Days Of Perdition: Voodoo Plague Book 6 (4 page)

Katie talked to Steve several times over the next few days. 
Her concern grew as he described what he was seeing on the satellite.  What had
been small groups at first were now forming into larger crowds.  Each one had
successfully taken one of the grocery stores, and for the moment things had
reached a degree of equilibrium. 

More plumes of smoke were visible all around her home, and
the sporadic gunfire she heard was coming closer each day.  Then, just after
noon on the sixth day the power went out.  Katie had been expecting it and was
more than a little surprised that it had stayed on as long as it had without
anyone from the utility maintaining the grid.

Within an hour the temperature inside the house climbed from
a comfortable 75 degrees to a stuffy 85.  She knew it would only keep climbing
as it was well over 110 outside with another eight hours before sunset.  She
dumped all of the ice from the freezer into a cooler before it could start
melting, but there wasn’t much else she could do.

Going outside with one of the last bottles of cold water,
Katie sat down and lit another of John’s stash of cigarettes.  Six days since
the attacks.  She had no idea where John was, or if he was even still alive. 
Steve had described to her the massive herds of infected moving around in the
southeastern part of the country.  Had John gotten out ahead of them? 

Katie knew that if he’d had the chance to get out, he’d have
been able to fight his way clear of about anything.  But had he had a chance? 
He could have fallen victim to the dispersal of the nerve gas.  He could have
become trapped by one of the massive herds Steve talked about.  Any number of
things could have happened to him.  She was finally ready to acknowledge that
it was time for her to do something other than wait for him to show up.

But what?  Flee to Australia as Steve wanted her to do? 
Then what?  If she made it was she ready to live her life out without ever
knowing what happened to her husband?  Maybe she should head to the mountains. 
The temperatures wouldn’t be dangerously hot and she could leave John a note
letting him know where she was.

Deciding that was the best course of action, Katie stubbed
the cigarette out and stepped into the sun to call Steve.  He answered on the
first ring, sounding happy to hear from her then disappointed when he learned her
final decision was that she wasn’t coming to Australia.

“Whatever you do, you need to do it soon.”  He said in a
subdued voice.  “There’s a large group formed up just to the west of you and
they’re starting to move into the residential neighborhoods to loot the
houses.  You don’t want to be home when they show up.”

“How bad is it?”  Katie asked.

“Bad.  They’re doing things… well, you’ve seen this happen
before.  I don’t need to tell you what they’re doing, especially to people that
try to fight back.”

“No, I don’t want to know.”  She said.  “How does the
highway northeast of me going into the mountains look?”  Katie wanted to rush
inside and make her final preparations to depart, but she couldn’t move under
cover until she was through speaking with Steve.

“Hold on,” he said.  Katie could hear him breathing into the
phone as he typed for a few moments.  Then, “It’s wide open at the moment.  A
few abandoned vehicles along the way, but they’re to the side and not blocking
the road.  There’s some traffic moving, but you’re far enough out of the city
that it seems to have been overlooked.”

“Thank you, Steve.  I have to start moving now.  I’ll call
you once I’m on the road.”

“Do that, and be careful.”  He said.  “I love you.”

Steve ended the call quickly, almost before what he’d said
had registered with Katie.  She paused for a second then dashed into the
house.  A small pack with some clean clothes was ready to go by the garage
door.  Grabbing one of John’s large packs, Katie filled it with every rifle
magazine that was in the safe.  A first aid kit went in on top of the magazines
and she topped it off with another pistol and several loaded pistol magazines.

Setting this aside she sat down at John’s desk and pulled a
spiral notepad and pen out of the center drawer.  Thinking for a moment, she
started writing.

Waited six days.  Things were getting bad in the area and
I had to leave.  I’m going to the place in the mountains where we got drunk and
I got mad at you when I thought you were looking at that girl’s ass.  You have
to remember that, and you have to come find me.  I’ll stay there as long as I
can.  If I have to move again I’ll find a way to leave word for you.  Please
come find me.  I love you!  Me

Katie always signed any card or note she wrote to John as
Me.  She didn’t know how it started or why, it just did.  Now, that unique
quirk would guarantee he would know it was from her.  In the modern, digital
age she doubted he’d recognize her handwriting any more than she would his. 
Neither of them actually wrote very often.  Tearing the paper off the pad she
ran to the large mirror in the entryway and taped it to the middle of the
glass.

Rushing, she carried the pack of magazines out to the truck,
putting it alongside her bag of clothes in the back seat.  Back in the house
she grabbed a case of ammunition out of the bottom of the safe and took that to
the truck, coming back inside for the cooler full of ice.  When this was loaded
she grabbed an axe from the garage, tossing it in the bed of the truck along
with her looted cans of food.

Seeing the food reminded her to run back inside and get a
can opener, a small metal cooking pot and a few basic utensils.  When all of
this was stowed in the truck she paused to look over her supplies for a
moment.  Satisfied she was as ready as she would ever be, Katie climbed up
behind the wheel and pushed the button to raise the garage door.

The door didn’t move.  With a curse she remembered the power
was out.  Jumping back down she looked up at the door opener, but there wasn’t
enough light near the ceiling for her to tell how to release the mechanism and
manually open the door.  Realizing she needed a flashlight, Katie ran back into
the house and yanked open the closet doors in John’s office.  Snatching a small
LED flashlight off a shelf, she also scooped up a pack of spare batteries and
ran back to the truck.

Katie didn’t know how to release the door, but she did know
it could be released.  She’d seen John do it once when the power went out
during a violent thunderstorm.  Clicking the flashlight on she played the
bright beam across the motor, seeing nothing that looked promising.  Examining
the track she spied a short rope with a red handle on the end hanging down from
what looked like a locking lever.  That had to be it.

Climbing up on top of the rear tire, she swung a leg onto
the bed cover of the truck to gain enough height to reach the red handle. 
Pulling, she felt it move a couple of inches, a loud click coming from the
lever to which the rope was attached.  Jumping down she squeezed between the
truck’s rear bumper and the door, bending her knees to get low enough to reach
the grab handle that was at ground level.

The door moved freely, rolling open in its track as Katie
straightened up with her hand wrapped around the handle.  She placed her hands
on the bottom edge of the door and lifted with a surge, the door rolling the
rest of the way and coming to a stop fully open. 

Her attention had been on the door and she was surprised
when she looked down the driveway and saw two young men standing in the road
staring back at her.  Both were carrying rifles and wearing backpacks.  Katie
only had the pistol with her, the rifle and shotgun in the cab of the truck. 
She froze in place, hand only inches from the holstered weapon, but she had no
illusions about being able to draw it quickly and fight with it.  That was
John’s thing, not hers.

Not that she couldn’t shoot.  She was actually a pretty good
shot.  On the pistol range with the weapon already in her hand and plenty of
time to aim.  John had tried to teach her how to quickly draw a handgun and
engage a target, but she hadn’t been interested.  She’d foolishly thought to
herself that she didn’t need to know how to be a gun fighter with him around.

The two men were frozen also, eyes locked on hers.  They
both looked surprised to see her, and at least for the moment weren’t
exhibiting any aggressive behavior. 

“I’m leaving,” Katie finally shouted to them.  “You’re
welcome to anything in the house.  There’s food and water inside.”

They glanced at each other but didn’t answer.  After a
couple of moments Katie started edging sideways along the back of the truck. 
She was almost to the corner where she was prepared to turn and make a break
for the cab when one of them spoke.

“Wait.  Please.  Take us with you.”  Neither of them had
raised their weapons, rather had lowered the muzzles even more when the one
shouted to her.

Katie paused.  Every instinct told her to not trust them. 
She was a woman by herself, and even though they were young, both were
considerably larger than her.  If they were close they wouldn’t need their
weapons to overpower her and take whatever they wanted.  Sure, she knew how to
fight, but she was also realistic about her chances against two much larger
opponents.

As she stood there considering her options and trying to
think of a way to turn them down without inciting them into doing something rash,
there was a loud, rending crash from down the street.  The direction of the
gates that secured her neighborhood.  The echoes were still bouncing around the
neighborhood when she heard a roaring engine approaching.

The two men in the street turned to look in the direction of
the crash and Katie seized the opportunity to dash deeper into the dark
garage.  Jerking the door open to the truck, she jumped up on the running board
and climbed behind the wheel, pulling the door closed behind her.  Turning in
the seat she watched out the back window as the men started running.

They headed down the street, away from her house, ducking
into the Wilson’s driveway before she lost sight of them.  The occupant of the
vehicle that had crashed the gate must have seen them because a moment later a red
Dodge pickup roared past her house and screeched to a stop in front of the
Wilson’s.  Four men hopped out of the bed of the truck, two more exiting the
passenger side of the cab, all of them armed and in hot pursuit.

Katie could see the silhouette of the driver’s head still
behind the wheel of the idling truck.  She knew if she backed out of her garage
he’d spot her before she made it to the street.  But staying where she was
wasn’t looking like a good option.  These guys had to be part of a group that
was looting houses, and they had already shown they had no hesitation to attack
anyone that wasn’t part of their gang.

It was better to go before the others got back.  Making her
decision, Katie started the Ford, shifted into reverse and floored the gas. 
The truck shot backwards out of the garage and she nearly lost control when it
bounced into the street.  Getting it stopped she frantically shifted into drive
and pressed the throttle to the floor.  The rear tires screamed and smoked for
a second, then she shot forward, steering around the curve that led to the
gates.

The driver of the Dodge was honking his horn, no doubt
calling his friends back so they could pursue her.  She didn’t think he’d been
able to tell she was a woman, and felt some relief about that, though how that
helped her at the moment she didn’t know.  Maybe they wouldn’t be as determined
to catch her.  She hoped, but had no illusions about what happened to women when
a society starts disintegrating.

Rounding the curve she caught her breath when she saw
another pickup blocking the opening where the entrance gate had been rammed off
its mounts.  Tightening her grip on the wheel she aimed for the closed exit,
keeping her foot firmly on the floor.  She had covered half the distance to
where the truck was sitting when its occupants noticed her.  Racing towards the
barricade, she noticed two men stand up in the bed of the pickup a moment
before the Ford’s bumper slammed into the heavy, iron gate.

The collision was bone jarring, but the momentum of the big
Ford battered the gate off its hinges, sending it cartwheeling down the road to
bounce off a tree trunk before coming to rest on a neatly tended lawn.  Gunfire
erupted from the bed of the pickup that had been guarding the entrance, but
Katie couldn’t tell if they actually hit anything or not.  All she knew was no
bullets struck her, and if any hit the truck they didn’t hit anything vital.

Braking hard, she made a left onto the main road, the Ford
threatening to tip up on its outside set of wheels.  Fighting it back under
control she stayed on the gas and in less than a quarter of a mile had to brake
again for a right turn.  She spared a glance in the rearview, not seeing any
pursuit.  Yet.

On the major road that fed into the area, Katie pushed the
Ford as hard as she dared, the speedometer needle sweeping up to 100, then
beyond.  She checked her mirrors and still saw no sign of pursuit, but didn’t
back off on her speed.  Right now the best thing she could do was to quickly
put as much distance between herself and the looters as possible.

A couple of miles later she slowed to turn left onto the
small, two-lane highway that ran northeast to what she hoped would be safety in
the mountains.  Negotiating the turn she checked over her shoulder, breathing a
cautious sigh of relief when she still didn’t see any sign of the men who’d
crashed her neighborhood.  Feeling slightly more secure, she lowered her speed
to 70, though she would have liked to go faster.

70 was fast enough in the truck, though, as she had to brake
hard and swerve around a burned out car that suddenly appeared when she rounded
a curve in the road.  Now she slowed to 60, knowing she missed running into the
wreck by only a couple of feet.  She wanted speed, but John had built up the
Ford for bouncing and bulling its way off road, not high speed driving on
pavement.

Katie calmed down after a few miles of not seeing any other
vehicles in her mirrors.  She’d had to avoid two more abandoned cars, but at
the lower speed was able to do so without any adrenaline inducing dramatics. 
She had already passed the sign welcoming her to Tonto National Forest and soon
crested a minor pass in the foothills, dropping back down to the Salt River
valley. 

A few miles ahead she could see where the road she was on
intersected with a larger highway that ran past Saguaro Lake, then on up to the
Mogollon Rim.  The Rim is the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau and runs
200 miles across Arizona.  On The Rim, thick forests of Ponderosa Pine grow and
the weather is cool in the summer and cold in the winter.  South of The Rim is
where the Arizona desert begins, several thousand feet of altitude lower with
blistering summers and mild winters.

Turning onto the larger highway, Katie began seeing other
vehicles fleeing the Phoenix metro area.  Cars, trucks and SUVs crammed full of
families and supplies.  There weren’t a lot of them, but enough that for a
moment things almost seemed normal.  Until she rounded a long, climbing curve
and traffic came to an abrupt stop.

In front of her she could see a long line of vehicles, red
brake lights glowing, stretching out of sight around the next curve in the
road.  Soon a heavily loaded Chevy Tahoe came to a stop only a couple of feet
from the back of the Ford and she was glad she had left plenty of space between
her bumper and the car in front of her.

She checked the mirror; grateful to see the Tahoe was
occupied by two women and a lone man.  The car to her front looked like a man
and woman, and she scanned ahead looking for any vehicles whose occupants might
pose a threat.  Not seeing anything she relaxed slightly, watching in the
rearview as another car came to a stop behind the Tahoe.  Sunlight was
reflecting off its windshield and she couldn’t see inside.

They sat for close to half an hour, occasionally moving
forward a few feet before stopping again for several minutes at a time.  The
highway was two lanes and the entire time Katie had been sitting there hadn’t
been a single vehicle pass her heading south.  Was there an accident ahead that
was blocking the whole road?  With nothing else to do, she considered her
options.

She could move over into the open southbound lane and drive
north, but if that was a good option why weren’t the people ahead of her
already doing that?  Turn around and go back south?  She had room to make the
turn, but if she did that, where would she go?  Because of the rugged and steep
terrain where the desert butted up against the Mogollon Rim there were only a
very few ways to drive north from Phoenix.

Mentally smacking herself, Katie powered up the satellite
phone and dialed Steve.  His phone rang ten times before going to voicemail. 
With a sinking feeling at the thought of losing her lifeline, she disconnected
without leaving a message and dialed again.  This time he answered on the
fourth ring.

“Sorry, I was in the bathroom.”  He said when he answered.

“You scared me,” Katie said.  “I was afraid you’d abandoned
me.”

“Like you did me?” Steve shot back in a haughty tone of voice.

Katie took a deep breath and counted to ten before
speaking.  “Steve, I’ve apologized for that more times than I can count.  I
thought we’d moved past it and you were going to help me.”

He was quiet for a long time, only his faint breathing
audible.  “You’re right.  You have.  It just still hurts.  I’m pulling up your
location.  Did you get out of your house?”

Katie told him about barely escaping ahead of the looters,
then asked him to look and tell her what had traffic stopped.  He mumbled to
himself as he worked, Katie struggling to maintain her patience.

“You’re about three miles from a road block,” he finally
said.

“Road block?  Who’s blocking the road?”

“I’m zooming.  Hold on.”  She heard some clicks and more
mumbling.  “There’s a big dump truck pulled across the road and at least thirty
armed men.  They’re pulling people out of vehicles and taking supplies.”

“Shit.  Is anyone fighting back?”  Katie asked.

“Doesn’t look like it.  They’re all in some kind of uniform,
but I can’t tell what it is.  Hang on, let me look at the vehicles they have
parked behind the dump truck.”

Katie wanted to scream.  She’d seen this behavior in war
torn countries the world over, but had never thought she’d experience it here
at home.

“OK, there are Tribal Police vehicles parked behind the
truck, but if these guys are real Indians I’ll eat my hat.  Probably stolen
from an equipment yard, and they’re using the uniforms to bluff people.”  Steve
finally said.

“Great.  More assholes.  All right, what about behind me. 
Is it clear for ten miles?”  Katie had another option in mind.

“Hold on,” Steve said, the sound of a keyboard clacking
coming clearly over the sat phone. 

“You’re good,” he eventually answered.  “There’s more
traffic coming up behind you heading north, but it’s mostly single vehicles. 
Nothing that would obviously be a problem.  What are you thinking?”

“There’s a Forest Service fire road that cuts through some
rugged terrain, but goes all the way to Payson.  I’ve been on it before.  I
know this truck can make it, it’s just going to be a long, rough drive.”  Katie
answered, checking her mirrors.

Cranking the wheel all the way to the left, Katie pulled across
the southbound lane, driving off the pavement on the far side of the road to
complete her U-turn and head back towards town.  The people that were stuck in
line behind her stared, wondering what she was doing.  She thought about
warning them of what was waiting ahead, but was afraid to approach any of the
vehicles.

About twenty vehicles had stacked up behind her and she
quickly passed them as she accelerated south.  As she drove she met half a
dozen heavily loaded vehicles heading north, but kept her eyes focused on the
road ahead after checking to make sure none of them turned around to follow
her.  Just over eight miles later she found what she was looking for. 

A small, dirt pullout on the left side of the road with a
heavy steel gate guarding access to a trail leading up into the mountains.  A
large combination padlock secured the gate, the whole arrangement solidly set
into concrete footings.  Pulling to a stop with the front bumper close to the
gate, Katie leaned across the cab and dug through the glove compartment.

The Forest Service allowed people to use the fire roads to
get into backcountry that wasn’t accessible by any other method.  All you had
to do was fill out a form and they’d issue a free permit that was good for six
months and also had a list of date ranges and gate codes printed on it.  The
lock’s combo was changed monthly and Katie hoped John had a recent permit.

Finding the right piece of paper, she scanned the dates,
happily finding the current range.  Reciting the combo to herself, she checked
the area around the truck and seeing all was clear hopped out and ran to the
lock.  The number wheels were stiff from exposure to the weather, but once she
got the right combo dialed in the lock popped open.  It took her less than a
minute to swing the gate open, drive through, hop back out, close and re-lock
it.