Chance start a conversation with the driver, while at the same
time another man, wearing woodland camo and carrying a large pair of bolt
cutters, jumped out of the middle SUV and quickly went to work cutting the
fence.

“Lev,” Duncan said
dryly. “Kill the guy cutting the fence first.”

“Roger that,” replied
the former 11 Bravo-Infantryman, U.S. Army.

“You made your bed,
Chance,” Duncan muttered. “Now you’re going to take a dirt nap in it.” He
tracked his gaze to the left to the fence post with the X scratched into it.
Although the second Humvee wasn’t fully bracketed in the kill zone, he decided
to spring the ambush anyway. He traded the binoculars for the two-way radio and
clicked the transmit button twice. His hands found the twin vertical grips of
the Ma Deuce. He swiveled the barrel up and placed the sights a hair above the
passenger-side headlamp on the black Toyota at the rear of the column. Then, he
took a steadying breath and depressed the paddle-shaped trigger with both
thumbs.