“There’s enough there for everyone on board, and some to hand over when we land,” Campbell advised. Winters had told him how many samples of the vaccine they had needed and Campbell had obliged.
“All’s forgiven, David,” she said. There were lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there the last time Campbell had seen her, a dearth of sleep definitely having infused and corrupted her. “I heard you had fun with the leaders of Gaia.”
“They were co-operative, after some persuasion.” He wouldn’t call what he had done to them fun. It was more an act of revenge done on behalf of those who had died from the Lazarus outbreak. If he had been given time, Campbell could have easily drawn out their penance, taking days to slowly extract the ever more desperate pleas for mercy that Brother and Father would have spewed forth. That was another regret Campbell could add to his list.
“I hear you perhaps enjoyed yourself a little too much.” It was hard for Campbell to read the expression on Winters’ face. Surely she wasn't going to get all pious on him. There was nothing he’d done that those bastards hadn’t deserved ten times over.
“I did what I thought needed doing. If anyone has a problem with that, perhaps they can come and talk to me whilst I’m handing out the vaccine.” Would anyone really object to the way he handled the mission? Were there really going to be any bleeding hearts who would cry and moan because he didn’t show terrorists their rights? Would there be any liberal demands for human rights for those who had released this plague into a now dying world? A sly smirk spread across Winters’ face.
“I don’t think anyone will hold it against you,” Winters reassured him. “Certainly nobody in the DIA. It’s not like there is even an agency anymore.” DIA headquarters had been abandoned, whole government agencies ceasing to exist as the country fell apart. Most of their staff in Washington were dead, infected or had simply been left to fend for themselves. You had to accept that not everyone could be saved.
“Can it be that bad?” Campbell knew things were dire, but he never really believed the government would start to collapse so quickly. The building blocks making up the echelons of power always seemed to be all encompassing and pervasive. How could things fall apart so easily? Maybe he should have stayed on Tristan da Cunha.
“If it was just the zombies, we would probably have been all right. But Lazarus cut through us before we even knew it existed. The CDC is gone. The Pentagon and Langley have all been evacuated, at least on the surface. I can’t even guess how many field agents the FBI have lost. We’re on a knife’s edge, and our President keeps sharpening the blade.” Winters bent down and opened the cooler. “I’ll get these distributed. Did you keep a copy of the Gaia research?”
“All here,” Campbell said, patting the breast of his jacket. Another bargaining tool to get them into Iceland. When he’d raided the Ark, he sent everything electronically to his superiors who had then passed it on to Fort Detrick. It was considered wise to keep a copy though, because where they were going needed that information, and there was nothing to ensure the reeling US government would do the right thing.
Whilst Winters was bent over, a tall man in his early sixties appeared in the aisle. He stared down at Campbell with a piercing gaze. A frightened woman who was probably his wife clung to the newcomer’s arm.
“Fine job, David,” the man said. Despite what was happening to the country, the man was immaculately dressed, not a single hair on his head seemingly out of place.
“Thank you, Director,” Campbell replied. Nice to have a bit of recognition for once instead of criticism. He had met the director twice before in his DIA career, if only briefly, and neither time had been particularly memorable. Winters righted herself with a loaded injector gun in her right hand. She handed it to her ultimate superior. It was only right that the man in charge went first.
In charge of what though?
“You first, dear,” the director said to his wife.
“I assume you’ve taken your dose already?” Winters asked Campbell.
“Of course.” First come first served was his motto. “What’s the plan? Site R I assume?”
“No chance,” the DIA director said, which surprised Campbell. “I’ve arranged for us to relocate to Iceland. We have an outpost there.” He spoke to Campbell without looking at him, the wife the main focus of his attention.
“Keflavik Station?” Campbell asked.
“That’s the one.”
“Careful dear, that hurts,” the wife complained as she was injected. The director just smiled at her reassuringly.
“What about the President?” Campbell wasn’t sure how he felt about abandoning the country he loved.
“What about her?” Winters gave Campbell a searching look. “Look, David,” she said earnestly, “you need to realise that this country has fallen. The President has already been advised that the war cannot be won, but she seems to want to be the last person standing.”
“But with the vaccine?” Can’t be won. Surely that was madness? How could these people be saying this? He had just been halfway across the world, had battled to bring back a vaccine that worked. Surely that amounted to something.
“There’s no chance,” Winters insisted. She passed another vial up to the director whilst extracting a second injection gun from the cooler. “I saw the computer projections before I left. The virus came on too hard and too fast. The undead are spread too wide, in numbers too large to deal with.”
“What about the Rust Belt states? Weren’t they relatively unscathed?”
“Yes,” Winters said, “but what’s left is already fragmenting. Most state capitals have already been overrun or are close to it. It’s only a matter of time now.” The government hadn’t shut the airports in time or the highways. Too many people had fled after the presidential alert was broadcast, going to places they thought would be safe, or gathering with relatives. They had taken the virus with them.
Most people left in the administration would deny that the battle was now hopeless, at least in open conversation. Winters clearly wasn’t one of them.
26.08.19
Frederick, USA
The injection site from where the vaccine was administered still throbbed. Straight into the muscle, it had felt like Jee’s fellow doctor had been injecting thick glue. It wasn’t guaranteed to work mind, but somehow Jee managed to put her worries about her own possible impending fate to one side so she could concentrate on the task at hand. She would either live, or she wouldn’t, and that was something she had faced in her career more than once. The worst incident prior to this hadn’t been either in the field or the lab. Instead, she and several other doctors had all received envelopes containing white powder whilst the national threat level had been high. The chatter that she was never told about suggested an anthrax attack against multiple government institutions. It had been a hoax, but that was a few hours waiting for the test results, an experience that she was now having to repeat.
It was essential to keep her head in the game, and her own anger helped with that. Saved from Schmidt’s clutches, Jee still didn't like what she was being asked to do in the pursuit of an answer to the Lazarus virus. At least there was no denying that the people she was experimenting on were volunteers, so they were taking part willingly instead of being drugged and locked in cells deep below the earth. Was that really true though? Soldiers were subject to a significant amount of indoctrination throughout their training, a love of their country and their unit drilled into them relentlessly. Especially the Marines, who made up ninety per cent of the twenty volunteers. Jee found herself wondering if they were truly able to have independence of thought.
It could also be a level of selfishness on their part. The vaccine would take time to go into mass production, so there was only a limited supply available. Those who stepped forward for the trials would be some of the first to become inoculated against Lazarus. They would still need to be fearful of the ever growing undead, but with an effective cure, the virus itsel
f would cease to be a threat to them.
Jee just wished there were more doses for her to work with. Most of what had been acquired by Campbell’s Delta team had already been shipped off to places other than Fort Detrick. Likely the President and her advisors would take their doses as soon as Jee’s research confirmed the safety and effectiveness of the medicine. Jee had no insight into what would happen to the vaccine outside of this facility. This experiment was her world now.
It was noticeable that the Delta team who had acquired the vaccine samples from the Gaia stronghold had been vague regarding how many doses they had found there, which meant the members of the Delta team had likely helped themselves to their magnificent bounty. You couldn’t really criticise them for that though, not really. The soldiers of the first Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta assault force had risked their lives to get the mission done, and their efforts had been admirable as well as heroic. Jee figured they had earned their reward, especially if the vaccine actually worked. Father and the other heads of Gaia had all injected themselves and their families with the vaccine, so the chances were, it did exactly what it was supposed to. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come with the side-effects that had led to the abandonment of the research started by the British Colonel Smith. That was another little nugget of fear that tried to lodge in Jee’s head, and she did her best to cast it aside.
With a working vaccine, the immune were now considered by many to be just a novelty rather than a vital cog in fighting Lazarus. And yet, for reasons unknown to Jee, Reece and Lizzy were still being held effectively captive. Was that an admission that the treatment of the immune had been a mistake? That worried Jee more than she would like to admit because desperate governments had a habit of trying to bury their mistakes. Such actions made no sense here, though. There was no longer any kind of public scrutiny that could embarrass a government. Who was going to care about two people when millions were dying? It made more sense to just give Reece and Lizzy their freedom back.
The volunteers Jee was using for her research were split into two distinct groups. All were to be exposed to a concentrated dose of the Lazarus virus as well as the vaccine. It was just that half would get the cure before Lazarus was thrown into their system. None of the men would be told which group they fell in, Jee hoping her actions for half of them wouldn’t amount to a death sentence. She herself was relying on the vaccine now after having been exposed to the virus due to a failure in the Fort Detrick quarantine procedures. As yet, she was showing no symptoms, but the Hazmat suit she wore was mandatory. She didn’t need protecting, but those around her did.
As skilled as she was when it came to saving people’s lives, there was a strong chance that she wouldn’t be able to save her own. She would either be cured or marched out to have a bullet put in the back of her head as had happened to so many. Not the end she ever imagined for herself, and she knew that, if the virus continued to ravage her body, there would be no special treatment for her. Not here. Nobody had the time or the inclination to show any kind of favouritism.
Her visit to the surface had been brief, so she was breathing the refined air rather than the freshness of nature once again. The whole base was on lockdown, with limitations on association imposed. Freedom of movement was almost impossible, a series of checkpoints at choke points set up to constantly monitor everyone until the vaccine was administered, whole buildings shut down and abandoned until the base could be made disease free. Half her team’s time was now spent checking blood tests which took too much of their energy away from where the fight was desperately needed.
Jee couldn’t get past the feeling that the vaccine was too little too late. She didn’t know the half of it.
The thermal sterilisation of the lower level had caused the evacuation of the four levels above it, which was severely hampering the research capacity of the Fort Detrick facility. In the fifteen-floor subterranean structure beneath the base, she now found herself on the third sub-level. It wasn’t really designed to contain something as formidable as Lazarus, but it was the only remaining level with the required isolation cells. They couldn’t possibly have potentially infected volunteers just wandering around freely, that would be unthinkable as well as suicidal. That had happened once already and had nearly cost them the whole facility, something that would have caused a severe dent in the war against Lazarus.
The testing of those on the base was still ongoing, a rolling quarantine engaged as they tried to salvage what was possibly the last military facility on the North American continent that could replicate the research that had led to the vaccine’s creation. The loss of this base would be a crushing blow to the country and the world. Nowhere else had such a concentration of equipment or personnel needed for the job at hand.
There was even a chance that the data seized from the Ark would reveal the inner workings of the plague, although that would be a secondary concern. Jee and her fellow scientists weren’t just curious about what made Lazarus tick, there was the added worry that viruses can and do mutate, making the existing vaccines ineffective.
To Jee’s knowledge, no other country with the exception of Iceland was close to starting the construction of the vaccine. Even though Jee had been assured that the information taken from the Gaia stronghold had been disseminated to all the planet’s governments still in communication, Jee had a sneaking suspicion that this was a lie. Perhaps she was wrong to be so distrustful, but she had a strong feeling that her new President wasn’t one to freely share such a significant strategic advantage. For sure it wouldn’t have been shared with the Russians or the Chinese, two countries President Fairchild undoubtedly considered to be enemies. To think that people were still willing to play politics was unthinkable, but Jee could somehow understand the logic behind it. If the USA could control the vaccine, then it could theoretically control the new world order that developed from the crisis. Order out of chaos, a new American century.
Did people really think like that? Having seen how Professor Schmidt’s research was eagerly authorised, even encouraged by the powers that be, Jee knew that this was exactly how the brains of those in charge worked. If Jee had been able to gaze into the inner working of Fairchild’s fevered thinking, she likely would have collapsed in despair.
Of the twenty men being experimented on, one in particular held Jee’s concern. Howell had saved them from the murderous intent of Gabriel, and now he had stepped forward to volunteer to receive the cure. This wouldn’t solely be out of any selfish intent, but more likely a way to earn some form of personal penance. Jee shared Howell’s inner turmoil when it came to the crimes that had been perpetrated on the now charred lowest level. Even though objection and refusal would have likely ended up with severe penalties being paid by both of them, Jee still felt guilty that she hadn’t done more to counter the madness that had permeated the research of Professor Schmidt. Jee couldn’t fool herself that it had all been for the greater good, not for a second. Despite the limitations imposed on her and the threats to her own safety, Jee still felt somewhat complicit in the atrocities done in the name of salvation.
Schmidt had clearly been a psychopath, someone who shouldn’t have been allowed near a laboratory, never mind test subjects. Jee was repulsed by what had happened, knowing she shouldn’t have felt forced to sacrifice her own humanity in the fight to save Lazarus. If those fighting the virus did that, then what kind of a species would they become at the end of this?
Jee reckoned Howell felt the same way, which probably went some way to explaining why he was willing to risk his life in this manner. It likely also went some way to re-establishing the trust of his fellow soldiers and his commanding officers who may have been viewing him with suspicion right now. It was common knowledge that Major Carson had been killed and that Howell hadn’t been there to help prevent the assassin from wreaking havoc on sub-level fifteen. Whilst saving the lives of the immune was all very noble, there would still be some of his peers who would view him as a coward who ran away f
rom a fight. Carson had been feared and respected, which meant a lot in this man’s Marine Corps. He had been the stuff of legends. Would some people even blame Howell for Carson’s death? Would some people think he perhaps even had a part in the major’s murder?
Jee was concerned for Howell, but at least he had been allocated to the group that would receive the vaccine first. Thirty minutes after that, he would receive the second, deadlier injection. Would that be enough time for the immunity to become established though? Laboratory experiments showed that the vaccine was toxic to the virus as well as producing immunity, so it was hoped it would act as the miracle drug that was promised. This was the dream behind the post exposure inoculation. It was Jee’s one chance to survive the pathogen that had infected her system.
The whole operation felt rushed and out of control. With the death of Schmidt, there was nobody more qualified than Jee to organise and perform such research, but whoever was running the show wanted the military in charge, and they had their own way of doing things. Schmidt had been a civilian, and they were all now being penalised due to the failures in her crazed approach.
The military was well and truly in charge now. Jee was just along for the ride, had been ever since she was dragged here on the orders of her superiors.
***
Howell felt naked without his uniform. The surgical bed he lay on was propped up at a comfortable angle, but it was unnerving to have his limbs restrained. He was in two minds as to whether this was a wise move on his part which was unfortunate because he was totally committed now. It made sense to get the vaccine as soon as possible, especially with its limited supply, but what if it didn’t work? Had anyone even considered that? It seemed strange that everyone was relying on the research done by a bunch of complete maniacs, the very people who had unleashed Lazarus onto the world in the first place. But of course, that was what these trials were all about.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 5): The Last Page 9
