Degeneration (48 page)

             
He climbed past the motionless fan blades and rested on one of the steel braces that supported the fan’s motor, catching his breath. He had forgotten just how out of shape he had allowed himself to get.

             
Above, he saw the bird-shit coated wire meshing that covered the exhaust shaft’s rooftop opening. After being stuck inside the dark mall for so long, the moonlight shining through the mesh was a welcomed sight.

             
Keeping his back pressed against the steel brace, Mathis kicked out both feet against the wire mesh repeatedly.

             
The mesh snapped off and flung out onto the roof.

             
“I’ll climb out first and get them to lower a line for you!” Mathis shouted down the shaft at Richard. “Just wait there! I’ll be right back!”

             
Mathis carefully stood up and balanced on the steel brace, reached up and grabbed the lip of the exhaust shaft.

             
Two soldiers wearing white hazmat suits reached in, grabbed Mathis’ arms, pulled him out of the exhaust vent, and let him fall to the ground on his back.

             
Before Mathis could react, two rifle barrels were pressed against his white-suit’s faceshield.

             
“Easy, please, just listen,” Mathis said, slowly displaying his open palms. “I’m Colonel Mathis, of the 161
st
. I have an immune survivor with me and he is still inside the ventilation shaft. There are no other survivors inside.”

             
The two hazmat-suited soldiers backed away, but kept their rifles aimed steadily at him.

             
One of the soldiers pressed his radios transmit button attached to the chest of his suit, keeping his other hand secure on his weapon.

             
“This is Lima-Three to Yankee-One. We have located Primary Two, do you copy, over?” the soldier said into the mike.

             
“Yankee-One copies. Check him for breach and bring him to the bird. Have you located Primary One, over?”

             
Three other soldiers wearing hazmat suits ran towards the exhaust vent and dropped a zip-line down into the shaft. One of them lit a red flare and tossed it inside.

             
“Lima-Three to Yankee-One, we’re in the process of retrieving him, over,” Lima-Three responded. He let go of the mike and gestured for Mathis to stand.

             
Mathis slowly stood and adjusted the oxygen tank slung around his waist.

             
“Keep your hands above your head, Colonel,” Lima-Three ordered, sighting his weapon on him. “This will just take a second.”

             
Mathis slowly raised his hands above his head.

             
A hazmat-suited soldier walked up with a spray bottle full of foamy-liquid and spritzed Mathis’ white-suit from head-to-toe.

             
The three white-suits who threw the zip-line down the shaft finally pulled Richard out and immediately pinned him against the ground and fastened plastic zip-cuffs around his wrists.

             
Richard struggled violently, but was quickly subdued by a swift kick into his ribs. He curled up on the ground, gasping for breath.

             
“Hey!” Mathis shouted, lowering his arms.

             
Lima-Three and the solider standing next to him stepped forward, their fingers tightening around the trigger.

             
“Easy, Colonel,” Lima-Three said.

             
Mathis froze and slowly raised his hands again.

             
“You guys aren’t search and rescue,” Mathis said with disdain in his voice. “You’re with Yate’s group, aren’t you?”

             
The white-suit spritzing Mathis stopped, stood up, and turned towards Lima-Three.

             
“He’s clean,” she said, “His suit hasn’t been punctured. I can’t detect any leaks.”

             
“Great,” Lima-Three said, “let’s get them both in the bird and head back to the lake.”

             
“Goddamnit!” Mathis shouted, clinching his fists. “You’re wasting your time! Yates has been cut off! He doesn’t care about securing your safe passage! He only cares about his own ass! He wants the civilian as a personal bargaining chip! Can’t you see that?!”

             
“Just get on the helicopter, chief, and everything will be alright,” Lima-Three said. “Everything will be alright.”

28

             
T
he President sat aboard Air Force One, staring out the window at the countryside below. It was hard for him to remember the last time he had slept. All that he knew was that he was getting sick and tired of being shuffled around from one secure location to another. His body ached and his head was pounding.

             
Sitting across from him was his Chief of Staff and beside him was his Secretary of Defense.

             
In the Secretary of Defense’s lap sat a silver attaché case that was handcuffed to his wrist.

             
The President was sick of the whole mess. First, he got pulled out from the White House’s secure panic room and shuffled to the downstairs bunker. Then, not even five hours later, he got shuffled to the Pentagon’s bunkers. He didn’t even get two hours of sleep before he was shaken awake and ushered up to a waiting helicopter flanked by Secret Service agents wearing riot armor.

             
Then to make matters worse, his throat was getting scratchy and his head was pounding from the lack of sleep.

             
He didn’t know the exact reason why he was getting moved across country to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, but, while sitting through countless situational briefings, he heard something about the situation deteriorating along the east coast. In truth, it was hard to pay attention when he was running off of two hours of sleep.

             
It excited him to know that his wife would be waiting for him in Colorado. Perhaps he’d be able to curl up next to her and sleep for sixteen hours straight. He was completely exhausted.

             
The thought about seeing his wife again made him smile, but his aching head made him wince.

             
“Are you okay, sir?” the Secretary of Defense asked.

             
“I’m fine, Hart,” the President said, forcing a smile. “I just really need to get some sleep.”

             
The Secretary of Defense offered a polite nod.

             
“Well, sir, I think after all of the commotion going on, you deserve a good night’s rest,” the Secretary of Defense said.

             
“We all do, Hart,” the President added.

             
“Who will do all the work if we’re all sleeping?” the Chief of Staff said, smirking.

             
“Well,” reflected the President, “I’m sure there are a few democrats hiding somewhere in the DC sewers.”

             
The three men chuckled and then fell back into silence.

             
The President sneezed.

             
The Chief of Staff politely offered his handkerchief.

29

M
athis sat next to Richard on the cold metallic bench inside the helicopter’s gunmetal cargo hold with his handcuffed hands neatly folded in his lap.

Richard’s right hand repeatedly inadvertently twitched during the flight, but he didn’t notice; he was too preoccupied eavesdropping on the voices echoing inside of his head. He heard Andy whispering to somebody, a female, but he couldn’t make out what either voice was saying and it was making him increasingly paranoid. He hated when his brother talked about him behind his back.

The four soldiers, three males and one female, sat opposite from Mathis and Richard, staring at them with their rifles gripped tightly. The soldiers were no longer wearing their hazmat suits because they were considered safe from ground-level airborne contamination at the altitude they were cruising. Not that it mattered anyway, because their suits ran out of oxygen not long after taking flight from the mall’s roof.

The pilot gave up trying to get in contact with Falls Lake since nobody on the other end was answering anymore.

“You’re wasting your time following the Major General’s orders,” Mathis finally said, breaking the awkward silence. “He’ll kill or abandon all of us and use the civilian to negotiate safe passage for himself out of the state. Falls Lake is isolated just like the rest of us.”

“Why don’t you want to land there? Are you sick?” one of the soldiers, Greg, aka Lima-Three, asked Mathis.

“I never took off my suit and I didn’t get punctured,” Mathis said, staring at him. He looked over at the female, Patricia. Attractive, if she would have bathed in the past forty-eight hours. “You checked me yourself, right? You weren’t satisfied?”

“It doesn’t matter if he is infected,” Patricia said. “He can’t infect us as long as he keeps his suit on. He has enough oxygen to make it to the lake and then we can let Yates make the call.”

“I’m not infected,” Mathis said matter-of-factly. “But Yates won’t care.”

“Well,” said Greg, “you just keep that hazmat suit on and we won’t have any problems, okay chief?” He propped up his rifle, staring at Mathis.

“You’re followed outdated orders,” Mathis said, “If you want to actually make a difference and get out of this alive at the same time, contact someone on the outside – away from North Carolina. That way, we can all negotiate our own safe passage without Yates.”

“Shut up, Colonel,” Greg said, “I have friends I left behind at Falls Lake. I’m not going anywhere unless we all get out safely.”

             
“Bombers coming in!” the pilot shouted, interrupting, “This is it! They’re making their run!”

A squadron of low-flying bombers passed underneath the helicopter and made it rumble with turbulence.

In the next instant there was a series of explosions, a sudden
whoosh
that reverberated through the air, and suddenly a sea of fire washed Raleigh in liquid flames.

The soldiers all huddled at the helicopter’s side window, staring down below at the burning liquid that flowed along the city streets.

“Well, there goes Raleigh,” Trish said without emotion, shaking her head.

“Damnit man,” another solider muttered. “Do you think that finally did the trick? Did that get them all?”

“I hope so,” Patricia whispered.

“The pyrotechnics display certainly blew their flu cover story. Every country with a satellite saw their little light show,” Greg said.

“I guess things are… getting desperate,” Mathis muttered to himself flatly, shocked yet not surprised. “They… just don’t care anymore, do they?”

Richard started to slap himself in the forehead.

“
No!
” Richard hissed to himself. “Not
yet!
”

The soldiers looked over at Richard.

“He worries me,” Greg said, pointing at Richard.

Richard’s hand continued to twitch in his lap as he stared absently ahead, lost in some deep thought.

“Something… something isn’t right about him,” Greg continued. “I think
he’s
infected.”

“He’s immune, you idiot,” Mathis said
monotonically
, sighing.

“And how do you
know
he’s clean?” Greg countered, face pale. “Look at him… Look at how he acts. You’re brass, not a doctor! If he is infected, we’ve been breathing the same air as him… so we’ve got it too.”

Patricia stared at Greg, horrified.

“Look, you need to calm down,” another soldier, Reggie, said.

“I am calm, Reggie!” Greg said, reaching for his pocket. “I just think that we should take some… precautions.”

Greg pulled out three vials wrapped in red CDC shrink-wrap.

Patricia’s eyes grew wide.

“You managed to buy some?! From whom?” she asked.

“Some radio geek got some from the CDC caravan that was headed into Butner,” Greg said. “I could only buy three and don’t have enough for everybody, so I didn’t want to bust them out unless absolutely necessary. And this shit,” he pointed at the jittery Richard, “just made it necessary in my book.”

“What is…?” Mathis started to ask, flabbergasted, “Oh, you got to be fucking kidding me… Didn’t you hear the reports about the CDC vaccine trails?”

“Shut up and mind your own business,” Greg snapped.

“I looked everywhere… I couldn’t buy a vial anywhere,” Patricia continued, tuning out Mathis.