Chapter 9
Carlie was stowing her pack with a 3-day
supply of rations, ammo, and gear on a table in the hangar when she caught
someone out of the corner of her eye entering the bay. She stopped what she was
doing and turned to see Eliza walking towards her wearing jeans and a green
sweatshirt. Carlie let out a partial smile. “Eliza, how are you doing—you
holding up OK?”
The young woman kept walking and then threw
her arms around Carlie’s neck in a hug. Carlie stood frozen with her arms by
her side and her face tense then slowly raised her arms in a partial response.
All of the years of providing executive protection and she had never had any of
her clients respond with such blatant affection.
Eliza pulled back and put her hands on
her hips. “How am I doing—I am alive and breathing thanks to you, Carlie. A week
ago I had high hopes about doing medical research one day but I have no
complaints, not about anything in my life ever again—except maybe the lack of
hot water for showers.”
Carlie looked at her face and could see
a budding confidence underlying her tired eyes. “You’re a strong woman and will
make a fine scientist—heck…doctor, politician or whatever you want to be.”
“Uh…thanks. It will be as a scientific
assistant for now. I think I’ll pass on anything related to politics though.
Speaking of that nefarious occupation, I heard that you spoke with my father or
more likely, he spoke at you.”
“Yeah, you could say that. He’s a man of
principle and I can’t say I disagree with what he said.”
“Well, don’t let him scare you away.
Deep down, he’s a guy who has great respect for the military and our fine
Secret Service agents. So, are you going to be back on my detail soon, after
you’ve rested?”
Carlie turned and walked back to the table
with Eliza following her. “I’ve been reassigned to a new task force. We will be
spearheading the movement to track down the origins of this virus.”
“What—but I thought once the situation
was set straight with the events in Tucson that things would return to the way
they were.”
“I don’t know if things will ever return
to the way they were a few days ago. My services are needed elsewhere and your
father is having his protective detail carry over to you.”
“Great…now he’s going to keep me
velcroed to his hip and never let me out of his sight,” she said, rolling her
eyes and crossing her arms. “Did that moron Phillip have something to do with
this?”
“Look, don’t get me wrong when I say
this but I am actually fine with leaving the Service. You will be missed but
will be in good hands,” Carlie said while carefully arranging the Glock magazines
in a neat row for the second time. “I’ve spent so many years climbing a ladder
that I thought I needed to in order to somehow prove myself. Now, I just want
to finish this mission and take care of my own.”
“Will you be coming back here when
you’re done with what’s ahead? Will I see you again?”
“I hope so,” she said, placing her hand
on Eliza’s shoulder. “Just remember, you’re a warrior and can overcome anything
life throws at you. Always fight the good fight, whether it’s with your hands
or your head, and you will make a difference. The world needs people like you,
Eliza.”
“Yeah, well that works both ways. And
when you come back here, note my optimism,” she said with a smile. “I expect
you not to be a stranger.”
“Roger that,” Carlie said as she looked
beyond Eliza’s shoulder at her team approaching from the rear of the hangar.
“You better go now or my team will think you’re trying to recruit me for the
science division.”
“Yeah, I can totally see you in a white
lab coat hovering over a microscope for hours.”
Both women laughed at the thought and
then Carlie extended her hand to Eliza. They both shook and then Eliza walked
away, passing the other operatives moving past her.
Chapter 10
Carlie spent the next hour meeting with
both of her teams. Having worked with Shane and Matias, she knew they would
help her look out for Jared and Amy, making their transition into their support
roles easier.
Sergeant Boyd’s group would be another
story. In addition to him there were five others whom General Adams had drawn
from a hastily assembled pool of men from the army personnel still left at
White Sands. She knew there was little choice right now in handpicking her
cadre as there were so few experienced operators at this facility. Most of them
were support personnel or artillery.
From their records, Carlie noted that
each man had served one or more deployments in the Middle East and possessed
above-average shooting skills. They would already be used to the stress that
comes with extended operations in hot spots along with sleep deprivation.
Carlie knew from her own training that an operator’s skills were only half the
equation in the success of a mission. A battle-tested mindset and undaunting
willpower to see a mission through, regardless of physical hardship, only came
from a place deep inside that you either had or you didn’t. Everyone was the
same from the neck down—it was what was nestled between the ears that made a
warrior gutting it out and getting the job done.
The first man to her right was over six feet
tall and had a clean-cut face and blue eyes. He could’ve been a movie star with
his looks, she thought. Beside him was a shorter man with a shaved head and
tattoos running the length of his sinewy arms to his wrists. Across the table
from her were the other three warriors. One looked to be around twenty-four and
the youngest of the group. He had a gruff appearance with a missing front tooth
and a pock-marked face that looked like he had seen his share of street fights.
Standing beside him was a meaty black guy who must have been six-eight and refrigerator-wide.
The last man had pale skin and a buzz cut that revealed his stubbly red hair
beneath his boonie cap. His hands were heavily scarred and his ropy arms
resembled those of a rock climber.
As she looked over the swarthy men provisioning
their rucksacks, Carlie noticed Boyd kept glancing her way, studying her like
she was a piece of produce in the grocery store. She walked over and stood
before him as he outfitted his tactical vest with rifle magazines.
“Sergeant Boyd, I saw in your files that
you were involved in operations in Tikrit in ’09.”
“That’s right, it was supposed to be an
easy sweep through the city but we got fucked by insurgents whose numbers were
greater than what intel indicated.” He set his vest down and stood straight up,
facing her. “The general said that you were in army intel at one point, weren’t
you?”
“That’s correct, Sergeant.”
“Well, there’s nothing like having boots
on the ground to augment what the drones above are telling you.”
“The intel which drives the drones is the
reason there are boots on the ground in the first place.”
“Hey, I’m all for technology but I put
my faith in the man to my right and my left,” he said, gliding his eyes over
her chest and then back up to her face.
“It’s good to be a man of faith, Sergeant
Boyd, but I also need men who have the balls to take action without question
when the chips are down. And if you’re the man your personnel file says you are
then you’ll be able to fit that bill just fine,” Carlie said, moving an inch
forward with her eyes fixed on him.
General Adams walked in, causing
everyone in uniform to stand at attention. Boyd turned away from Carlie and
stood erect while she slowly turned to face the general.
“I’d like both of your teams to
accompany me to the lab,” Adams said to Carlie. “I’d like you to meet the chief
medical researcher, Doctor Efron, and hear his take on what we’re facing before
you depart the base.”
Carlie walked behind the general as they
made their way down to the laboratory for what she hoped would be a brief intel
update on the virus.
On the way, Boyd moved up alongside
Shane, who was at the rear. “So, I heard you were a former SEAL, is that
right?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“So why didn’t they put you in charge of
this op?”
“Because I don’t speak Russian and Carlie
is way more qualified with her intel skills among other things.”
“She’s more qualified than you or me,
yeah right.”
“What was your background again, Sergeant—Rangers,
is that right?”
“Damn straight, Army Rangers,” he said,
slapping his chest with his right fist. “No disrespect but there’s a reason
that they don’t allow mattress-thrashers like Carlie into the Rangers, SEALs,
and other high-speed units. Women just can’t hack it.”
Shane stopped and fell behind the rest
of the group with Boyd next to him. “Listen, pal, however short your time is on
this team, just remember that Carlie can outgun, outrun, and outfight most of the
people here.” Shane moved an inch away from Boyd’s face. “So I’d start showing
some goddamned respect.” Shane glared at the man for a second and then turned
and walked down the hallway towards the others.
Chapter 11
In the lab were a dozen assistants
milling around, exchanging notes from their clipboards, analyzing numbers on
DNA sequencing machines, and feverishly pecking out results on laptops. Resting
on a corner table were heaps of discarded MRE packets, empty water bottles, and
crumpled napkins. The entire lab smelled like moldy bread overlayed with a
slight odor of bleach.
Carlie saw Professor Alan Beauchard standing
in a white labcoat at the back of the room, speaking with a female assistant. He
looked better than he had when Carlie rescued him in Tucson with Eliza. She was
relieved to see that his medical skills were already being put to use. The
professor nodded at her as she walked by and she responded in kind then made
her way over to the main desk where a silver-haired man was standing with
assistants hovering around him.
“I thought it would be in your interest
to meet Doctor Michael Efron before you departed,” said General Adams. “He and
his team of researchers have been hastily culling intel from around the globe
and trying to make sense of this virus.”
Carlie shook hands with the man,
expecting him to issue a wispy handshake but pleasantly surprised by his firm
grip. “Ms. Simmons, I’ve heard a little about you from the general. Sounds like
quite an incredible escape from Tucson that you mustered.”
“It’s Carlie. We don’t have much time.
Can you fill us in on anything useful about this virus or the creatures that we
might be able to use while we’re in the field?”
“I’m assuming full clearance on
everything henceforth, General?”
“Carlie and her team have the green
light from me on anything you can relay now or when they are on their mission,”
said Adams. “I have to return to meet with another group so I’ll leave them in
your good hands,” he said, then made his way to the entrance.
Doctor Efron motioned for the group to
move to a quieter corner of the room away from the humming noise of the lab
equipment. He leaned back against a stainless-steel counter and began his
lecture with his hands waving through the air. “All we know is that this
originated in the southeastern U.S. in this country, in New Orleans, as you’ve
already heard. In Europe, it was near the Thames River in London; Russia had
its outbreak near Sochi; in Japan it was in Tokyo, and Australia—near Sydney. In
every case, it was near a large body of water or ports of entry and each event
occurred within twenty-four hours of one another.”
“So far, this sounds like an
orchestrated terrorist attack,” said Shane.
“Too early to tell but if I had to
guess, I’d be along the same lines as you,” Doctor Efron said. “And the
timeline for infection was nearly the same across the globe. Once this virus started
it spread quickly and devastated every major metropolitan area around the
world. The only place to escape large-scale devastation was South and Central
Africa but most of those countries were isolated to begin with.”
“Any intel on point of origin?” said
Carlie.
“All we know is that the Department of
Homeland Security discovered some of the first undead creatures on board a
freighter in Louisiana. That is Ground Zero. Unfortunately only a brief amount
of information came out of their field office before the pathogen wiped out the
region.”
“And what about the virus itself—what
are we dealing with exactly?” said Matias.
“That’s the scary part—this is like
doomsday virology models that we used to produce in think-tank meetings with
the DOD guys. Nobody I know of in my field of research could have created this
virus in this particular fashion. There’s only one experimental pathogen on
record that comes close to fitting the profile of this one—KAD97.” Efron leaned
back and tapped his laptop keyboard to begin an audio track. “This recording is
from a NATO weapons inspector a few years ago who was discussing the old Soviet
biological warfare program.”
The voice of a scientist came over the
speaker as he spoke first in Russian and then in English. “To briefly recap,
the KAD97 strain and others like it were originally developed in the former
Soviet Republic at their bioweapons facility north of Kiev. Regrettably, no one
knows for certain what became of this particular pathogen as the scientists who
invented it died long ago and documentation on such projects is hard to come
by, as you might imagine. The virus had strains of encephalitis leading to
neurological breakdown coupled with a synthetic pathogen similar to plague. We
can only hope, for our sake and the future of humanity, that such a virus no
longer exists.”
When the audio ran out, Efron pulled up
a rolling chair and sat down, resting his arms on his spread-out legs while
clasping his fingers together.
“The Soviet scientists were so terrified
of this combined virus that after the USSR was dissolved, the remaining
stockpiles of the pathogen were destroyed so it wouldn’t end up in the wrong
hands. It would’ve taken an entire team of scientists working for years in a major
facility like they had to even come up with something like this again.”
“Clearly one of the former Russian
scientists must have held on to some, selling out to a rogue nation perhaps,”
said Shane.
“Or someone discovered a cache of hidden
vials and reanimated the virus,” said Efron. “During the Cold War, Russian
operatives were known to have crude bioweapon devices stowed in various locations
around the world, probably just as we did.”
“Yeah and I’m sure those devices were
eagerly dug up and sold on the black market after things fell apart with the
Russkies,” said Jared.
“If this was a terrorist effort, they
had deep pockets and an enviable infrastructure,” said Shane. “To run an op on
this scale takes a worldwide network and logistical capabilities beyond what a
small outfit could muster. But what puzzles me are the ports of entry you
mentioned—those are not targets I would choose for such a strike, plus the fact
that each area of outbreak didn’t occur at exactly the same time. That’s very
odd.”
“So this terrorist group or rogue
country decides to unravel the world by creating an army of undead,” said
Carlie. “Then what—they are going to sit back until the dust settles and become
overlords?”
“Or sell the antidote to the highest
bidder,” grumbled Boyd.
“I can’t answer the latter,” said Efron.
“So far no group or individual has taken credit for this attack. Typically,
there’s some kind of demand or affirmation from the culprits after a terrorist
attack. On this one, we’re still in the dark.”
“How does the virus move so fast—is
biting the main disease vector?” said Amy.
“I suspect that this began as an
airborne disease and then must have mutated quickly to spread through oral
contact from biting. This is the most common way of transmission now but you
can also get it from contact with the blood on, say, an open cut or wound, much
like any other infectious disease. The virus turns the living into, for lack of
a better saying, knife-edge walkers—they’re not dead but they certainly aren’t
alive in the sense of the person we once knew.” He glanced around the cavernous
room where his staff was frantically working. “This lab was set up very quickly
and we’ve only had a day of solid analysis behind us along with collating data
from our colleagues around the world. We have a few of the creatures contained
in a cell in a lower level in this facility and those have provided fresh blood
samples but the complete analysis is not in yet.” He paused to crack a knuckle
on his index finger. “What I can tell you is that the brain tissue samples I’ve
examined indicate that the victim’s frontal lobe becomes scrambled, thus
erasing their personality. This is the part of the brain responsible for
reasoning, cognition, and language. Only the more primal limbic system and
predatory drive is left intact. The interesting thing is that the nervous
system is enhanced—you probably witnessed the speed at which the creatures can
move and their raw aggressiveness.”
“Professor Beauchard, who was with us in
Tucson and is now in your employ, indicated that the facial sagging and yellow
skin color may be connected with a form of stroke,” said Carlie.
“Now, that’s the puzzling piece of this
whole thing—the original Russian virus didn’t indicate anything about that
side-effect. This could be a modification that was added in recently or an
unexpected outcome from fucking with nature.”
“OK, so far I’m with you,” said Carlie.
“But I saw a creature in Tucson, as well as outside the base here, that moved
and acted differently than the others. It had a bold, purposeful stride and an
almost alpha-dog appearance compared to the others.”
“Hmm,” Efron said, running his hand
through his silver hair. “You’re one of a handful of people to relay such a
sighting to me. Honestly, I don’t know. Perhaps its frontal lobe was less
damaged than the rest of the creatures or it has an increased oxygen and blood
flow rate—I just don’t have enough data to help you at this point.”
“So, onto practical matters, Doc,” said
Shane. “It’s all headshots or whacking off their domes that’ll save our asses
on the battlefield, right?”
“That and taking advantage of the night
as their eyesight seems to be hampered after sundown. It looks like we no
longer own the daylight.”
“At least for today—tomorrow is another
story,” Shane said, tucking his hands into his beltline.
“So what do we call these things—the
undead, zombies, mutants or what?” said Amy.
“How about flesh robbers or pickle-faced
goons?” said Jared with a grin.
“Calling ’em ‘Tangos’ works for me,”
said Shane.
“Very Argentinian of you—except that that
doesn’t distinguish them from the other living and breathing bad guys roaming
the streets,” said Jared.
“Bad guys that are livin’ or dead both
need killing,” said Shane.
Jared grinned. “Wait a minute—what about
‘tango undead mutants’ or ‘TUMs’ for short? How does that suit you, Sheriff?”
“I’m gonna need a roll of Tums when
we’re done here. I’m already feeling queasy just standing this close to you,”
said Shane.
“We can assign a practical name later,”
said Carlie. “We’ve got a plane to catch in one hour so do any last-minute gear
checks, grab some chow, and let’s rendezvous at the rear hangar at exactly 0500.”