Pestilence

22

The medical station was a few long metal trailers set up in rows in the middle of a Walmart parking lot. A few jeeps and Humvees were nearby, as were several groups of men in military uniforms.

Sam watched them closely. They were laughing and joking, and one of them had a cigarette dangling from his mouth. She watched the dim red glow as it rose and lowered. This was a conquering army celebrating its victory.

The guardsman got out with them and led them to the trailer at the center, the largest one. She didn’t see a door anywhere, but another guard opened one from the inside to let them in.

Inside were several scientific workstations, complete with computers, microscopes, and MRI and CAT scan machines. Just behind the six employees at their stations was a clear glass wall that overlooked what appeared to be a surgical room with one hospital bed. The room was clean tile and shining chrome, and it looked untouched.

“Samantha?”

She turned to see Lt. General Clyde Olsen walk over to them. He was in full uniform and had grown a mustache that was speckled with gray. He smiled and put out his hand.

She shook it.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

He smirked. “I think you know. I read your CDC reports on the incident in Oahu.”

“How did you get access to the CDC reports?”

“Come on, what do you think all this technology is for? Playing video games? Now what are you doing out here? I didn’t authorize the CDC to come out.”

“She’s with me,” Duncan said. “Dr. Duncan Adams, General. I’m with USAMRIID.”

“Well, what exactly are you doing here?”

“Research, General.”

“On what?”

“On the effects of Agent X on a civilian population. And the development of a possible vaccine.”

“We have Agent X contained.”

Duncan glanced at the surgical room. “It doesn’t work that way. You can’t contain something like this. It’ll get out, and you’ll need me to try and come up with a vaccine.”

“Really?” He folded his arms. “You think you can come up with a vaccine?”

“I can try.”

The lieutenant held Duncan’s gaze a moment and then said, “Well, I guess we can use all the help we can get. Let me show you what we have.”

He turned to one of the stations, and Sam and Duncan followed him. Numbers and a map of the state were up on the screen. Various swaths of the map were colored yellow, and red pinpoints marked other areas.

“Those red markers are known cases of viral infection,” the general said. “We’ve got eighty-nine of them right now. All contained in quarantine. I sent several men to each location, and they’re ensuring that the pathogen doesn’t spread. The yellow is possible areas of infection, should one of the infected get out. Those are the areas where we’ve conducted our operation, containing the citizens so the infection can’t spread. You can see that eighty of those eighty-nine are in southern California, so that’s where we’ve focused.”

“What about the rest of the state?” Sam asked.

“They’re contained in their own way. All highways leading out of the state have been closed off, no planes or buses. Nothing. The only way someone can make it out of here is by sneaking through the desert, and we’ve got roving patrols and choppers for that.”

Duncan shook his head. “Because that works so well on the Mexican border?”

The general didn’t respond and instead pressed a button, bringing up an image of a young boy in a bed. The bedsheets and his hospital gown were stained black, and he appeared to have been burnt. But Sam had seen that condition enough to know that it wasn’t a burn. The boy was hemorrhaging underneath his skin.

“Eighty-nine cameras feed into these trailers right here,” he said. “We have someone watching all the infected, twenty-four, seven. As well as the men I have stationed there. No one in or out.”

Sam stood silently for a long time as Duncan leaned close to the screen, observing the boy.

“This is monstrous,” she said.

The general nodded. “It’s… a trade-off. That’s for sure. And no patchouli-smelling hippie was more against it than I was. But I have to follow orders.”

“And what happens if someone tries to leave the state?” Duncan asked.

“They’ll be arrested.”

“Really?” Sam said. “A bunch of young soldiers are going to risk infection of the worst disease we’ve ever seen to stop a person from leaving? They’re going to shoot them, Clyde.”

“Only if they don’t lie down and do what they’re told. This is the American military, not the Visigoths.”

“How did this happen?” Duncan finally asked.

“Someone from your little island in the Pacific got to the mainland. Three of them actually. Two of them died. One was alive for twenty-seven hours before she was…” He looked from one to the other. “Before she was eliminated. In those twenty-seven hours, she infected one other person, which led to this. Luckily, all of the original patients went immediately to the hospital as they’d heard about the symptoms, so we got them quarantined early.”

She glanced at the boy on the screen. His eyes were halfway open as he slipped in and out of consciousness. “There is no way this agent was contained.”

“Why not?”

“I saw it destroy Hawaii in less than three days. It’s so contagious, just breathing the same air as an infected person could cause inhalation of the virus. I’ve never seen that. Not even with Ebola.”

Olsen glanced at them both. “We’ve been developing something that could help us. It’s almost ready for use, we think.”

“What is it?” Duncan said.

“A vaccine.”