by Z. A. Recht
“Fall in!” came the order from Thomas, who had pushed his way through the soldiers to stand in front of them all. “Fall in!”
The soldiers scrambled to obey, forming straight rows, standing at attention. Brewster found himself in the front row with Thomas no more than a few feet away.
“Dress right—dress!” Thomas ordered. The soldiers’ right arms shot out to the shoulder of the man next to them, and the lines evened themselves out into even neater rows. “Ready—front! At ease!”
The soldiers relaxed, folding their arms behind their lower back and spreading their feet shoulder-width apart. Brewster noticed Sherman for the first time. The General had been off on the side of the formation, talking with the photographer, and now came walking in front of the formation of men. Brewster followed him with his eyes.
“Gentlemen,” Sherman began, “In less than an hour we’ll make landfall. The reason we’re having this talk is because when we hit land, you are all going to have something you don’t normally get in the service: a choice.”
Brewster perked up a bit.
“As many of you know, the situation on land is mostly a mystery to us. Communications have been disrupted. We’ve been receiving conflicting reports. But for all intents and purposes, we’ll assume that North America is indeed an infected zone.”
The soldiers glanced back and forth at each other, but said nothing.
“Captain Franklin has graciously decided to assist the quarantine efforts to the south. I, however, have a different plan of action.”
Sherman stopped for a moment, gathering his thoughts. He then went on, “I’ve been in the service for a long, long time. There are few things I haven’t seen, almost nothing I haven’t done. But I realized that I don’t want to die trying to keep a dead city from falling. I’d rather live to enjoy a retirement. Therefore . . . I’m submitting my resignation.”
The soldiers again shared a glance back and forth, and here and there came murmured comments.
“That doesn’t mean I’m done here,” Sherman clarified. “I have a plan. I’ve been talking back and forth with an old colleague who happens to be one of the world’s leading experts on the Morningstar Strain. She’s trying to engineer a cure. It’s a long shot, but it’s better than sitting in a city waiting to be bitten by one of those godforsaken carriers. To that end, I’ve decided to head east—maybe find a nice unpopulated area in the Midwest and wait for news. I’m here now to ask you all which you would prefer: to go on with Franklin and help the defense efforts, or go AWOL with me. Measure your decision wisely.”
Brewster somehow knew that the General wasn’t joking, but he still couldn’t believe his ears. He was being saved the trouble of running. Even more incredible was the General himself making the same decision a lowly PFC had—even to the point of their similar goals. It wasn’t much of a decision for Brewster. He’d already made up his mind, but some of the other soldiers were not so lucky.
“Sir?” came a voice from the formation. “What happens if this blows over and we’ve gone AWOL?”
“Then we’re in trouble,” Sherman admitted. “Anyone who goes with me runs that risk. That’s why I want you all to weigh your choices very carefully before you make your final decision. Personally, I’ve got to admit I don’t think much of the chance of this blowing over. I think the Morningstar Strain is here to stay. Perhaps the passing of time will prove me wrong. I hope it does. But I don’t think it will.”
Washington, D.C.
January 20
1845 hrs_
The streets were mostly empty in the waning evening light. Mostly. Here and there an abandoned car sat with doors hanging open, and the dim sky was lit periodically by fires in the distance. The rioting that had been going on for days was long gone.
A man sprinted down the wide, open avenue, gasping for breath, clutching his chest with one hand and wielding a pistol in the other. His hair was unkempt and he had a wild look in his eyes. As he turned onto the street, he stopped for a moment, brandishing the weapon and squinting into the darkness. Sighting nothing, he took off again, running full-tilt, dodging the abandoned vehicles. His eyes scanned the houses as he moved, reading the address numbers silently to himself.
“Christ, where is it?” he said aloud, gasping as he managed each word. He’d almost run the length of the block before he stopped again, noticing a small, two-story house set back off the street. The windows and porch were dark, but the number on the mailbox was the one he had been searching for.
The man’s run had been with a purpose. He’d been forced to use an old car on this journey and the junker had broken down a mile back. There was only one safe place nearby—the house he stood in front of now. It had been designed to be used in a situation just like the one he found himself in: A refuge for legal fugitives. A safe house. The agency took care of its own.
The man didn’t approach the house with the same haphazard manner he’d run down the block. He knew that the place had its own defenses and it would do him no good to set off every alarm in the house and perhaps get himself ventilated with lead. He walked cautiously up the brick path to the front door, nervously keeping an eye on the shadows around him, worried that they might hold a carrier of the Morningstar Strain, or—just as bad—a civilian out for blood.
He climbed the stairs one by one, the wood creaking under his feet. His breaths were heavy and loud in the silent twilight as he reached a hand out to the knob on the front door.
His fingers stopped inches from the knob. His eyes had caught sight of a blinking red light through the window panes in the door. The alarms were indeed active. He took a step back. Even though he was the cautious type, the man hadn’t expected to find anyone at the house. It had supposedly been vacated almost a week before.
This bore investigation.
It was a good thing he had a high-level security clearance and had been briefed on the safe houses. Otherwise he wouldn’t have known that the kitchen window wasn’t alarmed. The idea was that an agent could still access the house if he or she needed to, even without the proper security codes. Still scanning the darkened street, the man walked around the side of the house, heel to toe to keep the noise to a minimum. He pulled a small flashlight from his pants pocket and twisted the end to turn it on. He shone the beam around the frame of the kitchen window, checking to see if any additions had been made to the house’s security. Seeing nothing, he turned the light off and pocketed it, exchanging the tool for a pocketknife.
Hearing something behind him, the man swiveled, holding out the pistol, and let his eyes scan the area. For a moment he neither moved nor breathed. When nothing sprang out of the shadows at him he relaxed, turning back to the window. He fit the blade of the knife under the window, pushing it along until it kicked up the old-fashioned latch. He used his free hand to retract the blade and then lifted the window silently from the sill.
He was in.
He took one last look around the yard, then stuck the pistol in his waistband and lifted one leg through the window as quietly as he could. When he felt his foot touch the linoleum on the other side, he shifted his weight and pulled the rest of his body into the house.
He spun, quickly but carefully sliding the window shut behind him.
He had already heard voices from deeper in the house. The pistol reappeared in his hand. Better safe than sorry. He knew there was always the chance he’d stumbled on a few of his colleagues taking shelter, in which case all his caution would be for naught, but there was an equal chance that the people in the house had no business being there.
He moved past the refrigerator covered in crayon drawings that looked like they were done by a child and the end tables displaying pictures of a family that didn’t exist, through the hardwood-floor hallway towards the door that led to the basement safe room. The door was mostly shut, but hung open a half an inch.
The man slid the barrel of the pistol in the gap and used it as a lever, very slowly pushing the door further open until he could see down th
e stairs. The second door—the one at the base of the stairway that was meant to be secured in a crisis—had been left hanging open, and a shaft of light shone through. The voices were much clearer now. It sounded like at least one woman and a man. He couldn’t make out their words.
The angle of the stairway would afford the man a view of the room if he descended a few steps, but he had no desire to put his weight on a creaky board and be discovered. Besides, he already had more than a vague idea of who was below.
His control had sent out a bulletin, telling everyone in the city to be on the lookout for a rogue agent and two escaped fugitives. They could be anywhere, the report had said, because they had escaped into the catacombs below the city.
The man knew for a fact that the catacombs connected to this safe house. He had a feeling he’d found the escapees. He slid back from the door, once again using the pistol to close the door behind him. He slipped back through the hall and into the kitchen where he could relax somewhat.
There was a hard line telephone in the upstairs bedroom, just like there was in every safe house in the city. He could make his call from there. Soon—hopefully—the fugitives below would be dealt with.
Down below, in the basement safe room, Julie was busy at the computer terminal.
“Goddamn, this security is thick,” she said.
Mason leaned over her shoulder and asked, “Making progress?”
“Yeah,” she told him. “But it’s going slow. There’s multiple layers of security. I have no clue how many, but I’ve gotten through three already.”
“Wish my login was still working,” said Anna. “Would’ve saved us a lot of trouble.”
“What’s the payoff we’re looking at?”
“Pretty much all of my research,” Anna replied. “Years’ worth. Everything from data on the strain to the behavior of the infected. Once we get through we can burn it onto discs so we won’t have to barge into the system again.”
“Just how many discs are we talking about here?”
Anna looked defensive. “Hey, when you write daily reports and have to save high-definition x-rays and RNA samples you end up taking up more than a few gigabytes of data.”
“I had no idea what we were getting into when we started on this,” Mason said. “I really didn’t want to stay here this long, much less another day or two or however long it’s going to take Julie to get through the security. We’re taking a big risk.”
“I’m not going to get caught,” Julie countered. “I’m too cautious for that.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about, though if you are caught that’d fry us just as well,” said Mason. “No, what I’m worried about is Sawyer. There’s a lot of exits to the catacombs, and he’ll have his hands full with the infected, but it’s not out of the question that he’d track us down. And I’m sure he’s going to try. That guy just couldn’t accept that the world’s spiraling down the shitter. He’ll see it as his patriotic duty to bring us in, even if there’s no one left to care.”
“Relax, Mason. He’s got an entire city to search,” Julie said.
“Maybe that sounds like an intimidating job to you,” Mason replied, “But it’s his job to gather intel and track people down. Once the outbreak at HQ is contained, he’ll be right on our asses. I bet there’s already an APB out on us.”
“We’ll be long gone,” Anna said. “Once we get my research downloaded we can head out.”
Mason nodded. “Good to hear. I’ll leave you to it, then. I’m going to finish getting our gear together. Maybe focusing on that will help me relax.”
The agent stepped back from the terminal and turned to the folding table in the center of the safe room. He had already laid out three backpacks and packed them with food, spare clothes, and tools. As long as they were within the city limits he wouldn’t be able to let his guard down. He felt as if they were in enemy territory—a double threat, as it were. One from the infected mobs roaming the city streets and the other from his ex-comrades at the agency. Perhaps, if they were extraordinarily lucky, one would take care of the other. He wasn’t going to put his money on that chance any day soon, though. Sawyer could handle himself as well as Mason, and the infected were more likely to die than the agent was.
Upstairs, the house’s uninvited guest was finishing up his telephone call.
“Two, maybe three,” he whispered into the phone. There was a moment of silence as the person on the other end spoke. “No, it’s just me here. I didn’t even know they were here. Just stumbled onto them. No way. All I’ve got is six rounds in my sidearm. I’m waiting for backup.”
There was another moment of silence.
“Hey, I’m not committing suicide to take in three fugitives this late in the day. In case you hadn’t noticed, the world isn’t exactly standing on its own two feet at the moment.”
The man sighed as he took another earful from the voice on the other end.
“Look, this has been a courtesy call from me to you letting you know I’ve found the people you’re looking for. As for me, starting a half hour ago, I’m looking out for number one. That being me, in case you couldn’t guess. Right now I’m going to hang up, go back downstairs, and get the hell out of Dodge. You want these people, you come and get them. You’ve got the address.”
The man hung up and heaved another heavy sigh. Eight years to pension and the agency falls to shit, thanks to the Morningstar Strain.
At least he could take an early retirement. He checked his sidearm and silently left the room, gliding towards his window exit.
USS Ramage
2034 hrs_
Night was beginning to fall when the Ramage came into sight of the mainland. Soldiers and refugees had gathered on the deck, looking out at the rocky shores half-obscured in evening mist. Captain Franklin had taken his ship north of the nearest city to give those who were leaving a better chance at getting away without being discovered by carriers or hostile uninfected.
Franklin’s sailors had begun ferrying the departing soldiers and refugees to the shore in a small dinghy. It was relatively slow going, as the little boat could only hold a few people at a time, and twenty-eight of them were still waiting to be taken in to dry land.
Brewster and Denton stood near the bow of the ship. The issuing of equipment had just been completed, and Brewster was idly loading nine-millimeter rounds into a clip.
“Goddamn, I wish I had my rifle back,” he muttered.
“Can’t be helped,” Denton said. “Not enough ammunition to go around.”
“I know, I know,” Brewster replied. “I just hate the idea of going in there and not being able to take a shot at range. It’ll be hell if we have to let ‘em get close enough to use these peashooters.”
As if to emphasize his point, Brewster raised the pistol up and fell into a shooter’s stance, peering along the iron sights at the mainland. He squeezed the trigger and dry-fired the weapon, then nodded, slapped in the loaded clip, and holstered it.
“Out of curiosity,” Brewster said after a moment had passed in silence, “Who was issued the M-16’s?”
“Didn’t you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“Sherman gave ‘em over to Franklin. Said there wasn’t much chance of finding ammunition for ‘em as we go along, and the Captain might need ‘em in the city to the south.”
“Bloody fucking hell,” moaned Brewster. “So we’re nothing but close-range snacks for those walking pus-bags out there?”
“Well, we’ve got the MP-5’s. Those things can lay down a pretty solid sheet of lead. We’re better armed than most folks’ll be.”
“Next landing party, board the dinghy!” called one of Franklin’s sailors, waving an arm at the group of folks waiting to be taken to shore. Another six—three armed soldiers, three civilian refugees—began to board the small boat.
“We’re up next,” Denton said, looking down at his watch. “Wonder what the plan is once we’re all back on terra firma. Think we’ll make camp
for the night?”
“Hell no,” Brewster scoffed. “First thing I learned in the Army is, just because it’s night doesn’t mean we stop working. Sherman’ll probably have us get a move on. Cover of darkness and all that.”
“Too bad. I feel like I haven’t slept in the last couple days.”
“Tell me about it,” Brewster said, shuddering inwardly at the memory of his disturbing dream.
“But anyway,” Denton began, “Thinking in the long-term, I wonder what the plan is. Sherman said something about having a friend he was keeping in touch with. Heard anything about that?”
“Just RumInt,” Brewster said, using the military abbreviation for Rumor Intelligence, widely respected as the fastest means of transmitting information in the world. “People are saying it’s a woman doctor, someone who knows a hell of a lot about the Morningstar Strain. Maybe she’s got a cure or something.”
“A cure? For this virus?” Denton chuckled. “When was the last time you heard of a virus like this getting cured?”
“Well . . .” Brewster murmured, wracking his brain. “Polio?”
Denton flashed the infantryman a bemused grin. “AIDS? Lassa? Hanta? Ebola? Marburg? None of ‘em. Viruses are tricky bastards, and this one’s a lot more diabolical than most. I don’t think we’re after a cure, personally. I hope I’m wrong.”
“So do I,” Brewster said, then, catching Denton’s glance, added: “No offense.”
“None taken.”
A moment passed in silence.
“Hey,” Brewster said after a few seconds, changing topics faster than an obsessive-compulsive changed underwear. He turned around and scanned the crowd. “You know who I haven’t seen in a while? That medic girl.”
“Rebecca?”
“I guess. Don’t think I ever actually met her. Is she coming with us?”
“I think so. Not sure. Last I saw of her she was in medical below, packing up supplies. She seemed kind of shaken up.”
“Oh, right! Of course!” Brewster exclaimed, slapping a hand against his forehead.
“What?”
