Plague of the Dead (6 page)

    Finally, the fire receded until only licking tongues of flame were visible, and the noise vanished entirely.

    The radio squawked.

    “Echo Two here. Demolition successful. All objectives destroyed. Out.”

    The entire continent of Africa was now completely contained. Any plane that tried to fly off the landmass would easily become prey for the Superhornets patrolling the airspace.

    Any boat that tried to steam out of the area would be sunk by one of the dozens of destroyers, frigates, and attack subs that prowled the waters.

    And any vehicle that tried to make its way to the relative safety of the uncontaminated Middle East would find that all three Suez crossings were now nothing more than smoldering piles of rubble.

    The largest maximum-security prison in the world just had its grand opening.

    Inmates?

    Just one.

    Its name?

    The Morningstar Strain.

PART THREE: SPARKS

    
INTERCEPT COMPLETE_

El Ferdan

January 5, 2007

1522 hrs_

    THE SUN WAS beginning to set and the sky was a brilliant hue of orange. Things had settled down along the canal as the soldiers dug in and waited. Here and there came the distinctive pop of an M-16 round being let loose from the confines of a chamber. Carriers kept approaching the canal, one or two at a time, and were systematically put down before they even reached the line of landmines protecting the far bank. The sharpshooters were chuckling amongst themselves, placing bets and taking turns shooting at the infected as they approached.

    Some were easier targets than others. Every third or fourth carrier shambled slowly across the sand, dragging its feet and looking more worse for the wear than most of its companions.

    The remaining three-fourths of the infected proved harder targets. As soon as they drew within sight of the entrenched soldiers across the canal, they broke into a full-out run, arms outstretched, teeth gnashing. These carriers usually took several attempts to hit, and it was not uncommon to hear a curse ring out directly after a missed shot, and see money change hands. Though gambling was technically against regulations, General Sherman couldn’t bring himself to put a stop to it. Hell, he’d participated in more than a few games of craps in his day-why rain on the soldiers’ parade?

    “There’s three more,” said Rebecca Hall, looking through a pair of binoculars. She was languidly stretched out in the sand, back against a crate of MRE’s.

    “Where? Oh, I see ’em, just past that dune, there,” said General Sherman, looking through his own pair of binoculars. A shot rang out and one of the carriers fell to the ground, twitching. One of the sharpshooters had drilled the figure dead-on. Sherman grinned. “A fine hit! A palpable hit!”

    “What?” asked Rebecca, lowering her binoculars and fixing the General with a curious gaze.

    “Nothing. It’s from Shakespeare,” said Sherman, still grinning.

    Rebecca and the General had formed a fast friendship. It was an odd pairing-one, a three-star General who had seen combat spanning four decades, the recipient of almost every military decoration the United States offered, and a commander of armies. The other, a twenty-two year-old young woman fresh from college with almost no real-world experience other than ideals, hopes, dreams, and a little white armband with a Red Cross. The General felt as if he’d gained a daughter, or at least a pupil. The medic felt as if she’d gained a mentor.

    “Oh, and I wouldn’t know anything about Shakespeare, is that it?” Rebecca asked.

    “Not as much as I know. An old general has to have hobbies.”

    “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him-”

    “Hamlet,” said Sherman.

    Rebecca felt challenged. “
All the world’s a stage, and
-”

    “
All the men and women merely players
.”

    “Dammit, General! Alright, how about…
Cry Havoc! And let
-”

    “-
Slip the dogs of war
. Julius Caesar. Third act, first scene, specifically. Don’t try to test your elders, Rebecca. We’ve had a lot more time to memorize the lines of a dead playwright than you have,” said Sherman, again chuckling.

    “Ever read Heinlein?” mumbled Rebecca.

    “Who?” asked a distracted Sherman, looking through his binoculars at the remaining carriers.

    “That’s what I thought,” said Rebecca, a touch of triumph in her voice. A second shot rang out and another carrier fell to the ground, kicking up a small cloud of sand. “It’s really too bad these are shamblers. I’d like to see your sharpshooters have a little challenge.”

    The soldiers and relief workers had taken to calling the slower carriers
shamblers
after their hesitant, swaying walk. The faster carriers were being called
sprinters
. All in all, they estimated they’d shot about a hundred shamblers and sprinters in the past few days.

    “I wonder why some are slow and others are fast,” Rebecca commented.

    General Sherman glanced at her from behind the lenses of his binoculars, but said nothing. It was true he could reveal what he knew about the Morningstar Strain and the positive proof they had of clinically dead bodies reviving, but he chose not to burden Rebecca with the knowledge.

    As it stood, the only people who knew about that aspect of the virus were the powerful elite and whichever refugees from the continent had witnessed one of the deceased victims reanimate. Sherman had already lassoed several of the soldiers and workers who had heard the stories from the refugees and told them to keep it under wraps, and to spread the word to the refugees to do the same. He knew there was no way to keep it secret forever-or even for much longer. The survivors of the contamination of Africa weren’t under anyone’s orders. Tongues would wag.

    “It doesn’t matter,” he finally said. “It’s an entire continent. They’ll probably just keep coming like this, in scattered groups. They’re mostly mindless, I think. Probably just wandering around. We’ll just keep ’em contained and let ’em starve to death.”

    “How long will that take?” Rebecca asked. “I mean, a person starves in about a week. The infected people on the other side of that canal have been about for weeks now.”

    “Maybe a lot of them starved days ago. Maybe we’re just seeing the new recruits,” Sherman replied.

    Rebecca let herself delve into the possibilities.

    “Well, maybe it alters their metabolism. Can a virus do that? I really don’t know. I can splint a broken leg but I don’t know thing one about viruses.”

    “I don’t know either. We’ve got eggheads who work on that stuff,” Sherman said. “They build the saw and hand it to me. I do the cutting.”

    Rebecca glanced askew at the General, who was studiously ignoring the girl. “So you
have
read Heinlein.”

    The General smiled wordlessly.

    “General!” came a gruff voice. Sherman swiveled his head and spied Sergeant Major Thomas jogging over to them. The sergeant slowed to a walk and saluted. From the ground, Rebecca smiled and waved at him. Thomas didn’t acknowledge her existence.

    Sherman returned the salute. “What’s the news, Thomas?”

    “Satcom’s got an update for you, sir. They think you might want to come have a look,” Sergeant Major Thomas said.

    “Oh, for Chrissake, Thomas, I don’t need to verify every time a city on the continent catches fire or put my signature on bad weather reports.”

    “They strongly recommend you have a look, sir,” Sergeant Major Thomas said, features expressionless. General Sherman had known Thomas long enough to know when he was being deadly serious.

    “Alright, alright,” Sherman said after a moment, pulling himself to his feet with a heavy-winded sigh. “Lead on.”

    “Have fun,” said Rebecca. She lifted the binoculars back to her eyes as a third shot rang out. The final shambler in the group pitched face-first into the sand. “
Oh, got him
,” she whispered.

    Thomas opened the door to the trailer that held the satellite communication equipment for the encampment and propped it open with one arm, letting the General enter. There was a young lieutenant in charge, leaning over the shoulder of one of his subordinates as they studied a display. As Sherman walked in, the lieutenant spied him and snapped to attention.

    “Group, atten-HUT!”

    The soldiers began scrambling to their feet, but Sherman waved them off.

    “As you were,” he said quickly. “What’s the problem, lieutenant?”

    “Sir!” said the young officer. “We’ve got a few interesting images off the continent from one of our spysats. We’ve been working on cleaning it up.”

    Sherman pulled up a folding chair and propped one leg up, folding his arms across his knees as he looked at the screen the lieutenant was gesturing at.

    “This is the east bank of the Nile near what’s left of Cairo. We’ve been monitoring the delta for the British battle group stationed there, trying to give them advance warning of any ships trying to clear the delta and hit the Mediterranean Sea. We’ve picked up trawlers, tugs, and even one kayak, and that lets the Brits-”

    “Get to the point, Lieutenant. I was busy doing nothing when you called, and I’d like to get back to it.”

    “Yes, sir. Anyway, our spysat’s delicate enough to pick up a single person from space. We tried focusing on Cairo to test it out, and we got this.”

    The officer punched in a few commands and the image on the screen flicked to a closer-in shot of the burned out city. The streets looked strange, as if there were ants crawling all over the pavement. The image zoomed in closer, and Sherman saw that what he had thought to be ants were actually carriers. Thousands of them.

    “We backtracked through the spysat memories and found out these infected are the refugees that stayed behind in Cairo after the fires. Morningstar must have reached them. We’re thinking one of the sprinters made good time and started spreading the disease from further south. But that’s not the disturbing part.”

    The image changed again. Sherman noticed the timestamp was dated only a couple hours before.

    This one showed the multitude of carriers flowing across the bridges, heading east. Heading straight towards the Sinai desert-and the Suez Canal.

    “At first we thought they’d actually grouped together, formed a battle plan, and decided to head for us,” explained the officer. “We double-checked and realized there was one more refugee who decided to make a run for it. He’s in a semi trailer headed our way now. Unfortunately for us, half the city noticed his exit and decided to chase him.”

    The Satcom image switched to the overhead view of a truck barreling through the desert. It was halfway between Cairo and Suez. The carriers were miles and miles behind, but they had a single-mindedness about them. They’d head in the direction their prey went until they ran him down-or found new prey.