District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (22 page)

“And leave the rest of the fleet here like unguarded sheep?
I’m certain that if there was enemy activity in Norfolk or beyond, your warship’s
sophisticated suite of sensors would have already picked up something.”

Qi set his jaw. Peering out the porthole, his face seemed to
go slack. He picked up the direct line to the bridge and said two words: “Drop
anchor.”

Though he couldn’t hear what was being said on the other
end, Zhen still watched with feigned interest as Qi listened to the commander
on the bridge.

“Yes,” Qi said. “We stay the night here. Put fresh bodies on
the bridge and tell the others to sleep and be ready to throw lines at 0300.” He
hung up the phone and looked Zhen square in the face. “If you ever disrespect
me like that again, Captain, I
will
have you fed to the jiangshi.”

Zhen’s lips were twin white lines. He stood at attention and
saw his reflection in the seated admiral’s shiny bald pate.

“Ready your vehicles and weapons and then rest your men,
Captain Zhen. We will make landfall at first light and then go into the heart
of decadence as saviors in the eyes of her remaining populace.”

Salutes were exchanged and Qi ushered the captain out ahead
of him. “I hope your assessment is correct, young Captain. For if it is not,
all of those days spent on the open sea will have been wasted.”

Zhen merely nodded and, with the sound of the door closing
at his back, stalked off in the opposite direction of the elitist, Communist-Party-loving
ingrate.

Davis left Cade at the entrance to the building housing
Nash’s new office. A stone’s throw from the TOC, her new one-level digs
reminded him of his dentist’s office back home. With its gently-pitched roof,
multi-paned windows and horizontal metal siding, the place looked as if it had
been designed in the late eighties when aesthetics of government facilities were,
at best, an afterthought.

The pair of doors out front were mostly glass and locked. He
pushed the doorbell button next to the jamb and got no results. So he knocked
until an interior door sucked in and the diminutive major poked her head out.

Expecting Nash’s face to light up like it always did when
any of the boys her satellites followed into battle graced her doorstep,
instead Cade saw her swallow hard and take a few tentative first steps across
what looked to be some kind of waiting room designed to hold two dozen people
and appointed with nearly twice as many magazines all stacked haphazardly on
low wooden tables.

Nash wove her way through the two-dozen chairs arranged like
a big S with one of the magazine-laden tables at their center. Muttering an apology,
she threw the lock and ushered Cade in from the cold.

“Major,” he said, offering up a cursory salute.

“Save that crap for someone else’s daily affirmation,” she
said, locking the doors behind them.

Not quite sure where this was coming from, Cade put his
hands at his sides. “You wanted to chat before the pre-mission briefing?” he
asked, his tone conveying the concern he was feeling.

“Come,” she said, pointing him into her office, which at
first glance appeared three times the size of her previous one.

Instantly it struck Cade that he hadn’t once been in Nash’s office—at
least here at Schriever—when the AC unit wasn’t cranked so high that his
nipples could cut glass. In fact, it was warmer inside her central office than
the childrearing magazine graveyard he had just been ushered through.

Nash closed the door and stood staring up at him. She was
wearing a long-sleeved shirt that looked to have been taken straight out of the
Air Force Academy gift shop. The official flying eagle image was emblazoned on
it in silver and gave him the impression someone had painted a crude target on
her chest. She wore the same camouflage ABU pants as the emergency personnel.
Tucked into her black boots and bloused to perfection, the contrast the two
articles of clothing presented was telling: part civilian soccer mom and part
soldier.

She said, matter-of-factly, “I hear you had a close call
with a PLA missile on your way here.”

“Nothing Ari and his aircrew couldn’t handle.” He let his
gaze roam the plaques on the wall as Nash circled around behind her desk.

Seeing the Delta operator inspecting her inner sanctum,
which was painted in muted pastels and walled in on one side by half a dozen four-drawer,
steel filing cabinets, Nash said, “This used to be the family services
building. Although I would benefit from both these days, I got rid of the anger
management and AA pamphlets when I moved in.”

Duncan’s recent successes in that arena on his mind, Cade
said, “Lots of people could benefit from those kind of pamphlets.” Steering the
conversation to the Eden survivors, he gave the Cliff’s Notes version of how
they were sitting going into winter. When he began to shower Nash with thanks
for giving his family the antiserum injectors that had recently saved Brook and
Gregory’s lives, the woman made a face and raised a hand, stopping him mid-sentence.

“Sit,” she said, motioning at the modern chrome and leather
chair sitting front and center before her white ash desk. Pulling her rolling
chair from the knee well and dragging it across the carpeted floor, she added,
“We’re both going to have to be sitting for what I need to tell you.” She
parked her leather high-backed chair beside her desk, sat down hard and
swiveled it so that she faced him at a slight angle.

Cade’s mind raced, trying to determine what piece of
information might be so dire in nature that he needed to be sitting to hear it.

Nash said, “We’re finding that the antiserum for Omega isn’t
all it’s cracked up to be.” There was a pregnant pause. “What we thought was
shaking out at a roughly fifty-percent success rate early on has dropped off to
half of that.”

“Better than the alternative,” Cade said pragmatically.
“Before Taryn found the doctor’s thumb drive a Z bite meant certain death. Now
it doesn’t. If you ask me, I’d rather put a revolver with just one round in the
chamber to my head than one with a full cylinder. And I’m pretty damn sure
anyone else finding themselves staring down a fate like Desantos suffered would
be singing the same tune.”

“Me too, Cade. But what I’m trying to tell you is that even
the patients the antiserum worked on initially are starting to show side
effects. Some of the early trial survivors have died of complications we’re
attributing to Omega’s introduction into the system.”

“What about antibiotics? That’s usually the go to where
viruses are concerned, right?”

Nash shook her head. “Antibiotics work on infection.”

“Some of these early survivors … did they turn after they
died?”

“The doctors are in the habit of destroying
everyone’s
brain. It’s become routine no matter the cause of death. Call it superstition.
I don’t know.”

“I hope you’ve changed that practice on the previously
infected.”

“New protocols are in place,” Nash said. She grimaced and
added, “However, a week ago a soldier from the 4th ID who was infected weeks
ago and saved by the antiserum—.” There was a long pause. “He just up and died.”

“And?”

Nash shook her head. A slow, sad, side-to-side wag.

Incredulous, Cade asked, “They didn’t take him to the
morgue. Open him up and see why?”

The major shook her head. “They didn’t know to.”

Cade saw her hands begin to tremble. He looked her in the
eyes and saw they were misted over.

Nash swallowed hard and said, “There were a whole bunch of
dropped balls. To the doctors it appeared as if he’d died of a heart attack. IT
folks are in high demand elsewhere. Means the hospital staff are all still charting
on paper. And this soldier’s chart was misplaced by someone. So they put him
aside and started in on a civilian who had been crushed by a mishandled section
of freeway barrier.”

Seeing where this was going, Cade leaned back against the leather
chair-back.

Nearly crying now, Nash said, “The previously fit
thirty-eight-year-old soldier reanimated on the gurney
after
showing a near
full recovery from his bite wound.” Another pregnant pause. “And the antiserum he
had been saved with came from the same batch as Brook’s.”

The last sentence hit Cade like a gut punch.

“Brook is on the road to a full recovery. I’m sure of it,”
he said, trying to ignore the niggling sensation that he might be lying to
himself.

Sensing a widening channel of denial concerning Cade’s perception
of the ramifications of what she’d just divulged and, though she was certain
that nothing she would say or do could divert the human missile once he’d been
launched, Nash still said what was on her mind. “I totally understand if you
want to get on the next bird to Bastion. I would expect no less.” She quickly
dried her eyes on her sleeve and met his gaze.

Seeing the look of concern parked on the usually stoic Air
Force officer’s face, Cade said, “Thanks for the heads up, Freda. But I’m a big
boy. And Brook, she’s a nurse. She’ll catch anything strange going on inside
her own body. And if she already had suspected something was up, she would have
said something to me about it.”

“How can you be certain she’ll know what it means? This is
all uncharted territory.”

Cade said nothing.

“I think you should tell her,” Nash pressed. “It’s the right
thing to do for all parties involved. For Raven, especially.” She dug in her
desk drawer and came out with a pair of satellite phones complete with power
cords and the factory-provided paperwork. “These are charged. You asked for
them last time we spoke.”

“I’ll take them,” Cade said, ignoring the timing. “We gave
up one of the others so we could keep in touch with our new allies in Bear
River.” Feigning a smile, he handed back the warranty information. “No need for
this.”

Nash took the papers and tossed them on her desk. “The
phones come with a couple of conditions,” she added.

Cade arched a brow. “Everything with you comes with at least
one.”

Nash’s expression didn’t change.

He asked, “What are your conditions?”

“You have to tell Brook and at least one other person at
Eden who you can trust about the 4th ID soldier.”

“And let them draw their own conclusions?”

Nash nodded.

Steering the conversation away from this new curveball
served up by Mr. Murphy, Cade said, “New office. Springs walled in and Z free.
Seems like things are changing real quickly in your neck of the woods.”

“Things are changing all over the United States. We are starting
to hear from communities like Bear River that are springing up all over the
country. And around here,” she said, drying her eyes on her sleeve again, “up
until now, with the some of the Joint Chiefs recovered and bending the
President’s ear on matters of the military, I’ve been left to my own devices.
Kind of set adrift, if you will.”

“We’re lucky to have gotten a healthy Tommy ‘Two Guns’ McTiernan
back in the fold. He
is
the man, Freda. He’s Devil Dog through and
through. Be glad he’s running the show now. Besides, you’ve been assigned to
head this one up.”

“Still makes me feel like the kid who gets picked last at
recess.”

“So how have you been earning your pay?” Cade asked.

“I just send the sats where I’m told and the imagery is
piped directly to Cheyenne where I understand IT folks have been working round
the clock to upgrade and EMP-shield the computer servers.” She looked at the
clock on the wall. “We better be getting to the TOC.”

“I’ve got an idea where we’re going,” Cade said, before divulging
the where and why and then, finally, how he’d come to the conclusion.

“The Long Beach mission played a big part,” Nash conceded.
“Eavesdropping on Ari and Haynes during the flight over from Bastion … that’s
dirty pool.”

“By any means necessary,” Cade said flatly.

Eyes still glistening, Nash said, “Very perceptive. You know
we can’t let the PLA get there first. They’ve already made landfall once. You’ll
see all of the latest satellite imagery at the briefing. Short of Pearl Harbor,
these are the boldest moves an enemy of the United States has ever taken
against her. They know we are severely hamstrung and that’s emboldened them. We
have very few pilots and to a person they are exhausted and, pardon the
metaphor—flying on fumes just like their aircraft. Air and ground resupply
missions are still ongoing, however, not with a frequency that’d make me
comfortable. The latter have suffered huge rates of attrition. And where the
flights in and out of Schriever and Carson were practically nonstop in August
and September”—she shook her head—“the pace of air operations here in October
has slowed to a trickle.”

“Mother Nature?” Cade said.

Nodding, Nash answered, “She’s a bitch. We’ve had one major
snow event here that grounded everything. Without the necessary number of weather
sats to keep us connected to NOAA’s ground-based observatories, high-atmosphere
weather balloons, and the picket of buoys deployed in territorial waters, there’s
no way for the TOC to accurately predict what kind of conditions our air assets
are likely to face when they do go out.”

“If the Farmer’s Almanac is anywhere close to right in its
prediction for this winter we’re going to be snowed in at Eden and you’re going
to be hard pressed to get birds in the air in order to watch your flanks, let
alone keep tabs on the enemy and Zs migrating the warmer climes.”

“Way too many variables to worry about now,” Nash conceded,
just as the phone on her desk emitted an electronic warble.

Nash snatched the handset off the cradle, announced herself
and then listened intently for a handful of seconds. Without saying a word, she
ended the call and replaced the handset.

“Lopez?”

She said nothing.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

She nodded again. “Ruptured appendix. He’s in surgery as we speak.”

Knowing that likely meant he was leading the mission, Cade
hung his head and said a silent prayer for Lopez and the men he was about to
take down range with him.

“The TOC awaits,” Nash said. “And after the briefing see about
having Davis outfit you with everything you’re going to need … starting with a
proper set of fatigues.”

Recalling Duncan’s quip, he said, “What … you don’t like the
Mission Impossible look?”

“It is slimming on you, Wyatt. But if you’re going to be
leading a team into battle …”

Confirmation
, he thought. “Copy that,” he said,
thumbing on the sat phone and dialing a number from memory.

Pursing her lips, Nash rose from her chair.

“Go ahead without me,” Cade said, thumb hovering over the illuminated
Talk button.

With Brook and Raven and Cade occupying her thoughts, Nash
padded from the office, leaving the man alone to make what she guessed to be the
toughest phone call of his life.