by Justin Bell
Slowly, the Blackhawk began its descent, gliding out of the sky, tail lifted, nose angled down, propellers thumping their hypnotic, recycling thump.
“They didn’t deserve that,” a voice barked from the cargo area. Santamaria pulled away and turned back toward Roman, who was seated in one of the seats back there, his arm tightly wrapped in layers of white gauze. “We shouldn’t have left them.”
“Had no choice,” Santamaria replied. “We were outnumbered and way outgunned, especially once our fifty cal went dry.”
Roman lowered his head and glared at his hands, his fingers flexing opened and closed in rhythm with his breathing.
“We’re coming in; get strapped in back there, make sure those cases are secure. We lose those, and this whole thing was for nothing.”
“They’re secure,” replied Santamaria, his eyes fixated on the layered metal briefcases stacked near the rear of the cargo area. “I’m not letting those things out of my sight.”
Technically known as Westover Air Reserve, the base in Chicopee stretched out underneath them as they approached from the northeast, flying low over the trees of rural central Massachusetts. An intersection of paved runways emerged above, crossing the flat plains of grass and the Blackhawk dropped low, angling toward the runways, getting into position to make a graceful landing.
As Wexall looked through the window, she saw a pair of dark-colored sedans moving soundlessly over the surface of the landing strips, driving in a straight line directly toward where the Blackhawk was landing. The dull roar of the engines and propellers completely muted the whine of the cars below, the two narrow vehicles streaking as if riding on invisible rails.
“Who do you suppose they are?” Wexall asked as they approached.
Greenway followed her gaze as he brought the vehicle down toward the pavement. “They don’t appear to be military,” he replied.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
Nose down, the large transport copter drifted toward the ground, beating at the pavement, kicking up dust and debris in the downdraft of rotors. The next few moments passed in relative silence, with no one inside the helicopter speaking as it eased its way toward the tarmac, its wheels buckling slightly as it settled its hefty bulk into a landing position. The propellers slowed, then stopped, men already emerging from the black vehicles and approaching, hands pressed over their heads as the tails of their jackets snapped and whipped around them.
Wexall fixed the first man with a narrow glare as she stepped down from the cockpit, working her way toward the open side of the black helicopter to assist Santamaria in getting Roman out of the aircraft with his injury.
“Where’s the other helicopter?” the man in the suit asked, his voice raising to a shout to be heard above the blades as they continued winding down toward silence.
“We radioed in, you didn’t get the message?” Greenway shouted, powering down the console with a flip of his wrist.
“What’s your name?” the guy asked Greenway, leaning in the passenger side.
“Name’s Greenway. Can you get out of my helicopter please?”
“Pilot of this bird is Veraggio,” the man replied without moving. “You don’t look like her.”
“Because she’s dead. Please back away.”
The man’s face twisted into a strange grimace as he pulled himself upright. Greenway finished securing the copter, then stepped out of his own door, coming around to where Roman was being gingerly assisted down to the tarmac.
All three men in suits and ties converged on them. The lead man had black hair, a high and tight haircut and wore thin, circular glasses over his broad face. He was definitely the man in charge, Wexall could tell that already.
“Did you get any intel?” he asked. “Retrieve anything from the scene?”
“In case you didn’t notice,” Greenway barked as he moved toward Roman. “We have a man with a gunshot wound here and we came back with two less people than we left with. Can you give us a moment please?” He shot a look at the three men, and the man with the glasses and high and tight haircut nodded curtly and stepped back as they helped the gunner down from the Blackhawk and began moving toward the nearest building. Greenway hung back as Wexall and Santamaria went with Roman, walking him to the structure and—hopefully—appropriate medical care.
“There are briefcases in the transport,” Greenway said, without even turning toward the men.
He heard the scattering of footsteps and the grate of shoe on metal as someone climbed up into the helicopter.
“Three of them in here, Agent Graff,” a voice said.
“Excellent,” came the response. “Get them unloaded and bring them to the hangar over there. We need to get them prepped for transport to Baystate Genetics. We’ve appropriated a segment of the local hospital for government R & D.”
Greenway turned and saw the men disperse, two of them lugging heavy cases toward one of the hangars while the man with the glasses, Agent Graff, Greenway figured, lagged behind.
“So, you’re in charge of this little group of well-dressed sycophants?” Greenway asked.
Graff glared at him. “We all want the same thing,” he replied. “To stop whatever this is.”
“Yeah, except when spooks start running around grabbing briefcases out of helicopters, I hope you can appreciate the fact that it puts some of us ill at ease.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re having some issues with resources at the moment. It’s all hands on deck. Nothing nefarious, we just want to get this figured out.” Graff turned and started following his fellow suit-wearing spooks toward the hangar. Greenway fell in beside him.
“Look,” Greenway said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be jumping down your throat. I know we’re all in the same spot. We just… it was nasty. In Boston. In every possible way. I wasn’t expecting that.”
Graff stopped. “Talk to me about it.”
“It’s a disaster,” Greenway replied. “The entire city is smoldering or actively burning. Cars littering the city streets. No foot traffic at all, or very little. I think we saw more corpses than anything.”
“And your team?”
Greenway drew in a deep breath. “Whoever it was, they were waiting for us. Captured one of our Humvees. Opened up with the fifty cal as soon as we landed, Veraggio had no chance. Fernando barely got the cases out before he got taken down. Five seconds slower and Roman would have been a third corpse. It was a bad scene.”
“Did you identify the hostiles?”
“That’s the worst thing about it,” Greenway replied. “Between the guy in the Humvee and the motorcycles afterwards… I think they were civilians. At least it looked that way. Just normal people taking advantage of a crappy situation.”
Graff just stood there, unsure of what to say or how to respond. All of Team Ten dead. Two members of the recovery team dead. All because normal people responded poorly to a crappy situation? What did that mean for the future of humanity?
“So, what’s the plan with the cases?” Greenway asked as the two of them resumed walking toward the hangars.
“We get them to Baystate in Springfield. See what we can do on site. I’m hearing through the pipeline that the Team Ten headquarters down in Fort Detrick has become more or less the command center for battling this thing. We need to see if we can open some lines of communication there, or if worse comes to worst, spin up another bird and carry the cases to their front door.”
They took a few more steps, then Greenway put a hand on his arm.
“Can I ask you a potentially sensitive question, Agent Graff?”
“Shoot.”
“Is this our fault?”
Graff’s eyes darted back and forth for a moment before landing back on him.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“This stuff that hit Boston. Seems pretty next generation, right? Who else could do something like that besides us? And when, no offense, intel spooks are crawling all over everything, it doesn’t
exactly lend us a whole lot of confidence.”
Graff nodded. “I get it. Truth is, I don’t have enough information right now. Anything I get is being filtered through other parties. All I can say is I hope not. But at this point, nothing would surprise me.”
He resumed his walk again, Greenway falling in close behind, both men considering a horrible truth, both men trying to convince themselves it couldn’t be. The hangars loomed tall and round ahead of them and Greenway couldn’t shake the feeling that this place would be his home for the foreseeable future. The word home twisted in his throat, closing his airway for a brief, heart stopping second. He hadn’t been home since this all started, hadn’t seen or talked to his family in nearly forty-eight hours, and he couldn’t bring himself to think about what might be waiting for him there. Cell service had been down, he hadn’t gotten to a landline, and if he was honest with himself, he’d been focusing purely on work just so he didn’t have to think about what might be going on at home.
Boston was ravaged, this he knew, but his family lived in Northampton, a whole state away. Things had spread, and things were spreading, but certainly it wasn’t as bad as they were saying.
It couldn’t be, could it? If it was, that would mean the end of the world.
Up ahead the hangar door eased open, revealing the shadowed figures of the men and women inside. Greenway drew a breath and stepped forward into the hangar, once again pushing thoughts of his family in the dark recesses of his already busy mind.
***
Above them, the sky was darkening, the trees and forest around them shifting to obscure shadowed skeletons, but they didn’t slow, they continued moving, pressing forward quickly, not slowing down, wanting to put as much distance as possible between them and the group of men from town. As they drew deeper into the trees, ground gave way to snow, the interlocking branches above shielding the trails from the sun’s heat. After a few moments, the snow grew more widespread and deeper, and as they trudged up the incline, winding between encroaching trees, Broderick found himself almost calf deep in some places.
Behind him, Javier lifted Mel and had to carry her a few paces to get over a particularly deep stretch of white powder, moved up several paces until things cleared, then set her down again, pausing for a moment to catch his breath. Melinda wasn’t small, she wasn’t light and carrying her up the incline was not realistic.
“It’s getting dark and cold,” Mel whispered, tightening her grip around Javier’s hand. “We’re not going to spend the night in the woods are we?”
“Hopefully not,” Javier replied. “We’re trying, kiddo, okay? We’re trying.”
They’d charged into the trees opposite of where they’d exited, far away from the trail where they’d originally stumbled upon those eight men, following no clear path, electing instead to simply press forward, heading vaguely south by the way Broderick was calculating it. They’d been in the trees for a while and had seen no sign of civilization, no access roads, no peaks of roofs, no indication at all that they were anywhere near anything other than more forest, but that was more or less how they wanted it. Clark and Broderick especially had been insistent on putting as much distance as possible between them and those men. They’d dodged two bullets going up against that crew, and didn’t feel like they could dodge a third.
Mixed along with them, the young woman from town moved swiftly and gracefully, weaving between trees, stepping over stumps and keeping pace with everyone else.
“So… you’re a doctor, you said?” Clark asked as they walked, making an effort to break the silence.
“Yes,” she replied. “Sorry. My name is Priscilla Conrad. You can call me Pris if you want.”
“Can I call you Doctor Conrad?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Please don’t,” she replied, rolling her eyes.
“Were you the only doc in town?”
“More or less,” she said. “There’s a small hospital about fifteen miles north of town, the closest critical access place. But the office I shared with the other two family docs is where everyone in town went, for the most part.”
“You look a little young to be a doctor,” Broderick said, curiously.
Priscilla shrugged. “I’m old enough. Old enough to…” she quieted for a moment. “…to be married for twelve years.”
“I take it your husband… didn’t make it?” Clark asked.
Priscilla shook her head.
“Any kids?”
She shook her head again. “We tried everything, but no, I never did have any children. For a long time it was a tough adjustment for me, but now? Considering what’s going on? Maybe it was a blessing.”
“Happily childless myself,” Clark replied. “Anyone else in your life?”
“My mom and dad live in Phoenix. I’ve got a brother in Kansas. Haven’t heard from any of them, but you know, I’m hoping for the best.”
“Yeah, we all are,” Jackson replied.
“You’ve got family in Connecticut?” she asked, looking at him.
“Fiancée. She was okay last time I talked to her, but… well… that was a while ago.”
“After everything went crazy?”
“After everything went crazy, yeah.”
She ducked under a branch which reached out to grab at her long, brown hair, then moved right, stepping around another thrust of trees, her squat boots crunching in the packed snow.
“You know your way through the woods,” Clark remarked.
“Hank and I did a lot of hiking back in the day,” she replied.
“Well, you’ll get sick of that real quick,” Clark said. “All we’ve been doing for two days is freaking hiking.”
“Hopefully not much longer,” Jackson said. “We need to get a car. We can’t walk all the way to Aldrich.”
Priscilla looked at him again. “That’s where you’re headed? Aldrich, Connecticut?”
Jackson nodded. “Ever hear of it?”
She shook her head.
“Yeah it’s a small town. Like, super small. Everyone knows everyone.”
“And you’re sure it’s safe?” she asked.
“Who can be sure? It was okay two days ago, but a lot can happen in two days.”
“You don’t say,” Clark said.
“So what about you guys?” Priscilla asked. “Married? Kids?”
“Nope to both,” replied Clark. “You think I’d be hanging out with Crossfit over here if I had better people to be with?”
“I’m married,” said Broderick. “A son.”
“Are they—?”
“I don’t know,” he replied flatly. His voice was low and even, devoid of emotion, though there was a slight tremor at the end of the sentence.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Can you get word to them? Find anything out?”
“We’ve been out of touch,” Broderick replied. “No communications, no radio, no working phones. I’m just hoping they’re okay and hoping they know I’m okay.”
They continued on peacefully for a few moments, weaving between trees, ducking branches, stepping over roots large enough to emerge from the white ground, not to mention fallen trunks.
“How are you doing back there, kiddo?” Priscilla asked, turning toward Melinda. “Those legs holding up all right?”
“Fine,” Mel replied quietly. “Little tired.”
“We’ll find a place to take some weight off. How does that sound?”
“Good.”
“I like your hippo,” she continued, looking at the small stuffed hippo whose head was sticking out of her pink backpack.
“Thanks,” she replied, grinning slightly.
“You must have been a kid doctor, too, huh?” asked Clark.
“I saw a little bit of everything.”
She drifted slightly ahead as they walked, moving under a low hanging branch. As she ducked low, stepping around a root, she halted and lifted a hand back toward them.
“Hold on a minute,” she whispered.
; The group halted, and Melinda glanced up toward the sky, peering at the shadows beyond the trees.
“The ground is knocked down here. I see some footsteps. And… something else over there.” She took a few steps through the trees, looking toward the snow. “Snowmobile tracks,” she called back. “We should be getting near… somewhere. No idea where, but somewhere.”
“How many snowmobile tracks?” Broderick asked. He adjusted his shoulder with the canvas bag tugged over it. “Last thing we want is to run into a bunch of angry guys with guns riding snowmobiles out here.”
“Can’t tell,” Priscilla replied. “I see them going in a few different directions.”
“Which way should we go?” asked Clark as Broderick moved up closer to her to take his own look.
“The prints are coming from the northwest,” he replied, pointing in a diagonal direction. “We should follow along the path, just to see what we can see.”
“The snowmobiles have wrecked most of the footprints over here,” Priscilla said, “but I see some tracks definitely coming from that same direction.”
“Soon it’s going to be too dark to see anything,” said Jackson.
“Well, we better move quick, then.”
They did move quick, the group following the faint trail of footfalls as it wound around tree trunks and moved through clutches of sparse grass, stepping over rocks.
“We’ve got a road up here,” Priscilla said, moving toward a separation in the trees. Just beyond where she stood there was a flattened swath of snow, dirt and grass, a path wide enough for a car leading parallel to the foot path they’d been following. Twin ditches ran up the length of it, tire tracks making a lazy progression into the deeper, thicker trees. Mixed within the twin deeper tire tracks were flattened, patterned tread marks in the snow, crushing white powder to an almost shimmering path of ice.
“Almost looks too small to be a road,” Broderick said.
“Kind of looks like a driveway or a private access road,” Priscilla said.
“Let’s see where it heads,” Clark said and the group moved to the right-hand side of the path and began walking up the gradual slope, following the trail of tire and tread marks through drying mud and flat snow.