“Homebase, target is neutralized, repeat, target is neutralized.”
“Roger that, Big Poppa. Come on back to base. Good work.”
“Roger that. Big Poppa comin’ home.”
Pete paced the floor nervously. Clover was sitting with his back straight as a board in Pete’s chair. They’d given the order to take the thing out.
Homebase, target is neutralized, repeat, target is neutralized.
Cheers went up, though they were muted since a commanding officer was in the room. Clover smirked and stood up, straightening his uniform. Pete strode next to him, awaiting his orders. This was Clover’s show, and Pete had come to realize that what he said didn’t matter. But that didn’t help the knot in his gut that told him they’d made the wrong decision.
“See, Sergeant-Major, nothing to worry about,” Clover said.
“Yes, sir. I’d like to see what’s left up close, though, sir.”
Clover eyed him. “I’m not sending a team out. It would cause too much attention. But feel free to have a look if you’re so inclined.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pete turned and crossed to the elevator.
23
The drive had taken longer than he thought it would. Pete Brass sat in the passenger seat of the jeep while Debra drove. He stared out at the landscape. People had been ordered indoors after T-Zero to eliminate contact with each other. Add the ips on top of that, and no one came out for any reason. It created a ghost-town effect where everything looked abandoned, like the cities themselves were living organisms and slowly dying.
“I used to think America would be around forever,” Pete said, not taking his eyes off the city passing in front of him.
“Nothing lasts forever,” Debra said.
“But it seems like it does, doesn’t it? There were people born during the Peloponnesian War who grew up, lived, and died during it. They thought that’s what life was, one continual state of war. I wonder all the time if we’re living in something like that, some epoch that future generations will see as a fluke.”
“I think maybe you wonder about things too much. You gotta just relax and live in the moment, Pete.”
“Children and criminals live in the moment. Adults plan for the future. Besides, is this the moment you really want to live in?”
She didn’t reply.
Up ahead, farmland took up the next dozen miles or so. Pete was familiar with the scenery. His grandfather had been a farmer. He remembered long summer days when his parents would drop him off at the farm and his grandfather would put him to work. The work was backbreaking, and all he could think about while doing it was when it would be over. Now, after ten years behind a desk, all he could think about was the feel of sunshine on his face and working with his hands, having something to show for a good day’s work in the evening. If someone asked him what exactly he did, he wasn’t certain he could define it.
“Look at that,” Debra said.
Pete looked. In the middle of a green field of crops, a smoking heap of parts took up space, an unwelcome scar. The jeep pulled into a road that led back there, and Pete kept his eyes on the heap. He scanned the surrounding area. The military patrols did a good job eliminating ips, but they couldn’t get them all.
Ips.
He hated having to call them that. They were people, people suffering from a horrific disease, but he had to create that cognitive dissonance. He had to feel they weren’t people at all but things. Otherwise, how could they kill millions of them?
“So, there’s seriously not going to be, like, a military response or anything? No doctors or scientists to examine this stuff?” Debra said.
“If we see something interesting, we’ll call it in.”
The jeep rumbled to a stop on the dirt road and parked maybe thirty feet from the heap. Pete stepped out and around the vehicle and stared at the smoke. The coloration wasn’t white or gray—it was black. Like burning rubber.
“Stay here,” he said.
He began making his way through the crops. His shoes sank in the ground, soft from rain a few days back.
When he was within ten feet of the object, or what was left of the object, he stood still and watched. Uncertain what he was looking at, he knew one thing: it looked familiar. He walked closer, cautiously and methodically analyzing anything out of the ordinary. The heap looked like a pile of refuse someone threw out and lit on fire. There was nothing particularly extraordinary about it. Behind him, he heard footsteps and turned to see Debra.
“I told you to wait.”
“Our possible first interaction with ET and you think I’m going to wait?”
He turned back to the heap. “No, guess not.”
Pete circled around, taking a couple of steps toward the object with each pass. He stopped when he was no more than five feet away and put his hands on his hips. “This isn’t aliens.” He reached into the pile as Debra gasped, as if he was jumping through the fire or something. He glanced over and then continued reaching for what he wanted.
The hunk of material burned his fingers, and he had to hold it by the edge. He pulled it out a few feet and dropped it. A long piece of black plastic, shaped something like a car bumper. He bent down and examined it.
“This is plastic,” he said. He tapped it with his fingers. It didn’t sound or feel like any plastic he’d ever encountered. “Some sort of unique polymer to give it better cohesion, but just plastic.” He leaned in close. In the corner, he saw a stamp.
Pete’s heart dropped and his eyes drifted off the object and back to the heap. He stood up, his gaze fixed on the smoke billowing up into the sky.
“I know what this is,” he said.
“What?”
“This is a drone.”
“Seriously?”
He looked at her. “I also know why Clover said he recognized it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s one of ours.”
24
Pete Brass paced outside the massive office. It was the largest one in all of NORAD, and Clover had taken it over. Pete had hoped Clover would leave after destroying the drone, but he’d decided to stay a while. Now he was making Pete wait to see him.
Finally, the door opened and someone in a military uniform stepped out. Pete stormed in. Clover sat with his back straight, staring out a window at the hallway.
“What the hell, Danny?”
“Problem?”
“You knew that was a drone.”
“So what if I did?”
“And I’m guessing you know it’s one of ours?”
“I do.”
Pete folded his arms, staring the older man in the eyes. “What else aren’t you telling me?”
“I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
“Don’t give me that need-to-know bullshit. What is going on?”
Clover straightened the top of his uniform, brushing away a bit of string on the chest. “Those drones were sanctioned for use by the NSA and DIA. They disappeared after their acquisition. They’ve turned up now.”
“That’s it? ‘They’ve turned up’? Turned up from where?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you have a guess.”
“I do.”
Pete waited a beat. “What, are we playing charades?” Pete sat down across from him. “What the hell is happening?”
“We had someone at the DIA who thought he was king. He’s toying with us right now. Showing us what he’s capable of.”
“Who?”
“His name is Kraski. He’s about the most weaselly son of a bitch you could ever meet. His division was shut down, funding cut, and he hit the roof. He consolidated his department so that it could run without strings from the DIA and Congress. Now he’s making his move for power.”
“With empty drones?”
Clover waved his hand dismissively. “It’s a power play. He’s showing us he can put something in the air over every major city if he wants to.”
“We
ll, who is he?”
“He’s never been military. Direct recruit for his language skills. He’s a polyglot, speaks ten languages. After a stint in the CIA, he went to the DIA and rose through the ranks until he carved out a little empire for himself. That’s where I know him from. He handled the intelligence in the first Iraq war.” He paused. “He and his team specialize in things we might find distasteful.”
“So what does he want?”
Clover shook his head, picking up a stress ball from the desk and squeezing it in his palm. “How should I know? I think he’s unstable, always have. No moral compass.” He placed the ball back on the desk. “I’m ordering all his drones shot out of the sky.”
“Why?”
“To show him how I feel about his power play.”
“They’re just plastic. Who cares if they’re up there?”
“I don’t know what he’s got planned, but I’m not playing along. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few calls to make.”
Pete rose from the desk and headed out the door. At the last moment, Clover stopped him, saying, “Pete, I want full response units at the sites of the crashes. Just in case. You didn’t touch anything when you went out there, did you?”
“A hunk of plastic. They’re empty.”
“Hm,” he said, nodding. “Well, just in case, then.”
25
After a breakfast of corn cakes and water, Sam followed Jason through the jungles again. The terrain varied among rainforest, grassland, and what appeared to be swamps, marshes full of brown water. Several times they’d had to swim, and all she could picture was what Shui had told her, people in the water disappearing suddenly with the infected below them. And then she wondered if Shui ever got back to Shanghai as he had planned.
Near the top of a steep hill, she saw a wake of vultures swooping above them.
“That’s not a good sign,” she said, huffing.
“There’s a body down there. The vultures know where everything is. Some people out here think they’re telepathic.”
“You think that?”
“No. But one thing I do know about ’em is they taste like shit.”
Over one of the hills, they approached a lake, and Sam saw children playing in the water. They were nude, white skin, blond and brunette hair, not natives, and had fishing poles made of wood and string.
The instant they saw the two adults, they ran into the brush and disappeared. A little beyond that was a village.
The village seemed like a town that had died. Everything was made of wood or tin, looking like it could fall apart at any moment. Old, rusted trucks lined the passageways that passed for streets, and several people were out on porches, sipping drinks and talking.
A group on the porch of a home near them quieted, and the men rose, ushering the women back into the shack. One of the men pulled out a shotgun and approached them. Most were black, but many were white. Maybe even American, Sam guessed. They’d been out here so long that they appeared as much a part of the jungle as the trees and the sky.
“Who you be?” one of the men said in clear English.
Jason stopped walking, locking eyes with the man. “I’m here to see Tristan.”
“She ain’t here.”
“Just tell her Jason Shafi is here. She’s expecting me.”
The man backed away and spoke to another man on the porch. That man ran off and disappeared into the village. When he returned, he spoke in hushed tones with the first man.
“Well?” Jason said.
The first man lowered the shotgun and set it back on the porch. “She’ll see ya.”
26
Pete Brass stepped outside the building and sat on a curb, an empty parking lot before him. It was lunchtime. The only place to eat nearby was the commissary, though some people had taken to bringing food in. Though an ip hadn’t been spotted nearby in weeks, no one risked travel when they didn’t have to.
He wasn’t hungry. In fact, he felt a general malaise, something akin to working out really hard and having the body force the mind to slow down. An itch had developed in the back of his throat, and it annoyed him. Several times he had to wipe sweat away from his brow, though the day wasn’t hot.
“You okay?” Debra said, sitting down next to him and handing him an unopened can of soda.
“Fine. Thanks. Just a scratchy throat.”
She sipped her drink. “Clover’s taken over your office. He liked it better.”
“Fantastic,” he said dryly.
“You don’t like him, do you?”
“I’ve just known a lot of men like him. They think they can’t be wrong. It’s dangerous to have men like that in power.”
“Is that sour grapes I’m hearing?”
He shook his head, popping open the can. “No, I’m fine where I am in my career. I got another nine years left on my twenty, and I’m going to get a cushy desk job and ride it out until retirement, as long as some ip doesn’t tear my throat out before then. But it just gets to me sometimes that guys like him are the ones calling the shots.”
She shrugged. “They’ve always called the shots. You and I can’t do anything about it.” She paused. “That was kinda weird this morning. I mean, I know they were just drones, but thinking that they were from some other planet was crazy. It made me… I don’t know. Giddy, I guess, that we weren’t alone.”
“Well, it’s probably fortunate that we are. Imagine our barbarity but with advanced weaponry we stole from another civilization.”
“Is that what you thought they were? Weapons?”
“What else would they be? They hovered above population centers, just waiting for…”
Pete’s heart dropped. The itch in his throat, the sweat… He jumped to his feet and said, “I need you to drive me somewhere.”
“Where?”
“The hospital.”
All hospitals still operating had testing centers screening patients that had shown symptoms for the presence of Variola major, better known as smallpox. Traditional smallpox, Pete knew, took anywhere from seven to twelve days to develop to the point where the host began showing symptoms. But this strain, and others like it, had mutated, and it seemed the incubation period for each strain was shorter than the last. It was entirely possible a strain had evolved that had an incubation period of hours rather than days. He’d seen something close to it in the ips.
As Pete sat in the passenger seat of the jeep, Debra going much slower than he would’ve liked, he felt the acute discomfort of body aches. He had a slight fever, he could tell from the heat emanating from his face and the sweat that wouldn’t stop rolling down his back and scalp.
“What are we going to the hospital for, Peter?”
He looked away from her so he wouldn’t breathe on her. “I think…”
The words wouldn’t even form on his lips. The possibility was too horrific.
The hospital was busy, as all hospitals were, even though triage declined most people. Unless an injury or illness was life threatening, the hospital wouldn’t take you.
Pete had Debra park near one of the five or six trailers in the parking lot, where the tests were performed for smallpox infection, a pinprick. The site of the injection would inflame if the patient was infected, creating a bubble-like pustule. He’d seen it several times in his colleagues who’d tested positive and were bedridden afterward. But this new development, the insanity that now followed infection, was the most terrifying aspect. He decided if it came to that, if he felt himself losing his mind, he would end it by his own hand.
“Pete, what’s going on?”
“I think I’m infected,” he said, his eyes unable to move from the trailer.
A long silence between them.
“Does anyone know?”
“No. But you need to come with me.”
“Why?”
He looked at her. “Because I think you’re infected, too.”
Neither spoke for a long time. Pete eventually got out of the jeep and waite
d for her. She followed him in silence to the first trailer. A physician was inside with a single assistant. They wore what looked like spacesuits, even while relaxing on chairs. A chain ran across the entrance to the trailer, and one of them rose and unhooked it.
“I need a test, please,” Pete said, “for smallpox.”
27
Waiting for the results of the test, for any test, was always the worst part. Pete decided sitting around at work being eyed by Clover wasn’t where he wanted to spend the next hour, so he drove around the city with Debra.
The thing that had caught him off guard, that had caught everybody off guard, was how few people needed to die for society to begin the process of disintegration. The virus had only wiped out perhaps 15 to 20 percent of the world’s population, though numbers varied widely depending on which nation you asked, and yet it seemed like the other 80 percent could not function without them.
The buildings were dark without power, and the streetlights didn’t work. Cars, too expensive for the general public, were abandoned like leftovers in every nook and cranny where they could fit and stripped of any useful or valuable parts. The skyscrapers had been stripped just as thoroughly of anything useable and now were just hulking skeletons needlessly taking up space. The whole thing gave Pete a chill, and he remembered why he didn’t like coming into the city.
“You okay? Debra asked.
“No,” he said, reclining in the passenger seat. “No, Deb, I think I’m definitely not fucking okay.”
“Easy, don’t bite my head off.”
He swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m scared, too.”
Pete shook his head. “I’m not scared of dying. I’m really not. It’s what has to come before it that scares me. I’ll be in that much pain and I still won’t want to die. I’ll still fight just as hard. And then I’ll lose my mind and attack anything that moves. I don’t want that. I want to go in peace. My dad died in a bed surrounded by everyone he loved. He got to hold hands… say a prayer, listen to his favorite album.” Pete grinned. “Led Zeppelin IV. He could’ve listened to anything he wanted, and he chose that. He said it took him back to his childhood.”
Scourge - A Medical Thriller (The Plague Trilogy Book 3) Page 16