The Coward’s Way of War - SAMPLE

Christopher Nuttall

http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
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All Comments Welcome!

Blurb

“In today's wars, there are no morals. We believe the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets.”
-Osama bin Laden

Sometime in the near future, a dying woman is discovered in New York City – infected with Smallpox.  As the disease starts to spread, it is discovered that terrorists have unleashed a biological weapon on the American population – and brought the world to the brink of Armageddon.  

Against this backdrop, an extraordinary cast of men and women fight desperately for survival in a world gone mad.  Doctor Nicolas Awad struggles desperately to contain and control the outbreak; President Paula Handley struggles to rally the shattered country for war and preserve something of the American way of life.  On the streets of New York, Sergeant Al Hattlestad and the NYPD try to keep order and save as many as possible, while survivalist Jim Revells takes his family and tries to hide from the chaos.

But the nightmare has only just begun...

Author’s Note

This story is not intended to be cheerful.  It was based on a scenario that I worked out, a scenario that seems alarmingly possible in our modern world.  There are people who will find it unbelievable or offensive.  Luckily, there’s no law against writing books that are either or both.

The story is based on a mixture of fact and fiction.  (I’ve put some notes on this in the afterword.)  I have, however, chosen to deliberately blur some of the factual details for obvious reasons.  I hope that it will not affect your enjoyment of this story.

You can download a sample of this book – and many others – from my website and then purchase them on Kindle.  If you like my books, please review them on Amazon – it helps boost sales and convinces me to write more in certain universes.

As I am not the best editor in the world, I would be grateful if you email me to point out any spelling mistakes, placing them in context.  I can offer cameos, redshirt deals and suchlike in return.

CGN 

Prologue

“Good afternoon,” Dr Rennet White said.  “I understand that there have been some…concerns about you?”

Nicolas Awad eyed her suspiciously.  Rennet was a thirty-something woman who might have been attractive if she had lost some of the weight and perhaps three-quarters of the make-up.  She dressed as if she was an instantly trustworthy aunt or mother-figure, but he found himself disliking her on sight.  She smiled too much and it never touched her eyes.

“Concerns, Doctor?”

“Please,” Rennet said.  “Call me Rennet.”

“As you wish,” Nicolas said, as if he couldn’t care less.  It was the truth.  What could the shrink say to him that actually mattered?  “Have there been concerns about me?”

Rennet leaned back in her chair.  “From Professors Kus and Conners,” she said, not entirely to his surprise.  “They have suggested that we might benefit from a little chat.”

Nicolas couldn’t resist.  “We, Doctor?”

“Please,” Rennet insisted quietly.  “Rennet.”

She paused and waited for Nicolas to speak.  When it became apparent that he wasn't going to open his mouth, she tried again.  “Professor Kus was very impressed with your paper,” she said.  “He actually believed that you had copied your work from other sources – the work was college or even government-quality – but apparently you were able to show a thorough chain of research leading to your paper.”

Rennet crossed her legs, hesitating slightly.  “But at the same time, Nicolas, he was concerned with your choice of topic,” she continued.  “You chose Biological Warfare Threats to the American Public.  Why did you choose such a…dubious project?”

“Hey,” Nicolas said, stung despite his determination to avoid revealing anything to a woman he was starting to dislike intensely.  “It is a morbidly fascinating subject, and one that most people don't pay any attention to.  We think about Mutual Assured Destruction by nuclear war, but to concentrate on that threat alone is stupid. The point of the paper was to illustrate that city-busting nukes are not the only threat.”

“I could not disagree,” Rennet said.  “You make your point very well.  Still, I do tend to disagree with your assessment that we face a serious threat.  The idea of someone using Anthrax as a weapon is pretty far-fetched...and the idea of using recombinant DNA to modify a disease such as smallpox is both frightening and nearly impossible. These techniques are fairly complex and expensive, and would require government resources. No sane government would spend money on such things. Besides, recent treaties make such research illegal.”

Nicolas scowled.  “You appear to have more faith in government sanity, and international treaties, than I do,” he muttered.

“And this other story, from your Creative Writing Course, has us very concerned,” Rennet contained, as if the discussion had never touched upon unpleasant subjects at all.  “There are some…frightening overtones here that I would like to talk to you about.”

“What is there to talk about?”  Nicolas asked, honestly surprised.  “The assignment was to write a horror story set in the modern age, perhaps based on The X-Files or The Twilight Zone.   Frightening is what she asked for; frightening is what she got.”

“But you talked about Arab terrorists setting off biological weapons in the New York tunnels and the resulting chaos,” she said.  “You seem to have a problem here with Muslims…I mean, the protagonists are Arabs and…”

She broke off.  Nicolas could almost read her thoughts.  He might have had the standard linebacker build of a teenage boy who’d spent more time on the field than off it, but there was no mistaking him for an Aryan, or even another person of European origin.  His face was unquestionably Arabic.  It didn’t quite fit into her worldview.  She’d be happier, he decided, if he had been the perfect WASP.  The embarrassment would probably do her good.

“Ah,” she said, as if she’d finally settled upon an explanation that made sense.  “You’re not…Jewish, are you?”

Nicolas laughed, despite himself, and saw her flinch.  “Do I look Jewish to you?”  He asked, dryly.  “My family came out of Lebanon years ago, Doctor.”

“Rennet, please,” she interrupted.

“Tell me something,” Nicolas continued.  “How many hijackings have the PLO conducted in the last few years?  And what is the next logical step?  They believe that America is not a neutral power in the Middle East, Doctor.  We are their enemies in their eyes, even if they pretend otherwise…”

“But the US has nothing to fear from the PLO,” Rennet protested.  “They don't even conduct their operations in the US. She shook her head.  “You mention the Muslim Fundamentalist movement as a threat in your biological warfare study, and then they are the main villains in the horror story.  This fixation against Muslims bears further examination.”

“It does?”  Nicolas asked, innocently.  “My father is a Muslim, Doctor.  My grandmother is a Muslim.  My cousins are Muslims.  If that question wasn't so stupid, I’d get irate.  Really.”

“It could be a rebound,” Rennet said, scribbling notes.  “Why do you feel that Muslims are a threat to the US?”

“Would that make me a threat to the US?”  Nicolas asked.  “I mean…I drink, I smoke, I had a long steamy affair with one of my fellow students…surely, I’m the worst threat to the United States since General Lee.”

Rennet flushed.  “Be that as it may,” she said, “there is still the underlying question of your worldview to consider…”

“What worldview?”  Nicolas asked.  “Look, my family chose to leave our homeland because it was becoming intolerable, a situation caused by radical so-called fundamentalists.  I understand how those people think, Doctor.  They regard America as a threat because America provides an example of a working society that functions far better than the best they can create.  They must oppose us.  We have already seen signs of a growing trend in Iran and Egypt…”

“Both of those countries are primitive,” Rennet observed.  “How could they threaten us?”

“Producing a biological weapon is not difficult,” Nicolas countered.  “We have the most open society in the world, Doctor.  We would find ourselves in grave circumstances before we even knew that we were under attack.”

Rennet leaned back in her chair, seemingly satisfied.  “You’ve obviously put a lot of thought into the technical details,” she said.  “My theory is that we are dealing with a case of repressed rage, perhaps fuelled by your father’s decision to leave his home, and that is what we are here to talk about.”

Nicolas rolled his eyes.  After several more sessions, he was finally able to convince the shrink that he was simply a harmless student, not a paranoid homicidal manic.  For his part, Nicolas decided that all psychologists were idiots, bent on seeing things that were not there.  It was a belief that would never be seriously challenged in later life.

Chapter One

…Among the many difficulties faced in countering such weapons is that the deployment system – i.e. an infected person, willingly or otherwise – is extremely difficult to detect.  No reasonable level of security – up to and including strip and cavity searches – can detect an infected enemy agent.  The issue becomes only more complicated when one realises that the infected person may be unaware that he or she is infected and, therefore, will show no sign of guilt or fear when investigated.
-Nicolas Awad

New York, USA
Day 1

“Did you enjoy the flight, sir?”

Ali Mohammad Asiri pasted a smile on his face as he looked up at the flight attendant.  He had visited America several times before, yet he would never get used to American women and how they chose to dress.  Just looking at the attendant – her nametag read CALLY – made him grimace inside, for it was clear that she had no sense of modesty.  If one of Ali’s sisters had dared to wear such an outfit in front of a strange man, he would have beaten her into a pulp.  The Americans were truly a shameless people.

“Yes, I did, thank you,” he said, in fluent English.  As much as he wanted to reprove the harlot for her dress sense and her forwardness, he didn’t quite dare.  The orders had been quite specific and completely beyond question.  He was to pretend to be a playboy, one tasting the seductive western world for the first time, and do nothing to attract attention.  It was odd that leering at a flight attendant was less likely to attract attention than politely turning his eyes away from her, but orders were orders.  Besides, he was skilled at concealing his true thoughts.  Growing up with a father who adored the Americans – and the money they brought into the Kingdom – had left him very aware of the possibility of betrayal.  “It was an excellent flight.”

Cally grinned down at him, apparently unaware of his inner thoughts.  “I’ll be sure to pass your compliments on to the pilot,” she said.  It had been a boring flight really, with no excitement beyond a short landing in France before flying on to New York.  “Is this your first time in New York, honey?”

Ali winced inwardly at her words.  “No,” he admitted.  He would have preferred to claim ignorance, but there was no way of knowing just who Cally truly worked for or even if she would get curious and check his records.  “I visited three times before and enjoyed myself, even though I was a child the first time around.”

Cally shrugged and headed off to bother another passenger, leaving Ali to slump into his chair in relief.  The passengers were disembarked row by row and herded off the plane and into the flight terminal, many of them heading back to the United States after a holiday or business trip abroad.  Even in a time of economic recession, the Americans looked fat and disgustingly healthy compared to some of the fighters he had seen at the training camp, but then the devil was fond of rewarding his servants in this life.  It was the afterlife that they had to beware, or so Ali had been taught, back when he had rediscovered his faith.  Allah saw all and stood in judgement over it all.

He stood up when the flight attendants waved at him, picking up his small carry-on bag as he moved.  There wasn’t much in it – increasingly burdensome flight regulations had made it impossible to carry anything useful onto the plane – but he had been warned not to let it out of his sight.  The Great Sheikh had made it clear that Ali must not lose his documents, even though he hadn’t offered any specific instructions as to the disposal of those documents.  Indeed, Ali had no idea why he’d been ordered to take a short holiday to New York City and spend a few days just relaxing and enjoying himself.  When he thought about the privations being suffered by the fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, he felt nothing, but guilt.  How could he enjoy himself – insofar as it was possible for a believer to enjoy himself in a sinful city – when his brothers were suffering at the hands of the infidel?

But orders were orders.

Ali remembered – as he followed another female flight attendant – how he’d first met the Great Sheikh.  He’d been a young man then, barely aware of the greater world outside his home city, yet bitterly aware of his father’s lack of faith.  His father worked with infidels, did business with infidels, profited from infidels…and ignored his duties to Islam.  The young Ali, more influenced by a strict believing uncle than his father, had wondered if his father had had plans to use the infidel lust for money against them, but as he’d grown older he had come to realise that his father just loved their money.  He had grown to manhood aware of his family’s shame – and of how his world was slipping away from him – and desperate to change it, somehow.  His uncle had introduced him to a more fundamentalist mosque and it had all grown from there.  Ali had thought to go to Pakistan – Iraq wasn't a safe place for believers these days, not with an increasingly effective Iraqi Army wiping out jihadi cells almost as soon as they were formed – but the Great Sheikh had had other ideas.  Ali was a young man with an unblemished record, one that would sound no alarms in the American security forces.  He could be far more useful elsewhere.

The Great Sheikh himself was a great man.  He had fought alongside the great Osama bin Laden before the unleashing of righteous wrath on New York City, over seventeen years ago.  Since then, he had fought in Iraq, Pakistan and even Europe before he’d finally been ordered to return to his homeland of Saudi Arabia and start forming new cells for overseas operations.  Ali, like many other young men, had been captivated by his words, for they had nothing in their lives to live for.  Ali had graduated from education with a degree in Islamic Studies that had proven to be worthless in the real world, while there was no hope of marriage or children.  His father had refused to help his believing son any further, after reminding Ali that he had urged him to take a more useful – and sinful – course.  Instead, one of his daughters was – against all Islamic Precepts – slowly assuming control of the family business.  Her husband, a weak man easily dominated by his wife, might have control in name, but in reality it was all hers.  It made Ali’s blood boil.  How could any man be so weak?

“You will do nothing to attract attention,” the Great Sheikh had said, the first time Ali had flown to America under his orders.  Ali had expected to be contacted while in the United States for a martyrdom operation, but nothing had ever materialised and he’d returned home, half-suspecting that the Great Sheikh would be angry with him.  Instead, he’d been thanked and urged to return to his studies, before being sent on a second trip a year later.  “You will be a typical sinful lad” – at this point, the Great Sheikh had winked at him – “and pretend to enjoy yourself.  You will have no connection with us that anyone can see.”

Ali could only assume – as he passed through the security checks – that the Great Sheikh had given him the mission because he knew that Ali wouldn’t be tempted by the many temptations of the West.  It was sad, but true that many of the fighters had been tempted – and fallen – by alcohol, or drugs, or women.  Some of the tales whispered by veterans from many campaigns against the infidel had been horrific, suggesting that they’d embraced sin in all of its many forms.  Ali had said that that might explain why they’d lost; how could they expect Allah to bless their mission if they broke His rules?  The Great Sheikh had taken a more pragmatic view.  If someone was willing to fight the infidel, all such failings could be ignored, at least until the Dar-ul-Harb became the Dar-ul-Islam, when purity would be the order of the day.  Ali longed for such a day, for it would give his life meaning.  He didn’t fit in with the modern world the Americans and their European lackeys had created.

The security checks took longer than they had the last time, causing him to worry about what the Americans might have found, even though he knew that he was carrying nothing that might implicate him in the cause.  He had no banned material, no pamphlets castigating the West and the fallen Muslims who accepted the West’s domination of their souls…he didn’t even have a copy of the Qur’an!  He had protested when the Great Sheikh had ordered him to carry only western material, but the Great Sheikh had been insistent.  He was to do nothing to attract attention.  He was merely a tourist visiting New York City and it had to remain that way.

Eventually, the Americans finished their checks and allowed him to pass through the security barrier and into John F. Kennedy International Airport.  It was the busiest international air passenger gateway to the United States, according to the Americans themselves, making it ideal for the network’s more undercover purposes.  There was no point in trying to sneak in – and perhaps being caught by the Coast Guard – when they could just fly into America perfectly legitimately.  It was something, Ali had been told, that made people like him extremely valuable.  As a ‘clean’ man, with nothing to alert the Americans to his true masters, there was no reason for them to delay his entry into their country.  Even the growing paranoia about Arabs and Muslims in America couldn’t delay his operation.  It did help that he had no intention of doing anything in New York City.

Waving goodbye to the TSA agent who had searched his bag, Ali headed down to the taxi rack and climbed into a taxi being driven by a Pakistani immigrant.  He was tempted to speak to the man in Arabic, but again, it risked attracting unwanted attention.  Instead, he gave the man instructions to head directly to the Marigold Hotel and settled back to enjoy the ride.  It always amazed him how orderly American streets were compared to the roads back home, where everyone drove as if their lives depended on it.  New York had a remarkable skyline, even though it was nothing more than a sign of American decadence.  It was temping to order the driver to take him to where the Twin Towers had once been – before they had been knocked down by the 9/11 Martyrs – yet he didn’t quite dare.  The Great Sheikh’s instructions had been specific.  He was not to do anything that might attract attention and that included visiting the site of 9/11, or any other Islamic site in New York.

The movement had spent a considerable amount of money booking him a suite at the Marigold Hotel, allowing Ali to relax in the lap of luxury.  He had to repress another surge of guilt as he paid and tipped the taxi driver, before strolling into the Marigold as if he owned the place – and, with the amount he was paying, the staff were happy to treat him as if he did own the hotel.  Ali allowed himself to act like a Prince he had seen once, tipping the staff as they showed him to his suite and helped him to unpack.  The wink from the maid suggested that she would be willing to go above and beyond the call of duty – in exchange for an additional gratuity, of course – but Ali just wanted to sleep.  He dismissed the staff, lay down on the comfortable bed and went to sleep.

When he awoke, several hours later, he felt famished and ordered a plate of food from room service.  The suite came with a computer and he logged on to a popular and free email account, sending a single email back home to inform his brothers that he had arrived.  The email would pass unnoticed, even by the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned American NSA and its dreaded interception skills, for there was nothing in it that might attract attention.  Who would notice – or care about – an email from a newly-arrived tourist to his friends back home?  He resisted the temptation to log onto some of the cause’s websites – that would definitely have attracted attention – and shut down the computer.  There was a knock at the door and a maid appeared with a tray of food, much to Ali’s relief.  He shook her hand, pressed a tip into her fingers and shoed her out of the room, before settling down to eat.  It was still early afternoon in the United States, but it felt much later.  The jet lag was kicking in.

After he had eaten his food, he left the hotel and played tourist.  New York had plenty of interesting sights to see, even if he had been specifically barred from going anywhere near an Islamic site.  He kept his feelings off his face as he walked through endless museums and art galleries, wondering at all the energy surrounding him.  The Americans had no sense of shame or decorum.  He spied a pair of Americans wearing army uniforms and shuddered inside, remembering tales from brothers who had narrowly escaped death at the hands of men wearing similar uniforms.  The Americans flaunted their power for all to see.

But then, he told himself, what could one expect from unbelievers?  When all one had was the glory of one’s own self – instead of the glory of God – why would they not flaunt what they had?  The temptations of the mundane world were great, yet the price was agonisingly high.  He saw a homosexual couple walking hand in hand and shuddered again, remembering the day when a pair of such sinners had been put to death back home.  The Americans seemed to embrace sinners.  Tired, he started to make his way back to the hotel, wishing – once again – that the Great Sheikh had given him something more worthy to do.  Perhaps, the next time he came, he would have orders to spend his life dearly in reminding the Americans that judgement existed, or perhaps he would be part of a team that would bring the United States to its knees.

He stepped onto the underground and rode for several stations before reaching the one closest to the Marigold.  Despite himself, he couldn’t avoid feeling a childlike sense of fascination with the transport system, even though the other commuters looked bored or angry.  He found himself rubbing shoulders with the American melting pot – Latinos from Mexico and South America, Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants from the Far East, men with skins so dark that they looked as if they had come from Africa – and fought hard to keep the distaste off his face.  He reminded himself, again, that it wasn't his duty to question the Great Sheikh and his orders.  He would carry them out, even if they made no sense.

Back at the hotel, he had a long bath and then settled into bed for the night.  The Great Sheikh had ordered him to play tourist for his entire visit, which meant visiting the American cinemas and watching some of their filthy films and other entertainments, perhaps even visiting some of their dance clubs and dancing…could there be any greater sin?  The Great Sheikh had told him that sins committed in the name of Allah, with no actual intention to sin for the sake of sinning, were no sin, yet Ali would have preferred to avoid them.  If the Great Sheikh had told him why he was following such absurd orders, it would have been easier, but what he didn’t know he couldn’t tell.  Ali was confident that he could survive an American interrogation, no matter how rigorous, yet others had believed the same.

He rubbed at his forearm as he turned over and switched off the lights.  The tiny bump had materialised only a day before he’d boarded the flight in Saudi Arabia, a sign that he’d been bitten by an insect in the night.  It didn’t really hurt, but it twitched from time to time, reminding him that it was there.  Ali pushed the pain aside and ignored it.  After what some of the movement had suffered over the years at the hands of the Great Satan and its allies, complaining about an insect bite seemed absurd.  Shaking his head at the thought, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.  He had a long day ahead of him tomorrow, doing nothing.

***
There had been over five hundred men and women on the aircraft that had brought Ali to the United States.  As darkness fell over the eastern seaboard, many of them returned to their homes in New York or headed onwards to other destinations within the United States.  The people he had met on his first day in New York – the flight attendants, the security officers, the taxi driver, and the hotel staff – likewise dispersed themselves over the city, relaxing after a hard day at work.  Some went to their homes to sleep; others went to party or to relax with their friends.  In the end, it hardly mattered.

None of them – not even Ali, who had carried it to America’s shores – knew that the most destructive attack in America’s long history had begun.  None of them knew that they were carrying the seeds of destruction within them.  And, because none of them knew this, none of them took any precautions.  The attack spread rapidly across the city and outside, across the United States.  An attack on a scale to dwarf Pearl Harbor had begun and no one had even noticed.  

But they would.

And soon.

Chapter Two

One of many dangers involved in a biological attack is that those who respond to the first signs of crisis may spread the weapon – the disease – further, even with the best of intentions.  Depending upon the weapon used, and the level of knowledge possessed by the first responders, they may be unaware that they have been transformed into vectors, unwitting weapons in an unforgiving way of war.
-Nicolas Awad

New York, USA
Day 5

“Coffee, sir?”

“Thanks, Rook,” Sergeant Al Hattlestad said, as Officer Tom Pearson passed him a cardboard cup from Starbucks.  He sipped it gratefully, glad of the strong dark coffee and the chance to relax, even in their patrol car.  It was a warm evening in New York and that always brought out the crazies.  “You did well this evening.”

Tom Pearson looked relieved.  It was his first night on patrol since graduating and becoming an NYPD officer and, to the older and far more experienced Sergeant, he still looked wet behind the ears.  They’d found themselves chasing a car driven by a group of drunken students from college and it had been a minor miracle that no one was hurt.  The driver had managed to crash the car into a lamppost and, when the passengers had staggered out, they’d found themselves under arrest.  They’d been taken away to holding cells and the two officers had resumed their patrol.  It could have been a great deal worse.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” he said, as he sipped his own coffee.  “Is it always that exciting?”

Al laughed.  “No, Rook,” he said, with genuine affection.  “This is a quiet night, believe it or not.”

He sensed the younger man’s disbelief and smiled to himself.  New York was the city that never slept, which meant that the New York Police Department couldn’t afford to sleep either.  Night duty tore at families and other relationships, yet it had to be done and the more devoted officers welcomed it as a chance to prove what they could do under pressure.  Al had sometimes considered trying to transfer to one of the other departments within the NYPD, but the truth was that he loved the streets.  A good patrol officer could head off trouble before it even began, or so his first partner had told him, back when he'd joined the NYPD.  Serving in the Marines hadn’t prepared him for serving as a police officer, yet in some ways the principles of police work and counter-insurgency were identical.  Maintaining a strong presence on the streets helped to deter trouble.

“There’s a big protest scheduled for two weeks from today,” he added, mischievously.  Al’s devotion to the principles of peaceful protest was real, yet all police officers dreaded protests.  They had a nasty habit of turning into riots, which meant that people would be injured and the NYPD would come out looking like bullies.  “If you survive that, you’ll survive anything.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Pearson said.  He didn’t sound insufferably confident, much to Al’s private relief.  He’d seen too many rookies who thought that graduating and becoming an officer meant that they knew everything they needed to know.  The good ones learned rapidly; the bad ones got people hurt before they either shaped up or were transferred into less vital departments.  “What are they protesting about this time?”

Al shrugged.  “Believe me, Rook,” he said.  “It doesn’t matter.  Whatever it is, it is our duty to try to stop it from getting out of hand.”

The radio buzzed before Pearson could say anything else.  “Al, we have an alert for you,” the dispatcher said, as the small computer monitor in the car blinked into life.  “The neighbours are reporting screams from a small apartment and want someone to investigate.”

“Acknowledged,” Al said, as he gunned the car into life.  They’d been parked near the coffee shop, only a few minutes from the location on the display.  He keyed a switch and the siren howled into life.  Traffic should start getting out of their way at once.  “Are there any other details?”

“Nothing important,” the dispatcher said.  “Good luck.”

Al frowned as he drove onto the streets and started to zip past traffic that hastily tried to get out of the way.  Someone screaming was sufficient evidence to force entry into a building if necessary, yet it wouldn’t be the first time that an NYPD officer had broken into someone’s home, only to discover that it was perfectly innocent.  The precinct’s wags were still teasing an officer who had broken into an apartment only to discover that the couple owning the apartment enjoyed a BSDM relationship and weren't actually abusing each other.  The department had been lucky not to be sued over that little mistake.

Two minutes later, he pulled the car into a parking space and checked his belt before climbing out and glancing around.  The area was one that had hundreds of fairly cheap apartments – to rent, at least – that housed workers for various companies.  They tended to be hotspots for crime because the inhabitants were rich enough to possess luxury goods, but too poor to afford proper security measures and safety precautions.  The streetlights flickered ominously as Pearson climbed out of the car and stood beside him, one hand on the pistol in his holster.  The area might not have gone to the bad, but it was on its way there.

He led the way into the apartment block and saw an elderly woman standing there, wearing a nightgown that covered everything under her neckline.  “Thank god you’re here,” she said, before Al could say a word.  He guessed that she was the person who had made the call.  “There was screaming coming from Apartment 22B, sir.”

Al listened, but heard nothing.  “It stopped several minutes ago,” the woman said.  She had a hectoring voice that reminded him of his third grade teacher, a woman the kids had joked was an alien in human form.  She was the kind of person who would happily mind everyone else’s business.  “It really was unpleasant screaming.”

“We’ll take it from here,” Al assured her.  “I suggest that you go back to your flat and put on some warm clothes.  We may want to speak with you later.”

Pearson looked up at him as the old woman headed back into her flat.  “We’ll want to talk to her later?”

“We might,” Al confirmed.  He grinned suddenly.  “Or perhaps we could do without having her in the area when we discover what’s going on.”

He led the way up the stairs and onto the landing, where he was surprised to discover several other people glancing nervously at one of the doors.  Unsurprisingly, none of them had made any attempt to force open the door and intervene.  It was one of the few reasons he disliked big cities and New York in particular; no one cared enough to intervene if someone was threatened, if only out of the fear of being sued.  He waved them back to their apartments – the rookie could interview them later, if necessary – and stepped up to the door, examining it quickly.  It was made out of cheap plastic and one good kick would allow them access.

“Wait,” he ordered, and pressed his ear against the door.  There was no screaming now, just a faint whimpering sound.  “I hear something.”

The sound seemed to grow louder and he swore.  It sounded like someone – a woman, he was sure – in pain.  It tore at his heartstrings, for the last time he’d heard someone whimpering like that had been a rape victim, several months ago.  She had been so badly terrified that she’d lashed out at everyone, including the police officers who had responded to the distress call.  Al knocked loudly, but there was no response.  He doubted that anyone who sounded like that was going to be in any fit state to open the door.

“Stand away from the door,” he ordered, as he pulled a small tool from his belt.  There was no need to kick in the door when he could pick the lock himself.  Pearson looked on in astonishment as Al worked the lockpick and unpicked the lock.  The fact that some police officers carried such tools was something that was carefully not mentioned to the media.  “We’re coming in.”

The door opened and he recoiled as the stench struck his nose.  He heard Pearson gagging behind him, but he had no time to spare for the rookie.  The stench was horrifying, a mixture of blood and piss and shit…and something else, something that nagged at his mind, something he’d smelled before, back in the old days.  He drew the flashlight from his belt and clicked it on, staring into the darkened room.  Something was moving towards the other side of the apartment…

Pearson found the light switch and clicked it on.  A half-naked woman was lying on the ground, desperately reaching towards them with weak feeble gestures.  Al was beside her with no clear memory of having moved, finding himself looking down at her.  For a moment, he was honestly perplexed; she didn’t look like a rape victim, so he reached down and swore.  She was feverish, her skin so warm that sweat seemed to be dripping off in waves.  He turned her over, hoping to see her face, and recoiled.  Her face was covered in ugly red pustules.

“My god,” Pearson breathed.  He sounded as if he were on the verge of vomiting, contaminating the scene.  Al heard him swallowing hard before he spoke again.  “What’s wrong with her?”

Al barely heard him.  Now he knew what to look for, he ran the flashlight down the woman’s semi-transparent nightdress and realised that her entire body was covered in dark red pustules.  He touched one of them before he thought better of it and swore again.  They felt like BB pellets embedded under the skin.  Gently, he opened her mouth and saw red spots on her tongue and the inside of her gums.  Old memories from briefings on diseases that could be used as biological weapons rose up within his mind and he swore silently at himself.  The chances were that he’d exposed both himself and his rookie to something lethal.

“Help,” the woman croaked.  He wasn’t sure if she was even aware of their presence.  She sounded delirious.  “Please…help…”

“We’ll help, I promise,” he said, although he suspected that it was a promise they would not be able to keep.  “Rook, fetch her some water from the sink, and then…”

His voice trailed off.  Whatever had struck the girl wasn’t something mild, like the common cold or even the flu.  It was something far more dangerous.  There were procedures in place for dealing with a disease outbreak, but it would take time to get organised and God alone knew how far it would spread by then.  If the two policemen were infected – and he’d touched her bare skin – they might spread it by their very presence.  If only he knew what he was dealing with!

“Here, sir,” Pearson said, passing him a glass of water.  Al held it up to the girl’s mouth and she sipped slowly, seemingly unaware of her location.  “Sir…”

“Listen carefully,” Al ordered.  “I want you to go down to the lobby and secure the doors.  No one is to come in or go out of the building.  Check with the janitor – if the building has a janitor – about how many other exits the building has and get him to seal them.  No one comes in or out; do you understand?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Pearson said.  He didn’t understand, not yet, that they might have both been infected.  “What are you going to do here?”

“Go,” Al snapped.  Pearson left, leaving Al alone with the girl.  She moaned as she finished the glass of water.  Al wanted to move her, but he didn’t quite dare.  She needed expert medical help as soon as possible.  Grimly, he keyed his radio and began to report in.  The dispatcher wouldn’t want to believe it – the emergency code he used had never been used outside of drills – but there was no choice.  The entire building had to be sealed off and everyone else checked before they started to spread the disease further into New York.

He hoped he was wrong; he prayed he was wrong, but he’d seen images back when he’d been in the Marines.  There was a disease that matched the girl’s symptoms, one that humanity had attempted to exterminate fifty years ago.  Perhaps he was overreacting, but somehow he suspected otherwise.  If it truly was that disease, all hell would be out for noon.

Al stood up and started to check through the apartment, hoping that the girl would survive long enough for doctors to stabilise her condition and hopefully allow her to answer questions.  He wondered about giving her some medicine, but there was nothing in his medical kit that would do her any good…and besides, he didn’t know enough to be useful.  The doctors would have to come quickly, yet it might take too long for them to arrive.  The NBC team would be suiting up now – New York maintained a dedicated team for dealing with biological or chemical emergencies – but they wouldn’t be able to arrive until the area was sealed off, which would probably mean that the media would be all over them within an hour.  The bastards would probably start a panic by broadcasting some half-heard rumour to the world.

He found a set of papers in one of the girl’s drawers and read through them quickly.  The girl’s name was Cally Henderson – the picture of her in happier times was unmistakable – and she worked as an air hostess.  That suggested that she might have picked up the disease on one of her trips outside the USA, although he wasn’t sure where she might have picked up the disease he suspected.  He studied her picture for a long moment and compared it to the sick girl, wincing inwardly.  Cally had been young enough to be his daughter, pretty enough to attract men like flies to honey.  Whatever she had done, he was sure that it wasn't enough to deserve such a horrible fate.

There was no one else in the apartment; there was no boyfriend or flatmate.  Even so, there were clearly two bedrooms in the apartment, both apparently occupied by women.  He checked their drawers and found bras and panties, confirming his suspicion that Cally had had a flatmate.  If she was somewhere else, the chances were that she’d been infected long before Cally realised that she was ill.  Al cursed under his breath.  He knew enough about how epidemics spread to know that the more widely spread the first infections; the further the disease could spread before modern medicine brought it under control.

His radio buzzed.  “Al, we have an emergency response team coming out to you now,” the dispatcher said.  He was keeping his words vague, as procedure dictated.  Some media moron was probably using a scanner to listen into the police band and would happily start a panic, just for the sake of claiming a scoop.  “They want pictures ASAP.”

Al cursed himself as he went back to look at Cally, pulling the tiny camera off his belt and holding it up, snapping shots from every conceivable angle.  He should have thought of taking pictures, something he was sure his superiors would point out to him during his debriefing.  Al felt a moment of pity for the girl as he pulled up her nightdress and snapped her bare body, wincing as he saw how the spots had formed on her breasts and down between her legs.  Even if she survived, which he suspected was unlikely, she was going to be pockmarked for life.  A once-pretty girl would have been transformed into a freak of nature.

He keyed the camera, using it to upload the images into the police network.  The emergency response team would get first look at them, but they’d also be passed on to the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta and USAMRIID, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.  Perhaps they’d tell him that he was overreacting and the girl had nothing more than a very virulent case of measles…no, he was deluding himself.  Whatever the girl had, it was far nastier than anything mundane.

“I'm sorry,” he said, to Cally.  Her eyes were wide and staring, barely tracking his hand as he moved it in front of her eyes.  It dawned on him that she was unable to stand the bright light, but there was nothing he could do about it except kneel beside her and cast his shadow over her face.  “We’ll do our best to save you.”

Despite the risk, he reached out and took her hand in his, squeezing it gently.  After a moment, she squeezed back, her face twisting into a faint smile.  Al couldn’t imagine what had happened over the last couple of days.  Had she thought that she had nothing more serious than the flu, or had she just woken up and discovered that she was covered in spots…or had she lost awareness before the disease really took hold?  There was no way to know.  He heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and hoped – prayed – that the emergency response team was on its way.  Cally needed help desperately.

His radio buzzed again.  “My God,” the dispatcher said.  “Al, other teams are on their way as well.  The Feds are sending a team directly to your location.  They want you to remain exactly where you are.”

“Don’t worry,” Al growled.  He knew that he would have to go into quarantine, at least until the disease had been identified.  The order was completely unnecessary.  There was no way he could outrun infection now.  He looked back down at the girl and wondered if he was seeing his future.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

Chapter Three

…It is vitally important that all information relating to a biological attack is rapidly compiled and acted upon if the infection is to be outraced.  Towards this extent, Project Wildfire serves as a clearing house for information, one that remains unknown to the media.  Panic will only spread the disease further…
-Nicolas Awad

New York, USA
Day 5

Doctor Nicolas Awad had been sleeping when his secure cell phone began to ring.  The sound penetrated his head and snapped him awake, for he had been conditioned to awaken instantly when he heard that sound.  Cursing under his breath, aware of his wife’s irritation as she shifted beside him, he picked up the phone and dialled his security code into the device.  The secure phone could only have one user.

“Nicolas,” he said, as the line opened.  The NSA had devised the toughest encryption program on Earth for the Wildfire secure lines, knowing that if the Wildfire protocols ever had to be enacted, all hell was going to break loose.  “This had better be important.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Doctor,” the duty officer said.  He didn’t sound intimidated by Nicolas’s voice, but he sounded badly shaken by…something.  “We’ve just received a FLASH message from Washington.  There’s been an incident.”

Nicolas felt his blood run cold.  He looked down at his wife’s dark skin and darker eyes and shivered.  Sabrina didn’t know much about his job, but she knew enough to scare her senseless, even to the point where she had urged him to transfer to a civilian post and start curing scraped knees and broken bones.  He wasn't that kind of doctor, yet he could definitely have found private practice, if he hadn’t been driven by his inner demons.  He pulled himself out of bed and walked naked into his study, a small room he used to write his papers.  It had the advantage of being private.  Sabrina knew not to bother him there.

“I see,” he said.  An incident could mean anything from a biological accident at the CDC Biosafety Level 4 storage site to an outright biological attack anywhere in the world.  Even if Iran or North Korea had been targeted, Wildfire would be involved; besides, biological attacks were no respecters of borders.  “What do we have so far?”

“There was an incident in New York, reported thirty minutes ago,” the duty officer explained.  “I’m emailing you what we have so far, which is very little.  There’s a car on its way to pick you up and transfer you to the red zone, where you will meet up with the mobile research lab and a security team.  The NYPD has primacy at the moment, but as soon as you and your team are in the area they will yield to you.”

“Understood,” Nicolas said.  The Wildfire Protocols ensured that the Wildfire team would get priority, once they got organised.  “I’ll get dressed now and wait for the car.”

He closed the phone and went back into the bedroom.  Sabrina was looking up at him nervously.  Her dark skin – a legacy from her Indian parents – had always contrasted oddly with Nicolas’s Arabic features, but he had never cared about that.  Sabrina was smart and tough, a teacher at one of New York’s more exclusive private schools.  They had been married five years and the charm had yet to wear off.

“They’re calling me in,” he explained, as he pulled on his work clothes.  They were carefully chosen to ensure that losing them – or having them burned after visiting an incident site – wouldn’t matter.  “You’d better go back to sleep.”

Sabrina leaned forward and kissed him on the nose.  “You’d better take care of yourself,” she said, as she held him tightly.  “Come back as soon as you can.”

Nicolas kissed her back.  “I will,” he said, knowing that that might be a long time.  Even if it was a false alarm, it would be hours – perhaps days – before he could return to his wife’s bed.  There would be endless reports to write, explaining that Wildfire wasn't responsible for the false alarm and that the millions of dollars spent on the false alert had been well spent.  It wouldn’t be the first time that Congress had tried to cut the budget, even though the director had explained patiently that Wildfire might be the only thing standing between the United States and a biological holocaust.  The Senators and Congressmen hadn’t wanted to know.  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

The car that picked him up was an NYPD personnel transport, used mainly to move high-ranking police officers around the city in reasonable comfort.  Nicolas nodded to the driver as he sat down in the rear of the car and then opened his laptop as the car moved out of the driveway, siren howling.  The neighbours would probably complain about the racket – they had no idea what he did for a living – but Nicolas found it hard to care.  If the alarm was real, the neighbours would be glad enough of his services before too long.

He skimmed through the report quickly, swearing aloud once he reached the photographs.  The NYPD officer who had taken the snapshots hadn’t been qualified to take pictures of ill people, and his equipment hadn’t been the best, but he’d done a remarkably good job.  The poor girl’s skin – and the growing pustules and rashes – showed up clearly, suggesting that a nightmare many had thought dead had returned from the grave.  The symptoms suggested Smallpox, at least to some extent, although there were other diseases that had similar symptoms.  The thought didn’t please him.  There had been accidental outbreaks of some of the most virulent and feared diseases on Earth, but Smallpox – with only two official remaining repositories of the disease in existence – was almost certainly a biological attack.  The nightmare had finally come to life.  He discovered that he was hyperventilating and used a calming mantra to calm himself, forcing his mind to focus on the here and now.  Perhaps, if they were very lucky, they could nip this outbreak in the bud.

“Get someone to check with the CDC in Atlanta,” he ordered, activating the secure phone.  By now, most of the people in the smart mob that made up Project Wildfire would have been alerted and some of them would be heading into work.  Others would be waiting by their phones for orders, knowing that they might be summoned at any moment.  “I want them to ensure that all of their samples – not just Smallpox, all of them – are in place and secure.”

He scowled as the car turned into the street and halted outside the police line.  The NYPD had thrown up a cordon and secured the area, keeping the entire apartment block firmly sealed.  Small units had sealed off other apartments, hopefully keeping people – and particularly the media – off the streets.  Nicolas doubted that that would last very long.  By now, people with cell phones and digital cameras – and the internet, of course – would be alerting reporters and trying to collect a reward for tipping them off.  It wouldn’t be long before the media descended in force.

“Nicolas,” Doctor Jim McCoy said, as he stepped out of the car and into the mobile biological research lab.  On the outside, it looked like a massive truck belonging to Wal-Mart; on the inside, it was a complete biological laboratory, duplicating the facilities at both CDC and USAMRIID.  The NYPD biological response team had brought up a set of secure ambulances as well, ensuring that the locals – who might well have been infected – could be moved into quarantine with the minimum of fuss.  “Thank God you’re here.”

“I wish I wasn't,” Nicolas growled.  Dawn was only starting to shimmer into existence, leaving him feeling tired and not a little wired.  “Come on, Jim; we’d better suit up and get in there before the media descends on us and starts putting us on TV.”

He led the way into the lab and donned the MOPP suit that had been put aside for him.  The Mission Oriented Protective Posture suit was designed to be used in a toxic environment, including nuclear, chemical and biological disaster scenes.  The suits that had been designed for Wildfire had been streamlined compared to the general issue suits used by the military, but they were still uncomfortable and had a tendency to overheat if worn for long periods.  Nicolas had boiled in one while in Alaska; he hated to think of what it must have been like to wear one in Iraq.  He checked McCoy’s suit and waited for McCoy to check his before they both stepped carefully out of the vehicle and into the building.  They had to be very careful, if only because a single tear in the suit could expose them to the disease.

Nicolas winced as some of the policemen stared at them with understandably hostile gazes.  The two residents of the apartment block who were in view – sitting on the ground with their hands cuffed behind their backs – looked as if they were staring at aliens, suddenly very aware of just how serious the whole situation actually was.  He averted his gaze and led the way upstairs, following the police line to the infected apartment.  The briefing had stated that no one had attempted to move Miss Henderson – Patient Zero, as she had been designated – but that couldn’t last.  They would have to transfer her out of the building and then sterilise the site.  Depending on what had actually happened, they might have to burn the entire building to the ground.

“In here,” Doctor McCoy said.  “Coming?”

The portable sensor at Nicolas’s belt began to vibrate alarmingly as they stepped through the door.  He glanced down at it and swore inwardly as two words – BIOLOGICAL HAZARD – blinked up on the small display.  The sensors were not always reliable – a news team in Iraq had once declared that they’d found Saddam’s collection of WMD when their commercial-issue sensors had identified something harmless as deadly poison – but they could be trusted to point out something that should be worrying.  The level of infection was alarmingly high.

“Doctors,” a cross voice said.  Nicolas looked towards a police nurse wearing lighter protective gear.  He winced again as he saw just how thin her protection actually was.  She would have to go into quarantine along with the rest of them.  “I trust that this will be quick?  Miss Henderson needs to get into a proper hospital.”

“It will be as quick as possible,” Nicolas assured her, as he studied the poor girl’s body.  The nurse had rigged up an IV and had started to feed the girl fluids, along with pain medication and stimulants.  Some people would have claimed that that would have contaminated the crime scene, but Nicolas knew that any nurse worthy of the name would have ignored any demands that she left well enough alone.  “We just need to check her apartment and take samples.”

The girl looked stronger than she had in the photos, but she was clearly still too weak to answer questions.  A team of FBI-trained researchers would be working on her case even now, getting her superiors out of bed to obtain her files – there would be no difficulty with a warrant under the Wildfire Protocols – and attempting to trace her every movement over the last few weeks.  Smallpox – if it was Smallpox – had an incubation period of twelve to fourteen days, although symptoms had been known to appear as early as seven days.  It was possible that they’d misidentified the disease and it was actually chickenpox or Contact Dermatitis, but looking at her, Nicolas suspected that they hadn’t been so lucky.

He pulled a small array of sampling tools out of his bag and started to work.  First, he drew blood samples – the girl moaned in pain as he used a needle to draw the blood out of her body – and then stool and urine samples.  Carefully, he scraped away some of her skin cells and removed one of the pustules, transferring all of the samples into a secure medical case.  The history of biological research included hundreds of doctors who had accidentally infected themselves with a deadly disease and even though Nicolas had been immunised against Smallpox, he could take nothing for granted.  It wasn't unknown for a new and deadly strain of a disease to be unaffected by the immunisation.

Beside him, Doctor McCoy took his own samples, duplicating Nicolas’s work.  If one of their instruments was contaminated, there would still be a proper set of samples.  Other Wildfire team members were moving into the apartment and starting to take samples from the air and all exposed surfaces, as well as the food in the fridge and sanitary facilities.  The entire apartment would eventually be bagged up and transferred to one of the classified research facilities, where it would all be analysed for clues as to how the outbreak had started and how far it might have spread.  He looked over at one of the unprotected policemen – an older man with a pose he recognised as being from the Marine Corps – and shuddered.  The retired Marine would have been immunised, of course, but there was no way to know if it would work.  The man might have been condemned to death just by walking through the door.

“Done,” Doctor McCoy said, finally.  “Nicolas?”

“I’m ready,” Nicolas said.  He took one last look at the girl and stood up.  Now that the samples had been taken from her, she could be transferred to a proper quarantine facility, where she would receive the very best of medical care.  If Patient Zero could be cured, it would bode well for the others in the apartment and outside who might have been infected.  “Come on.”

He led the way back down the stairs and outside, into the biological research lab.  The whole area was illuminated oddly by ultraviolet germicidal irradiation lights, which provided a measure of security for the surrounding area.  Nicolas didn’t completely trust them – few did – but they worked.  Even so, the remainder of the team would have to be careful, at least until they knew what they were dealing with.  His research now would hopefully confirm or deny the possibility of Smallpox.

They passed the cases in through the access hatch on the research lab and then stepped into the quarantine section, running through a series of sterilisation drills to ensure that the exterior of the MOPP suit carried no trace at all of disease spores.  Once the tests were complete, Nicolas removed his suit with some relief and stepped over to the sealed laboratory.  Remote systems within the laboratory were already working on the samples, removing them from one of the cases and slipping them into analysis tubes.  The other case would eventually be transferred to USAMRIID, even if it was a false alarm, something that was looking more and more doubtful every minute.

“Let’s see,” he said, as the computer-aided microscope hummed to life.  Germs might be invisible to the naked eye, but careful microscopic examination could lead to rapid identification.  Nicolas had spent years at the CDC and USAMRIID studying the few samples of deadly diseases kept in storage – ranging from Smallpox itself to Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers, as well as highly-classified samples of Russian biological weapons – and knew what he was looking for.  Even so, he took great care with the equipment, running through all of the checks before he began.  “Ah.”

Humans thought of germ cells, when they thought of them at all, as tiny cartoon monsters.  Nicolas knew that that was far from the truth.  Up close, germs could be remarkably beautiful, even though an aura of evil seemed to hang over some of the most dangerous diseases in the world.  Biological researchers had wondered if that was humanity’s primal mind warning of danger, or if it was merely an effect of the researchers knowing that they were staring at small items that could exterminate entire populations if they were released into the wild.  He studied the monitor carefully, wincing slightly as the germs came into view.  The computer analysis programs blinked up their results, but he ignored them, studying the images directly.  There was no margin for error.

“No,” he said, simply.  The world had turned upside down.  “Just…no.”

Doctor McCoy looked over from where he was studying the results himself.  “I think that there’s no room for doubt,” he said.  The results would be uploaded onto the secure network, where experts from all over America would look at them, but they’d only be confirming what Nicolas and Doctor McCoy had discovered.  “God alone knows where it came from, but the demon in the freezer has finally awakened.”

Nicolas nodded.  “Smallpox,” he said.  He felt stunned, unable to react.  In time, he knew there would be horror and anger, for the mere presence of smallpox was proof of a biological attack.  There were precautions that had to be taken – that must be taken, now that the threat was identified – but somehow he could barely move.  “Some bastard infected her with smallpox.”

Doctor McCoy nodded.  “Unless she was a terrorist herself,” he said.  Nicolas doubted it, from what he’d seen of her apartment, but it was a valid possibility.  He knew how terrorists thought, yet Miss Henderson hadn’t looked to be an Islamic fanatic, which meant that if she was a terrorist, she was from a domestic terrorist group.  Very few of them would be insane enough to release smallpox onto the United States.  This was the work of a far more fanatical enemy.  “What do we do now?”

“Get me the Director,” Nicolas ordered.  The Wildfire Protocols admitted of no ambiguity, not now that an attack had been confirmed.  They had to go right to the very top.  Others would handle the grunt work now.  “I have to brief the President as soon as possible.”

Chapter Four

…When dealing with a confirmed outbreak, there are certain steps that must be taken.  Patient Zero must be isolated, along with anyone else who might be infected, allowing researchers to hopefully limit the disease’s spread.  Failure to do so could be disastrous.  Even so, it is far more important to understand where the disease originated and how it spread than to take care of Patient Zero…
-Nicolas Awad

New York, USA
Day 5

The headquarters of Project Wildfire (New York) were situated in an unmarked office building near the centre of the city.  Various project administrators had complained about the location over the years, but the supervising committee had believed that a central location would work better as a command and control centre than one based outside the city.  In a compromise, many of the facilities earmarked for Wildfire’s use – if the Wildfire Protocols were ever activated – were situated outside the city, in areas that could be easily defended by the project’s security staff.

Doctor McCoy took his place at the head of the table and waited for the briefing room to fill up.  Project Wildfire, unlike many other bloated government programs, had only a small permanent staff and a temporary staff that existed as part of a smart mob.  Over the years since the Project’s inception, thousands of trained and experienced personnel had been investigated, security-cleared and then recruited into the smart mob, where their talents could be called upon at will.  Few had believed that they would be summoned to the building, outside of exercises and training drills that were run once a year, but they all knew to come when called.  The nineteen men and women in the briefing room might not have been public personalities, but they were at the top of their profession, a mixture of medical staff, trained disaster relief experts and investigative personnel.  They would all be needed to handle the outbreak.

He studied their faces, noting who looked concerned and who looked annoyed.  They had to suspect what was going on, yet there was no way to know for sure, not until the briefing began.  The psychologists had helped choose the recruits on the basis of who would take it seriously, rather than growing bored of false alarms and endless exercises, but McCoy had little faith in their conclusions.  In his experience, based on a career practicing medicine around the globe, there was no way to know what someone was really made of until the shit hit the fan.  As the doors closed behind the final member, he tapped the table for silence, forcing them all to look at him.

“This morning,” he said bluntly, “a pair of policemen discovered a woman suffering from smallpox in New York City.”

The staff stared at him.  McCoy knew that many others would have sought to sugar-coat the message, but that wasn't his way.  There was no time for panic, or even for disbelief, not when smallpox was already loose in New York and God knew where else.  They could panic later, once the crisis was under control...if they could ever get it under control.  Some of the more optimistic scenarios he’d seen over the years had included New York – or a city of choice – being transformed into a charnel house.

He keyed a switch and one of the images taken at the apartment appeared on the main display.  Cally Henderson’s face, covered with ominous red pustules, stared down at them.  He ignored several people who sounded as if they were going to be sick, flicking through the pictures one by one, ending with a chart showing how many people might have been infected by the outbreak.

“There is no room for doubt,” he said, leaving the display showing the final chart.  The implications wouldn't be lost on any of them.  New York was a large city, but as the old rule of thumb had it, there were only seven links between anyone in a city.  The entire city – including the Wildfire HQ – might be infected by now.  Smallpox, at least in its original form, was well understood, but from what little he had heard before the meeting had been convened, this particular outbreak wasn't behaving as it should.  It wasn't a reassuring thought.  “That poor girl was infected with smallpox and left to rot in her room.”

His gaze swept the room.  They were good people, he noted, observing how they had gathered themselves and focused on the issue at hand.  There were emergency procedures for a biological hazard or a disease outbreak and they’d drilled endlessly on how to confront them.  They were the best-prepared group in America.  Across the continent, other teams would be being briefed and warned to prepare for possible outbreaks in their area, but New York would have to take the lead.

“We have sent a representative to Washington to meet with the President,” he continued.  “We believe that the President will issue the order to lockdown New York – if not the entire country – within the day, but we do not have time to wait.  It is our duty to stop the outbreak as quickly as possible, regardless of the risks.  We all know what to do.

“I want Miss Henderson’s activities over the last week dissected down to the tiniest detail,” he said, looking towards the two representatives from the New York branch of the FBI.  “I want to know when she was infected and by who.  I want to know who she knows, who are her friends and family, who she works with...they may all be infected by now, running around like viral time bombs.  There is no way that this is a natural outbreak.  We are dealing with, at the very least, a case of biological terrorism.”

There was silence.  New Yorkers took terrorism seriously.  Terrorists had struck the city on 9/11, killing thousands of people and damaging the city’s famous skyline.  Since then, there had been a constant series of minor terrorist plots against the city, most of them nipped in the bud.  The NYPD and the city’s government had no intention of resting on their laurels, however; the city had the best-trained emergency response staff in America, outside the military.

“I want all hospitals and other medical centres alerted,” he continued.  “Smallpox is known to cause flu-like symptoms; doctors may have deduced flu without realising that they were dealing with a disease believed to be non-existent within the wild.  I want any suspicious disease patterns tracked down and all suspected infected people held for testing, if possible.   Miss Henderson is almost certainly the tip of the iceberg.  There will be more cases within the week, perhaps within the day.”

He spoke as if it would be easy.  It wouldn't be; New York’s medical profession wouldn't take kindly to such heavy disruption.  All non-essential operations would have to be postponed indefinitely, perhaps permanently.  Hospital beds would have to be emptied in preparation for thousands of smallpox victims.  Doctors and nurses would have to be briefed on smallpox, and then immunised against the disease before they could be risked while treating their patients.  McCoy had studied hundreds of smallpox outbreaks over the years and had been terrified; the disease spread rapidly, just like a wildfire burning through dry wood.  The irony was not lost on him.

“One final point,” he concluded.  “The President will doubtless make a statement to the nation.  Until then, there is to be no contact with the media.  I will personally blacklist anyone who speaks to a reporter out of turn; in fact, I want all contacts with reporters reported to me at once.”

There was no argument.  Most of them were familiar with how the media could distort and misrepresent the truth.  A single leak could result in massive panic, with the disease being spread further by the mobs and causing far more deaths before it finally burned itself out.  McCoy would have suggested closing down the media for the duration of the crisis, but he was experienced enough to know that the President – or even New York’s independent Mayor – wouldn't go for it.  

“Good,” he said, finally.  “I have to brief the Mayor in twenty minutes.  You know your duties, gentlemen; report to me the minute there are additional developments.”

He watched, grimly, as the team filed out of the room.  Outside, New York looked normal, although he was sure he could sense an edge in the air, a faint sense that something was not quite right.  Or perhaps he was just imagining it; the citizens were enjoying a normal day, unaware of the growing crisis.  That, he knew, wouldn't last.  No matter what the President said, it would not be long before the citizens of New York knew about the crisis, in a manner they couldn't ignore.

***
“You know,” Sergeant Al Hattlestad remarked, “perhaps I'm just being insane, but I feel as if I am in prison.”

He gazed around the hospital room.  It was bland, painted a boring yellow-white, with nothing in the room apart from a bed and some complicated-looking equipment.  He had been transported to the facility – he had no idea where he was, or even if he was still in New York – and pushed right into the sealed compartment, having been stripped of everything he had been wearing.  They’d even taken his wedding ring and refused to return it to him.

“This is not a prison,” the doctor said.  He wore a spacesuit-like protective garment, rather like the MOPP suits that Al had worn back in the Iraq War.  His face was completely hidden behind the goggles.  “This is an emergency medical centre operated by FEMA, among others.  While you are not a prisoner, Sergeant, honesty compels me to admit that we cannot actually permit you to leave.”

“Sounds rather like a prison to me,” Al said, flatly.  He deliberately looked away from the doctor, towards the mirror that took up most of one wall.  Unless he missed his guess, it was a one-way window, allowing them to stare at him through the glass.  He lifted his hand and waved towards it; unsurprisingly, there was no response.  “How long do you intend to keep me here?”

The doctor took his arm in a surprisingly gentle grip and pressed a hypodermic needle against his wrist.  “As long as necessary,” he said, flatly.  “We will keep you here until we know if you have been infected, at which point we will know how to deal with you.”

Al waited until the doctor had finished drawing blood and then leaned back on the bed, staring up towards the ceiling.  “Doctor,” he said, “let’s not bullshit around, shall we?  That poor girl was infected with smallpox, right?”

“Yes,” the doctor said.  He sounded surprised that Al had recognised it, even though it had been an essential part of the NBC course he’d taken in the Marines.  “The presence of the disease has been confirmed.”

Al nodded.  “But I have been immunised against smallpox,” he argued.  “You should let me out and back onto the streets.  I'm going to be needed.”

“There are several problems with that,” the doctor said.  “There is no way to know if the injection you received several years ago is still effective, or even if it was effective against this particular variant of smallpox in the first place.  If it is not effective, you are almost certainly infected and will infect others if we allowed you out of the room.  We will hold you here until we are sure that you can be released without posing a danger to others.”

“I guess I can't argue with that,” Al said, finally.  He had to admit that the doctor had a point.  “Even so...do you have any idea how long I am going to have to remain here?”

The doctor shrugged.  “Smallpox has a standard incubation period of up to fourteen days,” he said.  “We should be able to tell if you have been infected sooner, through blood tests and...ah...other methods.  If you don’t show any symptoms in a couple of weeks, we should be able to release you without further ado.”

“I see,” Al said, wondering what had happened to Pearson.  The rookie had to be scared out of his mind.  “Is there any way I can talk to my family?”

“I’m afraid not,” the doctor admitted.  “We don’t want to panic them unduly.  After a few days, we should be able to link you up with the other possibly-infected people, which will allow you at least something of a social life.  We can arrange for television and even video games if you wish.”

Al wanted to argue, but he knew it wouldn't get him anywhere.  He sank back on the bed and sighed.  “Just get me cleared and out of here as soon as possible,” he said, tiredly.  It had been a long day.  “I want to go home.”

***
“I think that this might interest you, sir,” Mija Cat said, as she entered the editor’s office.  “It’s about the developments reported last night down in that apartment block.”

Her editor looked up with apparent interest.  It was incredibly difficult to do something in complete secrecy in the modern world, not when cell phones allowed a witness to alert the media and digital cameras allowed them to record it for posterity.  The New York Times had received alerts almost as soon as the police had set up a cordon around the apartment block, although they hadn't been able to find out what was actually going on, or even if it was important.  The public wouldn't be interested in yet another drug bust or investigative operation.  Mija, as one of the paper’s junior reporters, had been given the task of investigating the reports, if only to see if there was a story in them or not.

“Oh good,” he said, slowly.  He hadn't expected much to come of it and hadn't bothered to conceal that opinion.  Mija hadn't expected anything else.  As a junior reporter, without the prestige of senior reporters, she couldn't expect anything apart from the shit jobs.  And, if it proved to be something newsworthy, there was a good chance that her editor would take it from her and give it to someone more experienced and popular.  “What have you found out?”

“Well, they’re saying nothing directly,” Mija admitted.  She found the editor rather terrifying, even though he hadn't made a pass at her; hell, she hadn't even caught him staring at her breasts or ass.  The editor blew a smoke ring and waited for her to continue.  “If it was a successful operation, or even a case of mistaken identity, they would have said something, wouldn't they?”

The editor managed to look impatient while chewing on one end of his cigar.  “So I spoke to a few of our contacts in the NYPD,” Mija continued, nervously.  “The ones who would talk to me said that a pair of policemen had gone into the building and then called for an ERT – an Emergency Response Team.  The team was barely on its way, accompanied by a small army of policemen, when the feds came in and took over.  The ERT was told to remain outside, the area was sealed and then they waited for the feds to arrive.”

“Curious,” the editor said, thoughtfully.  “And what do you deduce from that?”

“Nothing, sir,” Mija admitted, “so I dug deeper.  The feds are apparently holding everyone involved somewhere, including the policemen and some members of the ERT.  The neighbours said that everyone had simply been taken away, without apparent cause.  That is...odd, to say the least.  There was no reason to arrest everyone...”

“They took them all without a warrant,” the editor deduced.  He smiled for the first time.  Stories about abuse of government powers always went down well with the readers.  “Do you know where they were all taken?”

“No,” Mija said, “but we did get an image of one of the people being taken away.”

She held out a printed image an amateur photographer had taken with a standard digital camera.  It showed an elderly gentleman being helped into a van by a man wearing a spacesuit, while other men – wearing similar garb – stood around and waited for the locals to be removed.

“Son of a bitch,” the editor said, in astonishment.  “Those are MOPP suits.”

Mija’s puzzlement must have shown on her face, for the editor deigned to explain.  “MOPP suits are worn when there’s a biological hazard,” he explained.  “A chemical spill or an infectious disease...”

“Yes, sir,” Mija said.  She hadn't known what the suits were called, but she had deduced what they were for.  “I checked with a couple of our sources and discovered that the Mayor had been in conference with some of the feds, including experts from Atlanta and Washington.  There’s a total black-out on news about the apartment block, but the feds are still working there, which means...”

“That there was a biological hazard there,” the editor said.  He looked up at her.  “You do know what this means, don’t you?”

Mija nodded.  “I guessed that someone caught something nasty,” she said, “so I checked the building registry.  There were five people in the building who could reasonably be expected to travel abroad on a regular basis.  I checked with their places of employment and three of them had called in sick.”

“Very good, Mija,” the editor said.  He stood up and motioned towards the door.  “We will follow this up personally and your input will be noted.”

“Sir, with all due respect, this is my story,” Mija said.  “I think that...”

“This is not something you can follow up on,” the editor said.  “You will allow me to choose a reporter who is skilled at extracting truth from government officials.”

Mija recognised the dismissal and left his office, struggling to keep her face expressionless until she reached her cubical.  The editor would assign someone else and her scoop would be stolen.  Slowly, carefully, she accessed her computer and brought up her blog.  The editor’s pet reporters would discover that they’d been scooped, even if they never knew who had beaten them, or why.

It never occurred to her that, in doing so, she could cause a panic.

Chapter Five

...Every single person expects the President to give 100% of his or her attention to their project, their concern or their interests.  What complete nonsense!  The President cannot afford to becoming bogged down by micromanagement, nor could even the most enthusiastic micromanager handle all of the responsibilities of being President.  The President doesn't have to juggle balls.  The President has to juggle chainsaws.
- Press Secretary Fiona Dürst

Washington DC, USA
Day 5

Doctor Nicolas Awad waited impatiently outside the Oval Office, barely aware of the pair of burly Secret Service agents keeping a careful eye on him.  His use of a Top Secret code to gain access to the President had ensured that they let him through the security with the minimum of caution – although they had insisted on confiscating both his briefcase and the pistol he’d carried on his belt – but they weren't happy about it.  Personally, Nicolas suspected that security would be tightened up considerably once they realised what was happening in New York.  The chances were that there were infected people in Washington already, walking around unaware that they were dying from a disease they might never have known existed.

The President’s personal secretary stepped out of the Oval Office and looked over at him.  “Doctor, the President and her Cabinet will see you now,” she said.  “If you will come with me...”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Nicolas couldn't avoid a thrill as he stepped into the Oval Office.  It was the very centre of his country’s political system, the office of the most powerful person in the world; somehow, he felt very small and tiny compared to the weight of history that hung in the air.  In the Oval Office, President Bush had ordered the invasion of Iraq and planned the surge that had ended the insurgency and produced a viable post-war Iraq.  President Reagan had plotted the economic destruction of the Soviet Union, while President Roosevelt had led his country against the Axis powers and President Lincoln had fought to hold his country together.  The men and women facing him, the President’s Cabinet, seemed to loom large in front of him, even though they were politicians.  He found himself hoping that they had the strength and resolve to get through the coming days, for he knew that only prompt action had a hope in hell of preserving the United States as a functional entity.  The country itself was at stake.

“Madam President,” he said, feeling tongue-tied for the first time since he had been a very small child.  The President, Head of State and Head of Government, seemed to dominate the room.  He found himself speaking with more bluntness than he had intended.  “The country is under attack.”

President Paula Handley had not been expected to win the nomination, let alone the Presidency, but a damaging sexual scandal had torpedoed her rival’s campaign before he had forced her to bow out of the Presidential race.  Unlike her predecessor, she had a reputation for being truthful and trustworthy – everyone’s favourite grandmother, one reporter had called her – and if there were skeletons in her closet, no one had been able to find them.  The United States rarely trusted its political leaders, yet President Handley had a remarkably good and stable approval rating.  Her opponent might grumble that she had won only because of third party candidates and a general lassitude among his party’s supporters, but there was no doubting her determination.  Nicolas only hoped that she was competent and resolute.  The smallpox crisis would be her first major test as President.

At forty-one years old, she was a widow, much to the relief of the White House Protocol Office, who would have struggled to find a role for a First Husband.  Her husband, a US Army Major, had been killed on active service, leaving an angry and determined woman to go into politics and, as she’d said in her campaign speeches, to ensure that American soldiers received the support they needed from their country.  Her dark hair, which was starting to shade to grey under the pressures of her office, was tied up neatly in a bun, giving her a vague impression of being a schoolmistress.  Nicolas met her blue eyes and was impressed by their firmness, although he knew that the eyes were not always the windows of the soul.  Politicians, in his experience, tended always to believe the best and keep one eye on their chances of re-election.  The President might balk at doing whatever was necessary to save the country.

“Please be seated,” the President said.  Her voice, with a faint New England twang, admitted of no weakness.  “How exactly is the country under attack?”

Nicolas took his seat and began to explain, skimming though the discovery of the infected victim – he had to force himself not to think of her as a person, not when they had to keep testing her to discover just how dangerous her infection actually was – and ending with a brief outline of just how dangerous smallpox had been in the past.  There was no other disease, with the possible exception of the Black Death, that had had so much effect on history.  The United States might not even exist without smallpox, for it had been smallpox, rather than European guns and technology, that had broken the Native American tribes.

“The country is in terrible danger,” he concluded.  “Madam President, we need you to declare a state of emergency at once.”

The President said nothing for a long moment.  She had the most remarkable poker face that Nicolas had ever seen, for she showed no sign of any emotion.  She had watched him throughout his presentation, studying him carefully over her fingers, which hadn't even twitched.  He would have hated to play poker with her, yet now he would have sold his soul for a clear sign of what she was thinking.  Her decision could make or break the United States of America.

“I see,” she said, finally.  “How exactly do you suggest that we proceed?”

It was on the tip of Nicolas’s tongue to point out that she had been briefed on Project Wildfire – and other such governmental programs – back when she’d been the President-Elect, but then he realised that she wanted him to outline it for her Cabinet.

“We have to put the entire country into lockdown, Madam President,” he said.  “We must shut down all transport, from road traffic to the railroads and civil airlines.  We must not allow the disease a chance to spread further.”

There was uproar from the Cabinet.  “Madam President,” the Secretary of the Treasury - Gayle Freeman – protested, “if we shut down the country, the economy will crash completely.”  Her voice hardened.  “It would destroy us as a global power.”

“This outbreak of smallpox could also destroy us as a global power,” the Secretary of Defence growled.  Nicolas was relieved to see him, for he knew Scott Rudziński from his days working for USAMRIID.  Rudziński might have come from the 3rd Infantry Division before he’d retired and been tapped to serve as Secretary of Defence, but he wouldn't underestimate the seriousness of the situation.  “There is no point in having an economy if we’re all dead.”

“Absurd,” the Secretary of the Treasury snapped.  “This isn't a Third World state without a proper medical system.  This is America!”

The President nodded to Nicolas.  “Perhaps you could explain, Doctor,” she said, calmly.  “I suggest you stick to layman’s terms.”

Nicolas nodded thoughtfully.  “A serious disease - a contagious disease, which means one that can be spread from person to person – tends to go through four distinct stages,” he said.  “First, the victim is infected, but shows no symptoms and is not actually contagious.  They will not be infecting anyone else or spreading the disease further.  Second, they will become contagious, but they will not be showing any – or many – symptoms.  Third, they will start to suffer from unmistakable symptoms and will attempt to seek medical attention.  Fourth, depending on the disease, they will either die or recover, if their immune system can beat the disease.

“What this means is that anyone who is undergoing the second stage is spreading the disease, unaware that they are infecting everyone they encounter,” he continued.  “Smallpox – and many other serious diseases – starts out with fairly minor symptoms, ones more reminiscent of flu or the common cold.  By the time the third stage begins, when pustules start appearing and it becomes apparent that something is seriously wrong, they may have infected hundreds of other people, who will, in turn, spread the infection further.

“Just how far a disease spreads depends on various factors.  Although diseases are harmful to us, it is probably best to think of them as parasites rather than outright monsters.  A parasite that harms its host is not actually contributing to its own success.  Diseases like the common cold are extremely hard to eradicate because they don’t kill their hosts, allowing them to spread from person to person and then back again in a constant round of colds.  They make us ill, but they do not inflict permanent harm – or death.  On the other side, a disease like Ebola kills so quickly that it burns through its reservoir of hosts and can be prevented from spreading further.”

He paused.  “The real nightmare in the biological weapons field, Madam President, is a disease that has a long period of being contagious without any symptoms before it finally turns lethal,” he concluded.  “A disease that was airborne, with a year’s period of incubation, would almost certainly depopulate the entire planet.  This outbreak of smallpox is not that dangerous, I believe, but if we allow it to spread unchecked, it will devastate America.  We must act now.”

The President considered it for a long moment.  “So we put the country into lockdown,” she said.  “What do we do then?”

“We find out, as quickly as possible, if our smallpox vaccine is effective against this particular variant of the disease,” Nicolas said.  “If it is, we start massive immunisations of everyone, starting with medical personal and disaster relief specialists.  If the vaccine is not effective against the disease, we start developing one that is effective, quickly.”

“There are people who would object to being vaccinated,” the Secretary of State pointed out, mildly.  “Don’t we get groups that refuse to be vaccinated because of religious reasons?”

“Then they will die,” Nicolas said, flatly.  He looked up at him.  Allan Ross was a political genius, or so the media claimed, but he wasn't a decisive personality.  With one eye always fixed on political advantage, he would seek to water down Nicolas’s proposals in order to maintain his ability to get elected.  It couldn't be tolerated, yet how could he be prevented from destroying the country’s only hope of survival?  “Do you know how much of the country is immunised against smallpox?”

He didn't wait for the answer.  “Outside the military and some aid workers, only a very small percentage of the population is immune to smallpox,” he said.  “We abandoned mass vaccination programs in the 1970s after smallpox was declared exterminated in the wild and never restarted them, even after 9/11.  The Bush Administration looked at the possibility, but there were too many question marks hanging over the whole affair – and there was no immediate need to go forward – and the whole project was cancelled.

“What that means, sir, is that less than thirty percent of the American population is immune to smallpox,” he continued.  “It may well be less than that, for there are colossal question marks surrounding the older vaccines and just how effective they are in the long term.  For the rest of the population, we could be looking at what we in the trade call a virgin field epidemic, one that sweeps through the population and kills – or cripples – most of the people.  There will be so many infected people that we will be unable to provide hospital beds for them, forcing them to remain at home until they die, whereupon we will have to burn the bodies to stop them from infecting others if they are ever uncovered.  Our entire society will collapse under the weight of the dead.”

“You’ve made your point,” the President said, sharply.  Her eyes met his.  “Are you sure that this is an attack?”

Nicolas nodded.  “Madam President, there are two official repositories of smallpox left in the world,” he said.  “We have a repository at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention – in Atlanta – and there is a second storage site at the State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in Koltsovo, Russia.  In theory, there are no other repositories in existence; in practice, we have good reason to suspect the existence of several others.  We do not yet have a full breakdown on Patient Zero, but from what I saw before I came here, there is no reason to believe that there was any way she could have been accidentally infected.  The mere use of smallpox proves that someone did it to us deliberately.”

The President’s eyes were very hard.  “Who?”

“That is uncertain as yet,” Nicolas admitted, carefully.  “The Russian biological program remains a mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in an enigma.  The Chinese, Indians, North Koreans, Israelis and Iranians are supposed to have some samples – the Indians, in particular, may have samples of the most virulent form of smallpox known to exist.  We know that Iraq was definitely interested in smallpox and, even today, we are never quite sure what happened to the remains of their program.  And pretty much every other rogue state in the world would be interested in obtaining samples they could turn into a weapon.

“Even so, I suspect that this isn't the work of a state actor,” he added.  “Smallpox would be lethal almost everywhere in the world.  It is hardly a tactical biological weapon.  It could run out of control from here and race right across the world.  If the Chinese had released it, intending to cripple us, the chances are that it would spread back to China and wreakhavoc there.  The only real suspects are terrorists.  As yet, we cannot point the finger precisely, but I have no doubt that we will eventually locate the people responsible.”

“We will find them,” the President said.  Nicolas shivered at the steel in her voice.  It had gone unspoken, but the United States had a long-standing policy that any biological attacks would draw a nuclear response.  Even so, could a state reasonably be blamed for the actions of a terrorist group?  He shook his head.  The terrorists, whoever they were, might well have obtained their weapon from a country.  That country could be held to account for supplying the terrorists with a biological weapon.  “How quickly can we lock down the entire country?”

Rudziński scowled.  “It would take at least a day, if we were lucky,” he said, slowly.  “We would have to call up the National Guard and recall every soldier to his unit.  Once the word got out, there would be panic and outright chaos.  We could ground airplanes and shut down the railroads fairly quickly, but blocking traffic on the ground would be far harder.  There would be...incidents.  The American public will not approve of being trapped in their cities along with infected people.”

The President set her jaw.  “I understand,” she said.  “I will take full responsibility...”

“Madam President,” several people protested at once.

“This is not an issue for a vote,” the President said.  “If we are wrong about the scale of the emergency, then I will doubtless be blamed for everything and impeached, if I don’t get lynched in the streets.”  Her lips twitched humourlessly.  “And if we are right, and I don’t do anything, we will be looking at total disaster and collapse.”

Her voice hardened.  “I will not be the last President of the United States of America,” she said, calmly.  “My duty is to the people of my country, the people who elected me and the people who think I am a silly bitch who should go back to the kitchen and leave the work of government to real men.  If the price of saving my country is the end of my political career, it is a price I will pay gladly.”

She looked over at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  “General, I want you and Patrick” - Patrick Campbell, the Secretary of Homeland Security – “to activate the contingency plans for locking down the country.  I will declare a state of emergency covering the entire country after speaking with Congress and the State Governors.  I don’t expect perfection, but make it clear that I will crush anyone who tries to interfere with the lockdown.  The lawyers can argue about legalities after the country has been saved.”

Her eyes slipped from person to person.  “I don’t expect you all to agree with my actions,” she added, “but I expect you all to support them to the best of your ability.  If you feel that you cannot in good conscience support my orders, I will accept your resignations now.”

“Madam President,” Ross said, “the Constitution clearly states that travel is a right...”

“The Constitution is not a suicide pact,” the President snapped.  “If Congress wishes to impeach me, they can do so after the crisis is over.  Do you – does anyone – wish to resign in protest?”

There was a long pause.  “Good,” she said, when no one spoke.  “We can all hang together then.”

As the meeting began to break up, Nicolas felt his secure Blackberry vibrating in his pocket.  He pulled it out, pressed his finger against the biometric reader concealed within the small device and swore as the message popped up on the tiny display.

“Madam President,” he said.  He had to swallow twice before he could finish the message.  “We have five new cases of smallpox in America.”  He didn't want to say the next words, but there was no choice.  “Two of them are in New York, but the others are in three different cities; Chicago, Detroit and San Francisco.  It's spreading.”

“Whatever decision I make,” the President said slowly, “people are going to die.”

Nicolas shook his head.  “People are going to die anyway, now that the disease is loose,” he said, grimly.  She had to understand just what was at stake.  “Your decisions will make the difference between losing a few thousand people and losing the entire country, if not the world.”

Chapter Six

Did you ever see that movie with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones?  It hit upon a very good point about the human condition – a person is smart, but people, a mob, is a panicky mass of stupid idiots.  You can't tell the people the truth at once, for they can't handle the truth.  How far would Bush have been able to go if he’d told the world the truth – that we would be at war against the terrorists for decades – or Roosevelt – that Uncle Joe Stalin was in fact a very nasty man?  People are stupid; remember that.
- Press Secretary Fiona Dürst

New York, USA
Day 5

“Doug!”

Douglas Mann looked up in surprise from where he was weeding the garden.  Lindsey – his wife – had been nagging him for days about the need to work on the garden and he had finally set aside some time to work on it.  The last thing he had expected was his wife interrupting him, not after it had taken so long to convince him to do it in the first place.  He would have much rather have spent his day off with a beer and a few good movies – or a good novel, if there had been nothing on television or DVD – but his wife had insisted.

“I’m here,” he called.  Despite his wife’s nagging, he was rather proud of the garden, even though he rarely had time to work on it.  Life as an investment banker was rewarding, but not full of free time, not with the economic crisis still underway.  “What is it, dear?”

Lindsey burst out of the backdoor and ran into the garden.  At thirty years old, she was still the brown-haired beauty he had married, back when he’d been a young man.  She had borne two children and then gone straight back to work as a nurse, for they had needed two salaries to make ends meet.  Even now, when Doug was far more wealthy and successful than either of them had ever believed possible, she still worked when she could.  He had never tried to stop her, for he knew that caring for her patients meant a great deal to his wife.

“Your bleeper is sounding,” she said, in alarm.  Doug looked up sharply.  As a part-time National Guardsman, the last time his bleeper had sounded had been during a riot in New York, two years ago.  The National Guard had been called up, but had never been deployed, not like the old days when they had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan several times.  As a younger man, he had enjoyed those testing times, but they had been hard on his marriage.  “What do they want with you today?”

Doug shrugged, looking up into the blue sky.  It was just after noon and it was a lovely day.  He’d even considered suggesting that they forgot the garden for a day and headed to the beach, except his wife would never have forgiven him.  It could be anything, he knew, from an unannounced drill to a genuine emergency.  At least he wasn’t at work.  It was technically illegal to discriminate against National Guardsmen, who could be called to the colours and away from their workplaces at any moment, but employers hated losing them at unpredictable intervals.  Doug knew several of his comrades who had never found a permanent job because they could be called away, even though the employers had never quite admitted that that was what they were doing.  The National Guardsmen knew the truth.  There were times when he wondered if the country was truly worth defending, the way it treated the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of their country.

“I have no idea,” he said.  He pulled himself to his feet, passed the garden fork to his wife and stepped back inside the house.  The blessed cool from the air conditioning struck him right in the face and he smiled in relief.  New York was cool compared to the sandbox, but working in the garden had made him feel hot and bothered, a reminder that he was not as young as he had once been.  His bleeper was where he had left it, mounted on the wall where he could hear it anywhere inside the house.  It was bleeping incessantly and would continue to do so until he shut it off.

He picked the small device up and tapped his code into the system, accessing the message.  As he had expected, it was pithy and uninformative, ordering him to report at once to the nearest muster point.  It wasn’t a command he could disobey.  The Army National Guard would regard it as desertion, which carried a prison sentence and permanent disgrace.  He smiled as he placed the bleeper on his belt, knowing that Lindsey would not be pleased.  Reporting in to the Guard meant that he wouldn't have to carry on with the gardening.

“They want me instantly,” he called, as he found his coat and ID card.  He had a bag packed and stored in the cupboard for immediate deployment, a precaution he’d been taught by the old sweats when he’d first transferred into the Guard.  “I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s going on.  It’s probably just an exercise.”

Lindsey came into the house, her dark eyes worried.  She might play the harridan at times, but he had never doubted her love for him, or her fear that one day he might get permanently crippled – or killed – while on deployment.  In some ways, a National Guardsman’s wife was worse off than a soldier’s wife, even though she saw her husband most of the time.  She might never know when he would be plucked from her arms and sent to fight the foe.

“Just an exercise,” she repeated, nervously.  They both knew that it could be a great deal more.  “Take care of yourself, all right?”

She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, and then turned away, hiding her eyes from him.  Doug understood and allowed her to conceal her tearing eyes.  He patted her back awkwardly and walked out towards the car parked in the driveway, hearing – as he left – the sound of another bleeper behind him.  Lindsey’s bleeper was permanently tuned to New York’s Emergency Medical Department, which could summon her at any moment to help deal with a medical emergency.  The implications worried him, for he didn't think that his muster orders and her summons were just a coincidence.  The National Guard had trained for disaster relief and civil disturbance as well as actual war-fighting; he looked into the distance, half-expecting to see a mushroom cloud rising up like a dark harbinger of death.  There was no sign of any attack.  The suburb seemed perfectly safe and tranquil.

He climbed into the car, started the engine and pulled out of the drive.  Whatever was going on, he was sure, he would know the truth of it soon enough.  Perhaps it was just an exercise, after all.

***
“Hey, kitty cat,” one of the other junior reporters called.  “Did you hear the news?”

Mija Cat looked up impatiently.  Young Olson had delusions of grandeur, a fairly common delusion among the reporting community, suggesting that he would probably be the first to make senior reporter.  He not only fancied himself a great reporter, but also a real ladies man, hitting on every female who came into the office with a distressing rate of success.  Mija had never liked him, although she had to admit that he was good at worming information out of people.  The nasty side of her mind wondered how much he had learned during pillow talk.

“No,” she said, crossly.  She was still trying to figure out what was going on, but very few people seemed prepared to talk to her.  All the signs pointed towards a major medical emergency – every medical professional in New York seemed to have been called to duty, along with every policeman and fireman in the city – but no one who was willing to talk knew what was going on.  “What’s happened?”

“The editor sent Lois down to Town Hall to get an interview with Mayor Hundred himself,” Olson said.  He grinned openly; Lois was not only the star reporter, but a woman with a reputation as a real ball-buster, hated and adored in equal measure.  Privately, Mija considered her a snooty bitch.  “About seven minutes after she entered his office, two policemen came in and arrested her, carting her off to the police station in handcuffs.”

He leered at her.  “I even have pictures,” he added, passing her a small palmtop.  Mija couldn't stop herself from smiling at the image, with Lois pinned between two burly policemen.  “I bet you that that will be all around the city by tonight.”

“No bet,” Mija said.  Her mind caught up with her and she stopped, astonished.  America wasn't known for arresting reporters, not even the most obnoxious of the breed...and if Mayor Hundred had ordered Lois arrested, he could kiss his chances of re-election goodbye.  The New York Times would definitely file a lawsuit on her behalf, something that would smear not only the Mayor, but the NYPD as well.  Why had he taken the risk of arresting her?  “Do you know why?”

“Perhaps she asked him the wrong question,” Olson speculated.  He winked at her and recovered the palmtop.  “Or perhaps she asked the right question.”

He swaggered off towards a young intern’s desk, leaving Mija behind thinking hard.  All the signs pointed to a biological emergency of some kind, which meant...she suddenly became aware of silence falling across the office, broken only by the speakers.  The row of plasma screens mounted along the walls, which followed CNN, FOX, the BBC and other famous television channels, had all switched to a single broadcast.  The President’s face looked out at them, somehow subtly wrong.  It took Mija a moment to realise that she hadn’t gone through make-up; indeed, she looked worried.  Mija looked down at her computer and saw that the President’s speech was being fed online as well as over the television and radio channels.  The entire country would be hearing the speech.

“My fellow Americans,” President Handley said.  The most powerful woman in the world sounded worried, as if she knew that things were very bad.  “It is with heavy heart that I must confirm to you that the country is under attack.  A number of people within our country have been infected with smallpox, a disease thought to have been exterminated in the wild decades ago.  The nature of the infection suggests that the outbreak was not natural.  Those people are the first victims of the greatest terrorist attack since 9/11.”

There was dead silence in the office.  Mija had never known it to be so silent, not during the worst global crisis.  “There is no need to panic,” the President continued.  She sounded almost as if she were making the words up as she went along, adding a deeper layer of horror to her speech.  “Although the infection is serious, it can be treated and, with care, can be prevented from spreading further.  I have therefore, with the concurrence of my Cabinet, Congress and the State Governors, declared a state of emergency over the entire United States.  The National Guard has been called up and, along with the police and regular army units, will enforce the state of emergency.

“The disease spreads through social contact, so we will shut down as much social contact as possible.  All public transport systems will be shut down.  All schools, malls, sports stadiums and other places where people might congregate will be closed for the duration of the emergency.  I urge all civilians to return to their homes and remain there until the end of the emergency, leaving them only for emergencies.

“There are those who will say that these measures are not constitutional and that, in enforcing them upon the country, I am breaking the law.  I can only remind them that the Constitution is not a suicide pact and that, if we honour the letter of the law, we risk spreading the disease further.  So far, it remains limited; we can, with prompt action, keep it limited.  If Congress wishes to impeach me, they can do so after the emergency is over.”

Her voice tightened.  “Over the next few days, we will be vaccinating the entire country against smallpox,” she concluded.  “There is enough smallpox vaccine in the country for everyone.  Please do not panic, or demand immediate vaccination; we will get to everyone before the disease can spread further.  At the moment, panic is our worst enemy, not the disease.

“We do not know who has done this to us, not yet,” she concluded.  “I swear to you, however, that we will find them and, when we do, we will extract the most horrific revenge.  There will be no safe place for the terrorists to hide.  We will utilise the entire military might of the United States, with or without our allies, to exterminate the terrorists.  No one will be allowed to stand in our way.

“As a country, we have been through much in the centuries since our forefathers brought forth a new nation.  With God’s help, and our courage and determination, we will get through this crisis without compromising, without losing, what we are.”

Her face vanished from the screen.  A moment later, it popped up another broadcast, one specifically for New York. Mija barely heard Mayor Hundred’s words as he confirmed that a smallpox victim had been found in the city and that, in two hours, public traffic within the city would be closed down.  Half of the staff were already on their feet, preparing to head home.  The editor shouted for order, but no one seemed to care.  They all wanted – needed – to see their families before it was too late.

***
Jim Revells liked to think of himself as a professional paranoid, a trait that came in handy for an insurance investigator.  Back when he’d been at college, he’d joined a group that had believed that America's end was nigh, warning that anything from terrorism to nuclear war – or a left-wing government of the elite – would eventually destroy the country.  The group had eventually purchased, between them, a number of properties around the country that could be used as refuges in case of danger.  The more delusional ones had believed that they could, eventually, be used to rebuild the country, but Jim thought that that was insane.  The survivalists could only realistically hope to survive until order was restored.

“Get the emergency bags,” he snapped at his partner.  Linda didn't argue.  They’d been together long enough to share the same thoughts, even if they had never married.  Neither of them had wanted to add the government into their relationship, despite the fact that they had two children and a third on the way.  “Boys, get them into the car now.”

He glared at Jim Junior – the youngest boy – until he started to move and then ran into his study.  He’d collected his bug-out kit years ago and it only took a few seconds to check that he had everything he needed before he picked up the cell phone.  He brought up a saved message, keyed in an automated response, and sent it out to the others in the survivalist network.  They’d be on their way at once and their plans, which had been so carefully drawn up years ago, were about to be put into operation.  They’d talked them over time and time again, yet none of them had any idea how well they would work in practice.  They were about to find out.

The box under his desk was padlocked and he fumbled twice before he managed to open it with a key he carried on his key ring.  He opened it and removed the small collection of weapons – some of them illegal in New York – and ammunition, checking each of them one by one.  Linda was an excellent shot with the handgun and the boys weren't bad, even though some of their liberal teachers had had hysterics over the thought of teaching the boys to shoot.  Jim had reassured them that they were perfectly good shots, something that hadn’t reassured the teachers very much.  Perhaps they’d thought that, one day, the boys would come gunning for them.

“Let's go,” Linda called, from the driveway.  Jim picked up the box and carried it, grunting under the strain, outside, stowing it away in the trunk.  He passed handguns to each of the boys, reminding them to keep them out of sight unless they were needed.  He trusted them not to mess around with loaded weapons, not least because he and the other adults in the group hadn't hesitated to thrash any of the children who treated guns as anything less than dangerous weapons.  “Come on, Jim!”

Jim hesitated, looking back at the small house.  He had known that he might have to abandon it one day, yet now he was faced with such a prospect, he didn't want to leave.  There were so many happy memories within that house, from the birth of his children to the first night he and Linda had spent together.  Slowly, reluctantly, he pulled the door closed and locked it.  Perhaps the worst-case scenario wouldn't come to pass and they would be able to return, one day...

He climbed into the car and Linda gunned the engine.  A moment later, they were racing down the street and out of the city.  They had a long drive ahead of them.  Jim tensed as they passed other cars heading outwards as well, knowing that the army would be deploying to cut off escape.  They had to get out before the army sealed off the entire city, or they would be trapped within the infected city.  He looked back at the boys and swore to himself that he would not let that happen, whatever it took.  They would survive.

Chapter Seven

Rules of Engagement exist to tell troops when they can open fire against enemy forces.  When operating in an environment inhabited by civilians, the ROE are always very tight, with strict limits on when and how a soldier can take offensive action.
- General Tom Spencer

New York, USA
Day 5

“Well,” one of the other doctors said.  “That’s us told.”

Doctor McCoy scowled.  In his opinion, the President had acted too quickly.  It was hard to remember that the whole crisis was barely fifteen hours old.  No, he reminded himself, the crisis is much older.  We only knew about it for fifteen hours.

The President was right, of course, even though it would take time to get all of the roadblocks into position.  Perhaps she had been urged to move quicker by the arrest of several reporters who had been probing into the apartment and the suspected biohazard.  The more emergency protocols that were activated, the greater the number of people involved in the crisis and the greater the chance of someone on the outside putting two and two together and getting four.  Rumours had already been flying around, some uncomfortably close to the mark, when the President had made her speech.  It had been her decision.  They would just have to live with it.

Mayor Hundred had been on the verge of panic when he’d been briefed, but McCoy had been able to convince him that firm action would save his city and his career.  The Mayor’s broadcast, following the President’s broadcast, had called up every medically-trained person who had been missed in the first call-ups and asked the remainder of the population to head home and wait for instructions.  McCoy wasn't so sure that that had been a good idea – if he had had his druthers, he would have waited until night to announce the lockdown – but it had been his call.  There were now tens of thousands of New Yorkers trying to get home, while the cell phone networks were jammed with panicking parents and children and the internet was crashing under the sheer weight of demands.  The CDC briefing papers on smallpox and the FEMA emergency protocol WebPages had crashed, while hundreds of bloggers were posting information – some of it very inaccurate – online and speculating endlessly on who might be responsible for the disaster.  Islamic terrorists were at the top of the list; already, barely twenty minutes after the President’s speech, the NYPD was reporting shots fired at a couple of mosques.  If so many people hadn't been trying to get home, McCoy knew, it would have been a great deal worse.

He turned towards the big display and scowled as the information built up in front of him.  There were now seven smallpox patients in New York and four of them had no obvious link to Patient Zero.  Worse, the FBI had checked with Cally Henderson’s employers and discovered that she hadn't been the only one to call in sick with flu-like symptoms.  The airline managers had been wondering if they were facing a badly organised strike before McCoy had spoken to them personally and explained what was going on.  Police and medical teams were already on their way to visit the other ill personnel, but it wouldn’t be long before the medical services were overwhelmed.  The chaos on the streets was a perfect transmission medium for smallpox, even if anyone who so much as coughed would be shunned at once.

“The Mayor is making another broadcast calling for calm,” one of the doctors said.  McCoy shrugged.  The population of New York weren't likely to care about calls for calm.  They wanted to be with their families and then vaccinated before they went to work again.  Emergency supplies of vaccine were being flown in, but McCoy knew that – no matter what the President said – there wasn't enough vaccine to go around.  Emergency personnel would have to be vaccinated first.  “What do we do...?”

McCoy looked up at him angrily.  “What do we do?”  He repeated.  “We track down the source of this epidemic and stop it!  Do you understand me?”

The doctor slunk away, leaving McCoy to study the display.  Despite his words, he knew that it was almost certainly too late to prevent a major epidemic.  By now, smallpox would have infected enough people to make it impossible to stop it by destroying the source.  The terrorists could have used aerosols or a Typhoid Mary to spread the disease, but now it was too late.  The demon was out and could not be put back in the bottle.

“God help us,” he muttered.  “God help us all.”

***
Doug hefted his M16 as the National Guardsmen drove to their assigned duty stations, feeling cold ice running down his back.  The M16 was a good rifle – he’d mastered it long ago, even though a normal deployment would have included a refresher course before they were sent off to war – yet it was useless against germs.  Even the greatest sniper in the world couldn't shoot up a germ.  They’d been assured that they had all been vaccinated against smallpox when they’d joined the army, but he knew that some of the men were fearful.  Men who had fought the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents – and shown great courage and determination – were helpless when it came to fighting germs.  They might have been vaccinated – assuming that the vaccine held good now – but what about their families?  His blood ran cold when he thought of Lindsey.  She was a nurse, yet had she been vaccinated?

It felt strange to be a Sergeant again, let alone placed in command of twenty soldiers and five vehicles.  The sudden nature of the call-up had meant that several command slots were unfilled and would remain so, at least until the stragglers could join up with their units.  The Colonel who had been issuing orders at the barracks had wondered if they had deserted, but Doug was fairly certain that they had merely been caught on holiday or away from their bleepers.  The chances were that they would trickle in over the next couple of days, or at least report in and be transferred to another National Guard unit elsewhere.

It felt even stranger to be deploying – with loaded weapons and armoured vehicles – in the American countryside, but they had practised isolating the city before.  If a nuke had gone off in New York, as so many terrorists had threatened over the years, the population would almost certainly try to flee, carrying with them radioactive dust from the explosion.  They’d even practiced sealing the city in case of a disease outbreak, although that had never really been tested.  They’d sealed off cities in Iraq, but America?  None of them had ever seriously believed that it would happen, no matter what the terrorists claimed.  Terrorists made all kinds of claims, including some that were nothing more than impossible threats.

The NYPD had started setting up the roadblock ahead of them, but it was rapidly growing apparent that the police were overwhelmed.  It hadn't been long since the President had spoken – she could at least have given them time to deploy, he'd thought at the time – yet there were already hundreds of cars trying to make their way onto the interstate and escape.  God alone knew where they thought they were going, but it didn't matter.  Everyone in New York had to remain in New York, just to ensure that the disease spread no further.

“Deploy,” he ordered.  One of the vehicles was a truck carrying roadblocks that would have deterred anything short of a tank.  The National Guardsmen dismounted from their vehicles – the two Bradleys were moved into commanding positions, where their weapons could threaten anyone thinking about trying to punch through – and took up positions behind the police line.  The policemen looked relived to see them, even if some of them stared at the Bradley in horror.  Doug could understand their feelings.  The idea of using an armoured vehicle – almost a tank – to threaten American citizens was horrifying.  “Move into position and get ready to act.”

He refused to show any concern as he sauntered over to the police line, yet he was trembling inside.  This could go very bad very quickly.  There were hundreds of people shouting at the policemen now, trying to force them to open their lines and allow them to escape the city.  E saw bankers, stockbrokers and lawyers, mixed in with teachers, builders and even a handful of children.  There were kids screaming their heads off, wives pleading with their husbands to shout louder – as if shouting louder would get them what they wanted – and dogs barking incessantly.  The whole situation was spinning out of control.

We’re not really equipped for riot duties, he thought, bitterly.  It was the age-old story.  Whenever someone practiced for an emergency, they always left out the emergency.  Instead of the military machine moving smoothly towards its destination, there were hitches, glitches and deliberate enemy action.  There were no friendly umpires in real life.  Friction would get into the military machine and it would start to grind to a halt.  If they’d had time to prepare, but they hadn’t had time to prepare, which meant that if the mob broke through the police lines, he would have to open fire with lethal weapons or let them through.  Either one would almost certainly spell the end of his career.

“It’s getting worse,” the police sergeant said.  They shared a long look of shared – and fearful – understanding.  “There’s a line of cars all the way back to the city.”

Doug nodded, wincing as someone started to blow his horn.  Other drivers got in on the act and suddenly there was an incessant blare of hooting, all blurring together into a single cacophony that threatened to deafen him.  He keyed his radio and reported in to the CO, knowing that there was no one who could be spared to assist him.  Sealing off even a single city would require thousands of additional soldiers and the entire army was being deployed.  He’d been told that Marines would be on their way from Virginia, from their base at Quantico, but they’d probably wind up being diverted elsewhere.  The whole nightmare was getting badly out of hand.  He ducked as shots rang out, one of the drivers opening fire with a handgun towards the police line.  A police sniper shot the man neatly through his head.  The crowd howled and seemed to threaten to advance towards the line.  Their sheer weight would break right through...

“I want a warning shot,” Doug ordered the Bradley’s gunner.  The M242 25mm chain gun mounted on the vehicle swung around and fired a burst over the heads of the crowd.  The racket was deafening and brought instant silence, apart from a handful of children who cheered at the tracer burst.  The Bradley’s main armament was impressive; indeed, it had been reported that, with the right ammunition, it had killed Iraqi tanks during Operation Iraqi Freedom.  It would go right through civilian cars like a hot knife through butter.

He stepped back and took the policeman’s megaphone.  “RETURN TO YOUR HOMES,” he bellowed.  “WE ARE PERMITTED TO USE DEADLY FORCE TO MAINTAIN THE BLOCKADE.  PLEASE RETURN HOME AND AWAIT HELP!”

Some of the cars started to move, their drivers surrendering to the inevitable and heading back to the city, but others looked as if they would prefer to stay and fight.  Doug couldn't blame them for wanting to escape the city, yet there was no choice.  They could not be allowed to leave, perhaps spreading the disease further.  A pair of armed policemen picked up the dead shooter and took the names of his family, before directing them to head back into the city.

“Hey,” someone called.  Doug looked over to see a moderately-attractive girl shouting at him.  He ambled over and looked down at her, knowing that she would be unnerved by his dark glasses.  “I don’t live in New York.”

Doug swore under his breath.  That was something he hadn't anticipated, but of course there would be people within the blockade who lived outside the city, who had nowhere to go in the city.  He motioned for her to wait and walked back to the APC, keying the radio and asking for instructions before walking back to the girl.  The instructions hadn't been perfect, but they were still trying to get everything working properly.  The dispatchers back at the barracks and within the city would be busier than they had ever been before.

“Go back into the city and report in to the nearest police station,” he told her.  “They will arrange somewhere for you to stay in New York.  Once we get vaccination programs under way, you will be vaccinated and will be able to return home.”

He watched the girl head back to her car, looking terrified.  He didn't blame her, either.  

***
The CB radio kept bleeping with updates from various travellers as Linda drove her family out of the city.  Jim sat beside her, one hand on the pistol at his belt, as he struggled to make sense of the endless and contradictory updates.  Some travellers were reporting that shots had been fired at one of the roadblocks; others were claiming that the soldiers had opened fire and killed hundreds of desperate refugees.  One man was even claiming that there were hundreds of smallpox victims staggering after him, moaning with pain or desire.  One of the boys pointed out that they sounded more like zombies to him.  Jim hadn't seen the funny side.

They’d worked through, years ago, just how the military could seal off the city.  The main roads out of the city could be sealed off easily – along with all of Manhattan, which made him grateful that he hadn't made his home on the island – but it would be harder to seal off the smaller roads.  Given time, they would be able to deploy the manpower to do that, which meant that the survivalists had to hurry.  She drove as quickly as she dared, ignoring speed limits and speed cameras, heading out of the city.  Others seemed to have the same idea, but not everyone – thankfully – had thought of the side roads.  That wouldn't last.  He caught sight of a police car moving in behind them and found himself considering, quite seriously, trying to shoot his way out before the policemen let them go.  In the time they would need to stop Jim and his family from escaping, they’d lose hundreds of others.  They drove onwards, risking slipping onto the interstate west of the city and gunned the engine.  Even under the best possible conditions, they would still need over six hours to reach the refuge.  They’d have to stop and refuel the car, if money was still any good.  If not...he forced himself not to think about the possibilities, or about what he might have to do to take care of his family.  

He poked the radio as they drove onwards.  The President’s message was being repeated time and time again, in-between hundreds of different pieces of advice, some of them contradictory or harmful.  The last time the group had considered going to the refuge had been during the bird flu crisis, when they had feared that it might spread to America and out of control.  He couldn't fault the President for restricting travel, even if it was unconstitutional, but he wasn't going to leave his family in New York, not now that it had been infected with smallpox.  He would not allow it to happen.

“Dad,” Robin said suddenly, “what about school?”

Jim found himself laughing hysterically.  He had often considered home-schooling the boys, but the truth was that neither he nor Linda had much aptitude for teaching.  The boys hadn't liked their school or the smarmy teachers, yet now he would give almost anything for things to go back to normal.  The world would never be the same again.  It struck him that he was among those who were best prepared for the crisis, yet he knew now he hadn't prepared enough.  How could he have prepared?

“I think that school is out for the foreseeable future,” he said, ruefully.  The boys didn't look unhappy, he was amused to note.  If they linked up with the others from the group, perhaps they could set up some kind of schooling.  Public schools, with hundreds of children in close proximity, would be a breeding ground for smallpox.  They’d remain closed for a very long time and, even after the crisis had been defeated, if it ever was defeated, no one would place so much faith in them again.  “We’ll see what happens when we get to the farm.”

The sky slowly faded to darkness as the night wore in.  They passed hundreds of other cars and trucks, even though the radio kept repeating warnings about unessential travel.  Many of the service stations and motels seemed to have decided to close early, although he was able to stop at a pump station and buy some gas.  He took the opportunity to splash out and purchase additional supplies for the SUV, knowing that money might soon be worthless.  It wasn't hard to work out what would happen when most of America's workforce refused to come into work.  The entire economy would collapse.  Businesses would go under, banks would fail, tax revenue would end...the entire country would enter an unprecedented economic nightmare from which it might never recover.  Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

“Get some sleep,” he ordered the boys, as they passed an army convoy heading the other way.  He half-expected the soldiers to stop them, but they just let them pass without even waving.  Perhaps, out in the countryside, there would be no attempt to impede traffic.  “We’ll be there tomorrow morning.”

The radio spoke endlessly of the need for calm.

Chapter Eight

It is important to remember that animals are not, by definition, human.  A medicine tested on an animal – such as a monkey – may not actually be effective when used on a human, or vice versa.  Even when dealing with diseases that can cross between species – like smallpox – it is still difficult to be sure that one cure will work for all.  This leaves us with the disturbing need to carry out human testing, intentionally or otherwise.
- Doctor Nicolas Awad

Washington DC, USA
Day 7

There was exactly one research facility that belonged solely to Project Wildfire, a former USAF base that had been decommissioned and placed under the care of a small caretaker crew.  The Wildfire experts had converted the base’s underground facilities into a series of research labs, patient rooms and secure storage facilities, knowing that if the base were ever to be activated, it would be required to study the effects of a biological attack.  No one outside a very small group of select people knew that the base was anything other than what it seemed, a disused airfield far enough from Washington for comfort.  

Cally Henderson lay on a bed within a private room, stripped of all dignity by her disease and the small army of doctors and nurses surrounding her.  Nicolas watched as they bent over her naked body, warped and mutilated by the hundreds of pustules covering her bare skin, taking samples and injecting her with fluids that might help keep her alive for another day or two.  IV lines ran from the ceiling, pumping in liquid food and painkillers, while smaller tubes had been attached to her vagina and anus.  The poor girl would have died by now, were it not for the medical intervention, yet Nicolas held no hope for her recovery.  The researchers had been charting the process of the disease – Henderson’s Disease, they’d started to call it – and had concluded that it was systematically wrecking her body.  They weren't even sure if Miss Henderson was still aware of her surroundings.

Nicolas grimaced as one of the pustules broke, scattering infectious material over the bed.  The woman had become little more than a walking pile of smallpox, so heavily infectious that anyone who went near her without a protective suit would almost certainly wind up infected with the disease.  Even death would bring no relief for the rest of the world, he knew, for smallpox would remain dangerous until her body was burned in a furnace.  When her body finally failed, despite everything they could do to keep her alive, she would be dissected and then, what remained of her body would be destroyed.  Even so, it hardly seemed to matter.  The disease was already loose in America, if not the entire world.

He turned away as the girl moaned in pain and looked towards the FBI’s massive chart of her life.  It would have alarmed any civil liberties campaigner if they had known just how comprehensively a person’s life could be profiled by the government, yet none of it answered the most important question of all; where in the world had Miss Henderson been infected with smallpox?  As an air hostess, she had been around the world, but there was nowhere outside the United States – yet, he reminded himself – that was reporting a smallpox epidemic.  The disease appeared to have come out of nowhere.  The pattern fitted a biological attack, of course, but even so...where had it come from?

Cally Henderson, in the week before she had called in sick, had been to three different countries; Saudi Arabia, France and Mexico.  While on her aircraft, she had met literally thousands of people, from all walks of life.  Depending on when she had actually become contagious, she could have spread the disease all around the world on her own.  She had certainly infected most of her workmates, who had all been in the early stages of Henderson’s Disease when medical personnel had reached their homes.  If she had been the only carrier, it suggested that Henderson’s Disease had an incubation period of just under a week – unlike regular smallpox, which had an incubation period of twelve to fourteen days -  but there was no way to know that for sure.  If there were other carriers, the disease might have a longer incubation period.

He took one last look at Miss Henderson, who was moaning in pain as a needle gently penetrated her arm, and walked away.  It seemed obscene to keep her alive when they could spare her suffering, but there was no choice.  He told himself that they had to know everything they could about the disease, yet it meant prolonging – perhaps even worsening – her suffering.  There were plenty of people in the world who deserved to suffer, he knew, including the perverted doctors who had warped smallpox into Henderson’s Disease, but a doctor was not meant to encourage suffering.  He had known that he would have to play fast and loose with his medical ethics when he joined Wildfire, all in the name of the greater good, yet it was harder now he was facing a real patient.  The only other emergencies he had faced had been in drills, where no one had actually suffered and it had been easy to prescribe harsh and desperate measures.

His Bluetooth phone buzzed.  “Doctor, this is Jack,” a voice said.  “We’re ready for you in Room Three.”

Nicolas grimaced as he passed through a set of airlocks and into a long passage leading down to a second set of secure rooms.  He had always taken his oaths seriously – above all, first do no harm – and what they were about to do broke his oaths, along with hundreds of national and international agreements on just what doctors and researchers could and could not do.  He told himself that there were already hundreds of known cases of Henderson’s Disease – and doubtless thousands of unknown cases, who would begin to show symptoms over the next couple of days – and desperate measures were required, yet the whole concept disgusted him.  It smacked of what the Nazis or the Japanese had done back in the Second World War, or, for that matter, of the perverted genius that had created Henderson’s Disease.

Years ago, in 1796, Doctor Edward Jenner had realised that milkmaids – who caught cowpox as a result of their work – never seemed to catch smallpox, which had roared through England from time to time.  In an experiment that would have horrified his future descendents, Jenner had taken cowpox from a young milkmaid and transferred it to a young boy, who had promptly caught the disease.  When the subject had recovered, Jenner had attempted to infect him with smallpox, an act that could well have killed him.  The boy hadn’t caught the disease.  Jenner had repeated the experiment several times and then started encouraging people to spread the word, using cowpox to immunise people against the far more deadly smallpox.  Jenner had become known as the Father of Immunology for his work, saving the human race from one of the deadliest scourges known to man.  He would have been astonished to discover that, in the future, testing new and experimental cures was so hedged around by rules and regulations that the process had practically ground to a halt and human experimentation was effectively banned.

Nicolas stopped outside the viewing room and pressed his hand against the biometric reader, allowing it to scan his fingerprints before allowing him access.  The viewing room was dominated by a one-way mirror, allowing him to see into the four sealed medical rooms, each one inhabited by a single person.  A handful of other researchers were watching with interest, but no one spoke.  Nicolas knew that they shared the same ambivalence about the experiment that he felt himself, the certain knowledge that they were doing something necessary, matched with the concern that they were doing something inhuman.  If word got out, there would be uproar.  

He glanced down at his notes.  Subject One was a former infantryman who had been caught in the act of raping an Iraqi girl back during the occupation.  The media had made much of the act, but they had largely refrained from noticing that Subject One had been tried, sentenced and bundled off to the toughest prison in the United States.  Subject Two was a former USAF officer who had been convicted of terrorism after planting a bomb in a USAF aircraft, claiming that his religion demanded opposition to his country. The important detail, as far as Project Wildfire was concerned, was that both of the former military personnel had been injected with smallpox vaccine during their induction into the military.

Subject Three, on the other hand, came from a civilian background.  He had raped and murdered four young girls before he had finally been caught and sentenced to death by an outraged jury.  He had been working the appeals process ever since, struggling to remain alive, despite the country’s fury.  His fellow prisoners had taken a dim view of him; his face bore the scars from a brutal beating he’d taken while in the showers, before he’d been placed in solitary confinement for his own protection.  Subject Four, the only woman in the group, had deliberately murdered her own children, for no apparent reason.  She too had been under sentence of death when she’d been pulled out of Death Row and transferred to the base.

Nicolas shook his head as the prisoners paced their room.  They didn't know it, but their compartments were linked to Miss Henderson’s room and smallpox particles were drifting through the air towards them.  The doctors would watch and monitor to see which of the prisoners caught the disease and study how it attacked their system, charting its course from infection to death.  He wondered if the prisoners knew what was going on, or if they would have volunteered for the experiment if they had been told what was going to happen, yet they had to remain unaware.  The medical system in the outside world was already tottering under the weight of people thinking themselves ill, convinced that they were suffering from smallpox and were going to die any second, and the prisoners couldn't be allowed to warp the results in the same way.  The whole experiment disgusted him, yet there was no choice.  

The President hadn't been entirely truthful when she’d addressed the nation.  There wasn’t enough smallpox vaccine to inject everyone in the continental United States.  The various drug companies had been urged to produce more as rapidly as possible, but the most optimistic figures suggested that it would be months before production was re-established and new vaccines started to come off the line.  The immunisation program was proceeding as rapidly as possible, yet it was proving a difficult task.  It didn't help that the internet was already buzzing with rumours that the government intended to withhold the vaccine from certain elements of the public, purely in the hope that those elements would do them the favour of dropping dead.  It was absurd, yet people were starting to panic.  They would believe anything if it offered them the hope of surviving infection.  

He shook his head and walked out of the chamber.  The other doctors would continue to observe the patients, tracking the disease, but he didn't want to even look at them.  Deliberately infecting people – even criminals who deserved to suffer in the most horrific manner possible – was horrific.  It had been so much easier to draw up the protocols when there had been nothing more than an intellectual exercise.  He passed through a secure checkpoint - even within the base, there were areas that were off-limits to half of the base’s personnel – and headed down into the research labs.  In sealed rooms, robotic arms moved small samples of disease around, while doctors studied it through microscopes and compared it to the DNA records of other variants of smallpox.

“I have good news and bad news,” Doctor McCoy said.  “This particular variant of smallpox is behaving very oddly.”

“So it’s smallpox, Jim, but not as we know it,” Nicolas said.  Doctor McCoy scowled at him.  The joke would probably have been funnier if people hadn’t been making it ever since he had qualified as a medical doctor.  “What exactly is it doing?”

McCoy pointed to one of the sample trays.  “For a start, it is multiplying very quickly within the test materials,” he said.  He tapped a key and brought up an image from one of the microscopes, displaying it above the case.  The smallpox was attacking the sample of human flesh terrifyingly quickly.  “I would go so far as to suggest that the incubation period for Henderson’s Disease is less than a week, perhaps as little as four days.  If someone was already ill, the chances are that it would actually bring them down faster.”

Nicolas nodded impatiently.  A person whose immune system was already weakened – either through AIDS or simply through having a minor infection – would be in no state to fight off smallpox, or even resist it for any length of time.  AIDS was not easy to catch – although thousands of doctors and quacks had exaggerated the dangers for years – yet once a person had it, it was very difficult to cure them.  The drug companies were still working on a vaccine for AIDS, but there had been no real progress.

“Worse,” McCoy continued, “it is alarmingly contagious.  I think that a victim actually becomes contagious within two to three days and starts spreading the disease, unaware that there is something badly wrong with them.  The disease seems to be airborne and only a small level of infection is required to spread the disease.  In short, it appears to be the perfect biological weapon.  I would be very surprised to hear that we’d managed to contain it within the cities.”

“I know,” Nicolas said.  The military had thrown up the road blocks as quickly as possible, but he knew that thousands of people had managed to get out of the cities before the road blocks had been put into position, while hundreds more were still trying to sneak out past the military and escape.  The odds were good that most of them hadn't been infected, yet if only one or two of them had been infected, they were likely to spread the disease into the countryside as well.  Farmers and their families were on the list of people to be vaccinated as quickly as possible, but what would happen if the disease was already burning through the countryside?  Nothing good, he was sure.  “Is there any good news?”

“It doesn't last long in the open air,” McCoy said, standing up.  “We know that UV light can be used to kill germs, but it seems that even bright sunlight will kill Henderson’s Disease, at least in the air.  It won’t do anything about a dead body – that’s still going to remain a danger until it’s burnt to ashes – yet there will be limits on how far it can spread.”

“Let’s hope so,” Nicolas agreed.  There were already hundreds of cases within New York alone.  If the disease continued to spread, the cities would be turned into charnel houses.   Some irresponsible talking heads were already wondering if the military was planning to nuke American cities, just to prevent the disease from spreading further.  There were times when Nicolas cursed the American media, for talk like that would only spread panic.  It would be every man for himself if panic got out of control.  “Is there anything else?”

“So far, no one with the vaccine has caught it,” McCoy said, flatly.  “I’m due back in New York to check up on the policeman who found Miss Henderson, but so far he shows no sign of smallpox, even in his blood.  I would hesitate to be completely certain, yet I think that that’s a hopeful sign.  Someone who was infected, without being contagious, would still show smallpox in their blood.”

Nicolas nodded.  The real fear was that the smallpox vaccine would prove to be completely useless.  Only someone with an insane mindset would be happy to modify smallpox to the point where there was no known vaccine, but then, only a lunatic would release it into the general population anyway.  Cally Henderson, even assuming that she had been infected six days before she had collapsed, had been outside the country and the people she might have infected had gone further.  Henderson’s Disease could be all around the world by now.  The President had warned the rest of the world, but the odds were that it had already spread into hundreds of other countries.  

He scowled.  There were international protocols for sharing vaccine supplies if necessary, yet there was almost no cooperation from the rest of the world.  It wasn’t entirely surprising either; only a handful of countries kept smallpox vaccine on hand and all of them would need it for their own populations.  If smallpox could be confined to the United States, perhaps it would be possible to get additional supplies from the rest of the world, but it would be a long time before the world was convinced that that was true.  In their place, Nicolas would have made the same decision.  

“Doctor,” Doctor Sally Pagan called.  “I think you need to look at this.”

Nicolas and Doctor McCoy walked over to her station.  “I was comparing Henderson’s Disease to the recorded variants of smallpox that we store here,” Sally explained.  The CDC was twitchy about actually storing live samples of biological weapons, but the computer records could allow them to run comparisons without live samples.  “I found a partial match.”

“Show me,” Nicolas ordered.  The display blinked up in front of him, one showing the increasingly familiar shape of Henderson’s Disease, the other showing a recorded series of images from the past.  It was a nightmare given shape and form.  “Ah.”

Doctor McCoy put it into words.  “Shit,” he said.  “Nicky, if that is accurate we now know where the disease came from...”

“That’s not the important question,” Nicolas said, grimly.  “The real question is how did it get here?”

Chapter Nine

It is quite likely that, as the biological weapon makes its way through the American population, the medical system will be completely overwhelmed.  Other buildings, from schools to prisons, will have to be pressed into service as makeshift hospitals.  It goes without saying that stockpiles of medical supplies will be rapidly exhausted.
- Doctor Nicolas Awad

New York, USA
Day 7

The HAZMAT suit felt cumbersome against her skin, but Mija Cat never even considered taking it off.  The last thing she wanted to do was breathe in smallpox particles and come down with the disease herself.  The entire city seemed to have largely shut down, with the handful of people who had ventured onto the streets wearing facemasks and keeping their distance from other people.  The pharmacies had found themselves completely sold out of masks and other medical supplies, while there had been a run on food stores and other vital supplies.  It would probably grow worse in the next few days, she knew; the average New Yorker didn't keep food on hand for more than a few days.  By then, if the government hadn’t managed to organise food distribution, there would be riots.

She hadn't wanted to go out on the streets herself, but her editor felt that the New York Times had a duty to get the word out to the public, even if it was only on the internet rather than the more standard print edition.  The more senior reporters had managed to get out of visiting hospitals and other places where disease victims were likely to gather, forcing the editor to offer her and other junior reporters the chance to shine.  A few days ago, she would have loved the idea of a post that couldn't be taken from her by a senior reporter looking for another scoop, but now she would have happily passed it over to the first asshole who asked.  The HAZMAT suit, issued to the newspaper staff years ago, wasn't much of a confidence booster.  She’d seen enough pictures of infected victims to know that she didn't want it to happen to her.  If she hadn't had to pay the bills, she would have told the editor to go give the post to someone else.

The Brooklyn Hospital Centre was surrounded by a wall of policemen, some glancing sharply at the suit she wore.  Several of New York’s hospitals had been besieged by mobs demanding to be vaccinated at once – if not yesterday – and the police had had to be called in to prevent a riot.  The mobs had only been dispersed when the policemen had pointed out that the longer they stayed together, the greater the chance of catching something nasty from their fellow protesters.  Mija held up her press pass as the guards halted her, running a pair of bright lights over her body.  The UV lights would kill any disease particles clinging to the suit, or so she had been told.  Some of the talking heads on television had questioned that, wondering if anything could be trusted completely when it came to an act of terrorism.  Mija just hoped that they were right.

“You must be Mija,” a voice said.  A middle-aged woman was standing there, looking tired and worn.  She was wearing a nurse’s uniform and a mask that obscured her words and made her sound as if she was deliberately slurring them to annoy the reporters.  Mija was not unfamiliar with how civilians reacted around reporters, showing a mixture of fear, annoyance and disgust.  Even the ones who wanted their names in the papers distrusted reporters, for it was rare for a reporter to be held to account for her or her mistakes.  “I’m Lindsey Mann, one of the nurses at this hospital.”

She didn't offer to shake hands, for which Mija was rather grateful.  The nurse wore heavy gloves as well – indeed, she had covered almost all of her skin – but it was impossible to know if she was infected already.  As Lindsey led her inside the hospital, they passed through a second set of UV lights, followed by a chemical mist that seemed to hang in the air.  A handful of patients looked up at them from the Waiting Room, their gazes defocused and unconcerned with the surrounding world.  Mija wondered if they were infected, or if they were merely suffering from ghost symptoms.  If all of the reported infected were actually infected, Olson had confidently pronounced, the entire population of New York would have been wiped out several times over.

“Welcome to the Brooklyn Hospital Centre,” Lindsey said.  She had the tired sound of a person who was parroting the party line, without really believing her own words.  Mija was rather proud of her deduction.  “The senior staff and the regular nurses are working on the patients, so I have been assigned to show you around.”  Her voice darkened.  “It is a complete waste of my time.”

Mija winced at the bite in her words.  “I understand,” she said, swallowing the urge to mouth platitudes about the public’s right to know.  “Thank you for your time.”

“You won’t thank me once you see what you will see,” Lindsey warned, darkly.  “I’ve been working and sleeping here for the last two days, ever since I was called up for duty.  It has never been quite so bad in all the years I have been working in this city.  I don’t think it was this bad in Florida during hurricane season.”

She led the way down into a corridor.  Mija stopped dead, unable to believe her eyes.  The corridor was lined with hospital beds, each one carrying a single patient.  The patients ranged from young to old – there seemed to be a greater number of people over the age of sixty – and their faces were covered in ominous red spots.  An old woman’s hand had fallen out of her bed and hung limply, pointing down towards the floor.  It too was covered in red spots, spreading rapidly over her skin.  Perhaps Mija was imagining it, but she was sure that the spots were forming and multiplying right in front of her eyes.  She was suddenly intensely grateful that she couldn't smell anything through the suit’s filters.

Lindsey stopped by the old woman and carefully moved her arm onto the bed.  The old woman showed no sign of awareness, no understanding that there was a nurse standing beside her bed.  Her eyes were wide and staring at nothing.  Mija looked from patient to patient, but even the ones who seemed awake and aware were lethargic.  She caught sight of a small boy – he couldn't be older than ten – covered in red spots.  A child – she couldn’t tell the sex – was screaming its head off, comforted by a mother who was herself covered in red spots.  Mija felt a sudden urge to vomit and swallowed hard.  Vomiting inside the suit would have been truly disgusting.

“I don’t understand,” she said, as Lindsey motioned for her to walk further along the corridor.  “Why aren’t these people in a hospital room?”

Lindsey looked over at her, her dark eyes tired.  “The rooms are packed, young lady,” she said, sharply.  “Do you think that any doctor or nurse worthy of the name would leave people here if there was any other choice?”

Mija shook her head.  “This place has four hundred beds officially,” Lindsey snapped.  “We’ve managed to stuff in another three hundred or so into the rooms, by throwing out hundreds of regulations intended to keep this place clean and healthy.  Even so, we’ve had to cut down on cleaning and disinfecting, which means that the hospital is becoming a breeding ground for all kinds of bacteria.  One of the nastier traits of this damned disease is that it weakens the body’s resistance to all other diseases.  We’ve had people coming down sick with tummy bugs and colds, which are spreading even through here!”

Her voice hardened.  “Do you know that hospitals used to be places where no one sane would wish to go, purely because of the danger of infection, of catching something worse than what you already had?  This place used to be clean and as safe as a hospital ever was; now, even if we get a handle on the smallpox outbreak, we will lose hundreds of patients to other diseases.  We’re already pushing the limits pretty badly; what happens when we get the next wave of patients?  Where are we going to put them?”

Mija had no answer and swallowed nervously as Lindsey finally led her into an official room.  She saw what the nurse had meant at once.  There seemed to be hundreds of patients shoved into the room, deprived of everything from peace to privacy.  She caught sight of several patients who were sharing beds, both partners covered with dark red spots.  Now that Lindsey had pointed it out, she saw stains on the floor and on the sheets.  One patient was hacking up blood, coughing it out onto the floor; she didn't want to think about how infectious the blood might be.  A nurse headed over to him and tried to clean up the mess, but the patient just kept coughing.

“They develop sores in their mouths fairly quickly,” Lindsey explained, as they reached the end of the room.  A pair of junior nurses was trying to convince some older patients to drink water and liquid food, but the patients seemed unaware of their efforts.  “Once the sores are formed, they start having difficulty breathing and eating.  They’re very contagious during that time so it’s actually hard for us to help them.”

Mija blinked.  “You’re not vaccinated?”

“No,” Lindsey said.  Mija stared at her.  “Apart from a handful of doctors and nurses who worked for the military, or who went overseas, we have hardly anyone here vaccinated yet.  A number of the retired medical staff were vaccinated when smallpox vaccines were common, but we don’t know if they’re still effective or not.  Even so, they came here and volunteered to work, saving as many people as they can.”

“But I thought that everyone was going to be vaccinated,” Mija protested.  “They can't leave you all here like this...”

Lindsay gave her a cynical smile.  “Your generation,” she said, rolling her eyes.  “You always want it now, now, NOW!  Why do you never understand that there is no such thing as instant gratification in the real world?  They have to get the vaccine out of storage, and then to New York, and then they have to find time to inject us and hope that it takes.  Until then, we have to soldier on and pray that we don’t get infected.  Half of us could be already infected and we wouldn't know about it until it was far too late.”

She smiled at Mija’s expression.  “Come on,” she said.  “There’s quite a bit more to see.”

Mija didn’t want to see anything else, but she followed Lindsey tamely into a colder room.  Blue plastic bags lay on the floor, each one large enough to hold a human body; it took her a moment to realise that she was looking at body bags, several clearly occupied.  Bright red hazard warning signs covered the area, warning her not to go anywhere near the containers, while a pair of armed guards wearing military-grade protective suits waved her off.  She didn't press the point.

“We’ve lost seventy people so far,” Lindsey said, in the voice of someone who had become used to horror.  “Most of them were old, over seventy years old and their bodies couldn't take strain of trying to fight off the virus.  That’s a worrying development because many of them were old enough to have been injected and immunised years ago.  The others were younger, including a number of drug addicts and AIDS victims.  Their bodies were already too weak to fight for long.”

Mija looked up at her.  “What are you going to do with them?”

“We reported their deaths,” Lindsey said.  “I believe that they will be transported out of the city and incinerated.  They can't be buried normally because they would eventually be dug up, releasing smallpox back into the world.  Once they are incinerated, their remains will be buried in an unmarked grave.”

She led the way up the stairs and through another set of UV lights.  A group of young women were sleeping on blankets under the glare, their faces tired and worn.  “Welcome to our home away from home,” Lindsey said.  “We’re not allowed to go home until our families are vaccinated, so we have to remain here, even when we need to sleep.  Half of the nursing staff sleeps here or in the male dorm while the other half works.  We’re going to go insane here.”

Mija found herself grasping for questions, but she didn’t know what to say.  Lois would have known exactly what to say to provoke a reaction, yet Mija liked to think that she was a better person.  If she’d known that she would have to ask imprudent questions...no, that thought was absurd.  She had known it when she’d taken the job, but she hadn't really understood what it meant.  Lindsey’s personal story was nothing more than grist for the reporting mill, along with the stories of her fellow nurses and their patients.

“I see,” she said, neutrally.  Lindsey gave her a sharp look.  “Is there anything you would like to say to the readers?”

“Tell them not to come in to the hospital unless they’re certain that they’re ill,” Lindsey snapped.  “We keep getting people who are not infected coming in and wasting our time.  And tell them to follow the Mayor’s goddamned orders about quarantine and remaining in their homes.  If we could break the chain of infection, we might be able to stop the disease before we lose half of the fucking country.”

On that note, the interview ended.  Lindsey escorted Mija out of the building – after a pass through the UV lights and a chemical bath – and waved her goodbye.  Mija looked back at the building, knowing what was going on inside the walls, and walked over to the newspaper van waiting for her.  There would be another chemical bath before she could get out of the suit and back into normal clothes.  And once she was back at the office...what sort of story was she going to write?  How could she tell the world what was happening?

The thought tormented her as the van made its way back towards the office.  Her editor would want a story that would make the government look incompetent, or something that would have a hint of a scandal, for scandals sold papers.  She didn't want to write such a story, for it would only spread panic.  She wanted to write about hope, but what hope was there for the city?  If the vaccines didn't get into New York in time, how many people would die?

***
“Look, I’m telling you that I have to get through,” the man said.  He waved his papers threateningly, seemingly unaware of the M16s that weren’t – quite – levelled in his direction.  Doug would have been surprised if he hadn't known that the soldiers were armed, but perhaps he simply believed they wouldn't shoot.  “I have a very important appointment in Washington and I need to get through the blockade...”

“Yes, so you said, four times,” Doug said, with as much patience as he could muster.  Two days of duty on the road block hadn't endeared the duty to him, even though things were a little more organised now.  The National Guard was finally sorting itself out after the chaos of the first day; now, with roving patrols and relief teams, the blockade was a great deal tighter.  “And I told that unless you had an exception permit, you could not get through the blockade.”

The man stared at him, clearly unused to defiance.  The only people who were allowed through the road blocks, at least in theory, were military personnel who had been trapped inside the blockade when it had been declared.  They would have been vaccinated and could be forwarded to their units – or, in several cases, temporarily assigned to new units.  Anyone else had to wait inside the blockade, something that hadn’t gone down well with the public.  The remains of several vehicles bore mute testament to several attempts to break through.

“You don't know who I am,” the man insisted.  “I am the Deputy CEO of...”

“I don't care if you’re God Almighty,” Doug interrupted.  “You are not allowed through the blockade.  I suggest that you return to your home and remain there, awaiting further orders from FEMA and the CDC.  I cannot...”

He broke off as he heard a girl cry out.  Doug was used to screaming children, picking up on their parents’ fears, by now, but there was something about it that sent warning bells off in his mind.  Casually, one hand on his holster, he stepped away from the man and headed over to his car.  His daughter, a girl wearing only the latest brands and fashions, seemed to cower away from him, but it was too late.  The red spots on her face were all too clear.

“You fucking idiot,” Doug breathed.  The temptation to turn and punch the man in the face was almost overwhelming.  If he hadn't had to set a good example for his men, he might have given in to temptation.  He was sure that not a jury in the world would convict him.  “She’s infected, you...”

He broke off.  “I ought to shoot you right now,” he snapped, drawing his pistol.  The man suddenly cringed back, aware of the danger for the first time.  “I ought to...”

Doug caught himself with an effort.  “Go back to the city and take her to a hospital and then do what they tell you,” he ordered.  “I’ll do you one favour; I won’t take a note of your name if you go now.  I have no idea what the penalty is for deliberately spreading the disease, but damn me if you wouldn't be convicted by a jury.  Go!”

He watched as the man drove away, shaking his head.  The last message he’d had from Lindsey hadn't been very encouraging.  The whole crisis was growing worse.

Chapter Ten

Who in their right mind would expect the federal government to take care of them?  Even with the best will in the world, the government is simply incapable of dealing with even a minor crisis.  It exists to serve the rich and powerful; the ordinary people are lucky if they get anything out of it.  It is far better to prepare for the day when disaster finally strikes than rely on the government to do anything for you.  Get food, get drink, get guns...and stand up for your rights.
- Jim Revells

Near Mannington VA, USA
Day 8

The tiny farm was set well back from the road, hidden within a cluster of trees and plants.  It had been years since it had been part of the national food supply, but the people who had owned it had converted it into a place that grew most of their fruits and vegetables.  A small collection of chickens, a pair of sheep, a cow and four horses completed the picture of a very small farm, owned by farming enthusiasts.  Jim’s family had purchased the place years ago, after the previous owner had been busted for growing cannabis on the property.  It had been perfect for their purposes.

Over the years, his family had moved in everything they could imagine needing to stay out of sight for a long time.  There were entire racks of military-issue MRE packages, frozen vaults containing food and drink, plenty of medical equipment and dozens of guns.  The survivalists had believed that, in the event of a major crash, ammunition would soon prove to be more valuable than gold, so they had stocked up enough ammunition to fight a minor war.  Many of the guns were of dubious legality – being firm believers in the Second Amendment, Jim and his extended family chose to pay no heed to petty anti-gun laws – but as long as they remained out of sight, they were out of mind as far as the law was concerned.  The few guns Jim chose to show his visitors were merely the tip of the iceberg.  Last, but far from least, was an entire survivalists reference library, printed out and stored below the ground.  If an EMP had turned all computers into useless chunks of plastic and metal, Jim would still be able to access knowledge…and knowledge, he knew, was power.

When the sun rose above the horizon, Jim was already at work, checking through the farm’s facilities and stock.  Brian, his younger brother and the only one with any permanent attitude for farming, had maintained the farm in excellent condition, so well that Jim almost felt guilty about having hardly visited before the crisis had materialised.  He’d funded Brian, of course, with nearly sixty percent of his income fed into the farm and the massive stockpile of equipment, yet it bothered him to realise that his family was now largely dependent on his brother.  It had been too long since he had collected eggs for himself, or milked a cow.  He knew that he was ahead of most of the population – who barely had any idea of where milk actually came from – yet it wasn't enough.  His knowledge was barely enough to show him just how little he knew.

“The hens haven’t been doing too badly this year,” Brian informed him, as they worked.  His brother was quiet, rarely speaking when there was nothing to say.  He had never married, not even taken a partner, something that had led to accusations of homosexuality from the more conservative members of the family.  Jim didn’t care.  His brother was family, after all, and it was the job of a brother to look after the other members of his family.  “I actually thought about investing more money and buying additional chickens, but I decided against it.”

Jim nodded.  Had they known in advance exactly what form the crisis would take, they would have been able to make far more specific precautions.  As it was, the vast stockpile of medical gear they had amassed was slightly skewed, with more attention being paid to emergency care than countering a disease.  It might not matter anyway; he’d read up on smallpox over the night and he had been distressed to discover just how hard it was to cure smallpox.  The early doctors had used cowpox to give some immunity to smallpox, but even if Bessie – their cow – had had cowpox, he saw no way to safely infect the boys with the lesser disease.  The books had warned that there were some medical procedures that should not be carried out except under the most desperate of situations.

He had surfed the internet looking for ways to obtain smallpox vaccine ahead of the rest of the country, but it seemed that there were few reliable leads.  The government was trying to distribute vaccine as fast as possible, yet the process was a slow one and concentrated on the men and women who were responding to the crisis.  Farmers were being fast-tracked on the list, but Jim wasn't sure if he wanted to risk applying and drawing the government’s attention in their direction.  They had, after all, escaped from New York, something that the government would take a dim view of.  Who knew what they might be carrying?  Jim was sure that he and his family were not infected, but there was no way to know for sure until symptoms started to develop.  There were websites offering vaccine shipped in from the more unstable countries – he was amused to see that Nigeria was apparently offering smallpox vaccine to anyone giving their bank details to the company – yet he had no way of knowing if they were reliable.  The internet was already talking about horror stories where someone would inject themselves with something they’d purchased on the black market, only to discover that it was poison or even nothing more than a placebo.

“It can’t be helped now,” Jim said.  There were hundreds of small farms scattered around West Virginia; perhaps, when the crisis was finally under control, they would be able to purchase more animals from the other farmers.  “What about our power systems?”

Brian grinned.  “And you thought that I had converted to greenery when I started buying up those solar panels and the windmill,” he said.  There was no longer any need for the farm to grind grain, but the windmill had been built anyway by the previous owners – for no apparent reason – and Brian had never bothered to demolish it.  “We have enough power on hand for our immediate purposes and we don’t need to tap the grid and reveal our existence.  It won’t last forever, but it will serve for a few months.”

“That’s a relief,” Jim said.  If enough people died, according to some of the projections, the country’s infrastructure would collapse.  America could get by without bankers or social workers – two professions he held in complete disdain – but if it lost the power station crews, or the engineers who would fix the damage, the results were likely to be unpleasant.  Besides, one of the reasons they had bought and fitted out the farm was to hide from an evil government that some of the family had seen coming back during the Carter years.  The last thing they had wanted was to draw power from the grid, which would have attracted attention eventually.  “We’d better get back indoors.  Linda will be getting worried.”

Linda was working at the stove when they went inside, frying a breakfast of eggs and bacon, along with some healthier cereal for the boys.  Jim had long believed that it didn’t matter how fatty a breakfast one had, provided that one got lots of exercise, but Linda had insisted that the boys – her children – had some healthy foods as well.  She had even made sarcastic remarks about constipation when he had tried to argue with her.  The boys were helping sort out plates and glasses, pouring hot coffee into mugs.  Robin passed Jim a cup and he sipped it, smiling at how coffee always seemed to taste stronger out in the countryside.

“Please be seated,” Linda said, as she dished out the food.  “Let us say grace.”

Jim led his family in the prayer, with a special addition for the members of the family who had not yet made it to the farm, before inviting the boys to tuck in.  They had good healthy appetites at the best of times, but when they were out in the country they ate more, aware that their father and uncle were going to make them help with the chores before they did anything else.  Robin had been hinting about shooting practice, something that Jim could hardly deny was necessary, but chores came first.  A farm required constant maintenance, from feeding the animals to mucking out their pens and everyone – with no exceptions – had to help out.  Even Linda, who did most of the cooking in the farmhouse, helped with the animals as well.

“This is excellent,” Jim said, in honest delight.  Brian had smoked and cured bacon, before placing it in the freezer and storing it for the family.  He could have sold the bacon to outsiders, except that that would have drawn attention from the feds.  There was a health food farm only a few miles away that had been raided on multiple occasions by the feds, who had left it in a mess each time without compensation or even due cause.  They hadn’t found any trace of drugs, or anything else illegal; as far as Jim could tell, they’d done it just for the hell of it.  “You’re a wonderful cook, woman.”

“Call me woman again and you’ll be wearing it,” Linda said, patting him on the head.  Her voice hardened as the two boys sprang up from their seats.  “And you’d better help with the washing up before you do anything else.”

The boys promptly turned pleading looks on their father, but Jim backed his partner up.  “Hop to it, boys,” he ordered, in a tone they knew better than to disobey.  There might be hundreds of thousands of children who were brought up by liberal parents who never made them do chores, even something as minor as washing up after their meals, but Jim knew better.  If the boys worked for their pocket money, they would come to appreciate the value of money far sooner than their friends, who seemed to think of their parents as nothing more than bankers, cooks and maids.  Work first; fun and games later.  “You have a lot of work to do.”

A couple of hours passed slowly as they did the washing up, followed by tending the animals and some other minor chores that required two people to work on them.  Jim smiled at the complaints from the boys as they mucked out Bessie, transferring her cowpats to the pile of manure Brian used to fertilise the ground.   He’d seen city-slickers who had realised just what role cow shit played in farming and fainted dead away, but the boys were tougher than that.  Brian supervised, watching them carefully and handing out a tongue-lashing from time to time.  The boys would get better soon, once they got back into practice.

There was always something to do on a farm, but once the immediate chores were done, Jim went back into the living room and flicked on the television.  He had told the boys more than once that their chores came before anything, even homework, yet he needed to know what was going on in the outside world.  He flicked through CNN and came to FOX, his own favourite channel.  Much to his surprise, the television displayed a debate between two well-known congressmen.  Unlike the debates he’d seen before the crisis, it was obvious that the congressmen were not in the same room and were – clearly – using cameras built into their computers, rather than a proper studio.  It made them look faintly ridiculous.

“The President stated, in her speech, that the Constitution is not a suicide pact,” one of the congressmen said.  He was a conservative known for being one step to the left of Genghis Khan, who had left the Republican Party on the grounds that it was too liberal.  He was very popular with the more right-wing sections of the population, although he was smeared constantly by the left-wing media.  There were times when Jim thought that that accounted for his popularity.  “While I feel that there has been too much disregard for the Constitution in the last two decades, I cannot feel that clinging to a right to travel – and spreading Henderson’s Disease further – is a particularly good idea.”

“But one must question, also, the value of allowing the military to conduct operations on American soil,” his opponent said.  He was a known liberal, with a voting record that had been characterised as far too close to pure socialism for comfort.  Jim distrusted people like him on sight, knowing that their faith in government intervention and higher taxes – to pay for the interventions – ended up leaving the ordinary taxpayer worse off in the long run.  “So far, we have lost more people to military gunners than we have lost to Henderson’s Disease.”

“Congressman Featherstone,” the right-winger said, “are you not aware that all the people who have been shot were shot in the act of trying to break through the road blocks and get out into the countryside?  I am aware that your party seems to believe that no one is ever responsible for their actions – it’s all the fault of their parents, or society, or the evil right-wingers who are provoking them – but we must recognise that there are certain realities we must face.  One of them is that anyone carrying Henderson’s Disease will be contagious for at least three days – perhaps longer – without knowing it.  Do you not feel that people have a responsibility to society?”

“But those people, Blake, could be innocent,” Featherstone protested.  “Did they deserve to die?”

“Perhaps in a perfect world, you would be right,” Blake agreed.  “In the world we have, they chose to disobey instructions intended to keep them – and the majority of the American population – safe from harm.  They brought their fates upon themselves.

“And, as for the American military being deployed inside the country, we have a long tradition of using the military for disaster relief and other such emergency aid.  The President declared a state of emergency and Congress supported her on it.  Her deployment of the troops was legal and, I might add, the correct solution to the crisis.  Had she delayed by even one day, the disease might have spread further.”

“There are hundreds of new cases being reported every day,” Featherstone countered.  “Can we really claim that the President has stopped the disease in its tracks?”

He pressed on before Blake could continue.  “And then there is the racial, social and economic aspect to the vaccination program,” he said, quickly.  “The vaccines are mainly going to white bread, not to persons of colour or…limited economic means.  Is it not possible that the President has decided to manipulate this crisis and use it to exterminate a section of the American population?”

“I do not think,” Blake said tightly, “that any American President has been so insulted, not even George Bush II.  Like so many of your depraved political class, you believe that the world is inherently perfect and when it is not perfect, it is prevented from being perfect by evil right-wingers such as  myself.  There is no such thing as the Great Right Wing Conspiracy and never ever was.”

“Yet one cannot deny the figures,” Featherstone snapped.  “Thousands of people have been vaccinated by now, yet only a tiny percentage of them are black.”

“The President has said, and I believe that the figures support her, that vaccinations will be focused first on emergency response personnel and people in vital industries,” Blake said, tightly.  “You may feel that there is no real difference between a homeless bum and a trained doctor, but I can assure you that the doctor is far more important to the country than the bum.  The bum drinks cheap wine and gets philosophical; the doctor works tirelessly to save people from Henderson’s Disease.  Which one would you suggest be vaccinated first?”

His voice hardened.  “And before you answer that,” he added, “you might want to think about the dangers of having your doctors and nurses vulnerable to Henderson’s Disease.  Every doctor or nurse who is forced to become bed-ridden is one who cannot help look after patients.  Every…”

“I think I'm going to have to stop you there,” the moderator said, quickly.  Jim rolled his eyes.  He would have loved to hear Featherstone’s response to that tirade.  “We do not have much time left, so we will close with one final discussion.  We believe that terrorists inflicted this upon us and the FBI has stated that it is working to identify the group responsible.  What do you feel we should do about them?”

“They have unleashed a weapon of mass destruction on us,” Blake said, before Featherstone could say a word.  “We should retaliate in kind.”

“But you cannot use nuclear weapons against a terrorist group,” Featherstone objected.  “Quite apart from the moral issues of using nukes, the blasts would wipe out thousands of innocents along with the terrorists, creating thousands of new recruits willing to give their lives to harm the United States.”

“I just knew that you were going to wimp out,” Blake sneered.  “Let me see if I can put this in perspective.  Henderson’s Disease is not a natural variant of smallpox; someone created the disease with only one real purpose, its deployment as a biological weapon.  That someone has to be a state, because only a state would have such resources.  That state is compliant in the attack and must be destroyed.”

Jim clicked off the television and headed back to his chores, thinking hard.  If nuclear war broke out, as it might once the terrorists and their sponsors were identified, what would happen then?  He didn’t disagree with Blake that a nuclear response was necessary, yet would it not put the country in more danger?

Shaking his head, he went back to work.