After inspecting the man’s arms and torso, the soldier crouched to give his bare legs a once over. Rising, the soldier held a short conversation with the man, then sent him back to his vehicle and waved him through.
The scene was repeated two more times, and both times the drivers and passengers were subjected to the same inspection and then allowed passage.
“Our turn,” Riker said, slow-rolling the pickup forward. While the African American guardsman had been busy inspecting the driver and passenger of the second car, Riker had slipped the Sig underneath his seat with the shotgun and, with his heel, shoved them both as far back as possible.
As the guardsmen put the driver and pair of passengers of the third vehicle through the same inspection—the two women being scrutinized by a female soldier, off to the side where the Humvees provided a modicum of cover—Riker, Tara, and Steve-O had huddled together to get their stories straight.
While one guardsman moved the barrier aside to let a cleared vehicle pass, the African American who seemed to be running the show waved the Shelby forward.
Speaking out of the side of his mouth, Riker said, “Be cool,” and let his foot off the brake.
“Like the Fonz,” Steve-O remarked, flashing a thumbs-up between the front seat headrests.
“Exactly,” said Riker. “Like the Fonz.”
Perplexed, Tara looked to Riker. “Who?”
Rather dismissively, Steve-O said, “Never mind. He’s before your time.”
The soldier in charge watched the Shelby’s approach, finally putting a hand up when the bumper was nearly to his knees. Unlike the other guardsmen, he wasn’t wearing a pair of Gargoyles or Oakleys. He fixed a no-nonsense gaze on the Ford and walked confidently to Riker’s door.
Chin level with the road and the brim of a soft top cover shielding his eyes, the soldier asked, “What’s your business?”
Smiling, Riker sized the man up. The tape on his MultiCam uniform read: Wilcox. The black triple chevrons on the patch on his sternum told Riker he was a sergeant. And if he were forced to guess the cleanshaven kid’s age, he’d put him anywhere between twenty-five and thirty.
“We’re going camping on the Panhandle. But first, we need to stop for gas and supplies. Is Fort Myers open for business?”
As Riker spoke, the sergeant was surreptitiously sizing him and the others up.
Eyes now roaming the tonneau cover, the sergeant motioned another soldier to the passenger side and asked everyone to exit the truck. “This will just take a minute or two, then you’ll be on your way.”
Famous last words, thought Riker as he stepped from the truck. Turning toward the sergeant, he found they stood nearly eye-to-eye. However, the younger man had at least thirty pounds on him, all of it muscle. As he ordered Riker to remove his shirt, he backpedaled away from the open door and moved to one side. Even at six-foot-three and two hundred and sixty some-odd pounds, the kid moved like a predatory big cat.
Riker complied, unbuttoning and removing his shirt. Draping it on the mirror, he stuck his arms out and performed the pirouette before being ordered to do so.
“How do you explain these recent scratch marks on your back?”
“Rough sex,” Riker said, offering up the same lie he’d told the female soldier at the high school in Middletown, a week ago, when all this madness began.
“You’ll have to drop your shorts.”
Riker hesitated a tick before complying. He wanted to say: Is this all necessary? but knew deep down that it was. He also had a suspicion it all fell in the “too little, too late” category.
As Riker conducted another clockwise rotation, the sergeant scrutinized his legs, front and back.
Finishing his second clockwise rotation, Riker met the sergeant’s steely gaze.
Voice softening a bit, the sergeant asked, “Where’d you get the scars on your legs and torso?”
“Iraq,” said Riker. “Roadside IED. Same one that left me with the bionic south of my knee.” He lifted up his Braves cap. Showed the sergeant the pink scarring running from one ear, over his forehead, and down the opposite temple. “The burns were the icing on the cake.”
From across the bed, the younger of the two guard soldiers shouted, “Sarge … you’ve gotta see this dude’s tattoo.”
Shooting a glare suitable to quiet the subordinate, Wilcox handed Riker his shirt and scooped his shorts off the ground for him. Leaning in, he said, “You can go west or north from here. Fort Myers’s businesses have raised their prices through the roof. But it’s pretty much the same everywhere.”
Tara called out, “Can we get going, Lee?”
Riker saw her in his side vision. Just her head and shoulders over the nearby Humvee. She was pulling her tee shirt on. Spotting a snatch of her lacy bra, he averted his eyes and raised his palm to let her know he’d heard her. Staring past the sergeant at a spit of grass under cover of a distant overpass, where a couple of dozen civilian vehicles sat amongst a number of colorful airport shuttles, he asked, “What’s the interstate look like from here to the Florida/Georgia line?”
“Same as south of here—hit and miss. Some towns are shutting down. Some are open for gouging.”
“Is this about the sickness?”
Sergeant Wilcox nodded.
Both doors on the other side of the truck opened, then quickly slammed shut. The rig was rocking slightly as Riker said, “How bad is it?”
“Romero owns the Atlantic Seaboard from Maine to Miami. We’re on the verge of losing the entire eastern half of my state.”
Incredulous, Riker said, “Romero? You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s what the no imagination crowd inside the Beltway are calling this bug?”
The sergeant said nothing. However, he was shaking his head.
During the entire time spent stopped on the interstate—ten minutes, max—Riker had noticed the total absence of air traffic landing or taking off from the nearby airport.
Nodding toward the airport shuttles, Riker said, “The airport is real quiet. What are the shuttles for? You taking anyone with a fresh scratch or who you suspect was bitten to the airport? Stow them in a hangar or something?”
The sound of a racing motor broke the still. A sidelong glance told Riker he was hearing the same red SUV that seemed impossible to shake. It was still quite a ways out and coming at the roadblock with a full head of steam.
Motioning for one of the guard soldiers to open the makeshift gate, brows furrowed, the sergeant said, “I’m going to say this and then you have to be on your way. The supposed training exercise they’re now calling Romeo Victor started out as Vigilant Sweep. Something happened early on and its designation was changed. Call it what you will, but it was all about early containment of the Romero bug. As we speak, CDC and USAMRIID are setting up shop at the airport. MacDill is the operational hub of the southern containment efforts. USSOCOM is tasked with creating a north/south firewall to allow time for assets to be relocated along the Ohio River Valley.” He stopped long enough to get another soldier’s attention and order him to tend to the injured people spilling out of the red SUV. Turning back to Riker, speaking in a near whisper, he added, “One soldier to another … if I was in your shoes, I would get to somewhere real light in population and bivouac there until we get a handle on things.”
The Shelby’s horn blared, causing both men to start.
Shaking the sergeant’s hand, Riker offered a sincere and heartfelt thanks.
Shooting Tara a sour look, he climbed into the Shelby, started the motor, and got them moving north, toward the exit to Fort Myers, where he hoped to find food, fuel, and a bathroom—but not necessarily in that order.
Chapter 17
Washington, D.C.
White House Situation Room
President Henry Tillman tore his slate-gray eyes from the flat-panel monitor dominating the wall at his end of the five-thousand-square-foot rectangular space officially known as the John F. Kennedy Conference Room.
Situated a d
ozen feet beneath the West Wing, its rebar-reinforced concrete ceiling and walls able to withstand a near direct hit from an ICBM-delivered nuke, the White House Situation Room was abuzz with activity.
On the President’s right sat the Secretary of Defense, retired United States Marine Corps General Thomas “Tank” Marigold. A highly decorated former Commander of the 1st Marine Division in Iraq, Marigold had seen combat on multiple continents during his thirty-year stint in the Corps. The fireplug of a man twirled one end of his handlebar mustache and continued to watch what the President would not.
On the monitor was live footage shot by an MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle flying a racetrack orbit half a mile east of the White House. Parked in an inverted V, behind two rows of two-thousand-pound cement Jersey barriers, some of the SecDef’s Marines were in the fight of their lives.
In ones and twos, fast-movers would appear from the shadows of buildings or burst from within a large pack of slow-moving zombies spread out across Pennsylvania Avenue. The skirmish line was very near to the National Archives building, inside of which was housed the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and many more of America’s most treasured documents.
Highly mobile, newly turned specimens the soldiers were calling “Zips” met the Marines’ fierce barrage of fire head on. Speeding bullets tore limbs from bodies and fresh blood painted the street and sidewalks as the infected sprinters’ bodies spasmed and fell here and there.
Many of the felled creatures would stand again, waver for a beat, and then renew their attack as if hurtling hunks of lead hadn’t just cleaved meat from their bones or blown holes clean through their torsos. Shredded muscle and tendon or severed spinal cords stole from large numbers of Zips and slow-movers the ability to rise again. Undeterred, the multitudes of fallen zombies simply dragged themselves off of curbs, along sidewalks, or across oil-stained thoroughfares to get to the meat manning the cupola-mounted machine guns atop a pair of up-armored Humvees.
The SecDef turned to President Tillman, who was leaning forward, eyes closed and massaging his temples with his thumbs.
“As confident as I am in the training those men out there have had, not to mention the combat experience the vast majority of them have accrued from multiple deployments in the Sandbox, I cannot, in good conscience, let them continue on this fool’s errand.”
Meeting Marigold’s gaze, the President said, “Quit beating around the bush, General. What’s your assessment?”
Without pause, the SecDef said, “Containment has failed. The District is lost. Which means the White House is also lost.”
The President steepled his fingers and looked a question at Department of Homeland Security Head Maria Salazar.
The petite Hispanic met Marigold’s steely gaze. Held it for a beat, then said, “I concur.” She broke eye contact and aimed a remote control at the wall-mounted monitor across from the President.
The display snapped on. Front and center on a field of blue was the Presidential Seal. The seal faded quickly, giving way to a full-sized map of the Continental United States. Alaska and Hawaii were not represented.
The highly detailed map was awash with red dots from the Carolinas north. Small clusters of green dots were interspersed with the red outside the more populated cities.
Washington D.C. was an island of red amongst a spreading sea of the same.
West of the Carolinas, green dots vastly outnumbered the red, with the latter beginning to appear in real-time in and around the larger cities with stunning regularity.
The states surrounding Lake Michigan were mostly red. From the amount of color on the eastern edges of Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana, it looked as if Romero was making a steady push west.
Evidence of the outbreak was nearly nonexistent from Texas on up to North Dakota, and as far west as Colorado.
A few blips of red marred the map between the Rocky Mountains and the West Coast, where the virus had established a firm foothold in California.
“What about Hawaii and Alaska?” asked the president.
“So far Alaska is sterile and should remain so. Hawaii and Oahu, on the other hand, are not. They are both sealed off to sea and air. Have been since Tuesday last when the first jets carrying infected landed.”
“The other islands?”
Salazar grimaced. “So far, so good,” she said.
Tillman exhaled. Fearing the answer he was about to receive, he reluctantly proceeded with his next line of questioning. “How are our borders? And foreign aid … is it coming?”
“Mexico has beefed up its Northern and Southern borders. Coyotes are still moving bodies into CONUS, but apprehensions are way down. Canada was working with us on containment. However, in the last twenty-four hours they’ve closed all border checkpoints. They’re going hermetic on us.” She paused and locked eyes with the SecDef. After detecting his subtle nod, she went on with the bad news. “Thanks to the Logan incident, the genie is not only out of the bottle, he’s on a worldwide tour.”
As she paused again, the SecDef said, “For the moment, while our allies and enemies alike work on containing the virus on their own soil, we, Mr. President, are on our own.”
Tillman downed the remainder of the Scotch in his glass and slammed the crystal item down hard on the desk. “And now Mother Nature is adding insult to injury. What’s the latest on Owen? Glancing blow or is he going to kick us in the balls?”
“These are the latest developments,” said Salazar, indicating the monitor across from the President.
As President Tillman and the others assembled around the table looked on, she enlarged the image on the monitor until the South Atlantic states and Hurricane Owen—still a Cat-2 spinning lazily over open water—dominated the monitor.
“This time a week ago,” bellowed the President, “we had three flashpoints … Middletown, Manhattan, and Logan International?” He paused to pour himself more Scotch. Looking his SecDef in the face, in a voice devoid of emotion, he asked, “Tank, tell me how in the hell this thing got away from us.”
For the first time in his sixty-six years on the planet, Thomas Marigold was struck speechless.
On the monitor the image finally scaled to reveal dozens of new red dots erupting in Georgia and Florida. Simultaneously, in Atlanta, Orlando, and Miami, multiple clusters of green dots winked out, only to be replaced by more red.
“This is still real time?” asked President Tillman.
Salazar nodded. “We are losing hospitals to the sickness faster than we can dispatch teams to combat the outbreaks.”
Indicating the small pockets of green remaining on the Eastern Seaboard, President Tillman said, “We throw two brigades of the 82nd, nearly half of the 75th Ranger battalion, and every last man of the third Special Forces group at this problem, and that’s all we’re holding to the east?”
Having processed what he was witnessing on the multiple monitors spread about the rectangular room, the SecDef said, “This is no ordinary enemy. These things aren’t affected by wounds that would stop a normal combatant. They don’t halt their advance to check on their fallen. They can’t be demoralized. They show no remorse. And they never tire. Which means they don’t stop to rest or sleep. Furthermore, they are not predictable in their movements. Especially the Zips. One second a sniper has one of them in his sights, the next, the sniper is trying to shoot something that’s moving like a chicken that just had its head lopped off.”
Salazar asked, “How’s the bombing campaign panning out?”
“It’s not,” admitted Marigold. “Oh, a thousand-pound bomb thins them out a bit, but nothing—and I mean nothing we have tried so far slows their advance. The virus not only brings them back after death, it also awakens a dormant prehistoric instinct to hunt and feed. And it’s us they must hunt and consume. And they’re beginning to form packs to do it.” He took a sip of water. “With all their degrees and infinite wisdom,” he went on, “even the pointy heads at USAMRIID say there’s nothing we can do t
o rewire those responses.”
As the SecDef paused and drew a breath, President Tillman asked, “How long does it take for them to fully degrade?”
Like the infection on the map, red had creeped up from under Marigold’s collar and spread to his cheeks. He loosened his tie, then said, “Still undetermined. The scientists think the virus is continuing to mutate. The tweaks Zen Pharma made to Romero during trials that prolonged life in the original test subjects, the same tweak that allowed them to stay in the fight even after a mortal wound that had the test subjects bleeding out”—he shook his head, a look of incredulity on his face—“may be doing the same to the flesh of the infected after death.”
The President threw his hands up, then snatched the crystal tumbler off the table. Downing the Scotch, he asked, “Why didn’t we have our own people inside Zen?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He knew that just as lobbyists’ money greased the skids in the Capitol Building just up the street, plausible deniability was the grease that kept blowback of dark projects gone awry from sticking to those in power who tacitly endorsed said endeavors.
“Don’t answer that,” muttered the President as he looked around the room. Finished scrutinizing the faces of those assembled for what was likely the last meeting in the White House for the foreseeable future—if not ever—he pounded a fist on the table. “Damn it all to hell. We were there for the rest of the world when they needed us. Where in the hell are they now?”
“They’re battling this, too,” noted Salazar. “That debacle at Logan International saw to that. Sent thousands of infected travelers winging blissfully away to all points of the compass. I have to be frank with you, sir. You dragged your heels on grounding all air travel.”
“Can’t dwell on the past. We have to think about what’s in front of us right now. And right now, it’s clear that we’re on our own,” said the President to no one in particular. Regarding Marigold, he asked, “So where do we go from here?”
The SecDef opened a briefcase and removed a stack of sealed envelopes marked EYES ONLY. He placed one on the table before the President. Passing the rest around the table to the essential players, he said, “I recommend you enact Protocol Delaware.”
The Plan Page 10