“We don’t know, Madam Secretary. We have several hosts with us, but by the time we take blood samples and try and replicate the virus, it and the host die. We’re looking at an approximate twelve-hour cycle. It’s just not long enough.” The Colonel stared out of the video conference screen. His eyes were not focused on anyone in particular but had the vague look of someone staring awkwardly into a camera.
“So what you are telling me is you have no idea how to combat this or where it came from? You are head of USAMRIID. How is this possible?” The Secretary was seated at a plain metal desk in a private video conferencing room, strangely on her own. It was dark and only the light of the screen illuminated her face. She looked tired—worn out. It was two-thirty in the morning, and she had been up all night trying to engage in negotiations with the Chinese Government, who were refusing to respond to any communication. The seemingly unprovoked attack on Area 51 had washed its way through congress, resulting in furious arguments among its constituents as to whether waging war on the Chinese should be actioned immediately. She was frantically trying to reason for peaceful options, despite a strong opposing opinion from the Secretary of Defense. To make matters worse, the media was broadcasting twenty-four hours a day on some supposed secret government files on a life form that predated the human race. Files that suggested the U.S. Government not only knew about this species but were conducting active research. They had grown one in a lab at Paradise Ranch. Every conspiracy theory nut in the country had gone postal. Looting and violence was becoming more widespread. If that wasn’t enough, the Vatican was constantly requesting to speak with her as well. How all this was interconnected was still a mystery. All of her usual channels had shut down. Everyone had closed ranks and was saying nothing. It had not been a good start to the day.
“We don’t think it’s airborne, which is a positive thing,” continued the Colonel. “That means it requires fomites, touch points, to transfer it. As a result, it appears to have an R-nought of one to two. That means each person will only infect a maximum of two other people. But ...”
She sighed. “But?”
“But,” interrupted the doctor. “If this is the case, then we have a bigger problem. This thing has a cycle of twelve hours in the body or on a surface. This, combined with our initial analysis of its structure, makes us think it was engineered. What’s more, the only reason to engineer a virus that can only be transmitted via fomites with that short of a lifespan is to ensure two things: one, it kills quickly. And two, it stays within the populace in which it’s released. In our case, it is unlikely to leave U.S. soil. It was designed to decimate a large portion of U.S. citizens.”
The Colonel grunted. “Thank you for joining us, Dr. Cooper. Returning to your original question, we do think we know where it came from.”
“We do?” The doctor seemed surprised.
“Yes. We think it may be linked to the current issue with the Chinese.” The Colonel looked uncomfortable. He shifted his eyes to the doctor as if to ask permission to speak freely in front of the civilian.
“Get on with it, Colonel. How is this connected with my current situation? I already have a house full of officials wanting Chinese blood. If we have evidence of unprovoked biological warfare as well, I will have no choice but to recommend immediate and full retaliation.” Her stern face showed she meant what she said, but her voice carried a little hope that the Colonel was wrong, that there was a way to avoid this.
“General Benjamin Lloyd headed up a facility within Paradise Ranch. This facility was conducting top secret research. It was an extremely black-boxed operation. Very few knew about it. But Benjamin and I had worked closely together for years.”
“And?” She was growing impatient.
“The abridged version is this: Benjamin Lloyd, Professor John Alexander, and a small team at Paradise Ranch were conducting research on an intelligent, non-human life form. This life form was a clone of an original found frozen in Siberia by the Chinese in the 1940s. The incumbent U.S. Government at that time covertly extracted the corpse for our own research. A few months ago, General Lloyd’s team learned that, back then, they had not extracted everything of importance from China.”
The Secretary’s face reddened, her lips puckered in anger. She exhaled slowly before speaking. “How is this connected to the current situation?”
“My information is limited, Madam Secretary. After I took on a new assignment, my connection with Benjamin and his program was weaker. What I do know is Benjamin and his team believed what the Chinese were in possession of was worth risking all-out war for. So they went into Chinese territory and retrieved it.”
“What did they have?” The doctor’s question popped out of his mouth. Scientific curiosity had taken over, and he had forgotten his place.
“We do not know, Doctor. We only know two things: first, they had only a short time in which to analyze it. The Chinese responded quickly and attacked Paradise Ranch. Everything was destroyed, and there was no mainframe to store the data. It was too covert to allow that.”
“And the second?” the doctor asked.
“Second, General Lloyd, following his team’s return to Paradise Ranch, leaked everything we know on the life form onto the Internet.”
“General Lloyd leaked it?” The Secretary was confused.
“Doctor, the corpse in your morgue, patient zero, is a man named Jerry Caulfield, correct?”
“Yes.”
“We have managed to trace several calls to patient zero. The trail was masked, but it used encryption codes that were assigned to General Lloyd. The source of the secret file leak came from the Internet café in which patient zero was found. It is more than reasonable to assume General Lloyd provided him with the information.”
“Why would he do that? Not only is he committing treason, he’s openly inviting chaos. And why would the Chinese expose him to a deadly virus?” The doctor waved his arms in distress.
“We don’t know why Benjamin did what he did. It must have been related to what he found. As for the Chinese, if what was stolen was that important, then it seems they were willing to wipe out the U.S. to prevent us using it,” the Colonel replied. “Besides, I assume they took our incursion in their territory as an act of war and decided to hit us fast and hard.”
The Secretary slumped back into her chair and rubbed her forehead in a circular motion. A covert U.S. military strike had gone wrong, and now the Chinese wanted war. Who could blame them? Regardless of what the Chinese were doing undercover with this non-human life form, they had not attacked first. She leaned forward and peered into the camera. “Where is General Lloyd now?”
“He was originally flown to a hospital in Las Vegas, but my most recent report confirms he left the facility and is AWOL. All attempts to communicate with him have failed.” The Colonel wiped the sweat from his broad, bald head. He had served in every major war in the last twenty years, but this situation bothered him more than any other.
“We need to find him. If the General and his team were that black-boxed and the President had no knowledge, then the U.S. Government cannot be held responsible. We find the General and turn him over to the Chinese in exchange for an antivirus and truce.” Her eyes were wild. She was thinking on her feet, verbalizing her inner thoughts.
“What we need to do is strike back quickly, and with everything we have. We cannot accept an attack on our own soil. It would look unbelievably weak.” The Colonel spoke with the resolve of a seasoned warrior.
The doctor interrupted again. “I know I’m not a military person, but it seems reasonable to me that if we had black-boxed this operation, then the Chinese may have, too. It’s plausible their government knew nothing of this either. Do we really think an attack on U.S. soil was sanctioned by the Chinese Prime Minister?” It wasn’t logical—at least not to him.
“The doctor may have a point.” The Secretary’s face seemed to brighten.
“They haven’t responded to any communication. But neither
have they claimed responsibility for the attacks. If they are in the same situation as us, then they are probably trying to figure out how to avoid war, too!” She sounded almost positive now.
“And you think handing over Benjamin will be enough?” The doctor stood there bemused as the fate of a man was discussed as if he were a used piece of furniture to be given away and chopped up for firewood if necessary. What was more, no one seemed focused on the fact there appeared to be a newly discovered, intelligent life form on Earth. He wanted to ask more questions but thought better of it.
“So, what is the plan of action?” the Colonel asked.
“Colonel, you will liaise with whomever you need to find General Lloyd and bring him in immediately. In the meantime, Dr. Cooper, you will continue your research. I want you on the next available transport to USAMRIID in Maryland. You have the greatest experience with the virus so far, but you do not have the facilities. USAMRIID has state-of-the-art biocontainment facilities. Even if the Chinese are open to negotiation, we do not know if they have an antidote.”
“I think I would be better placed to find Benjamin,” the Colonel said. “I know him the best. And there is no need to bother the Secretary of Defense with this. I’m sure you and he are focused on preventing war with the Chinese right now.”
The Secretary, already anxious about her next step, simply nodded. “Sure, okay, Colonel.”
“And you, Madam Secretary?” the Colonel asked.
“I will arrange a conference with the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs. I will try to stall the Chinese, keep them talking until we can find the General and find out just what the hell is going on. See why he needed to steal whatever it was from the Chinese and then release sixty years’ worth of covert data into the public domain. We are not holding all the cards. You have your duties, gentlemen.”
With a flick of a switch, she cut off the video conference. The faint crackle of static filled the silence in the room. But she didn’t notice it. Her mind was racing and full of fragments of information that made little sense. There had to be a way of out of this. There just had to be.
Location: Peru, South America
The red Toyota Hilux hurtled along the dirt track. Large leaves slapped the windshield as if the forest were high- fiving the vehicle, congratulating it on not falling to pieces as its suspension was tortured by the rough terrain. Their driver had said this was the easy bit. The difficult part would be out on the highway. The mountainous landscape and poor road system meant the highway was forced to wind around a thousand miles to get to Callao, Peru’s largest port. A huge swath of concrete snaked from the city of Macusani, not far from where they were, round Cuzco, and then to the coast and up past Lima. With no stops, it was about twenty-four hour’s drive. Although they had agreed it would not be clever to try and make it in one trip, really, they had no choice.
Freya had one arm jammed against the ceiling of the truck, the other hanging onto the thin lip of the window sill. Her feet were forced under the seat in front of her. In this position, she had formed a splayed tripod of support, preventing her skull from being smashed against the chassis. Kelly, on the other hand, bounced around the inside of the cabin. But, his relaxed manner seemed to endow him with the ability to become one with the interior, flowing with each and every bump.
“How the hell are you doing that?” Freya said, her frustration evident.
“Hmm?” Kelly absentmindedly replied.
“That. How do you not have to wedge yourself into your seat to avoid whiplash?”
“You spend enough time in these things, you get used to it. I usually go to sleep on these trips, especially if it’s a long way.” He shrugged and went back to his thoughts.
“You okay?”
Kelly looked up, his brow furrowed. He appeared to be irritated at being disturbed again. “What? Oh, yeah, sure. I’m just tired, I guess. A lot on my mind.” He paused. “Egypt. I’ve not been back in a long time.” He forced a weak smile.
“I’ve never been. Did you like it?” Small talk. She wasn’t good at it, but they were going to be in this truck for a long time.
“Yeah, I was always fascinated with it as a kid. Always wanted to photograph the pyramids, and inside the tombs at the Valley of the Kings.” He chuckled quietly. “Actually, when I first went, I tried and got kicked out of a tomb for taking snaps. I refused to pay baksheesh to the guard who caught me. Never made that mistake again.”
“You went there a lot?”
“Yeah. Usually as a stopover to somewhere else I was going for work. But I had my ... contact there, so it was a good place to make a layover—learned a lot. Izel had taught kids out there for a while, too. She loved all the ancient history stuff. She used to talk at me incessantly about it all. She was obsessed with the pyramids, where they came from, where we, humans, came from. She would’ve loved all this crap.”
The sudden change from rough terrain to the much smoother tarmac cut Kelly short. The truck swerved to the left as the driver struggled to maintain control. Two or three sharp maneuvers and the Toyota was once again speeding along in a straight line. “Steady there, esé.”
“Sorry, Señor!” The little Hispanic man bowed his head and grimaced, thankful he hadn’t killed his passengers.
“Where did you find this guy?” Freya asked.
“In Macusani. He apparently came down to trade a few bits and pieces with the villagers after driving for hours to get to them. The old man described him as crazy. Said if we needed a truck, he was our man.”
“Does he know what we are carrying in the back?”
“Nope. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Kinda how things work down here. We’re paying him enough not to ask questions.”
“You do know some interesting people, Kelly Graham.” Freya had one eyebrow raised and a smirk on her face.
Kelly furrowed his brow and gave her a quizzical look. Was she making fun of him, or did she think he was an asshole? He shook the thought out of his head and changed the subject. “Do you think Moby’s all right back there?” Twisting his body, he peered out of the narrow rear window at the long flatbed. A heavy, green tarp was stretched across a makeshift frame, forming a tent-like structure. Underneath was a large bath tub that had been bolted to the metalwork of the Toyota. Inside was K’in. The few inches of water left from the constant bouncing of the truck were sloshing about his limbs. He cocked his head to one side, staring back at Kelly through the glass.
“Can’t you feel him?”
After a moment, Kelly turned to Freya. “Yeah. Sometimes, I just tune out, though. Kinda hard to explain, but when I let myself feel him, he makes me calm, and there’s no pain. It’s like I’m losing them.”
“Who?”
“My family. I feel guilty for feeling happy.”
Freya stared deep into him. He looked in pain. “You know, K’in’s influence may be a good thing for you. You have to let them go sometime.” Again, she thought about reaching out a hand of comfort but couldn’t make her arm muscles move.
“No, I don’t.” He spun back around in his seat and stared directly in front at the passenger headrest. Their conversation was over.
* * *
The beat-up Toyota grunted along the highway. It was dark now, and both Kelly and Freya had fallen asleep in the back. There were almost no lights along the road. Only the occasional passing car lit up the concrete, blinding their driver each time.
Kelly squirmed in the back but not so much as to disturb the sleeping Freya who had huddled up next to him. Even a few years as a married man had taught him how to ensure you didn’t wake the woman next to you. But his efforts were in vain. The truck skidded to a hard stop, propelling them into the front seats. Instantly, both were wide awake. Freya had the Beretta in hand. Kelly cussed under his breath.
“What the fuck, esé.”
“Sorry, Señor. But we have little problem.” The driver nodded toward the flashing blue light in the distance. “Policía.”
“Shit.
We don’t need this.”
“What do you think?” Freya was already wielding her weapon in one hand, the other hand on the door handle. “Do we take them out?”
“Jesus, Freya. Take them out? We can’t afford to have the Peruvian cops on our ass as well. We gotta lay low. This is South America. The cops here are a little more, shall we say, flexible. Watch and learn.” Kelly straightened his t-shirt and stepped out into the cold night air.
Two police officers in moss-green uniforms and military style hats marched towards the Toyota, brandishing hand-held flashlights that cut through the starless night. One man was fairly thin with a large moustache. The other was rotund and clean shaven, though both looked sweaty and altogether unhealthy. Kelly strutted equally confident toward the men. Freya watched nervously from inside the truck.
“Buenas tardes. ¿Donde estás viajando?”
“Buenas tardes. Estamos viajando a Callao. ¿Es algo incorrecto?” Kelly replied.
The conversation carried on outside the vehicle, but Freya could not hear what was being said. Kelly had reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of crumpled bills. One of the officers smiled and eyed the fistful of dollars. The other, however, peered over Kelly’s shoulder at the pickup, examining the tarp. Clearly, the man figured there was something worth more than the handful of notes Kelly had offered. Had K’in moved? Could the man see? It made Freya uneasy. She could feel this wasn’t going to go well. C’mon, Kelly. Tell me that charm doesn’t just work on women.
The curious officer sidestepped Kelly and strode toward the truck, holding the flashlight at head height, directing its dazzling beam through the windows. Freya reacted instantly, exited the truck and blocked the officer’s path. She pulled one of the Berettas strapped to her waist from its holster and concealed it behind her back. She tried a sweet smile but knew her current state, smeared makeup and greasy hair, was not going to win this man over.
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