The Doomsday Infection (33 page)

CHAPTER 47

23:42 PM

Sophie saw her pistol lying nearby and instinctively reached for it, but the general was one-step ahead and stood on her wrist, making her scream in pain.

Maybe a little torture, thought the general. It’s the least the bitch deserves. He could see that the man
was bleeding badly and would pose no threat.

He applied more pressure on her wrist with his boot. He enjoyed hearing her s
cream and watching her squirm in pain. Soon she would know it was the end, and that was his favorite moment, when his captives knew they faced the end and all hope drained from their being, their eyes becoming dead. Sophie kicked out at him, making him chuckle. She did not give up easily. Good, he thought, this would be fun. He assessed the situation, calculating if he had the time for a bit of fun and still make it back to the helicopter rendezvous point. His computations gave him a five-minute window and he grinned broadly.

He kicked her in the head, sending her half out of the airboat, however the boat rocked with the movement and his action almost sent him too into the swamp. He regained his
balance, and adjusted his pose.

He gestured with his hand for her to stand and take a shot. She rose into a crouch and launched herself at him, but he swatted her away effortlessly with a back-hander, sending her into the cage of the still spinning propeller blade. He squashed her face into the wire-cage and she could feel the wind from the revolving blades and feared her
hair might catch.

The general pushed her head further and hoped to grind her into the blade. Sophie tried desperately to pus
h back from the propeller, but the general over-powered her. The wire cage started to give and she felt her face inch forward to the spinning blades. She twisted, and turned sharply making him lose his grip. She tried to pull away but was caught by her hair in a lose wire of the propeller cage.

The general laughed at her predicament, th
is was too easy he thought, confrontation between two great enemies should have demanded a long drawn out protracted affair, not a push over. He gave her a moment for her to free herself, only sporting after all, and he had a few minutes to spare to indulge her. All she was doing was postponing the end, to live her last moments in pain and agony instead of a quick death.

She took a second to regain her breath, glanced over at Luke who stirred, which was a good sign she thought, and with an almighty tug she wrenched herself from the wire cage pulling the front cover with her
, exposing the four-foot whirling blades as she squared up to the general.

He lashed out with a kick, she tried to deflect the blow, but it caught her in the stomach, knocking the air out of her and she crouched down, to get her breath back. She slowly stood on the rocking airboat. The general span on the spot with a high hip-kick and caught her below the rib c
age and she felt something snap. She yelped and held her side. She tried to stand but the agony was too much.

The general re-adjusted his stance. Enough is enough, better get to the chopper he thought, one spinning head kick should do it, he star
ted to execute the move, when; “Freeze, you bastard sonofabitch!” growled Luke.

Luke held the discarded pistol and pointed it at him. “You?” laughed the general. “A one-armed, one-legged plague-ridden victim. You really think so?” he
shook his head in wonder, “Against
me?
I’m Jumpin’ Jack Malloy, a Four Star General who not only trained in, but relishes unarmed combat?”

“Leave her alone.”

“Well, if you really want to play,” he said, genuinely excited by the challenge. “Then, welcome to the party!”

“Back off,” Luke said, and coughed up blood.

“I don’t think so, son,” he said. It was pitiful, thought the general, as Luke tried to raise himself up on his one good leg. Blood poured from his shoulder wound and he raised the pistol with his good arm, but the effort made his arm tremble. The general chuckled and feigned ducking from side to side as if he could dodge the bullets, then quick as a flash he snatched the gun from Luke’s grasp, startling him, and pointed it at Sophie. “The bitch first,” he said, and pulled back on the trigger.

Luke sprang up from his good leg until he was horizontal on his crutch, kicked out at the general, and caught him with a tremendous blow
square on the side, making him stumble. The general almost recovered his balance when, Sophie swept out with a low kick, sending Jumpin’ Jack Malloy, the highly decorated, Four Star General face-first into the whirling propellers.

CHAPTER 48

23:43 PM

Some 4
th
of July, thought the surgeon general as he washed his hands in the bathroom at the White House down the corridor from the Oval Office, under the watchful eye of his armed escort. The time is now, he thought. Somehow, he would have to convince the armed guard to release him so that he could section the President.

Some tall order, he thought solemnly. Yet he had too for the sake of the country. He would have to persuade the armed guard that it was imperative that he s
ection the incumbent President.

Surely, they could see that the
President had become unbalanced, they could worry about the subpoena later, or maybe they could think of a way of impeaching him, either way they would have to worry about the niceties of their actions later. He had to act; the President had totally lost it, having proposed the annihilation of Florida.

He had never heard such nonsense in all his born days. Mental health was no laughing matter, and
should certainly not be in doubt in the ruler of the free world.

He marched briskly back to the Oval Office when to his consternation he found the door locked. “What the . . .?” Quinn Martell said in alarm. He tried the door again. Definitely locked. He heard shouting and turned to the uniformed guard, “Unlock this door, immediately!”

“Negative,” gulped the young guard. “My orders are clear. Guard you and nothing else.”

The shouting got louder. “Listen to them, that’s Vice-Admiral Reed in there. Who has the most experience in defending our nation, him or that preppy nobody?” he pleaded, as the guard stared straight ahead, as trained, and ignored him. “Use your initiative.”

“No can do, sir. Now step away.”

23.44 PM

Sophie gently steering the spluttering, disabled airboat along the
Intracoastal Waterway. The boat limped along, as the propellers malfunctioned after removing most of the general’s face. She shuddered as she remembered his howls of agony as the blades turned his face into hamburger.

Sophie heaved the carcass over the side of the airboat and was surprised how quickly the alli
gators were upon the corpse devouring it. She glanced at Luke who’d sunk into semi-consciousness. He’d lost an enormous amount of blood, she had stopped the flow for the moment. The bullet had passed right through his shoulder, so no permanent damage there, she thought.

She cut
the throttle and glided the airboat up to the embankment outside the Good Samaritan’s hospital, on Sandbank Island. My gosh, she thought, back to where we started. She came to a halt almost at the spot where the river ambulances would dock, then dashed inside the deserted hospital, grabbed a gurney and helped Luke onto it.

23:45 PM

The
President entered the Oval Office in a manic mood once again. His appearance unkempt, his hair disheveled, and he had large sweat patches under his arms. His face turned puce. “What have you done to me? He raged.

“I . . .I d - don’t know what you mean?” stammered the vice-admiral.

“You and that quack, Martell, you’ve given me something haven’t you.” He grinned, baring his teeth, and pointed in Reed’s face. “I’m on to your little game.”

Vice-Admiral Reed worried for the
President’s sanity, this latest bout of paranoia was too much, and as soon as Quinn got back to the office, they would have to act. “Mister President, we don’t have time for this -”

“Damn well right we don’t. That’s why we’re going to launch Plan Z. You and I, right her
e, right now.”

“Are you out of your mind?” the vice-admiral asked incredulous.

“You know what Plan Z involved. It’s going to happen, mister, with or without your help.”

“Never.”

“It’s been ratified by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“I don’t care,” said the vice-admiral. “I cannot, in all good conscience be responsible for this madness.”

“It’s not your responsibility – it’s mine. I’ve made an executive decision and that’s final. Now, put your goddamn palm-print on the plate!” he ordered, opening the briefcase containing the nuclear missile launch-codes.

“Not in a million years,” Reed replied.

“You put your goddamned palm-print on the screen now, or I’ll cut your hand clean off and put it on there.”

“You cannot launch a nuclear strike upon your own country, please think again. It’s insane.”

“We’ll bomb the state back to the Stone Age. We have to make sure that’s it’s uninhabitable. It’s the only
sane
option we have.”

“It’ll make Florida uninhabitable for a hundred years.”

“That’s what we want,” said Hamilton trying to appeal to the man through logic. “We kill every living thing, then logically we kill the bubonic plague’s host, and it’ll die with them. AND it’ll stop the illegal immigrants from wanting to enter the country through Florida; surely even they wouldn’t be dumb enough to venture into a radioactive area.”

“No!” Reed said.

23:46 PM

At the Good Samaritan Hospital Sophie gave Luke a blood transfusion by flashlight. She had Luke strapped to the gurney and drew more blood for a regular check. The prognosis was good from the gunshot at least. She compared before and after blood samples at a makeshift laboratory, and gained puzzling results. She was mystified. “That’s curious . . .,” she said to herself. “. . . Surely not . . .”

If correct, she may have accidentally stumbled upon the cure!

Incredible as it may seem - it had happened before - the discovery of penicillin had been by accident. She told herself to calm down, and thought she should do another test to confirm her theory.

She heard the roar of distant jets and peered from the hospital window and her mouth dropped open; the sky was full of military aircraft heading north and a shiver ran down her spine, knowing that the retreat was not good and had an ominous feeling
. Something awful was about to occur. She rushed back to her experiments knowing that the potential outcome of the tests could result in the most important discovery in history.

She prayed to God that she was correct.

23:47 PM

Submariner Pete Williams coughed and tried to breath in the thin, fetid air. Slow, deep even breaths he told himself. If the lack of air wasn’t enough, there was also the intolerable heat. He did not know which would get him first, lack of oxygen or heatstroke. Well, whichever got him first it would not be before he made a pre-emptive strike.

Fuck the retaliation only rule of a nuclear launch. He knew the enemies of the United States were behind the contagion and if he were to die then he would damn well make sure he would take them with him. He needed the captain’s computer, and with
a great deal of difficulty, he sat at the desk, and prepared to send the Rag-Heads or Ruskies back to the dark ages. He paused for a moment doubting his motives. The enemy would see the launch and would respond in kind. The US had always calculated on six or seven nuclear bombs getting through and resigned themselves to the loss of several major cities, New York, Washington and Chicago to name a few, should he be the instigator of such mass murder? Would anyone ever know it had been him, and would anyone even care?

He had fed the launch code
s into the captain’s laptop, on the outside it looked like an innocuous briefcase, but on the inside it held unimaginable power and destruction. Everything was prepared, he only had to push the button. His vision became blurred and his breathing erratic, the panic rising in him. He made himself calm, and regulated his breathing.  He flipped back the plastic safety cover and his finger hovered over the button. . . .

23:49 PM

Sophie entered Quinn Martell’s cellular telephone number into the army satellite-phone they’d taken from the soldier on the barge. He answered quickly, but sounded out of breath. “It’s me, Sophia Garcia.”

“My God, you’re alive!” Quinn’s heart swelled at the news, and he felt himself grinning for the first time in ages. The shouting inside the Oval Office grew so loud that he had to
cover his ear to be able to hear her. He nodded to the uniformed guard to open the door and saw that the young guard’s resolve waned; he took out a key and turned it over in his hand, trying to make the right decision.

23:50 PM

Pete Williams was in a quandary. I’ll give it a couple of minutes he thought. He scrolled through the captain’s emails, his vision focusing in and out
, when two words struck terror into his heart
Defcon One
emblazoned across the screen. He knew that this was battle stations, nuclear war imminent. Thank God that he’d already prepared, and was one-step ahead. Should he wait for the official command, or should he get on and do it, and maybe take out a Russian nuclear silo or two. Such proactive action might even save Washington. He was about to start proceeding when the next e-mail turned his bowel to liquid.

His vision blurred again but saw the relevant words,
Nuclear launch
. . . and
Florida
. . . they galvanized him into action and he pressed the button. The sub shook with the tremendous ferocity of the tomahawk launches. Nuclear War had begun. . .