Fire & Ash (26 page)

While Joe did all this, Colonel Reid stood exactly where she was. She said nothing and did nothing.

The ranger came back to the table. “Once we’re airborne,” he said, “we’ll radio you with the coordinates. Just in case. Maybe once you see where we’re going, you’ll understand.”

Reid’s face was wooden.

Joe paused. “I know what you’re dealing with, Jane. And you know that I’m doing the right thing.”

Her lips curled slowly back to reveal small, hard teeth. “I hope you die out there,” she snarled.

Joe sighed and walked away. Benny felt sad. That was exactly what Morgie Mitchell had said to him before they’d left him behind in Mountainside. Even now Benny didn’t think the colonel meant those words, any more than Morgie had. Sometimes you can be so hurt, so sad, and so confused that the only words you can force out are hateful ones.

Benny started to turn, but paused as Lilah pointed a finger at Reid. “Take care of Chong.”

“Louis Chong is a patient in this facility,” said Reid. “Don’t insult me.”

Lilah shook her head. “It’s not an insult. It’s a threat. I thought that was clear.”

She turned and walked toward the helicopter.

It occurred to Benny that this had all been going on a long time without any of Reid’s soldiers interfering. That didn’t seem right.

“Colonel?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral. “Where are the soldiers? Where’s everyone else?”

He expected a sharp answer or at least some sarcastic remark. Instead he saw sadness flood into her eyes. Her shoulders sagged for a moment, as if some tremendous weight pressed down on them.

But she did not answer Benny’s question.

60

T
HEY CLIMBED INTO THE HELICOPTER
, and Joe buckled everyone into a seat. Grimm threw himself onto the deck with a loud clank of armor. Only Riot remained standing.

“You need to buckle up, girl,” said Joe.

But she shook her head. “I ain’t going. I don’t like to leave Eve here alone. Little bird’s been hurting something bad, and I want to keep an eye on her.”

No one could argue with that. Lilah did something that surprised Benny. The stern, detached Lost Girl reached over and took Riot’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. For a fierce moment Riot clutched that hand like it was a lifeline. Lilah bent and kissed Riot’s hand. There was no romance in it, just a connection on a wordless, human level. A conversation through action rather than words.

It stirred Benny’s heart. Since Chong got sick, Lilah had become almost a nonperson. Cold, incredibly remote, and harsh. Could she be thawing? Or was Eve too powerful a reminder of Annie?

Benny said, “Give Evie a kiss from me.”

Riot gave him a sad little smile. “She liked those balloons.”

“It was nice to see her smile.”

That changed Riot’s expression, but she turned away to hide whatever was in her eyes. At the door she paused.

“Y’all come back safe and sound, hear?”

Then she stepped outside, and they could hear her crunching steps as she ran back to the bridge.

“Balloons?” asked Joe.

Benny explained about the pack of brightly colored balloons he’d found in the reaper’s quad. “Can’t figure why he’d have them, though.”

“Everyone’s a scavenger these days,” observed Joe. “Maybe he knew some kids and thought they might like them.”

That thought didn’t make Benny feel any better. Kids waiting for the reaper to return with a present for them.

He sighed and busied himself with trying to adjust the straps. Seats requiring buckles were as far outside Benny’s experience as helicopters were. However, he couldn’t tell if the hammering of his heart was because of the thought of actually
flying
—particularly in a machine that was as extinct to his experience as the dinosaurs—or because of the confrontation he’d just had with Colonel Reid. He suspected that it was both in roughly equal measures.

Nix sat next to him, her small hand in his, fingers entwined, skin icy cold. Lilah sat across from him, and her thoughts were clearly directed inward. Shutters had dropped behind her eyes.

Joe slid the door shut, squatted down, and shouted over the whine of the engine. “We used to have an expression: ‘This just got real.’ Well, that’s where we are. We’re stealing government equipment, and we have no friends here at Sanctuary except a bunch of monks.”

“Is that meant as a pep talk?” asked Benny.

“Just stating the facts.”

“Thanks,” said Nix, “but I’m pretty sure we’re already scared enough as it is.”

Joe grinned.

“Do we even know where we’re going?”

“We do.” Joe removed a big map from his pocket and spread it out on the floor and tapped a spot with a forefinger. “Right here.”

Nix leaned in and read the words printed on the map. “Death Valley National Park. Oh, isn’t that wonderful.”

“ ‘Death’ Valley?” asked Benny. “Seriously? Death Valley?”

“That’s the DVNP on the note we found,” observed Nix. “It fits.”

“I get that, but really . . .
Death
Valley?”

“I think we all appreciate the irony,” said Nix.

“Not sure you do,” said Benny. He reached out with the toe of his shoe and tapped another spot. “Does that actually say the ‘Funeral Mountains’?”

“Don’t let it spook you, kid,” said Joe. “Those names were given long before the dead rose.”

“That’s actually not a comfort,” said Benny, and Nix nodded agreement.

“We’re heading to a spot called Zabriskie Point on the eastern side of Death Valley, south of Furnace Creek. It’s in the badlands. . . .”

“Oh, ‘badlands.’ Also very comforting.”

Joe said, “Look, if we pool all of what we know, we come up with a picture that’s a little grim and a little hopeful. I think we can safely deduce that Dr. McReady was not on the
C-130 when it crashed. It seems clear that the plane stopped at the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon, where I believe Doc McReady and Field Team Five deplaned and took alternate transport to Death Valley.”

“Why did Dr. McReady stop at the base in Oregon?” asked Lilah. “What’s there?”

“Ah, well,” said Joe diffidently. “One of our dirty little secrets. Even though that base had been officially decommissioned, it was actually still in operation at the time of the outbreak.”

“You mean there were still chemical weapons there?” Benny asked.

“Were,” agreed Joe, “and are. Chemical and biological weapons, agents, compounds, and ingredients. It was all stockpiled there. The decommissioning process was a smoke screen. The government was making a show of complying with the Chemical Weapons Convention, an arms control agreement that outlawed the production, stockpiling, and use of all chemical weapons. The international agreement was administered by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons based in the Netherlands.”

“But we kept the weapons?”

Joe looked pained. “There are a lot of skeletons in the closet, kids.”

“Okay, so why would Dr. McReady stop there?” insisted Nix.

“Because there is a lot of crucial equipment there,” said Joe. “Stuff the American Nation can’t manufacture yet. Stuff like hazmat suits, biohazard containment gear, pretty much everything McReady might need if she was going to collect
field samples of a mutating pathogen. And there were planes there too. It’s possible that one of them—a prop job, not a jet—could have been repaired. Or maybe that had already been done and McReady got wind of it. Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that she stopped there, got some alternate transport, and as far as we know she’s still alive somewhere.”

“In Death Valley,” said Benny.

“Possibly.”

Nix said, “Death Valley isn’t that far, is it?”

“Hundred miles and change,” said Joe.

“And the doc went missing a year ago?”

Joe nodded. “Closer to eighteen months. We’ve been looking, but the country’s too big. And we don’t have enough resources.”

“If she’s still alive,” said Nix, “she can’t be trying all that hard to get home. She could have walked it half a dozen times by now.”

Joe winced, but gave another nod. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. But we still have to try and find her. Now sit back and enjoy the ride. None of you have flown before, right? Well—you’re going to love this, I guarantee it.”

They did not.

Lilah was the only one who didn’t throw up.

61

T
HE MOTION OF THE HELICOPTER
changed, and Joe called them all to join him. Green-faced, sweating, nauseous beyond imagining, Benny and the others unbuckled and staggered forward to crowd through into the tiny cockpit. Joe chased Grimm out of the copilot seat so Nix could sit there, and the mastiff sulked his way back into the main cabin. Benny and Lilah jammed the doorway.

“Welcome to the badlands of Death Valley,” said Joe as if he was happy about it. “Zabriskie Point is dead ahead.”

Below them was a landscape that Benny thought looked like the surface of some alien world. Stretches of barren ridges, wind-sculpted badlands, deep hollows cut into the terrain by millions of years of erosion, and the black mouths of caves carved by wind into the sides of grim mountains. Here and there were desperate splashes of color from hardy trees and shrubs that even this hostile wasteland could not kill.

“This makes Nevada look like a rain forest,” observed Nix. “Guess the name isn’t ironic.”

“And there’s not much out here. California State Route 190 cuts through this area, but that was mostly used by people who wanted to get through this territory as quickly
as possible,” said Joe. “No towns, almost no animals, no—”

“Whoa,” said Benny suddenly, “what’s that?”

Joe looked where he was pointing, and his eyebrows rose in surprise. “Well, well, well . . . Isn’t that interesting as all hell?”

Half a mile ahead there was an unnaturally flat shelf of rock set among the higher reaches of the rippled sedimentary rock. As Joe steered the helicopter toward it, they could see that it was paved with concrete. The surface was cracked and overgrown by some determined but leafless creeper vines. A symbol was painted on the shelf. A big circle with a capital letter
H
had long ago been painted in the center.

“That’s a helipad,” said Joe. “A landing pad for helicopters.”

“I thought you said there was nothing out here,” said Nix.

“I did.”

Benny nodded to the helipad. “So . . . what on earth is that doing out here?”

“Guess we’re going to find out.”

They rounded the end of a wall of eroded rock and hovered a hundred feet above the shelf. There were foot trails running down into the badlands, but no visible road and no buildings or structures.

“Weird,” said Benny.

Joe consulted his instruments. “That helipad is dead center of the coordinates. This is definitely where McReady’s team was headed.”

“You said they probably took a small plane here,” said Nix. “Could a plane have landed on that?”

“No. Only another helicopter . . .” Joe’s words trailed off. As they continued to swing around, they could see down the
slope on the far side. It was a sharp drop of hundreds of feet. Halfway down, smashed in among spikes of jagged rock, was the wreckage of another helicopter. Most of the wreckage was twisted into meaningless shapes, but as if to mock them, a flat section of the hull lay on a smaller shelf in plain view. And painted on the side, faded by a year and a half of harsh sun and wind, was the flag of the American Nation.

“Oh God,” gasped Nix.

Benny said, “No one could have lived through that.”

“It’s a wreck,” said Joe, “but let’s not read too much into it yet. We don’t know if it crashed when they got here or sometime later. Those crags are inaccessible. If anyone died in that thing, their zoms would probably still be trapped there.”

Nothing moved, however.

Joe brought the helicopter back up to the level of the helipad. The rear wall of the shelf was flat, but there was a ring of cracked boulders around the shelf, some as big as two-story houses.

“What’s that?” asked Lilah, pointing to the rear corner of the shelf.

A smile appeared slowly on Joe’s face. As he drifted closer, they could all see it. The object was eight feet high and five feet wide, and though it was caked with dust and clots of dirt, it was clearly made from solid steel.

“An air lock,” breathed Benny.

“An air lock,” agreed Joe.

Nix turned a suspicious eye on him. “That’s just like the one at Sanctuary. Is there another lab hidden in there? Did you know about this?”

He shook his head. “If so, then it’s news to me.”

“More secrets?” asked Benny.

“Too many secrets,” Joe said with a slow nod. “Too damn many secrets.”

“Is Dr. McReady in there?” asked Lilah.

No one answered. The door looked like it hadn’t been opened in years.

“Well . . . on the upside,” said Benny, “at least there aren’t any zoms.”

But once again the day seemed to want to mock them. A figure stepped from the shadows of a tall, rocky cliff and glowered up at the helicopter. Another joined it. And another. They moved out of the cave mouths and crawled from under the branches of large shrubs until at least a dozen of them stood in a cluster, hands reaching upward to the noise of the rotors.

“That,” said Joe, “is not good.”

Some of the zoms were dressed in the rags of what had once been military uniforms. One wore a bloodstained lab coat. A few wore black clothes with red tassels and white wings painted on their chests. Only three of the zoms were dressed in ordinary clothes.

“This is really not good,” Joe muttered.

Nix pointed to the zom in the white lab coat. The distance was too great to see the creature’s face, but the thing was clearly a woman.

“Oh no . . . is that Dr. McReady?”

Joe worked the joystick to bring the helicopter down, which made the engine whine increase. The zoms clawed at the sky as if they could tear the machine down and crack it open to get at the sweet meat inside. The ranger leveled off and hovered, then took a pair of binoculars from a
holster beside his chair and peered through them. They all watched him, seeing the muscles locked in tension beneath his clothes. After a full minute, that tension eased by a few strained degrees.