by Howard, Bob
What had become tears in Kathy’s eyes were quickly wiped away as she joined the Chief and Captain Miller when they began to shout words of encouragement to the pilots of the helicopter. As impossible as it appeared to be, the helicopter was falling, then laboring against the tremendous forces of gravity as it fought to stop its downward motion. Then it was hovering for a split second only inches from the water that was being whipped into the air by the turmoil above. Then it literally sprang upward with as much power as the pilot could give it.
The firing had stopped when the helicopter went into its steep bank, and from Fort Sumter they could see that someone had managed to close the crew door. If they hadn’t, the soldiers would have spilled onto the carrier’s deck or in the water before the pilot could get control. As the spinning rotors of the aircraft drew further away from the smoke on the ship, it became thicker at the side of the superstructure that rose from the starboard side of the carrier. Something was on fire there, and the smoke was becoming thicker and blacker as they watched.
“Captain Miller, Sir.”
The radio operator was holding up a microphone in the Captain’s direction, and he had a broad smile on his face.
“We have radio contact with the crew, Sir. Lots of bruises and bumps on heads from that wild take off, but no real injuries. One possible broken arm on the soldier that closed the door because he didn’t have time to get himself secured.”
“Tell the pilot we don’t have time to give out medals right now, but they all deserve a steak in the mess hall tonight.”
The radioman was happy to relay the word.
“I can’t wait to debrief Sergeant Graham,” said Captain Miller.
******
The debriefing was as interesting as they had expected it to be. When they were done and able to piece together the individual accounts of the pilots, Sergeant Graham, and each of the soldiers, it had come as no surprise that their escape from the carrier had been the result of circumstances becoming perfectly aligned, followed by the quick thinking and fast reactions by everyone.
They were only met on deck by a handful of men holding weapons, and they were so focused on their own three men as they got out of the helicopter that they were rushed away ahead of their captives. They totally forgot that the only reason the soldiers couldn’t use their weapons was the hand grenade. Once they were separated from the helicopter crew and soldiers, the hand grenade was no longer a threat to them. That was the perfect alignment of circumstances. The fast thinking and quick reactions followed when the Sergeant pulled his handgun and shot the man with the grenade and just as quickly shot the nearest captor. His soldiers grabbed for weapons and decimated the other captors while the pilots did what they were trained to do.
There wasn’t time to assess the situation on the carrier where the fire appeared to have spread to a fuel source. It may have been supplies or anything else, but whatever it was it burned easily. The men on board the helicopter didn’t have time to see what it was or what was happening from the moment the wheels came off the deck, and as the Sergeant described it, most of them were in a pile against the inside of the starboard door. If Corporal Langdon hadn’t closed it, Sergeant Graham guessed the helicopter would have been considerably lighter after dumping everyone overboard.
Once the initial adrenaline rush began to wear off, the Sergeant had managed to climb up front to thank the pilots for their fast reactions when the grenade had exploded. He also wanted to see if they had observed any useful intelligence because the pilots had the best view of the people on the carrier before they staged their escape. They both had the same information, and it was a curious observation. They reported that the people who had come onto the deck from the door of the superstructure wore uniforms, but they weren’t military. Both pilots agreed that they were dressed like security guards, and their training was basic at best.
The pilots of the helicopter were shown a recording of their harrowing escape, and they watched in stunned silence. They knew they had to let the helicopter fall off of the carrier and generate lift at the same time, but they probably wouldn’t have tried it if they had been given the time to think about it first. They went wide eyed when the rotors passed within inches of the safety rails and the deck, and they gripped the arms of their chairs with white knuckles as they watched the helicopter win the battle over gravity just as their wheels got wet.
“Curious,” said Captain Miller. “They were so disorganized that they didn’t even try to shoot at the helicopter. If they had used the RPG they had in the boat that day in the marshes, they couldn’t have missed.”
“My thoughts exactly,” said the Chief.
Kathy added, “These people can’t be military. Who do you think they are?”
One of the communications officers in the control room interrupted with some bad news that wasn’t entirely unexpected. Nonetheless, it would have been nice to have short range radio contact just a bit longer this time.
“Sir, radios are down again. This time I’m not sure we’re going to be able to get them back. We’ve been patching into new satellites every time we’ve lost the last one, and I don’t think there are any left in orbit we can use.”
Captain Miller nodded at the man without showing any concern, but he was worried. Without radios, they couldn’t coordinate with the other shelters.
“See what you can do about short wave connections, Private. We haven’t always had satellites and cell towers.”
As the pilots had watched the recording and the debriefings were done, the control room had become a bit more crowded. The rest of the Mud Island survivors began to gather in the room to see what we were going to do next. We were facing the threat from the biggest horde since the apocalypse began, and we were confused about the people at Patriots Point. They were the enemy, but other than having assets we had to wonder what kind of threat they posed to us.
The rescue of the three men followed by their skyjacking of the helicopter had been unplanned, but the information we had gained about our neighbors at Patriots Point had been invaluable. They were undoubtedly paranoid, but they had not displayed any hostility until today. When they had the opportunity they hadn’t functioned well enough to pull off what should have been an easy capture of the helicopter and prisoners.
“I have an idea,” said Hampton. “We should get someone inside their operation.”
The Chief nodded, “Good idea. I’ll go. I think I can get in easier than anyone else.”
More than one of us laughed, Tom put into words what we were all thinking.
“Maybe we can get one of their security guard uniforms in your size, Chief.”
Almost everyone in the room tried to volunteer, but Hampton was arguably the most logical choice. He would blend in the best, but he also had that mixture of talents that gave him the best chance of getting back out alive. After some debate there was a gradual acceptance that we couldn’t all go, but after I had volunteered, I had a moment of self satisfaction at the thought that I wanted to go and could have been as good a choice as others might have been.
I thought to myself, “Ed Jackson, former nerd gamer. Husband, father, zombie slayer, and wannabe spy.”
When I snapped out of my private world, I found that plans were already in motion. Infiltration appeared to be easy because there were so many places that could be weak spots in their defenses. It was once and for all decided that Hampton would fit in better at the State Ports Authority because it turned out that he had actually worked at the docks when they had hired temporary workers. He knew his way around the cranes and the container ships. Besides, there was so much activity around there that one more person wouldn’t be noticed. There weren’t any new ships coming in and waiting to be unloaded, but the people at Patriots Point had them working on something. We just needed to know what it was.
Over our usual collection of maps and digital satellite photos we searched for places that would be spots where Hampton wouldn’t be seen as he entered the area.
We knew they would have plenty of security because they couldn’t let any infected get inside their defenses. We also had mountains of scouting reports that had been collected ever since we had discovered the existence of the secretive people living over there.
They were collecting containers from ships for all kinds of reasons. Some were obvious reasons such as food and medical supplies. With hundreds of thousands of containers to search, they needed an army of people to inventory every container at three different terminals. Most were already offloaded from ships, but there were still a half dozen ships with as many as ten thousand containers on each one. We had to choose our insertion point carefully, but it was only a matter of time before we found the perfect spot.
We turned our attention back to the Yorktown and watched the black smoke rising away from the ship. A fire fighting team had extinguished the blaze, but the smoke was still too thick for us to see anything useful.
******
If Marshall Sayer was having a bad day before, it was nothing compared to what he felt like after hearing the helicopter had been captured and then escaped. Ted Atwater had conveniently disappeared to another part of the ship while Marshall was venting his anger. Anton Mikhailov wasn’t aware of what had happened yet, so he didn’t know to make himself scarce the way Atwater did.
“Where’s Mikhailov?”
His usual way of storming into the lab didn’t surprise anyone, so they didn’t even look up from their work. Mikhailov was just disappointed because he couldn’t get away this time.
“Maybe you can give me some good news. No one else in this ship of idiots has anything good to report these days. Those fools made it all the way back from patrol just to get themselves blown up by one of their own grenades.”
“Is that what that was?”
Mikhailov only had a little of the information, and it had come from the guards who had shot one of their own men. After one of them had died in the gunfire that had followed the explosion, he had turned and had almost bitten the others. He couldn’t believe that years later people were still being caught off guard and being bitten by their friends. He also couldn’t believe they didn’t restrain the man and deliver him to the lab. He needed more test subjects, especially those who had died by means other than a bite wound. He had plenty of test subjects who had become infected by being bitten, but he needed more that had died of other causes and then turned.
“Yes, that’s what it was,” snapped Sayer.
Mikhailov didn’t look up when he asked Sayer if he would mind reiterating to his men not to dispose of dead people because he needed them in his lab.
Sayer stopped short and stared a hole into the back of Mikhailov’s head.
“I guess I can take that to mean you don’t have any good news, either.”
It was more of a statement than a question.
“If I have a breakthrough, you will be the first to know,” mumbled Mikhailov.
“In case you have lost track of time, doctor, you’ve been working on a cure for over five years. I’m starting to feel like you’re just making sure that you’re safe while the rest of us are putting our own necks on the line.”
The sarcastic remark didn’t faze the doctor in the least bit. He knew full well that Sayer didn’t do anything that would risk his own neck. He had most likely been one of the safest people in the world since CEL Day One.
“We have learned something you might find interesting,” said Mikhailov. “It’s not a cure, but it is interesting.”
Sayer perked up a bit. He didn’t have to answer to anyone, so he wasn’t under any pressure to produce results, but he was driven by his own success. Anything that wasn’t known before would be interesting to him. He would at least be able to revel in the fact that he knew something that other people didn’t.
“Well, don’t just sit there and wait for me to ask. Spit it out.”
Mikhailov let out an exasperated sigh and explained.
“The pathogen can be transmitted from one human to another through body fluids. That includes any fluid that goes from an infected person to a living person.”
Sayer interrupted, because there was something he always wanted to know.
“We already know that, doctor, but at what point does a person become contagious? If they get bitten but haven’t died yet, are they able to infect someone else?”
Mikhailov wished he could tell Sayer he was a moron.
“I won’t be able to test that question until you tell me to try it on living subjects. So far we have only done tests on subjects we knew to be infected. This isn’t Auschwitz.”
Judging by the last part of his answer, Sayer understood Mikhailov to be insinuating that he wouldn’t test that question by knowingly infecting living subjects. If someone was bitten already, he had gladly run tests on them, but only because he knew they were going to die. It would be a horse of a different color if he asked Mikhailov to infect someone who had not been bitten by exposing them to a bite victim who was still alive.
“Okay, well how else do you propose to find the answer to that question?”
It was obvious to Mikhailov that Sayer would authorize testing on human subjects if he asked him for permission, but he wasn’t that far gone himself. He stood up and faced the man as closely as he could.
“We will only find out if it happens and we are aware that it has happened,” he said slowly and deliberately.
Sayer heard the menace in Mikhailov’s voice and tried to think of something he could say to gain the upper hand again.
“So, if that wasn’t your interesting news, what was it you wanted to tell me.” He was relieved when he remembered he had changed the subject on the doctor, and he could steer him back again.
Mikhailov turned back to his lab results and his notes and found one in particular.
“In layman’s terms, there is only one animal that appears to be capable of carrying the infection without itself becoming infected. Furthermore, it appears that it can also spread the infection by inflicting bodily injury to humans.”
Mikhailov paused to judge whether or not Sayer was following him.
Sayer said, “Doctor Mikhailov, talk to me like a student in his first year of biology classes, and I’ll authorize those human trials.”
Judging by the expression on Marshall Sayer’s face, Mikhailov had very little doubt that he was insinuating that he would be the first test subject. He decided to take the director a bit more seriously.
“I have been studying the blue crabs that are so plentiful here, even around the ships at Patriots Point. We can go outside with a net and literally scoop them out of the marshes at low tide.”
Everyone had seen them clinging to the bodies of the infected dead, so it was no revelation that the doctor would study the effects eating the dead flesh would have on the crabs.
“I have learned that they are not infected by eating contaminated flesh, but their bodies preserve the pathogen in a manner that allows them to pass it along to people. They do so by inflicting wounds or when they are themselves consumed by humans. It just takes longer for the infection to kill a person who ingests it through their digestive tract. I have not yet discovered why the infection is passed along by inflicting a wound. Perhaps it is causing the crabs to produce a toxin that carries the pathogen or perhaps it is simply a matter of the pathogen clinging to the body of the crab.”
“That would mean the pathogen is incredibly virulent,” said Sayer. “Most viruses don’t live long outside of their hosts, but you’re saying it’s possible this pathogen can live for hours or days on the body of a crab that’s immersed in salt water.”
“Correct. I don’t have much data at this point because I don’t have any baseline information, such as the amount of pathogen the crabs are exposed to or when the crabs became infected.”
“Or how long the crabs had been in the water after they were exposed,” added Sayer.
“Yes. Exactly.”
Mikhailov was getting a little excit
ed by the discussion because something told him there was something relevant about the fact that the pathogen affected humans but could be carried by arthropods.
“What I have been thinking is that I should find another arthropod that can be managed more easily than crabs because they wouldn’t need to be in salt water,” continued Mikhailov.
“Like what, insects?”
“Insects are such a diverse group of arthropods. We need to work with a smaller group, such as arachnids.”
“Spiders?”
As a scientist Marshall Sayer knew that he should be able to at least hide his distain for the eight-legged creatures, but his experiences as a child had shaped his phobia just the same as it had for millions of other people. Just the thought of them made his scalp itch.
“Yes, spiders. We can create a contained environment for them and control their exposure to the pathogen. Then I can dissect them to see if the pathogen has survived in their bodies, and I can even learn if it has evolved in any way.”
Sayer couldn’t help putting his thoughts into words.
“Too bad we can’t have them bite people to see if they get infected.”
Anton Mikhailov mustered up the strongest expression he could to show his revulsion at the thought, and Marshall Sayer recoiled from him enough for him to become defensive. He put up his hands in surrender as he backed away.
“I wasn’t seriously saying we should, just that it’s too bad that we can’t.”
Judging by the expression still frozen on Mikhailov’s face, that hadn’t helped. Sayer took it as his cue to leave, but as he turned for the door, he added one last thing.
“I think that’s a fantastic idea, doctor. Use whatever resources you need to collect your specimens. Talk with Reynolds about taking you into the field if you need to find their colonies.”