“Please, tell our kids,” she said.
Gia nodded. “I’ll put a warning note on the door for them so they don’t come in.”
Malley nodded. “Thank you. Please, tell them I love them.”
Gia didn’t want to tie a tourniquet around the woman’s arm. That would mean more contact with her than necessary. “Here,” Echo said, holding out the wipes.
“Thanks.” She took one and wiped blood off the top of Malley’s left hand, which was closest to Gia. Several veins stood out. She made the stick, pulled the plunger back to insure she’d hit the vein, then slowly began pushing the po-clo.
“I’m sorry I had to shoot him,” Gia said. “I didn’t want to.”
“It’s okay, I know you didn’t…” Malley’s voice tapered off, eyes glazed, body falling still.
Gia still pushed the rest of the po-clo, slowly, wanting to make sure. She’d seen videos during their classes warning them it would be that fast, and not to rush the push for fear of blowing a vein. It’d been different with the two assholes. Those had been executions.
This was a mercy killing and she didn’t want to fuck it up. She felt she owed the woman that much, at least. Had she checked on her yesterday, Gia might have gotten her out of the city and to safety before her husband returned.
She tried not to think about the Kite preparation classes she’d taken, with Chief Baynes sitting in the back and observing his officers as they practiced with life-like mannequins.
There was enough po-clo in each bolus to easily kill three large men, much less a woman Malley’s size.
Finally, when the syringe was empty, Gia withdrew it and dropped it on the floor. The three of them backed away from the couch and Gia stripped off her gloves, tossing them away from her and holding a hand out for another wipe. Echo dropped one into her palm, she wiped both hands thoroughly, dropped it, and he handed her another. She repeated it and dropped that one, too.
They backed out of the house and stared at the cooling body of the chief lying on the driveway.
“Now what?” Echo asked.
“We can’t just leave him here,” she said. “If for no other reason than I don’t want someone getting exposed. I damn sure don’t want his kids coming looking for him and finding him like this.”
Omega looked around. “I can’t believe no one came out to look.”
A functional numbness, combined with physical fatigue and emotional exhaustion, had set in. Gia was now operating strictly on mental autopilot as her training kicked into gear. “They’ve left, or they’re afraid to. Either way, it means less people exposed. Echo, in the back of my rig, there’s a blue plastic tote box. Bring the roll of warning tape, and the plastic sheeting, please. And more gloves.” She’d hoped she’d never have to use any of the items, and had frequently groused about what a pain in the ass it was to carry them around.
Especially the po-clo. The training for it had creeped her out.
The reality of it saddened her more than she’d ever imagined possible.
Working quickly, they rolled the man’s body into the plastic sheeting and dragged him inside the house. They left his body in the foyer and locked the door knob before pulling it closed behind them. Gia ringed the front and back porches with bright orange tape.
WARNING! KITE EXPOSURE HAZARD! was printed over and over again on the tape, in English and Spanish, with a skull and crossbones. She tied it off to the railings and then for good measure sealed the front door with crime scene evidence seals.
They wouldn’t stop someone determined to get in, but maybe it would make them take pause.
Before they left, she got a piece of paper and, in permanent marker, wrote on it: DO NOT ENTER. POSITIVE KITE VICTIMS INSIDE. INFECTION DANGER. To the Baynes family, she added, RICK AND MALLEY BAYNES DECEASED, KITE-POSITIVE. THEY SAID THEY LOVE YOU AND ORDERED YOU NOT TO ENTER THE RESIDENCE AND EXPOSE YOURSELVES.
They duct-taped it to the front door.
After stowing everything, they paused before getting into her unit. “What about their stuff in the vehicles?” Echo asked.
“We can’t risk exposing ourselves any more than we already have,” she said. “Now we need to return to the station and wait.”
“Let’s hold off on that,” Omega said. “Let’s take a little road trip first.”
“What?” she and Echo both asked.
He shrugged. “Been nearly an hour since we were exposed. We need two hours for the first stick test. Why go back right away and have everyone staring at us and possibly infect them?”
“True,” she said. “But you’d better call Papa on the radio and let him know.”
“I will.” He smiled. “Know of any good parks around here?”
“Are you serious? Parks?”
“Hell, show us around, girl. Not like we’ll be here much longer.” His expression sobered. “One way or another.”
“Hopefully another,” she said as they all climbed in. “I’d rather my leaving be in a convoy with everyone and not at the end of a po-clo needle.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gia drove them over to Quigley Canyon. A couple of decades earlier, a wildfire had wiped out a neighborhood that wound up and around one of the ridges. With the existing park area already there, the state had purchased the properties from the homeowners and planted the whole ridge and park area with trees and shrubs in an attempt to help prevent erosion and mudslides. They’d succeeded, but future fires had burned much of the vegetation.
Some of the more tenacious trees and bushes had taken hold, however, refusing to die. There were still a few of the original plantings, and plenty of seedlings and saplings scattered around.
The best part was the view provided of the eastern side of Santa Clarita.
They all leaned against the hood of the SUV and took in the view. There were no planes, no cars.
Other than the smoke off to their southwest, it felt like they were alone.
“That’s a pretty view,” Echo said.
“I’ve been known to ride up here and eat lunch or dinner by myself while partaking of the view,” she said.
She didn’t want to think right now. She knew the risk was low that they’d contract Kite from the little bit of contact they’d had with Baynes and his wife.
She was also a realist and had seen how quickly and fucktastically things could slide south in a really bad way.
Nick Edison was proof of that.
At least she no longer felt bad about fucking on top of Baynes’ desk.
The family picture, however, still haunted her.
Especially the thoughts of how close Baynes had come to destroying the entire family he claimed to love.
“You ever been exposed before?” she asked, walking up to the elephant in the corner and punching it in the snoot.
“Not us,” Omega said. “Others in our group. Worse than what we had today. Quack and Ak, they were both covered in blood.”
“So was Tango,” Echo said. “And they were okay. Doc never tested blue.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t test himself,” she said. “He should have known.”
“He probably did,” Echo said. “He just didn’t want to admit it to himself.”
“He exposed his wife. If we hadn’t gone there, they could have spread it to his kids and grandkids.” She felt more than a little sick over that. She’d always looked up to Baynes, thought he was a good leader and boss.
She never thought he’d ever willfully ignore safety, even when it came to himself and his family. Especially then.
“Yep,” Omega said. “And all over this region, there are people sneaking out and joining their families and passing Kite along to them. It’s here, and now it’s taken root deep.”
“The military is probably killing a lot of people who weren’t exposed to Kite,” she said. “By firing on the crowds the way they have. And those riots that were going on before the quake. Maybe they lied about the riots and what was really happening. And…Barstow
.”
And no telling what was in store for the people in or en route to Barstow.
“Yep,” Echo said. “I’m sure they have, and will.” He pulled his focus from the landscape and turned it on her. “Not a good idea, but remember, they’re looking at even more video than we are from India, Pakistan, China, everywhere over there falling to Kite. They are probably trying a hail Mary. Not saying it’s right, but when they looked at the alternatives, they probably thought they didn’t have any.”
“There is no way for them to contain it,” Omega said. “A natural disaster is localized. A nuclear bomb would have spread radiation, but still mostly been localized. You get out of the area, it’s not really contagious. The military could move the refugees anywhere. Or something like the anthrax attack, that was much smaller in scale. The flu pandemics, well, you could catch that anywhere. People were staying home, not emigrating to other locations.”
“They’re herding those people into a blind canyon, basically. In Barstow.”
“Yep,” the men agreed.
She felt a little relief once she’d admitted it out loud and they’d confirmed it.
But only a little.
They’d called Papa on the radio, told them of their status, and that they wouldn’t be returning right away. Gia thought about how quickly and peacefully Malley had died—well, physically, at least—and knew she’d want to go like that. By her own hand, if necessary.
She wouldn’t want to expose anyone else.
“So what else have you done in your life?” Omega asked.
Gia let out a snort. “Guess it’s kind of silly to worry about classified secrets now, isn’t it?”
The men, who flanked her on either side, shifted position to stare at her.
“What?” she asked.
“Aw, come on, you can’t tease men like that and not fess up,” Omega said.
She held up her right hand. “Pinky swear?”
The men laughed, and she laughed with them.
It felt good to laugh. She only hoped they’d all be around by morning to keep laughing.
“So what do you want to know about me?” she asked.
Echo leaned against the SUV. “Well, you know our secret identities, military grunts by day, superheroes by—”
“Actually,” she said, “I don’t. What are your names?”
Echo held out his hand and shook with her. “Ray Griffith,” he said in an exaggerated, snooty British accent. “At your service.” He bowed, waving his arm with a flourish.
“He’s a bit of a drama queen,” Omega said, his arms crossed over his chest. But then he unfolded his enormous limbs and also extended his hand. “Cedric Wall.”
“So, Ray, Cedric. Here’s a shocker for you. The US is still, as of over fourteen years ago, in possession of nuclear weapons it claims it no longer has.”
Omega only arched an eyebrow, but Echo’s jaw dropped.
“No!” He clutched his chest. “Oh. My. Gawd. Seriously? No. Way. Tell me it’s not true!” Then he straightened. “Yeah,” he said blandly. “We knew that.”
“You did?”
He nodded. “But it’s not as of fourteen years ago. It’s as of, oh, about six months ago.”
“We’ve had to do transportation recon for some of the nuke jockeys when they’ve had to move the hot potatoes to new locations,” Omega said.
She felt a little let down. “Again, here I thought I’d be shocking you.”
They chuckled and gathered close. “You want us to pretend to be shocked?” Echo asked. “We will if you want us to.”
“No.” She felt the urge to pout. Hell, she hadn’t pouted since she was a teenager. What the hell was up with that?
These two brought it out in her. In a good way.
“Hey,” she said. “Shouldn’t we be, I don’t know, not touching or something while we’re waiting?”
The men shrugged.
She really liked it when they did that. Liked the way their muscles rippled under their shirts.
“I don’t really think it matters,” Omega said. “Either we all have it, or we don’t. I saw what Ak and Quack looked like when they came in. If they didn’t contract it, I doubt we will.”
“What happened?”
Echo’s joviality faded. “A guy she used to work with shot her brother. Her brother grabbed her and took the bullet for her. Lima and Quack didn’t see the guy or they would have shot him before he’d had a chance to attack them. She was soaked in her brother’s blood, and so was Quack, transfer contamination from dragging her away from her brother’s body.”
“Wow.”
“Worse,” Omega said, “her elderly aunt found out about her brother’s death. Then she killed herself. She had arthritis real bad. Took an overdose of her pain meds. She’d raised them after their parents died. She only hung around because of Ak’s brother.”
“Why is she called ‘Ak’?”
Omega smiled. “That’s my fault. A-K. Ass-kicker.”
“She is that,” Echo said. “She’s also got dibs on castrating Rev. Silo if we get the chance to capture him ourselves.”
Gia blinked. “Wow. That’s…um…”
Omega’s smile widened into a playful grin. “Sadistic?”
“Yeeeaah, I guess that’s one word for it.”
They stared out at the valley, the warm breeze blowing past them. “So back to that friend of yours,” she started. “Doc. He recovered from Kite?”
“A mutated strain of it.” Omega detailed what had happened, how Doc had sliced his leg through his protective suit while in the RV, on some equipment that had been in the lab at their safe house in LA when the earthquake hit. Some things in the lab had broken during the quake and exposed the rest of the equipment. Despite their sanitizing everything as best they could before transferring it to the RV, apparently he’d been infected by a less virulent strain.
Instead of feeling more confident, Gia felt less so. “You’re telling me the strip tests might not even be accurate any longer?”
“Well,” Omega said, “they’ll tell us if someone definitely has Kite, the main strain of it. The deadliest strain. Whether or not the other deadly strains will be picked up by them now that the virus is mutating is still up in the air. But at least in Doc’s case, he never tested blue, and Q and the rest are pretty certain now it was a mutated version of Kite.”
“He got sick pretty fast, too,” Echo said. “Faster than the virulent strain. So if we didn’t test blue, if we did catch something, we’d likely feel it quick.”
“Hmm.” She walked around to the back of her unit and pulled out a blanket. She also fished a couple of items out of the backpack that was now functioning as her purse. Returning to where the men stood at the front of the SUV, she spread the blanket out on the ground, tossed down the condoms, tube of lube, and package of wipes, and started taking off her gun belt.
“What are you doing?” Echo asked.
“Well, if we’re exposed and we’ve got it, we’ve got it. If we don’t, we don’t. We’ve all been together anyway. I say screw it, might as well enjoy our wait.” She pulled her shirt off, then her bulletproof vest. “Unless you two just want to stand there and want to watch me masturbate. If that’s the case, no offense, I’d rather be alone.” She stripped off her undershirt and sports bra. “A couple of hours ago, I know I heard someone promise me that if I had both your cocks in me at the same time, I’d never want another man again.”
The men shared a glance before they started yanking off their clothes.
“That’s what I thought.”
When they were all naked on the blanket, warmth from the earth baking up through it, Omega pulled her on top of him in a sixty-nine and started licking her clit while Echo grabbed the tube of lube.
“Uh, I guess I should of warned you that he takes great pride in eating pussy,” Echo said. “He’s the only man I know who can make a woman safeword from receiving oral.”
She would have said something in return, b
ut she had a mouthful of Omega’s cock and didn’t want to be rude and speak with her mouth full. Despite her clit still being sensitive from before, she moaned as Omega’s tongue flicked back and forth, already starting tingles deep inside her core.
He reached up and grabbed her ass cheeks, spreading them so Echo had access.
“There we go,” Echo said. She felt him drizzle lube down the crack of her ass, then his finger started massaging her rim.
She and Dave had tried anal a few times while together, sometimes with his cock, sometimes with toys, but it had never felt this good. With Omega’s knowing tongue playing with her clit and totally distracting her, Echo worked one finger into her ass and started fucking her with it.
In fact, Omega’s fingers dug into her ass cheeks and he redoubled his efforts, his tongue sliding into her pussy and fucking her as Echo’s finger loosened her ass.
When Omega made her come the first time, Echo was ready and simultaneously worked a second finger into her. That turned the pleasure into a biting pinch of discomfort that Omega quickly soothed away with his mouth.
Echo went slowly, adding plenty of lube. “Okay, get her over again. I need to add a third so I don’t hurt her.”
Omega sucked on her clit and she fell over the edge one more time as Echo eased a third finger into her ass. Her moans turned into whines. “I know, baby,” Echo said. “But if you can take three, you can take me.”
It only took a few moments for Omega to soon have that feeling good, too.
Real good.
The thought that she was about to be stuffed with more cock, and have more orgasms, than she’d had in the last year or more of her life flitted through her head before Echo’s hand disappeared. She heard him open the container of wipes. “Turn her around. Let’s do this.”
She let out a cry as Omega reached under her like she weighed nothing, lifted her up, spun her around, and then settled her pussy down onto his cock.
He grinned up at her. “Oh, baby, you are perfect.”
Echo rolled the condom over his cock. He grabbed the lube and knelt behind her. Pushing her down onto Omega with a hand between her shoulder blades, he said, “Okay, I’ll go slow.”