Chapter 7 #4
He’d expected a facility like Glastine, with force fences, and had been strategizing how he could gain entry and rescue Melly.
Instead what he was looking at was burned and blown up buildings, apparently devoid of survivors, and maybe twenty infected standing here and there, waiting for new prey.
“What the seven hells? This didn’t happen in the last two days. ”
Cody sent his drones swooping closer to the buildings and zipping across the grounds. There were badly decomposing bodies here and there and other signs the attack had been a while ago.
“Why would Quantike send people up here, if there’s nothing here?” Zach asked.
“And who did this?” Cody said. “The infected didn’t bomb them from the air.”
Jeff could only shake his head and fight the despair washing through his mind. “We’ll continue to the location and see what we can learn from being onsite. There aren’t any other options at this point.”
He studied the holos as the APCs continued their journey.
Once they arrived at the site, he had Zach drive into the center of the ruined compound and before anyone left the safety of the armored transport, he ordered the two megacannon operators to pick off the infected, who were now converging on the APC’s.
“Quite a few Watchers,” Cody observed. “More than the usual ratio to ordinary infected.”
“Nothing makes sense about this,” Jeff replied, impatient to get his boots on the ground and search for intel. Any slightest clue as to Melly’s whereabouts would be helpful.
The drivers moved the APC’s away from the stack of dead infected, the wheels rumbling over a few of the corpses in the process, and once Jeff was satisfied with where they were parked, close to what remained of what had probably been the admin building, he authorized the team to deploy.
Mike, Jenny and Buddy came last, guarded by Les, Devora and Tamsyn, all armed.
The three adults kept the children and the dog on the other side of the APC’s away from the corpses and dead infected.
The soldiers spread out, examining the scene.
Jeff sent Cody and Ryan inside the ruined building, hoping they might find a system the cyborg could hack into.
He himself walked through the open space, eyes peeled for anything which might indicate Melly had ever been here.
He found the truck’s tracks and multiple footprints in the dust close by.
One set was deeper as if the man had been carrying something and on a hunch he followed those tracks.
They ended in a curious circle, as if a person had been on the ground, surrounded by infected who hadn’t chosen to attack.
There were muddled footprints in the middle which were small and he hoped they were Melly’s.
Boss, got a helluva big impression of a flyer having landed here, not too long ago, Trent reported, waving his arm from his position across the open space.
On my way. Jeff jogged over the hard packed ground. Cody, anything?
Nothing. It’s all been destroyed systematically in here maybe even before the place was attacked from the air. I wonder if the scientists and doctors staged a rebellion and then whoever is behind all this came in and wiped them out?
Makes as much sense as any other theory, Jeff replied. We need to know so much more. All right, meet me outside, Trent’s found something.
He arrived at the soldier’s side and gazed at the large indentation in the dirt and foliage, where a sizable flyer had obviously landed and taken off again. “Not any configuration I recognize,” he said, analyzing the outline. “Certainly not one of ours.”
A bit of color half buried in the dirt at the edge of the ad hoc landing pad, where a ramp might have been extended, caught his eye and he walked over, scuffing at the loose soil with the toe of his boot.
Heart pounding, he bent over to scoop up his find—a badge inscribed with ‘Dr. Jericho’.
“She was here,” he said in triumph. “This is hers from the Glastine medical facility. She must have dropped it to leave a clue for us.” He clenched his hand on the pin and pivoted, searching for Mike Jericho. “Hey, kid! Your sister was here.”
Mike came running around the end of the APC, the dog bounding ahead and barking. “How do you know?”
Jeff handed him the badge. “Found this. Smart girl, your sister, left us a sign.”
Shoulders slumped, Mike stared at the sky. “But then where did they take her? How are we ever going to find her now?”
He tried to hand the pin back but Jeff shook his head.
“You keep it, for luck. We’ll figure something out, I promise.
” Jeff turned to Cody while Mike was pinning the badge to his shirt pocket.
. “I want surveillance on this place. I don’t care what you have to do, cannibalize all the damn drones to make one super drone if necessary but we need eyes here in case the flyer comes back, and then to be able to track them when they leave. ”
“I’ve been working on extending their range and capabilities,” Cody said. “But it may be as much as a month before the flyer arrives here again, if it ever does.”
“I believe it will. They want the people Quantike is sending them. He wants the supplies, being too lazy to go scavenge for himself. I don’t see him or these mysterious Others altering their arrangements because of us.
It’s obviously a long standing system of pickup and delivery and as far as they know, we got here, killed a few infected and left.
They don’t know who we are or what we want.
” Jeff was confident he was right—he had to be now he knew for sure Melly was being held by whoever arrived in the flyer.
“How long will it take for you to enable a drone to do what I want?”
Cody shrugged “Couple of hours.”
“What are you standing here for then? Go get to it.”
As the soldier jogged off, Trent asked, “After he gets his modified drone up in the air, what’s our next move, sir?”
Taking a deep breath, Jeff looked at the abandoned research facility. His next words were bitter on his tongue. “There’s nothing more we can do here.”
“We could wait till these guys come back,” Mike said eagerly. “Ambush them, make them tell us where my sister is.”
“Certainly one option,” Jeff agreed, not wanting to crush the boy’s enthusiasm.
“In my judgment though it’s a better use of our time to head to our ranch instead of sitting out here in the open for maybe a month, twiddling our thumbs.
We’ve got all kinds of useful toys waiting for us there.
We might even be able to locate the flyer’s home base by other means once we get our hands on the gear that was sent there for our use on this mission.
” With sympathy he observed the mulish set to Mike’s lips.
“I know, don’t you think it’s hard for me too, driving away from the last place we know for sure Melly was?
But I believe we have a better chance of locating her and rescuing her if we go balls to the wall north, reach our homestead and unpack the cargo containers that came ahead of us, before the outbreak.
” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I have a flyer there too.”
“You do?”
“It’s in pieces, waiting for us to assemble it but yes.”
“All right then, I guess I can go along with your plan.” Mike stared at his sister’s pin. “You have to let me help rescue her, once we find her. She’s all I have left of my family.”
Jeff rested his hand on Mike’s shoulder.
“I give you my word. We’re going to get her back.
She’s tough and smart—these people, whoever they are have no idea what kind of trouble they have on their hands right now.
Or what hell we’re going to unleash on them once we suss out the location of their base. ”
Buddy barked and wagged his tail enthusiastically. Mike nodded, gave the dog a hug and walked off, heading to APC1.
“Gonna take the kid along on a combat mission, sir?” Trent asked.
Jeff watched Mike moving away, shoulders squared.
The kid had been through a lot since the outbreak hit the planet but his spirit was strong.
Losing his big sister too might be the final straw and Jeff was determined to shield Mike from that tragedy.
He wasn’t desperate to rescue Melly solely for his own sake, although that was his primary driver.
“No of course not. He’ll stay at the ranch to help guard the place.
But he needed to hear my commitment to find Melly. ”
“We all heard that, loud and clear. We’re committed to bringing her home safe too. We’re not losing a team member to this damn place, not now.”
“I appreciate the support.” Jeff glanced at the large depression in the ground where the enemy flyer had been and his frustration threatened to choke him.
Not knowing what had happened to Melly after she got aboard the craft and flew away with her captors was almost more than he could take.
But he had to stay frosty and pursue whatever he deemed the best plan to help her, even if it meant driving away from here.
He raised his eyes to the sky. I’m coming, sweetheart, don’t you worry.
Hang in there and do whatever it takes to survive.
Three hours later, with Cody’s upgraded super drone on station over the site, Jeff was the last one to board the APC.
He did one final check of the ravaged area, seeing Melly here in his mind’s eye.
A huge bubble of anger and frustration made his gut roil but there was nothing more to be done here.
Reluctantly he stepped into APC1 and closed the hatch, hating the finality of the sound.
“All right, you’ve got the heading for the ranch?” he asked Zach. “Head out, soldier. How long till we arrive?”
“Best speed, minimal stops?” Zach’s question was clearly rhetorical. It was obvious Jeff didn’t want a leisurely sightseeing type journey. He initiated the APC’s drive before he answered. “Five days.”
“See if we can do any better.” Jeff wasn’t satisfied. Every second counted now. “We’ll take shifts and drive through the night too.”
“We’ll be too exhausted to get anything done when we arrive,” Cody said in a cautious attempt to be reasonable.
“First twenty-four hours we’ll get the modular house building itself and we’ll take the downtime for ourselves.
Maybe assemble together a few items from the gear in the cargo pods but no heavy labor.
I want to try and contact my superiors and update them on the situation.
See if they can provide any intel on who might have done this.
We’ve got the alien languages on the medical machinery and the configuration of the flyer, based on its outline.
Commander Ironside should be able to give us a few answers.
” Sinking into the seat next to the driver, Jeff closed his eyes for a moment and reviewed the manifest for the equipment which should have been sent to them, on top of the standard agri package.
Oh yes, he definitely had resources at his command once he unsealed those secret pods which had been dropshipped from orbit.
The thought was comforting on what was otherwise one of the bleakest days of his life.