Part One (The second half is coming soon)

- Material is the sole intellectual property of Luke Pezanoski (StrykerPez) and shall not be copied, distributed, produced, or used in any way without express permission.


Preface

In the year 2016, the world changed forever. The United States was emerging from its Second Great Depression as a third-world country. New forces were beginning to take shape. The two terms of the democratic president were over, and Americans cried for a new leader that could bring them back to a great power. A new political party was formed, calling themselves the Confederate Party. The newly elected President was a ruthless politician and a brilliant military mind. The other branches of government soon followed suit. President John Eden’s policy was one of military dominance and strict martial control. What the crumbling US lacked in funding and resources, it made up for with millions of starving, unemployed, homeless citizens that were more than happy to join an army that promised food and shelter. The United States soon had the largest standing army of the entire world. The nuclear conflicts of WWII and the Israeli Incident had proved without a doubt that a great nuclear arsenal could never be used again. The nuclear fallout still circled the globe, and warning sirens screamed throughout the cities whenever the winds shifted in the right direction. The key was now in the hands of soldiers who would do things the old-fashioned way: front line combat. Deep in secret US military installations, Eden’s scientists worked on several projects to enhance the average human and create a “super soldier.” The end result was a simple process that would genetically alter the soldier’s body, allowing them to push past their limits, ignore pain and fear, and kill like a machine. Across the globe, military scientists of every nation toiled away on biological, genetic, and chemical weaponry, desperate to create an alternative to nuclear war.

August 4th, 2016, in the desert outside East Gaza, Israel.

Desperate to keep whatever friendly ties he could, President Eden had ordered several platoons of the new super-soldiers to deploy in aid to the weakened Israeli troops. There was slight resistance from a small group of insurgent forces, but the demonic perseverance of the genetically modified men proved insurmountable. The chatter of the decades-old Kalashnikov assault rifles increased as one of the American soldier’s gun jammed. He gave it a disgusted look and threw it down as he unsheathed his massive combat knife from his tactical vest. He leapt over the sandbag wall and walked calmly through the hail of bullets, shrugging them off as if they were no more than pesky flies. He dispatched three of the insurgents with his knife before a fourth rammed him with the bayonet mounted to his rifle. He staggered back, pulled the blade from his chest, and hurled the heavy AK like a spear, catching the insurgent between his terrified eyes. Only then did he fall dead, his body riddled with hundreds of bullets. The last insurgent fighter, one of a handpicked group, raised his eyes to Allah as his body shook with fear of these inhuman creatures, these “super-soldiers.” He also knew he had failed his mission, as a final bullet from one of the American’s rifles tore through his chest cavity. He died with a terrible and deadly secret, one that the American soldiers were unaware of as they searched his body and those of his comrades. They did not know that his mission was to serve as a live carrier of a deadly weapon-grade virus, nor that he had planned to die in the middle of Jerusalem to release the virus. They also could not know that they were now infected and were facing the beginning of a terrifying outbreak.

August 29th, 2016, LAX International Airport, Los Angeles, California.
Attempts to contact Israel Airlines Flight 101 had been unsuccessful since their transponder went off the air over one hour before. There had been no Mayday call or reported trouble. A hazy blip on the radar screen showed a contact heading along their original flight path, so Bruce, the lead Flight Controller, assumed they were having electronics trouble and had lost their radio and transponder. He ordered a crash crew on the runway and put all other planes in a holding pattern as Flight 101 came in for landing. He had no way of knowing the extent of their troubles, and wanted to take no chances. As he trained his high powered binoculars on the big Boeing 747 as it approached Runway 19R, he noticed that one of the big turbojet engines was trailing smoke and there looked to be airframe damage, likely due to depressurization. The big jetliner came in at full power, nearly clipping the tops of the approach indicator lights at the end of the runway. It was nowhere near the center of the runway and about 10 feet from the ground when the pilot abruptly engaged the reverse thrust baffles. The huge plane dropped from the sky as the one smoking engine finally exploded from being slammed into reverse at full thrust. It hit the runway with a sickening crunch as the landing gear was torn away and began sliding sideways on its belly. Bruce watched helplessly as the port wing was sheared off and the vapors in the nearly empty wing fuel tanks ignited in a massive fireball. He could only think of the people packed onto the aging airliner, some of them soldiers trying to return to their families, others coming home from vacation, as it careened across the tarmac leaving a trail of wreckage. When the big jetliner finally came to rest, two of the cabin doors were popped open and emergency escape slides unfurled as the frenzied passengers literally threw themselves from the plane. Bruce watched in horrified fascination as one of the passengers viciously attacked one of the members of the rescue crew, biting at his face and repeatedly stabbing him with the bloody, jagged bones of her own forearm. The petite woman then turned to another one of the rescue crew and heaved him above her head in a titanic display of strength. She let him drop on his neck with bone-crushing force. Around her, the rest of the hundreds of passengers shared the same bizarre blood-lust.
Within a few hours, hundreds of average people were committing terrifying acts of macabre violence. Within a few days, every city, county, and state prison was at maximum capacity with arrests for nearly every violent crime imaginable, and every Emergency Room was packed with the injured. It would take a week for doctors to determine that the cause of the widespread violent behavior was a contagious virus that attacked and modified human nervous tissue. It would take a month before scientists deduced that a crudely modified, weaponized version of the Rabies virus had merged with the DNA from the government created super-soldiers and instead of just killing its host in a few hours, it filled them with blind rage and gave them feelings of invincibility. By the time the government unleashed its own military against its people, it was too late. Entire cities burned, hundreds of thousands died. In a last resort, the President ordered precision bombings of the most heavily infected areas, but the virus spread too quickly. It was transmitted merely through physical contact before manifestation, but thankfully once signs of rage began to occur, it could only be transferred by fluid contact. Those who were infected lived a short life due to their own personal disregard. They felt no need to tend to wounds, ignored hunger and thirst, slept hardly at all, and even killed their own kind. They maintained some semblance of intelligence, and some would even attempt to drive a car or fire a gun. Most, however, resorted to using brute force to murder their victims. The survivors gathered where they could, and the military fought with all their might to gain a footing.


TWENTY YEARS LATER

October 24, 2036, Abandoned airfield outside the remains of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Constant scouring of sand driven on the hot desert wind had coated nearly every object with a brownish hue. Wispy thin clouds drifted lazily above the lifeless wastes.
“Hey, Mouse, you sure this’ll work?”
The one referred to as ‘Mouse’ was a kid no more than twenty. Whether his nickname came from his large ears and rodent-like facial features or from his skill with the prehistoric machines called ‘computers’ that required the small corded input device, no one really knew. He looked up from his beloved 20-plus year old laptop that he had connected to the dusty electronic equipment in the airport control tower.
“Yeah, sure, I think.”
The man the others called their leader was about forty, his six-foot body lean with muscle. His hair was cropped close on top, but he allowed a tangled mess to cascade down his neck from under his sweat-stained headband. He looked down at Mouse and laughed before glancing at his tightly-knit group. There was Mouse, the electronics wizard; Jack, the mechanical genius; Shrapnel, master of all things flammable; Jessie, who could drive anything with wheels; and Frank, an ex-SEAL who was currently about two miles away with a rocket launcher on his shoulder. They all trusted and respected each other like family. They were freelancers, led by the charismatic CK, who squeezed out a living in the hellhole known as the Wasteland. The world as it had been Pre-Infection was gone. Now most of the non-infected lived in gigantic Federation controlled ‘super cities’ that were connected by massive transportation highways and mag-lev high speed trains. The Wasteland in between was a dead zone, a desert devoid of almost all life. In the name of disease control, no one ever entered the cities from the Wasteland. Those too unfortunate to live in the cities struggled against starvation and rampaging packs of the infected. They made their homes in ragged outposts called Citadels that were carved from the remains of small towns that were not worth the attention of the government and were left to decay. CK and his crew had pulled hundreds of jobs, from tapping an interstate fuel pipeline to stopping and raiding a mag-lev train full of food and supplies. They traded their plunder with the people of the Citadels in exchange for shelter, water, and anything else they needed.
This job had been proposed by Jessie. She was also young like Mouse, having been born only a few years before the outbreaks. A girl most would describe as cute, with large brown eyes and tomboyish short hair, she and Mouse had often shared a romantic relationship, so he immediately began devising a plan to make it happen. They were going to hit one of the automated supply planes that regularly flew over the Wasteland. The planes were used exclusively by the military and government, and sure to carry valuable cargo such as weapons or electronics. Mouse had gotten information regarding how the pilot-less planes navigated, and had discovered that if one suffered a mechanical failure, it would attempt to land at the nearest Federation controlled airfield. He had written the code necessary to make the navigation beacons at this long-forgotten airfield transmit what appeared to be a government signal. When Frank fired the heat-seeking rocket that had been modified to pack less of a punch, it would disable one of the engines and cause the plane to automatically land.
CK was listening to the rhythmic clatter of the old diesel generator and scratched absent-mindedly at one of the tattoos that covered his muscular tanned arms.
“Ok! She’s two miles out and coming fast!” said Mouse enthusiastically as he looked up from the old dusty radar screen.
CK keyed his handheld radio, “Frank, she should be almost on top of you, take her down!”
With a small whoosh, the rocket streaked from its tube and homed in on the heat signature of the jet exhaust. There was a muffled thump, and CK could see the starboard engine streaming smoke through his binoculars.
Mouse spoke up excitedly, “Awesome! Her automated systems are asking for permission to land.” He quickly typed a string of commands on the worn keyboard. “She’s coming around. We’re pretty much in a dead zone here, so the Feds will just think she crashed. I’m lining her up on Runway Three.”
CK watched the ungainly grey plane gently touch its landing gear to the runway with a screech and small puff of smoke. The windowless, unmanned aircraft was not the prettiest thing to ever take to the air, but to CK, it (and its cargo) was a beautiful treasure.
CK spoke up, “All right boys!”
“And girl!” Jessie reminded him.
“Yes, and girl,” he laughed, “Let’s get down there and see what she is carrying!”
They all ran excitedly down the stairs of the control tower and met up with Frank who had just slid to a stop on a very used and abused dirt bike. His 6 foot 3 inch, 250lb frame of solid muscle dwarfed the little bike, his dark ebony skin glistening with sweat.
“Ah man, I hope its guns!” he drawled.
“Naw bro! Hope its food! - Mouse may have been skinny, but the boy was constantly hungry - Or computers,” he added as an afterthought.
Jack ran up and pulled the large red lever marked as “Emergency Release” near the rear main cargo door. It cracked open with a hiss and began to lower itself to the ground. The ragtag group was face to face with a sea of crates and boxes on plastic pallets. They started tearing into the crates with enthusiasm. Mouse triumphantly pulled the lid off one before his face fell and he held up a fistful of paper and envelopes. Shrapnel was slightly luckier as his crate contained at least a thousand instant meals, or MREs, as they were called. Frank got his wish as he recognized several crates marked “Fragile” and discovered a cache of weapons and ammo. Just as CK was about to tear into another crate, he thought he heard a slight noise coming from one of the larger crates toward the front of the plane. He motioned for silence as he and the others crept toward the crate in question. This one was not secured with adhesive foam like the others, but instead had a latch. He clicked back the latch and hefted the lid of the crate, only to gasp in surprise. He found himself staring down at a woman lying in the crate, her large blue eyes brimming with tears as she looked up at him.
CK and the others stared in shock for several seconds before he finally managed to get his mouth to work again.
“What the hell?”
Despite the woman’s pitiful condition, with her long copper hair matted to the side of her head and her fashionable clothes wrinkled and dirty, CK figured she was actually quite beautiful. Judging by the awful smell, she had been in the crate for some time and had been forced to relieve herself in it.
“Are you going to kill me now?” she sobbed.
“What? Why?” CK was incredulous.
He offered a hand and helped her to her feet.
“No, I’m not going to kill you! Who are you and why are you on an unmanned supply plane?”
She did not respond as she looked out the cargo ramp at the blowing sand.
“Where am I?” she asked.
CK thought for a second, “Well, you were stowed away on a cargo plane that I shot down to raid for supplies. You are in the middle of the Nevada Wasteland.”
She looked at him curiously. “So you’re rebels? What city are you from?”
He gave her a confused look. “Huh? My gang and I are from out here, not one of those super-cities.”
She stared at him, mystified. “Out here?”
“Look lady, apparently we all have a lot of explaining to do, but, pardon my French, you smell like **** and could use a shower.”
She winced at the profane word and looked around furtively. “Shhh, don’t you know swearing gets you fined?”
At that CK and the group burst into laughter. He offered her his hand and said “Come on, we’ll figure this out after you’ve had time to clean up.”
He led her out of the plane and towards the ancient dilapidated motor-home they had jokingly named the “Command Center.” He pointed the way to the shower and asked if Jessie could find some clothes for the mystery woman, while heading off to help Jack and Frank transfer the cargo from the plane to the motor-home.
The woman’s name turned out to be Jacqueline Grey. She was in her mid-thirties, only a few years younger than CK. She had been a high ranking government official in the capitol. At first she was reluctant to believe that anyone actually lived in the Wasteland, let alone thousands.
“President Eden has deceived us all more than I thought.”
“President Eden? I didn’t think that old codger was still alive!” said CK.
Frank interjected, “Wouldn’t he be ‘bout eighty or so?”
“Yes,” Grey said, “and he is still in office. He’s basically used the fear of the outbreak to create a dictatorship, with him in absolute power.”
“Damn!” said Shrapnel.
Grey winced again, “I guess you guys are used to it, but you almost never hear words like that in the Cities.”
Jack laughed, “Well lady, as you can see – he waved an arm around the expanse of desert – we’re pretty far from a city.”
“So Miss Grey,” interjected CK, “What brings you to our little hellhole. Why would an important government official be stowed away on a cargo plane?”
She caught herself blushing as she glanced at his deep hazel eyes. “Please, call me Jackie. I made a shocking discovery a few months ago, and am trying to get in contact with a rebel group based in the Angeles Super-City.”
“Sounds like fun, but that still doesn’t explain why you were on that plane and not a passenger liner, or why you thought we were there to kill you.”
“This information, if it got out, would topple President Eden’s regime. There have been several threats to my life and the rebel group thought it safest if I ‘ship’ myself to California.”
Frank spoke, “What info could be so bad they wanna off ya for it?”
Jackie steadied herself as she spoke in a low voice, “A few years ago, a group of scientists came up with a cure for the infection. The President has been hiding this to secure his power. He knows that if there was no need for these protective super-cities, it would be more difficult for him to keep his totalitarian rule.”
Jack gave a low whistle.
She continued, “There’s more. You might know that the infected have a fairly short life span. They are basically self destructive. To ensure that no one tries to leave his cities, Eden has been purposefully infecting people that his death squads kidnap along with common criminals and turning them free outside the cities. You ever wonder why there seems to be an endless stream of the infected? That’s why.”
Only shocked silence followed.
“So, you’re saying, this all could’ve been over with years ago? No infection, no super-cities, no wasteland?” Frank looked from Jacqueline’s face to CK’s and back.
She sighed as she replied. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”
Mouse just stared out the front window of the massive RV as Jessie drove. Jacqueline changed the subject.
“So, where did you say we are headed?”
A sly grin spread across CK’s face as he looked at her.
“Ever been to Vegas?”
“Not since before the infection,” she replied “for my eighteenth birthday. I thought it was destroyed?”
The answer could not have been further from the truth. The wealthy casino owners had refused government control and built what had become the largest and grandest of the Citadels out of the remains of old Las Vegas. A glow on the horizon was visible.
“They have electricity?” Jacqueline asked incredulously.
“Yep.” CK replied, “A few years back they got one of the generators at the Hoover Dam working.”
The Vegas Citadel was as close a thing to a home CK and the others had. They had come from across the country, but slowly began to settle in Sin City. The motor-home hurtled toward the glow on the horizon, its tired old diesel engine belching more smoke than a forest fire despite Jack’s best efforts to keep it in repair.
“Contact, dead ahead!”
Mouse was peering intently at a monitor that displayed the feed from an infrared imager atop the roof.
“Correction, multiple contacts, heat signature suggests they’re running hot!”
Jacqueline looked questioningly at CK.
“The infected generally have higher body temperature than normal people.”
Her eyes widened in shock as Jessie mashed the accelerator pedal to the floor.
“We’re going to run them over?”
Running them over was in fact an understatement. The fifty-foot diesel pusher motor-home had once been a beacon of luxury for the richest of the rich. It had since been modified by the team and featured heavy steel plates over the windows, various cargo secured to its roof, and several weapons sprouting out of turrets. On the nose was mounted a massive V-shaped steel ram, like the mutated offspring of a snowplow and a grille guard. It roared through the desert, its paint scheme a mix of rust and dirt, riding on ten balding, mismatched tires.
“Brace for impact!” yelled Jessie.
The solid steel tore into the crowd of infected at nearly seventy miles per hour, sending them scattering like leaves. Thick red blood splattered onto the windshield, which Jessie calmly swished away with a flick of the wiper lever. One of the infected somehow still clung to the front of the motor-home, most of his face torn away in a grotesque mask, one eyeball hanging from its nerve core. The thing began smashing its skull into the cage protecting the windshield as it emitted an unearthly, guttural noise. Then its grip finally weakened and it fell beneath the tires with a series of rapid thumps.
“Well, that went well,” Mouse remarked.
“Sure did,” said Shrapnel, “those must’ve been old ones. Fresh meat would’ve tried jumping!”
CK began to laugh at the macabre wisecrack until he caught sight of Jacqueline’s face. Her hands were covering her mouth, her eyes wide as saucers.
“I’ve never seen anything so horrible!”
He laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You were around when the infection started; surely this can’t be your first experience with them?”
“My father worked for the government when it started,” she replied, “They took him, me, and Mom into some military base when the infection began to spread.”
“Well,” CK pointed at the windshield, “that there is about as close as you want to get to one of the bastards. Hercules himself couldn’t out-muscle one of them.”
The dilapidated motor-home idled to the main gate of the Vegas Citadel with Frank and Shrapnel sitting on the roof. It was fully dark now, but the blinding lights from within the citadel cast long shadows into the desert. CK leaned out one of the windows and greeted the sentry that recognized the familiar vehicle.
“Hey, good to see you again Al! Got you a little something.”
He tossed a subcompact machine pistol, one from the downed cargo plane, down to the sentry who caught it and stared in reverence and fascination at the fresh-out-of-the-factory composite grip and gleaming barrel.
“You guys ripped off the feds for this? You got real balls man!”
It wasn’t a bribe; it was just the way the wasteland worked. There was no such thing as money. You made friends, you traded, and you stayed alive. The sentry yelled up at his companions atop the massive wall that encircled the citadel. One slammed a heavy electrical disconnect down and the colossal doors began to swing open. CK climbed the ladder and joined the other two on the roof. He hung his legs over the blood-coated front of the motor-home as they pulled onto the Strip like a heroic warrior of old returning from battle. Locals wandering along the sidewalks recognized the big vehicle and jogged along side, knowing how CK and his crew always returned from their trips with plenty to trade. They reached a dusty lot where a space was always reserved for the motor-home. Jessie killed the clattering diesel engine as the crew disembarked. CK put his arms around her and Mouse’s shoulders, grinning from ear to ear.
“Gotta hand it to you kids, this was the best haul we’ve had in a while!”
Mouse laughed. “Thanks Boss!”
Frank and Jack headed off to one of the several casinos to try their luck at poker, while Shrapnel went to visit his usual girl. Jessie and Mouse wandered to join a small group around a bonfire where an old man was strumming a well worn guitar and singing. CK was climbing down the steps of the motor-home when Jackie stood up to block his way.
“I wanted to thank you for saving my life,” she said. CK looked at her curiously. “You do realize that I was the one that shot down your plane and stranded you in the middle of this hell hole, right?”
“Well…” She paused as she held up a tiny device about the size of a stick of gum. “This is a pager. While I was in that crate, I got word that somehow the feds were onto me and planned to kill me as soon as possible.”
“So that’s why you thought I was going to kill you when I opened that crate.”
She nodded and then kissed him softly on the cheek.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
CK and Jackie made their way over to join Mouse and Jessie at the bonfire and listen to the guitarist. A warm breeze was blowing in from the west as a summer storm filled the sky with ominous flashes of lightning. The crack of thunder rolled across the wasteland as Jackie instinctively inched nearer to CK’s protective bulk. Despite the coming storm, the night was soothingly peaceful. There was sense of family, friends, and freedom. Jackie began to wonder how anyone could actually desire the cramped, controlling atmosphere of the super-cities.
The motor that rotated the ancient radar antenna atop the wooden guard tower at the gate groaned in eternal protest of spinning the big rusty dish around the empty sky. In the electronics shack located a few feet away, an old dusty screen glowed with a greenish tint as its sweeping line rotated. An old radio hummed faintly with static while the radio and radar watch dozed off at his post. It wasn’t likely there’d be anything to do; the radar dish and radio were far to weak to detect anything more than a few miles away. Suddenly the old radar unit began making soft blipping sounds. The watch sat up in his chair and cursed as he slammed his knee into the desk. He glanced at the screen before suddenly being shocked fully awake. He grabbed the intercom and flipped the switch for one of the lookout towers.
“Lookout, I have a contact, bearing point-oh-five-oh! Please confirm!”
The lookout grabbed a pair of high powered binoculars and caught the navigation lights of an unidentified aircraft.
“Confirmed, unknown aircraft, low altitude!”
CK could discern a high pitched whine above the music and crackling of the bonfire. He noticed several of the guards rushing toward the top of the wall. Suddenly the whine pitched to a howl as a black tilt-turbine hover-jet came blasting over the wall barely fifty feet off the deck, its engines tilted toward the ground as it kicked up a cloud of dust. He could barely make out the insignia on the side that designated it as belonging to Confederate Spec Ops, the president’s personal secret death squads. The port hatch opened and a group of men clad in the elite black form-fitting armor slid down ropes to the ground. CK urgently herded the other three off towards the motor-home as he pulled a well-customized weapon from his nylon thigh holster. It fired the military-standard 7.62mm rimless depleted uranium rounds from its top barrel as fast as the trigger could be pulled, and from the fat tube under the barrel it could fire a five kilowatt laser burst fed by a rotary magazine of four miniature hydrogen fuel cells.
The Vegas guards’ old and outdated weapons proved woefully ineffective against the advanced body armor. When two of the Spec Ops men had finally fallen, it was at the cost of nearly twenty of the ill-prepared guards. The hover-jet kept position above the fray and added to the melee with its chin-mounted mini-gun. CK thumbed the selector switch on his weapon down as he took aim at the cockpit of the hover-jet. He pulled the trigger and for a second nothing happened but an electronic whine from the laser as it charged, until the entire battle was suddenly frozen in a strobe of lurid green light immediately before the hover-jet detonated in an oily fireball.
The remaining members of the clandestine death squad were momentarily stunned by the loss of their ride. Then they incredibly renewed their assault with vigor. CK watched in horror as their subcompact machine guns spat a hail of bullets at the innocent people of the Vegas Citadel. He peered through the red dot sight atop the barrel as he thumbed the selector switch up past safe to the top position. His finger twitched methodically as he put three rounds through the top of a black helmet. The man dropped as his two companions turned as though in slow motion. Suddenly a fiery streak rushed past CK’s head from behind and carved a crater where the two Spec Ops had stood a second before. He glanced behind him to see Shrapnel and Frank grinning like demons, their faces caked with blood and sand.
“Nice of you guys to come help out, it was starting to get lonely out here.”
“Well we couldn’t let you have all the fun, Boss!”
The last few members of the death squad were dispatched with little trouble, but the damage had been done. The dead lay strewn across the streets, shattered windows marking passage of hundreds of wayward bullets. A small fire had started where the wreckage of the hover-jet had fallen, and the smell of spent gunpowder and burning wreckage filled the air. CK turned toward a clik-clik sound and found himself staring into the barrel of a pistol.
“You brought ‘em here!” the leader of the Vegas guards snarled.
Shrapnel whipped his sawed-off shotgun to point at the guard’s head, as another guard pointed his pistol at Shrapnel. Frank swiftly pulled two small-caliber handguns from his waist and trained each on a different guard’s head. The group was now locked in a deadly standoff. CK took a deep breath.
“No way would we do that. This is our home, too. Plus, we killed more than you did!”
The guard thought a second. “Well then they followed you so they could wipe us all out.”
“No, they didn’t.”
Every eye turned to this new voice. Mouse, Jessie, and Jackie had wandered up unnoticed.
Mouse continued, “They had no idea we were here. These guys are part of the secret Presidential death squads, they don’t go into a fight unless they know they will win.”
Realization dawned on CK. “They tracked the crates! They were just here to recover their stuff!”
“No way!” Mouse protested. “I scanned every crate; none were bugged with a tracker!”
CK’s eyes came to rest on Jackie. “No, but I bet she is. She told me earlier that they somehow had known she was on that plane. I figured they must have detected her in the crate while loading the plane. Mouse, scan her.”
Mouse was already pulling an old Pocket PC adorned with tangled wires and copious amounts of electrical tape from its case. He selected the frequency scanner application and began running the device around Jackie’s body, beginning with her head. She stood stock still, a look of shock on her face. When he finally reached her left thigh, the little computer beeped shrilly.
“Got it! It’s an old GPS-type transceiver, broadcasting at one second intervals on an 800mHz band.”
“I… I have something in me?” she asked, shocked.
The guards lowered their pistols, equally appalled.
“What are you going to do?” one asked.
“We’re going to take it out and throw it into the river.” CK replied.
After getting over the initial shock of the realization, Jackie resigned herself to the idea that somebody was going to have to dig around in her leg with surgical tools. Mouse injected a local anesthetic, and CK wiped the area with alcohol while it took affect. After several jabs, certain she could not feel anything; he slid the scalpel under her skin and opened a three inch slit. She watched curiously, as if it was someone else’s leg that was getting sliced open. CK probed with a hooked dental pick until he found the tiny transceiver. It was the size and shape of a large drug gel-capsule, made of clear polyurethane. He could see the tiny black microprocessor and the copper antenna windings. Mouse held an old empty water bottle to the blood streaming out of the incision until about an inch sloshed in the bottom and held it up for CK to drop the capsule in. It would continue to function, drawing its power from her blood, for several hours. They would toss it in the river, letting it float far away, to throw off their trackers.
The leader of the Vegas guards, basically the unofficial ‘mayor,’ came up to CK and put his hand on his shoulder. “You and me go way back. You know we appreciate all you do for the citadel. I really didn’t want to shoot you back there. But why in God’s name didn’t you leave her – he jabbed his thumb over his shoulder – out in the desert?”
“Because, old friend, she holds the key that can end all this. If I can get her to the Angeles super-city, the rebels will have enough power to topple the government that keeps us knee-deep in those infected monsters and harasses us with death squads.”
“You really think that will happen?”
“I’d die to make it happen…”
The easiest way to California was to enlist the services of the Train Crew. They repaired and maintained a few of the pre-infection rail lines and ran a small motley collection of rail cars pulled by a grease and rust-covered diesel locomotive. Like CK and his crew, they squeezed out a living transporting goods and people across the wasteland. CK had once given them over ten thousand gallons of fuel oil as a measure of good faith, and now it was time for the favor to be repaid. Jim, the leader, supervised the loading of CK’s old motor-home onto an equally dilapidated flatcar. Lazy wisps of inky smoke drifted from the exhaust stacks of the hulking locomotive into the morning air as the engineer warmed up the massive diesel power plants. On top of the rear-most car, an old caboose whose peeling paint advertised it once belonging to the Southern Pacific, was mounted the entire turret and cannon from an Abrams tank. A greasy-faced youngster sat astride the massive cannon barrel and pulled happily on his morning cigarette. Jim turned to CK, as he coaxed his unruly long grey hair into a ponytail.
“So I filled the boys in on what you got a wild hair up your ass to do.”
CK smiled. What the short old man lacked in height, he well made up for with an unstoppable personality. His wide shoulders had a little droop from age, and his slight paunch showed his love of beer.
Jim continued, “We decided we can’t stay; as soon as we drop you guys off, we’re going to head back.”
CK nodded. “No problem, I understand. It’s not your fight.”
Jim paused and then added, “Well, a few of the boys volunteered to go with you. They’re good fighters.”
“We’ll need all the help we can get.”
Jim smiled, “I guess they figure they’d rather go out a hero than a vagrant old train runner like me.” He paused a moment, scratching at his graying beard. “Come to think of it, if I had a few less years under my feet, I’d be goin’ too.”