Resistance: Pandora, Book 3

by Eric L. Harry

  She was being deceptive. How much had her mind recovered? How close was she to wholly uninfected behavior? There must be other Infecteds who, over time, would also revert somewhat. At least those who, like Samantha—and Emma—had received excellent medical care immediately postexposure. Their more limited damage had greater potential for recovery. It also made their behavior less trustworthy, and more in need of monitoring.

  Samantha’s interest in boys was less sexual than it would become as she grew up. It was more…emotional? Was a boy crush a precursor to love? Was that even possible?

  Samantha’s head tracked a mop headed, light skinned African American boy, who returned her wave with one of his own before both caught Emma looking at them.

  The world had completely changed once already. Was it possible it might yet change again? If an Infected could fall in love, or anything close to it, she couldn’t be counted on. She would protect the object of her affection over other conflicting priorities like following the Rules. If Uninfecteds became unmanageable and Emma decided to eradicate them, what would Samantha do? And if Sam can feel love, the voice said, what about you? Emma felt nothing save the occasional but growing twinge of sexual desire. The risk that she might develop emotions and the irrational behaviors they caused was a serious concern. Emma surveyed the next half dozen men and boys they passed. Yes, no, yes, yes, no, yes. She would have sex with many of them, but felt nothing more.

  “Should I go to Copper Hill,” Samantha asked, “or not?”

  “Go.” Emma would have Dwayne assign a bodyguard to escort her and to report on the girl’s behavior around the hair tossing, guitar playing boy. But, Emma knew, it would be a huge loss to The Community if Samantha turned out to be untrustworthy.

  Chapter 27

  ELLINGTON FIELD, HOUSTON, TEXAS

  Infection Date 89, 0745 GMT (2:45 a.m. Local)

  There was a loud rapping on the thin trailer door.

  Isabel was folded into Rick’s arms. She felt his muscles grow taught as he sprang from the sofa with the pointy metal door pull in his hand. She got her sharpened broom from under the sofa and took up a position beside the door. In the dancing beams of flashlights from outside she saw Jake, Noah, and Natalie appear with their own improvised weapons.

  Rick ignored the knocks and calls to, “Open up!” until everyone appeared ready.

  A half dozen soldiers in protective gear awaited them on the street. “Dr. Isabel Miller?” Rick made way. Isabel peered around the doorframe. “We’re here to take you downtown. To military headquarters. You’re being released from quarantine.”

  “What about everyone else?”

  “My orders only mention you.”

  “Well I’m not going without everyone else. If I’m healthy, so are they.” She declined to mention her vaccination.

  The confusion created by her apparently unheard of refusal to exit quarantine was resolved quickly over the radio. “All of you, gather your things.”

  That took two minutes. The Miller party—apparently, now, the Isabel Miller party—followed the guards down dark, empty lanes toward the well-lit front gate wearing an unsightly assortment of outdated, frayed, and ill-fitting clothes donated by area churches. Curtains were pulled aside as people peered at the departing souls, not knowing whether they were lucky or doomed. Another family, waiting in a tight huddle outside the gate—wrapped in blankets and looking exhausted, dripping wet, and traumatized—were escorted into quarantine, possibly to their old trailer.

  Troops at the canvas covered army truck were armed but wore no protective gear. Either the Miller family was now reliably certified healthy, or the troops had been vaccinated.

  Off they drove. The only words spoken were by Isabel’s brother, Noah, who said, “Once again, Isabel, I guess we should thank you for this.”

  Isabel made a face and shrugged. The ride down the empty highway seemed to be going quickly until they slowed to a stop. The canvas at the rear was pulled aside. A bright flashlight was shone into their eyes, causing flinches and averted gazes. “You need to look into the light,” came the stern command from the helmeted soldier in a gas mask.

  One by one, the flashlight ruined their night vision. Isabel saw sandbags and machine guns spanning all four lanes of the northbound Interstate except for the one lane through which they passed. The roadblocks were repeated once every few miles until they exited the Interstate and were ordered to dismount.

  The skyline of the city, mostly dark at that hour, loomed before them. Their truck did a three-point turn and headed back the way they had come. The Miller family passed on foot past last pupil and temperature checks before zigzagging through a narrow passage of towering tan sandbags. Two Humvees awaited them on the city side.

  Foot patrols by small units used flashlights to peer under mounds of cardboard rubbish or dying islets of greenery dotting the concrete desert. Everyone was armed, tense, and looked ready to kill.

  The Humvees stopped in front of yet more walls of sandbags at the foot of a well-lit glass office tower. More perfunctory pupil and temperature checks admitted them into the lobby, which bustled with men and women in the differing camouflage gear of various service branches. The new arrivals were processed singly in separate cubicles.

  “Full name? Social Security number? Residence address? Occupation?” The bored functionary tapped on a laptop. The expected glossy photos of splattered corpses and puppies sniffing daisies never appeared. A printer hummed. The uniformed bureaucrat trimmed and laminated the printout in a practiced routine as Isabel wondered why she was there? What happens next? She knew those questions would be answered in time, not here by the soldier with the scissors. At least they were out of quarantine.

  She hung the ID around her neck by its strap. When everyone had theirs on, an army captain approached Isabel. Although she had passed the infection checks, she had no way of proving she was immune. The man was taking no chances and kept his distance. “Dr. Miller? Follow me, please.”

  “What about them?” she asked, turning back to Rick and Noah’s family.

  “The commissary is closed, but there’s always coffee.”

  “We’ll be okay,” Noah assured her. She gave Rick a peck on the lips and a squeeze of his hand before following her escort to the elevators.

  The floors whizzed by and her ears popped. They exited onto an upper level lobby filled end to end with cots and both she and her escort had to endure yet more pupil and temperature checks. A scanner beeped after reading the QR code on her ID. Isabel’s handwashing was monitored by a nurse. “Use the brush to get under your fingernails.” Isabel scrubbed until her fingers hurt. All that remained of the nail polish after her last manicure months earlier was a tiny strip of red enamel hugging her cuticles.

  The view over the city outside the floor to ceiling windows was probably spectacular. But the streets and highways, still bathed in light, were totally devoid of traffic.

  The captain rejoined her after his own bathing ritual and they boarded an elevator for another ascent. It opened onto what looked like a lawyer’s office, with noise and activity everywhere. A man and a woman sat behind the receptionist’s desk wearing camouflage and side arms. They scanned Isabel’s ID before the captain led her past outer offices with windows, which were occupied by senior officers, based on their ages and insignia. The inner, smaller, windowless offices held either junior officers or two sergeants sitting on opposite sides of a single desk. All seemed to be on laptops or phones. Everything had the appearance of a normal day at work but for the fact that everyone wore camouflage and was armed.

  “Dr. Miller?” came the booming voice instantly recognized by Isabel. The hulking frame of Marine General Browner, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met her at the door of his large corner office. He extended his right elbow toward her. She met it with a bump. “Glad you decided to rejoin us. We can sure use your help.”

&
nbsp; A blanket was neatly folded at the foot of a simple folding cot opposite the small pillow at its head. He ushered Isabel to a guest chair in front of his cluttered desk. As Browner gave his assistant some instructions, Isabel gleaned as much information as she could from the mounds of books, papers, maps, and photographs lying before her. A ring binder’s label read, “West Coast Evacuation Plan.” The top photo on a stack looked to be navy ships exiting a harbor—San Diego, she guessed from the “Padres” sign on the stadium—with the skyline behind the ships lit only by blazing high-rise fires. A bound directive entitled, “Temporary Regulations,” was incongruously stamped with a diagonal and red, “TOP SECRET.” How were people supposed to follow top secret regulations?

  “Enjoying your eye fuck?” Browner growled.

  “Pardon me? Oh. I’m sorry, I was just—”

  “That’s okay. You’re cleared Top Secret, or you’d never be in here.” Browner sat in the plush swivel chair. “So you made it all the way from…” Browner consulted the desktop monitor, “the Shenandoah Valley to Bristol, Tennessee—on foot—250 miles through Injun Country? Not too shabby. And Captain Townsend is with you?”

  “He’s downstairs. So is my brother, his family, and….” Margus was dead. “What’s going on?” she asked when what she really meant was, Why am I here?

  The Marine found something in what she said amusing, and snorted. “Same ole apocalypse. But we’re making progress with our vaccine production. About 20 percent of my troops have been inoculated.”

  “What do you do with the ones who turn?”

  “Boy, you get right to it, don’t you?” Isabel wasn’t sure what he meant, but guessed she had a habit of raising uncomfortable topics. “You’re gonna find,” he said, rocking back in his chair and rubbing his face and eyes with both hands, “that we’ve had to institute the harshest possible measures to maintain the cordon sanitaire.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “We don’t exterminate them, if that’s what you’re asking.” She waited. “Look, Dr. Miller, I don’t have time to justify all the policy decisions we’ve made since the outbreak. And frankly, it’s irritating to have to justify our actions to someone we just rescued from a town that was overrun by Infecteds about an hour after you went wheels up. But I’ll give you one. We’ve got three levels of quarantine. There’s the one I just sprung you from for newly arriving people that appear symptom free and have special skills we need, or their immediate family members. There’s a second level for people who’re suspected of having been exposed. And then there’s detention of the clearly infected. That’s all. No firing squads, or gas chambers, or ovens. Okay? Do we pass your moral judgment?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a bitch about it. I just…. Never mind.”

  Browner sighed deeply. Isabel waited for him to return her gaze. “Alright, look. That third level of detention is…is horrible, okay? And the second level is none too comfy. They’re in open-air facilities. Minimal food and water. The medical care is nonexistent. And security is…. You understand that we can’t…police what’s going on inside there. It’s all we can do to keep ’em locked up. What they do to each other….” She thought she kept her face neutral, but Browner snapped, “Goddammit, Isabel!” startling her.

  “But you aren’t eradicating yet?” Turning quarantine camps into death camps?

  “We got the authority for it, just not the…will. Yet. There are still people who think Infecteds can be rehabilitated, or resettled on a reservation system, or reintegrated into society. And my subordinate commanders, who are closer to the troops, tell me their units will mutiny if President Anderson gives that order. I haven’t seen the president in person since he was sworn in at Raven Rock. He’s being kept airborne or at secure locations. So, basically, the plan still seems to be to slouch our way toward Armageddon.”

  She wanted to ask if Browner led the coup that intentionally infected former President Stoddard, who had adamantly opposed eradication, but a little voice in her head warned against it. “What is it that I can do for you?”

  “Plenty.” He dug through piles of paper until he found what he wanted. “First, you remember Dr. Rosenbaum? From the NIH hospital?”

  It had been less than two months since the two of them had “worked together” in Bethesda. Isabel had studied the effects of Pandoravirus on her sister’s brain, which she had thought she had been retained to do. Hank Rosenbaum had surreptitiously compared Isabel to her infected identical twin sister. It had been less than one month since their brief and chilly encounter at President Stoddard’s competency hearing in Raven Rock Mountain.

  “Ole Hank. How’s he doing?” Her voice dripped with faux concern.

  “His family got sick—every last one of them—while he was at Raven Rock.”

  “Oh.” Isabel really should be less judgmental, especially these days. “I’m sorry.”

  “He’s now working with what’s left of the government—military, Park Rangers, federal marshals, and FBI, TSA, and Treasury agents—out west. We need you and Townsend to assess whether they can hold on until we can get the vaccine to them, or, if not…”

  She waited. “If not…what?”

  “Can we buy enough additional time through unrestricted strategic bombing?”

  “Oh.” Isabel found herself longing for the simpler days of life on Virginia roads.

  As if reading her mind, Browner said, “We know, by the way, about your sister’s experiment. To be honest, I’m rooting for her. But I’m in the minority. To me, if she can maintain order, good on her. But there are others, including POTUS, who think her tactics—mass slaughter of holdout towns and mass execution of her own people arrested for any infraction, no matter how minor—make her irredeemably evil. And I do admit that, long-term, if she stabilizes their economy and raises an army, they are an existential threat.”

  “Is she raising an army?”

  “Her security forces are more paramilitary, for now. They issue towns ultimatums—either join or die. If they resist, she cuts loose truckloads of heavily brain damaged Infecteds, who overrun or infect the defenders. She then murders any men, women, or children who survive, infected and uninfected.”

  Isabel winced, and had to force her eyes back open when Browner continued.

  “I’m the one who gets to reject the desperate appeals from little towns in Virginia.”

  “So why don’t you help them?”

  It was Browner’s turn to wince. “You do know what the fuck is goin’ on, right? In the world?” She did, of course, but he nevertheless confronted her with hard facts, pulling a piece of paper from its untidy stack as if at random. “Portland,” he said, holding the single sheet’s corner as if disgusted, “fell yesterday. A convoy of local officials and surviving troops fought its way to the coast. The USS Comfort, a hospital ship, relaxed their screening protocols when the people on shore came under attack. The infection spread from one compartment to the next. Around midnight, the ship ceased responding to orders and set a course south toward who the fuck knows where…and I gave the order for a nuclear hunter-killer submarine to put two torpedoes amidships, may God have mercy on my soul.”

  Isabel opened her mouth to tell him she got his point, but he pulled another piece of paper from the mess. “That doctor you met in Siberia? Groenewalt? The guy who thought you were your twin sister? He wrangled a military flight back to Cape Town and found his infected wife making dinner and his diabetic daughter buried in their back yard. He used a sat phone to call his partner, that other scientist, Lange, who’d flown Emma down to Khabarovsk to you. Lange is holed up in a bunker outside Paris and listened as Groenewalt shot himself while uninfected neighbors waited to come retrieve his pistol.”

  “I get it,” she mumbled.

  “I doubt that you do,” Browner shot back. “But that’s gonna change. I want you to fly up to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho a
nd meet with Rosenbaum. He’s gonna bombard you with requests for assistance, but that’s not why you’re going.”

  “Why am I going, then?”

  “You impressed the National Security Council principals—and me—with your frankness. We need an honest assessment of whether anything can be done to hold the territory between the Rockies and the Pacific. Rosenbaum is going to focus on rescuing pockets of Uninfecteds stranded all the hell over the place, but that’s not your brief.”

  “Okay. What is my brief?”

  Browner caught Isabel’s eye. “There’s no Emma out west. It’s complete anarchy. The major cities on the West Coast are clinging to toeholds but falling one by one. Refugees, both infected and uninfected, are trying to flee back this way through mountain passes we’re blocking and are piling up in camps we can supply only by air drops that instantly become riots. When the virus breaks out, those camps turn overnight with unspeakable violence. One day we drop food and water. The next day we bomb them. We’re slaughtering people, Isabel, by the thousands every single day just to keep them from pouring east through gaps in our lines. If there’s no hope of ever reestablishing order out there…. We have to decide whether to start slaughtering them not by the thousands, but by the millions.”

  It was Isabel’s turn to hesitate. “Wait. You mean I’m going out there to help you decide whether to…to nuke the western states?”

  Browner pressed his thumb and index fingers on closed eyelids. The prior vigor of the Marine general and former Annapolis lineman was long gone. He was tired and old, obviously achy, with gray stubble on his previously clean-shaven chin. “What we can’t tell from overflights or from Rosenbaum’s memos—we call them Rosy Reports—is the human factor. How close to the breaking point are they out West? Do they have a chance in hell of holding out? We need a bitterly honest perspective. Will you help?”

  Isabel swallowed hard. Every time she thought the bottom was within sight, a new, lower depth was revealed. But now was the time to be practical. To survive. “What about my family?”