Pestilence

8

General Kirk Lancaster walked down the Hall of Heroes at the Pentagon and stopped a moment to look out the windows. At five in the morning, he’d already been up for an hour. He couldn’t sleep, and he’d thought about taking an Ambien but had heard they can cause psychotic episodes, so instead, he tried warm milk and chamber music. It didn’t work.

He walked down to a large office, where he sat behind the desk and immediately spun the chair around to look out the windows at the hedges and the lawn. He didn’t feel like staring at walls.

But the grass gave him an uneasy feeling, too. He had been at that desk on September 11th. He remembered running out of the building and seeing charred remains all over the lawn. He’d thought the entire country was under attack, and his first thought had been that Bin Laden was responsible. He had warned the CIA and the FBI for as long as he could remember, but no one took the threats as seriously as they should have. After all, so many people hated the United States that it was difficult to tell who would actually act.

“Sir.”

Lancaster turned around and saw his assistant, Major Martin Boyle, salute.

“At ease. We’re not on a battlefield, Marty.”

“Yes, sir,” he said as he sat down across from him.

“What is it?”

“Sir?”

“I assume you have something to say about this morning, so let’s just hear it.”

He swallowed. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“I couldn’t either.”

“We’ve closed off the major highways leaving the state, and all the flights out were cancelled about a week ago. Per your orders, we didn’t cancel the flights going in.”

“Good.”

He hesitated. “I don’t want to do this, Kirk. This is wrong. There’re less than a hundred infected, and we know where they are. We could just quarantine them and-”

“Have you seen someone infected with Agent X, Marty?”

“No, sir. Just photos.”

“I visited a military hospital up there, Loma Linda. They had a patient behind this huge transparent barrier. Like a bubble. And I went and pinned a Purple Heart to the bubble with tape. As I was looking in, he began to vomit. It wasn’t food, though, it was blood… and organs. The vomit wouldn’t stop, and it exploded out of him so violently, it looked like a grenade had gone off in there. And I saw his brains start coming out of his ears. The virus liquefies the organs, all of them, including the brain and skin. And all it would have taken for me to contract it is a single virus. Just one. If that barrier hadn’t been there, he would have infected a dozen people, who would each infect a dozen more.”

“But what we’re doing to our own citizens, it’s never been done before.”

“You kiddin’ me? Lincoln had Confederates arrested and held for years without ever seeing the inside of a courtroom. Korematsu v. United States was the case that decided that Japanese internment was justified. And guess what? It’s still good law. It hasn’t been overturned. In times of crisis, people always give up their freedoms, and they’re happy to do it.”

“This is different. This isn’t targeting a group. This is indiscriminate. And we can’t maintain order, General. We’re talking about forty million people. We can’t even scratch the surface.”

“Use local law enforcement to help you. But, Marty, we’re not letting this thing out. Not at any cost. We’re talking about the end of our nation if this thing spreads. No more America. And if the U.S. falls, you bet your ass the rest of the world is going down with us. We have to do this.”

“And you’ve cleared it with the Joint Chiefs and the president? The Justice Department?”

“Who do you think came up with the idea, Marty?”

They sat in silence a moment before Marty said, “Once we do this, there’s no going back.”

“I know.” Lancaster paused. “Do it, Marty. Send the order now.”

He rose. “Yes, sir.” He took the emblems over his heart off his uniform and placed them on the desk. “It will be the last thing I do as Major under you, sir. I’m here voluntarily, and I quit.”

Lancaster watched him walk out, and he leaned back in the chair. Marty was young and idealistic-two traits he himself might have had at some point. But if he ever did, they were so long gone that he didn’t even remember them anymore. He cared only about pragmatic decisions and didn’t understand those who took any other view.

He turned back to the window and stared at the lawn.