The Melanin Apocalypse

by Darrell Bain

  Then there was China and India. So far both nations seemed content to make noises rather than trying to invade other countries and that was good. India especially was probably glad in some perverse way that Pakistan was under the viral gun—or their leaders might have been glad had not so many of their billion citizens been ill. Many would die, but many more would recover. If the country stayed together, it might cause trouble later on. China was even more of a problem. He seriously doubted from the intelligence he was receiving that China’s central government could prevent the country from fragmenting into a balkanized travesty of a nation, where different provinces would be ruled by warlords and with God himself not knowing who controlled their nuclear weapons.

  The general sighed. Problems, problems, but perhaps before it was all over, the world would be aligned differently and much more to his liking. He pushed those concerns aside for the moment and turned his attention back to the most pressing problem requiring action, Atlanta and its icon, the CDC. The president had decided that whatever else happened, he couldn’t allow the damn black monkeys to destroy that haven of scientific talent. General Newman had to agree with him in a way. The CDC

  complex had gathered the best virologists in the world to work on the new diseases. There was no telling when they might be needed in the future. He had been forced to cancel the intended airlift of an army brigade to Atlanta. The rioters must have some sensible leaders because this time, they took the airport before the locals could react and blocked the runways by driving vehicles out on them, then burning or rigging them with explosives. Another armed mob was headed straight toward the CDC, killing and looting as they came. They had to be stopped, somehow. Reluctantly, he picked up the phone to alert the last two battalions of airborne troops he had available for deployment and ordered them to jump into the suburbs tomorrow morning. He knew it would be chaotic and very, very messy but here was nothing else to do; he didn’t even have enough helicopter transport available for them. Atlanta would just have to suffer. Urban warfare was never pretty. He got a battalion of Marines moving by road from the east toward the airport, then turned his watch over to the vice chairman. He knew he was dopey from lack of sleep; otherwise he wouldn’t have delayed so long making those decisions, though he still didn’t fully agree with the president. All the blacks on earth could die so far as he was concerned, and good riddance.

  * * *

  Amelia was up and in her office early; she had been so tired the evening before that when she finally had been able to get away she still hadn’t gone over the latest progress reports. Her conscience had pushed her to come in early today and review them before starting the regular day’s work.

  She entered her password and pulled up the files from each department and began scanning them, trying to absorb the gist of each, if not all the details. It was a chore she disliked, but a necessary one in order to supervise the direction of research and allocate resources to the most promising projects. The first thing she saw was that Johannsen, the rogue scientist responsible for the Harcourt virus, had arrived late yesterday evening and was being guarded by a mixed detail of Marines and government security agents in a recently depleted basement storeroom. She thought she had better warn the virologists—in fact, all of the staff, to watch him closely and report anything he did out of the ordinary to her immediately. She wasn’t about to trust a psychopath like that very far.

  There was still little progress on devising a vaccine. She made a note to pull two of the scientists working in that department and reassign them to drug research, where she found a few hopeful signs of possible treatments, if still tentative and largely untested ones. She began hurriedly scanning the following file, one concerning the latest bits of knowledge about the Harcourt virus, not expecting to find anything useful there. She already knew more than she wanted to about how that damnable virus worked.

  Suddenly her gaze hung up on a sentence. The words seemed to fairly leap off the screen and into her mind. Could it be possible? She read it again, then took a deep breath and went back to the start, reading more slowly this time. Eventually her breathing slowed to normal as she found only a hint of what, for a few excited moments, she hoped desperately was happening. Unfortunately, it was little more than a hint. She sighed with disappointment, even while castigating herself for expecting anything like a virus to be so simple as to change its characteristics overnight. However, it was certainly worth following up on.

  She decided to assign more people to that end of the research, even before knowing where she would find them. Just as she started on the next file, her phone rang.

  “Amelia, this is Gene. Alert your people. It looks like we’ve got a big crazy mob heading this way, and the airport’s was taken over by a mob last night.”

  “All right, but what…?” She heard a click as the phone disconnected and she was suddenly speaking only to herself. Despite the speeded up beat of her heart, she yawned. It was still early. She looked over to the coffee pot and saw that it was ready. Her hand trembled as she poured. When Gene sounded excited, it could be nothing but trouble. The first person she called to come in was June. As she put down the phone, she was suddenly grateful that Johannsen had arrived here before the airport was closed. He and his guards must have come in on one of the last flights before it was overrun. It was possible he had some useful information, but she really didn’t hold out much hope.

  * * *

  Doug woke to the persistent sound of the phone ringing. He glanced at the bedside clock. It was blinking, signaling that sometime during the night a power outage had occurred. As he reached for the phone, he dreamily thought that he and June might not have noticed even if it had happened while they were still awake, so absorbed in each other they had been. He plucked the handset from its cradle and handed it to June, who was already sitting up. The sheet had cascaded down to her waist with the movement, leaving her as prettily bare to the waist as a generously endowed centerfold from the old Playboy magazines he had perused as a youth, except that she was more beautiful in his sight than any of the remembered images. And realer, he thought, reaching for his watch to see what time it was. He blinked as he saw that it was only four in the morning.

  June nudged him. “It’s for you.”

  Uh oh, he thought as he took the phone. A call this time of the night could only mean trouble.

  “Craddock,” he said.

  “Get here quickly, Doug. We’ve got troubles,” Teresa said without identifying herself and hung up, no doubt to call others on the list—or to rush toward whatever crisis was at hand.

  He replaced the phone and pushed the sheets away. “I’ve got to go, sweetheart. There’s some kind of security problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, but that was Teresa. She never panics and she wouldn’t have called without a damn good reason.” He leaned over to kiss June then swung his feet off the bed and stood up.

  By the time Doug was dressed and had collected his weapons and gear, June had a cup of instant coffee waiting. He took it gratefully, kissed her again and hurried toward the elevator. Behind him, June was taking a call from Amelia that had her up and dressed so fast they might almost have shared the elevator.

  * * *

  The new security building was a scene of utter chaos when Doug arrived. They had barely gotten moved in and orderlies and couriers had little idea where each platoon was quartered, where the offices were, where the command centers were located, and in many cases who was even in command of different functions.

  He reported to Gene and was immediately told to start trying to get the lines of communication working smoothly and send all the troops off duty to their alternate posts, particularly to the front of the complex where it appeared the majority of the mob was heading.

  Doug got busy but was hampered by the fact that many still hadn’t gotten the word that he was Gene’s deputy. He couldn’t contact Teresa for long minutes, though Buddy answered his phone quickly.


  “Doug, I’m getting my off duty boys lined up. We’ll be ready to go in a few minutes, but some of them don’t remember which command they’re in. I heard shooting from where the army company is headquartered. Maybe Teresa decided to see what the situation is there. I haven’t been able to contact her.”

  “Get your troops to the front entrance and position your fire teams as soon as you can. Don’t worry about Teresa’s people; I’ll take care of them. And don’t worry about who belongs where; just make sure they have their weapons and ammo and get them going. This probably isn’t going to be much fun, so keep your phone open as much as you can. I’ll touch base with you quick as I know something more.”

  “Are we to fire before being fired on? What’re the rules?”

  Doug didn’t hesitate. “If you decide there’s a threat in your section, do whatever you think is necessary and I’ll back you. Whatever happens, we have to hold them away from here.”

  Doug began rounding up sleepy-eyed squad leaders and getting them organized to help defend the complex. He knew the situation was going to turn into a bitch before the day was over, if not before. Too many new people, too much ground to cover, little or no air cover. If it came to fighting, it was going to be just like urban warfare—in a situation made to order for the attacking force.

  Priorities has been set already and weren’t to Doug’s liking, even though they made sense. The science building where the research staff were both working and living and the treatment facility were first in line to hold and defend. After those the new security building and the transient apartments were next. The administrative building was last on the list, the very place where June would be working during the day and the worst-situated for defense. He tried to keep that out of his mind, but he couldn’t help worrying, especially as the gunfire he had been hearing in the distance began increasing in volume.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  As the impending battle for the CDC was shaping up, President Marshall was attending his combined intelligence briefing, the one he disliked because of the presence of the vice president. There was nothing in the constitution or government protocols that forced him to invite Vice President Marlene Santes, but for all his small minded, provincial and prejudiced attitudes, he did have a sense of duty toward government that impelled him to keep her at least marginally informed, and this weekly meeting was the method he chose. The world situation was so dicey that if something happened to him, say a heart attack, stroke, or—but he didn’t like to think about the last one. He was perfectly capable of committing troops to action where many of them might be killed or maimed, but he was a coward at heart. The thought of combat had kept him from enlisting for a term in the armed forces, even though he had considered it for political advantage at one time. In the end, it hadn’t mattered because he had attained the ultimate prize anyway. And if the first little sideways approaches to General Newman were an indication, he might remain in the oval office past the normal two terms. Right now the thought of holding onto power was little more than fantasy, but perhaps…

  He got his thoughts back in order as Vice President Santes entered the briefing room. A sense of duty might compel him to keep her in the loop in case she had to suddenly take over the reins of government, but that didn’t make him like her any better. She was a symbol of the changing demographic map of the United States—though the map wasn’t quite the same now as it had been when he put her on the ticket; a necessity in order to collect enough of the Hispanic, women and black votes to get into office. Already some five million blacks in North America were either dead or dying, with at least half that many Hispanics, and many more of them either ill or falling victim each day. After the Harcourt virus ran its course, he doubted he would have to use Santes to win election again, though it was too soon yet to know. Politics was a game of days and weeks, not years.

  “Hello, Marlene, how are you this morning?” he welcomed her courteously, standing up when she entered the room, like he had been taught as a child. He thought Marlene appreciated the little courtesy, although it was hard to tell. She kept her thoughts close to the vest. A fantasy of her naked and submissive raced through his mind, as it frequently did in her presence. She was quite attractive, especially so for her age, with no trace of gray in her dark auburn hair and no sign that she might be dyeing it. Even though she was in her fifties, she still had a slim, curvaceous figure and few wrinkles to her face. Her dark eyes; bedroom eyes said some pundits, probed at him and he thought she found no fault with his greeting.

  “I’m fine, Mr. President, thank you.” She nodded to General Newman, Edgar Tomlin, Lurline Tedd and Cantrell Willingham, the new secretary of state designate. “Gentlemen, Lurline.”

  “Shall we get started then?” Seeing no dissent, the president turned to the Secret Service agent. “John, I’m sure we’ll be fine, and there are some matters here which don’t need to be overheard.”

  John Dawson nodded and left the Oval Office, his face impassive, but his mind whirling with what he had already heard over the last weeks. Listening to high government officials, including the president, talk like that had shaken him. It wasn’t unusual to hear lies and idiocy coming from politicians, but this? Maybe he hadn’t been wrong after all, in what he had done when he first heard about the Harcourt virus. But again, he was just a secret service agent. Who was he to say what was right or wrong in world politics?

  The president had used the possibility of a secret service agent being captured by terrorists to arrange for total privacy when he most needed it. As soon as the door closed behind Dawson, President Marshall nodded to Tomlin.

  “Go ahead, Ed. What do you have for us this morning?”

  Tomlin glanced at the door to be sure that it was indeed closed. “I really don’t like discussing vital matters here, Mr. President.”

  “It’s fine, I assure you. This office is as secure as anyplace in Washington.”

  Tomlin wasn’t as certain as the president was; recorders had become so small and unobtrusive they were hard to spot, even by professionals. Nevertheless, he began.

  “First off, the war. There’s some good news there. It looks as if the damned J—as if Israel did get all of Pakistan and Iran’s nuclear missiles and the bunker busters we sold them took care of that facility Pakistan had buried so deep under the mountains. They were a little more circumspect with Iran. They only took out the nuclear weapons facilities and the missiles they knew were armed with nukes, leading us to believe they intend to send a big commando team in to shut down their uranium enrichment facility.”

  “Why should they have let Iran off?” Vice President Santes asked, still aggravated at Tomlin’s derogatory, almost-voiced remark about Jews.

  “It’s a little too close to home. I believe they were afraid of fallout, whereas the facility in Pakistan was pretty well contained—and farther from them.”

  Santes nodded and Tomlin continued. “At any rate, the Isreali Air Force did a remarkable job. The Middle Eastern states that declared war have no effective air cover left and the Israeli army is doing just about as it pleases. It appears as if they’re not immediately intent on conquering any of the adjoining countries, but merely pushing the opposing armies back far enough to put their artillery out of range while the virus they turned loose is creating havoc in the Arab ranks. The CDC projects a very high kill rate for Middle Easterners carrying the particular gene it’s targeting, which by the way, no one has figured out yet.

  Smart. They can sit back and take over the neighboring countries after the Arabs are dead with no risk.”

  “Crazy is more like it,” Santes commented. “What could they have been thinking of?”

  “Maybe that killing every Arab they can is the only way they’ll ever be able to live in peace.”

  “It won’t work. The world will remember what they did once this crisis with the Harcourt Virus is behind us. If you ask me, they’ll be even less secure in the long run simply because of the overwhelming number of Muslim
s in the rest of the world. However, I guess that’s not germane to the discussion right now. I’m sorry I interrupted.”

  “Thank you Mrs. Vice President,” Tomlin said, the exercise of having to use her title as distasteful as always in his mind. He thought women had no business participating in the world of geopolitical military affairs. Or even in government above a certain level. Santes should have remarried after her husband died, he thought, instead of going into politics.

  Marlene Santes wasn’t fooled by politicians of Tomlin’s ilk, but sometimes she found it advantageous to let political rivals think otherwise. She listened as Tomlin continued with his briefing.

  “Well, that’s the story in the Middle East so far as the war goes. We’ve communicated secretly with Premier Luria and he’ll accept some of our oil field workers to augment his special forces. They’ll help secure the oil fields as the Arabs die off, and idle them down until we can get more troops into the area.

  In return, we keep the munitions in the pipeline to them so long as they’re needed. If that virus continues spreading the way it has so far, we won’t have an Arab problem before long, just like we won’t… like we won’t have any more problems securing our chromium from South Africa,” he finished lamely, then added as a distraction, “The whole African continent has disintegrated into complete anarchy except for a few of the northern sections that were the last to be infected. And with the new virus, I guess those will go soon, too. Lots of Arabs there, as well as dark skins.”

  The vice president, as well as everyone else in the Oval Office, knew what he had started to say first, but she and the others politely ignored the slip, while Tomlin cursed to himself. He hated the idea of having not only a woman but a goddamned Spic in the vice president’s seat, even if she was light skinned and still pretty and slim enough to make a… he got his thoughts back to the briefing with difficulty, only to be interrupted by the vice president again.