The control officer pushed his glasses higher up on his nose and pointed to a different screen. “I don’t think it’s coincidence that they’re heading for this particular building. It’s been designated a non-action building.” Colonel Bell was about to ask a question; however, the officer answered before he could spit it out. “That’s the R & K research facility.”
He had said this with a knowing look that was lost on everyone and was forced to explain, “That’s where all this started. Or kinda started, I guess. That’s where they developed the plague and then they moved it to Poughkeepsie, where it got out. So, it is possible they developed some sort of repellent.”
Colonel Bell watched for a few minutes. “Can we get a better picture than this? The shadows are making everything…weird.” The children looked more than weird, they looked exactly like what they were: demonic.
“No sir,” the pilot answered. “This is a filtered shot already. Their interior light is messing with our night lenses, and the surrounding darkness makes the natural light lens useless.”
The colonel asked for a digital copy, which he sent up the chain of command. It was a slow wearisome chain that ended in a stack of papers over a foot in height that sat in front of the President.
The President was so afraid of traitors, saboteurs and provocateurs that he was trying to micro-manage every aspect of the war. It was an impossible task. Orders and decisions that only he could make were piling up. When he did make a decision, it was then triple checked by nervous generals and double checked by anxious, pale colonels, each afraid to make the smallest mistake.
It was grinding the war-effort almost to a halt, which seemed okay with the President. All he seemed to care about was punishing his perceived enemies. When he finally got to the envelope, he only gave it a second look because it was marked “Top Secret” and there was something heavier than a piece of paper within it; he was at the point that he was ready to burn the stack of paper on his desk. He asked for the Director of the FBI and when John Alexander showed up, he was immediately confronted with the video.
“Do you have anything you want to tell me about this little operation of yours?” the President asked, with an eyebrow cocked. He prided himself on being able to smell a rat and, in his mind, everything about R & K was extremely fishy.
Fear thrummed along Alexander’s nerves, but he was a cool customer. “I don’t know who those people are. But I’ll find out. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Yes, we will,” the president said, patting the empty chair next to him. “And we will do it right here in front of everyone so there’ll be no tricks. What do you think of that?”
I think I’m one wrong word away from going to the torture chambers, Alexander thought.
Chapter 20
1-7:02 p.m.
New Rochelle, New York
Special Agent in Charge, Katherine Pennock, her dark hair falling over her face, was going cross-eyed staring at the endless streams of numbers running down her computer screen—and she was used to raking through pages of data. This was much more mind numbing than anything she had ever done; she was looking for individual sequences of code hidden within a veritable waterfall of digits.
Behind her, Anna Holloway was doing the same thing, saying in an annoyingly girlish voice, “Nope, nope, nope,” over and over again. Katherine wanted to punch her. She also wanted to punch Dr. Lee, but mostly because she was lining up even more tests.
As they had a nearly endless supply of zombie blood in the form of Specialist Russell Hoskins, Thuy was throwing everything she could at the mutated Com-cells, and she was coming up empty in a practical sense. They could, of course, be destroyed in all sorts of manners: bleach, fire, acid, but so far they hadn’t found any way of killing them in a manner that didn’t also kill their host.
Anti-viral medications were shrugged off; antibiotics were ignored; antibody therapy had been a waste of time, as had photodynamic therapy. The use of interferons and other cytokines to induce an immune response had been as useful as spraying the Com-cells with Holy Water. Dr. Lee had also tried hormonal therapy, providing both extra hormones as well as blocking certain hormones, with zero response one way or the other.
The numbers that Katherine were currently staring at were tracing the effect of an idea called synthetic lethality; it was a way of looking for deficiencies or weaknesses in the cells themselves. So far, there were none. During the last five years, Dr. Lee had managed to unlock the power of the stem-cell, or as Katherine thought of it: the Anything cell. Its ability to replicate itself into any cell in the human body was the miracle of creation, only now, it was the direct cause of their destruction.
If the Air Force didn’t kill them first, that is. When the Reaper’s 500-pound bomb had detonated a mile away, it had rattled the windows and set off an alarm somewhere in the building. Even Dr. Lee had stopped her experiments long enough to rush to the north end of the floor, where they could see a mushroom cloud of black smoke billowing up from a burning building.
“Do you think it was them?” Anna had asked.
She meant Courtney and the others. It was a question that couldn’t be answered and shouldn’t have been asked. Dr. Lee had glared her back to work. Since then they had been at it so hard that Katherine was oblivious to her phone.
“Is that you?” Anna asked her.
“Me what? Oh, the phone.” She snatched it up and answered without looking at who was calling. “Agent Pennock.”
There was a click and a hum before John Alexander came on. “Agent Pennock? I’m here with the President on speaker phone.” This was rushed out in a spew. It was followed by a long pause to let the ramifications sink in.
She understood that caution was called for. “Hello sir. Hello Mr. President. It feels like a week since I was in the White House with you.” This wasn’t hyperbole on her part. Although it had only been thirty something hours, each of those hours had been a trial for her.
“Yes,” was the President’s cold reply. “What’s going on up there? What sort of experiments are you running that involve children?”
“Children? We’re not running experiments on children, sir. At least as far as I know of. Let me ask Dr. Lee if any of her experiments involve the tissue of children.” She certainly hoped not. She put her hand over the phone and asked Dr. Lee point blank and received an honest no in reply. “She said that all the tissue is from…”
“Dr. Lee is with you?” the President thundered.
So much for caution. Katherine began to choke and stammer; she should have known better as his paranoia had been raging out of control the day before. She was sure it had to be so much worse with everything going on. “Yes, sir she is. I have taken her into custody.” Dr. Lee raised a soft eyebrow as if to ask: For what? Katherine could only shrug in reply before going on. “She’s working for us now.”
“Is that right? And when can we expect a cure?” The President’s voice fairly dripped skepticism.
The perfect eyebrow came crashing down. “Sir, this is Dr. Lee. I need to make sure you understand that we are in a preliminary stage. This version of the Com-cell is almost like dealing with an advanced alien microbe. Currently, we are running a battery of tests to find a weakness within the cell itself.”
“I note that you didn’t answer my question,” he replied, tartly. “And are you just going to pretend that you don’t know anything about the children? Who are you working with? Huh?”
Thuy felt a prickle of fear as goosebumps flaring across her arms. “W-What children, sir? There are only the three of us here.” There were actually four of them, if the raging Specialist Hoskins was counted. He was even then screaming his throat out in what had once been a clean room; it was now disgustingly filthy.
“The children who are right outside your building. I can see them plain as day. There’s eight of them and there’s a man with them. Your accomplice, I presume.”
Katherine looked concerned by this and Anna was visibly nerv
ous; they should have been scared right down to their cores, but neither had been hounded by Jaimee Lynn Burke quite like Thuy had been. They didn’t know just how horribly cunning the girl could be. “Is the man Asian?” Thuy asked with a sinking feeling. She had seen Anna shoot Eng. She had seen it with her own two eyes—but she had not seen him die. Not really. Anna had shot him in the torso, and he’d been wearing a ballistic vest. Anna wasn’t as tough as she liked to pretend she was. If she was, she would have shot him in the head. It would have been messy and dis…
“I can’t tell,” the President said. The man had left the SUV running and although the little crowd was illuminated by its headlights, the angle from above didn’t lend itself to any sort of feature recognition. “It doesn’t matter. Let me talk to the FBI agent. Pennock! Get this situation under control. I want answers and I want results. And I want them by morning or I’ll pull the plug on this fiasco. There’s no way we will even consider an extraction without a cure. So get one, fast.”
Before Katherine could say a word, the sat-phone beeped once and went dead.
“What the hell?” Anna cried. “He wants a cure by morning? Is he an idiot, or what?”
“Yeah, I think he is,” Katherine answered, with a glance towards the elevators. “Shouldn’t we be more worried about these kids?”
“Of course, we should,” Thuy started, “It’s probably Eng and…”
Anna cut her off in something of a fury, a sneer contorting her pretty face. “You guys are really worried about them? Why? The situation isn’t the same. Last night you led us right into a trap, Special Agent. This time is completely different. We have lights, we have a gun and the building is in one piece. Let those little fuckers come.”
Katherine didn’t believe her nonchalance. “You aren’t afraid? I highly doubt that.”
“What’s there to be afraid of? A handful of kids and a stupid zombie? They don’t have an army like last time. But I don’t see that it matters. I say we blare the music and turn on every light on the floor and by the time they get up here, we’ll be out the back and gone.”
Thuy looked stunned. “What about all of this? What about finding a cure? What about your pardon?”
Anna laughed as she picked up the armored vest she had been given the night before and slid it on. “My pardon? Please. There won’t be any pardon. The President is off his rocker. And he doesn’t care about a cure, Thuy. If he did, he would have sent in a hundred helicopters last night, not just one.”
Katherine laughed softly. “I hate to admit that she’s right about the President. He’s getting crazier by the minute, and when he says he’ll pull the plug I think he means he’ll pull our plugs, if you get my meaning.”
“He’ll kill us?” Thuy asked in astonishment. Anna rolled her eyes, while Katherine nodded. “That’s…that’s…” She found herself spluttering and took a moment to pull herself together. After a deep breath, she said, “What the President thinks or doesn’t think shouldn’t matter to us. Finding a cure is the most important thing anyone could be doing right now. Agent Pennock, I need you to stop the children. If there are just eight of them, it should be no problem. Take Anna with you and if you need to use her as bait, I’m willing to take that risk.”
2-7:16 p.m.
Newville, Pennsylvania
Tony “Stubby” Alvarez took his F-15 Strike Eagle in a wide, wide racetrack, one that was much wider than was needed.
“Not again,” his weapons officer, groaned, sounding bored. “Are you trying to get us killed or just arrested? Maybe it’ll be both. You know they’re doing that right? Arresting people and then killing them? I have a wife and two fucking kids, Stubby! But you know that. You know that and you just don’t care.”
“I care, Matt. But I also have to care about them.” Below the jet, the 3rd ID was fighting for their lives in brilliant gouts of flame and thousands of tiny sparkles of light. The zombie army had coalesced and was now centered squarely on them. They were surging forward like a battering ram, throwing themselves at the tanks and soldiers. As they passed over the line, the shattering explosions rocked the jet as if they were flying straight through a thunderhead.
“Yeah, you care. That’s fucking great, only we’re out of ammo, Stubby. Did you happen to notice that? Huh? We’re flying in circles. That’s all we’re doing, oh except for wasting fuel. We’re also wasting a butt-load of fuel.”
It wasn’t all they were doing and Matt knew it. Stubby’s wide circles were being timed to disrupt any attack runs being set up on the remaining M6s. Only seven of the original eighteen had been destroyed. They were valuable weapons and could be helpful in the fight against the dead.
“Can we at least turn the radio back on?” Matt asked. “It would be nice to know that we’re not going to fly into another plane. Don’t you think that would be smart?”
“They have our position.” He was confident that they wouldn’t hit anyone. Not only were there at least two drones circling the battlefield, lighting everything up, his wide circles were designed to make sure that no one was surprised. If someone missed him and his fifteen-ton Eagle, they probably shouldn’t be flying.
“We only have a fuel load for another ten minutes,” he told Matt. “Just sit back. You’ll be fine. If anyone asks, I’ll tell them that…” Alvarez jumped as something huge and dark appeared very close off his starboard wing. Matt began screaming his name and telling him to bank away. It was natural to want to edge away from another jet flying twenty feet from your wingtip, but Alvarez held his course.
A glance saw that the dark form would have appeared grey had not the night come crashing down not long before. It was an F-16: a Fighting Falcon to his Eagle; a rapier to his bastard sword. Its pilot was gesturing furiously at him.
“I think he wants us to turn back,” Matt yelled.
“Yeah, I think you’re right.” Air Force pilots don’t use any sort of sign language and so when Alvarez held up a finger, he hoped that it would convey: Just a minute.
The pilot must have misread the sign because it suddenly slipped left, sliding under the Strike Eagle and disappearing. “What the fuck!” Matt cried, twisting in his seat to try to catch sight of the Falcon. “Holy crap! It’s back there, Stubby. Turn us around, damn it.”
“Why should I?” Alvarez asked himself.
“If you don’t, I swear I will punch the fuck out!”
Alvarez nearly choked. “You wouldn’t.” He couldn’t punch out alone. If he went, they would both go and that would be the death of his Eagle. It would be the equivalent of suicide. “Matt, this is a thirty-million dollar plane, damn it.”
“If you care, then turn around.”
Turning around meant huge trouble. He had broken just about every rule in the book, from ignoring comms to leading his flight against the wrong target. He had put his plane and his backseater in danger. He had disobeyed orders. But his orders were asinine and insane. The enemy below was not wearing green and anyone who thought so was allied with the real enemy. In his heart, he knew he was right.
And yet, his plane was his baby. He would never do anything to hurt her. “I’ll explain to the tower this was on me.”
“No! Just turn around.”
“Tango Zero One, this is Five Zero Five,” Alvarez announced, keying the mic for the first time since he called that he was switching to guns. At least four people began screaming at him, none of whom made any sense, each essentially saying: kill the humans and save the zombies. He ignored them. “Control, I have a Falcon acting aggressively. Please advise him that there are friendlies in the area.”
“Shut the hell up, Stubby!” he knew the voice: it was Colonel Scott, the wing commander, a tough as balls veteran of two wars. This made it even more shocking that he wasn’t siding with Alvarez. “You got two choices: Land your plane and face a court-martial, or get shot out of the sky.”
The air seemed to leave his body and not return, and his hands went numb; he could only hope his plane was okay with fl
ying herself for a little while. “Court martial for what?” It was a dumb question. There had been a number of pilots dragged away in the last few hours and the charge was always treason.
Sure enough, Colonel Scott answered in a low tone, “Mutiny, sedition, aiding the enemy…treason.”
Although this had been expected, Alvarez still felt the numbness spread up his arms and into his chest. Those pilots who had been taken hadn’t done anything close to what Alvarez had done. For the most part, they had faked weapons malfunctions or had purposely missed targets. Most had been locked up on base, but the worst offenders had been bundled off to a “camp” near Washington DC. They weren’t expected to return.
“What did you think would happen, Tony?” Matt hissed from the backseat. “You had to know what would happen to you.”
He did. Deep down he knew what was going to happen to him, but he had cracked. It had almost felt physical, as if there was a real crack inside of him, cutting him in two. On one side was his training, his sense of duty, his love of country; on the other was the fact that he wasn’t just doing something wrong, he was doing something evil. The one side demanded that he meekly return to base and face the charges against him. The other side said: Fuck it.
This sounded very tough in his head, only just then the F-15’s threat receiver began screeching in his ear. He had just been painted by two different radars. The sweat trickling down the back of his flight suit turned to ice—one of the radars was the F-16, that was obvious, but where was the other coming from? A drone? Was he being targeted by a Reaper?
The idea of a drone high above him with a missile ready to fire was more frightening than the thought of another Falcon with a lock on him. It made no sense, but he imparted a certain amount of cold perfection in the UAVs. He likened it to playing chess against a computer; there was no winning.
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