Mac’s voice had turned hard at the end, as if knowing that Jon had objections. Whatever objections he might have, they were overruled. Jon stiffened. “Yes, sir,” he replied.
“The group also has some useful skills. Military-trained men and women for defense. Four armorers. Eight nurses, two with emergency training, two medics, eight cooks. We’re in touch with other groups who’ve barricaded themselves against the infection. We’re estimating at least three thousand people within an hour’s radius. Get that vaccine to us fast, Jon, and we’re going to save some lives. Maybe even civilization while we’re at it.”
“Yeah, there’s something else, too,” Nick said.
Sophie was interested in what he had to say, but she was also interested because of Elle. Though she and Elle were very good friends, Elle had spoken very little of her love life, maybe because she had even less of one than Sophie did. But Sophie had had the impression that Elle had loved someone very much in the past and that the memory was painful. There was a feeling that Elle had been brutally abandoned.
Could this possibly be that guy? Though . . . Elle’s body language wasn’t one of anger or resentment. She loved this guy, and Elle wasn’t the type to fall in love overnight. So maybe this was the guy she’d been secretly in love with all this time?
Sophie tried to focus on what the guy was saying.
“Jon, we’ve analyzed the situation and we think you shouldn’t move until tomorrow. Here.” Nick made a movement off screen and suddenly Sophie was looking at . . . she had no idea what she was looking at. She tilted her head. Masses of fiery red blobs moving in a sort of Brownian motion. Nick made another movement and a map was superimposed and suddenly it made sense. A terrible kind of sense.
Sophie gasped, heartsick.
What she was seeing was a thermal image of an area a couple of miles from her home, in the Western Addition. It was teeming—teeming—with infected. “Fuck,” Jon said quietly.
“Wait,” Nick said and manipulated the image. “It’s not all bad. What you’re seeing is—I don’t know what else to call it but a swarm. Like of insects. We checked our drone tapes and went back about ten hours and it looks like there was a locus of infection in Richmond during a big street fair and a whole nest of the things spent a lot of time killing everything in sight, then they started moving. They seem to be moving counterclockwise. Here, let me show you.”
The hologram switched to daytime, on fast forward. It was an area she was familiar with, made up of funky wooden houses, most at least sixty years old, and tiny little shops. She’d been to that street fair many times. At first, the streets were full of happy tourists and locals, going from stall to stall. In fast-forward, the infection looked weird, like an old-time movie. Somehow, it was less horrible on fast-forward. A few blood-stained infected erupted into the crowd, which ran away. But not fast enough. From a few infected, within the space of three hours, according to the timeline at the bottom of the hologram, it looked like tens of thousands of infected crowded the streets.
At first, they moved completely separately, but as soon as a critical mass was achieved, which Sophie judged to be about four hundred infected, they started swarming behavior. It took hours and hours for the swarm to form, and the outlying edges of it showed anomalous behavior, but the center held. And a few hours after that, they started the trek east, then as they hit the water, doubling back northwest. It was a swarm about two miles across and it was terrifying. It moved slowly, but it left utter devastation in its wake. The images had quickly followed the day into night. Judging from the footage she’d seen, they’d come to her part of town some time tomorrow.
“Swarming behavior,” Sophie murmured.
Elle and Catherine nodded.
“So.” Mac’s eyes narrowed. “They’ve become insects?”
“Sort of.” Sophie looked up at Jon. He tipped his head in a go ahead gesture.
Jon turned to the hologram. “Sophie’s been observing the—the infected. They’re right outside her window. She has some interesting theories.”
“Please, Sophie,” Nick said. “Any information you have is useful. Could save lives.”
“Okay. This is anecdotal, you understand.” She tried to gather her thoughts, resisting the urge to stay quiet until she had further data. Science moved slowly, but thoroughly. Each hypothesis tested and retested to make sure it could bear the weight of other facts being loaded onto it. A little like walking across a frozen pond, testing each step before putting your full weight on it.
It was what she loved about science. It was not random. Her parents’ deaths had been random, completely unexpected and it had cracked her faith in the world as a knowable entity. Science had saved her from plunging into despair. Most things were knowable, if you approached everything using the scientific method.
This was the opposite. Random observations over a couple of hours were nothing. But they had nothing else to go on. And perhaps science had fled the world, anyway.
The holograms were positioned in such a way that the two images were on a parallel axis. It felt like she was looking straight into Elle and Catherine’s eyes. “Go ahead, Soph,” Elle said softly.
Sophie drew in a deep breath. “Okay. I think we can safely say that the virus knocks out the neocortex.” Both women nodded. “Catherine, I’m going to make some assumptions about neurological damage, but of course, you’re the expert—”
Catherine waved her hand. “Not about this, my dear. I think we’re all in the dark. This is something entirely new.”
Sophie nodded. Yes, it was.
Okay. She was going to lay out her observations. “I suspect the virus knocks out the neocortex and also the cerebrum. Essentially what is left is the limbic brain. It’s reverse ontogeny. Basically they are almost insects, hence the swarming behavior. Their behavior, no longer human, is essentially stigmergy.”
Catherine and Elle were nodding thoughtfully.
Mac, Nick, and Jon all said, “What?”
“Stigmergy. It’s a sort of indirect coordination. An action in a crowd stimulates emulation and reinforces crowd behavior. Some headed instinctively north and others followed suit, though they are unaware of following any of the other infected consciously, because they no longer have a consciousness. They only have primitive instincts. But if there are enough of them—and I postulate about four hundred in one place at one time—they will unconsciously coordinate their actions.
Jon was looking at the scanner, basically a field of red, the number of infected with raised temperatures almost beyond the scope of the drone. He tapped the scanner, the field widened further, without reaching the edges of the field of red. “I’d say we’re looking here at about ten thousand people. Ten thousand . . . things,” he corrected. He nudged her with his shoulder. “Tell them about the other things you’ve observed.”
Sophie nodded. “I suspect they have lost some of their vision, particularly in the dark. Conversely, I think their olfactory sense has increased exponentially. I think they smell the uninfected. Therefore, any masking odors could be protective. Perfumes or anything that covers our natural body odor might help.”
“That’s really useful,” Nick noted. “Thanks.”
Jon nudged her lightly again. “Tell them what you think about their life expectancy.”
Sophie nodded. “I think there’s a definite limit to how long they can live. Their metabolism is out of control. Median body temperature is 101 degrees—a high fever—and median heart rate is 180. There are very few elderly infected left on the streets. At least, I haven’t seen any elderly in a full day of observation. Their bodies couldn’t sustain the high fever and the increased heart rates. They are also starving. They are unable to feed themselves, except”—she swallowed and waited a minute for her voice to even out—“except for the bits of humans they are biting off, which seem to me more acts of uncontrollable aggression than hunger. Actually, I haven’t seen any feeding behavior at all. I don’t even know if they are smart enoug
h to drink water.”
“They have no instincts for self-preservation?” Mac asked.
“None, from what I have been able to ascertain. They’re walking time bombs. Walking dead, actually.”
“Zombies,” Jon muttered.
She shook her head. “No, they are not zombies. They are very much alive—but they are dying, all of them. Quickly. We just need to save as many people as possible from the infection and hope that when the last one is gone . . .” Her throat hurt. Her voice wobbled. She cleared her throat. “When the last one is dead, let’s hope there’s still something there for us to rebuild.”
“Well,” Mac said briskly, “we’re working really hard on that. Jon”—he switched his gaze to the man standing beside her—“we’re monitoring all radio bands. The civilian Internet is down. Ours is still working of course but that doesn’t help people outside our network. But we’re finding pockets of uninfected almost hourly and some of them have radios. Lucius has been advising them on how to make their homes as secure as possible. We’ve got a map of everyone and we’re scheduling pickups. The more people arriving here, the more people can go out in secure vehicles to rescue them.”
“You have enough food for everyone?”
“Yeah. And Snyder and his men are going to go back down to their gated community and make it impregnable, so that can be a staging area for the refugees. They have stocks.” Mac’s eyes went back to hers. “So, Dr. Daniels—”
“Sophie, please,” she murmured.
He dipped his head. “So, Sophie. You bring us that case so we can start manufacturing the vaccine and we’ll start a mass-immunization campaign. Let’s see if we can save the world.”
Save the world. Sounded good. “Yes, sir.”
“We have projections that the swarm should hit your area around fifteen hundred hours tomorrow. There are still lots of infected in your area and we think they will join the swarm. Once it’s past, you should have a clean shot at getting to the helo. Everything will be waiting for you when you arrive.”
“Boss—is the infection spreading to other states?” Jon asked.
All of a sudden, Sophie realized that she had no idea whatsoever what was happening outside California.
“Unclear. Marines are stationed all along the border. Our drones show us they’re stringing barbed wire along the border too. They’re going to contain the disease at the cost of writing California off.”
“What’s the rest of the country saying about that?”
Mac gave a huge sigh. “Not much. There’s been a massive news blackout. No reporters are allowed near the borders, and the governors of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona have instituted a curfew. Also, residents within a fifty-mile radius of the border are being evacuated.”
“What about boats? California’s coastline is 840 miles long,” Sophie asked.
“From what we can see, there are Coast Guard cutters from one to three miles out along the coast. All boats are being turned back.”
Anger flashed in her. “If people are operating boats they are not infected!” Sophie said angrily. “They are turning back people fleeing from a massive pandemic! That’s cruel.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mac and Nick said at the same time.
“We’re being abandoned to our own devices.” The truth sank into Sophie. Her entire country was deserting her.
Elle huffed out a breath. “Well, it looks like we’re not going to have any help. We’re on our own here. We’re going to keep locating uninfected and bringing them up to Haven, just as quickly as we can. And you, Jon, you’re going to bring us what we need to make a vaccine.”
Elle’s eyes brimmed as she looked at Jon. She reached out a hand and Sophie ached to take it though they were separated by hundreds of miles. “And Sophie. We need her. She’s a brilliant virologist.” Two silver tears tracked down her pale face. “And my best friend. Bring Sophie back to me, Jon.”
Jon’s hand cupped Sophie’s shoulder. He was holding her so tightly it almost—but not quite—hurt. “Count on it, Elle. We’ll make it, I promise.”
That was crazy. It was going to be almost impossible to make their way out of the city. Sophie doubted whether they could make it across the street. Jon was in no position to make such an insane promise. They were going to do their best, but the odds were almost outrageously stacked against them. On principle, Sophie didn’t like to make promises she wasn’t absolutely certain could be kept, and she opened her mouth to say so, but the look of relief that flooded Elle’s face kept her back. Elle believed in Jon, absolutely.
Actually, all four of them looked . . . relieved. As if something had happened and they could lay at least this problem to rest. But nothing had happened except that Jon had promised the impossible. How could they look so relieved?
And then she looked up at him, at his perfect but cold and hard features, the look of a man who was absolutely certain of himself and his abilities and for an instant, even though she knew better, she was relieved too.
“Okay,” Mac said. “We have the swarm leaving your area around 1800 hours tomorrow. It will be nautical twilight, and night vision can be used, so that’s when you exfil to the helo, Jon. We clear on that?”
“Yessir.” Jon’s deep voice was so certain. Sophie took in a deep, shaky breath. Everyone seemed so certain they had a fighting chance. She wasn’t going to jinx this. If there was even a chance in a million they might make it to the helicopter and then might make it back to where there was a lab that might have everything they needed to produce a vaccine quickly and they might distribute it . . .
A lot of mights there. But if there was a chance that it could be done, she had to believe it could be done. Otherwise . . .
No. The alternative was too horrible to contemplate.
Mac nodded. “Bring Sophie and the vaccine back home, Jon. We’re counting on you. Over and out.”
A big hand reached out to switch the hologram off and suddenly there was silence in her living room. Only a few screams could be heard, from a distance.
Chapter 4
Mount Blue
Haven
Elle Connolly sat on the couch in her comfortable living quarters, arms around her knees, trying to control the trembling. She waited until she was sure of her voice. “How can he make it, Nick? Did you see those images?” A shudder shot through her.
A mass of writhing red creatures in IR, whole city blocks long and wide. Thousands and thousands of those . . . things. Not human anymore. Merely claws and fangs and rage. That’s what Jon and her best friend, Sophie, had to battle their way through.
Nick sat beside her and picked up her hand. His hand was huge, scarred. Across the back of his strong, wide wrist was a jagged-looking scar. Catherine had Dermaglued it shut, but it had been deep and had bled badly. Nick was lucky he hadn’t sliced a tendon.
His body was full of bruises, too, from the grenade he’d thrown in the basement of Arka headquarters, where friends and colleagues of hers had been held prisoner. And where her spirit had been trapped in a Faraday cage.
They’d all been very special prisoners, with special powers, and were now safe here in Haven. As was she. Elle could astrally project, a power she was only coming to grips with now, at the age of thirty. As a child, her dreams had scared her. And even when she discovered that what she thought were very vivid dreams was actually her ability to project herself to other places, it had been hard to control the ability. Only at Arka had she found people willing to study the phenomenon, together with other extrasensory abilities, scientifically. But Arka had betrayed the people with abilities. Caged them.
They’d trapped her in the Faraday cage when she’d accompanied Nick and his warrior friends to the headquarters in San Francisco to free the gifted prisoners. When her astral projection had been trapped, her body, back here in Haven, had started dying.
Nick’s grenade had shattered the cage, setting her free. He had refused to leave until he’d freed her spirit. The virus had just erupted, and c
razy violent monsters were running screaming down corridors. Mac and Jon had left him, but Nick hadn’t left Elle. He wouldn’t budge until he found her, and find her he did.
He loved her.
They’d lost each other ten years before, but now they were together—forever.
Or maybe until next month, when everyone died.
Who knew?
Nick rubbed a thumb over her knuckles, then brought her hand to his mouth. He was always making romantic little gestures like that, and Mac and Jon kept looking at him as if he’d grown two heads. Because, well, until he’d found her again, apparently romantic gestures hadn’t been Nick’s thing. Not much had been Nick’s thing beyond soldiering and, after they’d been betrayed by a four-star general for money, the creation of Haven, a hidden high-tech city and now, possibly, the last hope of mankind.
He kissed her hand gently then brought both their hands down to rest on his massive thigh. But today, not even his thighs could distract her from her misery.
“I know you’re worried, but Jon’s the best, honey. Simply the best. At this kind of thing, maybe . . . maybe he’s even better than me.”
Huh. She blinked at him. “Did that hurt?”
A corner of his mouth went up. “A little. I’m a shooter. One of the best. But Jon—Jon’s a strategist and he is cold as ice. He was undercover for two years in a Colombian cartel known for its brutality. He impersonated a California dealer and they bought it, because he looks the part. If they had had even the slightest inkling that he was undercover, they’d have strangled him with his own intestines and it would have taken him a week to die. Or hung him on a meat hook till he bled out. They’d done it before; it was one of their specialties. But Jon kept his head, got tons of intel, and melted away one night. Two days later their enemies had enough information on their security arrangements to try to take the whole cartel down. The upshot was real satisfying. Bad guys were butchering each other all over the place and the DEA and the Colombian cops mopped up the survivors and put them in jail. You can thank Jon’s intel for your fancy research lab too.”
Breaking Danger Page 6