The wall screen flickered and the message STAND BY came on. Joanna was reminded of the words RECORDED EARLIER and felt a chill. She wished she had taken the time to get some Advil before the call. She had a headache that wouldn’t quit.
A moment later the screen changed to a conference room similar to Joanna’s, though containing more people and a lot more brass. Colonel Ferry, her immediate boss was there, and he quickly made introductions at the Pentagon end. It was an assortment of senior Navy and Army officers, several civilians and a handful of scientific types. General Laurents thanked Ferry brusquely and took over, pre-empting any further pleasantries.
“Lt. Colonel Bishop, we are three days into the outbreak, and I want to be perfectly clear on what you role is at this point. Your mission is now simply to keep the facility, and specifically the lab, on lockdown until Dr. DeVries can reverse this. Are we clear?”
“Yes, general.”
“And where is Dr. DeVries? I expected he would be at this meeting.”
Joanna caught Peck’s smug look out of the corner of her eye. “Dr. DeVries was not requested, and I made the call that his time would be better spent in the lab working.”
There was come conversation at the Pentagon table that she couldn’t catch.
“And you’re absolutely certain the lab has not been compromised?”
Joanna nodded. “One-hundred-percent, general. The lab is secure.” She told the lie with a straight face.
“I want DeVries on the next call, Bishop. Be sure he’s linked in.”
“Yes sir.”
And for the next two hours that was the last input Joanna had, the fact that she was not giving the briefing putting a fine point on any question about her career. Men and women at the Washington end took turns providing their own updates. L-2207 had gone aerosol, escaping through an unsecured ventilation duct (Joanna’s responsibility, a fact reinforced by the way Colonel Ferry looked down at the table and how General Laurents shot a quick but hard glance towards the camera), making its first stop at the VA hospital adjacent to the Groton facility. The bug (and wasn’t that an ironic term for it?) had unanticipated side effects which quickly had their way with the 3,700 patients and staff. It wasn’t a simple transmission of fatal disease, as L-2207 promised, but a different class of infection. Within twenty-four hours the growth acceleration nature of the formula caused a complete, physiological change within its victims.
Those car-sized ticks scrambling over the expressway had once been human.
Infected females quickly mated and began laying eggs at thirty-six hours, around three thousand eggs each, and at forty-eight hours they were hatching. Newly hatched larva females reached maturity twelve hours later, mated and quickly produced their own eggs. It didn’t take a mathematician to see how rapidly the crisis was exploding. All that was needed for the ticks to continue populating was a single blood meal, and the population of Southern Connecticut was providing plenty of those.
An Army Colonel read off civilian casualty figures to date.
Another detailed the units mobilized to combat the infestation.
A Navy officer gave a detailed account of what had happened to the submarine facility near Joanna’s location. It was grim, and only a single sub had made it to sea. Whether it had been contaminated and the crew exposed remained to be seen, but Navy aircraft were tracking its slow movement off the East Coast, ready to drop a torpedo on it and send it to the bottom if it turned out the crew had been infected.
A female scientist confirmed data Joanna had on her iPad. Not only could a person be infected by the airborne L-2207, but human victims bitten and not killed outright by a tick attack were infected by a mutated form of the bacteria Borrelia. Both exposures amounted to the same thing. The victim quickly transformed into the giant, adult arachnids. It was a condition someone had casually referred to as “having Blackleg,” and the nickname stuck. Although the creatures were driven to kill for a blood meal, believed to be instinctual, they then broke the rules of the natural world and kept killing and feeding until too bloated to move. On the surface, an observer might think this would be beneficial, making them easier to kill, but there were so many, moving and multiplying so very fast, that it didn’t matter. An Air Force general was discussing carpet bombing and napalm along the I-95 corridor, which sparked some lively debate. Joanna barely heard him, distracted and staring at Spencer Peck, not knowing why. Her headache hadn’t abated.
The final briefing came from an Admiral working with the Center for Disease Control. He reported the outbreak had already spread into Rhode Island, north across Connecticut to the Massachusetts border, and west to within five miles of the New York state line. Somewhere along the way his monotone voice stated that the ticks would go dormant in temperatures under forty-five degrees.
Too bad it’s the middle of July, thought Joanna, forcing her thoughts - her strange and somehow sexually-related thoughts – away from her executive officer and back to the present. General Laurents took the floor again, looking into the camera.
“Joanna, no bullshit now. Does Dr. DeVries truly believe he can reverse this? Come up with an antibiotic vaccine?”
Joanna straightened in her chair. “Yes he does, General.”
“Good. We’ll have another call in six hours. I want him to tell me that himself.”
The screen went black.
Joanna left the conference room without a word to Peck, and locked herself in her office. As she searched her desk for Advil, she called the lab. A young male tech with red eyes and in need of a shave appeared on the video link, then went to find the doctor. A few minutes later DeVries came on, looking more worn down than his assistant.
“You told them what?”
“I had to, Doctor. You said there was a chance.”
“I said there was a slim chance, and that I’d need the help of another facility, and it would take months to accomplish, if it can even be done at all.”
“Still, it’s a chance, isn’t it?”
DeVries peered closely at the screen, softening his tone. “You’re exhausted, Joanna, and not thinking clearly. You should have told them the truth.”
“And then they would have insisted you be on the conference link, full video.”
DeVries looked down and rubbed absently at a large pair of side-by-side boils on his upper lip. The fingers he rubbed with didn’t look right.
“If I told them, they’d nerve gas us without a second thought in some half-assed attempt at containment. I’m trying to buy us time to figure a way through this.” The doctor said nothing, and she noticed he very purposefully kept his other hand below the table, out of sight. “How are you feeling?”
DeVries shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“Good. Keep working, Doctor.” Joanna disconnected.
There was minimal staff on duty for the overnight shift, only a couple of men at the consoles monitoring the complex’s support systems. The screens on the wall were running new images, each more horrific than the one before, but someone had muted the volumes. Joanna saw a hysterical Hispanic woman being restrained by her husband on some suburban street, the camera soaking up her grief, then panning over to an overturned twin stroller. It was empty. Joanna was glad she couldn’t hear the woman wailing.
“You never had any kids, Colonel?” Major Peck said quietly. She hadn’t noticed him walk up beside her.
“No. I put my career first. You?”
“I always figured there would be time later. Any regrets?”
She stared at the image of the empty stroller. “Sometimes.” Her headache was back, her joints had begun to ache, and now her lower back was throbbing near her kidneys. She closed her eyes. Peck smelled good. “New cologne, major?”
“Not wearing any.”
They looked at each other, his desire apparent, and her attraction to him both inappropriate and undeniable. She took his hand and led him from the command center.
“We’ll miss the Pentagon call,” he said, but
didn’t resist her pull.
The sex was strange and savage, a wild tangling not without pain. Joanna’s headache pounded through it even as he pounded into her, and the moment he climaxed she shoved him off, staggering to her feet, dizzy and holding onto a wall, her vision blurry. He reached for her but she slapped his hands away. “Get the fuck out,” she said, pushing him out of her quarters.
It was a half hour before she returned to the command center, her uniform sloppy and unbuttoned, and now the left side of her face was paralyzed with Bell’s Palsy, a classic symptom of Lyme. She looked like a stroke victim. There was no one here, the watch stations unmanned, and she looked towards the glass wall of the conference room. Major Peck, wearing only his skivvies, was standing at the table talking on the phone, rubbing briskly at his upper lip. It was warm in here, and a glance at a monitor showed Joanna that the complex’s air conditioning had been shut down and the heaters turned up. A digital readout indicated a general temperature of seventy-eight degrees. She returned to her quarters, passing numerous closed doors, the thumping and growling of rough sex coming from behind them.
Major Peck could barely stand as he listened to the general on the other end of the phone. His heart was thudding and his respiration was ragged. A pair of hairy growths had erupted from his top lip – his knowledge of Project Blackleg’s primary research subject informed him they were referred to as palps – and it was difficult to speak. Plus they itched like hell.
“Yes, general, that’s correct. Completely unfit for command. Yes sir, a risk to project security.” A twitch was developing in his right eye, and his body seemed to hurt everywhere at once. “No sir. No, I won’t. Yes sir, right away.”
He looked up to see Joanna Bishop standing in the doorway to the conference room, and his eyes widened at the sight of her. It wasn’t the 9mm service pistol she held that froze him in place.
“Who are you talking to…Spencer?” Joanna wasn’t feeling like herself, pain rippling through her body and her brain feeling like it was misfiring, clear thoughts replaced by dark flashes that were more irresistible feelings and impulses than anything else..
The major slurred when he spoke, still holding the phone. “I’m supposed to…relieve you…of command.”
Joanna made a clicking sound deep in her throat, then managed the word, “Traitor.” She shot Peck three times in the face. Stumbling back into the command center, she dropped the pistol, grunting as she started tearing off her uniform. It was so damned tight! She tried to sit at one of the terminals but her ass had grown too large for it, was still growing, and she kicked the swivel chair aside with one of the thick, black legs which had sprouted from her left hip. Her left hand was twisting and expanding, becoming a claw, so she used her still-normal right hand to call up the lab.
Although the video link connected, no one appeared to take the call. In the background she could a constant clicking that sounded like bacon frying. Something big and black skittered past the lab camera.
Her rear and abdomen swelled, pushing chairs aside, whitish-gray and glistening, and she raised her eyes to one of the wall mounted screens. A news helicopter showed a black blanket of giant ticks swarming up the Empire State Building, trying to force their way through windows. Another screen displayed a ground level video shot from a moving military vehicle, the raucous bark of a machinegun close by, the image of a Manhattan street choked with overturned vehicles and corpses. The shot panned to show the marquis over Radio City Music Hall heavy with huge, clinging black shapes.
None of it made any sense to her.
A male tick the size of a Hyundai scuttled through the command center and disappeared through a pair of double doors. Joanna caught the scent of fresh air from that direction. Someone had opened an exterior door. She began moving in that direction, her final clear thought telling her the exit stairs were wide, and if she moved quickly she might get her swollen bulk up and through it before she was too big.
She had to get outside. She needed to find a place to lay her eggs.
TAILLIGHTS
It was four miles from Lee’s Country Store to the cabin, two-lane blacktop twisting along the east side of Whitaker Lake. Patricia’s headlights showed a rock face on the left, a narrow strip of trees to the right and the moonlit surface of the lake beyond. On the passenger seat sat three sacks of groceries. Her trip to the store had taken longer than expected, just enough supplies to tackle breakfast, and she was making it up now, her Mountaineer racing along the deserted road.
Patricia’s window was down as she smoked, which she wasn’t supposed to do with Gabby in the car, but as long as she kept it out the window she figured it would be okay. In the back her two-year-old sat buckled into her car seat, babbling and singing little songs to a plastic elephant.
The deer trotted onto the road from the trees ahead, stopped and stared at the headlights.
Patricia screamed, her cigarette falling into her lap, and stomped the brakes, yanking to the right. Tires smoked and the SUV shot off the road, headlights dancing off the trunks of pines, bouncing and rocketing down a short embankment, branches snapping at the sides.
She had quick images of wrapping around a tree, Gabby’s car seat, Randy and the boys-
The Mountaineer plunged into Whitaker Lake, a wave washing over the hood and windshield, then cold water pouring through the open driver’s window. Oh God, she thought, as the nose tipped sharply and started down, the lake quickly filling the front seat. Gabby. She lunged between the seats, but the belt snapped her back painfully. Patricia fumbled for the buckle as the water rose to her chest, couldn’t find it.
Gabby was crying. “Mama!”
“Mommy’s coming,” she moaned, tugging, probing for the button. Her thumb depressed something and she was free, hauling herself up into the back seat as the SUV went vertical. She forced herself to think her way through the five point harness securing her daughter, got it open, and Gabby dropped into her arms with a splash. It was up to her chest now, and the cold water made Gabby shriek. She yanked the door handle.
Nothing.
She tore at it, pulling hard, but it wouldn’t open.
The child locks were on.
“No!” Patricia pushed Gabby up and into the cargo area, then kicked and pulled herself up and in as well. A moment later the lake followed, cascading over the leather seat back. She tucked her screaming daughter under one arm and began pushing at the rear hatch, one hand groping along the surface for a release lever. She had never been back here, always opened the hatch remotely with her key fob, didn’t even know if there was a handle.
There wasn’t.
The lake rose to her chest again, and Gabby was crying in one ear, thrashing and kicking at the water. Patricia pounded a fist against the glass as the SUV sank. She could see the shore in the moonlight, saw a campfire and a pair of boys standing side by side at the water’s edge. They didn’t move.
“Help us, pleeeease!” She battered the glass as the water rose to her chin.
The Mountaineer went under with a gurgle, the red of its taillights shimmering briefly before being swallowed by the cold dark.
Dale and Chance stood close together, staring out at the calm surface. Their scoutmaster had just finished telling a ghost story, and they’d come out here to look. Five years ago, he’d said, a woman and her toddler, right here. “On quiet nights like this one, you can still see her taillights glowing at the bottom of the lake.”
Chance looked at the dark water and shuddered. “Let’s go back to the fire.”
Dale nodded, and they headed back to join their friends. He looked at the water again. He didn’t see any taillights.
But for a moment he thought he’d heard thumping.
WILDFIRE
It was a catastrophe being repeated up and down the West Coast, and it was quickly growing out of control. The destruction doubled every twenty-four hours, spreading outward from numerous zero-points, and the loss of human life was staggering. Only four weeks in
and already Portland and San Diego had been lost, with Los Angeles wavering on the brink along with other cities.
Seattle was one of them.
Yet there remained lives to be saved, people trapped inside the urban centers, desperately needing relief and rescue. They needed heroes. They needed salvation from above.
“Tacoma, this is Bluetail. Drop was on-target, preparing for next run.”
“Roger, Bluetail. Be advised, Rodeo King is inbound to your location.”
Jake Fowler nodded and consulted the small clipboard strapped to his right thigh, holding a map of metropolitan and suburban Seattle, covered in pencil markings. “Tacoma, suggest that Rodeo King make his run up I-5 into downtown, heavy concentration. Tell him not to clip the Needle.”
A chuckle in his headset. “Will pass it on, Bluetail.”
The weather report called for scattered cloud cover and overnight temps dropping into the fifties as this part of the Pacific Northwest eased deeper into fall. Favorable flying weather, thought Jake, stretching the big aircraft north, away from the suburbs. Minutes later he banked left in a wide arc, cutting his speed and starting his descent. For a brief moment the two-hundred-foot wingspan of the Sonoma Mars, call-sign “Bluetail,” was silhouetted against a three-quarter moon. The cold, lunar glow revealed her colors, a royal blue belly under white fuselage, and a matching tail. It also gave a glimpse of her nose art, a curvaceous, forties-era pin-up wearing blue, Daisy Duke short-shorts, the source of her nickname. Miss Bluetail would have made any WWII bomber vet grin with nostalgic appreciation.
Wearing a weathered leather jacket with U.S. Dept. of Forestry patches on the shoulders and a Giants cap turned backwards, Jake’s eyes flicked across the dials; altimeter, airspeed, oil pressure, wind gauge, compass, back to altimeter… He was dropping smooth and steady, coming up rapidly on 1,000 feet, the deep hum of the engines filling the cockpit. Beyond the windscreen, forested hills in the night could be seen far to his right and left, and a flat, inky blackness waited ahead and below. A rosary swung gently from the overhead dials, the crucifix clattering against dog tags from a previous life hanging beside it.
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