by John Conroe
“Yeah, you two, beat it,” Harper agreed. “Even with my awesome skills, it’s going to take time to figure this mess out. So go on. Get out of here already.”
So we did. We said our goodbyes and hopped in an SUV and drove to the lake. It was dark as the bottom of a cave in those woods, but the cabin, which was really a full lodge, was all lit up for us, with a roaring fire in the fireplace to take the spring chill out of the place. The big log structure sat up on a rise, overlooking a deep lake that had been formed by a natural dam on a fast-moving little river.
In the face of our fears potentially coming true, albeit in a completely different manner, it seemed like our wedding night might have been too tense to engage in traditional wedding night games. But that very tension infected both of us, and we had absolutely no trouble finding an outlet for our fears.
When I woke the next morning, I found her already up, coffee in hand, sitting on the porch wrapped in a blanket and watching the sun come up on the lake.
Filling my own mug with fresh-brewed caffeine (because who knows when coffee will run out), I stepped outside and sat in the Adirondack chair next to hers. “Did you check in?” I asked.
“No. It’s too beautiful right now to disturb it. And they haven’t called us, so I was letting sleeping dogs lie, at least for now. Maybe we could radio in after breakfast?”
We actually made it to mid-afternoon before we succumbed to the need to touch base.
“Not a whole lot more to tell you,” Hanna said. She was taking her turn monitoring the internet, the radio and television channels, as well as the base station for our radio. “It’s fast-moving, virulent, highly contagious, and has a very high death rate. Some type of hemorrhagic fever, but worse than any form ever seen before. Unnaturally vicious.”
“Unnatural as in man-made?” I asked.
“That’s my thought. It’s so damned fast, spreads like wildfire. From what we can tell, it’s infected and killed over a thousand people in Beijing in the last forty-eight hours.”
“What? That’s crazy! How is that even possible?”
“At a guess… genetic engineering. There is some suspicion it came out of a military lab. But the very speed it exhibits may actually be both a curse and a tainted blessing.”
“Because it might burn itself out?” Astrid asked. “That super-high fatality rate might kill off the entire population of available hosts so fast that it limits the spread?”
“You married a smart woman, Ajaya,” Hanna said.
“She reminds me of that every so often.”
“Anyway, that’s just supposition on my part. Go back to what you were doing and don’t bother to check in till tomorrow. It’s all good here.”
“How’s the rest of the world taking it?” I asked.
“Nervous, scared, closing borders and cutting air flights on one hand but offering assistance on the other. China has refused all aid so far. Now stop talking to me and get back to honeymooning. Doctor’s orders.”
We did. And we only checked in one more time, mid-afternoon the next day, then headed back after lunch on the last day.
Back at the compound, we found a little situation room set up, manned in shifts by one or two people, with the shifts spread out across the entire population of adults. By the time we got home, the deaths had been estimated at over six thousand in Beijing, but new outbreaks were popping up in Shanghai, Chengdu, Changchun, and several smaller locales. And more were coming to light. It was, in fact, an enhanced version of Marburg Hemorrhagic fever, modified greatly to be far more lethal and to spread far faster. The fatality rate approached one hundred percent and those few who survived were horribly disfigured by the disease.
We dove back into work, keeping one eye on our jobs and one eye on the tragic events unfolding in Asia.
The disease was spreading and no one knew how. It killed its hosts so fast that it should have burnt out. Yet new cases were popping up in far-off locations and no one could figure out how.
When the first cases appeared in South Korea and Taiwan, airlines started to shut down all flights into or out of the infected countries. When cases appeared in Mongolia, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, the World Health Organization demanded answers from China’s leaders—or rather, the remaining leaders. Chibola, as the disease came to be called, had by this time ravaged the Middle Kingdom from east to west and north to south. The surviving leadership finally answered the desperate request for information. The experimental disease was just one part of a weapon system. The other half was an artificial vector, a type of microdrone that was AI controlled and could travel significant distances, moving from population to population. And yes, it appeared that Plum Blossom had found its way into the lab.
And the bad news continued. Chibola wasn’t the only experimental genetically engineered pathogen in that lab. There were dozens.
World trade shut down. All aircraft and shipping was stopped, but not before India, Brazil, France, Italy, and Finland were all infected.
The first nuclear weapons used since World War Two were dropped on Chinese soil by Chinese aircraft in an attempt to sterilize the problem. It didn’t work.
Unless destroyed or otherwise rendered inoperable, the vector drones would continue to move across geography, infecting a town or city, then moving on. And Hannah was entirely correct that the Chibola pathogen would burn through a population in just a few days and then die out. Records collected by drone from the Chinese lab indicated that the weapon system was designed to depopulate an area, rather than as a true doomsday weapon. It certainly depopulated China, along with vast stretches of Asia, South America, and Europe. Where it did not seem to go was Russia and the United States. There were some flare-ups in Russian seaports before shipping was fully stopped, but they never made it past there. In the US, a handful of people died in California when a ship docked, but eyewitnesses saw what they identified as Decimator drones appear in the skies over the port and then sweep the ship from stem to stern. Weapons fire was heard inside the vessel, then the Coast Guard, in conjunction with what appeared to be Zone Defense troops, towed the vessel out to sea and sank it in deep water.
Something similar occurred on the East Coast, in Portland, Maine, when a Swedish container ship came to port. The port pilot reported Decimators overflying his transport boat before he even got out to the ship. Then the ship turned around and sailed away, never seen again.
The upside of Chibola was that it had a very stabilizing effect on the remains of the US government, forcing divergent parties to get their shit together and prepare the country.
Flottercot Productions scored another interview with Zone Defense, and our little community watched it in our gymnasium-slash-assembly room.
“Major Yoshida, are Zone Defense Decimators hunting down the vector drones before they can infect the country?”
“Yes, Cade. They are.”
“How? How do they identify them? Dr. Ewald, is this your doing?” Cade asked, turning to his other guest.
“Well, yes and no. See, the Decimator programming is so adaptable that they found ways to use their advance sensor suites that we never envisioned. Out of the box thinking, it would appear.”
“This is the same programming that Ajaya Gurung introduced through first his Berkut and then the prototype Decimator?”
Aaron frowned, opened his mouth, closed it, and then lost his chance when Major Yoshida spoke first.
“Essentially yes. We’ve worked extensively on the Decimator programming, tweaking it, but you are correct that the core program came from Ajaya’s drone,” Yoshida said.
“So it not only killed the Spiders, cleared the Zone, and fought the Plum Blossom program across the internet, but now it’s protecting the country as well,” Cade said.
“It’s remarkably adaptable, Cade, and very focused on protecting the citizens of this country. In fact, it may also be helping in Russia. We aren’t certain. What we do know is that Plum Blossom is still out there, hiding, waiting. This won
’t be the last attack,” Yoshida said.
Harper chose that moment to tap my arm. She put a finger over her lips and then pointed at Astrid too. I got my wife’s attention and signaled her to follow me as I followed Harper. JJ, who was leaning against the door, lit up with a knowing smile as he saw our little group moving toward the exit. As we went by him, he jumped into line behind his sister, smirking the whole time.
Harper led us out of the assembly area and up the stairs to the computer lab that we all called Harper Headquarters.
“You know what this is about?” Astrid asked her big brother.
“I do,” he said, smug. At least smug right up until Harper whipped around and glared at him. Then the smirk was gone as he held up both hands, palms out. Big tough Thor was thoroughly enthralled by our little computer wizard.
Harper led us to the back corner of the lab, where a rough-built wooden crate took up a half meter of width and three quarters meter of length. The top was uncovered, and a black carbon fiber and metal dome rose just high enough out of the box that it wouldn’t have been possible to nail a cover on it.
Harper went over to her desk, pulled out something I couldn’t see, then walked to the crate and touched the metal and composite dome. A little port opened, and she dropped something small and shiny into it. Something the size of a computer chip.
The thing in the box rumbled and vibrated, then went quiet.
“Wha…” I started to ask, but Harper shushed me, turning her eyes back to the box. Nothing happened for a handful of seconds, then another handful went by. I was about to speak again but a new sound came from the crate.
Tick-tick-tick-tick
The light went off in my head. “Is that…”
The front of the box suddenly fell forward, then the two sides fell left and right, followed by the rear panel. It appeared to have been just held together with double-sided tape.
The shape inside the box was sleek and compact, with four bent legs. It unfolded itself, becoming longer and sleeker.
“It’s your wedding present, more than a bit overdue, but greatness takes time,” Harper said. She turned to Astrid. “It may appear to be more for him than you, but when you both start having kids, you’ll thank me. I used those plans from the deep dungeon to come up with it.”
The four-legged bot was segmented in a way that was reminiscent of my once upon a time Berkut, but it had even more segments.
“I call this model the Mongoose, but really it’s a hybrid. The designation should be U-GAV, because it’s an Unmanned, Ground and Air Vehicle.”
The drone sat up, its black ocular band fixed on me. Then the sides shifted outward and unfolded some more and suddenly it was hovering on four fans, lifting right up to my eye level.
“It’s got more sensors than anything I’m aware of on this planet,” Harper said. “It’s extremely energy efficient and it’s armed with both a general purpose e-mag weapon that JJ designed that can shoot almost any projectile you can find, as well a scavenged fiber optic laser that your friend Egan supplied. And that was the original Rikki chip you smuggled out of the Zone. It’ll be the best babysitter and family guardian you could ever have.”
“Hello AJ,” the drone said in a voice so familiar, I almost choked.
“Hello Rikki Tikki.”
The End.
Author’s Box of Soap:
So yes, I ended Zone War. Lot’s of fans have petitioned for an extension, but I ended the series. That series. I never said we wouldn’t see Ajaya again, or his world. But let’s leave it there for now, with the world tipping over into a cascade of events, because that’s how I see it… a long slide into oblivion, rather than a flash of sharp light and glowing cockroaches. Some days after watching or reading the news I wonder if we’ll make it. Then I usually wonder if we should make it. But ultimately, I’m Team Human, and I think we can still, possibly, navigate our own minefields to reach the other side.
As usual, I must thank Susan for fixing my English and Gareth for making my imagination into art. And as always ,my family for constant support and love (and lots of patience, especially my wife).
The writing will continue, with more Demon Accords ( Darkkin Queen is next, I’ll give you one guess who’s holding the mike in that one). And something new is on the horizon, the 2020 horizon that is. A new series, Shadows of Montshire, my take on full fantasy, led off by book one, A Murder of Shadows. Look for it in 2020. And thank you all for taking the ride again.
