HOT ZONE: A Post-Apocalyptic Pandemic Thriller (The Zulu Virus Chronicles Book 1)

by Steven Konkoly

  “Where do we even begin, Stan? I’m at a complete loss. This is unmistakably a bioweapons attack.”

  “I concur,” said Greenberg matter-of-factly. “The coordinated appearance and widespread nature of the attack suggests a state-sponsored attack. It’s too sophisticated to be anything else.”

  “I assume you have an idea who’s behind this?”

  “I did—until early this morning,” said Greenberg. “Turns out Ockham’s razor can be misleading, particularly if you don’t know most of the story.”

  “This is related to Monchegorsk,” said Chang.

  “That’s what I thought, and in a sense, it is related—indirectly,” said Greenberg. “This isn’t the Russians or one of their proxies. Frankly, I’m not sure I believe the information in my possession, though it would certainly explain things.”

  “Inside job?”

  “That’s what my new friends say,” said Greenberg.

  “Where are you, Stan?” said Chang.

  “I honestly have no idea,” said Greenberg. “Forest and mountains all around. That’s about all I know, or I’m allowed to say.”

  “Who are these new friends?” said Chang, growing less and less comfortable with the call by the second.

  “I guess I shouldn’t call them friends, yet. The jury is still out,” said Greenberg. “They managed to thwart my kidnapping this morning, though I suppose it could be the other way around. Hard to say.”

  “How can you trust them?”

  “I don’t really have a choice at this point,” said Greenberg. “Where did you manage to hide? Don’t tell me the actual location.”

  “I didn’t really hide, Stan,” said Chang. “I mean, I’m not at my apartment, but this place isn’t exactly a secret.”

  He heard some hushed voices in the background of the call.

  “Gene, you need to get out of there. Anyone with even the slightest research-side knowledge of the Zulu virus has been taken out of circulation, as my friends put it.”

  “What does that mean?” said Chang. “I’ve never heard of the Zulu virus.”

  “I assume you sent me a DNA snapshot of it this morning,” said Greenberg. “A modified version most likely.”

  “HSV1 with indeterminate modifications. I left the lab as soon as I confirmed it. I wanted to get out of the city,” said Chang.

  “I don’t blame you,” said Greenberg. “Based on what I know about the virus, the disaster unfolding in Indianapolis will reach a tipping point tonight or tomorrow, and only get worse from there. Do you know about the other cities?”

  “I put together a map based on information blackouts—” started Chang.

  “I told them you were clever,” interrupted Greenberg.

  “Right. The Midwest was hit hard, and it’s starting to show up in larger cities,” said Chang. “I had to use a satellite data link. They cut cell service and Internet.”

  “Of course they did. Did you send the DNA snapshot to anyone else?”

  Chang wasn’t sure he should answer that question. He still had no idea if the group that “rescued” Greenberg was friend or foe. It was safer for everyone involved to assume the worst until proven otherwise. He must have paused for too long.

  “I understand why you’d be hesitant to answer that,” said Greenberg. “Here’s the thing, and I don’t know how to say this without just saying it. Christine left me a text message this morning. A single word. RUN. I haven’t heard from her since.”

  “She might have gotten away, like you,” said Chang, careful not to confirm whether he’d sent her an email.

  “Let’s hope for the best, but assume the worst. If she’s fallen into the wrong hands, your call may have been intercepted,” said Greenberg.

  “I didn’t call until late in the morning.”

  “Well, then maybe there’s still hope. They may have disabled her phone by then to prevent it from being tracked.”

  “How is that hopeful?”

  “Hopeful for you. I’m not optimistic about Christine, and neither are my new acquaintances,” said Greenberg. “I’d get as far away from your current location as possible.”

  “Then what?” said Chang. “Where do I go?”

  “Now might be a good time to take your plane and head to Canada,” said Greenberg. “Explain your situation and ask for asylum. Give them the DNA data you sent to Edgewood, along with a file I’m about to upload. Everything you ever wanted to know about Monchegorsk, Russia, but were afraid to ask.”

  “Stan, I don’t have the data with me,” said Chang.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I didn’t smuggle it out of the lab,” said Chang. “Too risky.”

  “Shit. This isn’t good,” said Greenberg.

  “There’s no shortage of samples available,” said Chang. “Not to be flippant about it.”

  “True, but I suspect that research scientists familiar enough with HSV1 to make the kind of assessment you made this morning will be in short supply soon. Nobody goes through this much trouble to let a few pesky scientists stand in the way.”

  “Is that you talking or your new friends?”

  “Both,” said Greenberg. “And speaking of these friends, they really think you should be on your way. Call me using this number when you’re safe. Hopefully out of the country.”

  “You might want to take your Facebook post down,” said Chang.

  “Already done.”

  He checked his laptop screen, immediately noticing the change.

  “Slick,” said Chang. “Almost too slick.”

  “They’re serious about getting their hands on that data and someone that can explain it,” said Greenberg.

  “Have you told them what I do for NevoTech?”

  Chang continuously apprised Stan of his progress on NT-HSE893, the HSV1 vaccine, which had been one of the main reasons for their initial partnership. The government was interested in a rapidly deployable treatment regimen to counter an HSV1-based bioweapon, and NevoTech was interested in selling a once-monthly booster drug to hundreds of millions of customers worldwide. It represented a win-win situation for the population, and he felt good about his work on the vaccine.

  “I have,” said Greenberg. “They said it’s too late at this point. Nothing can stop this cataclysm. My file should be available for download through your sat phone. Don’t waste your time reading it now. Get somewhere safe and call me.”

  With the call disconnected, he let Stan’s words sink in. Cataclysm might be an understatement. This would be more like an apocalypse. Millions of Americans were likely infected, with no hope of recovery—their humanity stripped away slowly by the disease—until nothing was left.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Eric Larsen woke from a sound sleep, his brain slow to register the insistent rapping at his door. He peeked at the digital alarm clock next to his bed. 11:29 PM. The knocking continued. Another mobility drill. Wonderful. Before he could form the words to answer his staccato summons, the door flung inward, a set of keys dangling from its knob. Larsen covered his eyes with a hand; the hallway’s blazing lights silhouetted the figure in the doorway.

  “Don’t hit the lights, please,” said Larsen.

  The room’s overhead lights flickered momentarily before bathing the room in a dull, institutional fluorescent glow.

  “Thanks,” he muttered, reaching for the lamp on his nightstand. “Kill the lights. I got it.”

  “No can do,” said the man they called the grim reaper. “The colonel wants all teams dressed and assembled in the pit within five. First bird rolls in twenty-five minutes.”

  Right after this drill, he’d remove the translucent plastic ceiling panels and yank the light tubes. Larsen had made that same promise before, always opting for sleep instead. He apparently hated losing sleep more than the lights.

  “Got it,” said Larsen.

  Larsen’s feet hit the thinly carpeted floor, his hands reaching for the pair of tactical cargo pants crumpled on the
chair next to the nightstand. With his pants secure, he rushed into the hallway, knocking into Laura Ragan. Ragan held firm, bouncing him into the doorframe. Somehow she was already dressed, complete with drop holster.

  “Walk much?” she said, brushing past him. “And put a shirt on. You know—so you sort of look like a team leader.”

  “Didn’t your mom teach you not to run inside?” he said, smirking.

  Ragan mumbled an obscenity about his mother and shook her head while knocking on one of her teammates’ doors. She was all business with Larsen, if not a little hostile, which suited him fine. He wasn’t here to get chummy with anyone. He was here to collect an easy, oversized paycheck that had fallen into his lap.

  Almost too easy. One month locked down in the middle of nowhere Indiana, followed by a few days of sustainment training. Then one month off with his wife and baby daughter, playing outdoors in the Colorado Springs area. He’d have the house paid off in three years, plus enough money in savings to pay for his daughter’s college. Not a bad gig at all, as long as one of these odd-hour shakedowns didn’t turn out to be the real thing. The Department of Homeland Security had created the unit with the worst-case scenario in mind. If one of their drills turned out to be real, something big and bad had gone down on U.S. soil.

  Larsen walked calmly to the room next to his and pounded on the door. A few seconds later, the door opened to reveal a fully dressed, towering, muscular black guy. Randy Dixon, the team’s second in command, took one look around and shook his head.

  “Does everyone but me sleep in their clothes?” said Larsen.

  “Fly’s down, man,” said Dixon, nodding at his pants. “How long and where?”

  “The pit. Four and a half minutes,” said Larsen, adjusting his zipper status. “I’ll wake Peck. You get Brennan. Meet at the entrance to the southern stairwell in three.”

  “Got it,” said Dixon.

  Four minutes and twenty-seven seconds later, Larsen’s team filed into the sunken auditorium and sat in the closest empty row to the front—behind the rest of the unit. A few dozen members of the unit watched them settle in, disapproving eye rolls and head shakes heralding their arrival. Larsen raised his hand in front of his face, glancing at his watch with exaggerated interest before lowering it and mouthing, “Fuck you,” to his audience. He had zero patience for these poseurs.

  The man standing in the shadows next to the auditorium screen moved forward into the light. Warren Cooper, aka the colonel, pressed the keyboard on the computer station next to him. He was about as real a colonel as the bearded gentleman featured on the side of a KFC bucket. An imaginary title bestowed upon him by his staff, from what Larsen guessed. It didn’t really matter. He was the senior Department of Homeland Security official at the compound. Everyone’s boss.

  The floor-to-ceiling screen next to Cooper illuminated, displaying the aircraft manifests. Shit. It was going to be a long day. A Cat One alert put the entire unit in the air. Drill or no drill, it was a big fucking deal.

  “There you have it. Category One deployment,” said Cooper. “I want to report wheels up on our last bird within twenty minutes. Sooner if possible.”

  “Any indication if this is a drill?” said one of the team leaders, who had moments ago cast him a condescending look.

  Larsen couldn’t resist. The guy had been an asshole from day one. “What do you think, Ochoa?”

  Ochoa’s entire team cast murderous glares at him as muffled laughter filled the auditorium. Cooper pressed onward like the verbal exchange hadn’t occurred.

  “Get to your aircraft. Mission details will be delivered before the aircraft start to taxi. Good luck. God speed. Hope to see you all back here shortly.”

  Cooper said the same thing every time, betraying nothing. A fact some of his colleagues appeared unwilling or unable to grasp. In the seven months Blue Team had spent in active status on the base, they had also done the same thing—every fucking time—until they received their mission packets. Zero variation.

  Most of the time, the packet instructions told them to debark the aircraft and report back to the auditorium. Drill completed. Sometimes, the initial instructions outlined their kit requirements, and the aircraft took to the sky. They’d change into the required gear, still unaware of their detailed mission parameters, and wait for the aircraft commander’s permission to open the next set of instructions. Typically, those instructions informed him that the aircraft was headed back to Grissom Air Reserve Base for landing and debark. Twice in his career with the unit, they had been instructed to egress from the aircraft in flight, over the airbase, putting their wingsuit and parachuting skills to the test.

  He studied the screen for a few seconds while the rest of the room scrambled for the exit to the tarmac. Zombie, his team’s call sign, was manifested with Specter, Banshee and Vampire on aircraft three. Wonderful. Specter was Ragan’s team, and Vampire was Ochoa’s. Two of his biggest fans. At least they’d have plenty of room to stay out of each other’s way. They’d been assigned to one of the C-130Es.

  Larsen slowly got up from his seat, making eye contact with Ochoa, who was bunched up with the rest of the teams trying to squeeze through the double doorway. The team leader sneered, clearly on the verge of spewing another ill-conceived comment or insult.

  “Take your time, Larsen,” said Ochoa.

  “Hurry up and wait. Takes less than a minute to get to the flight line,” said Larsen, tapping his watch. “Keep my seat warm if you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll take a dump in your seat! That’ll keep it warm!”

  Ochoa and his team laughed, a few of them adding that they’d warm up all of Larsen’s team’s seats.

  “The C-130 has sixty-four seats. I count sixteen of us on the manifest. How many shits are you planning to take?”

  Everyone inside the auditorium started to laugh, including Cooper.

  “You can go fuck yourself!” blurted Ochoa. “We’re all wondering why the fuck you’re even here.”

  “Because someone has to check your math from time to time,” said Larsen before turning to his own team.

  “You better watch your shit!” yelled Ochoa.

  The guy had horrible impulse control, which was probably why he got booted from the Dallas PD. Actually, he didn’t get kicked off the force. Just suspended—for the third time in his five-year tenure as a patrol officer. Larsen guessed he’d landed the job here because of his brief stint with Dallas SWAT. Everyone here had some kind of paramilitary experience.

  “I’ll start watching mine when you start counting yours,” said Larsen. “Correctly.”

  Ochoa’s half-cocked response got lost in the laughter.

  “You enjoying yourself?” said Dixon.

  “Not really, but he tees himself up—and he’s a dickhead.”

  “We all have to live with that dickhead, and his disciples.”

  “Very true,” said Larsen. “Sorry for stirring him up. Everyone else good?”

  Jennifer Brennan gave him a thumbs-up. She still looked half-asleep, which was a good thing considering the fight he had just picked. She and Ochoa most definitely didn’t mix. Brennan had “gently” kicked him in the testicles during a volleyball match after he got a little too gropey with her along the net. She didn’t take shit from anyone, which made her a good fit with Larsen’s less demanding leadership style. He assumed that was why he hadn’t been kicked in the balls—yet.

  The fourth member of the team, James Peck, was a different story altogether. He presented an alert, but disinterested look—like always. It was no secret that Peck wanted to transfer to a different team. The disapproval heaped on Larsen by the other team leaders got under his skin.

  Unfortunately for both of them, Peck’s skillset as the team’s communications and technology specialist was the most difficult and expensive to replace. Unless another ComTec from the unit was willing to swap places, the only way he could get off the team was to resign, or get Larsen fired. He kept a constant eye on Pec
k. The former Ranger had started to hang out with the likes of Ochoa and other prominent haters, who undoubtedly encouraged the divide.

  “You good, Peck?” said Dixon.

  “I’m here,” said Peck before shuffling away.

  His team filed out of the auditorium last, entering a long, well-lit corridor resembling a school hallway. Metal doors stenciled with team names flanked each side. Each room served as an individualized team staging and preparation area, mostly used for regularly scheduled training missions and team meetings. All of the equipment and gear cases they would find in their assigned aircraft had been packed in these rooms.

  The deep buzz of powerful turboprop engines reverberated inside the cinder-block structure, intensifying as they approached the open door to the airfield tarmac. When the team ahead of them vanished into the darkness beyond the door, leaving them alone inside the hallway, Larsen was hit by the bizarre urge to turn back. The feeling passed just as quickly, but it was the first time he’d ever felt that way before. He’d never experienced the proverbial “bad feeling” about any operation or mission before, even with the SEALs. He let out a quick laugh.

  “What’s up?” said Dixon.

  Larsen wasn’t one of those superstitious pre-mission ritual types at all, but he had no intention of informing his team “he had a bad feeling about this one.”

  “Nothing. Just thinking how much it would piss off Ochoa and Ragan if we walked to the aircraft,” said Larsen.

  Peck shot him a disapproving look, which almost convinced Larsen to do it. Instead, he stepped onto the shadowy tarmac and broke into a jog toward the third aircraft in the line of darkened behemoths.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Emma Harper dropped her lightened backpack on the gravel next to the road and took a few deep breaths. They had decided to forego turning north on Township Road, the first intersection they reached after the car accident, because they saw nothing but brake lights ahead—again. The last thing they wanted to do was wade through more of the ugly humanity they’d so far encountered on their short journey. The decision made sense, but it added distance to their trip, and Jack seemed hell-bent on making up the time by moving as fast as possible.