Days Of Perdition: Voodoo Plague Book 6 (3 page)

The morning after the attacks, TV and radio broadcasts hadn’t
come back on and Katie continued to have no luck in reaching John or any of her
friends or family on the satellite phone.  She even dug out some numbers from
her past and dialed former friends and colleagues that she was reasonably sure
were still with the CIA.  None of those calls went through either.  Buried deep
in her jewelry box was a scrap of paper with an international phone number
written on it in faded ink. 

Taking a deep breath she punched the number in so it was
held in memory then replaced the scrap of paper and walked out by the pool to
connect with a satellite.  When the phone showed it had signal she pressed the
SEND button and held it to her ear.  There were a couple of clicks then after
what felt like a long time she heard a ring.  On the sixth ring the call
connected, but no one said anything.

“Steve?”  She asked tentatively.  There was silence for a
moment, then a suspicious male voice.

“Who is this?”

“Thank God!  It’s Katie,” she answered, nervous yet relieved
to actually reach another person.  There was silence on the other end of the
phone; just a faint hiss was all that let her know the connection was still
open.

“Are you there?”  Katie asked after the quiet became
unbearable.

Steve Johnson had been a fellow case officer at the CIA, and
Katie’s former fiancé.  They’d been engaged for less than a month when she met
John.  She and John had fallen in love at first sight, and there hadn’t been
any going back.  She’d broken it off with Steve but he hadn’t handled it well. 
Not that she could blame him.  Even after all these years she still felt bad
about it, but her heart hadn’t given her a choice.

“I’m here.  Just surprised to hear from you.”  His voice was
sullen, but at least he hadn’t hung up on her.  “Are you OK?  Where are you?”

“I’m fine.  Safe for the moment.  I’m at home in Arizona. 
Are you still with… uhm, our former employer?” 

“Our former employer,” he laughed.  “Yes, and you can say
it.  C fucking IA.  I’m still assigned to a surveillance post in Western
Australia.  Keeping an eye on this part of the world, but I don’t think that
matters much any more.”

Katie gripped the phone tighter and took a deep breath. 
What had happened to Steve?  He had always been a happy person, intense about
his work, but with a wicked sense of humor and a quick wit.  That was what had
attracted her to him in the first place.  In many ways he was the polar
opposite of John, in others they were just alike.

“Why are you calling, Katie?  Still married to the hero?”

Steve had been calling John that since he’d found out whom
she’d left him for.  She had had a high enough clearance level to gain access
to John’s Army file, but somehow had managed to resist the temptation to check
him out.  Steve, however, hadn’t been able to let it go, and it was the final
straw for the CIA when the Army called wanting to know why one of their case
officers was reviewing Army Special Forces files.  Steve had been demoted,
received a formal letter of reprimand and reassigned to a two-man station in
the middle of the Western Australia desert.

“That’s why I’m calling, Steve.  I know I don’t have any
right to ask, but I’m asking for your help.  John is in Atlanta and I haven’t
been able to reach him.  All TV, radio, Internet, phones… everything is down. 
It’s getting scary here and I don’t know what to do.  Do I stay here and wait
for him?  Do I try to make it to Atlanta?”  Katie didn’t like the note of
desperation that crept into her voice as she spoke, but there wasn’t anything
she could do to stop it.

“If everything is down, how are you calling me?”  Steve
asked, the note of suspicion clear in his voice.

“We had a satellite phone stashed away.”  Katie said, giving
him time to think about her plea for information.

“I’ve got your number,” Steve finally spoke.  “Let me see what
I can find out and I’ll call you back.”

“Thank you, Steve.”  Katie said, flooded with relief.  “How
long do you think it will take you?”

“As long as it takes.”  He said curtly before breaking the
connection.

Katie slowly exhaled a deep breath, feeling sorry for the
man and also feeling a little guilty.  She’d broken his heart when she left him
for John.  She knew that.  But she also knew that she’d made the right
decision.

Going back into the house Katie walked through the master
bedroom and into the closet.  The closet was large with multiple, very long
rods for hanging clothes and built-ins for shoe and clothing storage.  All but
one of the rods was full of her clothes, only two of the slots for shoes
holding anything that belonged to John. 

She smiled, thinking how he never complained about not
having any room in the closet, then reached for one of his jackets and pulled
it to her face.  There was still a trace of his aftershave and she tried to
fight the tears but they got the best of her.  Going into the bathroom, she
dried her eyes and decided she had to get out of the house for a little while. 
  

A couple of minutes later, heavily armed with pistol,
shotgun and rifle, Katie backed out of the driveway and drove through the gates
to the main road.  Her house was on the far edge of town, only a few miles from
National Forest land, and as she expected there wasn’t any traffic when she
turned to head into the city.  She had decided she would go check on a friend
who lived a few miles away. 

Passing several other gated neighborhoods, she drove slowly
and looked carefully at each of them.  Not seeing anything concerning, she
continued on, slowing as she approached the entrance ramp for the 202 freeway. 
Two cars were crashed into each other, abandoned, blocking part of the
northbound ramp.  Letting the truck idle forward, she slowly got a better view
of the sprawling city that filled the valley in front of her. 

Fires were burning in multiple locations, tall plumes of
thick, black smoke rising into the blue sky.  The truck’s windows were up with
the air conditioning on high, and she lowered the driver’s window and turned
the fan speed to low so she could hear.  Sporadic gunfire sounded, somewhere in
the distance.  There was the hiss of tires from a steady stream of traffic on
the freeway, heading north, but the southbound lanes were eerily empty.

Leaving the window down, Katie gently accelerated across the
overpass and towards the intersection with the Safeway.  She began to see cars
moving as people rushed about, most of them ignoring the speed limit and
traffic lights.  The sound of gunfire grew in volume and intensity as she
approached the intersection, then she got a look at the grocery store.

The parking lot was jammed full of angry people, all of them
facing a small group of well-armed men who were guarding the entrance.  One of
the men was firing a rifle in the air, trying to deter the crowd from coming
any closer.  Katie didn’t know if the men guarding the store were actually
protecting it, or if they had seized the building and were intent on keeping
all of the food for themselves.  Either way, she said a small prayer of thanks
that she’d gotten in and out with supplies when she had.

Pushing on, she sadly noted that her assessment of depending
on the police had been accurate.  There was zero police presence, and the mob
scene was repeated at another grocery store she drove past.  A few vehicles
whizzed by her, traveling in the same direction at a high rate of speed.  One
of them with two men in the front slowed to look her over.  Driving with her
left hand she drew the pistol with her right, but fortunately they decided to
go on about their business, suddenly accelerating away.

“What the hell am I doing?”  Katie said to herself. 

Her friend was a single woman, divorced actually, but the
boyfriend du jour had just moved in with her so Katie knew she wasn’t alone. 
Checking her mirrors, she stepped on the brakes and cranked the big truck
through a U turn.  Time to go back home before something bad happened.

She had only driven half a mile back to the east when she
looked in the mirror and saw a car rapidly approaching from behind.  It looked
like the same Buick with the two men that had slowed next to her, but she
couldn’t tell for sure.  Resisting the impulse to accelerate, Katie held her
speed steady with an eye on the rearview as the car quickly caught up.

A few moments later it swerved to the side, the driver
braking to match her speed and put it in position alongside the truck.  The passenger
leaned out his window and shouted.

“Hey!  You look like you could use some help.  Pull over so
we can talk to you!”  He was pointing to the right side of the road.

“I’m fine.  Just on my way to pick up my husband.”  Katie
shouted back, hands starting to shake as adrenaline dumped into her system.

“We can help you find him.  Just pull over and we’ll help
you.”  The man shouted back.

The Buick drifted closer to the truck and looking down from
the cab Katie could see a shotgun resting across the man’s lap.  That didn’t
mean anything.  She was armed too and didn’t have any bad intentions.  Just
because they had guns didn’t mean they were bad guys.  But she wasn’t naïve,
and wasn’t about to trust them.

“He’s just up the road.  Him and his brothers.  Thanks
anyway.”  She shouted back, knowing her pitiful ruse would most likely not
deter them.

She wanted to step on the gas.  Go faster.  Run away from
the men, but there were a couple of big problems with that idea.  On pavement
there was no way the truck could outrun or out maneuver the much nimbler car. 
And assuming the men were willing to hang back and follow her, she wasn’t about
to lead them to her house.

Katie was watching from the corner of her eye and the man
made the decision for her when he raised the shotgun and stuck it out his
window.  Yanking the steering wheel to the left she smashed the truck into the
side of the Buick.  The man barely got his weapon and arms back in the vehicle
before the side of the Ford struck the car hard enough to shatter glass and
send it spinning across the oncoming lanes.

The truck weighed roughly twice as much as the car and Katie
had delivered a solid blow.  The car’s driver fought the wheel, trying to get
them back under control, but he ran out of road before he could stop their
slide.  The Buick came to a stop in a rock filled water retention basin a few
feet off the side of the street.  The rear tires spun uselessly when he tried
to accelerate back onto the pavement.

Katie was shaking all over, but managed to control herself
and floored the accelerator.  The engine roared as the truck sped up.  She
hadn’t covered much ground when she heard two booms from behind her.  Not
letting off the gas she looked in the mirror and saw the man who had been
talking to her standing outside the disabled car.  He had fired two blasts from
his shotgun, but as far as she could tell neither had found their mark.

Staying on the throttle Katie shot through a couple of
intersections, then forced herself to slow when she realized she’d pushed the
truck to over a hundred miles an hour.  Slowing to a more sedate speed she
looked at the Safeway as she passed, a grim expression settling on her face when
she saw several bodies lying in the parking lot.  The men were still guarding
the front of the store.  The crowd in the parking lot had withdrawn behind
their vehicles.  Even at a glance she could see lots of long guns and didn’t
want to be anywhere in the area when the real battle started.

She made it home without any further incident, impatiently
waiting for first the gate then the garage door to open.  Katie didn’t step out
of the truck until the door was fully closed behind her.  She started to survey
the damage to the truck, but the dim bulb in the door opener didn’t provide
enough light.  Turning on a bank of overhead fluorescents, she caught her
breath. 

The sheet metal on the driver’s side of the Ford was dented
and scraped for most of the length of the vehicle where she’d rammed into the
Buick.  Walking down the side she stopped and shivered when she saw the damage
from two shotgun blasts.  The man hadn’t missed, and she hadn’t been far enough
away. 

On the left rear fender an area larger than a dinner plate
had close to twenty holes punched through the metal.  A matching spot was also
on the tailgate, directly in line with the driver’s seat.  If he’d aimed a
little higher… Katie started to think, then stopped herself from going there. 
She had made it back safely, that was what mattered.

Turning the lights off, she walked into the house, poured a
stiff shot of vodka and sat down on the couch to see if there was any news
being broadcast on the TV. 

The time passed slowly, Katie struggling to deal with the
tedious boredom.  The power was still on so she tried running on the treadmill,
but was distracted and after half an hour shut it off.  Not only wasn’t she in
the frame of mind for exercise, she was concerned about not being able to hear
anything other than the whine of the belt and her pounding feet.  She didn’t
have any information that conditions had gotten worse, but she didn’t see how
they could have improved.

A couple of days passed and Steve hadn’t called her back. 
The sat phone didn’t have signal and wouldn’t ring in the house, so she was in
the habit of going outside every half an hour to check for voice mail.  Every
time she was outside she dialed John’s number, but never received anything
other than a recorded message that the network was unavailable. 

More times than not while outside, she’d hear gunfire. 
Sometimes it was distant, others it sounded fairly close.  The pistol never
left her hip and she’d taken to carrying the rifle outside with her, hanging
from a one-point sling around her shoulders.

Late in the afternoon she couldn’t wait any longer to hear
from Steve.  Walking out into the heat, she gave the phone time to connect to a
satellite then dialed his number.  After several rings he answered, sounding
groggy from sleep.  She’d forgotten the time difference between Arizona and
Australia.

They talked for a few minutes, Steve sounding slightly
warmer than the first time she’d spoken to him.  He had finally found a way
late the previous evening to gain access to satellite imagery and filled her in
on what he’d seen.  He started with Atlanta; her heart sinking when she heard
the majority of the city had burned.

He took her around the country, describing the devastation
he was seeing and the herds of infected that were starting to form. 

“What does the Phoenix area look like?”  Katie asked,
holding her breath.

“Lots of fires,” he said after a few minutes of looking for
the right feed and zooming in.  “Lots of fighting.  There’s a steady stream of
traffic heading north on the Interstate, but it’s barely moving.  Where are you
in the area?  Wait.  Never mind.  I can pull your GPS location from the phone’s
signal.”

Katie could hear rapid fire typing for a couple of minutes,
then just the sound of Steve breathing as he waited for the adjusted feed to
display on his screen.

“OK, got you.  Is that you standing by a swimming pool?” 
Katie involuntarily looked skyward, as if she could see the orbiting camera
that was capturing her image at the moment. 

“That’s you,” Steve said a moment later.  “Just as beautiful
as ever.”

“Steve…” Katie started to admonish him.

“Sorry,” he said.  “It’s just that I thought I’d never see
you or hear from you again.  It’s really good to be talking to you.”

Katie took a breath, biting off her impulse to remind him
she was married.  He was obviously still not over her, and didn’t sound to be
in the most stable state of mind.  She needed his help and alienating him
wasn’t the way to go.

“It’s good to talk to you, too.”  She finally said.  “Now,
tell me what’s going on around me.  Please.”

“OK, the neighborhood you’re in is quiet.  I don’t see any
movement or any damage.  The gates are still up and intact.  Open desert to the
east and northeast of you.  A couple of trucks driving on the highway that runs
up into the mountains to your northeast.  Fires to the south of you, but the
closest one is five miles away.”

Katie turned to look to the south, seeing three plumes of
black smoke climbing into the air.  “I see the smoke from the fires to the
south.”

“North of you is more neighborhoods.  They all look gated. 
One of them has had the gates torn out, but I don’t see any movement or any
other damage.  West is… west is a problem.  The freeway a few miles to your
west is jammed with cars.  No vehicles moving, but people are walking along the
shoulder and in the median, heading north.  What’s north?”

“The mountains,” Katie answered.  “It’s summer here.  Hot as
hell.  People are trying to get out of the city and that’s the only direction
that isn’t more desert.”

“Makes sense.  All right, on west of the freeway it looks
like a war zone.  We’ve got burned out buildings and vehicles all over the
place.  Lots of movement on the ground.  Medium sized groups and they’re all
armed.”

“Does it look like any of them are coming this direction?” 
Katie asked.

“No.  They’re occupied with fighting each other.  Looks like
lots of stores and that’s where the biggest concentrations of people are.” 
Steve said.

Katie stood silent, processing the information she had just
gotten.  None of it surprised her.  There were five large grocery stores all
within a couple of miles of each other and that’s what everyone was fighting
over.  Her fear was that when the stores were stripped bare the mobs were going
to start spreading out and forcing their way into homes to take any food the
people in them might have.

“What?”  Katie asked.  Steve had been talking but she hadn’t
been listening, lost in her own thoughts.

“I said I’ve been doing some research and I have an idea how
to get you out of there.”  He repeated.

“Steve, I really appreciate all you’re doing, but I can’t
leave.  What if John shows up and I’m not here.”  Katie said.

“Listen to me.  This isn’t about me or him, this is about
getting you to safety.  We both know things are only going to get worse, and in
a hurry.  The country is shattered.  Do you really believe he’ll make it all
the way from Atlanta to Phoenix?  That’s what?  1,800 miles at least?”

Katie stifled a deep sigh, not wanting Steve to hear her
frustration.  She knew he was right about the odds, but she also knew her
husband.  There weren’t many like him. 

“What’s your idea?”  She asked, more to placate him than
anything.

“Do you know where Gateway airport is?”  He asked.

“Yes,” Katie said.  The airport was a former Air Force
bomber base that had been closed due to budget cuts and taken over by the city
to supplement the main civil airport in Phoenix.  It was about 15 miles due
south of where she stood.

“That’s the Arizona hub for FedEx.  I’m looking at them on
satellite right now and they’ve got half a dozen long range cargo planes
sitting on the tarmac.  Long range enough to make it here to Western
Australia.  You remember our contract with them?  I’ve already checked and I
can still access their systems and create a flight with you on the manifest. 
All you have to do is make it to the airport.”  Steve’s voice sounded hopeful. 
Cautious, but hopeful that she would say yes.

“I have to think about it,” Katie finally said, knowing her
answer would be no.

“OK, but don’t think too long.  This will only work as long
as there’s a pilot available.”  For the first time since Katie had called him,
Steve sounded upbeat.

“I’ll think about it,” Katie said again.  “I’ll call you
back in a couple of hours to check on the fighting in the area.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Steve said, keeping the connection open
until Katie finally pressed the END button.