by S. Ganley
"Six minutes until the drone is in position," Dr. Woods announced to no one in particular. His staff were all gathered around banks of monitors preparing to begin digesting the data coming from the drone as soon as it began transmitting over the target. They were now racing against the clock to find out what they were dealing with and discover a cure.
After word reached the crisis center about the incident at the hospital in Camden it didn't take them long to discover that the intern from the Geological Survey team who had reported from close to the mine, had managed to squeak past a check point and reach a major city before succumbing to the virus. Reports from that hospital and others in that immediate area of Camden indicated increasing numbers of patients with symptoms resembling exposure to the H2N2 virus. Dr. Woods had arranged for the hospital to send blood tests results immediately to the field center and CDC laboratories, if those tests confirm that this new outbreak in Camden matched the signature of the virus they were dealing with in the quarantine zone, then they would be facing a confirmed breach of the quarantine. The reports of Carl's activities at the hospital noted that he had spent hours in a crowded waiting room while as many as one hundred people had come and gone during his visit. Even though they still needed to wait for confirmation from lab results, Dr. Woods already knew that they were on the verge of an out of control epidemic. In the hours that Carl had visited that hospital waiting room, he had likely infected everyone who had come and gone from there. Those same people would have continued spreading the virus and by the time the sun rose on a new day, it was already so far out of control that their only hope of containment rested on discovering a cure. Pulling up a map of the area surrounding Camden, Dr. Woods shivered as he counted at least ten airports within easy drive of the hospital, including an international airport in Philadelphia. The proximity to other major metropolitan areas alone was enough to make him feel faint.
The radio mounted on the desk next to his computer monitor crackled to life, “Crisis center, this is flight control, do you read?"
"Yes, this is crisis center and we read you loud and clear," Dr. Woods replied.
"Ummm, Dr. Woods, this is the flight director here, Captain Cochran, and I need to see what you make of some unusual activity we are seeing."
Dr. Woods looked at the mission readouts, the drone was still at least five minutes out from its primary target zone, "Ok, Captain, but according to our readings here the drone should still be quite a ways short of the target area."
"That’s correct doctor, I am sending a direct feed to your station. This is real time video and thermal imaging from a few miles down route 70 from our launch point."
Dr. Woods watched his screen as a video window appeared and started to resolve. The view was taken from an aerial platform and the readings in the corner of the screen showed the altitude to be 500 feet with an air speed of 180mph. As the image came into focus it took Dr. Woods a moment to understand what he was seeing. The highway and surrounding countryside were visible whipping by underneath the drone with the angle being shot out to the front and down from the camera mounted under the nose of the plane shaped UAV. As the view sped along the open and bare highway he started catching a glance here and there along the road of human shaped figures moving in the opposite direction of the camera. At first there were a few scattered figures then a larger clumping and finally a crowd of what must have numbered in the hundreds. At the speed the UAV was moving he only had seconds to make sense of what he was seeing. The video window that the Captain was directing to his screen had typical controls for computerized video along the bottom, including rewind, pause and frame by frame. Dr. Woods backed the video up until the first tendrils of movement were visible and then started the view forward again in a slower frame by frame view. This time through the video there was little doubt about what he was seeing, there were people, at first a handful, and then a couple dozen and then hundreds, moving down the highway and through the surrounding countryside as if in the middle of a poorly organized parade.
"Doctor?" asked the flight director.
"Yes, yes Captain I am reviewing the video at this time, I am not really sure what to make of it."
"There is one more thing, the UAV's thermal imager runs in conjunction with the video feed. The readings we measured are not exactly what you would expect when passed over human targets in the open like this."
A picture in picture window opened on top of the video screen with the same view of the video but in a black and white setting with shades of yellow and reds coming and going following the motion of the camera. Dr. Woods knew that a thermal image of a human being against a neutral background, not overly hot or cold, should result in readings that showed shades of yellow and orange depicting the body heat normally cast off from a person. What he was seeing now was the outline of people but with only a sliver of color almost in the light yellow range emanating from the head. The bodies he was seeing now were registering cold, without any body heat. The only other time he had seen something like that was in cases when thermal imaging was used to locate dead bodies hidden from view.
"Doctor, could we be looking at survivors trying to make a run for it out of the contaminated areas?" Asked Cpt. Cochran.
Dr. Woods considered the question as he stared intently at the images on his computer screen. The thermal imaging of the people under the UAV made perfect sense if he was to introduce his original zombie theory into the equation. The most defining factor of a zombie is that the body is dead with only the most primitive of brain activity directing motor functions and their overriding impulse to feed. The absence of any measurable body temperature with the exception of a tiny region in the head fit that theory like a glove. If what he was seeing on the screen was in fact a migration of zombies, it was likely they were being drawn by some impulse towards the road blocks just a few miles ahead of them. He didn't think it was sound and line of sight was also out of the question, which left smell.
"Captain, I need to know the wind direction in your area for the last two to three hours. I need to know immediately." He exclaimed into the microphone.
There was a pause over the open microphone while he searched for the information, "Ok, here it is, local weather readings for the last six hours show an easterly wind with gusts up to eighteen miles per hour, currently gusting at six."
The wind was blowing from the direction of the road block into the quarantine zone. With gusts that high there was a good chance it was carrying the scent of all those men at the roadblock as well as the multitudes of people who had driven up to the checkpoint and turned around, directly into the infected zone. They were looking at a horde of zombies rushing headlong to what they viewed as a self-service buffet waiting just up the road from them.
"Captain Cochran, the people approaching the roadblock are hostiles. They cannot under any circumstances be allowed to get within arm’s length of your men or be permitted to make it pass your positions."
"Doctor, you understand that any such orders for me to take that kind of action is going to need to come from a military authority. I suggest you contact my superiors and explain yourself. I will continue the UAV mission as planned and will alert our checkpoints that refuges are approaching their positions. At this time our orders for level of force are not clear enough for us to take any action beyond verbal warnings to dissuade those people from exiting the zone."
There was little sense in arguing with the man, he knew as well as anyone how rigid men like Cpt. Cochran could be when faced with standing orders that did not allow him the discretion to take action like he was asking. His career could be made or broken by what he did in the next few minutes, ordering his men to open fire on hundreds of civilians was not a decision he would ever make on his own.
"I am going to contact the White House for those orders Captain. You need to understand that those people approaching your positions are extremely dangerous, no matter what happens you cannot allow your men to come in contact with them. They will make ev
ery effort possible to bite anyone they can get their hands on. Anyone bitten will contract the virus, at this point we don't have a cure for it. I hope you understand what I am telling you Captain." Dr. Woods hoped this man was paying attention and would pay heed to the seriousness of what he was saying.
#
Army Captain Noel Cochran was on his last year of a two year tour as the active duty commander for this National Guard unit based out of Trenton, New Jersey. As a combat arms officer he had been offered the option of company commander for this unit for a two year hitch or a three year ride as the training officer of a regular army basic training unit in Delaware. On the fast track to reach major, he elected the short tour, from here he knew he would be reassigned to a deployable unit in a larger division level command, after getting his first combat tour under his belt his promotion was all but in the bag. It was now just a matter of surviving this last year with these weekend warriors. It didn't take him long after taking over command to understand why this was not a preferred assignment by other officers and also why it had been given only a two year obligation. Working with National Guard troops was much different than the professional soldiers he was used to in regular army units. The biggest part of his day was spent with disciplinary actions, late for duty, failure to show up for duty, out of uniform, missing required equipment during inspections, drunk on duty, sleeping on duty, disorderly conduct, and those were just the instances from the prior week. Out of a three hundred and forty man unit, he could count on one hand the number of soldiers who he had any confidence in actually doing their job to standards. His biggest ally in the unit was a former active duty Staff Sergeant who had two combat tours in the Middle East to his credit. He had let his term of enlistment expire in exchange for a reenlistment option with a National Guard unit close to his family in New York. His father was in the late stages of cancer and his mother was finding it more and more difficult to run their family craft shop by herself so he had elected to put his own career on hold to return home and help out. The National Guard offered him an instant promotion to Sergeant First Class and Cpt. Cochran had posted him as the units interim First Sergeant after finding the actual First Sergeant taking unusual liberties with one of their lower enlisted female clerks in his office.
When the orders had come down for the unit to mobilize in response to a natural disaster, Cpt. Cochran had begun to worry about how any screw ups on this mission would possibly effect his own personal career. He had been pleasantly surprised that from the first muster to moving out and deploying to the specified checkpoints that not one thing was yet to go wrong, in fact the men were actually moving and acting like real soldiers for the first time since he had taken command. He thought that perhaps the knowledge that they were carrying live ammunition and were being put into a situation where their neighbors and friends could potentially see them in action may have inspired them to dig down deep and put forth a professionalism that he was unaware any of them possessed. Once he had his orders in hand and his company deployed in the most effective arrangement possible to put a tight noose around the area of concern, he had taken it upon himself to personally inspect each roadblock and post. His confidence that this deployment could end up being a shining star on his record was taking shape as he found all of his men standing to their duties confidently and professionally.
All of the confidence he had built around this mission was now starting to circle the drain with the outcome of this drone flight. The crisis center's assessment of the meaning of the crowds of people even now approaching their positions had him concerned. He could see from the video that something was just not right about these people, they moved awkwardly and why were they all on foot? It had to be at least several miles from the closest town where they must have started from. Then there was the thermal imaging results. He had never seen a live human being show up on those sensors in such fashion before, it was literally like he was looking at a large collection of dead bodies instead of live people. When Dr. Woods tried to convince him that all of these people should be treated as hostile and not be allowed to get close to his men or pass through their positions he had said so with such conviction and an ominous note to this voice that Cpt. Cochran had almost been convinced to just follow those instructions without further authority. This doctor knew much more about what they were possibly dealing with than his own commanders did. If he felt there was an imminent threat from these people then the chances were good that they should be treated as hostile. On the other hand if he acted decisively in a manner that left civilians dead or injured by action from troops under his command, that could be a career ending move that possibly could also see him ending up facing serious charges on top of it. The prescribed levels of force with his orders for this containment mission were actually vague, they alluded for the mission to prevent access into or out of the designated zone. Beyond that there was nothing in those orders that either allowed or prevented him from using force to accomplish that goal and if he was to use force what level would be considered appropriate in these circumstances. From the video he had reviewed the civilians approaching his positions were unarmed, but they also outnumbered his own forces by at least twenty to one. There was also the possibility that these civilians had been exposed to a contagion of unknown origin and that alone constituted a threat not only to his own men but to the civilian populations beyond this roadblock that he was arguably supposed to be protecting. The whole thing was giving him a headache, he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. He just hoped to hell that Dr. Woods could convince an authority well above his head to amend his orders and tell him exactly how they wanted this situation dealt with. In the meantime he decided it was best to visit his men and make sure all of them were alert and ready, they would soon have visual contact with the approaching crowds and would be looking to him for instructions. Right now he intended to tell them to hold their fire, hold their ground and continue to use verbal commands to order the civilians back.
Chapter 9
Miranda Stevenson pressed a handkerchief tight against her mouth as the couple in the row right behind her kept up a steady stream of mucus spewing coughs and sneezes. Her flight from Philadelphia to Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia was a short one hour hop, but was made much more uncomfortable with the small plane being crowded and these two behind her spreading germs throughout the cabin. Even at the airport terminal in Philly she had spotted these two sickies and had made a concerted effort to steer clear of them, it was only blind luck that once boarding began she realized they were sitting right behind her on the flight. She had quietly inquired with a stewardess if she could change seats and was informed that the flight was completely full leaving her stuck listening to them hacking and coughing while trying to dodge the occasional spray of spittle from a cough or splash of snot from a sudden sneeze. The last thing she needed was to catch a cold this weekend.
Graduating from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business, she had been approached about this job opportunity right outside of Washington, DC. The high end fashion chain, Nordstrom, was opening a new corporate office in McLean, Virginia and was looking for young, fresh talent to staff their offices. One of her professors had actually approached her during her last semester with an opportunity that she just couldn't pass up. If she was willing to attend their 5 week in house business training program and did well in it, they would not only offer her a management position on the spot, average salary in the mid to high eighties, but they would also send her through graduate school on their dime. At only twenty three years old she considered herself extremely fortunate to be presented with such a wonderful opportunity before she had even graduated.
She had come from a humble background, her mother was an elementary school teacher and her father a drunk who floated from various construction jobs with most ending with him fired for either missing work or showing up too loaded to stand straight. Miranda had busted her ass in high school to get the best m
arks and be involved in all the right organizations in order to pave the way for a scholarship at a descent college. When she graduated in the top ten of her high school class she was offered a full academic scholarship to Dartmouth and from there all the cards just fell into place for her. Working a part time job as a personal trainer for the schools fitness center, she was able to afford a rent sharing plan with two other girls for a small three bedroom apartment just off campus allowing them to walk to classes and work. With the job and apartment she was able to put her shattered home life behind her and make a clean break to start her new life. When her lease was up after graduation, her mother excitedly welcomed her home for the two months she had to wait between graduation and the start of her training in Virginia. Her father had been less than enthusiastic about another mouth to feed in the house. But once he learned what her starting salary would be his entire attitude changed and he had spent the entire two months kissing her ass and dropping hints about new televisions and appliances her poor and loving parents were in desperate need of.
All through high school and college she had forgone the nicer things in life, she had denied herself any long term relationships or recreational activities all in the pursuit of ensuring her future was established. For as long as she could remember she had sworn to herself that she would not end up like her parents, living from pay check to pay check, fighting constantly and growing old and bitter well before their time. Now that everything was on track in her life she decided it was time to let her hair down and start living a little. She was coming to Virginia two weeks early to get herself established with a place to live and learn her way around before jumping into her new job with both feet. The employment offer had included a very nice relocation stipend, since the sum of her belongings fit into the two battered suitcases in the luggage compartment beneath her feet, she was planning on using that money for the upfront costs of an apartment, a complete new wardrobe and she had even given some thought about looking around for a nice used car as well. She had spent several hours in the computer lab on campus researching the area around Northern Virginia where she would be working. She had narrowed her apartment hunting down to three locations, all within an easy commute by public transportation to work, shopping and entertainment. She was excited about the prospect of starting a new life in a new location. It would be a completely fresh start for her with no one knowing her background enough to prejudge her based on the failure of her own parents. She wanted to make new friends, find a boyfriend and actually start enjoying life for once.