I thought about telling him to go pound sand. Part of me said I should, but another part of me, the part that knew Black Johnson would find a way to stop the mission if I did, made me hold that thought. Instead, I said, “We’re leaving at ten tonight.”
He almost leaped for joy, a vicious smile raking his face. “Thank you. Thank you. Ten tonight. Ten tonight. I’ll be there with bells.” When he saw my face, he shook his head. “No. Scratch that. No bells. Bells bad for recon. I’ll be there but wearing no bells. That good, Mase?”
No one had ever called me Mase, but as long as it wasn’t Benji, I’d let it slide. I nodded.
Crefloe bounced away like Tigger on his way to a party.
I thought about calling after him, but instead merely shook my head and went to find the chief of the scroungers. They were also the ones who controlled the maps. First, I’d need to get a map and plot primary and secondary routes. Then I’d have to go to supply and draw enough for all three of us to survive a six-day recon. My plan was three days there and three days back. Within a week we’d know what was up there or if it wasn’t anything more than a ploy from a man named Fredericks of Hollywood to get a free frolic under Junebug’s skirts.
We met by the back gate. Suzie showed first, carrying a pink Hello Kitty pack. Crefloe arrived wearing all black, including black Nike basketball shoes. I was glad to see that his pack was a blacked-out military mollied pack. At least he knew how to travel. Now to see what was inside them. I had both empty their packs.
Suzie carried toiletries and blankets. She also had a seven-inch gravity knife. Interesting. But no food. No other weapons. No first aid kit.
Crefloe carried four days’ worth of rations. Five gallons of water. A head lamp and a week’s worth of spare batteries. He also had two changes of clothes, one of which was an LA pimp version of what John Travolta might have worn had Saturday Night Fever taken place in Compton, not New Jersey. When I held it up, Crefloe smiled weakly and murmured something about a disguise. I noted he also carried a double holster with Browning 9mm pistols and had ten magazines. Finally, came a book filled with notes and maps, something he’d probably been working on since he’d first started scrounging. This I handed back to him with respect.
I tossed Suzie’s pack aside and brought forth one I’d already made for her. I added her toiletries and changes of clothes to this, as well as her knife. I also handed her a shoulder holster with a 9mm Sig Saur pistol and eight full magazines.
For Crefloe, I removed his disguise and replaced it with a field medic kit.
He didn’t seem too happy, but said nothing.
Neither did Suzie, watching the process with all the interest as if it were paint drying.
Once everyone had their packs ready and adjusted on their backs, I went around, checking for metal on metal, taping when I found them. Being in the forest alone was one thing. The idea was for us to get to our target area, conduct recon, and return with no one ever realizing we were there. Silence would be our best friend. Silence and speed.
Content with the way the load was distributed and our chances of stealth, I shouldered my pack, checked my nine on my hip, slung my M4 around my neck, and led them out the gate. After about a mile, I led them off the road, then had them kneel.
“I’m only going to say this once. Suzie, you wanted to come. Crefloe, you were told to come. But I can send each of you back in a heartbeat if I feel your behavior or actions will compromise the mission. We’ve been told there is some sort of new alien threat. We’re going to get to the bottom of it, then return with information to Mother. No heroics. No taking chances. Everyone is to follow my orders to the letter. Do you both understand?”
Crefloe licked his lips and nodded hastily.
Suzie stared at the ground, eye unblinking.
I cleared my throat and the effect startled her.
She nodded. “Yes. Sure.”
I stared at her and wondered for the thousandth time what had happened to her. I was hoping this trip would be a breakthrough. That something would happen to get her to open up. I could only hope.
Crefloe and I did a radio check with our walkies, then I stood, hand signaled Crefloe to move forward and take point, then had Suzie walk ahead of me.
Both Crefloe and I had Geiger counters and watched them closely. We would have liked to use the 210, but there were parts that were flooded with deadly radiation from where the Hollywood Hive had blown. Although most of the blast had been protected inside the hive, enough radiation had leaked out to cause pockets and waves of invisible death. We’d seen the occasional refugee try and get into the camp, radiation sores on their skin indicating they were in the final stages of radiation death. We didn’t want to share the same fate. So we had to head north, hugging the national forest, taking side roads through empty communities. Mostly empty. Here and there I noted a house barricaded, wood and roof tin nailed over the inside of ground-floor windows. We left them be.
The dog packs were the worst. Left to their own accord and without anyone to make them pets, they reverted to their precursors, making them dangerous enough that I’d seen packs of them take down an armed band of scroungers. When I could, I avoided them. I hated shooting dogs. So when he heard even the smallest bark, we moved in the opposite direction.
We trekked without incident through Bradbury, Monrovia, Sierra Madre, and Kinneola Mesa, until the sky began to lighten. I had Crefloe find us a hide spot. Not that we wouldn’t move during the day, it was just that a lot of things came out at dawn and I wanted to make sure we had a hide so we could see exactly what those things were. We ended up in a copse of trees on the edge of what the map read as Rocking Horse Ranch.
We heard an inhuman scream coming from the direction of Los Angeles about noon, but nothing else.
We left mid-afternoon, skirting the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I remembered when we’d last been here with Sandi, Phil and Dupree. They’d all been alive back then. I closed my eyes and smelled burning flesh as Phil set fire to the infected children, their skin popping, hair sizzling. They hadn’t screamed. They hadn’t even run away. They were infected by the spore and had no control over their bodies. But they could still feel the pain. They could still see themselves engulfed in flame.
We were forced to stop because I found I couldn’t move.
Crefloe watched over me as I lay on the asphalt, hugging my shoulders, reliving my own time with the spore, and how it had grabbed my soul by the throat and not let go. Then I was burning, burning, burning, my own skin popping, my own hair sizzling, feeling every microsecond of pain, but unable to release it. My insides churned until they were emptied on the street.
An hour later found me stripping my clothes and cleaning myself.
Suzie watched me the entire time, like I was a rare insect who was sometimes a dragonfly and sometimes a pill bug.
Crefloe didn’t say anything so neither did I. For all I knew, he had his own set of symptoms and episodes.
Once I was ready, I moved out, and they followed.
We’d traveled about two miles when I heard the screams. Someone, somewhere close, was dying a horrible death.
Crefloe gave me a look and I nodded. He took off, running forward, a pistol in his hand, carried low and pointed to the ground. He was gone two minutes before he squelched the walkie.
“What’s going on?” I asked
“Cray. Someone winged one and they’re trying to take it out.”
“And the scream?”
“These fools are going to get themselves killed.”