The Doomsday Infection (32 page)

“And bears, and panthers.”

“Just my luck.”

“Don’t be such a girl,” she teased. “They’ll be more frightened of you,
than you are of them.”

“Don’t bet on it,” he mumbled to himself. “As long as we don’t come across any snakes, I’ll be -”

“Oh.”

“Oh, what do you mean, ‘oh’?”

“Erm, nothing. Look, we’re here,” she pointed to the enormity of the Everglades, all two million acres of it, but in the darkness it was too difficult to judge the scale of its vastness.

They entered the boathouse and Sophie shone the flashlight around the inte
rior. “I suggest I take another look at your leg, it is going to need to rest.”

23:32 PM

“Well, Gentlemen,” Colonel ‘Homer’ Simpson said wearily, and locked eyes with each and every person around the mahogany conference table in the pentagon war room. “I think it’s time; on the strength of what we have learned from General Malloy.”

The chiefs of staff muttered in disbelief then fell silent. Colonel Simpson let the implication sink in for the longest moment, st
ill unable to believe what he proposed himself. “What with the unimaginable sinking of the USS Thomas Jefferson and the influx of illegal’s willing to risk their lives, I think it’s our only course of action. What say you?”

“Dear God,” said the Brigadier-G
eneral from the air force, “it’s inconceivable.”

“It’s out of our hands. We have to act and swiftly.”

“I can’t believe we’re considering the ridiculous proposition from that wet behind the ears Harvard boy.”

“I heard that,” cut in President Parker and his face filled their monitors. His face was startling, having taken on an orange hue.

Colonel Simpson leaned over to the Brigadier General, and whispered behind his hand. “Is he wearing make-up?”

The other man nodded, and shrugged in confusion.

President Hamilton appeared distracted, then remembered the men watching him on the monitor and turned his attention to them. “I’m glad that you have come around to my way of thinking, I’ve been listening to you debating all night, tip-toeing around the issue, but you know I’m right.”

“It’s monstrous,
” fumed the Brigadier-General. “I won’t be associated with such a vile scheme. You must all be out of your minds.”

“Fine,” said Ham
ilton Parker. “You’re dismissed.”

“
But – but . . .” stammered the Brigadier-General in protest.

“I said you’re free to go,” said the
President. The brigadier general’s face colored red and with as much dignity as he could muster, he gathered his belongings and marched from the war room followed by his group of advisors. “Now, I take it that there are no other dissenters?” the President waited for a moment. “Good then we will initiate plan Z.”

“Plan Z?” repeated Colonel Simpson.

“That’s what I’ve named it. This plan of action needed a grandiose name. We’re facing the Doomsday Infection; plan Z has a sort of Doomsday feel. After all we will go down in history as the guys with the balls to take the decision -”

“We?” queried the colonel.

“Me then,” the President said, he turned to Vice-Admiral Reed, and Quinn Martell sat together on a couch, under gunpoint of armed guards. He smiled winningly at them. He turned to gaze from the Oval Office window; the majesty of the Washington skyline always amazed him and he knew that he was doing the right thing. “I’m the XO and ultimately responsible for making this game-changing decision, but I’d prefer your blessing, and that it’d go down on record as being a joint decision.” He waited for the hubbub to end, giving them time to digest the enormity of their strategy. “Plan Z is going to happen,” he told them. “With or without your approval. I thought, that, years from now, you could be there, on record, as part of the team that changed the face of this country,” he threw his hands in the air. “Your call.”

There was more frantic chattering and gesturing amongst the
various factions. The Colonel tapped the mahogany tabletop to get their attention. “I think it only right that we should vote upon it, after all, as the President said the time for procrastination is over, we need to act promptly. Gentlemen,” he paused given the gravity of the situation. “Let’s take our place in history. On the proposal of the President’s Plan Z, what say you?” He nodded to the man to his left.

“Aye.” The man said resigned to the fact.

“Admiral?” he asked next.

The admiral thought some more, then gave in, “Aye.”

“General Air Force Chief of Staff?” he asked giving everyone his or her proper title as the conversation would go on the permanent record.

He paused, and pondered the notion milking the moment and making sure that it would be duly noted in the future that he had given the proposition his utmost attention, then said, “Aye.”

On the video-link monitors, the President’s smile grew and grew as each person concurred.

“Let’s initiate Plan Z
, and we’ll go to Defcon One.

CHAPTER 45

23:33 PM

The sweltering, balmy Florida night sapped the strength of the military troops stumbling along the canal bank. “This was the last known position, General,” said Major Harris.

General Malloy asked, “How many men were there?”

“Two. National guardsmen on a routine patrol.”

“How long have they been missing?”

“They were due to report in over two hours ago. It might be nothing. They may have deserted.”

The General rubbed his hand over his chin. He needed a shave. He had not slept since . . . he could not remember, but it had to be at least two days. “I won’t have that sort of talk. Even if they were in the National Guard. We need to find them. They might be in trouble.”

They traipsed under a bridge, “What’s that?” asked the general pointing up ahead.

The major squinted in the gloom. “It looks like a dead horse.”

They slowed and approached the horse and barge cautiously. The men spread out; two climbed onboard the barge.

“Here’s one of them, General,” said a corporal
, and pointed to the corpse of the skinny national guardsman on deck, he had to hold his nose to stop himself gagging.

“Any sign of the other one?” General Malloy asked.

A private came up from below decks, “All clear, no one down below, General.”

“How come they’d remo
ved their hazmat suits. A look passed between the lower ranks. The General noticed and signaled with his fingers. “Out with it.”

The major appeared bashful. “Well, I don’t know quite how to explain this, bu
t, erm, we’ve been getting reports of the soldiers getting, erm, frisky, shall we say, and may have, erm, interfered with the civilians.”

“Word is they think of it as a perk of the job,” said the corporal helpfully.

“A ‘perk’?” General Malloy said looking heavenward. “Are they trying to re-populate Florida single-handedly?”

The major tried to silence t
he corporal, when something caught his eye, he turned and saw what he thought looked like an arm. A half digested arm. “I think that’s what’s left of his companion.”

General Malloy took in the scene and his lips tightened into
a grimace before he spoke, “It’s them. I know it.”

“Who, sir?” the major asked.

“The terrorists,” said the General taking in the major’s baffled look. “Who else could overcome two armed soldiers?”

“There’s blood up here, sir,” said the corporal. “Not from the corpse, I mean. I think one of them is injured, quite badly.”

General Malloy allowed himself a smile, he sniffed the air and the hunt was on.

“Pentagon,” said the signalman, passing over the radio handset to him.

“General Malloy,” he said and found himself talking to Colonel Simpson, “Evening Homer, what can I do for you?”

“You’re to evacuate immediately. Transport is ready. We’re sending a Blackhawk to fetch you, right now.”

“What about my men?” he asked quietly, not wishing to alarm them. He assumed they would not be included in the airlift and would be left in Florida to fend for themselves.

“Frankly Jack, we do not have the time or the resources, we’re starting with key personnel and working downwards. We have your co-ordinates, and the chopper will land on the nearest bridge.”

The General saw the broken foliage nearby and could detect the route the terrorists had taken. “Affirmative. But I have some personal business to clear up here first.” He glanced at the path his quarry had taken and his nostrils flared as if he could smell them.

“Don’t hang around, General. We need you evacuated wi
thin the hour, please confirm?”

“Acknowledged, over and out,” he said cutting off the colonel before any further protest. He turned to the major. “A chopper should be arriving for me shortly. It’ll land on the bridge. Take the men and guard it with your lives.”

Yes, sir,” replied the major automatically. “Where will you be?”

He nodded into the jungle-like forest. “I’ve got a little matter to attend to first.”

“You’re going to go after the terrorists?”

“You
betcha!”

“Why you? Shouldn’t we send the men?”

“It’s personal, son.” He eyeballed the major, who knew when to stop arguing. “Look at the trail they’ve left. They’ve not attempted to cover their path. A child could find them.”

“Good luck, sir,” the major saluted and signaled for his men to follow him.

Luck, thought the general, I don’t need luck. He pushed into the forest, following the trail of broken branches. “Man, I love this shit!” He picked up his pace into a fast trot.

23:34 PM

Luke slowly awoke and stretched. He’d shut his eyes and rested for a moment while Sophie attended to his leg, and had immediately fallen into a deep sleep. Sop
hie who was equally fatigued joined him moments later.

Sophie rested against his chest then stirred. “How long hav
e we been asleep?” she asked groggily, still dozy.

“Thirty minutes.”

“We’ve got to go,” she said in alarm.

“I
gotta take a whiz first,” he stood, hopped on one leg over to his improvised crutch and tested his weight. Moonlight streamed through the slats of the wooden boathouse and water gently lapped against the airboats, which in turn bumped against the tires protecting the crafts from damaging themselves against the water’s edge.

Sophie sat up,
stretched, smiled and gazed at Luke’s battered face in the moonlight. He had dried scabs and bruises from fighting the soldiers earlier, his torso equally damaged. He would be sore and ache for a while, but would heal with time. Unlike his leg, as her temporary repair would only do for the moment. She would need breaking again and re-setting properly, or Luke would have a limp for life.

She hadn’t told him that good news yet. She finally let herself plan a future tog
ether for them. Everything was going to be wonderful and they would live a long and happy life together, and the last few days would eventually fade into a distant memory. They would live their lives to the maximum; they owed it to themselves and to those that made the ultimate sacrifice for them. Their work would have to have meaning, a purpose, for the betterment of mankind, be it a humanitarian action aboard, or feeding the needy back home, anything rather than the desperate search for more wealth and the accumulation of consumer products. She smiled as Luke wobbled, she shone her flashlight to illuminate his journey and tallied his injuries, all the scars and bruises until he turned fully and she saw his back and the first of the buboes . . .

CHAPTER 46

23:35 PM

General Malloy smashed his way through the foliage and had their scent in his nostrils he would show ‘
em. Sloppy, he thought, he despised them even more for making their escape route too easy to follow. Tracking in the jungle had been his specialty. He seemed to have the knack, to know how the opposing forces thought, where they would go, where they might hide. None had ever bested him and that wasn’t about to change for this pair who had ruined Florida and embarrassed his country. He wondered if they were prepared to die for their mission. He was soon going to find out. Would they die a martyr’s death, proud to give their lives for what they believed in, or would they snivel and beg like wretches? He'd show them all how to deal with terrorists, he’d hunt ‘em down and shoot ‘em like the dogs they were. He felt like yelling with the thrill of the chase and the expectation of the kill.

He hadn’t felt this good since his fighting days in Bolivia, before he became a career soldier. This is where he felt best
, in the heat of battle, where he felt truly alive.

23:36 PM

Luke hobbled back through the door, holding his crotch. “Man my balls hurt and I’ve got this swelling . . .,” He pointed at his crutch; he looked up at Sophie and knew instantly by her horror-stricken face what it meant. “. . . Oh no . . .”

She ran to him and hugged him for all she was worth, he tried to untangle himself from her, worried that he might give her the infection. “Shush, it does not matter,” she said soothingly. “If you have it, then so must I.” She became aware of the sound of a helicopter and froze. They peeked from the door and saw a chopper preparing to land not too far away. “That must be near the barge,” she said.

“They’re on to us, let’s go.”

23:37 PM

“Gotcha!” General Malloy said, seeing the wooden boathouse and the flashlight beams showing through the slats of the structure. He stealthily approached the building, deciding which way to kill them. Shoot them? No, far too quick. Maybe slowly with his ka-bar knife, up close and personal, he wanted to watch the pain in their eyes while he drew out their deaths. That would be his personal favorite and the least this pair of bastards deserved. However, as he had less than twenty minutes to get back to the chopper he had better make it quick.  

He drew his sidearm, released the safety catch, held it pointing down by hi
s side, and crept forward. His eyes popped out at the sight of the terrorist identified as Luke Spencer as he finished urinating and hobbled back into the boathouse.

The general was too flabbergasted to move. This was a master terrorist!? This hobbling cripple had disarmed and killed two trained soldiers? How in the name of God was that possible? He moved forward, and was almost at the
boathouse door when he heard the unmistakable roar of an airboat engine, and a moment later saw the terrorists whoosh from the boathouse aboard an airboat. He cursed, raised his arm, standing with a two-handed grip on his pistol, aimed and fired.

Sophie perched high up on the operators seat of the noisy airboat. Luke tried to get comfortable as the unusual craft skimmed the surface of the water. Due to the noise of the rear mounted aircraft propeller that drove the shallow-bottomed craft
, neither of them heard the gunshot or were aware of the imminent danger they were in.

“Fuck!” said the general as the bullet ‘pinged’ off the grill covering the giant propeller. He cursed himself again, for failing to keep up with his target practice. It was a shot he would have made easily ten years ago. Marksmanship was another of his natural talents – usually. He lined up another shot and fired at the moving target once more before they were out of sight.

23:38 PM

The air supply aboard the nuclear powered submarine USS Amarillo dwindled rapidly making it difficult for submariner Pete Williams to breath. He realized that it was the end for him, and knew he must mount some sort of retaliatory defense. He sat at the captain’s desk and read his stream of incoming e-mails; he shifted through the day-to-day garbage, while he tried to break the captain’s pass-code.

He had been a seasoned hacker; in fact, he had once caused a major incident as a youth, when he had successfully hacked into a US top-secret military computer. A
supposedly impregnable
computer. The army had been highly embarrassed that this young kid had broken in to their system so easily. However, they wanted to play down the breach of their security, and the evidence proved that the young man was a harmless geek, apparently on a quest to find concrete evidence of the existence of extra-terrestrial beings and in particular, the secrecy surrounding Area 51.

Instead of prosecuting him, they
waited for the media interest to die down then offered the teenager a job, as he clearly had talent, and they thought he would be of more use to them as a member of staff. Better on the inside testing their systems, as opposed to being on the outside trying to break in.

This was how Pete Williams, who’d previously had no interest in the armed forces as a career found himself aboard the USS Amarillo, glad to escape the glare of infamy. He hadn’t enjoyed his moment in the media spotlight. His duties apart from the odd bit of code breaking and unofficial hacking was as one of the contingent to muster the nuclear weapons should they ever be needed.

However, the thin diminishing air didn’t help his concentration as he’d tried his damndest to break the codes. He sweated profusely and the stench from the captain’s remains made him gag. He glanced at the corpse slumped on the floor, with dried, congealed blood around his orifices.

He regarded the elderly captain, one of the last old-school leaders and he found himself remembering that for twenty year
s during the cold war years all codes on the US nuclear missiles were set at 00000000. The official thinking being that it would be too much for the men launching the missiles to have to remember complicated codes, it would speed their launches, instead of having to find the codes, they would have the edge over their Russian counterparts, and these few valuable seconds could prove vital. Incredibly, this went on for two decades, and it was pure luck that some disgruntled, suicidal soldier had not launched a missile with such a simple code and sent them all to Armageddon.

More recently, hackers revealed that the Syrian government
’s top-secret communication pass-codes were set to 12345 and if the memorandum was above top-secret they took the extra precaution of adding another digit making the pass-code 123456, and it had been this simple code Pete Williams had used to open the captain’s wall-safe and had retrieved the nuclear launch-codes. He shook his head to get his mind back on track. Why not try it again, he tapped, 00000000 into the pass-code box, and remarkably the computer sprung into life. “You idiot,” he said to the captain’s cadaver. He now had access to the submarines arsenal of forty-eight tomahawk nuclear weapons and he had the launch codes. Payback time, he thought bleakly.

23:39 PM

General Malloy rushed into the boathouse and without breaking step leaped onto an airboat, took a moment to start it, and moved out of the boathouse in pursuit of the fugitives. He had used an airboat once before, on maneuvers
in Alaska of all places where airboats were used extensively as they were equally suited to a snowy terrain and could skim over ice as easily as water.

He listened and detected the rough direction of the fleeing craft. He put on his night-vision goggles and searched slowly from east to west getting used to the green imagery. Then he spotted them. “O
utstanding!” he declared, locking onto the fleeing terrorists.

He could tell by the way the fleeing airb
oat moved that it was piloted by an inexperienced driver and he knew that he would catch them effortlessly. He opened the throttle and gave chase.

23:40 PM

“What do you mean, ‘it’s got no brakes?!” Luke yelled over the din of the propeller.

“There are no brakes on airboats,” she replied with a shrug.

“Then, how do you stop?” he asked incredulously.

“You decelerate,” she said simply, while she tried to steer by moonlight.

“What if you want to avoid something?”

“That’s why you sit high up, looking for debris or marine animals, you swerve to avoid in most cases. There’s no reverse either,” she told him knowing she’d enjoy his reaction to this piece of news.

“Huh? What happens if we go up a dead-end?”

“Let’s pray that we don’t.” She smiled.

“
Maaan, that’s crazy, what sorta lunatic invents a high speed vehicle with no means of stopping?” He cut short his ranting as a helicopter passed overhead, and they swapped anxious glances. Luke realized with a sinking heart that they were caught, when, strangely the helicopter continued its journey ignoring them, swiftly followed by another three choppers flying in formation northbound. “That ain’t cool,” he said.

“Maybe they didn’t see us?” she suggested.

“Or they’re no longer looking for us,” he said hopefully.

She smiled, loving him more and more by the minute, when a plume of blood exploded from his shoulder as a high ve
locity bullet ripped through it. The impact made him twist and he fell forward.

Her mouth dropped open in disbelief. She hardly had time to register
he’d been shot, and by whom? She slowed and squinted into the darkness, when a second airboat loomed from the darkness and the general rammed her.

The airboat clipped Sophie’s and the angle sent her into a high-speed tailspin, which almost pitched Luke into the swamp. Sophie fought for control of the spinning airboat and thought that she would topple from the seat high up, in her unbalanced position. Sophie saw the lake edge loom up and knew that impact was going to be inevitable.

She braced herself, but the crash caused her to fall to the bottom of the craft and she landed on top of Luke. She felt concussed and confused, her senses told her to help Luke, but found her body unable to respond to her commands. She intensified her efforts and felt the airboat rock. She knew without looking up that someone else was onboard.

She turned and glanced up to see General Mallo
y, grinning wickedly down at her.

23:41 PM

Hamilton excused himself and went to use the bathroom. He checked his reflection and smiled. As soon as he initiated his plan, the Florida problem would be over, and then he could co
ncentrate on issues that were more important; like running the country, and humping the hell out of Miss April. Thinking of her brought an even broader smile to his face. Boy, she was something. He ached for her; in fact, his groin had felt funny all day.

He’d caught something off her in all probability. He wasn’t too concerned, he knew she wasn’t a virgin, hell no, not with her bag of tricks, you didn’t l
earn those skills in a nunnery.

Still, once he had her safely seconded there would be no messing about. He’d have to find a discreet doctor to treat the sexually transmitted disease. He’d had an STD once before, it came with the territory, he thought pragmatically. Nope, nothing to worry about, it was an occupational hazard as far as he was concerned, if you were a hound-dog an STD was something you had to allow for. He needed to find a friendly, discreet quack to medicate him. Not that prig, Quinn Martell, that was for damn sure. The devil in him wanted to tell him, to watch his face, but he daren’
t.

He gazed at his reflection, noticing that the hickeys were showing through again. He attended to them, covering them liberally with his wife’s make-up. He felt great discomfort from his nether regions and scratch
ed through his pants, which gave him slight relief. He saw another hickey poking from the top of his shirt. He tugged at the collar; sure enough, there was another bruise-like hickey. How had he missed that? His wife might have seen it. That would have left him with some serious explaining to do. How embarrassing.

He unbuttoned his shirt and saw the blemish, and thought he’d better remove the garment to attend to it properly, when to his utter horror he saw that
his torso was covered in dark rings. What the fuck? What kind of SDT had that bitch given him? He paced the bathroom cursing her. Then it dawned on him. This wasn’t a sexually transmitted disease. This must be the work of his enemies; it’ll be the vice-admiral, or the surgeon general. Goddamnit, he’d been too trusting. Had one of them slipped something into his drink? He’d soon find out.

His crotch ached and he went to use the john. He unzip
ped himself and felt a dull pain. He felt around his groin and discovered a swelling each side. What the hell is this? He thought.

As he urinated he felt
such a shooting pain from his penis that he thought he might pass out. He looked down and very nearly did. Not only did his urine smell pungent, but it dribbled out in thick black clots, his eyes rolled back into his head and he fainted.