by Ricky Sides
“No. I was going to suggest that we send in drones with the protective gear and let the personnel who have already been exposed conduct the tests. The drones can then deliver the tests to a secured location.”
“That’s not a good substitute for being there on the ground and examining the patients,” Maggie said shaking her head.
Tim looked to Jim for support. Jim in turn looked to Pol. “I’m afraid in this case, Maggie is correct. There is too much at stake to use a less efficient means of obtaining our intelligence,” Pol stated.
Maggie looked at Tim triumphantly and said, “Thank you, Pol.”
“Don’t thank me. Tim is right. We cannot risk our foremost authority on the disease at this point.”
“You can’t have it both ways. You just said we have to do this efficiently,” Maggie stated in a frustrated tone of voice.
“Yes, that is indeed what I said,” Pol stated with a nod of his head. “I am thoroughly familiar with what is needed. My background in working with contaminants is sufficient that I am qualified to perform the duties.”
“You’re not a physician,” Maggie snapped in irritation.
“There are doctors present already and I can carry a helmet cam so that you get up close views of the patients.”
“No, Pol. You can’t go either,” Jim said quietly. Looking to his brother, he said, “I’m sorry, but I think it’s time, little brother.”
Tim sighed wearily and nodded his head in agreement.
“You know something about this?” Pol asked. Then, making an educated guess, he asked, “You’ve had dreams related to this, haven’t you?”
“Yes and no,” Tim answered. “I didn’t dream anything about this being a mutated version of the disease used in Louisiana. As far as I knew, it was a terribly bad flu strain, like the one responsible for the pandemic in 1916. But I did dream that it was a devastating disease that was highly communicable with a one hundred percent mortality rate.”
“Well, that’s all the more reason that…”
“Please, let him finish, Maggie. This is difficult for him,” Jim explained.
“I can’t believe you all knew about this and didn’t tell me,” Maggie complained.
“I did not know about the dreams,” Pol said defensively.
“Nor did I,” Patricia stated, sounded hurt.
“No one knew except Jim, and we decided to keep it quiet until we made certain preparations.”
“Why would you do that?” Maggie asked.
“Because we knew how you’d react,” Jim said in irritation. “Now, if you don’t mind, stop beating up on Tim for trying to save your life. He’s been through a lot lately in an effort to protect you. Hell, Maggie, you’re a doctor. Just look at him.”
Stunned by Jim’s uncharacteristic rebuke, Maggie took a moment to study Tim carefully. Moments later, her eyes widened in surprise as one by one she noted the exhausted look on his face, his disheveled appearance, and his unnaturally pale visage. He had the classic appearance of a man who had endured extensive sleep deprivation and was bordering on a physical breakdown. “I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “I can tell from your appearance that you’ve been suffering a massive loss of sleep. I wish you had come to me. I would have given you something to mitigate the dreams.”
“I couldn’t do that,” Tim stated, stubbornly shaking his head in the negative.
“You could have had the doctor aboard the Peacekeeper give you something then,” she stated.
“I couldn’t do that either. We needed the information I’ve obtained from the dreams in order to make preparations.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. Please fill us in on what you know and the steps you’ve taken,” Maggie said.
Tim rubbed his face tiredly and then he looked at Maggie and Pol. He said, “Some of what I’m about to say may embarrass you two, but if you want the truth, then I have to reveal what I saw in the dreams.”
When both nodded their tacit permission for him to speak freely, Tim continued, “The dreams began the first night after we received word of the flu coming north from Mexico. In the dreams, Maggie was seeking a cure. She thought she had found one, but her test patient died. There was an accident as she was studying some fluid samples from that deceased victim in an effort to determine what had gone wrong. During the accident, Maggie was contaminated. She ordered her team to leave for the ship without her, but Pol wouldn’t abandon her. He entered the building with protective gear and, working with Maggie, he began an around the clock marathon in an attempt to perfect the cure. He collapsed from exhaustion at some point. I don’t know how long he’d been at it when he collapsed. Maggie was terribly sick by then, but she changed his air tank for him and lay down to sleep beside him.”
Tears began to roll unchecked down Tim’s face. Patricia’s eyes filled with tears as she saw his suffering. “Pol died in his sleep,” Tim said quietly.
“What?” Why?” asked Maggie.
“In the dream, you were already sick. Both of you were exhausted. After you went to sleep beside him, neither of you woke up in time to change the portable oxygen tank. He asphyxiated.”
Pol and Maggie both paled as this revelation hit home. “What happened next?” Maggie asked.
“I don’t know what happens to you. The dreams always show other things after Pol’s death. I saw mass cremations on a scale unimaginable. The Border States were lost first. Los Angeles was a nightmare of the dead and dying. The sickness spread as the population fled before it. I saw New Orleans burning as desperate city officials tried to save those they could, but in the end the city was lost.”
Tim paused in his narration. His face took on a collage of expressions in rapid succession. Expressions of fear, anger, and revulsion all flashed fleetingly across his face. He sat silently for a moment, not looking at the others.
“Should I finish for you?” Jim asked gently. He alone knew what had yet to be revealed, and that knowledge had haunted his own dreams.
“I’ll do it. There’s more to tell that even you don’t know yet,” Tim explained. But before he continued his narration, he added, “I hope you all understand that I make no claim that everything I’ve dreamed is accurate and will come to pass.”
The others in the room nodded their understanding. Pol, speaking quietly, paraphrased what the others were thinking by saying, “Generally, there are subtle differences between your precognitive dreams and what actually happens, but labeling them inaccurate would be wrong. A good portion of a dream is symbolic in nature. Therefore, your interpretation of what you see in the dreams can be a bit off. However, you’ve experienced them before, and as I recall you stated that they always feel different than other dreams. Knowing you as I do, I’m certain that you have determined that these are genuine, and not the result of a heavy dinner before bed.”
“Yes,” Tim said simply.
“Then please proceed, my friend,” Pol said.
“In one of the camps, some refugees will attempt to steal a peacekeeper ship or APC,” Tim said.
“That’s new, isn’t it?” Jim asked.
Tim nodded and explained, “I dreamed that last night, and there’s more. Some Peacekeeper bases in the Border States are lost. In their fear, the population turns on us in the hopes of seizing ships they can use to escape. The citadel stands. It’s so isolated that only a handful of people make it there, but they are disease carriers. They tested positive. I heard a peacekeeper tell them that he was sorry, but they had the disease and couldn’t be admitted. One of the refugees was carrying a concealed handgun. He shot the peacekeeper, but two other peacekeepers on duty killed the shooter. The other refugees, fearing retaliation against them by the angry peacekeepers, fled out into the desert.”
“They surely wouldn’t have shot them,” Maggie said.
“Yes, they would have done just that,” Tim countered. “They’d heard from other bases about the slaughter that was taking place. The peacekeepers there waited too long to use deadly force to defe
nd the bases. Houston was overrun. All the peacekeepers there were slaughtered by angry mobs wanting vaccine that the peacekeepers didn’t have. Some fool started a damned rumor.”
Pausing in his narration of what he had seen in his dreams, Tim said, “I’m not certain I’m right about the location, but I think the Texas was lost in the Dallas area. The crew lived long enough to sabotage the ship so that the enemy couldn’t get her airborne, but they were slaughtered in the end. Captain Adkins and Lieutenant Sheila Thompson, the communications specialist were the last to die. It was Sheila who sabotaged the computers. She activated the zero power failsafe, which causes the computers to think the ship has zero power so it won’t lift off. They beat the captain to death in an effort to make her fix the computers, but he ordered her not to talk as they beat him, so she didn’t. Then they started beating her. She…She took the secret with her.”
Patricia sniffed, causing Tim to look in her direction. “I’m sorry, babe. I shouldn’t have said that in your presence. I know how much you like her.”
“I trained her,” Patricia stated.
“From what Tim said, you trained her well, but don’t you worry. The Texas won’t fall to the attackers,” Jim explained.
“It won’t?”
“I’ll reassign the Texas to the citadel for now.”
“And the Houston base?” Pol asked.
“We’ll quietly evacuate the personnel and equipment to the citadel as well,” Jim assured him. “It’ll be crowded, but they have sufficient space for the fighters, APCs and the Texas. The Valiant will remain aboard the Damroyal, so the Texas can have her berth in the citadel.”
“I assume that you’ll also evacuate the other bases in the danger zone,” Pol said.
“Yes, but Tim isn’t quite finished,” Jim explained.
“Right,” Tim affirmed. “The bottom line is, we can’t stop it. From what I’ve seen in the dreams, not even the former government of the United States would have been able to stop the sickness from overrunning America. And we can’t stop it from spreading outside our borders either. Oh, we’ll try, but someone will inevitably get past us. It’s a matter of when, and not if, the disease spreads to the rest of the world.”
“It may already be in Central and South America,” Jim observed.
“You suspect some Mexicans took it south instead of coming north?”
“Don’t you?” Jim asked.
“Logic would seem to favor that scenario. Many people would have been south of the disease,” Maggie observed.
“So what do we do? Are you all saying that we are doomed?” Patricia asked. “If that’s what you’re saying, I don’t believe it.”
“No, we’re not doomed. Pol and Maggie are going to save us,” Jim stated.
“We are?” Pol and Maggie asked in unison.
“Yes,” Jim responded. Then he added, “Tim has one more piece of information for us.”
All eyes turned to Tim, who for the first time during the meeting smiled. He said, “After I consulted with Jim, I stopped having the dream about Pol dying. Another dream involving Maggie and Pol began. I’ve had that dream several times. It’s always the same. Maggie works diligently to find a cure, but never does. Frustrated, she eventually turns her efforts to developing a vaccine. It isn’t easy, but she finally achieves the goal.”
“Then I will help her,” Pol stated eagerly.
“You can’t,” Tim said, shaking his head in the negative. “You’ll have all you can do to solve a puzzle,” he explained. Reaching inside his shirt pocket, Tim removed a neatly folded piece of paper. For the first time he appeared hesitant. Several seconds elapsed as he unfolded the paper, held it in his hand, and stared at it. He finally said, “In my dream, I saw you working with mathematical equations on a blackboard. They were just gibberish to me, but I kept having the dream. Finally, a string of the equations stuck in my mind and I wrote it down just after I woke up. That was three days ago. The dreams have stopped, at least for now. The ones I’ve had since were just regular nightmares based on the other dreams. I keep seeing piles of bodies being burned by desperate men.”
His eyes looked haunted and his hand shook as he reached across the table and handed the paper to Pol. “I have no idea what this means, but in the dreams, it was very important to you,” Tim explained.
Pol examined the seven lines of math that Tim had written in a shaky hand. As he stared at the paper, Pol’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Well, is it gibberish?” Tim asked gruffly. Of all the things he had revealed to them at the meeting, this was the only one he had felt uncertain about revealing. To him, the math string was just a bunch of numbers, letters, and symbols that made no sense.
“No, my friend, it is most definitely not gibberish. Indeed, some of this incorporates symbols I use as a sort of shorthand. A code if you will, which tells me to apply specific equations at that point. I developed it for security reasons.”
Patricia got up and moved to stand behind Pol. She stared at the paper a moment. “I see it too, Pol. There, and again there, and also here,” she said as she pointed out the three different symbols from the mathematical shorthand that Pol had developed to safeguard his work.
“Not even my most trusted assistants know the secret of my code. Only Patricia knows it,” Pol revealed. “So if you need confirmation that your dreams are real, I’d say that this confirms it.”
“Can you tell us what it all means?” Tim asked.
“No, not entirely, but I can tell you that it involves linking other ships to the Damroyal. The rest seems to involve power collection under water. It almost looks as if I was attempting to work the math on how to link a vast number of ships and APCs to the Damroyal, and then sink it under water.”
Chapter 5
“It’s good to see you, son,” Jim said from across the desk when Evan entered his office.
“It’s good to see you too, Dad,” Evan responded. “I was told you wanted to see me in your office. I hope I’m not in trouble.”
“No, you’re not in trouble. I just wanted to see you in here for a private meeting. I’ll also be meeting with the commanders of the other two junior teams when they arrive later in the day,” Jim explained.
“You’re mission flights are being altered…”
“I know. I was just given my new flight plan by the Damroyal communications officer. That flight plan will add two hours to the flight and hopelessly foul up the scheduling,” Evan protested.
“We’re aware of that, but it can’t be helped,” Jim responded. “Have a seat. I need to brief you on what’s going on so that you’ll understand.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Jim explained what had been happening. While Evan listened in growing alarm, his father outlined the problems that the peacekeepers were facing. Few outside the council knew about Tim’s history of precognitive dreams. He made it clear to Evan that he was getting the whole truth because he was one of the few who did know that history.
“We are going to use all of our resources to try to save as many people as we can, but we have little reason to believe that we’ll be very successful. Yesterday, we used our communications network to warn the major population areas to avoid traveling. Unfortunately, the public is ignoring us. With so many people on the move, there’s no way we can arrest the spread of the disease. Compounding the problem is the fact that so many refugees fled Mexico before we got a handle on the problem. By now, many in the first waves could be anywhere in the country.”
“I understand. I assume you’re changing our flight plans so that we avoid major population areas to reduce the risk of contamination if we have to land.”
“Yes, but your orders on landing have also been changed. If you spot marauder activity, do what you can from the air, but under no circumstances are you to land in the Border States outside a base. That restriction will probably be expanded soon. It could change as early as tomorrow, and there won’t be time for another private meeting with you commanders. That
means I’m counting on you to follow orders.”
“Will it be okay for me to tell my crew about all this?”
“We’re planning a general announcement to all personnel tomorrow night. That will give us time to get the word out to all of our command level people first. They have to know so they can prepare contingency plans. We’re expecting a significant number of personnel will want to leave to return to their extended families. In the meantime, it’s a need to know basis only. Since the junior team pilots are temporary commanders, and because you’re the ones who’d land the APCs, you need to know. Inform your people only in the event you think it necessary to prevent contamination. Otherwise, they’ll hear the news tomorrow night.”
“Understood, sir,” Evan said formally.
“Now I want to hear about you,” Jim stated. “How do you like being married?”
“It’s great. I couldn’t be happier.”
“No regrets then?” asked Jim.
“Just one. I should have married her a year ago,” Evan said with a smile.
“Your mother would have been so happy for you. I know I am,” Jim said happily. Then he frowned and asked, “How’s it working out for you two remaining on the same team? Do I need to split you up for the duration of the missions? I know some couples can’t work together.”
“We’re fine. We follow your example. On the missions, it’s formal. There’s time for familiarity when we’re off duty.”
“Good. What about the rest of the crew? Are you all getting along well?”
This time Evan hesitated for a moment before answering. Jim noted that hesitancy and knew that he had struck a nerve. He waited expectantly. Finally, Evan replied, “One of the guys is starting to cause a few problems, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“It’s not Ralph is it?” Jim asked. He had his doubts about permitting Ralph to be on the team with Evan because of the way they had originally clashed.
“No, sir,” Evan replied formally. By doing so, he was indicating to his dad that he wanted to keep this professional. “In fact, my strike team leader has already volunteered to straighten the guy out, but I told him I’d handle it when the time comes.”