Scourge - A Medical Thriller (The Plague Trilogy Book 3) (15 page)

20

Planes, particularly commercial planes, were not something that held people’s trust any longer, especially Samantha’s. She’d seen commercial planes fall out of the sky, crashing into the ground in a fiery ocean of twisted metal and whatever they happened to land on. One flight had slammed into a residential neighborhood, taking out at least sixty homes. The pilot had been infected with Agent X but didn’t want anyone to know. He attacked the copilot and they lost control of the plane. Military transport planes had even more of the infected. The military wasn’t as kind to the infected in their ranks as the civilian population was, and there were rumors of executions for those that tested positive. It gave soldiers an incentive to hide the illness as long as possible, infecting dozens or even hundreds of others before being discovered.

As Sam crossed the Atlantic, the sparkling waters underneath her, she thought about the last time she’d been in the jungle
, a jungle in South America as dense as anything Africa had to offer, a jungle that had almost killed her.

When
they landed at an airbase in Brazzaville, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she was amazed by how large the city actually was. When she thought of the Congo, she pictured sprawling villages interspersed with jungle, not a city that looked as though it might have been pulled out of Europe.

“There
’re no fires,” she said, staring out the window.

“No,” Jason replied. “The city’s on military lockdown, for sure, but the infection didn’t hit here like it did in the States. Not yet
, anyway. The military’s been able to keep the ips in the jungles.”

Once on the ground, Jason took over. He knew where to go and who to speak with. A
guide drove them to the drop-off point near the Congo River, and from there they loaded packs and began the hike through the jungle flora.

The Congolese jungle oozed darkness, a general sense of unease gripping Samantha’s guts and tightening them. The vegetation, though dark green and red
, spattered with yellows and browns, was foreboding, like the woods from
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
, where monsters and demons dwelled. The afternoon warmth melded with the humidity of the jungle to create a wall of heat that hit Sam like an entity, as if it were a thing that she could touch and see. The taste of warm grass, soaked by the fetid water and heated by the brutal sun, sat on her tongue and filled her nostrils. She knew lots of different species of fauna were in there, but she couldn’t hear them. The wilderness dampened the noise, as though they were being watched by the animal life. In other areas, the animals grew so loud it was deafening, like being at a rock concert where you can’t hear the words being sung.

“How do you know where you’re going?” she asked
after a couple of hours.

“Just being here before
, for training. They used to fly us out to different places, places with snow and mud, water, war zones, anywhere we had to fight to survive. Then they’d drop us off with nothing and we’d have to make our way back.”

After another
two hours in the heat and humidity, Samantha felt like passing out. She stopped in the middle of trudging up a particularly steep hill, taking a moment to gaze at the landscape before her: vines and valleys, mountains, hills, and dense canopy. “What’re the people in this village like, Jason?”

He
breathed deeply a moment as he came over the crest of the hill. “Normal folks, but I always felt like they had secrets. They never really trusted anybody from the outside. These are people who don’t send their kids to school or read books. They’ve detached from civilization.”

“I’m not sure I blame them.”

Sam hiked another half an hour, then stopped and drank from her canteen, every muscle screaming for her to lie down and rest. Her head pounded with a coming migraine, and she considered stopping underneath the shade of a tree. But she thought of Jessica, a young girl stuck in a hospital, surrounded by violence and death. If there was a way to stop that, Sam would do everything in her power. That would give her the strength to keep going.

Pushing
through the brush, they crossed a massive clearing and came to a gathering of thick cypress trees with branches that nearly reached the ground. She moved them aside with her hands, feeling the soft branches against her skin. Stopping under the trees for a few minutes, they ate a light meal of jerky then kept moving.

Dry land took up most of the landscape, and then suddenly a lake or pond would appear, the water a murky brown, concealing whatever was underneath. Once,
she thought she saw a crocodile, but as she fixed her eyes on it, she saw it was just a log.

“Do you know how far?” she asked.

“Probably best you don’t know.”

The hike turned brutal as the land elevated within minutes. The trees and shrubbery thinned out
, and all that was left was long grass that came up to their knees. In the distance, lush green mountains tore into the sky, their peaks covered with white clouds like icing on a cake.

The ground seemed to sink under
her feet, making movement problematic, and soon sweating became more difficult, as she had already lost most of her body’s moisture. As far as she knew, none of this water was drinkable. The parasites would make them so sick they would just vomit up any moisture they consumed.

At
evening, Jason dropped his pack in a small clearing surrounded by African oak trees. “This is good,” he said, “protected by the trees and nowhere near a water source.”

Sam didn’t argue. She dropped the pack that clung to her like a wet shirt. The ground was dry grass
, and she collapsed and lay on her back, staring at the clouds slowly drifting by overhead. The howling of monkeys in the distance unnerved her, reminding her she was someplace unknown.

“The ips stay deeper in the jungles,” Jason said, pulling out a small tent from his pack. “You’ll hear ’em screaming at night sometimes. When they do come out
, they rush for the cities. As long as we don’t build a fire or make a lot of noise, we’ll be safe.”

“I’m not worried about them,” Sam said. “I’m more worried about the insects.”

Jason nodded, though his back was turned to her. “Buddy’a mine got bit by an unknown insect. His heart started giving up. In two months he went from two hundred pounds to ninety-five pounds. Got a heart transplant, but that didn’t do much. He died from it, and they couldn’t even tell him what kind of insect did it.”

Sam turned her head toward him. The tent was up
, and he walked over and took hers out of the pack without asking and began putting it up.

“You know,” he said, “if you do
create a vaccine or a cure, you’ll be one of the greatest scientists in history. They’ll have you in the same books with Newton and Pasteur.”

“I doubt that. People tend to forget things quickly. Abolishing smallpox the first time was one of the greatest accomplishments of science. Can you name one person
who took part in that?”

Jason flop
ped onto the ground next to her. “No. This is different, though. This thing will eventually wipe us all out.” He looked at her then, and their eyes locked. A brief moment, just a moment, passed between them. Jason leaned in and kissed her, a quick kiss lacking passion but a small token of something that could’ve been.

“Night falls in a second out here,” he said. “You should get some grub in your stomach and get to bed.”

He rose and went to his tent, leaving Sam staring at the surrounding jungles. A small voice, extremely distant, echoed through the vegetation, a scream.

21

The overhead lights had been turned off, transforming the space into one lit blue by all the computer screens. Pete
reclined in his chair, rocking manically back and forth. He rose and paced around the edge of the room a bit as though walking around a circular track. No one said anything to him, but he was certain his looming presence bothered a few of the techs monitoring the screens.

Assistant Secretary Clover came back into the room. Pete beelined for him and caught up as he stared at the monitors on the far wall.

“Well?” Clover said.

“
They’re still hovering, sir. No movement.”

“The squadron ready?”

“Yes, sir. They’re taking off right now from McClellan.”

Airman Clyde Andrews climbed into his fighter jet as though slipping into a convertible. He had
one back home, and every time he got into his F-22 Raptor, he thought of his car sitting in the garage gathering dust.

“Big Poppa,” he heard on the intercom in his helmet, “we got you a clearance for take off. Over.”

“Roger that,” he replied.

The Raptor was one of the most advanced jets in the United State
s military. It had both stealth technology and supersonic capabilities. The jet was meant for a war that Andrews knew wouldn’t be fought. Not a single air force in the world had anything like the Raptor with the exception of Israel, who got it from the United States. No one was a threat anymore in the way this jet was meant to fight, and soon it would be obsolete. The new war didn’t need them. With ips, jets were useless. You killed an ip with bullets and blades, not jets and tanks.

Andrews, as he prepared for takeoff and began pulling the 43,000
-pound plane out of its slip and onto the runway, realized he was envious of the pilots that served during the Cold War. They had a distinct enemy, someone to put a face to, to be the epicenter of all their fears and hatred. Now they fought scattered bands of insane people, preying on women and children hiding in closets. It was a different world, and not one he felt would get much better.

“Big Poppa ready for takeoff. You keep the
m pizza bagel bites warm for me.”

“Will do. You’re clear. Good luck.”

The pressure in the Raptor was unlike anything else Andrews had ever experienced. Nothing in training had prepared him for it. The closest thing he could think of was being smashed by a tractor.

The jet lurched forward with so much force
that his organs compacted, and the blood rushed out of his limbs. As the plane left the ground, the pressure slowly easing off of him, he wanted to shout, to holler at the top of his lungs. He wanted to do that every time and never did.

The object wasn’t more than a couple
of klicks away. He curved around and increased the altitude gradually. He caught a glimpse of the city below him, a city once bustling with people. Now it looked abandoned, cars left on the road, trains stopped mid-shipment, factories that no longer poured smoke into the air. He turned away, focusing his attention instead on the object in front of him.

It was black, but
it didn’t really appear to be a vessel. He’d studied aeronautical engineering for two years on the government’s dime, and he knew the ship, or whatever it was, hadn’t been designed to minimize air resistance. It was an oval shape, something more like a container than a vessel.

“Homebase, I’m near. The unidentified vessel appears to be unprotected. Doing a fly-by now, hang tight… it looks made of plastic or something similar.”

Pete Brass listened to the pilot.
Looks made of plastic or something similar
.

He shook his head, staring at a still image of the object on one of the monitors. Clover was standing with his hands behind his back,
flanked by two of his assistants, or what Pete guessed were his assistants. His face was stern and didn’t change as the pilot reported back.

“Homebase, it looks completely unguarded. Awaiting further instructions.”

Clover smirked. “Well, that was easy.”

“What was, sir?” Pete said.

“Determining if it was a threat. If we can just take it out, I’m not too worried.”

Pete
looked from Clover to the monitor. “Why would we take it out? We don’t know what it is.”

“Oh, I know what it is. I’ve seen it before. I’m going to order it shot down. We’ll see how they like that.”

Pete thought a moment. “Sir, it’s completely unprotected. Why would it be unprotected? Unless they, whoever ‘they’ are, wanted us to destroy it. I’d like your permission to study it a bit further before taking any action.”

Clover looked at
him, running his eyes up and down as though noticing him for the first time. “And what if it attacks us while you’re studying it, Master Sergeant?”

“Sir, if it intended to attack us, it could’ve done so already.”

Clover grunted and turned his eyes back to the screen. “You got two hours. Make them count.”

22

The NORAD command center seemed to close in around Pete, confining him as if he were locked in a box. The claustrophobic pressing in of a room built underground without windows was too much. He decided to go for a walk.

“Where you going?” his assistant, Debra,
asked.

“For a walk.”

“I’ll come with.”

They headed up the elevator and then out of the building. The sun hung in the sky
, but clouds blocked the light. Pete put his hands in his pockets and strolled along the perimeter of the base, just beside the fence. Something he’d done a thousand times.

“You know, Nietzsche said all great thoughts were the product of walking,” Pete said.

“You trying to impress me by quoting dead philosophers?”

He grinned. “Are you
impressed?”

“A little.”

She looked at the object in the sky. “What are those things?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. But they’ve been reported over all the major cities
—Tokyo, Shanghai, London, Madrid—at least the parts of those cities that can still communicate with us. If you wanted to kill off our species, you’d only need to take out the major cities. Without leadership, everyone else will divide and be easier to conquer.”

“
This is crazy, I know, but what if they’re aliens? You think they’d come here to conquer us?”

“No
, an advanced civilization… if that’s what they are… no. We just assume that because that’s what we’ve historically done. Whenever we’ve encountered a new, more primitive culture, we’ve enslaved them, whether in real chains or by making them think they need blue jeans and Coca-Cola to be real people.”

“What do you think Clover meant when he said he knew what they were? That he’s seen them before?”

Pete saw a colony of ants swarming over an old crust of bread. He stepped over them, never taking his eyes off the ground. An icy chill ran up his back at their movements. “I don’t know. But it makes me think we’re not dealing with anything extraterrestrial, as much as I would prefer that to the alternative. Whatever’s happening is above my pay grade. But one thing I do know: we shouldn’t blow them up without knowing what they are.”

“In about five minutes, Clover’s going to do just that. You got any ideas?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. I’ve tried communicating, we’ve run searches through every database in the world containing aircraft… it’s something new, whatever it is.” He checked his watch. “We better head in. They should be launching soon.”

Back in the Raptor and up in the baby
blue sky quickly turning gray, Clyde Andrews looped around the black object, leaving a stream of white contrail across the sky like a scar. He dipped the plane low and then raised it high again, testing whether the object would have any reaction to his movements. Nothing happened. The black mass was as motionless as a statue.

He was
given clearance to fire, and that’s exactly what he did. The first missile released, throwing the balance of the Raptor off for only a split second. The projectile sped to its target in less than two seconds, impacting with enough force to shatter it.

The object fragmented and fell to the earth.

“Homebase, target is neutralized, repeat, target is neutralized.”

“Roger that, Big Poppa. Come on back to base. Good work.”

“Roger that. Big Poppa comin’ home.”

Pete paced the floor nervously. Clover was sitting with his back straight as a board in Pete’s chair. They’d given the order to take the thing out.

Homebase, target is neutralized, repeat, target is neutralized.

Cheers went up, though they were
muted since a commanding officer was in the room. Clover smirked and stood up, straightening his uniform. Pete strode next to him, awaiting his orders. This was Clover’s show, and Pete had come to realize that what he said didn’t matter. But that didn’t help the knot in his gut that told him they’d made the wrong decision.

“See, Sergeant-Major, nothing to worry about,” Clover said.

“Yes, sir. I’d like to see what’s left up close, though, sir.”

Clover eyed him. “I’m not sending a team out. It would cause too much attention. But feel free
to have a look if you’re so inclined.”

“Yes
, sir.”

Pete turned and
crossed to the elevator.