“Yep, you get into bed with whores—you get the pox!” he said, then raised his glass in a toast.
He slammed the empty glass down on his desk then looked at the bottle. There was one drink left—two if he was careful. He couldn’t go to sleep just yet. “Yep, let’s have one more for Dell, Dell,” he slurred, “I mean Dell'nie… oh, hell What's her fuckin' name!” He laughed at his inebriated state and poured another glass.
The bourbon would help Calgleef sleep and keep his conscience in check, but he couldn’t do it every night. Not if he wanted to keep his position. The bottle wasn’t the solution.
4
Four
Police units from all over Des Moines descended on the Riverside Hospital. Blue lights flashed and sirens oscillated through the streets toward the city’s second largest health facility. A special security team from the CDC had been killed in action, and the thin blue line was ready to make amends. There had been little news other than the reports of an attack within the medical center itself. The local police believed, as did the public, that it was an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, and disposable face masks would be all the protection they’d need. There were some quizzical looks and hushed questions asked when members of the CDC showed up wearing level A hazmat suits. This was an unusual way to combat a Legionnaires’ outbreak, to say the least. But in post-9/11 America, specific agencies were given priority when it came to certain situations. The CDC was there—ostensibly—to determine the full extent of the outbreak and as to whether it might be a deliberate act of terrorism. What wasn’t known to local authorities or even the state government was the involvement of the CIA, FBI, and in particular, the NSA.
Police cars, SUVs, and vans ringed the hospital in the early morning light. There were officers from many precincts and no one knew—nor cared—who was in charge. A large group of almost fifty officers—some armed with pump-action shotguns—strode determinedly across the parking lot to the shattered double doors of the front entrance where a CDC officer in a white, fully enclosed level B hazmat suit met them head on.
“Halt. Stay right where you are. Do not proceed any further.” He held a megaphone to the external speaker of the suit.
The officers stared at the spacesuit-clad agent, shocked that he would give them orders not to enter a building where several fellow officers from the CDC had just been killed.
“A strain of the Baltic Flu has been detected inside the hospital, we’re not sure if it’s airborne, but for now, we’re going to treat it as such.” The CDC officer continued to hold the megaphone up against the speaker of the hazmat suit.
The police officers, now joined by many more, continued to look on speechless, but the vengeful looks had all but disappeared.
“The flu that's killing everyone in Europe, it's loose. Now get out before it kills you!” The CDC officer used terms they were more likely to understand. “Back off and seal a one-mile perimeter around the hospital, you’ll have orders regarding evacuations soon.”
The CDC officer already knew how it was supposed to unfold—he was ready. He received a call, but not from his superior, Calgleef, but from a man he had never met—Calgleef’s NSA contact. The contact told him what was to happen, that he could expect a show of force from the city’s cops but to order them away. A special unit with proper protection was on its way, and in a few hours the National Guard would be mobilized. The NSA agent had told the officer, "The ball has started to roll then, don’t try to stop it. Keep the cops out of the hospital, or we’ll have hundreds with flu symptoms all over the city, without any way of controlling or treating it, you follow?”
The CDC officer did indeed. Every week for nearly twelve months, he waited for a red Mini-Cooper at a specified location. When it showed up, he would follow the Mini around for thirty minutes—sometimes an hour. When given the signal—three quick flashes of the brake lights—he would drive up beside it at the next stop sign with his window open. A brown paper bag would be tossed through and the Mini would drive off, as would he—in another direction. Inside the paper bag, he would find two thousand dollars. There was no question as to where this officer’s loyalties lay and whose orders he would follow. It was because of his involvement with this unseen NSA spook that he could remain behind and not end up as one of the dead from the team that went into the hospital to extricate the vaccines—influence. The officer had no idea what was involved, but he knew it was big—damn big. And players in the big time play for keeps.
With the strong overnight winds that had been forecast, it was hoped that the airborne particles had been blown away and rendered harmless by the dispersion.
However, if the winds were weaker, then the virus would remain concentrated over populated areas. The outbreak of Baltic Flu would then be on a scale with many European cities—and so to would the death rate.
The CDC officer knew little of this, but the NSA agent knew it all. He even knew well in advance when this CDC officer would pass away. For now though, the officer would coordinate things here at the hospital until martial law was officially declared. Once the Guard took control, they could storm the hospital and kill the infected within, if the disease hadn’t done so by then.
Police officer Dean Taurel, who had been on the force sixteen years, woke up feeling like shit. The night before he came home after quite an unusual day, sat in front of his huge plasma TV, and watched replays of last weekend’s football games—he didn’t get to see them at the time because of his current roster. He liked to eat pizza or burgers and, of course, wash it all down with a six-pack. But last night, after two slices of pizza and one and a half cans, he had to rush to the bathroom where he brought up both slices in a mushy liquid fountain of foul smelling, warm beer.
He hadn’t missed a day due to illness in ten years—a few from injuries like gunshot wounds, but not from feeling sick. Today, he had no choice. He called in and told the desk sergeant the situation and that he couldn’t stop vomiting, that it must have been something in the pizza. “Think I’ll get the health department to check that place out,” he said.
His superior understood and told him to take it easy and to see a doctor if it got worse. Taurel thanked the sergeant, then settled down in front of his TV. He convinced his wife he could look after himself and that she should go to work. If he felt bad, he told her, he’d go back to bed.
It was while watching his TV that he learned the news about the escape of Delaney and her four accomplices.
“Damn, they really want that bitch, don’t they?” he commented as he grabbed a cold slice of last night’s pizza. He didn’t believe the pizza made him sick, that was an impossibility itself. He was part of the police team that intercepted the TV news chopper at the heliport in which the woman doctor and companions had made their short dash to freedom. That whole situation still didn’t gel with him. Officers from the CDC in crazy space suits, National Guard troops when no state of emergency had been called, they had no legal right to be there, but his superiors had said not to concern himself with it, just assist with the arrests and be on his way. But the gunning down of the nurse by the National Guard and—he was ashamed to admit—some of his fellow officers excited by the bloodlust was far from assisting. He was also pissed that these spacesuit-wearing monkeys from the CDC ordered him about like an ignorant subordinate when he went to check on the body of the nurse.
“Fucks. Lousy fucks!” He didn’t know what made him angry the most, being home sick with shitty cold pizza, being ordered about by CDC agents whose faces you couldn’t see, or the escape of suspects he helped capture in the first place.
“Fuck it, I’m going to Joe’s for a few!”
He got dressed, put on his shoes, grabbed his car keys and his off-duty piece—a Glock 9mm—and headed out to his favorite bar and grill. He would get a few cold beers, a taco or a burger. Just the thought already made him feel less shitty.
5
Five
Joe’s Bar and Grill was a typical sports bar. Beer, TV,
and burgers in a dark, musty environment. For many years, the bar had been a guy’s domain. Even in the heyday of the women’s lib movement, no one from the finer sex ventured into Joe’s. Showing a desire to swill beer while watching overpaid boneheads chase a bag of air around was not the way to go about the whole equality thing. Since the 1990s, however, more women—and many attractive ones at that—patronized the bar. There was some opposition at first, but it was discovered the women were hot, horny, and just looking to get laid. Opposition abruptly ceased. Now the ladies did the flesh hunting, and many a married man would wish he’d never gone to the bar on certain nights.
“Hey Dean, how ya doing?” a customer at the bar greeted.
“Just a bit under the weather, Stan.”
“Yeah, I hear ya, let me get you one.”
“Sure, won’t say no.”
Stan signaled the bartender, who poured two more draughts and brought them over, while Dean took a seat on a barstool next to his buddy. When someone buys you a drink you don’t move off to another part of the bar. After a few minutes of idle chat, Dean got the sniffs and wiped his nose on the back of his arm.
“Are you okay? You look a bit worse for wear.”
“Yeah, as I said, I’m a bit under the weather, but it’s nothing a few of these won’t fix.” Dean raised his glass in the air but didn’t notice his drinking partner back away.
When the sniffs turned into coughing up blood on top of the bar, he knew right away it was more than just an irritation in his nasal passages.
“Shit, Dean, you need to get to the hospital.” Stan stumbled over a stool as he pushed further away.
Dean slumped forward. His forehead hit the edge of the bar, and his glass of beer went over the edge.
“Hey, what’s the problem over there?” the bartender called when he heard the glass smash on the floor.
“Call an ambulance. Dean is sick, I mean real sick. Do it, man, do it!”
As the bartender went for the phone next to the cash register, Dean threw up a stream of blood all over his gray hoodie and his pants.
“Maybe you should come over to a booth and—”
Dean abruptly jumped from his stool and stared at his drinking partner. His skin had become the color of chalk and his eyes were all red—blood red.
“Dean, Dean, De-e-e-e-a-n!” Stan screamed as the no-longer-recognizable Des Moines officer charged.
Stan tried to push his attacker off. “Get him off, get him off me!”
A single blast from a 12-gauge shotgun followed, shaking the windows of the bar. Dean Taurel suffered a direct hit to the side of the chest, knocking him several feet sideways.
“What the fuck?” Stan jumped up from the floor.
“You wanted him off, di’n’ ya?” The bartender leaned over the bar, his double-barreled shotgun aimed at the convulsing body on the floor.
“Yeah, but fuck’n’ hell! You coulda killed me with that thing!” Stan struggled to his feet and wiped blood spatters from his face—Dean Taurel’s blood.
“What was the matter with that guy anyway?” The day-shift bartender didn’t know the man he shot from a bar of soap.
“He was a cop, but just went crazy. Did you see his eyes?”
“A cop? You mean I just shot a cop?”
“There was something wrong with him. Did you see his eyes?” Stan insisted.
“No. He was on top of you trying to bite you—well, that’s what it looked like. You’ll back me up, won’t you? Won’t you?” The barkeep already concerned with the consequences of shooting a cop.
An ambulance took the dead officer to the city morgue where pathologists would perform an autopsy. Officers from Dean Taurel’s precinct took the protesting bartender away—arrested for first-degree murder. Stan would be required to give a statement down at the precinct after a quick check-up at a clinic in West Des Moines—in the opposite direction from Riverside Hospital.
The virus, or unaware carriers, were now stretched across the city of Des Moines and in the outer suburbs. Whether it was airborne was no longer an issue. The number of individuals that had contact with carriers or contaminated blood was enough to ensure the Baltic flu would tear through the social fabric of Des Moines society. The ferocity of this contagion would guarantee all levels of the social structure would fall—not just the poor, the infirm, or the very young.
Hundreds were dead at the hospital. Thousands of inmates at Polk County Prison were dead, dying, or worse—preyed upon by the infected. Police officers from the failed rescue attempt at the hospital and clinic staff where Stan’s check-up was conducted would be next to suffer the onslaught. Many infected were from parts all over the city and some, were outside the barriers of the restricted zone. Only with the complete prohibition of all travel out of Des Moines would there be any chance of containing the virus—not plastic barricades and armed troops.
6
Six
The phone woke Calgleef from his alcohol-induced sleep. The sun was barely up in Atlanta on this overcast morning. The CDC Director’s head throbbed and the top of his tongue felt like a sewer rat had crawled inside and died. His stomach did involuntary movements, and he wanted to get to the toilet bowl, but knew he couldn’t ignore the call. Man-made or not, there was a national emergency in progress—he’d have to hold the contents of his stomach a while longer.
More important than the emergency, it could be Thorncroft.
“Calgleef,” he answered without looking at the caller identification.
“Mr. Calgleef, you’re in the office bright and early this morning,” the NSA agent, Mr. Jones, said as a way of greeting.
“Yes, I…err, had some things to do, which we discussed, and by the time I finished it was quite late, so I spent the night on the sofa.” Calgleef lied. Besides, the NSA spook probably knew exactly what happened and how many glasses of bourbon he had…and even the brand.
“The National Guard have arrived at the Riverside Hospital in Des Moines,” the spy continued, “they’re preparing at this moment to storm the building.”
Calgleef had to stop for a moment before the information registered. “Won’t that be a risk? If there are any infected patients throughout the hospital, the troops could be in jeopardy, couldn’t they?”
“They will take precautions. Each man will be fitted with a contained breathing apparatus with approximately thirty minutes of oxygen. They will also wear a nylon jumpsuit and their head, hands, all parts of their bodies will be covered from exposure. The police and the fire department are also on the scene.”
“Fire department?” Calgleef didn’t recall any mention of the fire department being needed.
“There are, we assume, a lot of dead in the hospital. Some may still be alive, but infected with the virus. We can’t take the chance of it spreading it to other areas of the city—areas that haven’t been locked down yet.”
What Calgleef heard from the NSA agent was ominous.
“Fire is, as you are aware, one of the best and quickest methods to destroy the host of the bacteria.”
In this case, that meant the patients—dead or alive—inside Riverside Hospital.
Calgleef wasn’t prepared for this turn of events, but there was no point arguing with the agent.
“Thank you for the information, I appreciate—”
“You will need to make a television statement yourself. You don’t need to leave Atlanta, you can do it via satellite when the governor goes live.”
Calgleef felt his insides rise, the sharp acid taste of vomit in his lower throat, and a steady pounding behind his eyes.
“How-how…what time is that scheduled?”
“Stay in touch with the governor’s office—which you should do anyway—you’ll be informed. The governor will need to explain about the accident that occurred at the hospital.”
In Calgleef’s current state, his retention was less than perfect.
“What accident is that?”
“The fire. Now you’ll need to
stay in contact with your officers at the scene and coordinate with metro police, the FBI, and state health officials. I’ll contact you if there’s anything I need to know, do you follow?”
“Yes, yes of course.”
Calgleef put the phone down. Everything was stage-managed, and he was just another hand. He still wondered where the NSA agent stood on all this—and perhaps the NSA as a whole. While the agent appeared to be onboard, there was nothing to prevent him from stating he did so to “gain the trust of the conspirators.” Plausible deniability—a policy that dictated the way every intelligence agency in the USA acted and was exercised right now. Calgleef decided, like all intelligence operatives, his contact played both sides against the middle—with more than enough cut-offs in between. Armed with new insight, Calgleef gave no more thought to his tender stomach. He did rush to the bathroom, however, for a nature call and a much-needed freshen up. He kept an electric shaver, toothbrush and paste, along with a change of clothes in here for just such a purpose. There was also a change of clothes in a small closet for emergencies. There were showers in the CDC building too, and he wanted one badly but didn’t have time. His personal staff had yet to come in for the day, but he could keep them busy with menial tasks and a “do not disturb” order.
“What is the current situation?” Calgleef asked the senior CDC agent at Riverside Hospital.
The officer informed his director of the manpower that had been brought in. Hundreds of National Guard troops in Humvees and trucks with what looked like a platoon, covered in green, nylon, protective hazmat suits.
“Doesn’t the army possess anything besides green?” the CDC officer asked his superior.
Pestilence Boxed Set [Books 1 & 2] Page 18