by Lorch, Jeff
I leaned back in my chair, smiling.
“There, isn’t that better?” I asked. “Cards on the table, right?”
After a moment and a few more nostril flares had passed, he too leaned back, and allowed a small smile to cross his face.
“Cards on the table, okay,” he agreed, nodding. “I showed you mine, now how about you show me yours.”
I nodded and reached down into the backpack Trey had given to me. From the corner of my eye I could see the soldiers in the room stiffen in response, their fingers twitching on the rifles in their hands. A glare from the Colonel immediately returned them to their original posture. I pretended not to notice.
I pulled a ring-bound notebook from the bag and dropped it on the table in front of the Colonel. It was the kind of notebook any kid in grade school might carry to doodle in or take notes. It looked innocent, innocuous. It wasn’t.
“This is from the guy who orchestrated the attack on the camp last night,” I said. “He sent me here with the explicit request that I deliver this to you personally.”
“Before we get to that,” the colonel stated, his eyes flickering over the notebook, “why don’t you fill us in on how you and your people fit into all this.”
I nodded, and started from the beginning, covering everything from the airport through to the death of my husband, Camp Rapids, the attack on the convoy, everything. I was getting pretty good at telling this story; repetition breeds efficiency, I guess.
Aside from a few questions here and there, Colonel Scott was silent, taking it all in. To his credit, he was a good listener, and I could tell he wasn’t missing anything. Despite his statement earlier about Dumont being a good friend, when I got to the part about me breaking his nose, Col. Scott tried to hide a smile. Unsuccessfully.
Overall, I thought I did okay up until I got to the part where Trey had me sitting down in the rink. That’s where things got complicated.
Colonel Scott could tell I had hit a stumbling block, so he helped me out. He leaned forward, patting the binder with his hand, and asked me, “Stephanie, don’t overthink it; as plainly as possible, tell me what’s in here.”
I took a deep breath, and I looked up at him, tears in my eyes, trying to hold it together.
“If Trey isn’t lying, then this explains how the world is going to end.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Day 12
Colonel Scott leaned back and looked at the notebook like it was a box that held a rattlesnake, one that might snap out at him any second; not afraid of it, but afraid of what it might have inside of it. Then he realized his position, the sole point of authority in the room, and on the base, and cleared his throat.
“How about you talk me through it,” he asked.
I took a moment and summarized the “freedom isn’t free” monologue Trey had given me in the rink. Colonel Scott nodded along in all the right places. As I spoke, I realized for the first time that much of what Trey had said actually resonated with me.
For the first time I realized how much of our lives were controlled, constrained, restricted. I realized how little of what I chose to do each day of my life was actually that: choice. I would be at work for a certain time frame performing certain duties because it was demanded of me. I drove a certain way because it was the law. I treated others a certain way because it was expected of me. When posting on social media I always double- and triple-checked to make sure it wasn’t something offensive, something inflammatory. I was on cruise control and had been for almost my entire existence.
It was something I had never given much thought to before now, but I realized that the last couple weeks had truly been eye opening in more ways than one. As much as it pained me to think of it, I realized that maybe my affair had been an unconscious rebellion against expectations; for the first time in my life it was something I had deliberately chosen to do, damn the consequences, for better or for worse.
I looked across the table at Colonel Scott. He sat there, uniformed and controlled. He gave orders and expected them to be followed. Breakfast at 0700 with a mug of black coffee, showered, shaved, bed made, boots shined.
I thought back to last night, looking across the scarred table in the small-town community skating rink at Trey. He was everything the Colonel wasn’t. He was rolling out of bed at noon on a Tuesday with a hangover and three-day-old stubble.
Colonel Scott was a twenty-year anniversary; Trey was a drunken roll in the hay.
And here I sat, across the table, trying to figure out where I fit in with it all.
As horror-filled and terrifying and painful as they had been, I knew that the last two weeks had been the freest I had ever been in my life, and to a degree it had been liberating. But at the same time the sane part of me realized that the price to pay for that freedom was too high; limitations on our personal freedom were required for us to live in a world of generalized freedom. I recalled once reading a quote that said, “your right to swing your arms ends where the other man’s nose begins,” and finally understood, I mean really understood, what it meant.
It wasn’t about freedom; it was about the cost of freedom.
But where did that leave us in the world of today, rather than the world of two weeks ago? Where did that leave my family? Where did that leave me?
I looked down at the notebook on the table and realized that I knew exactly where it left me.
It left me in control.
“Let’s get the elephant out of the room to start with, why don’t we,” I said to Col. Scott. “You know as well as I do that this was no terrorist attack, don’t you?”
I saw him start, his eyes immediately glancing to his men standing behind me. I had a feeling this conversation was going to be above their pay grade.
♦♦♦
Ten minutes later the population of the room had decreased dramatically. My family, the twins included, had been escorted to another room nearby where they were promised coffee and something to eat. Col. Scott had ushered his four soldiers out with instructions to find someone named Major Heath.
While we awaited the major’s arrival, the colonel graciously provided me with a cup of coffee. His attitude had changed dramatically, in that his anger and his antagonism seemed to have disappeared. I think he believed that we weren’t to blame for what happened last night at Dundurn, and that alone cooled him off considerably. But more importantly I think he also realized that I wasn’t really any part of what was happening outside the walls of his base.
A knock on the door prompted Col. Scott to move back behind the desk and sit down.
“Come in,” he said loudly.
A tall man with an athletic build entered the room. He was well over six-feet tall and had broad shoulders and muscular arms; basically, he had the kind of build my husband had always been jealous of. He had light brown hair that was shaved close to the skull in a severe military cut, and he had sharp blue eyes that looked directly at his superior officer as he nodded. His skin, while likely naturally fair, had a dark tan that spoke of him recently being somewhere warm and sunny. In his one hand he carried a leather satchel, and in the other a tan beret that clashed with his green military fatigues.
“Major Jameson Heath, this is Mrs. Stephanie Hayes.” He nodded to me, and when Col. Scott indicated that he pull up a chair, he sat down at the table with us.
“Now then, Mrs. Hayes,” began Col. Scott as he leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his fingers interlaced in front of him. His face was deadly serious. “What makes you think this wasn’t a terrorist attack?”
I nodded. “Remember, this is an ‘all cards on the table’ conversation, correct?”
He nodded back to me. I could see that we had Major Heath’s attention despite his relaxed posture.
“As I mentioned, Trey and his core people have been preparing for something like this for quite some time. They have groups throughout western Canada and the US that have been sharing information since before this outbreak, and now that th
e shit has hit the fan, they’re upping their game. Despite being much harder hit by the infection than we have been, a few of the groups in the US are much better organized, and that includes their access to information and intelligence. One group in particular has some members who until recently were high-ranking US military and intelligence personnel. This group is the main source of the information in there,” I said, nodding my head towards the notebook on the table. “In there, Trey claims you’ll find everything you need to verify the legitimacy and accuracy of the intelligence they’re relying on.”
“According to Trey’s sources, this outbreak had absolutely nothing to do with terrorists; it was a false flag operation initiated by the US government at the highest level, and it got away from them.”
That got a reaction from both men. Major Heath glanced sideways at the colonel, who sighed heavily, and nodded.
“I guess this really does mean ‘all our cards on the table,” said Major Heath, as he reached into his briefcase.
♦♦♦
“Have you ever heard of ‘Operation Large Area Coverage’? asked Maj. Heath, pulling a thick manila file folder out of his bag and setting it on the table in front of him.
I shook my head and replied that I hadn’t.
“Back in the late forties, just as the Cold War was starting to get really frosty, the US government decided they needed to find out how vulnerable they were to attack from biological agents released into the atmosphere in an aerosol form across a broad area of coverage. From 1950 through to 1958 they conducted numerous secret experiments where they released microscopic zinc cadmium sulfide particles into the atmosphere in massive quantities and tracked how it was dispersed and distributed meteorologically. They did this from ships in San Diego harbour and off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, they did it from airplanes across long distances in Minnesota, and they even dispersed it from the rooftops of school buildings and from the back of station wagons in St. Louis. What they discovered is that America as a country was exceptionally vulnerable to broad coverage of atmospherically-dispersed agents.”
I understood the connection immediately. “And this is the same method used to distribute the pathogens causing this outbreak, right?”
He nodded, his face grim. “Not just the same method,” he said, “but the same timing meteorologically; the same time of year when winds and weather patterns would give them the coverage they wanted, and even the same patterns of release. The existence of Project Large Area Coverage isn’t necessarily a secret any longer. Much of the information around the project was declassified many years ago, I’m sure you could find out the basics with a simple Google search. But the details of the project, such as the time of year which affects weather patterns and the patterns of release, that information is still classified. That’s what I have here,” he said, tapping the folder in front of him.
“How did Canadian military come to have this classified information if it was a secret US project?” I asked.
“There were joint aspects to the project going back to day one involving Canadian military, since they expected a significant amount of coverage would extend up into Canada; and they were correct, as we saw then, and as we’ve seen now with this outbreak.
“So yes, we believe that this was all done on the President’s say-so, but really at this point it’s all moot; even if we could prove it, which we can’t, who would we prove it to? We’re cut off from the rest of the world right now; we’ve been quarantined. There’s some exchange of information trickling in and out, but in the big picture, we’re in the dark. And what we are hearing from overseas is not good. Thankfully there’s no spread of infection beyond our shores, nor even any risk of spread of infection due to the binary nature of the pathogen, but politically everything is a hot mess. Canada and the US have recalled all their troops home from their posts abroad to help deal with the emergency, and that’s left a huge void in the stability of dozens of nations throughout eastern Europe, the Middle East, and even Asia. Allies who relied on our military aid to sustain their interests are suddenly left vulnerable, and their enemies have been quick to take advantage of their weakness. We’re getting word that North Korea has already crossed the DMZ and is preparing for a full-scale invasion of South Korea; China is preparing to move against Taiwan and Japan, and you can bet Russia is likely ready to invade Ukraine and reclaim their old Soviet states. And don’t even get me started on what’s happening in Israel and Syria and the rest of the Middle East right now. Without the strength of the US military, NATO is toothless. The predators smell blood in the water, and they’re getting ready to feed. This could very well be the start of World War Three.”
All of this was very scary hearing it come from these men in front of me, but none of it was new to me; Trey had all this same information and had gone over it with me last night. But it was what these men didn’t know that really scared me.
I picked up the booklet and set it down on top of Heath’s file folder.
“No, Major Heath,” I said, my voice low. “I’m afraid it could be much worse than that.”
♦♦♦
“If Trey’s right, what no-one on this side of the border has been able to figure out is the purpose behind it. Why would the President undertake this kind of an attack against his own country, against his own people? Am I right?” I asked. Colonel Scott just frowned at me, which was as much of an answer as I needed.
“From what I’ve been told,” I began, “and remember this is all third-party information that’s come from their contacts in the US; I’m just passing it along, and it’s up to you to fact-check it. This outbreak wasn’t the intended result. Whatever his intent was, it wasn’t for anything like this. He had been expecting a distraction and he got devastation.
“Look I’m not a member of the tinfoil-hat brigade, but we all know that governments everywhere pull off some pretty shady moves, right? Do you remember back on September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld held a press conference announcing that there was something like two and a half trillion dollars in Department of Defense spending that couldn’t be accounted for, and suddenly the very next day two planes were flown into the Twin Towers and a third plane was crashed into the Pentagon, destroying the very offices that contained DoD budget records? The Goddam CIA orchestrated the build up to the entire fucking Vietnam war, and lit the fuse by faking the Gulf of Tonkin incidents; so why would anyone be surprised to learn that this administration tried something similar?
“According to Trey’s contacts, the plan was to unleash a biohazard attack that would accomplish a few things: first, it would create public chaos during which some black bag teams could execute seek and destroy missions targeting public and private records implicating the President in all manner of shady deals; under-the-table stuff that would destroy him if it were ever made public. Plus, as a bonus they said he was going to make sure they take out that porn star, just for spite. Secondly, it would swing public sentiment in favour of the President’s anti-immigration plan when they revealed that the ‘terrorists’ responsible for the outbreak were from some ‘shithole country’ and that they snuck into the USA across its exposed borders, namely up from Mexico and down from Canada. Next up: ‘we’ll build a wall and Canada will pay for it.’ And finally, it would prompt Congress to free up trillions of dollars in defense spending, just like happened after 9/11, all of it going to defense contractor ‘friends’ of the President with, no doubt, some of it making its way into anonymous Swiss bank accounts.
“I’m sure there were all kinds of other reasons and plans behind it all, but those were the biggies. So, the President called up his friend Vladimir and said he needed a custom-brewed cocktail that couldn’t be traced back to the USA; but that sneaky Commie bastard saw a bigger opportunity in all of this, and instead of sending his puppet in the White House a firecracker, he sent a nuclear bomb and let the moron light the fuse. The President pulled the trigger expecting a .22 and what he got was a Howitzer.”
�
��And here’s the big picture, here’s the big why:”
I slid the notebook I had delivered across the table towards Col. Scott and summarized what Trey had told me last night.
“All of the information they have, or at least everything they shared with me, and I’ll leave it up to you to determine the veracity of it, points towards a full-scale joint Russian-Chinese invasion sooner rather than later. I’m talking a full-blown invasion for the purpose of taking the entire continent and wiping all of us off the map.”
I waited a moment for that to sink in.
♦♦♦
“So where does that leave us?” I asked. “The groups like Trey’s that are scattered across Canada and the US are getting organized, and they’re doing it quickly. The raid on Dundurn wasn’t an attack against you or your people, per se, rather they saw it as a necessity of survival to supply themselves against what’s coming. And the way they see it, despite what happened last night, you’re not their enemy; you and they are on the same side.”
Col. Scott snorted derisively at that, but Maj. Heath didn’t.
“Our infrastructure is at a standstill; the power grid is almost completely shut down which means our telecommunications network is silent. Supply and distribution chains are completely broken. Upwards of eighty percent of the population have been decimated by the infection, and from what we’ve been told around the same percentage of those infected died from the symptoms. So, a quick rough figure in my head translates to ninety-plus percent of the population of North America either dead or dying.”