Fire and Ash

“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



THE 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.



“No . . . that’s Dr. Jones. Merry, I think her name was.”



Merry, thought Benny. What a sad name for a creature that would spend eternity down there, perpetually hungry, lingering in dried flesh long past the point where life had any meaning.



Joe handed the glasses to Nix and nodded toward where the Teambook was tucked under the dashboard. At his direction she found the page for Dr. Merry Jones and confirmed the identity of the zom in the lab coat. Then she flipped through the other pages and identified three of the soldiers—Engebreth, Hollingsworth, and Carr. The others were reapers. She began to close the book when Lilah stopped her.



“Go back,” she said urgently, and as Nix fanned back through the pages, Lilah thrust a hand out and stabbed one photo with her finger. “There.”



It was the page for Sergeant Louisa Crisp.



“What about her?” asked Joe.



“There, she’s down by that tall rock,” said Lilah. “See her?”



“That girl’s a reaper,” began Nix, but Benny cut her off.



“No . . . look at her.”



They did, their eyes flicking back and forth between the reaper who stood at the edge of the pack and the face of the staff sergeant in the Teambook. The thick black hair was gone, but the woman had a very distinct Native American face. She looked a lot like Deputy Gorman from the town watch, who was full-blooded Navajo.



“That’s her,” Lilah said with certainty.



“Damn,” breathed Joe. “Louisa Crisp was the squad leader for Field Team Five. It was her job to protect the science team.”



Nix shook her head. “But she became a reaper. Why?”



Joe didn’t answer that. His finger rested lightly on a plastic trigger mounted on the control joystick. “Listen to me,” he said. “We have to set down and try to get through that air lock. That’s going to take time, and it’s going to leave us exposed. We have two choices. We trust to cadaverine and hope that it works on them. Smells don’t travel as well in air this dry.”



“Or . . . ?” asked Benny with a sinking heart. He knew where this was going.



“Or we eliminate the threat here and now.”



“God,” breathed Nix. “We can’t just kill them. They’re victims. . . .”



“We all know what they are, Nix,” said Lilah. “But I don’t see any real choice.”



But something else was bothering Benny, something beyond the ethical dilemma. “Wait a sec,” he said. “Joe, can this thing get closer to the ground? I mean, can you like . . . skim just above the ground from one side of the clearing to the other? Maybe get almost to the ground near them and then sort of—I don’t know what to call it—drift away from them. Not up, but across the ground. Can you do that?”



The ranger started to ask why, then smiled and nodded, getting Benny’s meaning. “Let’s give that a try.”



Joe lowered the helicopter so that the wheels bumped against the rocky ground ten yards from the cluster of zoms. The zoms instantly broke into a flat-out run, screaming like demons, hands tearing the air as they swarmed forward. Joe didn’t bother to drift backward and instead rose to fifty feet and hovered.



The truth was obvious.



They were all R3’s. Every last one.



Joe slowly turned the Black Hawk to face the zoms, who had now stopped below the machine. Some of them tried jumping up to catch the helicopter, even though it was too far above them. The ranger curled his finger around the trigger.



“You kids go back,” he suggested. “You don’t want to see this.”



“No,” said Benny, “we don’t.”



“Who would?” asked Lilah.



Nix spoke some words very softly. It was a prayer they’d heard twice the day before they’d left town. First in one cemetery as the Houser family was buried, then in another cemetery as Zak Matthias, Charlie Pink-eye’s nephew, was put into the cold ground.



A prayer for the dead.



In the cabin behind them, Grimm tilted his big head and bayed like a hound from some old-time horror novel.



As Joe opened fire with the thirty-millimeter chain guns, Benny thought he heard the big ranger murmur a single word.



“Amen.”



62



THE BIG BLACK HAWK HOVERED above the scene of carnage. Where a minute ago there had been a cluster of R3 zoms, the fastest and most dangerous kind, now there was torn meat and broken bones. The chain guns had literally torn the dead apart.



“God almighty,” breathed Nix.



Joe’s face was set and grim as he put the machine down on the center of the helipad. The whirling blades threshed the gun smoke and scattered it to the dry desert wind, and blew most of the body parts over the edge. He cut the engine.



“Okay,” Joe said, “gear up.”



Lockers in the back of the helicopter were filled with protective clothing. Thin leather jackets covered with wire mesh and metal washers, arm and leg pads, and gauntlets for their hands. Helmets, too, with wire grilles. All the joints were flexible and the stuff was surprisingly lightweight. Joe showed them a special feature.