by Alan Baxter
Tom caught his mood and quietly asked, “You see something?”
“Don’t you?” asked Ledger.
The young man looked around the room for several minutes, then nodded. “The ratio?”
“And—?”
“Too many women. No one’s old. Wait, that’s wrong. None of the men are older than you, and you don’t look as old as you are.”
“No. So what’s that tell you?”
Tom frowned. “Doesn’t make sense if this was just for inoculation.”
“Nope. But tell me why.”
“If this was a real cure, then everyone would be in here. That little girl’s not here. In fact, I don’t see anyone who looks starved or sick. No one with a bandage over a possible bite.”
“Nope,” agreed Ledger.
“This treatment is supposed to work even if you’re already sick. So why aren’t they showing people that?” asked Tom. “Seems to me that would sell this pretty hard. Curing the sick.”
“Uh huh.”
They spoke very softly, making sure the other people in line didn’t hear them.
“Not having the warm fuzzies about all of this,” said Ledger. “It’s both too good to be true and not set up the right way. Too many things are off about this.”
“People are buying it.”
“Dude, let’s face it, this is the apocalypse and someone’s offering a possible fix. This is a seller’s market.”
“What’s our play?”
Ledger considered. “Without looking like you’re doing it, count the guards. Don’t miss any. Get a good sense of where they are, how they’re armed. Look for places of concealment in case we have to do something creative.”
“‘Creative’?”
“Uh huh.” He nodded at the big, dark mouth of the cavern. “I got a feeling we’re walking into the dragon’s mouth, kid. That general they mentioned, Ike Black? I know that name. Can’t quite place where, but it wasn’t from a Nobel Peace Prize announcement. There’s something wrong about him. It’ll come to me. Point is, I think we’re about to step into some shit. If I’m right – and, sadly, I’m usually right about this kind of thing – then it could all get crazy real fucking fast. You understand me?”
“Yes,” said Tom.
“Watch me for cues. Be stupid and agreeable. Don’t be threatening in any way. Follow my lead and if I make a move then I want you to move with me.”
“What kind of move?”
“Don’t know yet,” said Ledger. “I’m going to let the moment tell me what to do. You understand that?”
“Yes.”
They nodded and moved with the line, but they kept enough distance between them and the end of the line to be able to speak together in low tones.
“If this goes south on us, Tom,” said Ledger, “I need to know that you’ll do whatever’s necessary. Don’t freak out. Pick your targets and watch your fire. You understand the concept of trigger discipline. Remember your training. We protect civilians as much as possible, but we have to win any fight we start. No bullshit. War isn’t polite.”
Tom looked appalled. “You think it’ll come to that?”
Ledger rubbed at the blond-gray stubble on his chin. “It usually does.”
The line moved forward and in forty minutes it was their turn to step up to the table. It was immediately clear that two of the lab-coated people were assisting the third, a woman of about forty, with long auburn hair and a lovely face. Her hands moved with professional competence, accepting syringes, swabbing with pieces of cloth soaked in alcohol, jabbing with practiced deftness, handing the used needle off, taking a new one. Over and over again. Doing it fast and doing it well.
Ledger looked at the doctor, trying to catch her eye and read her. She was disheveled, her clothes were dirty and stained, and her hair hung in lank threads. If all he had was a quick glance he might have put it down to an earnest desperation to get as much done as possible, to fill every minute of every hour of every day with the good work she was doing. Pushing herself to the edge of exhaustion because what was personal comfort when measured against saving the actual fucking world?
That’s what a quick glance would have told him. Ledger, however, was not in the habit of making quick or hasty judgments. Reliable intelligence required attention and consideration.
He glanced at the guards standing just a few feet behind Dr Pisani. There were five of them. Four were generic brutes with hard faces, dead eyes and callused hands resting on the automatic rifles slung over their heavy shoulders. The fifth was a different kind of man, and Ledger met his eyes only briefly and when he did he projected absolutely nothing because this was a far more dangerous man than the guards who stood with him. This man was tall, lean, wiry, hawk-faced, with cat green eyes and a slash of a mouth. One corner of that mouth was hooked upward in a permanent, knowing, mocking smile. It was clear to Ledger, as he was sure it was to Tom, that this man was in charge. Not just of this post, but of everything. He wore a black leather jacket but beneath was a military blouse with two stars pinned neatly in place. A major general. He stood with a faux slouch that Ledger had seen a lot of good fighters affect. His long-fingered hands hung loose at his sides, and he wore the kind of loose-fitting clothes that allowed for quick, unhampered movement.
Danger, Will Robinson, mused Ledger. He shifted his gaze away before the man could fix on him. There was something very familiar about the man, but Ledger could not quite place it.
So, instead he focused on Dr Pisani, trying to catch her eyes. It took a moment, but as the doctor prepared to inject the woman in line in front of Ledger, Pisani glanced at him and their eyes met. Locked. Held. He wanted to make contact with her, to make sure she saw him as he saw her. That’s when Ledger knew that everything that was going on here was as wrong as his instincts had warned.
There was a look in the doctor’s eyes. Not exhaustion. Not the weary triumph of having succeeded in something great. Not even the fatalistic sadness of someone who wished she could have succeeded in her great achievement sooner.
No. None of that was in Pisani’s eyes.
Instead, what Ledger saw in those lovely, intelligent brown eyes was a total, overwhelming joy. A joy that was too much, too big, too wild.
It was the kind of limitless joy of a mind that had broken loose of its moorings.
The doctor who desperate people traveled hundreds of miles to find was absolutely insane.
—16—
Top and Bunny
It didn’t take long before the workers switched from hauling bodies to herding groups of people. As the troop carriers filled with dead pulled out, they were replaced within five minutes by troop carriers carrying the living – all wearing red, white, and blue wristbands. This time, the reds were immediately put in with Top and Bunny, until their red holding pen was full. And then the next and the next. The whites and blues were split, some being taken off further into the reaches of the cavern and whatever lay beyond their line of sight, while others were ushered into the appropriately marked holding pens for blue and white.
“Wait. Where are they going? Why are we being put in here?” one woman demanded, looking longingly off after the other blues.
“We can only process so many at a time, okay?” the guard replied, smiling warmly as if to reassure her. “You’re next, I promise. Look, there’s nice chairs here, Blu-ray players, books.”
He was right. Unlike the pens for the reds, the whites and blues had been given couches, chairs, tables with games, flatscreen TVs with Blu-ray players, bookshelves of books and magazines. All stuff to make them comfortable and help them relax while they waited, which meant either the guards didn’t care about the reds relaxing or the reds, for some reason, wouldn’t be waiting as long.
Bunny elbowed Top and tipped his head toward the other pens. “What’s wrong with this picture?”
“Everything,” Top agreed, whispering.
“How come they get to sit and we have to stand here?” a red-banded old man said. “My legs are tired and I have a bad back!” He scowled, his voice dripping irritation.
The guard just turned and shoved him further back into the red tagged cell. “Shut up and do what you’re told, old man. Make room for the rest.”
“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?” the old man demanded, but before he could say anything further, the guard backhanded him across the face, knocking him to his knees. Two more guards rushed in, grabbed him, and dragged him out the door.
“You just got yourself a speed pass, old man,” the sneering first guard said, watching as the others dragged him, feet trailing behind, off into the cavern where the groups of blues and whites had gone.
“Jesus,” Bunny said, exchanging a look with Top.
The first guard noticed a line of men who’d stopped to stare. “Get in there! Go!”
They started moving again as he turned back to his duties. Bunny searched every face for anyone familiar. No one. He shook his head. “I don’t know why but I keep looking for someone we know.”
“Don’t stop,” Top said as his eyes continued scanning faces. “So am I.”
As more and more people filed in, the first trucks having been replaced by three more, the overwhelming smell of gunpowder and chemicals now mixed with the smells of sweat, body odor, colognes and perfumes – of people.
Then Bunny did a double take as his eyes scanned a line of whites climbing off a nearby GMC. Son of bitch, that almost looks like… it can’t be.
“Fuck, Top,” he mumbled. “My eyes are getting so tired, I’m seeing things.”
“What?”
“That guy over there looks almost like Captain Ledger. I mean, I wish it was, but—”
“Where?” Top’s eyes snapped over to where Bunny indicated. “Son of a bitch. Doesn’t that kid beside him look almost like Sam Imura?”
“Yeah,” Bunny agreed. “Weird. But it can’t be. They’re both dead.”
Top grunted. “Technically we didn’t see them die, but after nineteen years, yeah, I think you’re right.” He went back to searching another line as the two men moved off out of view, further into the cavern, urged by guards.
“We gotta come up with a plan, son,” Top said then, leaning closer to Bunny’s ear. “A way to distract the guards, get ourselves out of here.”
“Hooah,” Bunny replied. “You know, there’s a lot of us here. If people got excited for some reason…”
“The door’s locked,” Top said.
“So we find a way to make them unlock it.”
“Okay, Farm Boy, and how is that?”
“Just follow my lead,” Bunny said, and an idea formed as he remembered the old man they dragged off. If the others started to question, if they worried about their fate – people could be all sorts of unpredictable under such circumstances. They might even get riled up enough to alarm the guards. “We’re all gonna die!” he suddenly shouted.
“What are you talking about?” Top asked, raising his voice to be heard.
“The red bands!” Bunny said. “We don’t get chairs, Blu-rays, games, books – it’s obvious. They don’t give those to red banders because we’re gonna die!”
“Stop saying that!” a guard outside their holding pen said, shaking his head. “Everyone just remain calm. The colors are for sorting treatment.” A couple other guards muttered and glared in Bunny’s direction.
“But that old man – when he complained about his back, they beat him and dragged him off,” Top said. “What kind of medical treatment facility is this?”
“The kind where you wait your turn and don’t ask questions,” Major Diamond said, appearing before them with a cold stare. “One more word out of you two, and you’ll find out all about that old man.”
“You just threatened us!” Bunny shouted.
“Hey! They’re right!” someone else said.
“Why are you threatening us if we’re here for treatment?” another called.
Then chaos erupted in the red cells as people began chattering, calling out questions, pounding at the doors, shuffling nervously.
More guards moved in, some whispering calm words, others waving guns and ordering people back from the barred walls.
Bunny grinned at Top as he called out, “We’re all gonna die! I know it!”
—17—
The Soldier and the Samurai
When it was his turn to bare his arm for Dr Pisani, Joe Ledger did a quick but thorough read on the syringe. It was clean and the barrel of it contained a completely colorless liquid. Before the End, Ledger had spent a lot of years taking Echo Team into conflict with terrorists, many of whom used bioweapons. He’d been in every major biological and chemical development lab in the United States, and dozens around the world. He was a frequent visitor to the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. As a result he knew what viral transport media looked like, just as he knew what vaccines looked like, including the various versions of Lucifer 113 and the counter-agents developed to try and stop it, notably Reaper. As the doctor raised the syringe, Ledger looked from it to the doctor, meeting her eyes again.
“This is a cure?” he asked quietly.
Pisani twitched. “Yes, yes, it won’t hurt. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried, Doc. I admire you for what you’re doing. But I have a question,” said Ledger, pitching his voice so that only she could hear him, “what kind of vaccine is this? Is it an antibiotic of some kind?”
“No,” she said, “it’s a broad-spectrum antiviral vaccine.”
“Ah,” he said, taking time to remove his jacket. “But I’m confused about something. They said that Lucifer 113 was unstoppable. They said that the addition of Reaper to the bioweapon strain was what caused it to jump to an airborne pathogen. I’m really impressed that you’ve been able to counteract something that was designed to be unstoppable.”
“N-no,” she said quickly. “We broke the pathogen down and this is the cure. It’s the real cure, a perfect cure.”
Her words tumbled out way too quickly. Ledger nodded, still smiling warmly at her. He draped his jacket over one arm. She swabbed his arm with alcohol.
“But what confuses me,” he said, “is how an antiviral will work against Lucifer 113. I mean… it’s not actually a virus.”
She froze, the needle a quarter inch from his flesh. Her eyes were huge and filled with strange lights. “What…?”
“As I understand it,” Ledger said, “Lucifer was built using select combinations of disease pathogens and parasites and then underwent extensive transgenic modification with Toxoplasma gondii as a key element, along with the larva of the green jewel wasp. It has genetic elements of the Dicrocoelium dendriticum and Euhaplorchis californiensis flukes that combine to regulate that aggressive response behavior into a predictable pattern. None of that is a virus, so how does this work? I mean, not even an antibiotic would work because this isn’t really predominantly bacteriological, so how can an antiviral do any good?”
Dr Pisani stood there, the tip of the needle trembling near his shoulder. “No, I… I mean I… what you don’t…” Her words tumbled and tumbled and fell off a cliff, leaving her blank-faced except for those wild eyes. Ledger saw tears there on her lower lashes, and the doctor’s lips trembled almost in time to the needlepoint.
The two lab assistants realized something was wrong and stepped forward. So did one of the guards.
“Doc,” asked one of the assistants. “Is something wrong?”
The other assistant gave Ledger a suspicious look. “What did you say to her?”
Ledger’s smile was bolted into place. “I just told her how much I admire what you’re all doing here.”
Everyone looked at
Pisani. Tears broke and fell down her cheeks. “It’s a perfect cure.”
The second assistant jabbed Ledger in the chest with a stiffened forefinger. “That’s not what you said. Tell me what you—”
“What’s holding up the line?” demanded the hawk-faced general as he pushed his way toward Ledger. Tom shifted a half step away, but Ledger knew it was to get some room for movement if this turned weird.
Ledger had been expecting it to turn weird since the checkpoint but he was glad to see the young man read the moment this well. Just how weird was to be determined. No one was pulling guns yet, which was good, but everything in the cavern had come to an abrupt stop.
The first assistant pointed at Ledger. “This guy said something to the doc and it’s got her all upset.”
The general walked right up to Ledger and kept approaching in the way some hard-asses do when they want to force someone to back away. It was a bully’s trick that usually triggered a response based on the natural tendency to maintain a bubble of personal distance. Ledger knew the trick, and for a moment, he almost chose to step back to let this man own the moment. But then something changed that, and Ledger knew that it was going to change the trajectory of the entire day.
He recognized the man. When they’d met before, he’d been wearing the same black leather jacket and similar black pants to what he now wore.
Ledger knew his name.
So he stood his ground and let the general invade his space and get all the way up to a chest-to-chest contact. Ledger was a big man, but he was in his fifties and he’d been slouching to make himself look older and smaller than he was. This army officer was about not quite six feet tall, which made him a couple of inches shorter than Ledger. When it was clear Ledger wasn’t going to step back, the general placed a hand on his chest and pushed. Ledger allowed it, and for a moment they stood there, studying each other with professional thoroughness.
