Chapter 44- Hastings

Chapter 44

Hastings

Cavill, Virginia

Captain Thomas stood in the village square of the ruins of Cavill and lit a cigarette.  The air was thick with smoke and the rank odor of death.  The clean up was still going on and the steady crack of rifle fire was broken up by screams and the whoosh of flame-throwers.

“Burn the bodies.  Burn all the bodies,” yelled Staff Sergeant Eckerson.

Captain Thomas stared at the huddled survivors of Cavill.  According to his sources, Cavill had a population of around one thousand.  They had found fewer than one hundred and fifty people left.  More than one hundred infilitrators had been discovered, generally mid-process, covered in blood and gore.

Captain Thomas had emptied the magazine of his M4 into the twitching bodies over and over again.  He’d then personally burned more than six or seven of them before he’d grown exhausted and numb.

He paced back and forth, looking at the crowd of shocked and mute people who may, or may not, be survivors.  Staff Sergeant Eckerson continued to speed around, barking out orders and occasionally directing efforts.

Captain Thomas preferred to just watch the crowd now.  There was a wide variety of reactions from them.  Some of them sat there blank faced and stunned.  It was a classic shock reaction.

One or two were on their feet yelling for help.  They wanted medicine, food and blankets.

One or two of them lay on the crowd crying their eyes out.  Captain Thomas wasn’t sure which ones were the most suspicious to him now.  How could he be sure of anything anymore?

“This is Captain Thomas to Lance-One,” he called into the radio.

“Lance-One here, over,” replied the voice.  Since the General had “resigned, Lance –One was the new call sign.  He’d been assigned early this morning from the Pentagon.  Captain Thomas didn’t care anymore who was calling the shots.

“Please advise, I have one hundred and fifty two survivors here. That is one five two survivors.  I cannot tell if they are infected or not.  Please advise on how to proceed.  Over,”

“Lance-One, will advise shortly,” came the reply.

Captain Thomas took another drag of his cigarette and waited.

“You okay Captain?” asked the staff sergeant.  Captain Thomas nodded but he wasn’t sure if he was convinced.

Elsewhere in the crowd, Tom McVay sat amongst the other survivors of the little town.  He had always been a quiet person so his continued silence drew not attention at all.  He looked at the tired and grubby soldiers.

Washington, D.C

Hayden McDonald breathed something that wasn’t too far from a sigh of relief.  The report had come in, Cavill was sealed off on all sides and the cordon was tight.  More units were on their way.

Meanwhile the other village in Venezuela was “clean” too.  The General was on the phone to the President of Venezuela who was rather unhappy about his country being bombed not once, but twice.

Still, Hayden McDonald knew that a lot of extra work was needed to truly fix the situation.  Colonel Carpenter came back to speak to them.  Even he looked a little happier.

For a second or two.

“We’ve got a rough decision to make and I wanted to get your measure on it,” he said.

“I don’t like the sound of this,” said Jack Krane, Hayden’s deputy.

“Yeah, you shouldn’t,” said Carpenter with a tiredness in his voice.

“Get it over with then,” replied Hayden.

“We’ve sealed off Cavill with about one hundred survivors at the scene.  All of the infiltrators that we were going to find are dead now and burned.  But we’ve got no way of knowing who, if anyone got infected at the scene and how many of the survivors are infected,”

“There’s a test isn’t there/” asked Hayden.

“Yes the Air Force says you can do a blood test.  But do we really want to take that chance?”

“What’s the alternative?  Keep them in there forever?” asked Krane.

“No, it’s cleanse the scene utterly,”

“Jesus fucking Christ.  You’re talking about bombing it aren’t you?” said Hayden grimly.

“Yes we are.  We’ve got no real choice here.  We’ve got to stay strong for the good of the human race,”

“What human race will be left if we just bomb anything that had any contact with them at all?  What humanity will we have left?” said Jack passionately.  “Why don’t we just shoot everyone but ourselves?  Just to be safe?”

“Don’t fucking joke about that, “ replied Carpenter.  “There are some that think we should just napalm anything that we’re even slightly worried about.  I thank my lucky stars I’m on the inside for this rather than the outside. Because, quite frankly, the General has decided that anyone who is outside is expendable now,”

“Expendable?  They are American citizens!” yelled Krane.

Expendable, Hayden supposed they had always been expendable hadn’t they?  Thousands of Americans’s died every day.  Thousands more were born.  They grew up saluting a flag and saying their pledge of allegiance, they voted Democrat or Republican or they none of the above.  They were truck drivers and mailmen, they were butchers and farmers, they were Wyoming ranchers and California oilmen.  They were the expendable, grimy, overweight, happy-go-lucky Americans.

“We cannot do this,” said Hayden.

“We’re not asking for your permission,” said Carpetner with some compassion in his voice.  “We just wanted to get your opinion on it.  General Pierce doesn’t think there is any other way,”

“Find another way. If we start bombing our own people when we aren’t sure, this will only get worse and worse,” Hayden shot back.

“Don’t you get it?  Even the fucking test isn’t one hundred per-cent proof.  If one of them breaks containment again then we’re fucking finished.  What if one of them gets to Richmond? Or Atlanta?  Or here?”

“Or New York?  If they do then we’re fucked.  But as soon as the first one broke containment that was already the case wasn’t it?  If this is cancer, then we’re already dead.  I’d rather we went on living like human beings then live a bit longer as a diseased animal,”

Cavill, Virginia

A dog barked a couple of times and wagged its tail.  The soldiers had rounded up and shot most of the town’s animals by now.  They were not afforded the benefit of the doubt like the humans were.

Deputy Andy’s collie-cross, Walker, was the last dog standing in Cavill and even he was not to last much longer.  He stopped by a tree and cocked his leg.  As there was a rustle in the branches above him, he whipped his head up suddenly to spot the passing squirrel.

There was a crackle of gunfire and a flash of light.

“Poor pooch,” said someone into their radio mic.  There was a whoosh and flames spread across the tree.

Chapter 43- The Final Cut

Chapter 43

The Final Cut

Cavill, Virginia

She’d always considered herself to be a good mother, to be a good person and to live her life right.  She’d always worked, even when Jeffrey was first born.  She’d paid her taxes, looked both ways before crossing the street and never done anything she shouldn’t have done.  And people in the little town she’d been raised in said that she was “a good sort.”

Mary Elizabeth Wagner had prided herself on that, on being a good mother to Jeffrey.  She’d spent money on making sure he had toys that would help him grow up with a brain in his head.  Neither Mary nor her husband, Mark, were especially bright.  Neither of them had gone to college and Mark had left high school before graduating.

Mary wanted more than that for Jeffrey.  He was going to be able to go to college if he wanted to.  It was a long way off but Mary wanted to give him every edge, every opportunity, every chance she’d never been given herself.  But America wasn’t about being given a hand out, it was all about the idea that once you were on your own two feet, you could run as fast as you wanted to.

Mary, often referred to as “Mare” by her friends, was a believer that Jeffrey was the future she had always dreamed about.  “If we get behind the boy, get our shoulder behind him, there’s no telling how far he might go,” she had said to Mark.  Mark had nodded, he wasn’t much for talking.  Mark was a good ole boy and heading for an early grave.  Beer and turkey sandwiches were his favorite things in the world, with Mary and Jeffrey probably following in after Sunday night football.

Mark had been willing to work extra shifts, stay on late and quietly help them save the money they needed to.  Mary had thanked him and been good to him.  She was a good wife too, knowing when to keep her mouth shut and when to speak.  She’d turned the other way when he wanted to drink and smoke with his friends and they often paid her the compliment that she, like her husband, was “ole country tough,”

There was another series of thuds in the distance and Mary looked up from her reverie.  She was wearing a familiar pair of cut-offs, not indecent but short enough to catch the occasional stare from her appreciative neighbours.  Her blouse was stained with a red sticky substance and now as scattered with a fine white powder too.  She finished what she was doing and walked back towards the bedroom.  Her eyes were wide, darting from one place to another.  Jeffrey’s CD would be ending soon.

Mary had always considered herself to be kind.  She had recsued “Mr Snuff”, the little kitten that had ended up in their house and had become Jeffrey’s treasured friend.  She had fought Mark to keep him and Mark had eventually backed down on that front.  She had taught Jeffrey that a kitten was a living thing, that it had feelings.

“If you look after him, he’ll be good to you and he’ll be your buddy,” she had said last summer .  She had always talked to Jeffrey like he was a little grown up and she hoped that by aiming high, she’d get him to follow.  It was working, already it was working.  He was the smartest kid in his pre-school and this made both Mary and Mark very proud.

“Proper little quiz-kid aint he?” Mark had said, a big smile on his face.

“I love you Mark,” She had replied.

“Yeah,” he had said back and gone back to his magazine.

She had knelt by Jeffrey in the garden, Mr Snuff not too far away and said to him.

“Now remember that he’s a living breathing animal.  So you gotta treat him right?  You remember how much it hurt when Tommy Cristakis pulled your hair at kintergarden?”

“Yeah mommy, that was nasty”

“Yeah.  Well that’s what it’d be like if someone yanks on Mr Snuff’s fur too.  He’s got feelings like you do”,

“I’ll not forget mommy”.

Mary found herself crying again and she stopped by the baby’s bedroom.  The baby, they still called him the baby even at four and a half years old.  He would always be their baby.

There was a crashing sound from the neighbors house and Mary wondered vaguely who it was in there now.  Whether it was the army or the others.  She wasn’t sure and she supposed it didn’t make any difference now.

She stood by the door and she looked bitterly at the cross that was on the mantle-piece.  “Jesus, you’ve let us down,” she said mildly.  She had gone to church every Sunday, she’d baked for the fund-raisers and she’d raised Jeffrey to be a proper little Baptist.  If this hadn’t happened, if they had been saved, if someone had saved them, then he’d have grown up Baptist too.

His first day at high school, dressing up for the prom, college, jobs, his first car.  His whole future ahead of him.  Mary bit back her bitter tears for her sons sake.  She entered the baby’s room where Jeffrey was lying on his bed, headphones on.  When he saw his mother enter the room, he looked up.

“What’s up mommy?” he asked.  He was a bright kid and he’d figured out that something was amiss.

Mary sat down and hugged him closed.  Jeffrey had learned that his mother needed to hug him almost as much as he needed to be hugged and he held on to her.  She cried over his shoulder and Jeffrey looked up.  The headphones slipped away and he heard the terrible crashing sounds coming from nearby.

“What’s all the noise?” he asked.

“Jeff, honey.  You need to take some medicine now,” She said.

“I’m not sick,” he replied

“Yeah I know honey I know.  But it’s like the vaccine you had. Do you remember that?”

“It hurt,” said Jeffrey ruefully.

“Well this is just some pills.  I crushed them up in some jam for you so you just swallow em right back,”

Jeffrey obeyed his mother’s strange instruction.  Sometimes adults would want you to do the strangest most inscrutable things and Jeffrey had already learned that if you just went along with it, it would normally be okay.  After all, his mother loved him very very much.

Jeffrey laid his head down, already feeling drowsy.

“I’m sleepy,” he murmured.

“I know baby I know,” she replied, tears pouring down her face.  The front door buckled under an unseen impact.  She looked away and lifted something small but heavy onto the bed.

“Good night mommy,” he whispered.

“Good night baby.  Mommy loves you”, she whispered back.  She looked up at the ceiling, a mobile spun in the breeze, cast in the dawn light.  She looked down at her son, seemingly fast asleep.  She decided not to take any chances.

There was a flash of light from a window and the sound of a gunshot.  Somebody wrenched the front-door to the Wagner house away from its hinges and threw it to one side.

There was another gunshot and another flash from the doorway.  A human-shaped figure entered the bedroom through a gauze of smoke.  It looked impassively at two small slumped forms.

There were more crashing sounds, guns and vehicles, death and screaming.

The human shaped figure walked calmly back out the front door to greet the new arrivals in the town.

The sun continued to rise

Chapter 42- Fading

Chapter 42

Fading

Villa Pylar, Venezuela

Surviving isn’t a binary status.  That isn’t to say that a person isn’t either alive or dead, that most certainly is true.  But a person can survive and not survive, it’s possible to be “half surviving”, it’s possible to keep running on empty, on four flat tires, to keep running before you break down for good.

Walking all day and all night, Oscar began to get the feeling that he was getting towards his breaking point.  Hannah had attempted to keep the conversation going, attempted to keep their spirits up.  The sense of expectation, that they had been setting off on a great adventure was fading away, being replaced by fatigue, sadness and injury.

Hannah had picked up the trail, drops of blood on the leaves, about six miles out from Villa Pylar.  Oscar had felt a new surge of energy and that they were closing in on their elusive enemy.  But the town of Villa Pylar had a population of around eight thousand.  Finding one invisible infiltrator in there was going to be nigh on impossible.

The two of them sat down to rest for a moment.  Hannah had kept the radio at her side the whole time and they had overheard the orders being relayed to Sabre-Two.  Villa Cyranno, Oscar’s home, was bombed into a pile of ashes.  Bones were reduced to less than dust.

Oscar had felt nothing at the time, nothing about the death of the town, the death of all of those people had had once connected with.  All he felt now was tired, all he felt was the ache in every joint.

Oscar now looked over at Hannah as she sat listening in on the radio. 

“Anything?” he said to her.  She looked up, her eyes were red and tired.

“Nothing that I can follow,” she replied wearily.

“Do you think we might be able to get some sleep before we head into the Villa?” he asked her, thinking it was unlikely she’d say yes.

“No, no we cant.  But I’m not sure we can go in there anyway,” she said back to him.

“Why?” he asked.

“Think about it Oscar.  There are eight thousand people in there, more or less.  If they’ve been exposed to these infiltrators we’ll never be able to find them in such a large area.  Our only hope was to catch them before they reached a major conurbation.”

Oscar followed her words as best he could and spent a second thinking about it, looking for the deeper meaning that she was laying underneath her words.  But his mind didn’t function like hers and certainly not on this level of fatigue.

“What are you actually saying Hannah?  No entiendo,”

She looked at him again with those tired eyes and she blinked twice before she spoke.

“Oscar, we cant do this now,” she said with a husky voice.

“What do you mean?”

“Let me finish,” she said, holding up a hand.  “We cant do this alone.  We’ve followed the infction to here.  So we’ve got to take action,”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“We’ve got to call in the air strike and burn this area clean,”

“No,” he said fiercely and got to his feet.

“Oscar!” she pleaded.

But Oscar had taken all he could cope with.  He couldn’t give up these people and give them to the fire like the villagers of his old village.  Oscar still had the belief, still had some hope left that they could go in, they could sort out what was going on, find out who was human.  They could do it.

Hannah gave him a look that was all imploring.  Oscar’s eyes focused on her machine-gun, slung around her back.  Oscar saftied his weapon and pointed it at her.  Her eyes fell.

“You’re going to shoot me?” she asked him.  “You know that might almost be a relief,”

“I wont shoot unless you try to call in that air-strike,” replied Oscar.

“You’ve got the drop on me Oscar.  But I might have to test you,” she said.

“Oscar,” came a voice from behind.  Oscar span around pointing the machine-gun.  Wharton, agent Wharton, was standing behind him.

“Oscar, she’s right.  We’ve got to call in the strike,”

“You!” snarled Oscar.  “You are dead.  You are one of them”

“I understand why you’d say that,” he replied.  “But I’m not.  That doesn’t even matter,”

“What the hell do you mean it doesn’t matter?”

“Think about it, kid.  The infection is out there.  And we’ve got no idea, for sure, how bad it’s gotten.  Any one of us could be infected,”

“I’m still human,” replied Oscar.

“Sure, so am I and so is Hannah.  But we’ve got no way to be really sure,”

“The test,” replied Oscar bitterly

“It worked, yes.  But we cant replicate it without whole blood to test.  We could all take turns burning ourselves but Hannah’s got a better notion,”

Oscar looked over at her, aware that he had his back to her.  But she hadn’t drawn a weapon.  She looked up and Oscar thought he saw a tear in her eyes.  But that could have just been the light.

“Oscar, we’ve got to call in the air strike and we’ve got to call it in on this location,”

Her hand waved across Villa Pylar.

“Yes,” replied Oscar.  “But you wont do that,”

“Yes I will,” she said.  “I’m going to and if you must shoot me to stop me, you go ahead.  It’ll be okay.  If you don’t shoot me, the air strike will kill us anyway,”

“It’s the only way to be totally sure kid,” added Wharton.

“Dios mio,” breathed Oscar.

“I hope so,” replied Wharton with a strange smile on his face.  “Hannah?”

“Yep, I’m ready,”  She looked at Oscar.  “Oscar?  Are you ready?  I’ll even turn my back if that makes it easier for you,”

Oscar looked down at the village and thought about it, thought about the mothers and fathers, women and children, old men and cats and dogs and chickens.  He thought about fading stucco walls and linen cloth, he thought of all the wooden stumps hammered into clay fired earth.

“I can’t, I just can’t.  I just can’t,” he said.  Oscar dropped the gun to the floor.

“I’m very proud to have met you Oscar,” said Hannah, her voice strong again.

Oscar wanted to reply but his mouth was dry and frozen.

“Okay do it Hannah,” said Wharton.  Wharton sat down on a big rock and ran his hands through his hair.  His side-arm was in one hand.

Oscar turned and ran towards the village, he ran as fast as he could, down hill and over stones.  He ran down the hill, half expecting to be shot in the back as he went.  He ran as fast as he could, running as fast as a human could run away from the onrushing flood.

Hannah put the radio receiver down and hugged her legs to her chest.  Wharton stayed where he was looking up into the sky.

Oscar ran towards the village, some remote survival instinct telling him to keep going and to fight against the very reality of the situation, a situation that he knew was utterly utterly hopeless.

Oscar ran, unaware that he was screaming.

There was a sudden flash of light in the center of the town and a rush of air.  Oscar felt the weight of the last two days drop away in an instant of heat and a flare of blinding light.

Chapter 41- Zero Sum

Book Five

Hexxenkessel

Chapter 41

Zero-Sum

Cavill, Virginia

When you can’t run, you walk as fast as you can.  When you can’t walk, you crawl away from the scene of the danger.  When you can’t crawl anymore, you die where you fall.  Tom McVay crawled as fast as he could out of the burning wreckage, the terrible inhuman howls still rending the early morning air.

The fire had spread fast but very few of Cavill’s inhabitants had been very interested in the fire.  Most of them had quietly began to leave Cavill as the day broke.  But those of them that still had an interest were out on the street watching the Cristakis place burn to the ground.

Tom McVay crawled until he could crawl no more.  Whatever had been after him, whatever awful thing it had been had surely been burned to death in that inferno behind him.

Tom lay on the gross of the Cristakis family lawn for a moment, panting and staring up at a lightening sky.  Tom had wondered if he would ever see the sun rise again.  But already there were streaks of blue and gold in the sky above him.

Tom couldn’t really hear much anymore.  The gunfire and the explosion had robbed him of most of his hearing.  Everything sounded tinny and far away.  He couldn’t hear the sounds of shouts and cries, screams and roars.  The town of Cavill was nearly empty of people.

He could feel the vibrations in the ground though.  Something large, larger than a truck, was rumbling down the main drag of Cavill. Tom was sure he knew what it was but he was just as sure that it couldn’t really be happening.

Tom didn’t hear the bark of the dog but he noticed the pair of paws that came and stood by him.  Tom looked up, it was deputy Andy’s dog.  Tom reached up and took hold of th dog and ruffled its fur.

“Good boy.  You’re still alive then?”

Washington, D.C

Hayden McDonald sat back at his old desk again and tried to make sense of what he was reading.

“You’re sure about this?” he asked.

Jack Krane, his deputy, looked up from his own desk.  His face was gaunt, made to look worse by two days of growth on his chin.  “Yep.  Checked and double checked.  I asked for confirmation,”

“Who from?”

“The Chilean State department.  They said affirmative.  There is a huge mushroom cloud in Venezeula”

Hayden closed his eyes for a moment and felt the darkness seep in from all sides.  It was like trying to hold back a tidal wave.

“Payload.  What was the payload?” he asked.  “Where the hell did they get authority to use nuclear arms?”

“Relax, it was conventional ordanance.  A MOAB, a very high yield conventional bomb,”

“Moab?” he asked, trying to pick out the reference.

“Mother of all bombs,” said Jack Krane colorlessly.

Hayden got to his feet and poured a cup of coffee for himself and then another for Jack.  Normally he’d have a secretary for this sort of thing but all non essential staff had been sent home.

He’d lost count long ago of how much coffee he’d drunk.  He had been counting as an alternative metric for keeping an eye on the crisis, which by now it was.  There was no question of the scale of the problem.  General Pierce had left the Whitehouse for the first time since the “coup” or the “takeover” as they preferred to refer to it now.

As a veteran political operative, Hayden knew spin when he heard it.

“Jack, we’re going to go and speak to Colonel Carpenter,”

“Sure boss.  Are you sure we don’t want to speak to…” Hayden cut across him.

“Carpenter, he’s in charge.  Pierce is away so Carpenter runs the show,”

The two men got to their feet.  Hayden did his jacket up and across the room he didn’t see the way Jack did the same, with a similar movement of his shoulders.  Hayden was a busy man, a man with an ability to narrowly focus or broadly strategize.  He was often unaware of what was going on right next to him.  It had cost him a marriage and a number of other failed relationships.

The two men walked to the oval office.  Hayden knocked and then entered.  Admiral Burroughs was sat in the largest chair holding court with other officers.  As ever, Colonel Carpenter stood to the side.

“Mr McDonald?  How can we help you?” asked the insincere Admiral.

“Can I have a quick word with Colonel Carpenter, admiral?” asked Hayden.

“Sure you can.  Colonel?” Admiral Burroughs pointed across the room as if Colonel Carpenter might not have been paying any attention.

The colonel walked across the room, a clipboard in his hands.

“What is it gentlemen?” he asked in his normal quiet voice.

“We need to talk,” said McDonald.

“Sure, let’s take a walk shall we?  Get the blood flowing,”

“What concerns you gentlemen?” asked Carpenter.

“Venezuela” replied McDonald.

“Ah.  I guess you’ve heard about General Petersen’s resignation.  Brave man,”

“Resignation?” asked Krane.

“He made that his last order in the service, giving that order.  He had grit, true grit,”

“I see,” said McDonald, reading between the lines.

“Look, the situation was out of control and we had to close it down.  The problem is that it may have escaped the marine cordon.  Due to the conflicting orders…”

“That were coming from General Pierce,” spat Jack Krane

“That doesn’t matter now.  Due to the conflicting orders, the perimeter may have been breached once or twice.  Once is once too many.  We’re getting reports of possible outbreaks in other small towns in Venezeula but we cant tell if there is any truth to it.  And oddly enough, the Venezeulan government isn’t feeling too cooperative,”

“What about Cavill?” asked McDonald.

“We’ve got a unit on the scene under some Captain.  He’s already rounding up survivors and creating a perimeter.”

“Make it tight this time,” said McDonald.

“Obviously, “ replied Carpenter.

“Will it hold?” asked Krane.

Carpenter fixed Krane with a look that spoke an awful lot.

Chapter 40- Battle Zero

Chapter 40

Battle Zero

Sat-Com, Somewhere In Virginia

“Is it over?” she asked him.  The old man didn’t reply, sat back in his chair, a hand resting under his chin.

“Sir?” she asked him again.

General Petersen’s mind had wandered back to the year he got his bars.  He was a buck Lieutenant, just graduated from West Point and serving his first tour in Vietnam.  General McDowell had personally pinned his bars onto him and he had felt an intense pride and a sense, this is who he was.

General Petersen had at that time, just Lieutenant Petersen then, decided he would die one day in this uniform.

Of course that had been day one of his near nine hundred days “in country”.  He had seen some awful things, a lot of dead soldiers and a few too many incidents that were hushed up.  He had grown up fast in those three years and over the next thirty five years he had risen the ranks but lost much of that idealism that had gripped him so tightly.

This, this was the first time he had ever felt ashamed to wear the uniform.

“Sir?” she asked him again.

General Petersen turned around in the chair and looked at Lt Walker.

“How old are you Lieutenant?” he asked her.

“I’m twenty two in three weeks sir,” she replied.

“Twenty two,” he said whistfuly.

“Sir?” she asked again.  “Sir what are we going to do?”

After Vietnam had come Germany, the cold war and the Fulda Gap.  He had advised President’s and the Joint Chief’s but never quite been invited to join their illustrious ranks.  He had been considered to be a specialist, too useful to waste on a desk job.

“Sir?” she asked.  She took a step closer to him.

Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq again.  There had been a procession of plans and theatres of war.  Petersen saw them vanish behind him in a blur.

“Sir we need you,” she said imploringly.

Petersen finally opened his eyes to her and her question.  What to do now?

“Have we heard back from Cavill?”

“Yes sir, Captain Thomas has made contact.  The town is infected,”

“Good God,” replied the General.  “And Cyranno?”

“No sign of anyone alive down there sir,”

“I see, “ replied General Petersen.

“Sir?”

“Lieutenant, do you still remember when you got your bars?”

“Sir?”

“Do you remember when you passed Lieutenant?” he asked her.

“Yes sir.  It was the proudest day of my life sir,” she said with a smile.

“Who gave you your bars?”

“You did sir,” she said, the emotion thick in her voice.

“The next orders only I can give,” said Petersen.  Tears stung his eyes for a moment.  He took the radio mic and opened the channel.

“Sabre Four, are you there?”

“Sabre Four here, go ahead,” came the tinny voice.

“Son, what’s your name?”

“Sir?” asked the voice.

“What’s your name son?” he asked again.

“Captain Michael Cappener,” replied the pilot.

“Captain, I want you to do something terrible now.  I’m sorry that this falls on you,”

“Roger that sir,”

“Initiate Plan-Green,”

“Understood sir.  Sir, it’s been an honor serving with you,”

“The honor was all mine,” replied the old General.

He got to his feet and looked around at the young faces that surrounded him.

He walked past them , stopping here and there to speak to one or the other.  He had trained many of them, showing them how to be a better officer, to be a better person.  He walked up the stairs, the pain in his hands forgotten for a moment.

He opened the door to his office, walking across the room and sat down at his desk.  He took a swig of his drink, a last shot of scotch.  He opened the draw and took out his notepad, writing a final note, a summary of his career.

The muffled gun-shot brought them up to the office.  A single line had been written on a blank sheet of paper that was now dotted with blood.

“You already know how this will end,”

Washington, D.C

The door to the oval office opened again.  Hayden couldn’t help it, his natural respect for the office made him straighten up and button his jacket.  He walked in stood near the General, who was still sat on the couch chair rather than behind the President’s desk.

Internally, Hayden realized that he would hate the man that much more the first time he saw him sat behind that desk.  It wasn’t just the symbol of it, it would be an insult to the President and to all of the President’s who had trod this road before this General had come along with his emergency and taken the office for himself.

“Mr McDonald,” said the General, looking up from a report.  “What do you have for me?”
Hayden took a beat, counting to two in his head, and spoke.

“I’ve managed to get you control of all of the civilian agencies you will need during the crisis.  A number of them want reassurance that you will surrender power after the crisis has ended,”

“You can tell them what you need to,” said the General glibly.

“You want me to lie to them?  Or do you really plan on handing back the keys once the Visigoths are gone from our gates?”

“I wish it were the Visigoths,” said Colonel Carpenter, speaking from the other side of the room.  “Then we could just pay them off with Wyoming and a few million dollars,”

“Wyoming is a beautiful state,” said the General vaguely.

“Mr McDonald, we’re glad you’ve been so cooperative,” said Colonel Carpenter.

“You’ve done what I’ve asked, I’ve honored my side of this.  Is there anything else you need me for?” asked Hayden.

“Yes,” replied the General simply.

Colonel Carpenter walked Hayden out of the oval office again. 

“Forgive the General, he’s tired.  We’ve been working for forty eight hours now with no sleep,”

“We’re all in the same boat in that respect,” replied Hayden curtly.

“True enough.  The pressure on General Pierce is somewhat greater than for a humble cog or gear like you or I,”

“Save it Colonel, I’m not convinced he’s any great hero,”

“Hero’s exist in books Mr McDonald, General Pierce is utterly real.  And real people are falable.  What we need is your help here to make a plan,” stated Colonel Carpenter, those grey eyes boring into Hayden.

Hayden knew enough not to look away.

“You want my help again?  What with now?  You’ve got the civilian agencies,”

“We need a new plan,” Said Carpenter.  “We’ve lost containment in Virginia and there is now an outbreak on US soil.  This requires a radical solution, post haste,”

Hayden drew in his breath.
“Colonel, what is it exactly you are asking for here?  I’m not a solider, I don’t know about battle plans,”

“I know that.  But you do know how to control this country during a crisis.  That’s what we need.  This thing could get away from us.  If the center does not hold?”

Hayden looked out the window, a Stryker armored personnel carrier blocked most of the view of the lawn.

“What rough beast indeed,” he said softly.

Villa Cyranno, Venezuela

Another body was turned over but there was little way of telling who this one was.  The burns were severe.  Oscar had now reached a point where each body was just a pile of rubble, rocks or tree trunks.  They were not people, they certainly weren’t people that he had known.

“No, no survivors,” he muttered to himself.

“What was that?” replied Hannah.

“Nothing,” he said back softly.

“How many?  How many did you find?” she asked him  It had been her idea to make a count of the dead and to see if anyone had managed to escape.  Oscar had known the answer to that without the count but he didn’t want to argue with her.

“I counted eighteen, give or take one.  Some of them are in a very bad state,”

“All of them, really,” she said back.  “I got twelve.  That leaves us at least ten short,”

“Yep,”

The silence blew through the air like a fell wind and Oscar felt his body shaking.  He wanted to close his eyes and sleep.  The air stank in a way that he hoped he would live to forget but something told him that this would be with him for whatever remained of his life.

Hannah looked over at him and a moment passed over them both. The first fragile rays of dawn rose above the mountain and Hannah closed her eyes for a moment.  When she opened them, the moment was gone.

Oscar wiped the tears away from his eyes and sat back against the wall.  Hannah, a soldier and a scientist, began working again.  She dug through rubble and bodies, finding weapons and clues, diamonds on her desert island.

Oscar tried to remember that day when he had decided to leave the village in which he had grown up, he tried to remember the arguments with Don Brazzo and the political conversations with Ivan.  But in the end it seemed like nothing but this night existed in his mind anymore.

It had all been turned into something it wasn’t.

“Okay, can you work a P-90?” asked Hannah, hefting another sub-machine gun.

“Yeah I think so.  Never fired one before but I’ve got some small-arms experience,”

“Good to hear that.  It’s simplicity itself, line up the dot on what you want to die and pull the trigger.  It’ll pull to the left a bit but compensate.  Aim dead Centre, get close and try for battle-zero,”

“What?”
“Point blank to a civie,” she replied with a faint smile.

“Okay, what’s the plan Lieutenant?” asked Oscar.  They had packed up medical supplies and Hannah had a flame-thrower strapped across her back.  Hannah’s face had taken a stark tone.  She had high cheek bones but a vivid bruise stood out under her left eye.  Oscar supposed her body was trying to shut down, shock.  Shock was sure the right word for it.

Oscar had long since given up on the idea that he would wake up and it was all a dream, that the things that had taken over and killed so many people were just a figment of his nightmares and paranoia.  He had given up on that hope.  But now, with a weapon in his hand a sense of direction, he started to feel the first golden touches that it wasn’t all over yet.

“Good to go?” asked Hannah.

“I guess so.  There’s another village over the mountain, it’s nearly twenty miles away,”
“They have a huge head-start over us. I think we’ll struggle to catch up.  But we’ll make good time if we leave now.  We’ll rest soon too,”

Oscar nodded and the two of them got to their feet.  Oscar left his home, a little later than expected but just as finally.

Chapter 39- The Dragon's Teeth

Chapter 39

The Dragon’s Teeth

Cavill, Virginia

A terrible shriek split the night air.  A pair of doves broke from their tree and flew away as fast as they could, finally settling on a telegraph pole.  Above the central junction of this two horse town, they looked down on the desolate high street.

Smoke was rising from the chimney of one house and floating up into the sky, obscuring the silent stars above.  In the backyard of another building, a man was digging a hole and putting bloody rags into them.

The apparent serenity was shattered again as there was the rumble of “distant thunder.”  Gun shot after gun shot echoed through the street.  Further along, stood outside an open door, lit by the one of the few remaining house lights, was a solitary figure with a rifle in his hands.

Behind him, cowering the doorway was another man who was looking out past him, looking at the crumpled figure in the road.  There was a splash of blood on the floor and the man in the doorway called out.

“Jesus Tom, you shot him!”

Tom didn’t reply.  He shouldered the modified M14 rifle and moved carefully toward the now prone figure.  He didn’t recognize the man; his face was torn to shreds and not by Tom’s gunshots.  The first round had pulverized his elbow on his right arm.  The second and third had punched dime sized holes through his chest.

“Tom, what’s going on?” called Mike from his shop.

Tom didn’t reply.  He stood over the prone figure and was about to turn around when he heard a hissing growl from the floor.  Tom’s reactions were sharp, perhaps not as fast as when he had been on active duty in Afghanistan but they were still fast  He spun around and fired a shot with the rifle.

Bullets leaving a rifled barrel can spin at over 100,000 revolutions per minute (rpm) depending on the muzzle velocity of the bullet and the pitch of the rifling.  The five point five six milimetre bullet fired from the M14 Garand spun around in a dizzying fashion, reaching an incredible speed.  The bullet slammed into the face of what may have once been a man but was no longer.

There was a small explosion and a splash of blood threw the man’s face back into the cold ground.  There was a terrible guttural moan from the figure on the ground.  Tom, who knew that a shot in the head at this range was one hundred percent sure to kill someone, stepped back.

“Ammo, do you have more ammo for this thing?” he called back.

“You shot him!  You shot him in the head,”

“Yeah I did. But he isn’t dead.  I don’t know what’s going on but he’s not dead.  Now do you have more ammo?”

“What the hell?” asked Michael.

At that point, as if to underline the hell that they were living in, the figure began to drag itself back to its feet.  It’s head was a crumpled ruin, one half of it a dark red cave that dripped black blood to the floor in an obscene rain as it stumbled forward.

Before it reached the light, it seemed like it had no eyes, the one side of its facing missing.  But something became clear as it became visible to Michael.  It had new eyes, three or four of them, Micheal didn’t stick around to count them. They had pushed through the other side of its face and were clustered in the left hand side of its face, sitting above a huge mouth that was filled with jagged black teeth.

Michael Cristakis, a simple soul, broke from his door and ran back into his shop.  Tom  McVay, a much more troubled soul, turned and got inside the shop, slamming the door behind him.  He grabbed the dead bolt and slid it across as the shambling figure slammed into the door.

The plexi-glass buckled under the impact and Tom put his shoulder into the door.  The figure on the other side was strong, stronger than Tom.  Tom had always been stronger than he looked; it was encoded into the McVay DNA.  But there were limits to human strength and endurance.

The being on the other side of the door, slamming away with two huge clawed fists, appeared to have no limit to either.  There was another huge impact and Tom was thrown back.  He redoubled and got back to the door.

He became fairly sure at this point of two things.  One was that Michael Cristakis, the friendly Greek American owner of the pizza shop, had run for his life.  The other was that he was going to die very soon.

Tom had been expecting to die nearly every day since his first fire-fight in Afghanistan, was not especially afraid.  He would die, that was everyone’s fate.  What bothered him was the thought that he was about to beaten, to be overcome.

The door cracked and the entire window buckled inwards.  Tom stepped back and prepared to swing the rifle like a club.  The door cracked again and this time it was wrenched clean of its hinges.

“Tom!” shouted Michael.  He threw a box of shells underarm to Tom who caught it and walked backwards away from the bleeding figure that was now stood in the doorway, where Michael himself had been not long ago.

Tom reloaded as fast as he could.  He flipped the M14’s selector switch to automatic , braced himself and fired from the shoulder.

There was a roar of fire and flame, the store front lit up again as if from some artificial sun and a series of flashbulb images struck Tom’s eyes as he fired.  The strange man-shaped creature jigged and jumped as bullets slammed through it, knocking it backwards and out of the wreckage of the store.

The silence was intense and even with Tom’s experience of combat gunfire, he felt the pressure on his ears.  He dropped the magazine from the rifle, smoke pouring from the barrel and the ejector port.  He loaded a fresh magazine and approached the prone figure but, even at five foot, he could see that it was still moving.

“It’s still not dead,” he said, pretty much to himself.

It lurched back to its feet with an alarming speed and violence.  Tom stepped backwards quickly and fired twice from the hip as he went.  The gunfire had torn its arm from its shoulder and its body was a bloody ruin.  There was a terrible ripping sound and its torso began to split at the neck.  A ragged seam opened up and to Tom’s horror, he saw that a huge maw of teeth had formed in the middle of its body.

Tom stumbled backwards and tripped over the wreckage.  He scrabbled backwards as fast as he could dragging his rifle with him.  The beast lurched in after him and followed him with a lumbering gait.

Tom rolled and fired as he went.  One round hit the ceiling, releasing a cloud of dust and rubble.  Another round exploded into the chip fryer and there was a dull thud, followed by a hiss, followed by a spark, followed by an explosion.  Fire spread with speed across the shop’s ruined interior.

Chapter 38- An Exercise Of Control

Chapter 38

An Exercise Of Control

Washington D.C

“I understand what you mean Gerry.  I know how you feel.  But the reality of the situation is the way I described it,” said Hayden McDonald with some tiredness in his voice.  This was now his thirtieth phone-call of the day and he had been through some degree of resistance and incredulity from each person he had called.

“Gerry, Gerry, there is no point in sitting on your hands.  This is the way it is.  The President is not calling the shots at the moment and we need to expedite the situation.  For the good of the Republic,”

Hayden was used to pressure situations.  He was the Whitehouse Chief of Staff, a political powerbroker.  And even before the President had asked him to be his chief, he had worked for the Senate Majority Leader.  Hayden was a very accomplished person.  But this was a challenge that was stretching him to the limit of his extensive capabilities.

“Gerry I don’t know how much plainer to make it to you.  If you don’t go back to your agency and get them to play ball, then the General will send some officer over there and he’ll either arrest you or shoot you.  Then someone else will do it.  No one thinks that this fucking guy calling the shots is a good idea.  But it is a political reality.  Now we either accept that and adapt or we render ourselves obsolete,” Hayden waited for the tirade to cool and for Gerry to accept what he had said.

“Thank you Gerry.  You’re a good man,” He put down the phone and walked back around his desk.  Jack Krane had been making his own phone call at the same time.  He finished up with a much less forceful tone and hung up too.

“Good news, I got the Department of the Interior to cooperate,” said Jack.

“Good man,” replied Hayden.  He’d had a large number of deputies and lieutenants in his life and generally he had always worn them out.  Hayden’s highly confrontational and adrenaline based management style was often more than people could handle for extended amounts of time.  But Jack Krane had nerves of steel.

“Okay next is the director of the CIA.  That one is going to be a bitch,” said Hayden.

“No doubt.  But he’s a former military man.  He’ll follow orders,” replied Jack.

“He’s also a friend of the President.  He’s unlikely to appreciate the situation the way it is.  Equally he’s likely to think of me as a traitor,”

“Well then he needs to grow up then doesn’t he?” Jack said simply and made his next phone call.

Hayden smiled briefly and then walked over to his window, already dialing the phone.  Somewhere in Virginia right now someone would answer the phone.  Virginia was where the problem was centralized, that was where Briar had been based, that was were Sat-Com was based.  And Sat-Com had dropped the ball and failed to keep the infection from spreading.

“This is Hayden McDonald for the DCI and I don’t intend to hold.  Put him on the line right now,”

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded tired but there wasn’t the resistance that Hayden was expecting, in the end the DCI had accepted the inevitability of what had happened and that it was better to remain a player than to become an observer.

“I want you to direct your agency to cooperate with the current regime in any matters that relate directly to the crisis.  If you’re in any doubt whatsoever, call me or Jack and we’ll tell you which way to go.  But you are a right guy, you’ll figure it out,”

Hayden hung up the phone again and took a deep breath.  It all seemed like a long shot at the moment.  Hayden wondered what the odds of it all coming off were.

An officer, a Captain, opened the door without knocking and came into Hayden’s office.  Hayden didn’t even look up.

“Mr McDonald?” he asked.

“What is it?” asked Jack, who had stood up.

“The General wants to know what you’ve achieved so far,” said the young Captain.

Hayden looked up briefly.

“Tell him I’ve persuaded the intelligence community to cooperate with him.  Not bad for an hours work eh?”

The captain nodded with a smile.

“Do you think when they write the book on me they’ll talk about me like Benedict Arnold?” asked Hayden to the young Captain.  Hayden didn’t even wait for a reply.

Villa Cyranno, Venezuela

Oscar picked up the gun in shaking hands.  There was still blood on the weapon.  He looked around at Lt McPherson.

He cocked the weapon but he didn’t aim it at her, it was a suggestive motion rather than a direct threat.

“Lieutenant, you need to make the call on the radio,” he announced.

She didn’t look up, she was still holding the body of the dead sergeant.

“Hannah, if you don’t get on the radio, we’ll all be killed,” he said with more force.

She nodded.

“Yes we will wont we,” she said with an effort.  She still didn’t move towards the radio.

“Hannah, if we don’t move then we’ll be killed and we wont be able to help them stop this,” he said with a mixture of impatience and force.

Hannah sat up and looked around.

“Okay, okay I’m back in,” she said slowly.  She got to her feet and moved over to the radio.  She began to tune it into the tactical frequency.

“This is Lieutenant Hannah McPherson, 180588K.  I’m the last survivor on the ground here at the initial infection site.  I’m checking in that my team is dead but that I am still able to proceed.  Please advise me,”

There was a crackle of static and then a tinny voice.

“Roger that.  This is Sabre-Two.  We’ll relay that back to command and advise you shortly,”

“Well, they know we’re still alive,” she said.

“No, they know you’re still alive,” replied Oscar.

“You’re non military, I’m keeping you out of this,” she replied.

“No chance of that now,” said Oscar, looking around at the wreckage that had once been his home.