First Wave Series Box Set (Books 1-3) Read online

  A few more unsuccessful attempts on the SAT phone led Travis over to his friend’s side. “I think we should implement Plan B and send out some hikers at first light. The rafts are already deflated and we don’t have enough food to take the group three more days downriver to Lake Mead.”

  Pete concurred and, with the sun setting in a few hours, he told the group that he and Travis would trek to town the following morning and send a van back for those staying on the beach. Whoever wanted to come along on the hike was welcome.

  Pete couched his anxious tone and uncertainty in guide-speak. “The nearest town is only sixteen miles south and three thousand feet in gradual elevation from here. You have already done more arduous day hikes throughout this trip than anything this walk will throw at you. And you’re all part billy goat by now,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “Halfway back, there’s a spring nestled in a grove of mesquite trees off the side of the road. We should be able to replenish our water bottles there. It’ll take us most of the day to get to Route 66 and the town of Peach Springs. From there, we can send a van back to get the rest of our gear and anyone choosing to stay behind. We will head out at a few hours before sunrise to get a jump on the heat, and should be to town by 4 p.m.”

  Everyone nodded and agreed to make the hike out together. As the light faded from the canyon walls and everyone gathered around the campfire, Travis readied his gear. It was similar to what everyone was carrying but with a few specialized items from years of desert living. He jammed his trusty Alice Pack with six quarts of water and then did a review of the remaining items: electrolyte tabs, shemagh, sunscreen, first aid kit, Mora knife, headlamp, poncho, 20’ of 550 cord, spark rod, signal mirror, Iodine tabs, two remaining protein bars, sunglasses, brimmed hat, faded gloves, and a Ziploc with a soaked cotton shirt. He would don the latter garment during the heat of the day to keep cool. From a side pouch, he pulled out a faded photo of his ten-year-old son, Todd. Hope he had a good end to his summer. School must have started by now. Can’t wait for the coming elk hunt we’re going on.

  Sliding the picture back into the leather wallet, he grabbed the pack and stowed it next to his bedroll. He sauntered over to the fire and sat next to Katy, who was brushing her silky hair, which held the faint smell of peach blossoms. Travis noticed the slight curve in her red lips as she looked at him. He recalled her comments from the first day, when she mentioned that she was on the trip “to get away from the shackles of city life and reconnect with the raw forces of nature.” Her jade-green eyes and thick lashes were overshadowed by newly formed squint lines from living in the sun, and her delighted look seemed far removed from the high-strung city girl he had met weeks ago.

  Travis glanced over the group, whose faces were aglow with firelight. He had really taken to these “civvies.” He had spent most of the trip bonding with LB, a former army helicopter pilot, and Evelyn, whose son had lost his life in Iraq shortly before the surge. Even when you’re out of the military, you’re still in. Travis stared into the fire in between conversations over the next hour. He recalled vivid images of hundreds of other campfires he had sat around over the years in the woods around Ft. Bragg while training other operators in the skills of staying alive in the wilds. I sure don’t miss the mosquitos, chiggers, and poison ivy.

  Travis looked over his shoulder towards the river’s edge, and saw Mark and Fran holding hands under a tree a hundred yards from the glow of the campfire. Just as he was turning his gaze back, he caught movement coming down the moonlit gravel road. It was a tall man in a uniform, weaving his way towards Fran and Mark. The figure stumbled like he was inebriated.

  “Hey, Pete, looks like the river ranger is here,” he said, nodding towards the beach. Everyone stood up, eager to hear news about the vans. “I’ll go talk to him and see what’s up,” said Travis as he strode towards the beach.

  As Travis walked to where the road dead-ended at the river, he saw the ranger increase his stride towards Fran and Mark, who had their backs to him, their attention lost amidst the loud gurgle of the rapids. The ranger’s skin was mottled and his shirt unkempt. He wasn’t slowing down and, as Travis neared, he heard the figure emit a wheezing, rodent-like sound. Then the ranger did a partial leap for the back of Fran’s head, burying his face in her shoulder. She turned and shrieked as the man slammed his jaws onto the right side of her neck, biting out a sizeable portion of flesh. Fran reeled back while the ranger bit further through her neck, sending a spray of bright red blood onto Mark’s face. Her husband recoiled a step back in horror but then shot forward, punching the man in the side of the head and screaming at him. The ranger snapped his jaws at Mark, catching his thumb in the crossbite and shearing it off. Travis was in an all-out sprint and did a linebacker’s slam onto the ranger, sending him flying off Mark and into a large boulder a few feet away.

  The disheveled ranger immediately got up, unaffected by the jarring impact, and fixed his attention on Travis. The man lumbered towards Travis, with the glimmer of fresh blood dribbling from his lips and running down over the bronze badge on his uniform.

  Travis pulled his eight-inch tactical knife from its sheath and rushed forward, slightly sidestepping the oncoming attacker while sinking the blade below the man’s sternum right to the hilt. Without any sign of being diminished, the ranger pawed at Travis’s face with crusty hands, while a sickening acrid smell ushered forth from his rubbery lips. Travis yanked the blade out and drove it in an uppercut through the man’s lower jaw, pulled it back out, and stomp-kicked him on the chest, sending him backwards. The ranger was flailing his arms, on all fours when, across Travis’s left side, the flash of a wooden oar came, striking the man across the head as Pete moved in and made a wild swing. After two more blows from the oar, the figure lay lifeless, with its head pancaked on the rocks.

  Travis’s face was like chiseled ice as he stood over the body of the ranger. He tapped his dirty boot into the ribs, making sure the man was dead, and then gazed up at Pete, who was leaning on the upright oar, catching his breath. He noticed the man’s skin was marbled blue and gray, like the person they’d seen earlier on the river trip. It resembled someone suffering from cyanosis or carbon monoxide poisoning. Chunks of the man’s hair were missing, and only small strands, resembling dental floss, hung off the side of his head. An ammonia-like odor emanated from the body, causing Travis to step back.

  “What the hell just happened, Trav?” muttered Pete.

  “Not sure, bro. Maybe this guy was jacked up on nose candy or meth. I’ve never seen anything like that, and I’ve seen some crazy shit before.”

  Mark was kneeling over Fran’s limp body, his own bloody hand curled back against his chest. His wife’s blood formed a small puddle next to her head as her glassy eyes shone in the moonlight. Katy and the others rushed up and huddled around the two, with bewildered looks painted across their faces. Katy bent down next to him, trying to avert her eyes from Fran’s mangled face. She swiftly wrapped the shredded stump of Mark’s thumb with a bandanna pulled from her neck, and then looked Mark over for any further injuries.

  Travis knelt down and removed the pistol from around the man’s bloody holster, along with a flashlight and pepper spray. Then he did a quick chamber check of the Glock 19 and stowed the two magazines in his back pocket. Travis dragged his knife across the man’s pant leg and resheathed it while palming the pistol in his right hand. Out of habit, he refocused his attention on the bigger picture around them and scanned the road and surrounding cliffs for any movement. “Go check on the rest of the group and get them back to the campfire,” he said to Pete. “Then load it up with tons of firewood. This could be a long night.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “On the high ground over our camp to scan for movement and see if anyone else is out there. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Katy and Pete ushered Mark back to the campfire while the others helped drag Fran away from the water’s edge, towards a tangle of downed tree branches. Then
they covered her body with a tarp.

  Travis was on a rock formation that rose sixty feet above the beach, peering down the faintly illuminated road that wound through the thousand-foot-high walls of Diamond Creek Canyon. Other than the sound of some crickets and a gentle breeze in the willows, the only other sound came from the trembling voices at the campfire below him.

  After he was satisfied, he stowed the pistol in his belt and scrambled down the trail to the group. Their faces were tight. Everyone’s pensive eyes darted from Mark’s hunched, moaning figure beside the fire to the gravel road by the beach.

  Travis moved out of the shadows, and his broad form cast a long shadow on the boulders behind him. “I’m not sure what the hell just went down or what was wrong with the ranger, but let’s hike out of here at dawn and get some answers. For now, let’s take turns keeping the fire going, and make sure your eyes and ears stay sharp,” said Travis.

  LB got up and walked a few feet over to the gear pile, and brought back a handful of wooden oars, placing them around the outskirts of the campfire, while Pete piled more wood on the blaze.

  Chapter 2

  Few people slept and, other than awkward small talk, they sat silently around the fire, catnapping or staring furtively into the darkness.

  Around 4:30 a.m., dawn was muscling into the canyon and wrens and jays began to sing. At first, it seemed like the same serene setting they had awoken to each morning. Then Evelyn sat up and looked at Mark. “My God, what happened? Look at his skin.”

  Mark was lying face down in the sand with no indication of breathing. Pete rushed over to his side and turned him on his back. Flecks of caked sand fell of his mottled blue face, and patches of his hair had fallen out.

  “Katy, you’re the ER nurse—what do you make of this?” said Travis. Before she could respond, Mark’s eyes opened and he sat straight up. From his mouth came the same contorted vocalizations that Travis had heard from the ranger.

  “Mark, buddy, it’ll be OK. Just sit still,” said Evelyn. His milky eyes fixated on her and then he shot his hand out at her sandaled foot. She gasped and jumped back. Travis grabbed an oar and held it against Mark’s chest. “Easy, dude, just stay put. We are going for help shortly.”

  The man slapped the oar aside and lunged at Jim, who was a few feet away. Jim fell back on piles of stacked gear while Mark scurried on his knees to grab Jim’s ankles. Travis and Pete raced over and yanked his shoulders, throwing him back on the sand. Then Travis moved in and squirted the pepper spray in Mark’s bulbous eyes. The man turned his attention on him and snapped his jaws, while flinging one hand at Travis, who kept spraying until the entire canister was empty. Mark kept coming. Travis raised the Glock, making sure no one was behind his line of sight. “Mark, stop. Enough!”

  With their eyes fixed on the immediate melee, no one had seen Fran’s reanimated corpse straggling up to the fire pit, her head half-attached and flopping sideways. She came up behind Jim, who was just recovering from his tumble, and tried to grab his right arm.

  Katy and Evelyn snatched up oars and drummed down vicious blows upon Fran’s loosely tethered head. It finally broke free of the remaining tendons and rolled down towards the river, its jaws still snapping lustily while the rest of her body went limp beside Jim, who was screaming.

  Travis, with no more than six feet between him and Mark, loosed two rounds into the forehead, dropping the figure beside the smoldering ashes of the fire.

  With both bodies unmoving, everyone paused to catch their breath and make sense of what was going on. Jim was screaming, “Get me away from here! Please someone get me away from these things. I want this trip to be over already.”

  “We need to get the hell out of this canyon,” said Katy. “What if there are more of those things lurking around?”

  “Let’s not wait to find out,” said Travis, glancing at the two bodies. “Fill your packs with water bottles, any remaining chow, and the usual survival gear, and let’s hoof it outta here.”

  ****

  It was 5:30 a.m. by the time they moved in silence up the road, engulfed by the undulating contours of the canyon. Travis holstered the pistol under his baggy shirt and downed some water and a protein bar before shouldering his pack. He thought of grabbing the ranger’s belt and holster but it was sticky with blood and viscera.

  Walking alongside him was LB, who was nervously running his fingers over his thin goatee. He had told everyone on the first day to call him by his nickname, LB, which, as he said, stood either for “little buddy” or “little bastard” depending on his mood that day. LB had been a helicopter pilot for a metropolitan news station and now, with kids grown and being a widower, was looking for a trip to provide some time to reflect on his life. Travis, Katy, and Pete were the younger members of the group, being in their mid-thirties.

  The rising sun painted the cliff walls ochre, and the birdsong and buzzing insects broke the rhythmic crunch of boots falling on gravel. Nearing 10 a.m., the party rounded a bend in the road beside an arroyo, and the familiar smell of rotting flesh pierced Travis’s nostrils. The repugnant odor brought back gut-twisting images of remote caves in Afghanistan.

  A hundred yards up the road, with its front end smashed into a pile of rocks, was the river ranger’s white truck. Travis motioned for the group to halt as he moved towards the rig with the pistol at low-ready. The driver’s door was ajar and tracks led to the other side by a towering pillar of sandstone. A young woman’s body was propped up against a bus-sized boulder, looking almost like she was taking a shade break.

  Her neck had a gaping hole in the side. What remained of her looked like a driftwood mannequin, with the remaining flesh shrink-wrapped to her bones. Fire ants had just discovered the rotting figure and were moving like a red ribbon over her pants. Travis inspected the body from a distance. Her left hand was still gripping a small pocketknife, and dried blood was visible under her nostrils, ears, and eyes. There were no other tracks in the area, not even from coyotes.

  Travis moved cautiously towards the driver’s door of the truck. By the tracks on the ground, with their lack of tread detail and rounded edges, he figured this scene had played out five days prior. Inside the rig were a few water bottles, binoculars, and a walkie-talkie. He motioned for the rest of the group to come up.

  “Any ideas, Katy?” said Travis. She looked over the body with one hand covering her mouth. “Looks like this woman was in bad shape right to the end. Wonder if the ranger attacked her or someone else?”

  “Yeah, I imagine she hurt worse than a giraffe with a sore throat,” said Travis.

  “Stop with the military humor and show some respect,” she replied.

  Pete walked up, peering at the body. “It’s just his way, Katy. He doesn’t mean anything by it. Let’s see if the walkie-talkie she was carrying still works. There should be a repeater tower southeast of here.”

  “Nothing; it’s not picking up a thing,” Travis said in a somber tone after flipping through the channels.

  He squatted down a few feet from the desiccated body. “This is probably the river ranger’s wife. Question is—was she coming or going from the area we just came from?” He rubbed the whiskers on his chin. “Let’s push on in ten minutes. We still have some miles to make if we’re going to reach the main road before nightfall.”

  An hour later, after refilling their water bottles at Mesquite Springs, Katy moved up next to Pete, who was trailing behind, and tugged on his shoulder. “So, we’re going on over three weeks together and I still don’t get Travis’s dark sense of humor. You’ve known him for years—has he always been like this?”

  “Well, he’s always been a practical joker and a glass-half-full kind of guy, at least until recently. His deployments in the Middle East, and God knows where else, changed him from the carefree dude I knew. The sarcasm and constant humor is just his way of dealing with life’s headaches. Spend time around a bunch of his old unit buddies and your ears may go up in flames.”

  Ka
ty was about to speak when the sight of a capsized eighteen wheeler on the road ahead caught everyone’s attention. As they crested the top of an incline, where the dirt road met the asphalt by Route 66, they saw hundreds of abandoned vehicles strewn on the waffle pattern of empty streets that made up the small town of Peach Springs. Some vehicles had doors open, suggesting a quick departure of the occupants, while others had blood-stained dashboards and windshields. A half-dozen cars in the immediate area were riddled with bullet holes, and numerous rotting body parts littered the half-mile-long stretch of road before them. Most of the small houses were completely burned to the ground, while many others had the windows shattered out, and doors swung on broken hinges, or were missing completely.

  Travis stood frozen, his throat tightening, while he stared at the decimated town. Creases from a clenched jaw pulsed through his scruffy beard. He scanned the area beyond the homes for any movement, but the only living creatures were the flocks of ravens picking through the decaying remains.

  “My God, what’ve we walked into? What’s happened to the world?” whispered Evelyn, her eyes welling up while the others stood paralyzed, surveying the horrific scene of carnage before them.

  Travis tried to swallow and then blinked his eyes hard a few times. “Let’s get out of this exposed area and trot over to that boulder field,” he said. Everyone pulled up their shirt collars to cover their faces as they strode through the littered street, abuzz with flies and departing flocks of hungry birds.

  As they edged towards the boulders, Travis could see that the hotel and attached restaurant a thousand yards down the road were still intact. They picked up their speed and made it to the shaded north side of the boulders, where they plunked down in the sand. Travis plucked out the binoculars from his pack and glassed over the parking lot beside the hotel.