McDaniels looked back at Jeffries. “Sir?”
Jeffries shrugged. “Got me, Major. The Marines are a tenant unit here at Detrick, but I’m not sure what they’re up to.”
Several Marines dismounted from the vehicles. They were all rigged for combat and had night vision goggles mounted on their helmets. They scanned the area, their hands on the stocks of their M4 carbines. One of them hurried toward the assemblage standing in front of the Rid, his eyes on McDaniels. He started to salute, then noticed Jeffries and saluted him instead.
“Good evening, sir. I’m Lieutenant Bonevich, Bravo Company, Fourth Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion.”
Jeffries returned the salute. “Good evening, Lieutenant. Colonel Jeffries, commanding officer of USAMRIID. What, uh, what can I do for you?”
“We’ve been told to establish a defensive perimeter around the Rid, sir. At least until some regular Army troops can take over for us.”
Jeffries pointed at the LAVs sitting at the curb. “What, with those?”
“Yes, sir. That’s what we have, so that’s what we’ll use.”
“Is there a problem?” McDaniels asked.
“The Rid isn’t particularly well-defended,” Jeffries replied. “We have some good physical security, but there aren’t a lot of armed tenant commands here. We’re mostly medical and signals, and the Marines”—he nodded toward the waiting LAVs—“are pretty much the only combat component on the entire base.”
“And we were ordered to supplement security at the Rid,” the lieutenant added.
Jeffries checked his watch and nodded to Kersey. “Take Doctor Safire inside and start working on that,” he said, pointing to the Iron Key Kersey held. “Start your analysis as quickly as possible, and make multiple duplicates of the data. The sooner, the better.”
“I will,” Kersey said. “Doctor Safire, if you’ll follow me?”
Regina looked at McDaniels, and he said, “Go ahead, Regina. Make sure they can unlock the data.” She nodded and followed the taller woman inside.
Jeffries dismissed the rest, and as the assemblage turned toward the building, the short colonel looked at the Marine officer. “Lieutenant, do whatever you need to do to protect the building,” he said. “We have essential research about to start, and if the necromorphs show up, I’m hoping you can zero them.”
“Count on that, sir.” The confidence in the Marine’s voice was almost palpable.
“You know how to do that?” McDaniels asked.
“Head shots, sir. Though a round of twenty-five mike mike will probably make do.” The Marine motioned to one of the armored vehicles waiting at the curb.
“Probably not. You can blow a zed to pieces, and whatever’s still connected to the brain will try and come after you. Even if it’s just a head and shoulders, the stench will come at a chin-crawl. I’ve seen it, so believe it, Lieutenant.”
“Where did you see this exactly, sir?”
“New York City.”
The lieutenant looked at McDaniels for a long moment, then nodded. “Roger that, sir.”
“Major, we need to get going.” Jeffries adjusted his garrison cap and pointed at the Humvee that still idled at the curb.
McDaniels was surprised. “Where are we headed?”
“To the helipad. We’ll get aboard that UH-60 that flew you in, and then we hit the Pentagon. It seems you have a cast of thousands to report to, and now that you’ve completed your mission, I’m tasked to get you to them.”
“Don’t you need to review the data on the thumb drive?”
Jeffries snorted. “Doctor Kersey is the expert here, Major. She’ll be able to square that away probably before we’re wheels down at the Pentagon. Lieutenant… I’m sorry, son, what did you say your name was again?”
“Bonevich, sir.”
“You’re good to go with whatever you need to do. Just try not to shoot any workers here at the Rid. Some of them might look like zombies, but they’re just tired.”
The lieutenant managed a ghost of a smile, then turned to his waiting men.
McDaniels followed Jeffries to the Humvee, but he didn’t like it. He was getting tired of all the helicopter rides, but he couldn’t keep the folks at the Pentagon waiting, especially the senior ones. And if they had dispatched a full-bird colonel to hand-deliver him, then McDaniels knew the senior folks would have lots of stars and stripes among them.
***
The flight from Fort Detrick to the Pentagon took less than twenty minutes. The helicopter was met by two captains who ushered Jeffries and McDaniels toward the slab-sided heart of the American military. Above the rotor noise, McDaniels heard automatic gunfire in the night, and he stopped and turned, his hand resting on the butt of his MP5.
“What’s going on?” he asked the captain nearest him.
“New York wasn’t the only city with a sizeable infestation,” the young captain said. “Don’t worry, sir. We’re secure here.”
McDaniels fixed him with a glare. “Son, don’t try and blow sunshine up my ass. We are most definitely not secure if those things are anywhere nearby.”
“McDaniels, we need to get moving,” Jeffries said.
“And Major, we’ll need to secure your weapons before we go inside,” the other captain said.
McDaniels laughed. “Try and take them from me, Captain.”
Both of the junior officers looked at Jeffries. The colonel rubbed his eyes and looked at McDaniels as if he was a difficult child. “Major, I know you Special Forces types are wedded to your weapons and all, but really—”
“Colonel, I’m not giving up my weapons. I know what those things are capable of, and I know what they can do. They’re easily the biggest threat I’ve ever gone up against, and I lost an entire alpha detachment to them. If you, if anyone, thinks I’m going to give up my weapons just because we’re supposedly ‘secure,’ then someone’s going to be very disappointed. Are you reading me on this, Colonel?”
“Sir, security won’t let you in while you’re armed,” the first captain said. His tone was conciliatory and reasonable, but McDaniels saw something in his blue eyes—fear. He wasn’t afraid of McDaniels. He was afraid of what McDaniels had said.
“Then make it happen, Captain. Or have whomever I’m supposed to talk to come on outside to chat.”
“Major McDaniels!” Jeffries was starting to get hot under the collar, and McDaniels glimpsed what kind of commander he was: a man who liked to lead by intimidation, not example. “Give up your weapons! Now!”
McDaniels fought to keep the smile from his face. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t believe you’re in my chain of command. You’re not even in one of the combat arms, so I’m going to have to respectfully decline your order. I’m not giving up my weapons while this nation is under direct threat.” He pointed toward the nearby doors, which were manned by armed police carrying assault rifles. “Go on in and tell whomever it is we’re meeting that I disobeyed your orders and see how things work out. Otherwise, this show has gone as far as it’s going to go. Hooah?”
Jeffries glared at McDaniels, then marched toward the building. He conferred with the police for a minute. The junior officers shifted uncomfortably and exchanged glances, but said nothing. Behind them, the Black Hawk spooled up and lifted back into the dark sky. One of the police officers manning the door spoke into his radio, and two other cops stepped out of the Pentagon and joined them. Their eyes were all on McDaniels, who stood at ease and tried to look as non-threatening as any fully armed special operator could. The cops conferred with each other and Jeffries, and then the radio squawked. McDaniels couldn’t make out everything that was said, but the cops looked at each other in surprise. One of them shrugged and waved McDaniels forward.
“Major, you’re clear to enter with your weapons. I can’t believe it, but the word comes down from the very top.”
“Are you satisfied now, McDaniels?” Jeffries asked, the irritation plain in his voice.
“Yes, sir. I’m
practically slap-happy.” McDaniels walked toward the door. He half-expected the cops to rush him once he got close, but they only watched him. Two of them did break away from the group and walk off in different directions. McDaniels knew what they were up to. If he turned out to be a crazy man, the cops hoped their disparate positions would prevent them from taking fire before they could neutralize him.
“Sirs, we’ve got to hurry,” said one of their chaperones, and the two captains picked up the pace.
McDaniels followed them down a series of corridors that all looked the same. He hadn’t spent much time at the Pentagon, and the vastness of the facility was almost overwhelming. It seemed to him that they spent more time walking and standing in elevators than they had flying in from Fort Detrick. Finally, they made it to a hallway guarded by police and soldiers. Men in business suits stared at McDaniels like hungry tigers, muscles coiled and ready to pounce. McDaniels made them to be members of the Army’s Protective Services, which meant someone very important was inside the room.
Before McDaniels could reflect further on that, he was ushered inside a conference room. The room was dominated by a long, broad table flanked by eighteen high-backed chairs, nine on each side. Along both walls, more chairs had been placed; almost all of them were full, as were the chairs around the table itself. On either side of the rectangular room, large LED monitors glowed. One displayed a detailed map of the continental United States, while the second showed a more global view. McDaniels had just a moment to glance at the display of the U.S. and saw the eastern seaboard of the country was dotted with red pips. He knew what the pips designated.
Zombie infestations.
My God, they’re everywhere …
“So you must be McDaniels, the fellow who caused such a disturbance downstairs.” A small-framed man seated near the center of the table pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. McDaniels recognized the man as Secretary of Defense O’Hara. On either side of SecDef O’Hara sat generals and flag officers, all of whom were turned in their chairs to stare at McDaniels. McDaniels recognized some of them: General Walter Dotson, commanding general of United States Special Operations Command; Lieutenant General Josiah Abelson, commanding general of Army Special Operations; Admiral Rennick, the Chief of Naval Operations. It seemed that the collective body and soul of the U.S. military had gathered in the conference room, and all eyes were on him.
McDaniels suddenly felt self-conscious. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry for that.”
The SecDef waved a hand. “I’m not worried about it, Major. We’ve been expecting you. Have a seat.”
When McDaniels started scanning for a seat along the conference room walls where the aides and lower-ranking officers sat, the SecDef pointed to an empty chair across the table. “At the table, Major. At the table.” The SecDef glanced at Jeffries, then indicated another empty chair at the far end of the table.
Jeffries, suitably star-struck by such an august assemblage, practically scurried down the length of the conference room. McDaniels didn’t exactly take his time heading for his designated seat, either. He pulled out the chair and waited until the SecDef sat again. The chair was not as comfortable as it looked.
“We’ll go over the general status of the nation and our current posture before we ask you for your report, Major,” the SecDef said. He ran a hand through his graying hair. His dark blue suit jacket was draped over his chair back, and his white dress shirt was somewhat rumpled. A leather-bound notebook and a Blackberry smartphone lay on the table in front of him. He opened the notebook and looked around the room. Behind him, the army of military and civilian aides rustled, readying their support material.
“Who’s going to kick this off?” the SecDef asked.
“I’ll take that, sir.” The current chief of the joint chiefs, an Air Force general named Shockley, got to his feet and indicated the digital map of the world. In one hand, he had a laser pointer; in the other, a remote control unit McDaniels guessed was tied to the conference room’s audio-visual system. When the CJCS spoke, special microphones caught and amplified his voice.
“As always, everyone should know this session is being recorded. Things could get a little heated because all the services dropped the ball on this one. I’ve already been through this with the rest of the service chiefs, so I hope we can keep our tempers under control and save the blame game for another day.” Shockley looked around the room for a moment before turning to the map. “We’ve known about the so-called necromorph infestation in Europe for almost a month now. As far as we can tell, it started in the city of Kirov in the Russian federation, west of the Urals. Kirov was a leading biochemical center for the Soviet Union; they manufactured and stored not only weapon precursors, but completed biochem weaponry. Of course, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War, we were assured that the Kirov facilities had been idled and then dismantled. And that may have been the case. Our intel folks are split between classifying this as the work of a terrorist group, or an accidental release. It doesn’t really matter at the moment, as it appears that whatever happened couldn’t be controlled by the Russian government. If it was one of their weapons, they either never made an antidote or had destroyed it. Russia went dark two weeks after the first reported cases of, uh, zombieism caught our attention.” On the map, red pips multiplied throughout Russia and began an inexorable surge westward toward Europe. A smaller surge went through the Ural mountains, heading east into Asia.
“The rest of Europe wasn’t ready for what was coming their way, even though they’d had two weeks warning and had experienced isolated outbreaks in several cities, such as Berlin, Frankfurt, and Prague, anywhere infected Russians could travel. Quarantine procedures were implemented, but the initial implementations were extremely uncoordinated and very haphazard. At the last minute, Supreme Allied Commander-Europe tried to get involved and take charge of the situation, but it was too late. The Army didn’t have the rolling stock for this type of mission any longer, not after the cold war came to a close. And without synchronized cooperation with the individual countries and their militaries, it was a lost proposition. Though we did make a great amount of progress in securing Germany, that all came to an end when the cordon sanitaires between Germany and Poland fell. There just wasn’t enough manpower to hold back the zeds, and at that point, they numbered well into the millions. Conservative estimates say between twelve to fifteen million zombies marched into Germany alone. Once the defenses in Germany had been overwhelmed, the rest of Europe was just waiting for them. And as you know, Mister Secretary, at that time, all U.S. military assets in Europe were ordered to return to the continental United States. Regrettably, the lion’s share of our assets were lost to the horde. We recovered a substantial number of Air Force and Naval assets, but most land-based elements were overrun.” Red pips continued rolling through Europe. McDaniels noticed that, at the same time, flowers of pips started blooming in other parts of the globe: Saudi Arabia, China, India, Malaysia, Japan, Brazil, Australia.
“Understood, General Shockley. And as interesting as the cycle of events has been so far, I’m going to have to ask you to table the historical perspectives of your report and focus on the state of the nation,” the SecDef said.
“Of course, sir.” The electronic map behind General Shockley zoomed in to focus on the United States, with cutaways for Alaska and Hawaii.
McDaniels looked at the map closely. Clusters of red pips were all along the eastern seaboard; everywhere there was a major population center, red pips glowed. New York City, Long Island, Staten Island, and a good part of New Jersey glowed red. A sprinkling of pips had made it into suburban Connecticut, and more lay in Boston. Down the coast, Atlantic City and Baltimore had outbreaks of their own. As he had already suspected, Washington DC was full of red.
“We’re in pretty much the same boat as the European Union and most of Asia,” Shockley continued. “We just weren’t prepared at a national level for such a crisis. Our
understanding of the transmission cycle was correct. The Russian virus is passed from host to host by a fluid exchange, such as from a bite. But we overestimated the time it takes for an infected individual to die and reanimate.”
“Why is that? We had weeks of practical, real-time experience with Europe, including actual operational involvement,” the SecDef said. “That we could be caught flat-footed doesn’t make any sense.”
“Mister Secretary, if I may?” Heads turned toward the other end of the table, and McDaniels was surprised to see Jeffries was the speaker. The Secretary of Defense looked at him for a moment, then back at Shockley.
Shockley nodded. “Colonel Jeffries is our man with the medical credentials.”
The SecDef waved a hand. “Very well, Colonel. Go ahead.”
Jeffries stood. “Sir, the reanimation cycle was clearly understood when the outbreak began burning across Europe. There was very little deviation—a person would be bitten or otherwise infected, and two days later, they would die from an uncontrollable fever and sepsis. Anywhere from one to sixty minutes after death, the victim would reanimate. Obviously, once an infected individual was identified, the two-day cushion gave us enough time to try and deal with their condition medically, or at least detain the individual until they turned.” Jeffries paused and looked around the crowded conference room. “But the virus has mutated. Now, the cycle no longer takes forty-eight hours. It takes between four and twelve hours.”
“Jesus Christ,” the SecDef said after a long moment.
Shockley picked up the thread again. “And this is why we’re having trouble, Mister Secretary. We can’t find the infected persons quickly enough. They die, they reanimate, they go looking for food, they bite other people, and the cycle continues. We just don’t have the number of troops necessary to break the cycle.” He turned back to the map. “We lost every unit sent into New York City, and we’ll likely lose control over Washington within the next day or so. And at this time, Mister Secretary, I’d like to recommend the president and senior government officials are evacuated from the area.”
The Rising Horde, Volume One (Sequel to The Gathering Dead ) Page 3