A string of explosions miles away drew their attention. “They’re still out there,” his lieutenant replied.
“Fuckin’ Air Force. That’s hardly fightin’. Droppin’ bombs on some poor bastards who may or may not be sick? Then drinkin’ beer back on some airbase?”
“Shut the fuck up!” came the increasingly menacing curse from his commander.
A woman from the family in the distance screamed. Her high pitch caused everyone to rivet their gaze on that gloomy patch of parking lot. “They’re coming!” the head of the starving family shouted. “They’re coming! Let us in!”
A searchlight swung their way. The family was running straight toward their guns.
“Shit!” Rick said. He raised his rifle to his shoulder.
“You’re not gonna shoot them!” Isabel said.
Rick shouted, “Ha-a-a-alt!” at the top of his lungs. His command jarred Isabel. She could see them now. Five people. A mom, a dad, two boys, and a girl. They were sprinting toward the convoy.
“Your call,” Rick said to the army officer, a lieutenant.
“Fuck you. Sir! Your fucking call!”
“Rick!” Isabel said.
It was the wrong thing to do. He took one side-long glance at her, set his face in a grimace, and literally growled out a loud, “Ahhh!” His muzzle flamed. The family dove to the ground. Rick surely would’ve hit someone if he’d aimed at them, but no one appeared wounded. Soldiers’ helmets swiveled left and right. Hushed arguments broke out.
The family rose and resumed their run toward them, this time in a stoop. Rick looked at Isabel, then raised his rifle again and fired a single shot. The man fell instantly. A girl screamed. “Daddy!” The family gathered around him.
Isabel burst into tears. She tried to stop and walked away from and out of sight of Rick. But she doubled over, instead sobbing even harder. She heard more calls of, “Movement!” and “Contract!” Through her blurry vision she saw figures emerge from the tree line. “Oh, God!” she said just before the entire unit opened fire.
Dozens of running figures came straight at the family and at their armored wagon train beyond. These weren’t pathetic pleading figures. They were shooting back.
The family lay flat underneath sheets of fire that had to be passing just over their heads in both directions. Spent cartridges spat from Rick’s rifle. Bullets zipped through the air. “Get your fucking weapon!” Rick shouted when he saw Isabel.
Through eyesight still obscured by tears, she stumbled back toward their Humvee. Muzzle flashes sparkled in her liquid vision. She ducked low on hearing a bzzzt fly past her head. At the Humvee, she grabbed her rifle and ran back to the fight.
She knelt on the hard pavement behind the huge tire of the MRAP and raised her M4. The scene was alive with sprinting figures. She aimed at the Infecteds closest to the prone family, unsafed the rifle, and pulled the trigger but missed. She reached up and wiped her eyes clear, then her runny nose, and focused. A woman in jeans and a high school letter jacket with something that looked like a hatchet in her hand didn’t weave or duck, she just ran. Isabel kept her in her sights while slowly increased pressure on the trigger till the recoil surprised her. The woman’s legs seemed to outrun her torso as she fell backwards, half rolled onto her side, then lay still.
Isabel fired again, and again. It took her several shots to fell her next kill—an old man, who dropped to his knees, tried to rise, then crumpled forward in a heap like a Muslim in prayer. Just as the number of targets began to dwindle, the steady thump-thump-thump of the Bradley’s small cannon opened fire from the opposite side of the circle.
Soldiers ran to the sound of that gun. Isabel followed. Sure enough, there was a second mob of people approaching the opposite side of their circle from the tree line as if in a coordinated, two-pronged attack. One hurled a burning, spinning object toward them, but it fell well short. The parking lot, however, erupted in a blaze where it landed. They were making Molotov fucking cocktails! Several more rained down, ever nearer, lighting up the killing fields with their barbarous glow.
She fired at a man in a police uniform who was shooting a pistol at them. Strangely, she felt no fear despite the bullets clanging off their vehicles. She was sprayed with debris from a shattered taillight. She could practically feel shots whiz close by. She heard the shouts of “Medic!” from the opposite side of the convoy’s circle.
When the policeman she’d wounded rose to his knees, she killed him. Fired straight into his torso as Rick had taught. Then a skinny man, dragging one leg behind him, moving slowly, an easy shot. Then what looked like a teenage boy, who would run a few steps, kneel, and fire his shotgun. On his third kneel, as he was loading another two rounds into the open, double-barreled gun, her bullet struck him squarely in his face. The shotgun flew from his hands. A woman picked it up. Isabel wounded her. She rose again, wobbly, and was riddled with fire from someone else.
Above the pops of the guns and thumps of the Bradley came a new sound. Deep. Throbbing. Growing louder.
The chop of the helicopter’s rotor was quickly punctuated by a howl from the sky. That was the word that came to her—a mechanical, banshee-like howl. The helicopter swept in low over the parking lot, its green fuselage lit by a blaze four feet in length. Clearly visible at that low altitude was a man in an oversized helmet standing behind a spinning, multi-barrel gun that fired at a prodigious rate. A second after it passed over them, spent cartridges rained across their vehicles’ formation. Dozens of shell casings clinked off rooftops and bounced off pavement like hail. The helicopter orbited, raining fire down on the attackers. The rifles, machine guns, and cannon of the convoy slowly fell silent. The shrieks of the helicopter’s door gun grew less constant, ending in short rips that must have been brief pulls of its trigger.
The aircraft flared out and touched down gently amid a tornado of debris.
“Isabel!” Rick shouted. He jabbed his finger at the helicopter, which kept its rotors turning, ready to take off. “Get on board!”
She ran back to her Humvee. He joined her there. She got her backpack. He got his gear and her ice chest. They and three nervous soldiers with rifles raised to their shoulders jogged the short distance to the Black Hawk. Rick hoisted the chest into the open doorway. The door gunner pulled Isabel aboard.
“Come on!” she shouted to Rick, holding out her hand.
“I’m staying!”
“No! You have to come too!” He shook his head. She shouted, “The mission, remember?” She pointed at the ice chest. He hesitated, looking at the circled wagon train, which was profiled by a half dozen gasoline fires. “What if we don’t make it back to the airbase?”
Reluctantly, Rick tossed his heavy pack into the cabin and climbed aboard. The second his boots left the pavement the helicopter was airborne. The gunner had to hang onto Rick to keep him from falling out. Isabel crawled away from the man’s fearsome six-barreled weapon, which again began to shriek, and leaned her back against the bulkhead. Rick did the same, but on the opposite side of the cabin. He never once made eye contact with her on the twenty-minute, twisting and turning, low-altitude flight. The helicopter gyrated so wildly that Isabel craned her neck to see what the hell the pilot was doing. He and his copilot sat behind their sticks, pointing, shouting warnings to each other constantly, and pulling sickening Gs to avoid whatever threats they had spotted or imagined.
Amazingly, they didn’t hit a radio tower or power line, and slowed to settle onto the brightly lit tarmac next to a 747 with “United States of America” written on its side.
They bounced once, then settled. The pilots killed the engines, and the door gunner raised his weapon so that it pointed harmlessly skyward. He sank onto his butt, wiping sweat off his face and flexing his cramping gloved hands.
Isabel and Rick climbed down wearing their heavy packs. Isabel held her rifle. Rick’s was slung over his should
er to allow him to carry the ice chest for their short walk to the E-4B. It was bathed in blinding lights and surrounded by air policemen with rifles raised and at the ready.
A small delegation left a cluster of Humvees at the base of the forward staircase leading up to the president’s plane. From outside the glare from the spotlights, Isabel couldn’t make out who the dark profiles were that were headed to meet them, but some wore camouflage and others business suits. They intercepted Rick and Isabel half way to the staircase.
“Dr. Miller,” came the booming voice of Gen. Browner. Rick stiffened, but couldn’t salute because of the ice chest he carried. “Capt. Townsend. Glad to find you both well.”
The two civilians who accompanied Browner were the Directors of the CIA and FBI. No one smiled even though they surely knew what she’d brought.
“This is for the president,” Isabel said, indicating Rick’s cargo.
“Two hundred doses?” Gen. Browner asked. “Good, good. Wonders of modern science. We’ll take them from here.” Browner reached for the ice chest himself.
Isabel rested her hand atop the white plastic lid. “The president asked me to bring them back to him.”
“We’ll take care of it.”
It seemed strange to Isabel. The high-level welcoming committee. The fact that Gen. Browner asked for the ice chest himself, rather than having some flunky carry it.
Isabel hesitated. “Can I have one dose?”
“You’ll get yours on Nightwatch.”
“I mean one more dose.”
Browner’s gaze flitted to Rick and back to Isabel. He opened the latch and lifted the lid. From the rising fog inside, he extracted a syringe from a form-fitting foam pocket and handed it to her. Rick gave Browner the ice chest and saluted. CIA Director Struthers maintained a poker face, but FBI Director Pearson appeared troubled. The three men returned to a waiting black SUV.
“That was strange,” Isabel said. Rick nodded. Seconds later, an officer in full camo emerged from the SUV and carried the ice chest up the stairs to Nightwatch, whose engines were powering up. The two Directors followed the man onto the plane seconds later, and the black SUV drove away with Browner inside.
Isabel handed Rick the syringe. “There’s a six percent chance this will give you Pandoravirus. But if it doesn’t, you’ll be immune in a few hours.”
“Are you gonna take it?”
Isabel looked at the giant 747. “I imagine everyone on the plane will. So, yeah.”
Without further hesitation, Rick dropped his pack and body armor, rolled up his sleeve, and injected the thimbleful of precious amber serum into his biceps. “I guess I’ll go find someplace secluded while I wait.” He climbed back into his gear.
The air policemen withdrew from their wider perimeter at all corners of the jet toward the stairs deployed in the back. “I’ve gotta go,” Isabel said, staring at the concrete beneath her. “Hey, are we okay? I mean, you’ll still come and find me? Like you promised?” She held her breath and couldn’t look his way.
“I hear they’re evacuating the Pentagon to Pennsylvania. My guess is I’ll be headed down that way. But yeah. I’ll find you, Isabel. I’ll try. Somehow. Someday.” Isabel rose onto tiptoes and kissed Rick’s lips, scratching herself on his stubble. Rick, always clean shaven, hadn’t shaved in days. But he crushed her to his chest for a second, deeper kiss. In that instant, the Earth resumed its orbit and the ground beneath her firmed. The world felt right again, in spite of everything else. And then he left to await his fate.
Chapter 35
THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY
Infection Date 61, 1315 GMT (9:15 a.m. Local)
“He’s on!” Natalie called out to Noah, who joined her and Chloe at the TV. He could hear the buzz of Jake’s drone landing outside. Natalie pointed at the flat screen.
A picture of the presidential seal switched to Bill Stoddard, seated in front of a blue wall. The lighting was poor and the room cramped. They were obviously on the airborne command post, not in a studio. And Stoddard wore a dark blue, short-sleeved, collared golf shirt that said, “USAF” over a logo.
“My fellow Americans, I come to you today to announce wonderful news. Our scientists, who’ve been working tirelessly since the outbreak of this terrible disease, have made a stunning breakthrough. They have developed a vaccine that will prevent infection from Pandoravirus.” Natalie sank into a chair, closed her eyes, and mouthed a prayer. “We are, right now, employing every available resource this country can muster to initiate large-scale production of the serum, which we hope to begin distributing to regional health authorities within a few weeks.”
“This is great!” Chloe said, turning to her parents with a hopeful look. “Right?”
“What’s great?” Jake said as he descended the spiral staircase from the tower.
“Shhh!” both Natalie and Noah responded.
“This godsend will allow our nation, indeed our entire world, to turn the corner and begin to bring an end to this horrible nightmare, which had previously seemed unstoppable. We are sharing the vaccine, of course, with every nation on earth as all of humanity attempts to halt the scourge of Pandoravirus. What I ask of each of you, my fellow citizens, is to stay calm, stay safe, and hold on because help is on the way. Victory over this dread disease is in sight.”
“But if it’s gonna take weeks, or months maybe, to make the stuff,” Chloe said, less enthusiastically than before, “can we hold out till then?” Noah realized she was asking him. He couldn’t bring himself to answer. He had promised her he wouldn’t lie.
With Jake back from the tower and his drone patrol, the house was undefended.
“There are side effects,” Pres. Stoddard said, “that our scientists are striving to reduce. I will not deceive you by telling you that this vaccination is without risk. A small percentage of the people who take the vaccine will get sick with Pandoravirus.”
“That’s not good,” Chloe said.
“But that should not dissuade you from inoculation just as it will not dissuade me or my family. In fact, when given the choice, fully informed of the risk, every single crewmember and government official on board this aircraft elected to take the vaccine, which I will now do.”
“Isabel is supposed to be on that plane,” Natalie noted.
A woman in a white lab coat over camouflaged fatigues appeared on TV with an alcohol wipe and a syringe. As the president raised his sleeve to his shoulder, Chloe covered her mouth with both hands, cringing melodramatically as the needle went in.
“There,” said the president. “I should achieve full immunity from Pandoravirus within hours.”
Chloe looked up at her mother and father to confirm whether this was something she should be excited about. Noah acted as if he didn’t notice his daughter’s searching gaze. It was far too early for them to celebrate.
“The initial allotments of the vaccine will go to medical workers and first responders. The second round will go to our troops, law enforcement personnel, and key officials. We hope to have every citizen of this country inoculated by the end of the year.”
Natalie said, “Can they make 300 million doses in a year?”
“We won’t need that many,” Noah replied. “Every day that goes by, we need fewer.”
Stoddard ended with praise of everyone for everything they’re doing, uplifting statements about the triumph of human ingenuity and the can-do American spirit, and exhortations to keep calm and carry on. The scene cut to a network studio. The talking heads began what would surely be hours of speculation about the treatment based on no more information than they had all just heard. Noah muted the television.
“We should listen to what they’re saying about…” Natalie began.
“Shhh!” Noah replied. There was a steady uproar of clucking in the barn.
“Hey, my chickens,” Chloe said, rising and heading
for the front door.
Noah grabbed her arm and motioned toward her rifle. “Jake, get back up to the tower but stay low.” Noah retrieved his rifle and was the first to make it to the door. He chambered a round, took the safety off, and headed across the yard for the barn from which chickens were busily scattering. Everything happened quickly. Natalie called his name. Chloe shouted, “Lookout!”
A figure appeared beside the barn raising a weapon. Noah dropped to the ground just ahead of a boom that jarred him even more than blowing the ridge road.
Crack.
The man dropped his shotgun and fell. Noah hadn’t even had time to raise his rifle. He looked back at the porch. Chloe’s smoking AR rested atop the wooden railing.
“Sorry!” she called out in horror toward the man she’d shot, who lay deathly still. Natalie knelt beside Chloe and held her as their daughter began to sob.
The chickens were settling down, bobbing their heads and pecking at the dirt around the fallen intruder. Noah’s heart threatened to burst out of his chest with each thud as he lay on his stomach gripping his rifle so hard his hands quickly grew sore. He could see no other motion through the barn’s windows and doorways. The man hadn’t moved. “Anyone see anything?” Noah called out.
Natalie said, “No!”
Jake shouted, “Clear!”
Noah ensured his rifle’s safety was off and approached the barn with his AR-15 at his shoulder and eye to his sight, ready to fire with a single twitch of his finger, as taught.
“Noah! Sweetheart! Be careful!”
He peered into the darkness of the barn. His eyes hadn’t yet adjusted. Wait! he cautioned to restrain himself. Slowly. Carefully. The chickens seemed unconcerned, approaching him as if he bore seed for their morning feeding. He cleared the room as he’d been instructed in the tactical course. Left. Right. Proceed to cover. Left. Right. Behind. The nooks and crannies were danger zones. He remained ready to fire at any hint of movement. But the barn was empty save the chickens. He saw where the fencing outside had been cut and bent inwards, but there was no one in the woods beyond the breach.
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