by Jeff Gunhus
The clock on the stage certainly made it feel like something was heading toward them. Slow-moving, ticking down minute-by-minute, but no less terrifying in its inexorable march.
Something horrifying and unstoppable was on its way to Resurrection, but her intuition doubted it was what Keefer had described. Maybe it was something worse. But what that could be, escaped her.
She walked through the square toward Tent Two’s holding area. Hazmat soldiers tracked her progress with steely eyes, their guns pointed down at the ground in a resting position. That at least was an improvement over pointing them directly into crowds of civilians. Still, seeing the weapons made her shudder.
What the hell had Morris been thinking?
The billionaire fancied himself a true-life Tony Stark from the Marvel comic books he loved so much. In reality, he was a socially awkward computer nerd without many friends or connections other than the people who worked for him. Still, Cassie couldn’t imagine him getting involved in a biological weapons program with Keefer. It didn’t fit into his expertise or any of his weird childhood superhero fantasies. No, something was wrong.
But then there was the fact that Morris had obviously told Keefer about her. The problem with that was she hadn’t told Morris she was coming up to Resurrection. Nor had she shared her concerns about the data streams coming out of the mine. That meant he’d been spying on her. Probably accessing her Genysis computer. Maybe even tracking her car. It was a company vehicle so it would have been simple for him to keep tabs on her through the GPS system.
She grew angrier as she imagined Morris sitting in his office watching her every move on his computer screen. She felt violated. But if Morris did turn out to be involved in the military weapons program, him tracking her movements and hacking her computer was the least of the rising list of reasons for her to kick his ass.
She had to get through the next twenty-four hours first, she reminded herself. Fortunately, from what she could see, Keefer’s men had things under control.
The people in the holding area seemed content enough. They stood or sat on the grass in long, snaking lines that led in to the tent. People exited the back of the tent with bright green wristbands signifying they’d received the shot. Cassie wondered what they would do if they were told that there was a chance the vaccine wasn’t going to work.
She paused at the sight of a young couple sitting on the grass, tickling their baby’s nose with a dried leaf. The baby, a girl she guessed from the pink hat and gloves ensemble, giggled and laughed, bringing smiles to everyone around her. Cassie felt a pit in her stomach as she considered the implications of what was going to happen if the vaccine didn’t work. Everyone in the square was going to die.
Including Keefer.
If he was actually infected, that was.
Cassie walked away from the tent, enjoying the freedom granted her for being singled out for Keefer’s community peacekeeping duty. She looked up at the flags on top of the tents, still flapping in the breeze. The wind direction checked out. An accidental release of an airborne agent up where the mine was located in relation to the town would have blown straight into the valley and through the town. She wondered at the vitality of the virus. It’d been dissipated into an enormous area, subjected to ultraviolent rays and other radiation, and yet was still supposedly strong enough to infect the entire town. If the virus was this hardy, it seemed like there was no end to how far the contamination might spread regardless of what they did here.
But her questions to Keefer when they were back at the sheriff’s station had gone unanswered. He knew enough buzz words to scare them, but when the science behind what he was describing was challenged, he immediately hid behind his lack of scientific knowledge.
He’d promised her that he would advocate that she have access to the lead scientist on the project once the crisis had passed, so as to have all of her questions answered. Perhaps, Keefer had suggested, she might be able to bring her computer science expertise to help them model a safer containment protocol for the program.
Oh, she’d help them all right. Just long enough to plant back door access into every one of their systems. Hell, she might even be able to use the sensors she secretly attached to the data line in the lab as a way in. They were obviously using the main data trunks for the project since that was how she’d noticed the activity in the first place. Once she had access, she could use that to get into all their systems. If they were running this weapons lab, what else were they doing? She wouldn’t hesitate to blow the lid off their madness and show the world the illegal activity going on right inside US borders.
The only problem with the plan was she wondered if the world would collectively shrug at the revelation. A few peace protestors would take notice, maybe even a few politicians who’d won their offices with an anti-war message, but would there be a scandal? Would the outrage happen?
After so many years of carnage, battling an enemy with no moral boundary around how they were willing to wage war, an enemy that broadcast mass beheadings of nonbelievers, had live cameras in their torture pits of captured US soldiers, who used little kids with bombs sewn into their stomachs as weapons, she suspected that a huge swath of Americans might feel it was about damn time their government created a virus to wipe out the Jihadis.
The Chinese invasions through Asia, the instability in Russia, the chaos in South America, the street-to-street fighting against the Jihadis in European capitals, all of it showed the average American a world sliding toward darkness. American leadership was a phrase used only by nostalgic politicians. The new reality focused on withdrawal from the world, erecting walls to stop immigration and protecting the people that lived in the forty-eight states, whatever the cost. And if that cost included a virus that killed indiscriminately, but kept Americans safe, was the average citizen going to care? What if that cost was killing thousands of innocent people? Millions? Tens of millions?
Cassie hoped her country wasn’t so numb from her own losses that she had forgotten how to care about numbers like that. Cassie wasn’t that old, but she still remembered a time when the United States stood for something, a light in a darkening world. Imperfect to be sure, but unique in that it was at least trying to be a better version of itself and channel the more noble aspects of human nature. Most countries didn’t even pretend to try. They accepted the violent nature of man and capitalized on it.
Perhaps that was the reason for their relative rise in the world and America’s decline. Cassie liked to think not, but she knew it was a compelling argument.
Cassie walked up to a group of teenage girls, each with a green wristband, clustered together near Tent Two. She chatted with them for a while and heard that the shot hadn’t hurt at all and that they weren’t too concerned about their safety. They were more interested in how attractive one of the medics had been, challenging Cassie to go check the soldier out for herself. Cassie encouraged the conversation, anything to get the girls thinking and talking about something else. She gently probed whether any of the girls had heard about anyone trying to leave the town. They looked totally confused by the question. This was the only exciting thing that had happened in the area in decades, so why would anyone want to leave?
Cassie excused herself and headed to the tent as catcalls came from the teenage girls who thought she was on a mission to check out the hot medic. She grinned and gave them a wave, pretending to primp her hair before walking into the tent.
A hazmat soldier blocked her way. “Other side,” he said, his voice coming to her with the hint of digitalization from the speaker on his suit.
“I’m Cassie Baker. Colonel Keefer has asked me to––”
“Yes, ma’am,” the soldier said, cutting her off. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. Carry on.”
Taken aback by the response but honestly enjoying it just a little bit, Cassie nodded to the soldier and walked farther into the tent. There were lights strung up inside even though the sunlight provided adequate illumination
. The ground was covered with thin, industrial carpet, slanted slightly as it followed the grade of the lawn beneath it. She walked up to one of the two inoculation stations and watched it in action.
A middle-aged woman walked up from her spot at the head of the line and showed her wristband. A soldier scanned the barcode using a handheld device and then asked the woman to take a seat at the workstation. Next, the same soldier held up the device that appeared to take a picture of the woman. Cassie guessed that it did more than that. As she moved closer, she could see the computer monitor when a second soldier reviewed a screen of data, and was amazed by what she saw there.
The screen being scrutinized by the second soldier showed the woman’s vitals, pulse, oxygen intake, EKG, and, oddly enough, brainwave patterns. To the layman, the grid with multicolored wavy lines bouncing up and down wouldn’t look like much. But electro-brain fields were Cassie’s field of expertise. Tapping into them was the basis of all her work on full integration of prosthetics into the body. But even she had never seen such a sophisticated scan of the brain from such a tiny handheld device. She leaned into the soldier at the computer.
“Why are you scanning for brainwave activity?” she asked quietly.
The soldier jumped and quickly turned the screen to the side. “Ma’am?”
“It’s amazing that you can get a scan like that from a handheld,” she said. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“I’m sorry, but we’re on a schedule,” the soldier said, pointing to a digital clock counting down in the middle of the tent, closing in on an hour and ten minutes. “Can you refer all information requests to Colonel Keefer?”
Cassie stepped back. “Of course, sorry.”
She watched as the third soldier of the group, who Cassie noticed must have been the good-looking one her teenager friends were fawning over, readied the inoculation. To her surprise, instead of a store of premade syringes, the soldier checked the clock and then selected a vial from a shelf. He double-checked the markings on the vial, then inserted the syringe and drew out the fluid. Crossing to the woman, he swabbed her arm, but then stared at the clock, waiting. The instant the clock turned to the next minute, the soldier injected the woman.
A quick look down the line and she saw that each station had done exactly the same thing, administered the injection at the precise same second.
Why in the hell would they do that?
26
Rick had a bad feeling about things. The idea almost seemed laughable. Of course he had a bad feeling. His town was under martial law, guarded by armed men in hazmat suits, and every person he knew was infected with a lethal virus.
No shit he had a bad feeling.
As a Marine, he’d been in bad situations before. The day he lost his arm in Istanbul was about as bad as it got. He’d been stuck behind enemy lines, surrounded by a ruthless enemy hunting him and his squad down, trying to stay ahead of the bad guys, slowly running out of both ammo and options.
But at least he’d known what side he was on. He knew he could trust his men and he could trust that there were Marines somewhere busting their asses to come to their rescue. And, most importantly, he knew how to fight. Even in retreat, the enemy paid a price. He and his men made sure of it.
Fighting Jihadis in the desert was hell on earth, but at least there was clarity of purpose. Stay alive. Kill the bad guys.
He looked at the snipers lining the rooftops, guns trained on the crowd below. He dropped his eyes to the people herded together in the medical tents. In a weird juxtaposition that made everything feel that much more surreal, someone had piped 50s and 60s music in through the PA system, probably thinking it would help soothe some nerves. Hearing the Beach Boys sing Surfer Girl just made him feel like he was in an episode of the Twilight Zone.
There was no clarity in this mess. His own government had done this to his town. And the military had put a man like Keefer in charge of the whole thing. No matter how he tried to rationalize things, he just didn’t like the man. He told himself to put aside his first interaction with him on the mountain so that it didn’t cloud his judgment of the situation, but it was hard to do.
Knowing what he knew now, Rick tried to view that first meeting differently. Keefer was in charge of what was supposed to be a secret installation and had been sticking to his cover story when Rick had shown up. The whole story about the mine going full auto had been pretty brilliant, actually. It explained the need for security and the secrecy in setting the place up. He felt sure that if Manny hadn’t gone up to the mine on a whim, they wouldn’t have known anything about the place until it was operational. Or until the sirens in town had gone off.
It made sense now that the tree in the access road hadn’t been an accident, but an obstacle put there to ward off any joyriders. Still, somehow security must have broken down to even let either him or Manny as close as they did without being turned away. Rick didn’t hold anything against Keefer for doing his job, but he couldn’t shake the memory of the perfect ease with which the colonel had looked him right in the eye and told him one bold-faced lie after another.
Again, the man had just been doing his job and Rick was willing to push those lies aside. He would have done the same thing himself had their roles been reversed.
The problem was that he had a terrible feeling that Keefer was still lying to them.
He’d been told that he had free range throughout Town Square but, like anyone else, he couldn’t leave the confines of the quarantined area. According to Keefer, every structure outside the square had been searched and anyone not at the festival had been brought to the square. Outside of town, there were troops in expanding rings of security in case anyone got through.
He had to admit, these guys were thorough. But this added to Cassie’s point that they seemed almost too prepared, especially for the size of the outbreak. The next town was ten miles away through mountain passes. It seemed that if the virus could get that far from the mine, then it would mean it was already out of control. But they’d been ready to process over two thousand people within less than an hour’s notice from the event. Three hours from infection was the countdown. The sirens had gone off right after noon and the helicopter arrived seconds later.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Roscoe Peterson, the owner of the only decent bar in town, called as Rick walked by. “Can you believe this shit?”
Rick slowed down, but didn’t stop. “I keep hoping I’m going to wake up with a hangover and an unbelievable bar tab at your place.”
The man laughed. “Ain’t that the truth. I think business will be good after this. Everyone’s going to need a drink or three when this is over.”
Rick waved and kept walking, knowing through experience that Roscoe always liked to get in the last word. He didn’t have the heart to say what he was really thinking. After this was over, people would need a drink or three, just like Roscoe hoped. But then, vaccine or not, people were going to pack up and get the hell out of Dodge.
What parent in their right mind would raise a family in the shadow of a biological weapons facility with a proven track record of nearly killing everyone in town?
No, once this was over, regardless of how much money the government ponied up for damages, the town of Resurrection was done for. He didn’t want to slow down long enough to really think through what that meant. He couldn’t. The town was the one thing he’d held onto when it seemed like the rest of the world had lost its mind. But it wouldn’t survive this. There was no way. A year from now the place would be a ghost town and Rick knew it.
Before Dahlia and Charlie, the idea of losing the town, losing his anchor, might have sent him spiraling. But as he walked across the square, he realized he would be all right as long as he was with Dahlia. Funny, she always thanked him for looking out for her and Charlie, but they were the ones saving him.
As he walked toward the nearest armored assault vehicle to get a closer look, he remembered what he was thinking about before Roscoe had stopped him to c
hat.
The sirens. The ones that’d been installed the night before.
That part made sense. If they intended to bring the facility online, adding the air sniffers and a warning system checked out. Only it wasn’t an early warning system. If the alarms went off and the helicopter appeared overhead seconds later, and then the AAVs and the troops not long after that, then it meant that the breach had occurred much earlier. The road down the mountain from the mine took thirty minutes to drive, maybe twenty if you went like a bat out of hell. Not only that, but even the most elite fighters needed time to scramble and form up.
The breach had to have occurred well before the sirens went off in town. Certainly, the sensors attached to them sent the data that confirmed the virus was in town. So why all the theatrics? The sirens, low flying helicopter blaring instructions, the stampede of people. It all seemed unnecessary.
“Sir, stop there please,” the soldier in front of the AAV said. The soldiers on either side raised their guns and aimed them at his chest. It looked like they still had their safeties on, but it still didn’t sit right with him having US soldiers pointing loaded weapons at him.
“I’m Sheriff Johnson. Colonel Keefer gave me permission to look around.”
“I know who you are, sir,” the soldier responded, the sir clearly not meant as a sign of respect. “This is the edge of your area.”
Rick looked back and forth between the men. Like all the soldiers, about half of them had the reflective visors on their helmets, but he could see the faces of the others. They struck him as being a little older than he expected. Soldiers on this kind of duty tended to be a little greener. Usually babysitting a facility was for new recruits or those on some kind of modified duty. But these guys had the look of grizzled veterans.
“Easy, guys,” he said, “we’re on the same side here. I’m a Marine, not one of these civilian pukes.” The guns edged down a few inches. “I just came over to admire the machinery. We didn’t have anything like this in Iran.”