Bug Out! Part 10: RV Race to Battle (19 page)

“Well, hi there, old friend,” George said. “I hope the accommodations meet with your approval.”

“How’s the food?” Malcolm asked sarcastically. Saladin moved his eyes towards Malcolm, trying not to move his head. “Look at that. Reminds me of how a dog looks at you. You a dog, man?”

“Now that’s not nice,” George said.

“Shall I open the cell?” the Sheriff asked. “He’s been frisked.”

“Sure, why not,” George said. “I might need to examine his burns a little bit. Anybody got a meat thermometer?”

Charlie laughed, shaking his head. “Looks pretty well done to me. Meat probably falls right off the bone.”

George, Malcolm, and Charlie cracked up. The Sheriff looked at them blank-faced, shaking his head. He unlocked the padlock and undid the chain, then pulled open the door. George walked in.

“So, Saladin, your four bombs along the Mississippi went off. They didn’t do as much damage as they could have, but they weren’t duds, at least.”

“Guess he didn’t buy them from ACME,” Malcolm said, laughing as he entered the cell.

Saladin’s expression didn’t change, but his eyeballs continued to move between the four men nervously.

“Here’s what we need to know,” George said. “We need to know if there are any more bombs, and we need to know exactly where they are.”

Saladin focused his eyes on George, and his thin mouth formed a faint smile.

“Something funny there, spinach chin?” Malcolm asked, moving closer to him. “You ever heard of pulled pork? Oh, I’ll bet you haven’t, sorry. It’s pig meat, after all. A little too close to cannibalism for your kind. It’s cooked all day. It gets so tender you can just pull it apart, thus the name. If we don’t get the information we need from you, we’ll have to demonstrate how it works. I see meat on your side.”

“Now, men, no reason to get rough right away,” Charlie said. “Let’s be reasonable. I’m sure we can convince Mr. Saladin here to tell us what we need to know without tearing his burned flesh off of him.”

“Water,” Saladin whispered.

The Sheriff looked down and saw that his bottle had been knocked over. “Oh, I’m sorry, didn’t know you were out,” he said. “I’ll just fill that right up.” He stepped into the cell, picked up the bottle, and went up the stairs.

“Well, there, we’re giving you something. Now you can give us something,” Charlie said, as Malcolm and George stared at him, looking like animals ready to pounce.

The Sheriff brought back the water bottle and handed it to Saladin. He drank, coughing, water coming up out of the corners of his mouth. He was still for a moment, and then drank again.

“There’s more,” Saladin said softly.

“Where?” George asked.

“Not nukes,” he said, voice cracking. “Biological. Fail safe.”

“Fail safe?” Malcolm asked. “What does that mean?”

“If our fighters know they will lose, they will set off biological devices. Weaponized small pox.”

The Sheriff and Charlie glanced at each other, worried. Saladin saw it and smiled.

George shook his head, then looked Saladin in the eye. “You guys really are stupid, aren’t you?”

Malcolm gave George a quizzical look, and he just smiled.

“Back about the time of our first engagement with this creep, the US Government started making small pox vaccine. We’ve got stores of it all over the country. Guess where there aren’t stores of it?”

“Oh, I know the answer to that,” Malcolm said. “All of those hell holes that these cretins crawled out of. Am I right, George?”

“Yeah,” George said. “So now you have an important choice to make, old friend. You get your people to surrender and give up the biologicals, and we’ll let those of them who didn’t commit war crimes go back to their hell holes.”

“Why would I do that?” he croaked.

“Because you have no other option,” George said. “If you go forward with your plan, you will kill some Americans. No doubt about it. You won’t kill much more than a couple percent, though, and once the cat’s out of the bag, it’ll be world-wide in no time flat. If it doesn’t get to the home of your Caliphate, we’ll make sure we help it along. Everybody you love will perish.”

“You lie,” Saladin hissed.

“Well, go ahead and think that,” George said. “I’d like to see as many of your fighters get killed as possible. We win either way. I’ll go talk to the General. We need to kick off the vaccinations. Should only take a few days to get it rolling.”

George hurried up the stairs and found General Hogan over by the bar.

“You hear any of that?” George asked.

“No, not really,” he said.

“Saladin says that if his side is sure they’re losing, their fail safe option goes into place.”

“What’s their fail safe option?” the General asked.

“Weaponized small pox.”

The General leaned back, laughing loud, shaking. “We have more vaccine than we know what to do with. Really went overboard. They don’t know, do they?”

“Apparently not,” George said.

“That’s surprising. Do you believe him?” General Hogan asked.

“I don’t know,” George said. “He’s shifty as hell. He double crossed everybody the last time we met.”

“Yeah, I remember,” General Hogan said. “I have half a mind to toss a few grenades in his lap.”

George chuckled. “I heard about what you did to Simon Orr. I’d rather you didn’t do that down there.”

“Why not?”

“The historical value of that dungeon, for one thing,” George said. “It’s pretty rare to find the lair of a major serial killer intact like that.”

“Oh,” General Hogan said. “Okay, we won’t do him down there, if it comes to that. At least not with grenades.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I’ll call the Joint Chiefs and tell them we need to do a mass vaccination. I also want to find out why the enemy didn’t know this is a waste.”

“Yeah, something doesn’t add up,” George said. “Wonder if they have a strain that our vaccine won’t handle?”

“We need to capture some of their material,” General Hogan said. “Try to get locations out of him.”

“Okay,” George said. He headed back downstairs when the Sheriff rushed up.

“He just bought it,” the Sheriff said, a grim look on his face. “Just stopped breathing.”

“Dammit,” George said.

“Well, I’d better go take more pictures,” General Hogan said. “Plenty of propaganda value here.”

“I wouldn’t broadcast that he’s dead just yet,” the Sheriff said.

The General stopped, and looked down, then up at the Sheriff. “You’re right. We should hold off. There you go, exceeding my expectations again, Sheriff.”

He smiled sheepishly at the General. “Thanks.”

“Wonder if we can put him on ice?” George asked

“We have a walk-in freezer,” the Sheriff said. “Hey, Charlie, come up here.”

Charlie came up the stairs. “Yeah, what’s up?”

“Think the crispy critter will fit in the walk-in freezer?”

“Hell, yeah, but we’d better wrap him up good and tight,” Charlie said. “The girls might not like this. We’ve got quite a bit of food in there now.”

“What about the small pox?” the Sheriff asked. “Is it true we’ve got plenty of vaccine? I remember reading about how much of a threat small pox is.”

“Yeah, we’ve got plenty of vaccine, although it’s a big logistical job to administer it to everybody,” General Hogan said. “There’s also a slim chance that their strain is something we can’t protect against.”

“Shit,” Charlie said. “How much chance is a slim chance?”

“I don’t know,” General Hogan said. “I’ll go make some phone calls now. Talk to you guys later.” He went back into one of the bedrooms.

“Should we be worried?” the Sheriff asked.

“I really don’t know,” George said. “I’m having a hard time believing that none of the traitors in the Pentagon told them about our stockpile. A lot of the grunts in their force are stupid, but the leadership isn’t. Daan Mertens, for example.”

“Maybe he was just bluffing,” the Sheriff said.

“So what do we do now?” Charlie asked.

“Wrap him up and freeze him, I guess,” George said. “You’re 100% sure he’s dead, right?”

“I think we should have Mary take a look at him,” Charlie said. “Hey, Malcolm, lock that cell up again, okay?”

“Gotcha,” Malcolm said from below.

***

Frank and Jerry were up in the clubhouse, watching download stats, and keeping an eye on the apps. Jane and Jasmine were on their laptops watching things too. Jasmine’s phone rang.

“Hilda! Hi, how are you?”

“Good. Need to talk to you.”

“You’re coming back with Earl, aren’t you?”

“Tomorrow,” Hilda said. “The army has arrived at the hospital, and they’re leaving a detail here to guard Jeb and your mom. Are you okay with that?”

“I think so. Just a sec.” She covered the phone microphone and looked up at Jerry.

“What, honey?” Jerry asked.

“It’s Hilda. They want to bring Earl back home tomorrow and leave mom there with Jeb. The army put guards on them. What do you think?”

“It should be okay,” Jerry said. “But it’s not up to me. It’s your mom. I’d be happy to drive you there if you want to go.”

Jasmine nodded and uncovered her phone’s speaker.

“Hilda?”

“Yeah, sweetie.”

“Go ahead and leave. We might show up there in a few days ourselves, but we’ll see how things go. Does the road look safe?”

“Safer than it was, from what the army detachment told us.”

“Good, then we’ll see you soon. Call if you need any remote support, and we’ll fire up the close-in app.”

“Great. See you soon.”

Jasmine put her phone down and stared into space for a few seconds.

“You okay, honey?” Jerry asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” she said. “I’m just worried.”

“I’m worried too,” Jane said. “Those enemy fighters in the hospital are all high ranking. I hope we don’t have problems there.”

“I say we keep one machine on the long range detail app, focused on the hospital and the surrounding area,” Frank said.

“Yeah,” Jerry said. “And we should take turns watching it.”

“Let’s use your laptop for that, honey,” Jane said. “You keep up the app monitoring on the PC.”

“Fine by me,” Frank said. “Load it.”

Jane moved over to the chair next to her and got on Frank’s machine, bringing up the app. Then she took a pad and pencil and wrote down a number.

“What’s that?” Jasmine asked.

“The number of enemy chips at the hospital right now. There are seven.”

“Gotcha,” she said. “Good idea.”

“What’s the download count now?” Jane asked.

“Almost twelve million, believe it or not, and still building fast.”

“Wow,” Jerry said. “Wonder how much impact it’s having on the battle field?”

“Looked at Denver lately?” Frank asked.

“Not me,” Jerry said. “Been focused on the Canadian border. Movement from there is at a dead stop. I think the bad guys are getting rounded up.”

“Denver is down to less than a hundred icons,” Frank said. “They’re fleeing to the west, and I see a large grouping of them now, just outside of Boulder. We’ll have to check with the General and see if they’re being rounded up, or if they’re just hanging out there.”

“You guys ought to take a look at Mexico,” Jasmine said. “That big group of icons south of Texas is gone.”

“You mean moving away from the area?”

“No, I mean gone,” Jasmine said.

“Crap, look at the news,” Jane said. “Somebody nuked them.”

“Think we did that?” Jasmine asked, eyes growing wider.

“That’s an unpopulated area,” Frank said. “Mexico have nukes? I can’t remember.”

“Good question,” Jerry said.

***

Back at the hospital, Hilda and Gabe were sitting in the waiting room. Earl was getting checked out before release. The lobby was buzzing with activity, military men rushing around. No more ambulances had arrived.

“We’ve got some time to kill,” Hilda said.

“You want to go out to your RV Park, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Mind?”

“Think we should wait until Earl gets released? Be nice to have an extra gun.”

“I can’t imagine there’s any enemy fighters there.”

“You’re probably right,” Gabe said. “I checked the app about twenty minutes ago. Nada. Nobody in the area other than the seven here. It’s probably safe.”

“Let’s go, then,” Hilda said.

Gabe got out of his seat. “Okay, but let’s tell Major Harrison what we’re doing, so they know where we are.”

“Okay,” Hilda said, getting up, her heart fluttering.

Gabe drove the Suburban
down the deserted road, Hilda in the passenger seat. His pistol was in the map holder on the driver’s side door, and a rifle was leaning on the seat between them.

“I’m so nervous,” Hilda said. “What if those heads are still there?”

“Oh, I’m sure our dead have been cleaned up by now,” Gabe said, hoping he was right.

The road thinned as they got closer. They hadn’t seen a car yet.

“Looks like all the locals fled,” Gabe said.

“Yeah,” Hilda said. “Or maybe they’re all in their houses watching the news.”

“How much further?” Gabe asked.

“There’s an access road another mile up,” Hilda said. “Off to the left. Take that. My place is at the end, about a hundred yards down.”

“What’s it like?” Gabe asked.

“A lot less rustic than your place. The layout is similar to the Kansas RV Park.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, except the front has buildings and a good fence. We could shut things up pretty well. The back of the park was pretty. Dense trees, then a creek with a pool and waterfall area.”

“Ah, yes, heard about the deer blind,” Gabe said, chuckling.

Hilda shook her head and smiled. “I so miss Ger, silly as he was. He was a charming man.”

“So I’ve been told.”

They rode silently for a little while.

“That the road?”

“Yep, that’s it,” Hilda said.

Gabe took it and went round the bend. The park was there, deserted, staring back at them like a rotting corpse. Hilda cried.

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Gabe said. “Looks like the buildings are intact.”

“I know, it’s all the people who died here,” she said. “Especially the Doc. Such a sweet man. He was a friend for years.”