The Doomsday Infection (22 page)

The pilot said, “She
’s a darkie for sure, you can see her skin color from here.”

“What about him?”

“Execute him too, she would‘ve passed the disease onto him.”

The military camouflaged helicopter turned in midair
, hovered sideways and the gunner spun around to get them in his sights.

“
Now!” Luke yelled, running for the motorcycle, he hopped on and pulled back on the throttle and was surprised when Sophie threw herself onto the back and wrapped her arms around him, instead of heading for the river as arranged.

“I’m coming with you,” she told him in a tone of voice that broached no argument. He kicked down on the
gearshift lever, engaged first and released the clutch, when the gunner sprayed bullets in front of them kicking up dirt.

The metallic voice from above said. “Say your prayers, suck -” Suddenly t
he trailer erupted, and orange-red flames shot upwards with large sections of the roof striking the rotor blades, putting the chopper into a spin. The engine coughed and spluttered and a crash landing was inevitable.

Luke did not think twice and spun the bike away from the river
, as he roared down the main avenue of the trailer park, the mobile homes exploded to the left and right of them with differing ferocity. Behind them another fragment of roofing shot up into the undercarriage of the helicopter, rupturing the fuel line and the chopper exploded mid-air into a hovering ball of flames.

Up ahead a double trailer detonated. The eruption reverberated up through the frame of the motorcycle, and set o
ff the trailer opposite, blocking their exit with a thick, black blanket of smoke. Luke leaned down onto the gas tank to make himself smaller, and Sophie did the same. “Hold tight,” he said as they disappeared into the blinding, cloud of billowing flames. The smoke was disorientating, and Luke thought that maybe they were already dead and this was hell, when a moment later they reappeared into the fresh air. He whooped as the last trailer erupted, pulled out onto the street, but knowing that other patrols would be along imminently, Luke sought the refuge of the riverbank once more. He steered a path back down a side street, rode up the embankment and back onto the towpath and when they were under the protection of a canopy of tree branches, he cut the engine so that they could catch their breath.

__________

Sophie observed the flaming trailers from a safe distance in awe-struck silence. At least a dozen trailers were burning fiercely as was the wreck of the helicopter. “My God.” Sophie muttered unable to take in the scene. She dismounted from the motorcycle and went to a nearby clearing in the trees for a better view. “How did that helicopter find us so quickly?”

Luke clambered off the motorcycle
and put it on its stand, but left the engine running just in case. He stretched and said, “Maybe a passing patrol got lucky. We’ll have a better idea of their response time after the next fire.”

He gazed around and saw that the river widened into a small marina containing half a dozen powerboats and one luxury cruiser. “What do you think?” he said, nodding at the floating time bombs.

She smiled in agreement. He climbed aboard the nearest powerboat and imagined for a moment what it would be like to take such a craft out onto the ocean and open it up. Luke fiddled around in the engine compartment, ripped out the fuel line and the gas pumped around the engine compartment. He repeated the procedure on the other powerboats.

“How much does a boat like this cost? “ Sophie asked as they clambered aboard the luxury cruiser.

“Quarter of a million bucks,” he said and set out to find the engine cover. “How the other half live, eh?”

“What on earth do they do for a living to afford something like this as a toy
, – a plaything?” She said, frowning her disapproval.

“Nothing legal, that’s for sure.”

Luke smirked and held up a kilo of cocaine. “Look at this. There are probably twenty kilos of it. All the inland waterways make Florida so hard to patrol. This area has been a haven for smugglers since the days of the pirates.” He opened the engine cover and rummaged around, eventually found the fuel line, yanked it out and grinned.

Up in the cabin, Sophie switched on the gas rings of a portable stove, and then rigged up a cigarette lighter as Luke had shown her. She was about to close the door behind her when Luke pushed her back in. “Listen?”

She strained her ears and heard the distant sound of helicopter rotor-blades, and moments later, four Chinook helicopters hovering low overhead, then she remembered the impending explosion. “The gas,” she said.

“Wait,” he said, and then sighed as the choppers passed overhead in towards the trailer park. “Let’s get out of here.”

They disembarked from the cruiser and leapt onto the dirt bike, the rear wheel spewing up gravel in Luke’s haste to get away.

10:00 AM

The choppers prepared to land in a straight-line formation on the street outside the burning trailer park. The side doors popped open and soldiers emerged wearing camouflaged biohazard suits
and climbed down before the choppers had landed properly.

A man of military bearing, wearing sunglasses stood with his hands on his hips and stared at the devastation
. A growl emitted from deep within his throat.

The pilot of the following chopper recognized the man and choked. “That’s
Jumpin’ Jack Malloy!” he exclaimed in surprise as they approached him.

“Jesus Christ!” said the co-pilot.

“Close enough. Although he was the last man to come back from the dead.”

“I thought General Malloy perished in the HQ bombing?”

“No such luck,” he moaned as they grouped around the general awaiting his orders.

The general snapped a sharp salute, which the enlisted men returned. “Who’s your highest ranking officer?”

“That would be me, General,” said a sergeant major, pushing through the mob. “What can I do for you?”

“I need your men to sweep this area for terrorists.”

“Begging your pardon, General, how do you know it was terrorists?”

The general glowered at him, and the sergeant major visibly quaked. “This is clearly the work of terrorists. If you were observant, son, you would know that the intensity of the blasts suggest that these trailers had been full of gas before they were destroyed. And a nearby house on the river was also reduced to rubble by
a deliberate act of terrorism.”

“What does HQ say abou
t this use of manpower?”

“There is no HQ, son. I’m HQ until further
notice. Now, are you going to disobey anymore orders?”

“But we are needed -”

The boats erupting less than a mile away ended the argument as a column of thick, black smoke reached up into the scorching hot sky. The general whipped off his sunglasses and glowered at the sergeant major. “Why are you still here? Get after them!”

__________

The luxury cruiser exploded and the ferocity of the blast wave blew Luke and Sophie clean off the motorcycle. Sophie stirred, checked herself over, wriggled her extremities and although battered and bruised she knew that at least no bones were broken.

The tumb
le stunned Luke. He massaged the shoulder that took the brunt of his spill, and counted himself lucky that he did not have the dirt bike up to full speed or their fall might have been a different story. Sophie looked at him with a worried expression on her face and he stuck up his thumb to reassure her that he was OK. He stood gingerly, testing the weight on his ankle. She limped over to Luke who tugged the dirt bike upright and started it. “Come on, we better get out of here,” she hopped on the back and the motorcycle sped away spewing up dirt behind the wheel.

11:00 AM

The Pentagon war room was in utter chaos. The digital revolution had made information instant and copious. No slow drip of intelligence like in the past, where they
had time to assess the material. Now the intel was instantaneous and demanded attention. The back-room analysts could not cope with the overload, and accurate information was in short supply as the intelligence passed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff conflicted. The chiefs yelled at each other like school-kids, each wanted their branch seen to have discovered the answer, or failing that, and equally as important, that their branch of the armed forces did not face the blame, or seen on the wrong side when this was eventually over.

Each Chief of staff sat on the fence and agreed with each opposing argument, but above all else
, agreed with the wet-behind-the-ears newly installed President, who got more and more paranoid by the hour.

President Hamilton Parker’s face showed signs of fatigue not the usual shiny, smiling visage he showed to the public, but lined, creased with worry and in need of a shave with a growth of stubbly gray hair. He cleared his throat, and tried to get the discussion
back into some form of order.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, silence please,” he yelled from a video-link above their din. “Be seated and let me tell you where we’re at.”

Vice-Admiral Reed butted in. “Mister President, what have your advisors’ made of the data we sent over to the White House?”

“
Damnit, we’ve not had time - half my staff didn’t turn in today.”

“That’s odd?”

“I expect they wanted to start the holiday weekend early,” he said with a shrug.

“That does not sound like White House personnel. They would have fought so hard to get a position on the staff. I don’t think they would jeopardize that by playing hooky,” the vice-admiral said. His companions nodded their agreement, suddenly the vice-admiral’s face dropped. “You don’t think it’s the -”

The President waved away the notion, and cleared his throat again. “No, no, Washington is safe, all the hospitals are on red alert, and we have the police doing ‘unofficial’ random stop-checks. No, we’re clean. My guess is they’re fleeing north, or aboard to get away from this thing. Goddamn cowards . . .” He paced around his desk deep in thought, and then seemed to remember that they were there on his video-link screen, “Where was I . . .?”

“Are you feeling alright, Mister President, are you getting enough sleep?” the vice-admiral asked.

“Who has time to sleep?” He threw his arms up in the air. “Not me, that’s for sure. I wanted to ask my physician for something to help, but he hasn’t attended today.”

“Doctor Crawford’s not shown up?  That’s not like him. Have
you tried to contact him?”

“He’s not answering,” he said dismissively. “Can we get back to the matter in hand?”

Quinn Martell is still in DC, shall we send him over?” said the vice-admiral.

“The surgeon g
eneral’s in DC? Why?” He acted jumpy, and then his mind seemed to wander off.

“Shall I send him over, Mister President? Protocol states that a physician should be at your side at all times?”

“That’s right, I’d forgotten, what with all the pressure on me.” His voice trailed off, then. “Right, where were we?”

“Shall I send for him, Mister President?”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Do that, fine. Now, we must get back to the situation in Florida. Has anyone heard from General Malloy? Has anyone made contact yet?”

“We’ve sent another team down there, Mister President,” Vice-Admiral Reed said. “To set up mobile command, further north this time.” An interactive map filled each man’s monitor. “Miami and the surrounding areas are lost . . .” He let the fact sink in, before continuing. “We’re going to pull right back and set up the comman
d center near Lake Okeechobee.”

Once again, there was a murmur from the assembled men regarding the chaotic mess in Florida.  Each man knew the enormity of the situation, but Vice-Admiral Reed was the first to admit the crisis was out of control. He laid it on the line, and told them how bad things were.

“When was somebody going to tell me this?” the President asked with menace in his voice as he paced the Oval Office disappearing and reappearing on the screen while he wandered.

Vice-Admiral Reed used his cell to call Quinn Martell. He gave him instructions to hightail it over to the White House as soon as possible. He filled him in on the latest information, and reminded him that it would be within his power and in
fact, his duty, to section President Parker if necessary. He quoted the relevant amendments and paragraph numbers that gave him the authority to do so, which would then give leadership to the more even-keeled Speaker of the House.

“OK,” said President P
arker. “You’re trying to tell me that the might of the US army, navy and air-force can’t handle the situation and we are retreating like cowards?” He clearly did not approve.

“A tactical maneuver, Mister President, it would be prudent to use our troops on the ground more efficiently. From what I can understand – and I’m only getting fragments at the moment - but it appears that a band of vigilantes are blowing things up to distract -”