Degeneration (22 page)

One of the
gunners
atop the tank
abandoned
his post, leapt off of the tank, and ran away from the approaching horde.

The
radio
operator looked at the s
ergeant,
gave an apologetic look
, and took off
running after the gunner; other soldiers in white hazmat suits stopped firing,
turned
,
and joined t
he retreat as the horde weaved in-between the Humvees and tanks
.

Down the road, the
gawking
c
ivilian onlookers realized
what was happening
and their
panic
intensified. They
trampled over each other and shoved past the riot police as they tried to make an ineffective retreat
.

Infected climbed onto the tanks and pulled gunners out of their nests while the others
chased
after
the retreating
soldiers and spread out into the terrified civilian crowd, c
laiming
countless new numbers.

A group of four infected men tackled the s
ergeant
, tore open his white-suit, and started to bite him repeatedly.

The s
ergean
t managed to pull
his
Beretta
out of his holster
, stuck
the barrel against his head,
and pulled the trigger.

Glenwood-Five Points Station was lost and the downto
w
n quarantine had failed.

The six fighter jets roared past the compromised Glenwood-Five Points and over the heads of the screaming crowd.

The lead pilot looked down at the ground below, dismayed.

“
Hades Zero-One to RAL Control, it looks like we have Whiskey-Tangos mixing with civvies in all directions. Five Points didn’t hold. This won’t be an effective run. How do you want us to proceed, over?”

“Control to Hades Zero-One, we copy. Drop your payload as planned.”

The fighter jets fired their thermobaric missiles towards the heart of downtown Raleigh and then veered off into opposite directions.

A massive pillar of flames formed over the heart of downtown and quickly flooded the surrounding streets with liquid fire, spreading outward.

Within seconds, every downtown street was awash in burning napalm and multiple plastic-draped skyscrapers took to the flames like dry kindling. Agonizing shrills of death filled the air and rose above the roar of the flames.

Many of the smaller skyscrapers along the outskirts of downtown, including Central Hospital, remained unscathed.

Outside of the engulfed downtown area, the infection spread into the surrounding neighborhoods unabated and festering with infection.

Back in D.C., Gen.
Falton sat
at the polished
oak desk
inside the White House’s Situation Room
with his hands clasped togeth
er atop a piece of paper. His mind helplessly drifted back to an earlier time in his illustrious career, a time before the ‘PT-12’ unpleasantness. His mind searched desperately for some way to escape, for some way to make things the way they used to be. He wished that he could tell himself that everything was going to be okay and actually believe it.

“General Falton
?
”
a haggard man sitting across from him asked.

Gen. Falton blinked and stared at the unfamiliar man until recollection finally struck him.

The president stared back at him, looking lost, pale, sick, and worried.

“So, t
he downtown
firebombing happened too late and the
quar
antine has been defeated?” Gen. Falton
asked aloud for the third time
.
How did such a well-organized plan fall apart so rapidly? He blamed Maj. Gen. Yates since it was his plan in the first place.

The president’s expression went from distraught too annoyed.

“We already went over that! My question to you, again, is why in the hell did those planes take so long to respond?” the president asked.

Gen. Falton looked around at the faces staring at him around the table. He saw the vice-president, looking frail and frightened; Chief of Staff Norton, frowning in his wrinkled blue suit; Secretary of Defense Hart, staring at him with piercing green eyes; Secretary of Homeland Security Rutherford, slowly shaking his head side-to-side, glaring at him; Admiral Rooks, a look of disgust plastered on his hard-lined face; General West, looking focused and energized; and General Spinks, sitting ramrod-straight, calculating.

Gen. Falton wished that he could detach himself from his body and leave that unpleasant room. His eyes drifted up the large LED screen on the wall above the president. The screen showed a live satellite view of Raleigh, North Carolina and various other live camera feeds. It all felt so very surreal.

“Well?” the president asked. The irritation was evident in his voice.

Gen. Falton’s gaze drifted back to the president. He kept his hands clinched over the face-down sheet of paper in front of him.

“The… pilots were on schedule. It was the virus’ fault. It swept through at an unbelievable speed. We never expected it to be so… tenaciously fast,” Gen. Falton trailed off, lost in his own thoughts.

“Unbelievable,” the president muttered. “Completely unbelievable. Hart, what projections are we looking at?”

The Secretary of Defense cleared his throat.

“Sir, there is no way to confine this situation to Raleigh. At best estimates, we’re going to lose Durham, Wake Forest, Garner, Cary, Morrisville, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro just to name a few of the larger surrounding cities,” Secretary of Defense Hart said with dismay. “And that is within a twenty-four window.”

Dead silence hung in the room for a full two minutes.

“Projected loss of life?” the president finally asked.

“Insurmountable,” the Secretary of Defense replied. “Many people ignored FEMA’s mandatory evacuation order, probably due to hassle and complication involved.”

All attention shifted to Secretary of Homeland Security Rutherford. FEMA was under his command.

He shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

“Well, we couldn’t point a gun at their head and force them to leave. We tried that with Katrina and look at how that backfired. The cover story for this was ridiculous. Why would anybody evacuate over a flu bug?” Rutherford said defensively.

The Secretary of Defense waved his hand dismissively.

“None of that matters anymore, anyway,” Hart said. “We can’t risk evacuating anybody out of Raleigh now, not even our own men.”

“What are our options?” the president asked.

Secretary of Defense Hart stood up and pointed a small remote at the screen on the wall. The lights in the room dimmed and the men swiveled in their chairs to face the screen. A detailed topographical image of North Carolina centered on the screen.

“As of right now, our immediate worst case infection scenario is this… after roughly three hours,” Hart said, clicking the remote.

A large section in the center of the map turned red.

The men in the room stared at the map in silence.

Gen. Falton looked away from the screen and stared down at the paper underneath his folded hands.

“If we seal the state border and corral the hot zone, we can keep this thing from blowing into a full-scale pandemic,” Hart continued. He clicked the remote and red ‘X’s appeared on every road leading out of the state.

“And just how are we supposed to corral a hot zone
that
size, exactly? We couldn’t even handle downtown!” Gen. Spinks said, angrily gesturing towards the map.

“With fire,” Hart said. He clicked on the remote and a white circle appeared around the red shaded area on the map. “If we create a flame barrier using white
phosphorus
munitions, we can keep the infected from leaving and spreading the virus to outlying areas. The infected swarm and overpower physical barriers, but tend to stay clear of fire. The behavior could be instinctive, but we’re not sure.

“In any case, we can keep the flames fed, keep the infection corralled, and then move in after the infected die off in the currently projected five day window and begin clean-up. It would be a large scale version of the downtown operation.”

There were murmurs.

“How do you know they’re afraid of fire? They sure as hell aren’t afraid of getting shot, that’s for sure,” Gen. Spinks griped.

“After we firebombed downtown Raleigh,” Hart continued, “Our UAVs detected a mass exodus of them moving away from the drop zone. In addition, the others outside the drop zone haven’t ventured in towards the engulfed areas. They avoid flames, if they can help it.”

“I can see how a flame barrier would prove more effective, but what about the smaller towns caught inside the barrier’s confines?” the president asked.

“In light of the larger circumstances, expendable,” Hart somberly said.

“Nobody in those smaller outlying towns is infected yet, though,” Chief of Staff Norton quietly remarked.

Nobody answered.

“Do it,” the president said, closing his eyes.

“Yes, sir, I’ll get it started,” Hart said.

Norton shook his head.

“This will be a public relations nightmare,” Norton said. “We’ll never politically recover from this, you know.”

“All cellular traffic and Internet access in the state is being jammed and we have a handle on the media,” Hart said. “It’s not an ideal situation, but it’s better to lose one state than it is to lose the entire eastern seaboard.”

“What about the troops already trapped inside the red zone? Surely they will try to escape once they realize they’ve been cut off,” Admiral Rooks said. “The troops have protective suits and respirators. Most of them can survive for a few days with adequate supplies of oxygen canisters.”

“The firewall will prevent them from using ground-based transportation,” Hart said after a moment. “Their only option will be to use aircraft, and the Air Force’s orders are to blast anything out of the sky, civilian or military. It’s very unfortunate, but we really don’t have any choice.”

“Christ, those are
our
people though, Hart,” Rooks said punitively, shaking his head.

“I know…” Hart looked down and sighed. “They will be remembered as heroes.”

The lights slowly brightened and Secretary of Defense Hart sat back down.

“Falton,” the president said with distaste.

Gen. Falton’s haggard gaze slowly drifted away from the paper underneath his folded hands up towards the president.

“Have you at least pulled the vaccine out of cold storage and started mass production? I’d like to get the surrounding states inoculated just as a fail-safe,” the president said. Gen. Falton slowly slid the paper he was guarding across the table towards the president.

The president blinked and grabbed the paper.

“What’s this?” the president asked.

It was, in fact, the very same memorandum that the Fort Detrick laboratory received and the same memo Col. Mathis mentioned briefly glancing at.

Gen. Falton sat in silence, wringing his hands together as he started down at his sullen reflection on the glossy tabletop.

The president stared at the memorandum. His eyes widened as he processed what he read. He sat the paper down, stunned, shocked, afraid.

“The antivirus we have in storage is no longer viable. If it really did mutate, it may cause more problems than the disease itself if we administer it,” Gen. Falton said, looking down at the desk. “Since… we have no cure on-file for ‘PT-12’… we have to start from scratch. If you want a timetable on when it will be completed, well… I have none and I couldn’t even begin to guess.”

A silence hung the room.

“I’ll have CDC to start working on it then,” the president said as he pressed his thumb and index finger against the bridge of his nose. “In the meantime, let’s test out the vaccine we have in some of the surrounding smaller towns.” He paused. “We don’t have anything to lose at this point.”

“Sir, may I speak?” Secretary of Defense Hart quickly interjected.

The president weakly waved his hand.

“We won’t be able to let the teams that venture inside the hot zone to test the vaccine back out,” Hart said.

“I’m aware and it is a tragedy, but this is about national security at this point,” the president said. “I don’t want to waste BLS-4 laboratory time on an unstable vaccine. I want all of our labs focused on creating a new viable vaccine.”

“What if,” the vice-president asked, “The quarantine fails? What then?”

Admiral Rooks brought out a silver attaché case from underneath the table and opened it.

“If that event arises, we have a final contingency,” Rooks said. He brought out a handful of sealed red folders from the case and distributed them around the table.