The Tipping Point (Surviving the Fall 9)

Chapter 1

Washington, D.C.

“We’ve been going around in circles for an hour, guys.” Jane groaned from the back seat, arching her back and shifting her weight around to try and find a more comfortable position in which to sit. “Can’t we just take a break?”

Rick was about to reply with an explanation that stopping would result in yet another unacceptable delay when Dr. Evans cut in. “That’s not a bad idea, my dear. Rick, would you mind?” Rick glanced over at Dr. Evans, ready to argue with him about it, but the look on his face made Rick reconsider.

“Uh… yeah, sure.” He glanced around the vehicle and pointed to a nearby building that was around seven stories tall. “I’ll stop over there. If the structure’s not too damaged on the interior maybe we can get to the roof and spot a path through the destruction while we’re at it.”

“Sounds great,” Jane replied, “Whatever it takes to get us to pull over. These bumps and turns are killing my back.”

Three hours of circling the south and western edges of Washington, D.C. later and the trio was still no closer to finding a way into the deeper portions of the city without abandoning their vehicle. The high number of vehicles and the tightly packed buildings meant that, like other urban centers, the city went up like a book of matches once the Damocles virus destroyed most of the vehicles in the area. Fires tore through structures old and new alike faster than first responders could mobilize and over ninety percent of the nearly 1.1 million people living and working in the city died within hours of when the fires began.

Of course, anyone with moderate to high level connections in the city was nowhere nearby when things hit the fan. High ranking government and military officials, their families, their friends and friends of their friends all slipped away in the days and hours before the zeroth hour. The workers—both in private and government sectors—whose ceaseless labor enabled those at the top to do their jobs weren’t so lucky.

Back of the napkin math done by a small group of senators, an active Army general and a Navy admiral showed that there simply was no way to evacuate any decent sized number of people from the city without inciting panic across the globe and potentially causing more deaths than they anticipated might occur. While their assumption about panic was correct, their assumption that only ten percent of the city would perish was a gross understatement. After the first wave of explosions destroyed most of the vehicles in the city, most survivors tried to flee on foot. The swiftly spreading fires ensured that those staying in their homes and those on the streets were killed.

There was no possible way in which large numbers of people could have survived—though that was the entire point of Damocles. A weapon of war that could turn a country’s own resources against it was an invaluable tool. In the right hands it could quickly bring about an end to conflicts, topple dictators and help to ensure peace and stability. There are very few ‘right hands,’ though, and most hands that start out right either turn wrong or die out and are replaced by the wrong hands anyway.

“Looks like that highway there acted as a firebreak.” Rick held his right hand over his eyes while pointing with his left. “It’s clogged with vehicles but we might be able to go around on this western edge and weave between the buildings.” With most of the city in ashes and a potentially long journey ahead of them, neither Rick, Jane nor Dr. Evans were keen on leaving their only mode of transportation behind.

“Maybe,” Dr. Evans replied. “Or we could try going all the way around to the north.”

“And what about the bridges?” Rick shook his head. “The railroad bridge was completely broken up and the regular one next to it was covered in burned-out vehicles.”

“Guys, I hate to be a downer, but is it possible that we might have to leave the car behind and go on foot from here?” Jane inserted herself into the conversation as she emerged onto the roof from the floor below.

Rick sighed and looked back over the city, most of which was charred and giving off thin wisps of smoke. “That does not look like a fun place to walk. Besides, we don’t know where the facility is. We could spend days walking around from potential location to potential location.”

“That sounds like hell,” she replied. “But if that’s our only option then the fact that we hate it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Dr. Evans looked at Rick, wearing a slight smile and an amused expression. “She does make a good point, you k

now.”

“Ugh.” Rick sat down on a large metal duct running along the roof and closed his eyes. “I started this whole nightmare walking through a city on fire. I hate walking. I really, really hate it.”

“Cheer up, Rick.” Jane smiled as she sat down next to him and gave him a hug. “Besides, I don’t think the city’s technically on fire. So it’s got that going for it.”

Rick snorted, laughed and shook his head. “All right, fine. Let’s take one more hour and search along this western edge, where the fire didn’t jump the highway. If we can’t find a way into the city after that then we’ll move in on foot. Okay?”

Dr. Evans and Jane both nodded as Rick stood to his feet and the trio headed back down through the building and out to their car for what they hoped wouldn’t be the last time.

***

“I miss the car.” Since leaving the vehicle tucked away in the garage of a small lube shop fifteen minutes prior, none of the three had spoken a word until Dr. Evans finally broke the silence.

“I don’t,” Jane replied immediately. “Sitting in the front seat was torture. Sitting in the back was somehow worse.”

“General Black,” Rick intoned in a deep, mocking voice, “Thank you for the use of your automobile. Might I suggest something a little roomier next time, with a better suspension and some off-road capabilities, though?”

Dr. Evans chuckled while Jane rolled her eyes. “That thing is such a piece of garbage. I’ll be glad to never see it again.”

“I look forward to using it to get back to my family once this is all said and done,” Rick replied.

“Where’s your family at again, Rick?” Dr. Evans asked.

“Down near Blacksburg.”

“My goodness,” he replied. “They’re very close, then.”

“Don’t remind me unless you want me leaving you two and never coming back.” Rick’s reply carried a hint of humor around the edges, but it was obvious that he was actually quite serious.

Chapter 2

Blacksburg, VA

Dianne’s eyes flicked back and forth as she watched the group of a dozen men approaching the building. Two she recognized—both from earlier in the city when they had hounded her at the clinic and from when they had tried to steal her car when the event started—but most of the rest she did not. A couple of the faces looked familiar, and after a few seconds of racking her brain she realized that she remembered them from when she and Jason had infiltrated the gas station to rescue Tina.

“I don’t see red shirt anywhere,” she mumbled to herself, referring to the leader of the group at the gas station, though she hadn’t seen his face and realized that he could easily be in the group.

As the men closed in on the LTAC building, Dianne turned around and ran up the stairs, her remembrance of why she was there in the first place finally kicking in. While she would have to deal with the gang at some point, finding the medication for Jason was crucial and without it her journey to the LTAC would be wasted. She took the stairs two at a time and threw open the door to the next floor, disregarding all pretense of stealth. She was in a race against time before the group got into the building, and every second delayed was a second wasted.

Dianne ran down the hall, looking for the room number that had been written in the notebook at the nurse’s station, her flashlight bouncing back and forth as she scanned the walls. She finally arrived at a small alcove in the hall and stopped, double-checking the number next to the space and nodding before tugging on the door set just inside. There was resistance to the pull, and Dianne tried again before realizing that it was locked—likely for good reason given the medications that lay just inside.

She instinctively glanced down the hall in both directions, listening carefully for any signs of the men who were approaching. After confirming that she was alone for the moment, Dianne took off her backpack and rummaged around inside before pulling out a small five-pound sledgehammer that she had thrown inside before leaving the house. The wire mesh safety glass was tough and designed to stand up to a fair amount of abuse, but several swings with the hammer obliterated it, leaving a narrow gap for Dianne to reach in and unlock the door so that she could open it up.

The room tucked away in between patient rooms and small offices had neither windows nor decorations. Several shelves lined the walls and they were divided up into sections. Each shelf contained a myriad of bins, all of which had labels on them with a few words and several numbers and letters that designated what they were, along with a barcode. A barcode scanner hung just inside the door, used by the staff to keep track of every single item that was removed from the storeroom.

The bins on the shelves were filled with all manner of supplies, and Dianne quickly began rifling through them while occasionally glancing at the scribbled words on her arm. She had written the list of must-haves on her arm both in case she lost the full list that was still tucked in her pocket and so that she could quickly refer to it without having to fumble for a paper. The decision had been spontaneous but turned out to be an enormous timesaver in a situation where every second was potentially a difference between life and death.

“Yes!” Dianne whispered to herself, pumping her arm as she finally found the bin she was looking for. Several small vials were inside, each of them with the name of one of the antibiotics Tina had requested to help cure Jason. Given that the top choice on Tina’s list was nowhere to be found in the room and the ones she did find were second, Dianne decided that they would have to be good enough. She grabbed her backpack from the floor where she had placed it after entering the room and took several rolls of gauze from a bin on a nearby shelf. After quickly rolling all of the vials up in thick layers of gauze she placed them in her pack before returning to the shelves to find the other items she needed.

“Needles, tubing and saline… check, check and check.” The other items were easy to find, and she stuffed them into her pack along with as many other useful-looking supplies as she could find. Large adhesive bandages went in next, then several different types of needles, bottles of over-the-counter pain medication in blister packs, a thick roll of medical tape and several sealed scalpels and pairs of tweezers. Diane’s backpack was almost bursting at the seams as the tried to fit the tape, scalpels and tweezers inside and she shoved them into the pockets of her jacket, not wanting to abandon anything she had picked up. The entire room was a gold mine and she wished that she had time to ransack the entire place and fill her truck to the brim, but a faraway noise reminded her of the perils of her situation.

“What the hell happened here?!” The shout was loud, but distant, echoing through the halls of the facility and alerting to the fact that the men were inside and likely on the floor just below her.

“Did that bitch do this?” Another voice asked, equally as loud as the first.

“They’ve been dead for days, you idiot. Calm down and keep searching!”

Dianne slipped her backpack on as she stood near the door to the room, then made sure her rifle was secure across her back before drawing her pistol with her right hand and gripping the small sledgehammer with her left. “All right, Dianne,” she whispered, trying to psych herself up for what was coming next. “You just have to get down a few floors past a dozen people who want to hurt or kill you. No biggie.”

With a deep breath, Dianne moved out of the room and slunk down the hall, her flashlight off and in her pocket to avoid the chance of the men seeing the light. She walked lightly, going ball to heel with each step, hoping that there weren’t any loose floorboards or large objects in her way that might give away her position. She reached the end of the hall without incident and stood next to the stairwell, breathing as quietly as possible as she listened to the noise below.

Footsteps, the sounds of hushed conversations and the occasional banging of a door or some unknown piece of equipment were constant, and were drawing closer to the stairwell with each passing second. Knowing that the men were likely searching room by room for her, Dian

ne looked around and did the only thing she could think to do: hide.