He sent the advisors away so that he could concentrate on the General’s statement to the Chiefs of Staff.
General Malloy continued, “He was assassinated by the female terrorist that we have identified as being at the hospital where the Bubonic Plague has so far been tracked back to. For her to be present at both locations as an innocent bystander is too much of a coincidence - and I don’t believe in coincidences. She is now our number one suspect.
A hazy image of Sophie filled their monitors, Quinn Martell recognized her at once. He knew that she was not capable of the crime, but to announce that he knew her would mean he would have to reveal her name and ultimately it would lead to her capture. He saw the general staring at him and guessed his face had given him away. He thought he better have a cover story. “The President told me that he had invited her himself. She’s an expert on ancient communicable diseases and he wanted to hear from her first hand. She’s the foremost expert on the contagion.”
This threw the general for a moment, and then he found his voice. “Nevertheless, she’s our number one suspect and -”
“Hold on a moment, general, are you trying to say that out of all the experts in the world he could have called upon to advise him, he picked YOUR number one suspect, and invited her into his home?”
“Well, that’s what happened.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences?”
“Nevertheless, she has been identified as the assassin and has fled the scene in a stolen vehicle. Hardly the actions of an innocent advisor. We have people watching her apartment and all personnel have been issued with an image of her and instructed to shoot her on sight.”
The surgeon general sighed. “General Malloy, when will you understand that this is not an attack by some foreign power. It is the Black Death, the Bubonic Plague. It’s here, and we need to deal with it. Stop chasing mythical terrorists, you’re barking up the wrong tree. We need to concentrate the military on taking care of the good folk of Florida -”
“Don’t worry, doc,” he sneered. “We’re taking care of the Floridians, and you can trust me on that.”
04:00 AM
Sophie turned around and was shocked and delighted to see Luke. He put his finger to his lips, and she nodded. He took his hand away, and they backed into the darkness of the bushes. He explained that he’d come to find her, claiming he thought it a good idea to be with the expert on the disease, and that for some reason they seemed to be immune to the Bubonic Plague, he paused then said with a grin. “And I wanted to see you, again.”
They moved northward, then ducked into a doorway as a patrol zoomed past them tracking down a young girl on a scooter, the gunner on top of the Humvee aimed, fired, and hit her square between the shoulder blades, the bullet exited her chest in a cloud of red blood. She fell forward onto the handlebars, and then slumped from the scooter, which carried on down the street before toppling over.
Sophie gasped in shock. Although Luke had told her what had been happening, it still jolted her to see American troops murdering American citizens. She told him about General Malloy killing President Burgess and his plans to annihilate the residents of Florida. He explained that it had already started, he told her of the execution squads and of the mass gassing at the refugee camp. They moved north along Biscayne Boulevard and were fast becoming immune to the atrocities. They kept to the shadows as they saw looters shot, their bodies joining the many others littering the streets, left to rot.
04:15 AM
“Hello?” Submariner Pete Williams called out aboard the nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Amarillo. It’d been over an hour since he last found someone alive, albeit only for several minutes as that sailor too, succumbed, noisily and painfully to the virus. He made his way around the narrow metal tube. Claustrophobia overwhelmed him. He’d never known he’d suffered from it until now, but he had become aware that the tight metal coffin had him trapped. Everywhere he went the sailors were dead, strangely turning black first, some appeared to have died almost instantly. Dying sat at their posts. Friends he’d seen alive and healthy an hour or two earlier, now stone-cold dead, sat upright in front of their work stations, staring at their computer screens too frightened of their superiors to ask to be dismissed, with what they had perceived a bug, thinking a good night’s sleep would see them alright.
He made his way down to a lower deck where the thrum of the engine got louder. “Hello . . . anybody?” He felt fear rise in him and tears streaked his cheeks. He didn’t care who would see them. He wished there would be someone alive to see his obvious cowardice. He wondered what would happen if the nuclear reactor overheated? He did not have a clue what to do to stop it overheating. He was the last man standing and had been found wanting.
A more heroic sailor would save the day, and possibly the nearby population, for that matter, whereas he contemplated suicide, thinking it preferable to a slow lingering death. He thought the air had warmed up, and that he sucked in the deadly microbes with every breath. He only wanted to get to the surface, to breathe clean air his only ambition now. He didn’t care if no one found him he just needed clean fresh air. However, he didn’t know how to surface the vessel and his despair worsened.
He found himself in the communications sector, and thought of the radio, there must be a link to the mainland. Someone there would know where he was and rescue him. He felt elated and sat before the microphone, he’d seen the guys making calls enough times, he pressed the button, and spoke. “Mayday, mayday, mayday! Hello, can anybody hear me, this is Submariner Peter Williams on board the USS Amarillo, please respond . . .” He heard his voice echoing around his metallic hellhole. “Hello, can anybody hear me, this is Submariner Peter Williams on board the USS Amarillo, please respond . . .”
Fort Jenkins, a short squat building near Key West was a facility big enough to dock submarines for servicing and repairs. It was also responsible for communications between submarines and HQ. However because the USS Amarillo was on a top-secret mission, no messages were expected. The captain of the submarine knew better than to break radio silence, it would cost him his job to do so.
The Submariner did not know how many violations he broke, nor would he have cared, his thin, reedy voice, tinged with hysteria rattled around the room. The message came through loud and clear, sadly there was not one human left alive in the room. The sailors were dead at their posts, and the ever-present rats, greedily devoured the human flesh.
04:15 AM
“We’re pulling the plug on southern Florida,” said Hamilton Parker the incumbent President. He addressed the War Room via a video-link from his desk within the Oval Office at the White House.
General Jack Malloy spoke via the video-link from the ex-President’s summer residence. Quinn Martell was with the chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon’s War Room.
“You can’t be serious,” Quinn Martell said.
“We’re pulling the plug on Florida, all the way to the outskirts of Orlando.”
“That’s inhumane?” spluttered Quinn.
“Wouldn’t it be more inhumane to the rest of the population to expose them to the deadly virus? Wouldn’t that be morally wrong?”
“Of course, but we haven’t finished our studies. If we could isolate -”
“We don’t have the luxury of time for your flapping around, Quinn. All our evidence is that we cannot wait. It would be too late. Our men on the ground can only do so much.”
“So we quit, just like that, on millions of US citizens?” Quinn asked in disbelief.
“Most are dead or dying, we’re talking about a handful of survivors that are resistant to the bacteria, but they may still succumb.”
“That’s why we must do the tests, we need -”
“It’s too late, doctor,” said the new President. “To be frank, there are too small a number to risk the safety of the rest of us. It’s unlucky for them, sure, but if the shoe was on the other foot, who's to say. . .”
The men around the tabl
e murmured their agreement. “It’s time for bold decisions for the sake of the future of our great nation and I’m the man to do it. We’ve already cut all communication to and from the exclusion zone, we’ve got the ports, airport and roads blocked, and patrols mopping up the darkies -”
“The what?” Quinn asked appalled.
“The “darkies”, it’s what the troop’s are calling the plague carriers, their skin darkens in the latter stages of the disease.”
“And if a person is African-American?” Quinn asked. “How do we distinguish between them and a plague carrier?”
“Again, it’s too bad. In all likelihood, they are going to die anyhow. As I said, we’re talking about a handful of people.”
“May God forgive us,” Quinn mumbled in defeat.
“We’re controlling the information, and when the danger is over, and enough time has passed, our actions will be vindicated. We may even be hailed for our bold, brave decisions, that have not only saved the country, but more likely the world, we’ll go down in history -”
“We’ll go down in history all right,” Quinn scoffed.
“You’re comments are duly noted,” Hamilton Parker said not meaning it for a second. “Now, we have key people in the zone, manning nuclear installations, and other highly sensitive organizations, but they are being stretched thin.”
“We need the citizens to go to the refugee camps. We’re offering food, medicine and shelter, yet there’s still too much resistance. We have round-up patrols but they are taking up too much of the military’s valuable time. So, I have decided to pull the plug, to force the more independently minded to hasten their way to the camps.”
“What do you mean, Mister President?” asked Quinn. “How are you going to force the population to the camps?”
“We are literally pulling the plug.”
04:30 AM
From Orlando pretty much bang in the center of the peninsular of Florida down to Miami the average ground height above sea level is just twelve feet. Much of the coastal districts even lower still, and what with the latest trend in scare stories of global warming Floridians now had the specter of a tsunami to contend with along with their annual and often fatal hurricanes. Florida had experienced a tidal-wave centuries ago, an earthquake off the coast of Portugal, had caused a tidal-wave that swamped the present day Miami and almost five miles inland. What with the boxing day tsunami in 2004 and the more recent 2011 event in Tohoku, Japan, triggered by an earthquake that had a devastating effect on the local area and was still fresh in Japan’s collective memory, it was a wonder anyone lived in such low lying areas. It was claimed that Cinderella’s castle at Disney World was the highest non-residential point in Florida.
Luke appreciated Florida’s flat as a pancake landscape, because it gave him a birds-eye view positioned from on top of the Coral Tower, the thirty story incompleted condo, that skirted the I-95 freeway gave him an unobscured vantage point.
Luke thought about how fantastic it would be to soar from the top of the tower on his hang-glider. To catch a thermal and soar around and around the tower and would probably be able to land back on the top.
He turned to Sophie and said; “I’d love to jump off the tower.”
“Excuse me?” she said as her jaw dropped open and she thought her travelling companion had suicidal tendencies.
He saw her confusion and laughed. “No, I meant on a hang-glider. That’s how I like to spend my time, soaring around like a bird.”
“You would not catch me in one of those contraptions, far too dangerous.”
“Not if you know what you’re doing. I’ll take you for a flight, you’d love it.”
“Uhuh, not me. I’m happiest with my feet planted firmly on the ground thank you very much.”
He smiled at her and returned his attention down below, where he could watch troop movements, and could see them coming from miles away.
__________
The Coral Tower had stood empty for two years since erected. A white elephant that demonstrated not all buildings will have a line of salivating buyers with open pocket books. The builders had speculated on a glut of eager buyers, but gotten their predictions badly wrong, ending up going bankrupt in the process.
From the deck on the roof, the views were spectacular. Luke observed a nearby private airstrip, wondering if anyone was contemplating a low-flight escape, but it was too far away to tell. He guessed that he could see roughly thirty miles to the south, he could easily see the glow of the Miami sky scrapers and about the same to the north, he could make out the Atlantic coast-line and although could not see them, he knew navy vessels were lurking out there.
Waiting.
All at once a block of skyscrapers in downtown Miami plunged into darkness, followed swiftly by another and then another. He tapped Sophie on the shoulder and pointed. She watched open mouthed as block-by-block the skyscrapers were swallowed by the night.
“Man, can you believe it?” Luke said in stunned surprise.
They watched in shocked silence as Miami went black, followed by Fort Lauderdale suffering the same fate, as grid by grid the city descended into darkness.
03:39 AM
Alvin Borelli had broken into the convenience store at the ground level of the luxury block of his ocean facing penthouse on Miami’s south beach. He loved the art deco architecture of the oceanfront blocks. They divided opinion - you either loved them or hated them, no middle ground. He naturally enough loved them. The shapes of the buildings resembling ocean-liners or as others had unkindly described them, as wedding cakes. The beachfront had fallen into decline some time ago and had gained a sleazy reputation. However, the area had been cleaned up recently and now commanded premium real-estate dollars to gaze out onto the beach and ocean beyond.
Alvin ignored the TV broadcasts and mobile military loudspeaker announcements for all civilians to make their way to the designated refugee camps. Yeah, right, he thought. How foolish did they think he was? He did not intend to be crammed into a sports arena with potential Bubonic Plague victims. No chance! It made him shudder to think of all those people polluting his air. God, how disgusting. It would have played havoc with his lifelong claustrophobia, he could just about bear to get into the elevator to his penthouse apartment. And even that was a private elevator. No way could he have those unclean sweating bodies crushed against his in the main elevator. He counted himself lucky that his career had afforded him the luxury of not only a penthouse apartment but a private elevator, straight to the top, not the interminable waiting as the elevator creaked from floor-to-floor on it’s deathly slow progress to the top of the building.
His lucrative career being the supply of heroin into Florida since the early '80s, where gentlemen, like himself, at the top would do the deals and make the contacts, no macho posturing was necessary, they dealt with it like any other business and everyone made money.
That was before the wetbacks had muscled in, mostly Castro’s garbage. The criminals and the gibbering insane had swamped the city, and the greasy filth had upset the apple cart for a while, under-cutting him on price, cutting the merchandize making it a dangerous product, with their ridiculous policy of tit-for-tat killing of their rivals, the ‘you kill one of ours we’ll kill one of yours’, nonsense, was bad for business. What was the point of all the he-man theatrics, it meant no business sense?
The '80s and '90s had been a bad time, until the families took back control and rebalanced the power, and then it was back to business as normal, of supply and demand, that would never end, well, until the user inevitably died, but there were always more, plenty more addicts to take their place.
The ‘families’ had been slow to realize the potential of heroin, strangely taking a moral high ground against drugs initially; yet happy to force underage girls into prostitution, disregarding the misery that money-lending and protection rackets caused, yet drugs had them clutching at their under-skirts like maiden aunts. It had been a massive mistake, not just from a lucr
ative point of view, but it had let the coloreds get a foothold in the supply and distribution of the illicit commodity, not dissimilar to booze during prohibition, the mobsters had no qualms about making and distributing. It was strange that they had been reticent about drugs and heroin in particular, that was in the early days, of course, but not anymore.
He dealt with the supply and shipment of the product in an organized professional way, same as any other business, the equilibrium restored once more and Alvin Borelli counted himself blessed, because as a top-level mobster he had gotten into the trade early and made a fine living at it. He had no sympathy for the junkies, in fact, he despised them for being so weak-willed and no one had put a gun to their heads and forced them to take the narcotic in the first place. So why bleat about it once hooked? In fact, it gave them another income stream, because the hopeless junkie would turn tricks in desperation for the cash they so badly needed. If they were lookers he’d use them himself, but junkies aged prematurely, getting creased and wrinkly, often losing their teeth, and they would soon slide down the scale until they were out on street corners offering blowjobs for ten bucks a pop.
The male junkies went the same way, happily selling their bodies so long as they got their heroin fix. Didn’t seem to matter what they looked like, how much they let themselves go, there was usually a pervert for every type of junkie. Nope, they brought it on themselves and good riddance to the feeble-minded idiots. Did they not watch the news? They knew it was dangerous, and highly addictive, yet they still tried the product.
The Doomsday Infection Page 13