7 Sykos

by Marsheila Rockwell

  “Yes, ma’am,” Guzman said. He was, she observed, beginning to enjoy this a little too much.

  The door opened, and she unbuckled. Barksdale went out first, motioning for Fallon to follow. A ­couple of soldiers stood outside to help her down. At first, she was unsteady on her feet, despite the flight’s brevity, but it only took a few moments to trust her balance, then she eyed her surroundings.

  Soldiers were everywhere.

  She had been to NASCAR races here a ­couple of times. Not that she was particularly interested, but Mark enjoyed them, and she had accompanied him twice before Jason was born. After that, she was content to let other friends go with him, ­people more tolerant of the noise and the crowds.

  Even on the busiest race day, the place had never looked like this.

  All over the track, and inside it, military vehicles were either parked or moving. Some of them were the familiar Humvees, but others were bigger, armored, and bristling with big guns or rocket launchers, and still others were oddly shaped trucks of various sizes. Soldiers, alone or in groups, moved here or there with what seemed to be serious intent. She saw ­people wearing familiar, colorful Hazmat suits, and others wearing similar getups but in military camouflage, gas masks hanging at their necks. A cluster of young men worked on some sort of structure, putting up the framework as she watched. Buses and trucks drove in from the outside, and more soldiers piled out, gathering to await their marching orders, she supposed. The grandstands were nearly empty, with just a few ­people sitting and watching the buzz of activity.

  Fallon felt Guzman’s presence at her left shoulder. “Well, we’re here,” she said. “What now?”

  “You’ll find out soon, Doctor,” he replied before launching into one of his longest sentences yet. “I’ll need any mobile devices you’re carrying, and anything capable of storing data. Phone, iPod, flash drive, anything like that.”

  “You’re joking,” she snapped. Annoyed to indignant in no time flat.

  “No, ma’am. You’ll be entering a secure area.”

  “What if I say no?”

  “I’m afraid that’s not an option.”

  She hated the idea of handing over her property—­it felt like surrendering her rights as a citizen. And she hated Guzman’s “not an option” answer even more. But she had to admit her curiosity was piqued by all the fuss, almost enough to outweigh her growing anger. Reluctantly, she handed Guzman her smart phone. “That’s all?” he asked.

  “Well, my brain stores data, but you’re not getting that. Everything else is at home or in the lab. Which you didn’t let me get into.”

  “All right,” Guzman said, seemingly willing to take her at her word. He pocketed the phone.

  “I’ll get it back when I leave here?”

  “You’ll get it back,” he said. She noted that he had dropped the dependent clause but decided it wasn’t worth fighting over. “General Robbins is waiting to meet you.”

  He gave a brisk nod and turned away. Before she could say anything, the suits formed a phalanx around her. Hot sun pressed down on the track and was thrown back up again, but after a ­couple of minutes, they were in one of the luxury suites overlooking turn two. She had heard about these suites but had never been in one. Maybe the races would have been bearable from inside those. The chill of powerful air-­conditioning worked through her, making her back and shoulders twitch. Here, too, there were uniformed military personnel, along with more ­people in suits and ties, and some in shorts and T-­shirts, more appropriate for the weather outside. Everybody wore ID badges, either clipped to their clothing or on lanyards, like hers. She noticed now that even the FBI suits who had escorted her inside had conjured them from somewhere and put them on.

  Most ­people glanced at them and went back to what they were doing, but one soldier, tall and seemingly bald under his cap, strode toward them purposefully. He wore camouflage fatigues, like the other soldiers she’d seen, but he walked with an air of command, and when he came close, Fallon saw three stars mounted on a patch on his chest. Above his right breast were the words U.S. ARMY, and above the left, the name ROBBINS.

  “Dr. O’Meara, I presume,” he said, grinning like he had just made an original joke. “I’m Carter Robbins. Thank you so much for joining us.”

  He put his hand out, and she shook it, tentatively. His grip was firm enough to hurt. “Didn’t seem like I had much choice, General.”

  “Carter, please, Doctor. We’re a little too busy here to stand on ceremony.”

  “Busy doing what?” Fallon asked. “Building a military blockade of a major American city? Because that’s what it looks like to me.”

  The general’s head swiveled on his muscular neck, taking in the scene. “Let’s go someplace quieter and have a chat. There’s some folks here anxious to meet you.”

  “Me?”

  He waved her toward a corridor. “This way. We’ve got a conference room all set up.”

  ­People wanting to meet her, and a conference room in a racetrack grandstand. She had figured this wasn’t a spur-­of-­the-­moment idea since all those ­people had been waiting for her at the lab this morning, and the helicopter had been ready to go. But it was starting to feel like a party to which everyone had been invited except her, only she was the guest of honor. Couldn’t somebody have called and mentioned something?

  In the hallway, the noise from the reception area was muted, and the lights, hidden behind textured glass, were dimmer. Recessed spotlights shone down on autographed photographs of drivers, some so famous even she had heard of them.

  “There anything you need?” Robbins asked. “Coffee, tea, pastry?”

  “Some water would be good, I guess.”

  “It’s already in there.” He stopped before a door, mostly frosted glass with some highly polished, reddish wood around it, cutting across at an angle on the hinge side, and a tall, brushed-­steel pull bar. “Here we are,” Robbins said. He paused with his hand on the door. “You’re the woman of the hour, Doctor. I know it’s all a little strange, but everything will be explained soon.”

  “Explanations would be wonderful, General.”

  “Carter,” he corrected.

  She didn’t intend to be that familiar with him until she knew what was going on, and maybe not even then. Politeness dictated that she reciprocate, but to hell with that. As far as she was concerned, he could call her “Doctor” all day long.

  He hesitated another moment, as if in expectation of the correction that wasn’t coming, then pulled the door open and held it for her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced as she entered, like he was a herald and she some sort of royalty. “Dr. Fallon O’Meara.”

  CHAPTER 4

  95 hours

  Inside the room, a bevy of somber ­people sat around an enormous, highly polished, wooden conference table. Huge windows facing the track had been curtained off, the individual seats removed, and the table occupied the space where catering would normally have been set up. Some of those in attendance wore military uniforms, others civilian clothes. They were mostly male and mostly white, but not entirely either. General Robbins indicated a chair next to his head-­of-­the-­table position. A legal pad and a pen had been neatly placed there, and a glass of ice water sweated beside them. Fallon stood behind the chair as Robbins hurried through the introductions. Names flew in and out of her head instantaneously; the overwhelming message she got was of government-­agency titles and acronyms. She met the Assistant Secretaries of Defense for Health Affairs, for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs, and for Public Affairs, along with representatives of the National Center for Medical Intelligence and the CDC, DHS, FEMA, NSA, and FBI. The only person in the room she already knew was Jack Thurman, a DOJ official she had met through her government contracts. He was seated next to Special Agent in Charge Soledad Ramirez, who ran the Phoenix FBI office, and
whom Fallon had at least heard of. She hoped she wouldn’t have to learn the other names—­that she’d sit here for a while, maybe answer some questions, then get to leave.

  An empty whiteboard stood at the far end of the room. Fallon saw faded spots on the wall where pictures had hung, and in one corner, she spotted a stack of racing posters mounted on heavy board. Robbins, or whoever was in charge, had tried mightily to erase the vestiges of racetrack from the space but hadn’t entirely succeeded in making it look like a high-­level government conference room.

  She wondered what was important enough to require such a serious environment and all the fuss to bring her into it.

  “Please, Doctor,” Robbins said when the introductions were finished. “Sit.”

  He moved to do so himself, so she pulled her wheeled chair back, parked herself in it, and rolled to the table.

  “First of all, Dr. O’Meara, we apologize for the somewhat abrupt, unannounced nature of our invitation today. We’ve brought you here to ask you—­” Robbins began.

  She cut him off. “I’m not answering anything until I get some answers, General Robbins. What is all this about? What’s with the big fences being built outside the raceway? Why are all these important ­people sitting around a table in Arizona?”

  “In due time,” Robbins said.

  “No. Now, or I’m going back to work.”

  “This is a very sensitive matter,” one of the various assistant SecDefs said. She had already lost track of which was which. “Highly classified. I don’t think—­”

  “Look,” Thurman interrupted. “If what we believe to be true really is, she’ll need to know anyway. And even if it’s not, I’m sure Dr. O’Meara will prove invaluable. Let’s fill her in to the extent that we can, so she’ll have some context for our questions and be able to provide more meaningful answers.”

  “What we discuss in here can’t leave this room,” Robbins warned.

  “Fine,” Fallon said.

  “We’ll have you sign a statement to that effect.”

  “Understood.”

  “Very well. Would you do the honors, Mr. Thurman?”

  “Sure,” Thurman said. “Fallon, you’ve heard about the flu epidemic in the Valley, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s not the flu.”

  No shit, Fallon thought. She bit her lower lip to keep herself from saying it, and nodded. Clearly, though, her face showed what she thought of the rather obvious statement. To his credit, Thurman didn’t seem embarrassed in the slightest.

  “Yes. The thing is, we know that for certain now. What we don’t know is what it is. It doesn’t act like any viral infection known to medical science. We don’t know if it’s man-­made, or what.”

  Kyle Billings, the NSA man, leaned forward.

  “For our part,” he said, “we’re operating under the assumption that it’s an act of terror, and we’re responding appropriately. We’re jamming all communications—­every phone call, text, tweet, or e-­mail, into or out of the Valley. We’re screening every second of every video-­surveillance recording we can get our hands on. As far as we’re concerned, that’s all SIGINT, and potentially valuable.”

  “Sig-­what?”

  “Signals intelligence,” the man said.

  “Ah.”

  “It could be terrorism, or it could be just a natural phenomenon,” the woman from the CDC said. “The last Ebola outbreak in Africa started because a little boy played in a tree that had bats in it. Sometimes the most seemingly inconsequential acts can cause serious outbreaks. We have a few theories, but we haven’t been able to pin down the origin of this one, though we’re working on it day and night.”

  “Yet that would still only answer the why,” Thurman said. “And it’s not clear it even does that yet.” Billings looked like he was about to respond, but Thurman cut him off. “As I noted, though, we are trying to determine the what—­and that’s what Dr. O’Meara really needs to focus on right now.”

  Fallon considered nodding, but she wasn’t sure there was enough information to agree—­or disagree—­with anything at the moment.

  One of the group’s other women—­one of the few African-­Americans—­spoke up. She was a representative from FEMA, Fallon recalled. Her voice was like aural honey. “Agent Thurman is right. Whatever the cause, Doctor—­and it’s important to find that out—­our immediate concern is the effect. It’s not a flu, but it is an epidemic. And it doesn’t just make ­people ill. It makes them incredibly, uncontrollably violent.”

  She paused a moment, letting that sink in. Fallon had no response. “I know how this sounds,” the woman continued. “But it’s all documented. ­People infected with what we’re calling the ‘Crazy 8s virus’ attack the uninfected. They try to bash open their skulls, so they can—­don’t laugh—­eat their brains.”

  Despite the admonition, Fallon couldn’t help but let out an involuntary bark of laughter, though she pulled it back before she broke down entirely. “Sorry,” she managed. If she’d been upset about being dragged here before, now she was bordering on enraged. This nonsense is why I’m locked in a room with all these ­people?

  And yet, no one else was laughing.

  “Obviously, anyone whose brain is even partially consumed dies, from the cranial trauma. But those who are attacked without having their head opened up and their brains dug out become infected almost immediately—­within a few hours, at most, and more often minutes or seconds. Because of this, we’re theorizing that the virus is a blood-­ or fluid-­borne contagion. And it is incredibly contagious. Maybe in the 99-­percent range. Virtually everyone exposed to it contracts it.”

  “Why Crazy 8s?” Fallon asked. Other, more complex questions swirled in her thoughts, but she had to tease them out one by one to know how to even approach them, and finding out why they’d chosen to name a deadly virus after a child’s card game seemed like a good place to start.

  Robbins answered that one. “Because of a military preparedness plan that seems to fit this situation,” he said. “CONPLAN 8888.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  “You said—­I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Virginia Johnstone,” the CDC woman said.

  “Virginia, you said that ‘virtually’ everyone exposed comes down with it. That means there are exceptions?”

  “That’s right,” Robbins said. “One exception that we know of, to be precise. That’s why you’re here.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Robbins pushed his chair back from the table. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

  Pens and water glasses were placed on the polished wood, and the other ­people around the table stood up. Fallon did the same. “To where?”

  “To the media center,” Robbins said.

  “Because?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Ten minutes later, they were all seated at small desks in the media center. A wall of windows provided a bird’s-­eye view of the track. Mounted on the other walls were TV monitors, dark at the moment. The carpet was considerably less plush than in the grandstand suites, scarred by cigarette burns and stained by years of spilled drinks and dirty shoes.

  When they were all settled, General Robbins said, “Roll it,” to somebody in a control room, out of view. The screens flickered to life, and images began to appear. They showed surveillance video from various sources. Most had time-­and-­date stamps. Some offered strictly indoors views and others outside, some both. She saw the interior of a Circle K store, a sidewalk, a freeway, a mall, the inside of a bank. Fallon counted twelve different feeds, making it hard to focus on any one of them.

  Almost at the same time—­they had obviously been carefully cued up—­­people appeared on each screen. Then other ­people came into frame—­these bl
oody, in most cases, their clothing torn and soiled. Without hesitation, they charged the other ­people, attacking with nails and teeth and fists. Fallon tried to pay attention to one screen, where the video had been shot from high above a bank of gas pumps. A car had pulled next to a pump, and the driver was gassing up his SUV when he was set upon by a woman with bloodstained cheeks and chin. Little remained of her light green shirt, and blood spattered her bust and bra. He fought back, even spraying gasoline at his attacker, but in the end her strength was too much. The driver was trying to clamber back into the driver’s seat when she caught his neck and shoulders and hurled him to the pavement. He almost regained his feet, but she straddled him, grabbing his head in both hands and smashing it repeatedly on the pavement.

  Fallon thought she could tell the moment he died, when he quit struggling and his eyes went blank. Blood spread beneath his head, a dark pool in the black-­and-­white footage. The woman kept at it until his skull was sufficiently pulped, then rolled him over and tore into it with both hands. Fallon had to look away, or lose what little breakfast she’d eaten.

  A glance around the room told her that similar scenes were playing out on all the other monitors. The overwhelming impression was of a world gone mad with bloodlust. Fallon—­who had once sat alone in a room for four hours with a man who had murdered his parents, his grandparents, and his three siblings, then had gone on to end the lives of fourteen more human beings, all women, with a knife, slicing off the tongue of each one and laying it carefully across her crotch—­had never been so frightened in her life.

  Robbins noticed that she was looking at the floor. “That’s enough!” he called. “Cut it! All but eight, and freeze that.”

  The monitors went blank, except for one. A hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped. “I’m sorry, Fallon,” Jack Thurman said. “I wanted to warn you, but they thought you should see it cold, like the rest of us did. In real time, some of us.”

  “It’s . . . it’s awful,” she said. “Is it Flakka? Something like that?” Use of the synthetic drug was spreading around the country fast, and it had been known to make ­people paranoid, violent, and seemingly insane.