by B. D. Lutz
Train disconnected the call and swiveled his chair to face the monitor on the wall. The War Room, deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, remained in stunned silence. Nothing had changed. The monitor cycled between video feeds of Alameda, California, and Wendover, Utah. Each feed broadcast the same story. The antidote had failed.
Thousands of people appeared cured of the virus, only to die as the antidote reached maximum saturation in their systems. Some simply bled out from old wounds sustained during their life as a UC; others dropped for no apparent reason while large pustules formed on their skin, then burst. But those weren’t the monsters responsible for shocking the battle-hardened military men and women to silence. That honor belonged to the beasts now referred to as Blue Savages.
They were spotted moments before boots hit the ground in Wendover. Seconds later, all watching realized the antidote had created monsters far more lethal than the ones they had been fighting. Mallet watched, horrified, as they quickly formed hunting packs and performed what appeared to be door-to-door searches for the living. Humans, temporarily cured by the antidote, were flushed out, torn to shreds, and devoured.
Mallet pulled a sharp breath when the Blue Savages herded the less-developed UCs together and used them as decoys to ensnare the cured. The Blue Savages eviscerated those UCs unable to aid in the slaughter. At that point, he realized he needed to pull the team out of Wendover. He was two minutes too late.
Train stared across the table at the Joint Chiefs. Shifting his gaze to Mallet, he said, “What’s the plan?”
“Mister President, I have no idea. This level of intelligence is something we’ve not encountered.”
Train leaned forward, preparing to respond, when one of the dozens of analysts seated at an equal number of monitors spoke: “Savage Blues are collapsing.”
Mallet, thankful for the intrusion, pivoted towards the young woman. “Clarify.”
“Sir, it just started; they’re dropping like dominos in Alameda. Once down, they don’t attempt to stand. Actually, they don’t move at all. They appear… dead.”
A second analyst spoke up. “I can confirm the same in Wendover.”
Now standing, Mallet asked, “Anyone have a theory? Have we secured McCune’s notes? Do we know his location?”
Silence greeted Mallet. He understood. The world was still attempting to wrap its collective head around dead people eating the living. How could he expect them to run down this rabbit hole?
“Understood,” Mallet said, acknowledging the ridiculousness of his first question. “Do we have a lead on McCune?”
A man, sitting in a darkened corner, responded. “Sir, I have Camp Hopkins on my secured line. They have information on McCune.”
“Patch them through. NOW.”
Chapter 31 – A Promise Made
It startled Albright when Chairman Mallet’s voice issued from the speaker in Camp Hopkins’ Tactical Operation Center. He went cold when the President’s voice followed. When he informed the analyst what had happened at Camp Hopkins, he’d had no idea of the implications.
“Chief Warrant Officer Albright. We understand you may possess information regarding the whereabouts of Doctor McCune.”
“Sir, to clarify. I have information regarding members of the CDC arriving, unannounced, via a C130 delivering medical supplies to Camp Hopkins. They commandeered a Humvee and set out as quickly as they arrived. No mention of McCune. But sir, I have a question. President Train’s signature was on the orders they produced. Shouldn’t you already be aware of their reason for being here?”
Train slammed a hand on the conference table. “That son of a bitch! How many other orders has he presented in my name?”
Albright raged at the realization. “Mister President, the papers they produced appeared legitimate. My apologies for the oversight. I promise you, we will deal with them when they return.”
“Albright,” Mallet began, “to be clear. They haven’t returned with the doctor?”
“Not that I’m aware of. We’ve been preoccupied defending against an attack on a local community. Sir, what’s going on?”
A young soldier, Corporal Offutt, who’d been monitoring the radio traffic from the Black Hawk mopping up the attack on Otto’s community, interrupted Albright’s conversation. “Chief, our air assets located an abandoned Humvee two klicks north of the community.”
Two things happened simultaneously. Mallet, overhearing the information, reacted exactly the way Albright had expected by ordering a search of the area. And the TOC’s administrative specialist announced that he had made contact with Lucas.
Two birds, one stone, thought Albright. “Patch her through to primary coms.” He then shifted his attention to Offutt. “Order them to smoke the Humvee’s location.”
Lucas was on speaker an instant later.
“Lucas, I want your Bradley on that smoke ASAP. Clear the area and locate three people. Two military and one civilian VIP. Assume military as hostile and engage if necessary. Do NOT harm the VIP.”
Albright could hear Lucas as she repeated his orders, verbatim, to her team. When she finished, Albright immediately spoke. “Lucas, are you with Sergeant Willis’ family?”
“Affirmative on Willis’ family. Sir, why are they here? Is Willis…?” Her silence was deafening.
“Sergeant, it’s important that I speak with them at the same time. Give them each a helmet. After I’m done speaking with them, I’ll need you to do the same for Otto.”
The sound of rustling fabric preceded the fear-strained voices of Logan and Addie as they confirmed they were both present.
“Logan, Addie, I’m patching you through to your brother. Hold tight.”
Counting the IV drips, I’d started dozing off when the red-eyed monster poked her head into the room.
“Hey, Otto, how ya feeling?”
“Well now, that depends. Are you going to take advantage of my weakened condition and slap me around? Or is this an actual wellbeing check?”
No bluster, no threats, and no name-calling; just red-rimmed, watery eyes staring at me.
“Sergeant Lucas, are you okay? You’re kinda freaking me out.”
“Otto, Willis wants to talk to you,” she said while holding her helmet out for me. The lack of an insult about my head being too fat to fit into her helmet raised my anxiety level.
With a hard slap on top of the helmet, I got it to cover my ears. “Sergeant Willis, make this quick; Lucas’ tiny helmet might squeeze my brain through my ears.”
A soft chuckle filtered through the speaker, followed by my friend’s voice. “Mister Otto, you just don’t know when to keep your pie-hole shut, do you? Don’t answer. I don’t have a lot of time. I have information the community needs to act on.”
I sat quietly while Willis shared the horrific news about the Blue Savages. My head went woozy when he told me about his team being stalked by a group of them. Then he leveled the worst of it. RAM had deployed an antidote, and it had failed in spectacular fashion.
“Willis, what are we talking about here? If these things go Twenty-eight Days Later on us, we’re screwed.”
“Otto, I have no idea what that means.”
“Damn, Willis, have you ever even been to a movie theater? It’s the movie where the zombies are super fast and aggressive. No shambling, mindless dolts; they’re hardcore killers. Scary as hell.”
Another soft laugh from Willis preceded his voice, one that sounded uncharacteristically subdued. “Nope, nothing like what you’re describing. But they organized into a fighting unit, and they displayed more agility than we’re used to.” Silence thick enough to dull a knife’s edge followed.
“Willis, what’s going on? Anyone could have delivered this information and delivered it to someone far more stable than me. Spit it out, man.”
I wished I had taken a deep breath when he spoke, but I hadn’t, and I struggled to get air into my lungs. My vision went hazy as tears stung my eyes. Allowing my head to drop to the pillow, I stuffed my ra
ge away to visit later.
“You’re not coming home?” I asked through gasping breaths. His silent confirmation nearly crushed me.
When he finally spoke, he asked one thing of me: “Otto, keep my family safe.”
“I will. I promise.”
Chapter 32 – Blood Type
After Otto handed the radio back to Lucas, Albright waited a heartbeat before speaking. “Lucas, what’s your twenty? Over.”
“The infirmary, over.”
“Perfect. You need to determine if someone named McCune is in that facility. He’s a doctor, and the President needs to talk to him ASAP.”
Lucas bolted from Otto’s room, making a beeline for the small waiting area turned triage. She knew who she needed to find as she searched the faces of the people tending to the wounded. Her eyes locked onto Pat, and after making her way through the crowded space, she found herself caught in the matriarch’s icy glare.
“Pat, I need to verify if a doctor named McCune is here.”
“Who’s asking?” Pat answered.
“Your answer tells me he’s here. Where?”
Pat stared defiantly at the sergeant. They needed him. She wasn’t about to turn him over to the same government that had tried to execute him.
Frustration bubbling over, Lucas barked, “Pat, the President wants to talk to him. I don’t know why, but my guess is that McCune has important information regarding the virus.”
Eyes still locked onto Lucas’, Pat finally answered. “McCune, huh, never heard of him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to helping my friends.”
Lucas took a menacing step in Pat’s direction.
Pat matched the move. “Take your best shot, Sergeant,” she growled.
As Lucas contemplated her next move, a voice broke the stalemate. “Ladies, please, we’ve seen enough bloodshed today.”
Lucas pivoted, preparing to belittle the intruder, but the man interrupted. “I’m Doctor McCune. If you’re here on behalf of Doctor Flocci, I assure you I will not accompany you to the CDC.”
Moments later, Doctor McCune sat with his face buried in his hands, struggling to control his anger. His stomach threatened to heave its meager contents to the floor. “The arrogant fool didn’t listen to me. I warned him not to move forward with the test. You must believe me, Mister President, I tried to stop him.”
“Doctor, we believe you. Plus, he confessed. Now tell us what we can expect from these monsters. How do we fight them? More importantly, how do we keep this variant from spreading?”
McCune pulled air deep into his lungs, trying to calm his quickly unraveling mind. After he felt he’d placed his nervous breakdown on hold, he addressed Train’s questions. He moved through the information as if he were reading directly from his notes.
“It’s all driven by blood type, sir. That’s the determining factor in how the body responds to the antidote. Several outcomes are plausible, some less desirable than others. Our human trials found that living subjects with AB negative blood developed high levels of aggression. They killed for the sake of killing.
“If a subject had already succumbed to the virus, the result was an exceedingly aggressive, more mobile UC with higher cognitive skills than its predecessors. A super UC, if you will. The unknown is super UC to human transfer; my fear is it creates a hybrid monster evolving beyond our capabilities to contain it. To date, we have been unable to duplicate the exact circumstances responsible for our blood donor’s success in fighting off the virus. The key lay in the entirety of his treatment after his exposure to the virus.”
Pat, listening from just outside the slightly opened door to the room McCune sat in, pulled a sharp breath. Super UCs; hybrids. Are you kidding me? The thought promised to steal her sanity. She removed her pen and notepad from the inside pocket of her jacket and scribbled a note. Waving the paper in the air to get Darline’s attention, she stuffed the note into her friend’s hand, then turned her attention back to the conversation.
Darline exploded through the hospital’s door at a full run, Pat’s note clutched in her hand. She took a confirming glance. She hadn’t misread it. “Hide Andy!” was written in her friend’s flawless penmanship.
Pat grew frustrated with only being able to hear McCune’s side of the conversation. She pushed the door open a smidge more, hoping to hear the full conversation. Lucas, sitting across from the doctor, noticed the movement and met Pat’s fearful stare, then nodded her approval just as McCune resumed speaking.
“Sir, I’m afraid it will take years, many years, to develop a successful antidote. A vaccine appears unlikely. The human trials did not produce antibodies or any positive results in our test subjects other than curing several previously incurable diseases, most notably, cancer. It had no effect on humans outside the aforementioned blood types.”
“Doctor, this is Chairman Mallet of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. How do we fight them? Do they have any exploitable weaknesses?”
McCune pondered the question before speaking. “Yes, they do. Time. As you’ve likely witnessed, their lifespan is quite limited. Once the antidote reaches maximum saturation, their death-clock begins ticking, and internal decay accelerates. Uninfected persons with AB negative blood burn out rather quickly; a matter of hours defines their post antidote lifespan. Infected subjects can wreak havoc for longer, possibly forty-eight hours. I haven’t performed an in-depth analysis of their life-cycle, but their slowed metabolic rate would dictate a longer, but not indefinite, life cycle. I’m basing that estimation on the early studies of the antidote on our infected subjects. Again, super UC to human transfer is unknown. I pray it’s abbreviated, but I have no data on which to wager a guess. If a hybrid monster is created from that type of transmittal, the human race has no chance. Think of all of the aforementioned traits minus the death-clock to end their reign of terror.”
“Doctor,” Mallet began, “we can confirm that your estimated lifespan for the UC, or super UC, is accurate. They’re dying off at roughly that threshold. We cannot confirm if any of them were super UC to human transfer. What else can you tell us about them?”
“Keep them on the other side of our border wall. If allowed to run rampant, they will eliminate all life they encounter. Do not, under any circumstances, allow the uninfected to handle the antidote unprotected. If a person so much as gets a drop on their skin, eliminate them. We possess no data on the antidote’s half-life, meaning, if the liquid comes in contact with inanimate objects, sterilize them with fire. It’s the single element effective in neutralizing the compound.”
Mallet fell silent. The answer was obvious, but its implementation could be devastating. Mallet asked McCune to hold and muted the line. “Mister President, I believe the good doctor has given us our path forward.”
Train nodded his understanding, then glanced at the speaker.
“Doctor, this is Mallet. Do you possess any data pertaining to the antidote’s implementation? Specifically, drift and coverage once it’s airborne.”
Panic overtook McCune. “Sir, please tell me you’re not planning to weaponize the antidote! The only thing we know for certain is that it was successful in creating monsters far more dangerous than the ones currently ravaging our country. We have no means to control it. Releasing it over populated areas will, I repeat, WILL end life on Earth.”
Mallet bristled at McCune’s sharp tone. “Doctor, does the requested information exist?”
“No sir, it does not. But please give me more time to work on a solution, I’m begging you.”
Mallet silently ticked off the tasks to complete prior to moving forward with his quickly developing strategy, the first of which was returning McCune to the lab at Saint Joe’s. “Doctor, we’ll dispatch an escort to take you back to your laboratory. No matter the outcome of our actions after today, discovering a cure for the virus remains paramount.”
“No, thank you, Chairman Mallet. I’m needed here and prefer to stay in this community. Nevertheless, so that I may continue my
work, I’m requesting two mobile labs be delivered to me. I’ll submit a list of supplies by tomorrow morning. Good day.”
The instant the line went quiet, Mallet barked a string of orders, causing the room to explode with activity.
President Train leaned close to Mallet and said, “Chairman, I’m still the Commander-in- Chief. How about you brief me on your strategy.”
Acknowledging his overstep, Mallet had Train join him in front of one of the room’s large monitors. He brought up a map of Blue States United’s West Coast and overlaid it with current wind patterns. “My plan, Mister President, is to disburse the antidote over cities with the largest populations of UC. This should help stop the spread while thinning the ranks of the dead. If we work with the wind patterns, we should be able to cover large swaths of land quickly. I see no value in dispersing the antidote over populated areas of Right America. You have my word; we will keep it as far away from RAM as possible.”
Train remained silent for a long moment, the war raging inside of him evident to Mallet. “There must be another way. You’re talking about the annihilation of millions… hundreds of millions of people. Can we buy time, focusing on clearing RAM of infected, then weigh our options?”
“Mister President, we’ve already ceased rescue operations in BSU to focus exclusively on RAM soil. The few remaining pockets of BSU survivors we were in contact with have gone dark.”
Mallet turned back to the screen and ordered the display of drone and satellite images of RAM Entry Points. Hundreds of thousands of UCs were assaulting each Entry Point with equal numbers en route to join them.
“Sir, these pictures were taken yesterday. The siege at our gates continues and grows larger by the hour. It is only a matter of time before they overrun our defenses. Our munitions resupply is strained beyond capacity. A Black Hawk crash-landed a mere seventy-five feet from Entry Point Four’s gate. We lost the crew, but if it had crashed into the gate, hundreds of thousands of monsters would have poured into RAM.”