Dirk Patton [Voodoo Plague 04 Red Hammer (epub)

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.What was surely thousands of frogs sang, nearly masking all other sounds, but she could also hear the occasional night bird.The buzzing of mosquitoes and stealthy rustling of small animals in the grass were the only other sounds.Absolutely no man made noises.Rachel imagined this must have been what it was like to stand here a few hundred years ago before the first European settlers reached this part of America.What to do? Follow the gravel road on the levee to the north until she reached the bridge? Then what? The chances that John or Dog were waiting for her at the bridge were so slim as to be nearly non-existent.Heading south didn’t seem like a good idea.There were supposed to be large herds of infected in all the gulf coast states and Rachel sure didn’t want to go find out.West, cross country? But how was she going to find John?Rachel wasn’t ready to contemplate thoughts that she might never be reunited with him.The last few weeks, her time with John, fleeing and fighting the infected, felt like a lifetime.She had fallen in love with him.There was no denying that any longer.Now he was gone.Would he be trying to find her? How did he even start looking? It was hard enough to survive the new world.Starting to slip back into despair, Rachel struggled to calm her racing mind, then it hit her.Oklahoma City! That’s where the train was headed.If he couldn’t find her, that’s where John would go! How far was it? Rachel had never been west of the Mississippi River before, and had only a vague idea of the geography of the western US.Could she make it? Straightening her back with a grimace, she made her decision, crossed the road and descended the steeper side of the levee to the rice paddy below.7The sun was setting, sporadic rifle fire in the distance reaching my ears as soldiers and the surviving civilian population mopped up the remaining infected.We were in West Memphis, Arkansas, a few miles west of the Mississippi River.Actually, we were a few miles west of West Memphis, occupying the public airport just south of US 70.Two Apaches were on station a hundred miles farther to the west, acting as an early warning if any more Russian aircraft started heading our direction.Eight Black Hawks and half a dozen Apaches sat on the tarmac, refueled, rearmed and ready to go, but go where?Two fat C-130s sat at the far end of one of the two runways, empty after having disgorged their cargo of soldiers, missiles, ammunition and maintenance crews for the helicopters.Both aircraft had been on stand-by at Little Rock AFB, waiting for Colonel Crawford’s call.When they arrived, the first one on the ground had delivered 110 Army Rangers in full battle rattle who cleared all the airport’s grounds and buildings before spreading into the adjacent town where they linked up with the remnants of civilian law enforcement to finish the job.The second one was heavily loaded with all of the ordnance needed to completely re-arm all of the helicopters, resupply all of the ground troops with ammunition and give everyone a hot meal courtesy of the mess hall at LRAFB.The train Jackson had driven across the river sat on a siding a quarter of a mile from the airport, guarded by a couple of dozen Rangers.The evacuees had been allowed to disembark, but the Lieutenant in charge at the siding had orders to keep all of them within a hundred yards of the train in case we needed to get them moving in a hurry.They were eating the same chow as the rest of us and sat in subdued groups as the light faded.Crawford, Captain Blanchard, Jackson and myself had commandeered the small air traffic control tower.We sat around a folding table, eating.The tower provided a commanding view of not only the entire airport, but miles in every direction.The terrain here along the flood plain of the river was almost perfectly flat.Earlier, I’d picked up a pair of large binoculars off the controller’s desk and looked to the east, across the river.Hundreds of thousands of infected lined the shore, all staring directly into the setting sun.This was our first opportunity to have a meeting.Jackson and I had spent much of the day in the field with the Rangers, routing out and killing infected.I was hungry, tired, and nearly obsessed with worry about Rachel and Dog.“Hell of a day,” Crawford commented, tearing into a large piece of fried chicken.“Let’s all get on the same page.Captain, you’ve been running SAR flights all day and getting our remaining train ready to keep rolling.What’s our status?”Blanchard placed his fork down next to his plate, finished chewing, drank some water and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin before he started talking.Jackson and I kept right on eating, devouring the food on our plates like starving dogs.“Sir, we’ve had multiple search and rescue operations underway all day.First mission was to look for survivors from the battle with the Russians.I’m sorry to report that the only survivors on either side were the three men you captured.Next we ran two operations.The first operation was a Black Hawk detailed to search the river for the woman and dog.” Blanchard turned to me before continuing.“We have searched for fifty miles downstream from the bridge, two passes over the water and one pass each on the two shorelines.So far we have had negative results, and I’m not optimistic that we will find them.”I started to open my mouth, but Crawford beat me to it.“Put up another Black Hawk now that the sun is down.Maybe we’ll get lucky with FLIR.” I nodded my thanks to the Colonel and went back to my food.I had lost my appetite, but forced myself to eat.Food is fuel, and without it the body will suffer.I needed to be in as good condition as possible.“Yes, sir.” Blanchard made a quick note in his small, spiral notebook before continuing.“The second train out of Nashville was our large SAR operation.When the air units arrived it appeared that the train had been completely overrun by the infected, but there was one livestock car that had been able to keep the infected out.Using air assets we were able to clear enough of the infected away from the car to start lifting people.Some were lost, but we did manage to rescue…” he paused to flip through his notebook.“We rescued 411, mostly women and children.They are now with the other evacuees at the first train.”“411? That’s it? There were nearly 10,000 people on that train when it pulled out of Nashville.” Crawford didn’t try to conceal the pain in his voice.“Yes, sir.That was all we could save.” Blanchard answered in a quiet voice, looking down at his plate of cooling food as he spoke.We all sat there in silence for a couple of minutes, each of us lost in our own thoughts as we processed the number of people that the infected had ripped apart.“Moving on to the train, with your permission sir?” Blanchard waited, Crawford finally nodding before taking another bite.The look on his face told me he was only eating because he needed to.None of us were enjoying the meal.“We have found a retired railroad engineer in Little Rock that is being flown to us.We have also found plenty of passenger and livestock cars on a siding ten miles to the west [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Pokrewne