Pandora - Contagion

by Eric L. Harry

  As they neared the small gate in the fence, Isabel’s phone buzzed. They were back in WiFi range. She read her only message with growing concern. “Shit. The helicopter is on the way back here to pick me up.” Noah detected a hint of a smile on her face.

  “Is that this Rick’s helicopter?”

  “Maybe. Yeah.” She grinned. “I’m on the E-4B list.” Noah had no idea what she was talking about. “The president’s plane? I’m supposed to get on it at Andrews.”

  “The president is evacuating Washington? When?”

  “Like they told me that, Noah!”

  “Why the hell are you supposed to be on his plane?”

  “Because I’m the world’s leading fucking zombie expert, remember?”

  “Just tell them no.”

  “I can’t,” Isabel said. Noah guessed it had something to do with her Marine. She packed and said her good-byes. When the same helicopter as the day before picked Isabel up, Noah waved one last time, but his little sister didn’t notice. She was too busy kissing Townsend.

  “I guess he didn’t dump her,” Natalie said to Noah, perplexed.

  “I’ve got, uhm, something to tell you,” Noah said to his wife. “Remember when I told you that Emma had a bunch of roommates at the NIH hospital?”

  Chapter 24

  JOINT BASE ANDREWS

  Infection Date 54, 1545 GMT (11:45 a.m. Local)

  Rick and Isabel were nearly alone in the large Black Hawk helicopter. The only crewman in the rear sat beside his door gun and avoided the couple who, despite the many empty seats lining the thrumming bulkheads, pressed close to each other.

  Rick seemed distant. “What’s the matter?” Isabel asked repeatedly.

  After dodging, he eventually said, “There was this church bus full of kids. We…didn’t get there in time. I don’t wanna talk about it.” His mood darkened further.

  She wanted him to share everything with her. But their intimacy had come to an abrupt halt. Rick now stared at the cabin’s deck instead of at her.

  The gunner slid his door open and roiling wind blasted their cabin. He swung his multi-barreled gun out and pointed it down. They were descending. Rick seemed relieved by the interruption and went from handhold to handhold to stand near the opening, lowering his goggles against the gale. Isabel joined him there, squinting.

  The helicopter settled lower and lower as they tracked the Potomac River headed north. The familiar monuments of the District of Columbia were directly ahead, and Arlington, Virginia, on their left was dominated by the Pentagon. Ugly concrete barriers interspersed with hulking green tank-like vehicles surrounded the huge complex. The bridges were blocked, and the nearby streets were empty.

  The helicopter began a big, sweeping turn to the right. Ever lower, Isabel could now see the still quiet residential neighborhoods of suburban Maryland. All seemed calm other than the fires that rose here and there in the distance closer to Washington. But as they passed an oval track that at first Isabel thought was a football stadium but on closer inspection appeared to be some sort of motor raceway, she and Rick both saw the fencing, the troop tents ringed by sandbags, and the giant green reception tents emblazoned with red crosses on white circles. Although the infield was empty, it would soon be filled with detained Infecteds. Elevated man lifts topped by umbrellas, presumably impromptu machine gun towers, encircled the Mass Open-Air Detention facility just like in Boston despite their report of its total failure there. Her eyes met Rick’s, and in them she saw reflected the same thought. These plans, too, would fail. Isabel’s concern deepened on sensing Rick’s internal disquiet. He appeared to be at risk of losing hope. Brandon had given up too.

  The helicopter landed on the airbase tarmac amid dozens of others. They were directed to a breezy tent with open sides. A nurse in full combat gear stood behind a small table beside an air policeman holding an assault rifle at the ready. Both wore masks and gloves. The nurse did temperature and pupil checks on Isabel. The air policeman asked Isabel questions. “You like football, ma’am?” Isabel nodded while trying to hold her eyes open as the nurse shone a pen light into them, but she flinched at how bright the beam was. “What’s your favorite team?”

  “The Giants. I grew up in Connecticut. We were Giants fans.”

  “What do you like about football?”

  They were checking her emotional responses. She needed to show that she had them. “I loved the thrill when we scored and the crowd went crazy. When you’re at the game, it vibrates through you like you’re sitting on a speaker at a concert. It was,” she was going to say infectious, “scintillating, blood-tingling, electrifying.” She couldn’t think of any other emotive synonyms.

  The air policeman gave the nurse a thumbs-up. Isabel marveled at how easily their test could be passed. The thermometer held to Isabel’s forehead beeped. “She’s good,” the female medic said.

  The air policeman relaxed slightly, but he never lowered his weapon. He was committed to living and taking no chances.

  Rick said, “This is where I say good-bye…again.”

  “Now? You can’t, at least, come inside with me?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve gotta get back across the river. But they’ve tasked me to the staff of the Joint Chiefs, so I’ll probably stay in the area…at least until it’s time to come meet up with you again. You’re the one who’s headed off God knows where.”

  They hugged and kissed, but Rick was more reserved than in days past. She thought about saying, “I love you,” but settled on, “Be careful. I’m depending on you, you know?”

  “You’ll be fine.” He tried to smile. “You’ll literally be in the safest place on Earth.”

  “I mean, stupid, that I’m depending on you to take care of yourself and come back to me. I need you to. Do you understand?” He nodded, but that seemed too noncommittal. “No. That’s not good enough. You have to find me. It’s very, very important. If you understand that, then say it.”

  “I’ll make it to you. I’ll find you.”

  How? she thought but couldn’t bring herself to ask. It would’ve been unfair to Rick.

  She looked back as Rick strode toward the helicopter and the air policeman drove her across the base in an open-air golf cart. She focused on controlling those pesky emotions of hers. She had to keep herself from crying so much, especially on military bases. Her escort parked beside sandbags manned by heavily armed troops, saluted, and reported to an officer.

  Another PPE-clad medic checked her vitals again. Temperature normal. “They should fuckin’ kill ’em all,” an armed airman said, sitting on the mound of sandbags. “As soon as it breaks out. Wipe everybody the fuck out.” Pupillary response normal. “Ever seen fuel-air ordnance? Big canister filled with gas that gets sprayed out over a wide area and lit. Boom!” Knee reflexes normal. “The blast wave’s the trick. Breaks every bone in your body like you jumped outta the World Trade Center.” Blood pressure and heart rate in the elevated range.

  “She’s good,” the medic pronounced. “And shut the fuck up,” she said to the bloodthirsty airman.

  Isabel was escorted by a female air policeman to a lounge. A TV mounted high on the wall was tuned to CNN, but the volume was low. Scattered about sprawled on sofas and in recliners were crewmen in their flight suits, most asleep. Isabel settled close enough to the TV to watch, if not hear. It amazed her to see a video like those she’d viewed weeks earlier in the underground White House Situation Room. A crowd of Infecteds in some midsized American city, not far-off Asia, confronted troops. It would’ve been classified Top Secret just a short while ago. She could anticipate what was going to happen as she watched the still, quiet crowd. A hulking black vehicle with the emblem of some police department sprayed water from behind barricades onto the stoic front ranks of Infecteds, whom Brandon would have called charged.

  She had tried not to think about Brandon, but now s
he winced. It had been too much for her to digest when they’d made it across the East River to the Hunter’s Point South ferry landing. Their helicopter crew had been searching for fuel, so their remaining entourage had hiked south on Long Island. Her huge pack had wrecked her back, and every previously insignificant pressure point in her combat boots had become a blister. Rick talked their way across the Pulaski Bridge with the aid of Isabel’s White House pass. “Did you see him…after he went into the water?” she had asked. But when Rick had shaken his head, Isabel let it drop. Brandon was gone.

  Rick had gotten in touch with an Annapolis classmate stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The lieutenant had driven to meet them in a gray pickup truck wearing gray-themed camouflage. Vasquez and his five green-clad troops had filled the bed in the back, and Rick and Isabel had crowded into the cab. The Navy guy had a million questions for Rick. Can you catch it from bodily fluids? When do they go from rational to crowd-crazed? Had he ever seen them use weapons? Had he heard about the survivors of the New York National Guard unit that had turned and were now fighting against us?

  On the nearly muted TV, the camera displaying the crowd shook once as if a blow had fallen on the cameraman. But it wasn’t a physical blow, except to the extent of the concussive effects of so many guns firing all at once, which was only a slight hiss at the set’s lowered volume. Masses of Infecteds fell in waves. This time, the line held, with only a few infected attackers topping the barricades and being shot point-blank by PPE-clad troops. Piles of the dead and dying soon formed a second barrier that attackers found difficult to surmount, climbing bodies that still writhed, brushing aside hands that still grasped, slipping on blood and viscera, only to be shredded by steady fire from a few feet in front and added to the height of the obstacle.

  “Dr. Miller?” Isabel jumped. The female Air Force officer at her side apologized, glancing at the carnage on the screen above a graphic—“Recorded earlier today in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania”—before saying, “I guess we won that one.”

  “Yay for us,” Isabel replied. The woman erased her polite expression. Isabel left her rifle and pack in the lounge and was led down a short hall for her E-4B orientation. “So, E-4B is…what? The name of the plane?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s the name of the equipment model, a heavily modified 747-200. Call sign Nightwatch.” At the end of a long hall, she opened a door into a hangar large enough to engulf the huge jumbo jet. The scale of the everything was so out of proportion that Isabel’s head swam. “You’re now on twenty-four-hour ground alert. You’re not to leave the hangar. You sleep in your gear and listen for the call—Nightwatch—over the PA. You’ll have six minutes to board, but you oughta be there in two. Go to the aft stairs.” She pointed at narrow steps that had been lowered from the rear of the plane. “Show this badge.” The woman handed her an ID with Isabel’s hideous White House security pass photo. “Never take it off.” Isabel slipped its strap around her neck before showing it to the air policeman guarding the wider steps up to the front of the plane.

  The 747’s interior was more Spartan than Isabel had imagined. The only luxury was in the smallish presidential quarters, of which she got only a passing glimpse. The cockpit looked old-fashioned, with dials, gauges, and knobs instead of glass touchscreens. “Analog,” her escort explained, “not digital. Not networked. Unhackable.” Three large cabins, filled with workstations, took up the rest of the plane. In the very back, Isabel would “hot bunk,” sharing a bed on a rotating basis with other crewmen, or she could sleep in her assigned seat, whose upholstery was a shockingly bright blue. It stood out against the décor in the rest of the plane, which was in the style of late-Twentieth-Century-beige-computer-case. “But since that seat’s also where you’ll spend all your waking hours, you might wanna stretch out for variety’s sake. We’ll exit down the aft steps. Any questions?”

  That was it? “Uhm, yeah,” Isabel replied. Any idea what the fuck I’m doing here? What she actually said was, “When do we take off?”

  “Fifteen minutes after the National Command Authority says go, ma’am, and about sixty seconds after he and his family are aboard.”

  Isabel took a last look around in disbelief. The woman escorted her back to the giant hangar’s lounge, introduced her to a newly arrived aircrew, and said, “Make yourself comfortable. I hear different things about how it’s going in D.C., but you may be here a while.”

  Isabel dumped her M4 and pack, draped in body armor with her helmet hooked onto it, beside an empty plush recliner in front of the TV. The three airmen she had met, spread out to either side, wore one-piece flight uniforms and cast tired but curious glances at G.I. Jane. Isabel inquired politely what they all did in the Air Force. The dark-haired man with graying temples, sitting on her left directly in front of the TV, said, “I’m a pilot, she’s my co-pilot.” The blond female officer to her right was about Isabel’s age. “And he’s our loadmaster.” A younger man—a sergeant with a bunch of stripes—leaned forward and gave her a wave. He then grumbled, “But since we just maxed out our flight duty hours, we’ll probably get handed shovels and ordered to dig.”

  The co-pilot filled her mouth with yoghurt and mumbled, “Somebody’s gotta fly that bird outta here ’fore Andrews is overrun.”

  “Why? Pretty soon we’re gonna have way too many planes and way too little fuel.”

  “Yeah, but not yet. Plus, I saw a lo-o-otta flight plans being filed for Texas.” She thumped her chest with her fist several times before burping.

  “Gross,” the loadmaster said.

  “Gross ma’am,” the co-pilot corrected.

  “Gross ma’am,” came his perfunctory revision.

  “Fuck-off,” the co-pilot responded with a single, two-syllable word before stuffing an entire white donut into her mouth and licking her fingers.

  “Ma’am?”

  The co-pilot turned to the sergeant and spat puffs of confectionary powder. “Fuck the fuck off, Chapman!”

  “You on Nightwatch?” the pilot asked Isabel. “Better chow down, ’cause it’s rationed MREs, 24/7, unless you’re the NCA and family.”

  Isabel grabbed some fruit and a coffee and returned to her place. The others all reclined in the comfortable, padded chairs, so Isabel did the same. The news anchor was on a split screen alongside shaky aerial photos that pixilated every few seconds. The caption said they were from suburban Buffalo. Streets and lawns were dotted with bodies that now represented hazardous waste sites. Large Army trucks filled with soldiers in gas masks held rifles pointed outward. A line of police cars all had lights flashing. Police in helmets and gas masks held large clear riot shields. The picture switched to recorded video of a brutal, primitive orgy of gouging, stomping annihilations. Too late, a warning about graphic violence appeared.

  “You gonna eat that?” the co-pilot asked Isabel about the half-empty plate she’d rested on the broad arm of her chair with its disposable plastic fork, half a dozen cantaloupe slices, and semi-picked over grapes on a stem. Isabel shook her head. The woman instantly seized the sagging paper plate and shoveled the fruit into her mouth.

  “Ma’am?” the loadmaster said to the co-pilot.

  “Yeah. Gross. Copy that. Could you…?” She looked at the pilot, but motioned toward the TV.

  The senior officer used the remote to raise the volume. “Scenes like this,” came the anchorwoman’s funereal tone, “are being repeated all across the northern tier of States and are, well, one has to admit frighteningly reminiscent of the last footage we saw out of China, South Korea, and Vietnam before they went dark, and have seen in Europe and Japan in the last few weeks.”

  Barricades, smoke, burning buildings, the lingering fog of tear gas, rioters, looters, bouncing rocks, spinning tear gas canisters. Wounded crumpled against a building. People steering wide berths around them. They’re not wounded, Isabel realized. They’re sick.

  The expressions on th
e faces of the flight crew around her had darkened, but none more than the co-pilot’s. The blond woman stared at the screen looking pallid and waxen. Winces made brief appearances on her otherwise guarded face. The abandoned plate of half-eaten food now seemed of no interest.

  The pilot, watching scenes from Buffalo, said to Isabel, “We just got back from up that way. Took a C-17 with supplies to Syracuse.” He glanced at his crewmen, who stared back from beneath knit brows. “It got…bad. Some of the Guardsmen wanted to get the hell outta there. I can’t say that I blame ’em.”

  “The stacks of the dead,” said the co-pilot on the other side of Isabel, looking as if she might grow ill right then and there, “were piled, like, one story high? Two? Practically the whole length of Runway 2-8. Nine thousand feet. They were bulldozing bodies into long trenches, and when we opened up the ramp, man, the fuckin’ stench….”

  “And the fuckin’ Guardsmen,” came from the loadmaster. “They stormed aboard, before we could even unload our first pallet. Screamin’, ‘Take off! Take off! Right now!’ I had to explain that we were too heavy. We had to offload our cargo. I swear to God I thought they were gonna shoot me right then. They were arguing with each other. Fuckin’ terrified, is what they were. Then, I thought they were gonna shoot their colonel, who came marchin’ up the ramp with his hand on the butt of his pistol. Did you see that? Like, what? Quickdraw fuckin’ McGraw there with his Berretta was gonna take on two dozen desperate motherfuckers with M4s? Tryin’ to get home to their families?”

  “I gotta take a crap,” the distressed and bloodless co-pilot said. Gone was her bravado, and her color.

  “How’d you get outta there?” Isabel asked.

  The pilot said, “The colonel convinced the lieutenant, the lieutenant convinced the sergeants, and the men followed the sergeants.” He seemed deeply disturbed. One of the signs of the apocalypse, Isabel imagined. U.S. troops…mutinying.