In The Falling Light (9 page)

She opened the iPad and brought up the
facility app, tapping in a top-clearance passcode, then tapping her
way through several menus until she brought up real-time
schematics. The first was a satellite shot of the exterior. E-11
was a mostly underground complex at the edge of the Groton Boat
Yards, having once been part of the naval facility but now taken
over by the U.S. Army exclusively for Project Blackleg.

When one thought of secret, underground
military research facilities, places like the Utah and Nevada
deserts came to mind. Not coastal, heavily-populated Connecticut.
It was both coincidental and ironic that this research should have
been carried out so close to the town of Lyme, the original
discovery point for the disease back in 1975. It
should
have
been Nevada, she thought, as far away from people as possible.
Someplace you could quickly nuke if something went wrong.

Her finger moved the screen around. A
project like this should have never been.

She traced the perimeter fence and double
tapped at each guard post, confirming that all the MPs had been
pulled back into the safety of the bunker. She next scrolled
through the floor-plans of the above ground structures, looking for
the heat signatures which would indicate people who had missed the
evacuation to the sub-levels. There was no sign of life. No human
life, anyway. Her fingertips slipped and tapped through all three
subterranean levels, no longer looking for heat sources (there were
plenty of those) but checking to see that the Firebreaks were
secure. These were triple-thick steel blast doors which, during
lockdown, compartmentalized the complex much like watertight doors
on a ship. As Major Peck had indicated, E-11 was secure.

She snorted.

Not secure enough, clearly. Not tight enough
to keep L-2207 from escaping. And the little bastard was not only
blood and fluid-borne as intended, but had also figured out a way
to become airborne. That had
never
been intended. Nor had
its side effects.

“Colonel?”

Joanna looked over her shoulder at Master
Sergeant Jackson standing in a doorway, one of her communication
people.

“Ma’am, ten minute warning for your
call.”

“Inform Major Peck, please.”

“He’s already in the conference room,
Colonel.”

Joanna nodded. “Carry on.” She switched apps
and pulled up data she would need for her call with the Pentagon.
They had access to the same information, but she would be expected
to give the brief. Data and an assortment of close-up color
photographs appeared on screen. The images were disturbing.

Project Blackleg’s objective had been the
testing of accelerated biological processes, with the primary
subject being
Ixodes Scapularis
, the North American
Blacklegged Tick, selected for its durability and capacity to carry
and transmit ten known diseases. The introduction of radical growth
hormones showed early progress, and the scientific minds at the
Pentagon quickly saw the potential for weaponization turn to
reality with the development of Batch L-2207. Simply put, the goal
had been to breed large specimens which could be infected with any
number of nasty diseases, then release them in enemy territory or
population and let them spread death. No exposure of American
troops, no cruise missiles or carriers, and very, very cost
effective. Technically, the project was a violation of
international law and a breach of half a dozen treaties the U.S.
had signed or even sponsored. And it was also just like many other
nasty, top secret weapons programs her country developed. Although
there was no immediate need and certainly no plans to use it, the
generals and the White House liked to have options. Just in
case.

So they had done as asked, and succeeded.
And for whatever it was worth, not a single specimen had escaped
the complex. In fact they had all been terminated in their breeding
chambers the moment everything went wrong. None had gotten out.

It was L-2207 that snuck past her
multi-layer security program.

Joanna closed her iPad and made her way to
the conference room, finding Major Peck on a phone. He glanced at
her, said “yes, sir,” and hung up.

“What was that?”

“Just verifying the link.” He pointed to the
big screen on one wall. “It’s a video conference.”

Joanna didn’t like the way he had trouble
meeting her eyes.

“Is Dr. DeVries joining the call?”

“Not this time.” Joanna took her seat at the
head of the conference table. She and Peck were the only ones in
the room.

“Don’t you think he should be?”

“If they wanted him on the call, they would
have asked for him. Besides, I have all his data.”

“Still, Joanna…”

She looked at him. “That’s enough,
Major.”

Spencer Peck held his commander’s gaze a
moment longer than was polite, then shuffled through his own files.
He was a West Point graduate the same as her, they had both been to
the War College, but of the two of them, he was the only one with
combat experience. A tour in Afghanistan followed by another in
Iraq should have put those silver oak clusters on his shoulder
boards, not hers.

The wall screen flickered and the message
STAND BY came on. Joanna was reminded of the words RECORDED EARLIER
and felt a chill. She wished she had taken the time to get some
Advil before the call. She had a headache that wouldn’t quit.

A moment later the screen changed to a
conference room similar to Joanna’s, though containing more people
and a lot more brass. Colonel Ferry, her immediate boss was there,
and he quickly made introductions at the Pentagon end. It was an
assortment of senior Navy and Army officers, several civilians and
a handful of scientific types. General Laurents thanked Ferry
brusquely and took over, pre-empting any further pleasantries.

“Lt. Colonel Bishop, we are three days into
the outbreak, and I want to be perfectly clear on what you role is
at this point. Your mission is now simply to keep the facility, and
specifically the lab, on lockdown until Dr. DeVries can reverse
this. Are we clear?”

“Yes, general.”

“And where is Dr. DeVries? I expected he
would be at this meeting.”

Joanna caught Peck’s smug look out of the
corner of her eye. “Dr. DeVries was not requested, and I made the
call that his time would be better spent in the lab working.”

There was come conversation at the Pentagon
table that she couldn’t catch.

“And you’re absolutely certain the lab has
not been compromised?”

Joanna nodded. “One-hundred-percent,
general. The lab is secure.” She told the lie with a straight
face.

“I want DeVries on the next call, Bishop. Be
sure he’s linked in.”

“Yes sir.”

And for the next two hours that was the last
input Joanna had, the fact that she was not giving the briefing
putting a fine point on any question about her career. Men and
women at the Washington end took turns providing their own updates.
L-2207 had gone aerosol, escaping through an unsecured ventilation
duct (Joanna’s responsibility, a fact reinforced by the way Colonel
Ferry looked down at the table and how General Laurents shot a
quick but hard glance towards the camera), making its first stop at
the VA hospital adjacent to the Groton facility. The bug (and
wasn’t that an ironic term for it?) had unanticipated side effects
which quickly had their way with the 3,700 patients and staff. It
wasn’t a simple transmission of fatal disease, as L-2207 promised,
but a different class of infection. Within twenty-four hours the
growth acceleration nature of the formula caused a complete,
physiological change within its victims.

Those car-sized ticks scrambling over the
expressway had once been human.

Infected females quickly mated and began
laying eggs at thirty-six hours, around three thousand eggs each,
and at forty-eight hours they were hatching. Newly hatched larva
females reached maturity twelve hours later, mated and quickly
produced their own eggs. It didn’t take a mathematician to see how
rapidly the crisis was exploding. All that was needed for the ticks
to continue populating was a single blood meal, and the population
of Southern Connecticut was providing plenty of those.

An Army Colonel read off civilian casualty
figures to date.

Another detailed the units mobilized to
combat the infestation.

A Navy officer gave a detailed account of
what had happened to the submarine facility near Joanna’s location.
It was grim, and only a single sub had made it to sea. Whether it
had been contaminated and the crew exposed remained to be seen, but
Navy aircraft were tracking its slow movement off the East Coast,
ready to drop a torpedo on it and send it to the bottom if it
turned out the crew had been infected.

A female scientist confirmed data Joanna had
on her iPad. Not only could a person be infected by the airborne
L-2207, but human victims bitten and not killed outright by a tick
attack were infected by a mutated form of the bacteria Borrelia.
Both exposures amounted to the same thing. The victim quickly
transformed into the giant, adult arachnids. It was a condition
someone had casually referred to as “having
Blackleg
,” and
the nickname stuck. Although the creatures were driven to kill for
a blood meal, believed to be instinctual, they then broke the rules
of the natural world and kept killing and feeding until too bloated
to move. On the surface, an observer might think this would be
beneficial, making them easier to kill, but there were so many,
moving and multiplying so very fast, that it didn’t matter. An Air
Force general was discussing carpet bombing and napalm along the
I-95 corridor, which sparked some lively debate. Joanna barely
heard him, distracted and staring at Spencer Peck, not knowing why.
Her headache hadn’t abated.

The final briefing came from an Admiral
working with the Center for Disease Control. He reported the
outbreak had already spread into Rhode Island, north across
Connecticut to the Massachusetts border, and west to within five
miles of the New York state line. Somewhere along the way his
monotone voice stated that the ticks would go dormant in
temperatures under forty-five degrees.

Too bad it’s the middle of July, thought
Joanna, forcing her thoughts - her strange and somehow
sexually-related thoughts – away from her executive officer and
back to the present. General Laurents took the floor again, looking
into the camera.

“Joanna, no bullshit now. Does Dr. DeVries
truly believe he can reverse this? Come up with an antibiotic
vaccine?”

Joanna straightened in her chair. “Yes he
does, General.”

“Good. We’ll have another call in six hours.
I want him to tell me that himself.”

The screen went black.

Joanna left the conference room without a
word to Peck, and locked herself in her office. As she searched her
desk for Advil, she called the lab. A young male tech with red eyes
and in need of a shave appeared on the video link, then went to
find the doctor. A few minutes later DeVries came on, looking more
worn down than his assistant.

“You told them
what?”

“I had to, Doctor. You said there was a
chance.”

“I said there was a
slim
chance, and
that I’d need the help of another facility, and it would take
months to accomplish, if it can even be done at all.”

“Still, it’s a chance, isn’t it?”

DeVries peered closely at the screen,
softening his tone. “You’re exhausted, Joanna, and not thinking
clearly. You should have told them the truth.”

“And then they would have insisted you be on
the conference link, full video.”

DeVries looked down and rubbed absently at a
large pair of side-by-side boils on his upper lip. The fingers he
rubbed with didn’t look right.

“If I told them, they’d nerve gas us without
a second thought in some half-assed attempt at containment. I’m
trying to buy us time to figure a way through this.” The doctor
said nothing, and she noticed he very purposefully kept his other
hand below the table, out of sight. “How are you feeling?”

DeVries shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“Good. Keep working, Doctor.” Joanna
disconnected.

There was minimal staff on duty for the
overnight shift, only a couple of men at the consoles monitoring
the complex’s support systems. The screens on the wall were running
new images, each more horrific than the one before, but someone had
muted the volumes. Joanna saw a hysterical Hispanic woman being
restrained by her husband on some suburban street, the camera
soaking up her grief, then panning over to an overturned twin
stroller. It was empty. Joanna was glad she couldn’t hear the woman
wailing.

“You never had any kids, Colonel?” Major
Peck said quietly. She hadn’t noticed him walk up beside her.

“No. I put my career first. You?”

“I always figured there would be time later.
Any regrets?”

She stared at the image of the empty
stroller. “Sometimes.” Her headache was back, her joints had begun
to ache, and now her lower back was throbbing near her kidneys. She
closed her eyes. Peck smelled good. “New cologne, major?”

“Not wearing any.”

They looked at each other, his desire
apparent, and her attraction to him both inappropriate and
undeniable. She took his hand and led him from the command
center.

“We’ll miss the Pentagon call,” he said, but
didn’t resist her pull.

The sex was strange and savage, a wild
tangling not without pain. Joanna’s headache pounded through it
even as he pounded into her, and the moment he climaxed she shoved
him off, staggering to her feet, dizzy and holding onto a wall, her
vision blurry. He reached for her but she slapped his hands away.
“Get the fuck out,” she said, pushing him out of her quarters.