The Cannibal Virus

by Anthony DeCosmo

  As if by divine intervention, the display changed from NO SIGNAL to four full bars right before his eyes. He dialed again while Barnes reloaded and fired.

  "This is K5 declaring an emergency! K5 declaring an emergency! Edelweiss! I say, Edelweiss—"

  Click.

  NO SIGNAL.

  Costa stared at his phone for a second, and then tossed it to the ground in a burst of panicked frustration.

  "YOU GOTTA GET ME OUTTA HERE — DO YOU HEAR ME?" The senator shouted, grabbing Costa's shirt as he blabbered. The lead agent knocked him into the bungalow and turned to face the threat.

  The shambling mass reached the rolled Jeep. Barnes fired at point-blank range, knocking two more down before turning to retreat.

  He did not get away. Parker — or what had been Parker — crawled from his prone position and jammed his teeth into Barnes's leg just below the knee. The agent's finger yanked the trigger in spasms, sending bullets into the beautiful clear blue sky.

  Costa saw it all. He saw the flood break around the cars and flow toward the bungalow. He saw Parker's fingers claw at Barnes, dragging him to the dusty ground at the foot of the steps.

  He saw their sickly, milky-white eyes as they came for him.

  And then there were one hundred.

  2

  Lieutenant Colonel Liz Thunder sat at a plain metal desk and surveyed her office. It felt rather cold and unfamiliar, despite her having worked on sublevel one in Pylon A at the Darwin Research Facility for nearly three months.

  General Albert Friez had called this little corner of the massive underground complex home before moving on to bigger desks and greater responsibilities at the Pentagon. His act of moving out meant no more than grabbing his personal files and his hat and heading topside to catch a helicopter ride off the Fort Irwin grounds. It seemed Friez never brought any of his personal affects to the base, which was in keeping with his cold and distant disposition.

  Liz did not mean to mimic the general's approach to office décor, but she found she lacked the right personal items to give the place a more comfortable feel. After all, she did not like reaching into her professional past because she found only scars there: memories of botched Psyops experiments, investigations, and reprimand. She had kept no group pictures, she had earned no ribbons, and the brass years ago had sealed all documentation of her projects.

  True, she had somewhat redeemed her reputation in the eyes of her superiors during a brief stint as commander at Red Rock in Pennsylvania, but that short-lived assignment had failed to produce any fond mementos, either.

  As for family and friends, well, Liz Thunder worked underground but she might as well have lived there, too. The top-secret nature of her employment had long ago cut ties with school and childhood friends. Currently she knew a few neighbors in her block of townhouses by their first names, but that was about it.

  At the same time, her family tree held very few branches and she sat way out on a limb. She had not found out that her grandmother had died until six months after the fact, and her divorced parents grew new roots on opposite ends of the country.

  She felt an ice pick — like jab in her heart as she realized the true extent of her isolation. While she might head topside and home at the end of the day, she was as much a prisoner as any of the specimens down on sublevel six.

  Well, at least her containment cell provided a view, of sorts.

  Most of the facility's levels used concrete as the primary building block, however the designers had seen fit to use glass along her particular stretch of sublevel one. Her room sat at the end of a row of three offices, each separated by thick windows allowing — with all the blinds retracted — a clear view from her seat all the way over to Major Gant's chair, two offices away.

  While the inner walls were thick slabs of concrete, the outer walls were also glass, looking out on the tube-like corridor running from one end of Pylon A sublevel one to the other. In her case, she was afforded the added view of a perpendicular passage leading to an elevator that only went down.

  As luck would have it, all of those blinds were retracted and Liz could, in fact, see all the way over to Thom Gant's office. While he spent very little time there, she saw him sitting there now on the receiving end of a rather animated discussion.

  His accoster was a petite young woman — maybe ten years younger than Liz, placing her at about twenty-seven or so — with short spiky black hair and wearing a white lab coat over a dark shirt.

  The sight might have seemed somewhat comical to a newcomer: this diminutive woman shouting at the sturdy soldier who — if he stood from his chair — would hover a good foot taller than the scientist. However, Liz knew Thom Gant to be a chivalrous man. He would sit there and listen patiently. Nonetheless, the woman's chance of bullying him into a decision he did not agree with was not in the cards.

  As for that woman, Dr. Annabelle Stacy had been on-staff for nearly a month. In that short time Liz had learned enough about the young prodigy to know her competence in several different fields of scientific study was matched by an incredible amount of determination. No doubt that was why she had earned doctorates in three distinct specialties in the first place.

  It also meant that Liz knew what was going to happen, and it played out exactly as expected.

  From her vantage point two offices over, Liz watched Dr. Stacy throw her arms up in frustration and exit Thom Gant's office. She then marched between the wall of concrete and the wall of glass and metal that framed the corridor directly to the C.O.'s office. That C.O., of course, was Liz Thunder.

  "Liz — I mean, Lieutenant Colonel — he is still refusing."

  "You can just refer to me as Colonel, Dr. Stacy. No need to keep repeating the lieutenant part."

  "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm still getting used to all this, you know, army stuff."

  "I can see that."

  "But Colonel, um, Liz, I have all my clearances, I've been here a month, and he still won't do it."

  Liz held a hand up to silence her complaint. She had, after all, heard it plenty of times already. She then locked her eyes on the back of Major Gant's head from two offices away.

  He sat there with his eyes intently focused on some slip of paperwork; eyes so intently focused that she knew he was not interested in that paperwork but rather more interested in avoiding eye contact.

  She glared.

  Thom made the mistake of glancing in her direction, no doubt to spy on how much his disagreement with the doctor had escalated. He then saw Liz watching him and the game was up. Despite him being a couple of years older, she outranked him, and on occasions such as this — occasions when his obstinacy came from something other than sensible logic or sound strategy — he could come across as somewhat childish. Like a kid refusing to eat his vegetables.

  Liz summoned him with a wave. He sighed, stood, exited his office, and traveled in Dr. Stacy's footsteps until joining her in front of Thunder's desk.

  "Yes, Lieutenant Colonel?"

  Stacy jumped, "Oh, you can just call her Colonel," she said, but then realized how stilly it sounded for a civilian to correct a man who had spent nearly two decades in the military. She sort of blushed and quieted … but only for a moment.

  Liz considered how to approach this particular conundrum and settled on sarcasm.

  She pointed first to him and then to Annabelle while saying, "Major Gant, this is Dr. Stacy. She is the new science officer for the military detachment of Task Force Archangel. Have you two met?"

  Something akin to a smile appeared on Thom's face, but she knew it to be more like a dam holding back a rumbling pool of annoyance.

  "Yes, Colonel, I am acquainted with Dr. Stacy."

  "Tell me, Major, how long have you known Dr. Stacy?"

  Gant answered, "I believe she has been on base for nearly one month," but the greater his annoyance or aggravation the more stilted his speech, and thus it sounded as if he spoke individual words as opposed to one congruent sentence.

  "Major
Gant, Dr. Stacy has received all necessary clearances and is a fully functioning and contributing member of Task Force Archangel and an employee here at the Darwin Research Facility. She is quite familiar with the surface structures; she has already utilized the Cray over on B-1, received certification on biohazard disposal from the chief down on A-3, and partaken in a conference with the microbiology research team at their facilities on Pylon A sublevel four. I personally showed her the chemical warfare test range on B4, and we toured the aeronautics department, the theoretical physics labs, and the Earth Studies offices spread out across both pylons of sublevel five."

  Gant stood straight — not exactly at attention but as close as he tended to get these days — but as she spoke he swayed, as if, perhaps, the restroom called.

  She went on, "Now, as the commander of this base, I felt it my duty to give her a proper orientation to the more traditional facilities. However, as I have explained to you twice already, I am still a relative newcomer and, given your experience, the nature of your detachment, and your connection to the containment facilities, I requested that you provide Dr. Stacy with a thorough tour of sublevel six and below. Or was I not clear in that request?"

  Gant shifted, maintained that pseudo-smile, and answered, "Colonel Thunder, my understanding is that you did, in fact, request that I show Dr. Stacy to those lower levels and that that request was not, in fact, a direct order."

  "That is correct, Major. Would you please explain to me why you have not seen fit to honor that request?"

  Stacy watched the exchange through young but sharp brown eyes.

  "Colonel, I do not believe Dr. Stacy is ready to visit those lower levels."

  Stacy broke in with a voice that sounded very much offended: "I have been briefed on just about everything that is down there. I have read two dozen medical and psychological articles on the specimens; I have seen the after-action reports. I trained with the Navy Seals for six weeks to get ready for this position, for which I was personally recruited by your boss."

  Thunder held a hand aloft to calm Stacy. While she did go silent, she did not appear to calm at all.

  "What do you mean she's not ready?"

  Gant shifted some more, but did not answer.

  Stacy said to Liz, "I know I don't understand all this army stuff, but I thought you were his superior officer?"

  Thunder nodded.

  Stacy went on, "Then can't you just make that request an order?"

  Thunder eyed Major Gant and then answered, "I won't do that."

  "Why?"

  She replied to Stacy but kept her eyes on Gant.

  "I may outrank him, but Thom here has been doing this a lot longer than anyone on this base. If he doesn't feel you're ready, then I'm not going to push it." She ignored Stacy's gasps, stood, and told him, "I respect your seniority here, Thom, but she deserves to see; otherwise she won't be ready for the things you'll run into out there."

  Liz saw the answer in Thom's eyes, hiding there behind his forced smile and his stiff — but swaying — stance. She did not see chauvinism or disdain for a civilian; she saw something else.

  She added, "You can't protect her forever, you know."

  He blinked but that was the only concession he offered.

  The phone on her desk buzzed. Liz held her eyes on Thom's for two seconds longer and then answered.

  "Yes? Yes, General, hello. Yes, he is right here in my office, along with Dr. Stacy. Okay, hold on."

  She pulled the phone away from her ear, tapped a button, and set the receiver down.

  "General, you're on speaker phone."

  "Major Gant? Annabelle?"

  "Yes, General Friez," Thom replied, while the younger woman surprised them both with a bubbly, "Hello, Albert."

  "Glad you're all here because there isn't much time. Major, your unit needs to scramble and deploy. Less than an hour ago PACOM flashed Edelweiss, sourced to a Secret Service detail escorting a United States senator. Contact was lost almost immediately but point of origin was a small, privately owned resort named Tioga Island situated in the South Pacific."

  "Sir," Gant leaned forward and placed both hands on Thunder's desk. "Any understanding of the nature of the threat?"

  "Negative, Major. You now know everything that we know. It seems we got lucky in that one of the Secret Service agents interfaced with Archangel a few years back and remembered the alert code, otherwise we wouldn't even know about it. As I said, this is a private island and I really mean private. There is no national claim here, which is unusual even for so-called private islands. We're tracking ownership, but from what I can tell, it's sort of a playground for the high rollers. The senator ended up there due to engine trouble on his flight to Australia. At least that's the cover story," Friez said, adding a cough.

  "It sounds as if we have a very long way to travel," Gant mumbled.

  "We have been unable to raise anyone on Tioga, not the detail, not the airstrip there, not anyone. More intel is expected within six hours; the NRO has a bird set to photograph the area. I'll be at their Chantilly facility when the data comes through. In the meantime you need to get moving; it's going to take all day just to get there and that's assuming we can find the necessary assets."

  Gant thought aloud, "We'll need a liaison with PACOM."

  "I can handle that from here," Colonel Thunder volunteered. "That's just a bunch of phone calls."

  Friez's voice came over the speaker, "That's a start, but you'll need to get someone in theater to interface directly with the service components, particularly with the Pacific Special Operations Command. That will take time, and Major Gant, I don't like wasting time."

  "We can insert a small team first," Gant said, "if I can find air transport within operational range of the target. We recon and report. Is the senator's extraction a priority?"

  "Senator Kendal has friends on the Intelligence Committee, which is probably why he had such a veteran Secret Service escort for what was essentially a vacation down under. Yes, we'd like to extract him intact, if possible."

  Major Gant said, "Getting in fast should be easy. Getting out fast will pose a challenge."

  Friez worked a step ahead: "You will need someone to coordinate support assets with Pacific Command. Fixed-wing insertion should not be an issue, but unless we're particularly lucky I doubt there is a helicopter within range, at least not immediately."

  Major Gant stood straight again and said, "Colonel, if you could get working on the preliminaries from your office, I'll assemble my team. Captain Campion will go to PACOM as our liaison along with the bulk of the detachment. I'll drop in with a partner to assess the situation and evaluate the threat. Experience tells me this is probably a wild goose chase, but if it's not then I can communicate what measures need to be taken."

  Before anyone could speak, Dr. Stacy broke in, "I want to go."

  "That will not be possible—"

  Friez's voice from the speaker cut off Gant, "That's a great idea, Annabelle. Dive right in and put all that training of yours to work right away."

  "With all due respect, Dr. Stacy has been a part of Archangel for less than a month and has not been in the field yet."

  "Major, what kind of threat are we facing here?" General Friez asked.

  The question threw Gant. He squinted and replied, "As you said, that has not been established yet, General."

  "Exactly. I would think that having your science officer and her trio of PhDs along might help you ascertain the nature of that threat and perhaps even combat it. Or does that not make sense?"

  "General, sir, we are most certainly looking at a high-altitude air drop mission."

  Stacy shot back, "I practiced HALO and HAHO jumps with the Seals. Perfect landing each time, and I've been hitting the altitude chamber with the rest of the team."

  "Really, Doctor?" Gant glared at her. "Odds are, we will not arrive at the drop zone until after nightfall and need to fall six miles out of the sky in about two minutes to hit a tiny island in the
middle of the largest water mass on the planet. Is that what you trained for?"

  Stacy hesitated, her energetic eyes faltering.

  Friez ended the conversation, "Take her, Major Gant. She has the background to evaluate the environment and the situation. I put her on your team for a reason and this is it."

  Silence fell for a moment as Friez's point — his order — became clear. When he was satisfied that all objections had been quelled, the general told them, "I need to get balls rolling on my end and so do you, Colonel. As for the major, well, your team should be in the air in a few minutes, with the rest to follow based on the cooperation we get from Pacific Command. Contact me when you're getting close to Hawaii. I may have the satellite photos by then."

  The line went dead.

  Gant glanced at Stacy, glared at Thunder, and then walked out of the office to assemble his men.

  When he had left, Stacy turned to Liz and said, "I'm not stupid. I know this isn't going to be easy. If Albert hadn't jumped in, I'd be spending this mission at my desk, wouldn't I?"

  Colonel Thunder told her, "Your dad is still alive, right?"

  Stacy nodded, "Yes. He's on the other side of the country but he's there. Why?"

  "Well you've got two new fathers looking out for you. You should be honored."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Different kinds of dads, of course. General Friez is the type of father that wants you to go out and reach for the brass ring. Gant, well, he's the kind that wants to keep you sheltered and protected."

  Stacy snorted something like a chuckle and answered, "I'll go with the general. If I wanted shelter, I'd be working in a civilian lab or teaching at a university."

  Colonel Thunder looked at the younger lady and warned, "Before this is over, you may wish that was the case."

  3

  Major Gant exited the Humvee. His black BDUs stood in stark contrast to the bright desert landscape with the sun beating down so hard that it felt as if he might be broiled alive.

  In front of him sat an airfield nearly surrounded by mountains. To the south, through a break in those mountains, were Fort Irwin's primary facilities, including the National Training Center.