[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) (57 page)

“But it has been months since that effort. It is out there. Each week it is spreading to millions of people. If we have less than a month left to the reach 100% dispersion in Europe, that means that ten percent of the population is already immunized. That’s one hundred million people in Europe alone. To noticeably speed the process up now we would need to manually immunize millions … and there is simply no way to do that, not without alerting the Agents to their actions. It is simply impossible.”

There had always been a diminishing marginal return from further injections, which they had matched against a serious and steadily increasing risk of discovery every time one of the team or its proxies stabbed another stranger with the drug.

A sad resignation settled over the room. People who had worked round the clock for months under the constant threat of discovery were now somewhat inured to it all, and faced with facts like these they knew they had to simply accept the potential for mass casualties, just as they had accepted the potential for their own. And so no one expected the next question.

“Umm, there is another thought,” said Martin Sobleski, “but first I have to ask: when we launch against the satellites, can I assume the gloves are off?” The group stared at him. His glance moved between Neal and the colonel and they both shrugged and nodded.

“What do you have in mind?” said Jack, voicing the room’s curiosity.

“Well, I was just thinking that maybe instead of looking at ways to speed the spread of the cure, maybe instead we could look at ways to slow the spread of the disease.”

Slow the spread? How do you slow down a doomsday virus released from space in a thousand capsules, each one of which is programmed to detonate in the stratosphere? But Martin didn’t seem to notice the group’s lack of enthusiasm and carried on, “Tell me, how many of you are familiar with thermobaric grenades?”

Jesus, thought Jack. Firebombs? A smile spread across his lips. This was going to be interesting.

* * *

It was their most ambitious plan yet. Martin would leave the remainder of the nose cone shielding deployment to Jack, Barrett, and the team that Admiral Hamilton had assigned to the project. This would allow him to redirect his considerable expertise to a new avenue of research. Ayala would go with him to North Dakota and once they were there they would use the resonance chamber to build a new type of warhead.

The AGM-158A was an already existing air-launched cruise missile that could be deployed from a B-2 bomber, the bomber type that Jack Toranssen had been a pilot of up until Barrett had recruited him to the team.

The plan was to build an entirely new set of warheads for these stealthy missiles. Ayala would help with the procurement of materials, Martin would work with Madeline to meld these materials in the resonance chamber in North Dakota, and once these new and highly explosive warheads were ready, Martin and Ayala would deliver them down to Whiteman Air Force Base, where the main US B-2 bomber wing was stationed. After that it would be up to Jack, the colonel, and their ally Admiral Hamilton to pull the necessary strings to discreetly get the upgraded warheads onto the base.

Even after that set of fairly considerable hurdles, the final step would be by far the most dangerous. John had shared with the team the plan for how the satellites would drop the virus. They could see that, of all the areas that still remained vulnerable, the largest unprotected populace was also directly within the arc of the satellites’ pod drops.

And so, once the warheads were fitted onto a series of the cruise missiles, and the missiles were loaded into one of the B-2 bombers, Major Jack Toranssen would get behind the wheel again. They were going to attempt to shoot down the virus pods as they entered the atmosphere. Not all of them, that would be impossible. But those pods that were dropped over the area still left untouched by the antigen’s spread. They would strive to save some of the millions of innocent people that lived in those areas: the rural peoples of the Hindu Kush, the Afghan mountains, and the plains of western Iran.

They would focus there because they fell directly within the drop paths of the viral pods. They would use the stealth of the B-2 to carry him deep into enemy airspace. Once there, they would start the biggest fireworks display in the history of humanity, and once they started firing, they had no doubt that those same people they were trying to save would no doubt do all they could to stop them.

“Thanks for that update, Mike, looks like more rain, huh?” the anchorwoman beamed a paper-white smile, shrugging as she laughed with practiced cheerfulness. “Now for our next story we’re going to head over to Jacksonville General where Robin Jacobson has a report about a medical miracle.”

The view switched to her co-anchor whose face became comically quizzical, “A miracle, Bethany?”

The view switched again to show both anchors for a moment and they looked at each other as Bethany replied, “Well, Simon, reports are coming in from around the country about what
some
are calling the
miraculous
recovery of some previously seriously ill patients.” They both smiled and tilted their heads with the sheer joy of it all and Simon took his cue, “Wow, sounds like a miracle to me. Why don’t we go over to Robin at Jacksonville General and find out what it’s all about? Robin?” They both smiled, their sparkling eyes wide with faux curiosity as the scene shifted.

A smiling woman stands in a hospital room holding a large WPPI News microphone up to her beautiful face.

“Thanks, Simon and Bethany. Yes, that’s right, folks, I’m here at Jacksonville General with Armondo Zorilla, a patient who, until recently, was in near critical condition with effects of advanced Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.” The reporter frowned a moment, because that is what reporters have to do when they mention AIDS, and then turned to the patient, who was standing in his regular clothes to her right.

“Mr. Zorilla,” she said to him, still very serious, “I understand you were diagnosed HIV positive some years ago?”

She thrust the microphone under his chin and he stammered a moment, unsure whether to look at the camera, or her, or the floor. Choosing the floor, he said, “Yes, that’s right, Robin, I was diagnosed back in 2006 with HIV, but apparently I had already had it for a while and it progressed to full-blown AIDS last year.”

Robin did not like her interviewee’s sullen tone, or his use of the acronym AIDS, which research showed was not good for ratings. For that matter, the fact that the man had used the term ‘full-blown’ was also far from what they had discussed before the interview. She decided to redirect the conversation.

Reclaiming the microphone when Armondo paused to breathe, she turned to the camera again, and said, “But things have taken a turn recently, isn’t that right, Mr. Zorilla? Can you tell us a bit about that?”

She turned back to the patient and he stammered again, “Err, yes,” he managed to aim a small smile at the camera, then looked down again as he went on. “There’s been some, well, some good news over the last three weeks.” He smiled again and then stared at the camera in silence, apparently having to choose between speaking and smiling.

Robin’s smile remained plastered on her face but inside she growled quietly in frustration and gave up on the patient, turning back to the camera. Her cameraman took her cue and focused in on her again, “Well, isn’t that just great?” she said, “And for more information on that, I have Armondo’s doctor here, Dr. Lawrence.” She turned to her other side and the camera zoomed out again, this time to include a young, tired-looking doctor.

“Doctor,” said the reporter, “this all sounds very interesting, maybe you can tell us a bit about the case?”

The doctor nodded, looking at the camera. He looked a little disconcerted, but it was really the case, not the camera, that was baffling him. He shrugged for a moment and then said, “Well Robin, it’s a heck of a thing. The patient was in an advanced stage of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome associated with infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. As I’m sure you know, HIV is, in and of itself, not fatal, but its effects on the immune system make the sufferer much more susceptible to other infections that our bodies’ white blood cells would normally be able to handle.”

The reporter nodded and then, feeling the need to say something, she put in, “And in this case, Doctor, what has happened that is so unusual?”

“Well,” continued the young doctor, “actually, we really don’t know.” He shrugged again, “Since the patient’s last check up a month ago, there has been a dramatic reduction in viral and other foreign bodies found in his blood, and this has been matched by a notable increase in his white blood cell count, though not by nearly enough to account for the drop in foreign bodies.”

Robin knew the network would expect her to stick in her line now for the masses and prompted, “A miracle, Doctor?” glancing suggestively at the screen and smiling.

“Well, if you want to think of it as a miracle, then I suppose you can do that,” said Dr. Lawrence, slightly impatiently, “though I can tell you that we have also seen a similarly anomalous set of symptoms in two other patients in the last month.”

Robin froze. Wait, what did he just say? More cases? More cases meant a bigger story and her long-subjugated journalistic instincts kicked in. She responded in a serious tone, “So there have been other cases of this, Doctor? Could this be an epidemic? Should folks at home be worried?”

Dr. Lawrence stared at her a moment, mildly perturbed by the chopped logic that Robin had applied to his statement, then replied, “No, Robin, the public should not be worried that people with potentially fatal diseases are showing signs of remission. That is, I think, a good thing. And nor should we start using words like epidemic. A few folks have had some extremely good luck, and that is great. We’ll continue to monitor them and hopefully they can have some measure of reprieve from their difficult prognoses.”

Robin picked up his mood and matched his air of respect and sobriety, thanking the doctor seriously, but then turned back to the camera with a big smile and said, “Well, folks, there you have it. Some good news for some of the suffering people here at Jacksonville General. A Miracle on Richard Street? I’ll leave it up to you to decide. This is Robin Jacobson reporting live for WPPI News, back to you in the studio.”

Agent Lana Wilson turned off the television and stood up. It was one thing to have random reports filling up CDC filing cabinets, but now this thing was in her backyard. The last thing she wanted was humans living longer. There were far too many of them as it was.

Jacksonville was twenty-five minutes from the naval base she was stationed at. It had been a few weeks since the AI had introduced the topic at the meeting, and she was hearing more of these reports every day. As usual, the local news station was the last to get the story, having been relegated to more of a tepid regurgitation of local weather and sports than an investigative news source, but now it was so widespread that even this nescient outlet had been forced to take notice. This was no longer a phenomenon, it was indeed an epidemic, and it was time that Lana found out what it was that was spreading longevity amongst the very people whose lives she was working so hard to shorten.

* * *

It had been nearly a month since John and Shahim had managed to stave off a detailed investigation into the rapidly spreading antigen’s effects. They had done their best, and in truth the time they had bought had translated into the effective completion of the antigen’s spread in most urbanized nations. The same was true in the rural areas that were linked to those urban centers by the trains and roads that gave the cities their life. But just as the team had predicted at their meeting in Boston, this same success was inevitably going to be their downfall. And sure enough, events in Europe and America were now beyond the team’s ability to dissemble. With local news stations reporting ‘miracles’ and anomalies in previously critical AIDS, Diphtheria, Lyme Disease, and Hepatitis patients, and the number of new cases of other infectious diseases dropping off dramatically, Shahim and John had known that the time was coming when they would no longer be able to delay the inevitable. As Lana’s report uploaded into the Council’s minds, John and Shahim both braced themselves.

Lana Wilson’s avatar spoke, “After the observations of the AI a few weeks ago I have continued to hear of these anomalous cases. This culminated in a report I saw on television yesterday from a hospital near my location. After hearing the report I travelled to the hospital and managed to procure a blood sample from one of these ‘miraculous’ cases. Though I was unable to conduct a chemical analysis without proper equipment, I was able to scrutinize the blood visually at high resolution. I have since uploaded my imagery of it to the AI for confirmation of my analysis. The images are in the reports that have been provided to the Council.”

Here it comes, thought John. Shit. His avatar remained outwardly calm but the Agent himself subtly cued up a response routine he had laid in for this moment. He had several protocols that he had planned out with Neal and the rest of the team. He knew that the team wasn’t completely ready yet. The antigen had spread far faster in heavily populated nations than others, and in certain pockets tens of millions were still defenseless. Every day they waited more people would be safe from the attack and maybe he and Shahim could delay things just a few days longer.

But as Lana’s report went on, John’s heart started to sink, “The results were disturbing. The man’s blood contained significant numbers of some kind of cellular defense mechanism. This cellular construct appears to have capabilities similar to those of the Bio-Immuno-Defensive-Constructs that we have long relied on back on Mobilius.

“Now it was our understanding that this kind of technology was far out of the grasp of the humans, in fact, our own viral attack weapon that we hold in reserve here relies on just that fact. We have assumed to date that they were unable to even build this kind of defensive cell, let alone disseminate it on this scale. If the humans now have such a technology, then we urgently need to review our own progress to see what options we have. In fact, I believe we may need to take drastic action, and very soon.”