July 19, 2093—Cabo Rojo, Mexico
“It’s ugly dude,” Shift said. “I don’t know if anyone else will get here. There aren’t any pilots out there, or so I’m told. And even those people who think they can fly haven’t been able to figure it all out. Modern planes, and even some of the older ones too, have complex onboard computers and other systems. You can’t just jump in and start flying. Jerad is compiling information to send to others, just in case anyone gets an opportunity to attempt to fly, but he doesn’t think that will be sufficient. It’s much more complicated than just sitting there pushing buttons.”
“So what does that mean,” John asked. “We’re not going to have anybody joining us?”
“We haven’t heard from the folks down south—the Brazilians or Argentineans—in three days. I don’t know where they are. They don’t answer the MEHDs. If they had been able to get here as fast as they planned, we could see them as early as tomorrow, but I don’t know whether they’ll make it, or when. We need to be ready for them though, just in case. Who’s on watch tomorrow?”
“I’m on the six A.M.,” John replied. “Then Marilyn has the afternoon, Steve has evening, and Anta has the night shift.”
“Will you talk to each of them? They need to know that any shapes they see out there could be human, not necessarily Skin. Of course, in the daytime, it will be easy to tell. Even though those Brazilians like their nudity, I don’t think this particular group will be showing skin the way the Skins will.”
“No, I don’t suppose they will,” John replied.
July 19—Panama Canal, Panama
“Jump!” Hubert yelled from across the gaping hole between the massive, broken concrete ribs.
The Brazilians had never made it to the rendezvous point. Hubert didn’t know where they were. But he wasn’t going to worry about them. He had four people right here who needed his leadership and guidance.
“I can’t!” Gemma yelled back. “It’s too far.” She began to cry, and she felt stupid for it. 16-year-olds shouldn’t be afraid of heights.
“You can do it, baby,” Gemma’s mother whispered, standing next to her. Ange had been afraid of heights too, when she was younger. Now, she worried that her daughter’s fear could cost all of them their lives.
Hubert, formerly a military special agent for the Argentinean government, had secured his family a berth in a military bunker outside Buenos Aires when the plague had found its way to his country. Now, months later, he, his wife and daughter, and two others ran for their lives, hoping to get across the old Panama Canal before the monsters finished devouring the others. Or whatever it was the monsters were doing back there. Of the 67 people who had inhabited their bunker, only 5 were left.
“I’m going,” Benoit said. “They’re too close. We can’t wait for Gemma.” Benoit, a 64-year-old politician, jogged back several paces. A few days earlier, he had been hit by a stray bullet as the group fled their bunker during an attack by the Skins. It only grazed his shin, but it was enough to cause him to limp. He began to race forward toward the gulf that separated Hubert from the others. Hubert was safe over there, and Benoit would be too.
Benoit’s speed wasn’t enough. Hubert could see he wasn’t going to make it, but couldn’t form the words in time to stop Benoit’s rush forward. Benoit leapt. The gap wasn’t that far, but the distance to the bottom of the chasm below was as much as 100 meters or more. In mid-air, Benoit saw that he was short. He reached his hands out for the ledge at Hubert’s feet. Hubert dropped to his stomach, reaching toward Benoit. But he wasn’t able to react fast enough. Benoit fell. A few short seconds later, his body crumpled against the cracked and dirty concrete far below.
The Skins were coming. Rogelio, the last survivor of the small group, ran forward. He made it, easily. Gemma, seeing the ease at which the young, handsome mechanic made the leap, felt encouraged. Squeezing her mother’s hand, she ran forward. As she took the last step toward the gulf that separated her from her father, she heard her mother scream. The effect of that scream, and the gurgling noise of the monsters as they tore into Ange’s flesh caused Gemma to lose balance. She stumbled and fell over the edge.
Rogelio ran.
Three seconds later, Hubert stepped off the ledge to join his daughter far below.
July 19—Cabo Rojo, Mexico
“Shift, get in here!” Mike yelled through the open door to the computer lab.
“What?” Shift said anxiously as he ran through the doorway into the small room.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Mike said. “But look at this, down in Panama.”
On the left-middle screen, Mike’s camera was following a group of Skins near the old, unused Panama Canal.
“What’s going on down there?” Shift asked.
“Those Skins chased down and attacked a group of humans, just now,” Mike replied. He was struggling to hold his emotions in check. “I don’t know who they were, but they were running. They weren’t even in cars or hovers or anything. I just watched some of them fall into the ruins of the canal. They’re probably dead.”
“How many are still alive?” Shift asked. He began to wonder whether these were the Brazilians or the Argentineans they had been expecting tomorrow.
“Only one. That’s him,” Mike said, pointing to a lone figure hundreds of meters ahead of a horde of Skins. “He’s never going to make it. He’ll never get away from them.”
“Look how fast they’re moving!” Shift said, horrified.
Mike and Shift watched as the Skins closed in on a young man running down a lonely highway. Then they watched, in fascinated terror, as more than 200 nearly-naked figures began to leap skyward, traveling as far as 40 or 50 meters through the air to land all around the poor man. They brought him down swiftly. Within moments, the group fell back as the man arose from the ground, ripping and tearing at his clothing. He was one of them.
“Do you have this recorded? And can you back it up and show me what led up to this?”
“Every camera is recording. But do you really want to see this?”
“We won’t show it to anyone else. But we need to know what they’re capable of and see if we can find a weakness.”
“Ok,” Mike said with a sigh. “Happy dreams!”
July 29, 2093—Cabo Rojo, Mexico
“Street, come in here,” Shift called out as Street walked past the door to the small conference room.
“What’s going on?” Street asked as he tentatively entered the room.
“We, well Mike actually, has found out something that will be very interesting to you. Can you go gather everyone together please?”
“Okay.”
Fifteen minutes later, everyone had gathered in the conference room except Marilyn, who was on watch in the security room by the front entrance. Mike and Shift were standing at the front of the room, patiently waiting. Marilyn was visible on the holo in the corner of the room.
“Thanks for coming everyone,” Shift began. “Mike has discovered something that will be very interesting to a few of you.”
Nobody spoke.
“Okay, Mike tell us what you’ve learned please.”
“Well,” Mike said, “A couple of weeks ago, I began thinking about an issue which I hadn’t thought about for a while. So I began to do a little digging. Over the past two weeks, in my downtime, I’ve been combing through databases and personnel archives from various sources. After a couple of days, I found a few bits of information which led me to focus my search on a small, rogue paramilitary outfit located, well, formerly located in Connecticut. I say ‘formerly’ because I imagine they’re all dead now.”
“What’s a ‘rogue paramilitary’?” Jon Porter asked.
“Good question Jon,” Mike replied. “Generally speaking, a paramilitary group is a group of people, often former military, who operate like a military but who don’t always have the backing of a specific government. Some paramilitary groups are backed by local governments, but this one doesn�
�t seem to be of that type. This one appears to be rogue, which means, generally, that they are operating on their own, without the backing of any government.”
“So what did you learn?” Shift prompted.
“Early on, I found a website that contained various rumors, including that old one about the whole Anthrax E plague being a government conspiracy. As I read through the various postings to that website, I found a rumor about this particular group. They call themselves “ConControl”—short for Connecticut Control. Anyway, according to the rumors, ConControl planned to break into an unnamed lab to secure a vaccination. That got my attention, since we were one of those types of labs.
“The rumored plan called for an attack of some type on that unnamed lab utilizing the services of an insider. The insider had allegedly revealed that a vaccine had been created and was ready for distribution. The informant was supposed to steal the vaccine, escape from the compound, and then reconnect with the group at headquarters somewhere in Connecticut.
“That was all the web posting said. But, naturally, I was interested. The rumor was posted on April 25th, just a few days after that original conspiracy story came out. Among the many other avenues I pursued for information, I also looked back through our bunker’s archives from that time. Most of you know, I think, that all of our meetings were recorded and kept in archives. Well, I started checking our archives from that time period, just to remind myself of what was going on in the world at that time.
“As of April 25, death and infection estimates were somewhere between four and five billion—half of the world’s population. But we had some good news that day as well. Does anyone remember what we learned on April 25th?”
“Yeah. That was the day Yurgi told us that the animals Lucky and I caught were immune to Anthrax E,” Street replied almost instantly. “He created a vaccine that worked on animals.”
“Correct. April 25th was the day of that awesome revelation. But there was more that day. April 25th was also the day I announced to all of you my backdraft theory. The theory about how AE was likely being sucked into bunkers like ours through the ventilation systems. We’d just had that ventilation problem a few days earlier and I had come up with my theory.
“Well, there was someone in the group that morning who was displeased with me. She felt I had done something wrong by not telling you guys about the possibility earlier, even though I had just put it all together that morning.”
“Bodily,” Street growled.
“Correct again. Latisha Bodily was angry that morning when she learned that we were possibly at risk of infection and that other bunkers like ours had probably already been infected. That was the morning Yurgi put her in her place. He humiliated her in front of all of us. You guys remember that?”
Several heads nodded and a few smiles appeared as the memory washed over the group.
“Keep going Mike,” Shift encouraged.
“Well, thankfully, we concluded that we were not in danger from infection through our ventilation system, but it put us all a little on edge that morning. So, Bodily’s anger was easily dismissed. But, does anyone know where Dr. Bodily is from?”
“The question’s too easy now,” John replied. “Connecticut.”
“Right. So, I was putting the pieces together. I checked out Dr. Bodily’s file and everything else I could find out about her in the archives. There’s quite a history on all of us in the databases. I followed leads and trails and here’s what I’ve pieced together.
“About six years ago, Dr. Bodily was introduced to a man named Thomas Franconi at a fancy dinner party. They bonded, perhaps were lovers even. Franconi was disenfranchised with the way the IWO was operating in the United States. So he formed ConControl in 2084, without the backing of any government. That’s why they’re rogue Jon.
“Between 2084 and 2092, ConControl made repeated attempts to peacefully assert itself into the local politics of Connecticut, through elections mainly. They never succeeded. And, of course, without any success locally, they never succeeded in gaining political power nationally or internationally either. In other words, they were very small fish. But size does not always equate with desire or craziness.
“When AE began its deadly march through the states, ConControl began stirring up the populace with conspiracies and rumors. They were distributing false information about government cover-ups. ConControl’s goal, as I’ve learned, was to make the government focus on other things while ConControl continued forward with their big plan.”
“What was the plan?” John asked.
“It is my belief that Franconi and Bodily were communicating, secretly, while she was in the bunker with us. The logs, which we stopped monitoring as closely after February 9th when Yurgi gave us all the option of leaving the bunker, denote communications from Bodily to Connecticut, and one with Brazil strangely. When I first saw them a couple days ago, I naturally assumed they were coms to family. We all began communicating with our families in those days. And yes, I knew about that, even though you were all trying to keep it on the downlow.”
Mike smiled as others in the conference room looked down, bashfully.
“But then, as this information began to surface, I checked out Bodily’s coms a little more closely. Bodily didn’t have any family in Connecticut. But she did have Franconi. The com numbers were routed from their original destination to an unknown distribution site, and then routed to the Law Offices of Thomas J. Franconi.
“I believe that Bodily was the inside informant I had read about.”
Shift and Mike had both prepared for the probability that they would have to reign in the group after that little announcement. Instead, the room remained silent. They were all considering the ramifications of what Mike had told them.
“Anyway,” Mike continued after a short pause, “on April 25th, when Yurgi announced the apparent success of the vaccination, at least on animals, Bodily must have been thrilled. She finally had information she could feed to Franconi, and she did place a call that day, after our meeting had ended.
“But only minutes after Yurgi’s announcement, I destroyed Bodily’s hope, and the hope of most of you as well, when I announced that it was possible we could all be dead within days through the backdraft effect. She must have gone nuts. She yelled at me. She yelled at Yurgi. She was very angry that morning. Remember that it was Bodily who also argued that we should only vaccinate the strongest and the fittest. She was a lunatic.”
“So, Mike, tell them what you really wanted to tell them,” Shift said.
“There’s more than that?” John asked.
“Yeah, there’s more,” Shift replied.
“Definitely,” Mike added. “Seven days later, on May 2nd, Bodily, along with others, volunteered to be among the first humans injected with Yurgi’s test vaccine. Later that day, Lucky and Dr. Case were injected with the test vaccine. Bodily was not. She didn’t say anything to anyone that I’m aware of, but she did spend the rest of the day in her room. I found several coms throughout the afternoon and evening of May 2nd, from Bodily to Franconi, and again, one to Brazil, which I couldn’t figure out.
“The next day, May 3rd, AE was released in the bunker.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Street asked quietly.
“I’m saying that I believe Latisha Bodily released Anthrax E into the bunker.”
With that announcement, the room finally erupted in a cacophony of voices, all talking to nobody in particular. Shift and Mike let the noise continue for a few moments.
Finally, Shift said, “Alright everybody, get it together.”
“I’d like to tell you the rest of my theory,” Mike added.
Finally, the noise quieted down.
“Anyway, Bodily must have done it, and here’s why: She wanted to be vaccinated the day earlier, even though we knew it was only a test vaccine. She wasn’t selected to receive the inoculation. But she needed to be vaccinated in order to get outside the bunker without becoming s
ick. And she needed to get out soon in order to deliver the vaccine to Franconi and others before they became sick and died. Timing was crucial and time was running out. The only way Bodily could receive the vaccination, and have enough time to get it outside to Franconi, was to release AE inside. She’d be sure to be inoculated then, along with the rest of us.”
“That’s quite a risk,” Angel said. “We didn’t even know whether it would work on humans yet.”
“That’s right,” John said. “We didn’t have that evidence for another 10 days.”
“Well, like Mike said, she was a lunatic,” Steve Porter said.
“But remember that she didn’t have the time to wait,” Mike continued. “On the outside, everyone was dying. Franconi was obviously still alive, but he may have been sick already. We don’t know that. But we also didn’t find out that the vaccine had to be administered within the first 24 hours after infection until weeks later, after Churchill. So, even if he was sick, she may have thought the vaccine could cure him. Or, if he wasn’t sick yet, she knew it was only a matter of time.”
“Amazing what love, or perceived love can make a person do,” Marilyn said from the security station, through the holo.
“But how did she release AE?” Anta asked. “And if she found a way to get into the locked labs to do that, why didn’t she just steal the vaccine instead, vaccinate herself and get out with the supply of vaccine?”
“I’ve been thinking about that for hours,” Mike said. “And I discussed it with Shift this morning. We don’t have an answer. Maybe Angel and John have a theory, since they had access to the labs.”
Everyone looked expectantly at John and Angel.
“Well,” Angel began tentatively, “AE and the vaccine were not stored in the same place. They were in separate, but adjoining labs. Both labs were locked while any of us were inside; and when we were outside, a passcard was required to gain access.”
“And each lab had a different passcard,” John added. “So, if she had help from one of us with access, then she could have gained access to both labs. Since she didn’t vaccinate herself, she must have gained access on her own, but only to the lab with AE, not the lab with the vaccine. But how she could accomplish any of it escapes me.”
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