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Chapter 126 – After the RainAlex worried, “Do you think that’s gonna take care of Birkin?”
Jack frowned. “It’d better. But just in case, I already called Big Cheese. He’s sending us a fully-loaded Warthog, and one of those babies can take out an entire tank battalion. And if the Warthog isn’t up to the job, he’s talking to the Joint Chiefs about a cruise missile.”
“Eww.” She didn’t like the sound of that, but at least it was still way below Option Failsafe.
Hanna walked over and smiled at Alex. “I got to use my grapple guns.” Then she frowned. “But it wasn’t fair that I didn’t get to go down the stairs and engage the enemy. I have not disobeyed a single order all day.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “No, you just slid off the roof of a skyscraper and trusted your grapple guns would work perfectly and you could find grappling points every time. I think you gave me a thousand more gray hairs.”
Sergeant Scott contributed, “And I think twenty different people down here got it on their cellphones and already uploaded it to YouTube and Instagram.”
Jack muttered, “Great, now we’re going to need to go around telling people ‘don’t try this at home.’ Because they definitely will.”
Hanna nodded. “I have looked at many videos on YouTube, and a large number of people lack the strength and coordination for the stunts they are attempting. However, I do not understand why it is funny when someone fails to land a stunt and smashes their teeth in.”
Jack patted her on the shoulder. “It isn’t. It’s only funny in cartoons and slapstick comedies.”
She nodded intensely. “You explain things much better than anyone else.”
Alex wondered if that was really true. Maybe Jack understood Hanna better than Janet or Cindy or Grover or even Charlie did, just because Jack understood how hardened spec ops people thought, and that was way more Hanna than, say, your average teenaged girl.
It was totally not fair that Hanna and some other girls were genetically engineered like they were, and then Hanna got her entire life education from a creepy black ops nutbar who kept her from having a real life and trained her to be a soulless killer. And it was even more unfair that Marissa Weigler had all the other kids like Hanna murdered so they never even got the few life lessons Hanna had gotten.
* * *
So Jack did the meeting thing, which he hated, and Alex and Hanna did the ‘zooming around looking for badguys’ thing, which was just a ton of fun now that Hanna could swing from building to building with her grapple guns. Alex flew around, keeping down around Hanna’s speed, and they chatted about boyfriends while they soared around a hundred feet above the streets and searched the area around the Umbrella Corp building for monsters and creepiness.
After maybe an hour, Jack called them on their earjacks and told them it was time to come in from the playground, like they were still eight. Although Hanna never got to be a schoolkid who got to run around on the playground with her friends.
Jack and Sergeant Walters drove them and Grover to a nice motel which was part of the area the CDC and the National Guard were using. Jack had a nice motel room for Alex and Hanna and Grover, and he sat and ate lunch with them, even though it wasn’t even noon yet. But Alex was starving, and exhausted, and just ready to sleep for about a year. After she ate again. And the motel’s cheeseburgers were really big and really good. And Jack had ordered them just the way she liked them.
Jack grimaced. “The three of you were great. We wouldn’t have survived the mansion without you, and we wouldn’t have gotten the antidote or stopped Birkin or kept the red team from blowing up our sat dishes. But the CDC’s been making real progress with the t-virus, thanks mainly to Lieutenant Marshall, so after naps we get medicals.”
“All of us?” Alex checked.
“Even me?” Klar wondered.
Jack muttered, “Well, it may be a little tricky for someone who has invisible blood, although Marshall has been talking to the CDC about options for you. We’ll work something out. You’ll get a dose of the antidote just in case, and Janet will give you an extra physical when you get home, whether you like it or not. But we all need to get checked for a really dangerous, really contagious, really nasty virus that we cannot let loose no matter what. I’m detailing Marshall to ramrod the checks on my people, and no one is going to get to find out just how special Alex’s and Hanna’s blood is, and anything that doesn’t get used gets disposed of properly.”
Jack had normal clothes for Hanna and Grover, and a gym bag for Alex. So they all changed into casual stuff and went to sleep. Alex and Hanna took one queen-sized bed and Grover took the other. Jack went to a room just down the hall.
Alex woke up with nightmares twice. Grover woke up at least three times that she knew about, because he wasn’t that quiet. Hanna didn’t have any nightmares, even if she woke up every time anyone else did. Or whenever someone walked down the hall outside their room.
* * *
Alex was really glad Jack let them sleep until five in the evening, but then they all had to put on their uniforms and ride over to the main CDC lab building, which was way too ‘X-Files’ for her taste. They even had plastic liners in the rooms and the hallways, and lab guys in bunny suits with special air supplies.
Okay, considering what they were dealing with, that was way more reassuring than if they weren’t taking tons and tons of precautions against the t-virus getting spread all over the place. Alex decided this was way better than ever having to deal with another zombie again as long as she lived.
They were ushered into a big room with half a dozen gurney-like medical tables covered in plastic. Graham and Jo and Sergeant Carlson and the two lieutenants were already there and obviously just finishing up, along with Jill Valentine and Officer Kennedy.
Jack asked way too cheerfully, “Any updates while I was taking a well-earned nap?”
Alex watched as Graham tried not to smile. “Yes, sir. We’ve been able to verify that the bottom levels of the building aren’t emptying out into the sewers or the storm drains. The city engineers tell me there are special pumps installed in the building to do that, and as long as we don’t run those pumps — which are probably crushed into tinfoil right now — the contaminated water is just going to sit down there until we have a treatment plan in place.” He turned his head. “Marshall?”
“Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Marshall faced Jack and explained, “I’ve been working with the CDC and the Army Corps of Engineers, and we’ve got a test operation already in place. We’re using a Corps pump system and running the water through ceramic filters that’ll capture even viruses and prions. We have to keep backflushing the filters regularly to clear them, so it’s not going to be fast, but it looks like the outflow is completely clean. The CDC is running tests right now, and if they give us the all-clear, we’ll have ten pumps like this going by nightfall, and we’ll have the basements emptied out by tomorrow night.”
Jack nodded. “Well, at least there’s some good news.”
Graham smiled wickedly. “And somehow, newspeople all over the country have gotten leaked material on Umbrella and the zombies and the mutated monsters. Someone must have hacked into the Umbrella security camera systems, because there’s footage all over the net of Terawatt flying into that atrium and frying everything that was loose, and then playing matador with Birkin until the entire building collapsed.”
Alex just cringed.
Lieutenant Bailey looked at her face and whispered, “It wasn’t me!”
Yeah, well Alex had a pretty darn good idea who did it, and while she figured the lieutenant was a pretty good hacker, he wasn’t even being considered. No, her top three candidates were Willow, Willow, and Willow.
Candidates four through ten were also named Willow.
Jo added, “And you’ll be completely shocked to hear this, sir, but Umbrella Corporation is already going with tons of press releases explaining that they’re not at fault.”
Jack sighed. “Yeah, I’m completely stunned to hear that one. I suppose we’ll have to let our anonymous cracker spread intel all over the internet and to hundred of reporters, just so this doesn’t look like ‘evil black ops organization vs. wholesome foods and medicines people’. Has Big Cheese given us permission to talk to the press?”
Graham shook his head no. “No sir, but Rebecca Chambers and Chris Redfield have been talking to every reporter who comes their way. They seem to be pretty pissed off about being betrayed by their boss and fed to the lions. And the chief of police had a psychotic meltdown in front of thirty newscasters when the DOJ hauled him out of his office in handcuffs, so his statements are getting a ton of play, and they’re making Umbrella look a lot worse.”
Lieutenant Bailey grinned. “Even better, he had a bunch of secret rooms and cabinets built into the walls of the police station! He’s been taking massive payoffs from Umbrella, and he’s been buying works of art and hiding them in his station. And they found film footage he took of him killing one of his cronies and threatening the rest, so that weasel Andrews will probably get some sympathy votes when he goes to trial. And on the same film, Irons is telling them how he’s going to hunt down and kill and stuff the mayor’s daughter, and if any of them cross him they’ll be next, so no one in city government is going to be backing him now.” He smiled unpleasantly. “That film’s one of the top news items today, and it’s going to get played at six and eleven on every news station in the country.”
Jo put in, “And video of someone swinging from building to building across the skies of Davenport is getting almost as much internet traffic as the security camera footage of Terawatt.”
“Cool!” Hanna grinned. “Can I make a thank-you card for the Batman and get someone to deliver it for me?”
Jack checked, “And what’s the word on Finn and Enrico?”
Lieutenant Marshall pursed his lips. “Really good on the major, really bad on Officer Marini. The antiviral seems to have killed off all the t-virus in Major Finn’s system and already created recognizable antibodies, but that may be because it’s also given him a supercharge on his healing rate, and we don’t know how long that will last. But Marini went zombie before the antidote arrived, and the damage appears to be irreversible, even after dosing him with the antiviral. The CDC’s already using the samples and my notes to crank out hundreds of doses, but that won’t help him.”
“Why not?” Jack asked.
“Because the virus does irreversible damage to the brain and the body first. We got Marini frozen in a block of plastic so he couldn’t move —”
“Not frozen in carbonite?” Jack smirked. Lieutenant Bailey and Klar both laughed for a moment.
“— not frozen in carbonite sir, and we put him through a CAT scan. There are incredible amounts of lesions all over his cerebrum. His higher brain functions are just … gone. There’s nothing left but the primitive functions we’re already seeing. And the damage to the skin and eyes and internal organs is permanent. There’s nothing we can do for anyone we don’t get to well before the primary symptoms show up.”
Alex totally got it. The zombies they had killed couldn’t be saved. She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or furious. Okay, she was totally relieved she hadn’t killed some guys who could be rescued. And she was mega-furious at these Umbrella jerkheads who would do such a thing. She hadn’t thought anyone could be worse than Danielle until she ran into Wacky Maggie’s work, and she hadn’t thought anyone could be worse than Maggie until she saw what these creepazoids were doing. These jerkheads made Maggie Walsh look like Saint Francis of Assisi.
Jack said, “Good job, all of you. Now go get a really good dinner and get some sleep. We’ll be on patrol most of the night, just in case something else pops up around that building, until the Guard can get their choppers off the mansion detail.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Then Alex thought the CDC doctors were really nice. They only took one sample of blood each from Alex and Hanna and Grover, although Grover had to help with his blood draw because no one else could see his veins. Then some smart CDC lady who had been listening to Lieutenant Marshall did Grover’s labwork under an infrared imager so they could see what they were looking for. And they even let Jack and Lieutenant Marshall stand there and make sure they used all of the samples so nothing ‘accidentally’ wandered off into the hands of, say, Colonel Harry Maybourne. Since the t-virus was so fast-acting and so virulent and so distinctive, they already had a fast test for its presence. So Alex and Hanna and Grover and Jack and the sergeants were labeled ‘clean’ within an hour. They still got antivirus injections so they’d have antibodies in their systems in case they ran into this kind of stuff again.
Jack said, “Okay. We’re gonna go visit the sick, and then we’re gonna get more food into Tera, and then we’re going on patrol all through downtown Davenport on a grid centered around the Umbrella building so Action Girl can play more with her grapple guns.”
Hanna grinned excitedly and almost hopped on the balls of her feet like a ten-year-old.
They weren’t allowed into Riley’s room. But there was a big viewing window that had a curtain Riley could close when he felt like it so he could have a little privacy. Alex would have totally wanted as much privacy as she could get, since they had Riley in one of those tiny white hospital gowns that didn’t even close all the way in the back.
Boy, Riley looked really hot in that teeny thing. She hadn’t thought anybody could look good in one of those things, but Riley looked way too good for someone who was in a hospital gown.
And he looked way, way, WAY too good for someone who was in a knife fight to the death and had his throat ripped open last night. She could see his entire neck, and there wasn’t even a bandage on it now. There wasn’t even a scar. Okay, that was creepy. She was suddenly really afraid for Riley, because he might be turning into one of those things like Wesker or Birkin.
Jack didn’t say any of that. He just led off with, “Hey, Finn, have they let you call your folks and your wife?”
Riley frowned. “Yes, sir. My folks are pretty upset. Not with you, sir. The Spencer Trust has been selling stock in Umbrella Corp for years all over the region, and that means someone used some of dad’s money and the money of a lot of their friends to kill people and torture people and mutate animals and try to wipe out every human on the continent. If I know my mom, Umbrella is about to get hit with the biggest class action lawsuit in the history of Iowa. And Sam said she was going to call in some favors with every virologist she knows, and some of the ones she called are already here with the CDC so they let me know I’m getting the celebrity treatment since I’m married to Dr. Samantha M. Finn.”
Jack smiled. “Yeah, it’s always good to have an incredibly smart and talented significant other. I recommend it highly.”
Riley grinned some. “Sam said a few phrases in Swahili and Hausa that she doesn’t think I know. My mom would wash my mouth out with the laundry soap if I said those things. Well, the English translations.”
Jack smiled back. “You’ll have to teach ’em to me so I can use ’em the next time Gates starts cursing in Russian.”
Hanna asked, “Is your healing as fast as it looks? Your neck is all better.”
Alex winced a little, but she tried not to show it, because that was sort of what she was avoiding saying.
Riley grimaced. “Umm, yeah. It’s not exactly Wolverine-speed, but it’s pretty darn fast. More than Spiderman, at any rate. They had to get all the stitches back out, because my cuts were healing up ridiculously fast.”
Jack craned his neck like he was taking a better look at Riley’s neck. Alex was pretty sure Jack had noticed that first thing. Jack smiled a little. “Well, it definitely looks more Logan than Peter. I’m glad to see your neck’s all healed up without any scarring. That was a nasty bite.”
Riley sighed. “Yes, sir. But the doctors are extremely worried about it. So they’re going to need to keep me quarantined for a while longer until they understand the biological mechanisms and they know whether I’m contagious.”
Jack went for the ‘guy who doesn’t understand’ thing he did all the time. “Contagious? Who wouldn’t want to heal up faster?”
Riley patiently said, “Sir, I know you’re joking, but they’re expecting my cells may go cancerous at an extremely accelerated rate. Or I may get serious auto-immune disorders. No one knows.”
Jack swore, “Damn. Well, I’m ordering you to get well and not get any unpleasant side effects, soldier.”
Riley gave him a weak smile. “Roger that, sir.”
Alex felt really bad for Riley, so she said, “I hope they let you out really soon, Riley.”
“Thanks, Tera.”
“Me, too!” agreed Hanna and Grover both.
But Alex was worried, because if Riley was contagious and the super-healing thing was dangerous, or just a side-effect of the real problem, then they might never let him out again.
She was so worried she only ate four of the motel’s cheeseburgers, with three Diet Cokes. And just one order of their nacho cheese fries, even if one order was supposed to be a hearty appetizer for six to eight people. She let Hanna and Grover have a few of her fries, but Jack had to ask really politely first, because he tried to snitch half a dozen without asking. But Jack had to know that had like zero chance of working out, when he was eating with one super-fast super-strong person, one person with telekinesis, and one person who could reach out and block him without Jack being able to see it, so he was probably just doing it to be a smarty-pants.
Sergeant Walters drove Alex and Hanna and Sergeant Scott back to the wreckage of the Umbrella Corp building. Sergeant Scott pointed at the wreckage. “Well, so much for the Oswell E. Spencer Building. The colonel wants all of us patrolling around for the next four to eight hours, backing up the National Guard forces in case anything ugly rears its head. They’ve got choppers coming in later tonight for the official patrol duty, and we’re the stopgap until then.”
Alex hadn’t even known the building had a name. The sergeant laid out the search patterns they were going to take. His job with Sergeant Walters was ground-level exploration around the edges of the rubble and moving out to cover most of the nine-block area that had the rubble at its center. Hanna’s job was to use her grapple guns and sweep in squares and rectangles inside a five block by five block square around the rubble. And Alex was supposed to fly around in a nine block by nine block search pattern looking for stuff. She even got this weird headpiece that had a night vision monocular with a zoom lens on it. It weighed about ten or twelve pounds, which would have been really uncomfortable after a while if she couldn’t hold it up with her TK. She figured Hanna didn’t need one. Hanna was already about as close to a nocturnal predator as humans got.
So Alex studied the patterns drawn on the sergeant’s map. Then she checked her earjack and she took off into the air. She was really on edge as she waited for stuff to happen. But she remembered the thing with searching for Jo Baker, and she tried to make herself relax. She might have to wait for hours before anything happened. She might go all night without any surprises.
Okay, it would be a totally great surprise if nothing else got loose during the night.
About all she did for the next four hours was fly around, check in regularly, and look at stuff. There were little rat traps and small animal traps scattered all around the rubble, in case something rat-sized or terrier-sized got loose from the building, but nothing got triggered. Sergeant Scott and Sergeant Walters didn’t run into anything. The worst thing that happened to Hanna was she found out one of the copings she hooked with her grapple wasn’t sturdy enough to hold her weight, and she had to release that grapple and hook something else really fast. As for Alex, she was bored stiff after half an hour, and it only got worse. She started counting the number of laps she flew. She tried writing her next lit paper in her head, although that didn’t work as well. Boy, was she glad when Sergeant Scott called her and Hanna in for a coffee break.
Okay, he had hot chocolate and three energy bars for her, and tea for Hanna. It was really great that the SRI knew what she liked, and what Hanna liked.
Sergeant Walters looked at her and Hanna and told them, “Yeah, I know it’s really boring. Guard duty is like that. Incredible amounts of boring, with occasional short bursts of uh-oh. That’s why enemy teams are most likely to strike toward the end of a long duty period, when the guards are most likely to be bored and sleepy and lax. Same for shortly before sunrise, when your body is instinctively telling you to go get a nap.”
With hot chocolate in her tummy, the next four hours were even worse. She just wanted to get some sleep. She went silvery and started timing herself in sprints across her search area, trying different shapes to see if she could go a little faster. She settled on a thin fish shape that cut a noticeable amount of time off, so then she went back and did her search patterns while doing the math in her head, which wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be. She had to check all her calculations with the calculator app on her tPhone. But her new fish shape got her up to maybe a hundred twenty miles an hour, which she thought was awesome when she hadn’t been able to go faster than eighty-six miles an hour less than a year ago.
Okay, maybe her increased strength with her TK had a lot to do with it, too.
After that, she tried changing her shape into an airplane wing to see if she could get some lift. That was really hard, because she just didn’t have that great a control over her shapeshifting, and she couldn’t make a sharp point like the back of an airplane wing. But at least it wasn’t boring.
At two in the morning, Sergeant Scott finally called them in and turned over the guard duty to four National Guard helicopters that were going to fly around the area in pairs, two hours on and two hours off, because helicopters couldn’t stay in the air forever. Alex figured that anything that could stand up to the rocket pods mounted on those choppers would probably be too tough for her anyway. It wasn’t like she had another spare building to drop on any more t-virus monsters.
They got back to their room and found Grover was sound asleep and face-down on his pillow. And snoring. Loud. She looked at Hanna, and they totally got the giggles every time Grover made another loud snurking sound. Alex showered and put on her peejays from her gym bag and hung up her uniform to air out overnight. She was already asleep before Hanna finished showering and then drying her hair.
* * *
Alex woke up when her tPhone rang. Her first thought was that it was another desperate emergency with more creepy zombie and monster outbreaks. Then she realized it was playing ‘Basketball Jones’ which was totally not one of the songs she had programmed in as personalized ringtones. She was still sleepy, but she’d still managed to work out who it was before she picked up the phone and saw Ray’s name.
Okay, someone had changed it to ‘The TeraHoney’. She just knew Jack had talked Willow into messing with her phone.
“Hi, Ray.”
Ray sounded really worried. “Are you okay?”
Oh, right. This had to be all over the news. “Yeah, I’m totally fine. Jack and Hanna and Grover, too. Didn’t Acid Burn give you any updates?”
He admitted, “Yeah, like once an hour. Even during the night, so I figure she wrote a computer program to upload new Terawatt bulletins while she was sleeping. But I still feel better hearing your voice. Was it really as bad as they’re saying?”
Alex frowned. “I don’t know what they’re saying, but it’s bound to be worse than what’s on the news, because if people around here knew the whole truth, they’d either be panicking in the streets or they’d be hunting down every living member of Umbrella Corp and lynching them. Or both.”
“Yikes.”
She told him, “I’m not usually big with the Punisher thing, but these people are worse than Maggie Walsh. This was totally sick and evil and just plain wrong.”
“But everybody’s okay?”
She said, “Riley’s in the hospital. He’s okay right now, but he may be contagious. So we don’t know if he’s going to stay okay, or if he’ll need to be quarantined forever, or if he’ll get a super-aggressive cancer like tomorrow, or if he’ll turn into a monster that makes those silicates look like house pets.”
“Damn. From what you told me, he sounded like a nice guy.”
She smiled a little. “He’s also totally John McClane. He had a one-on-one knife fight to the death with a super-strong, super-quick guy who was mutating into something even more dangerous, and he totally ruled, even if the badguy cheated at the end and grew these fangs and bit Riley in the neck.”
“Like a vampire?”
She said, “No, more like a werewolf. So then he’s got these knife slashes all over the place and a big rip out of the side of his neck, and he just stands up and moves out like everyone else.”
“Is he okay?”
She admitted, “Maybe not. We just don’t know yet. The whole thing is just so creepy I don’t know what to do.”
Ray said, “Well, I love you, and I worry.”
“I love you, too, honey.”
He finished, “So I’m gonna get going and give everyone else a heads-up.”
She looked at the time. It wasn’t even ‘rush off to school and work’ time in Paradise Valley yet. She felt really guilty after Ray’s call, so she called home and talked to her mom and Shar. Her dad was already off to the office, but her mom promised to call him and let him know she was okay.
After breakfast, they had to go back over to the CDC labs for another check-up, and then Jack said they would all be going home. He explained, “We’ve done as much as we can. The National Guard and the Army Reserve are moving in around here, and around what’s left of the Spencer Mansion now that the fire’s mostly out. Officially, we’re all cleared except for Riley, and I want Klar home ASAP so Janet can do an extra work-up on him just in case. And I want to be back east before Acid Burn finishes leaking computer files to whoever thinks they’re the next Woodward and Bernstein, because D.C. ought to be like a hornet nest someone hit with a rock. It ought to be more fun than humans are allowed to have.”
So it turned out to be that simple. Alex changed into the fresh Terawatt uniform in the gym bag, along with clean underwear. They gathered up all their stuff and took a ride to the CDC labs, which just did quick physicals on everyone visible and a repeat of the test for the virus. Then they drove over to the nearest air force base. There was the original Cessna for Alex and Team Two, and the newer Cessna for Team One. Alex hugged Hanna and Grover, and then flew into the Team Two Cessna.
The Cessna took a detour north of Edwards Air Force Base, so it got within about a hundred miles of Paradise Valley. Alex had all her reports for Jack done before it was time to take off. She packed her gym bag and left a note on it that she’d worn the peejays and the uniform and the thermal uniform and a set of undies. She went silvery, bailed out, and jetted home.
She got home early enough to eat lunch and start dinner in the slow cooker. Then she showered and took a nap and then ate a ‘late lunch’. Then she started looking to see what the internet was buzzing about.
Wow. Willow had really been busy. There was security camera footage of the monsters in the atrium. There were emails downloaded from Umbrella’s private email server connecting Umbrella to secret payouts to local businessmen and local politicians and the Davenport chief of police Brian Irons. There were emails from important Umbrella board members to other Umbrella board members talking about how powerful they were going to be, and how they were going to get rid of most of ‘the riff-raff’ and rule over the rest. There was even an email from Oswell Spencer to his grandson thanking him for making Oswell’s vision finally possible. Plus there were millions in illegal campaign funds to Orphans like that U.S. Representative guy. And there was money paid out to Glenn Howard! Yes!
Alex took the time to do a victory dance all over the upstairs. Even on the walls and the ceiling.
Ooh! An email from Willow, showing her victory dance when she found the dirt on Glenn Howard. That was really funny. Willow was pretty graceful when she wanted to be, but she was mostly acting like a spazz in her video. So Alex got some camera footage of herself as Terawatt dancing on the floor and the walls and the ceiling, and sent that off to Acid Burn.
Even better, Willow released the Glenn Howard thing through the internet and then to a bunch of ‘truther’ websites, just before she leaked it to a host of reporters, so it looked like the government got the info last.
It was all over the news stations and the internet news sources. Even Fox News was eating this story up, because some of the illegal campaign funds went to moderates and left-wingers, too. And it wasn’t like Umbrella Corp had ever been a Fox News revenue source. And maybe they were mad at Glenn Howard for ditching them to run for office.
Naturally, Glenn Howard was denying it like crazy, because he was a big lying weasel. The news was reporting that some of the other politicians on the Umbrella lists were under arrest for really serious crimes, and a couple others had just up and vanished. And three of them besides Glenn Howard were standing their ground: one moderate was claiming he had no idea where the money came from; one liberal was saying she would give it all back because she had no idea Umbrella was evil; and one fundamentalist right-winger was insisting he was being framed and God would not have let him take dirty money.
Did people really believe stuff like that? These three people were Orphans and part of The Collective and as evil as Albert Wesker. And Alex figured they knew way more about what Umbrella was really up to than someone just getting campaign funds should know.
And when Alex told her folks about the ‘Glenn Howard and illegal campaign funds’ thing, her mom did a victory dance in the kitchen. It looked a lot like disco to Alex. Especially the ‘point up into the air at an angle’ thing.
That night, just before the six o’clock news, the President made a big announcement about the NID failing in their mission and illegally wiretapping huge numbers of America’s decorated military men and women, along with a wide array of other possible charges. Alex jumped up and down and cheered. Even better, since some of the bigshot businessmen and politicians behind the NID were now tainted by the Umbrella scandal, the NID was going to need a ton of reorganization from top to bottom. And then the President thanked Terawatt and the brave men and women of the DHS, plus the National Guard and the CDC, for saving the nation from the nightmare of Umbrella Corp’s nefarious plans.
He even used the word ‘nefarious’, too!
Alex’s mom and dad hugged her when they heard all that. Shar gave her extra hugs while telling her she should have taken Pyre along to burn up zombies and monsters. Alex just reminded her that because Shar lied to Jack and flew into a battle zone when she wasn’t supposed to, she was grounded from SRI ops for years, and it was all her own fault. Shar pouted for like ten straight minutes.
When Alex got back up to her room, there was another email from Acid Burn, and it had a video enclosure that was forwarded. Charlie O’Neill got it on his cellphone and sent it right to Willow. It was Jack doing his happy dance in his living room when the President made that announcement about the NID, and then complaining when he spotted Charlie filming him. The complaining part was even funnier than the dance.
And around midnight, Terawatt got a phone call on her tPhone. It was Hermione. She almost forgot to switch to her Terawatt voice because she was so excited to hear from her.
“Terawatt? Is this an inconvenient time to call?”
She darted down the hall and into the home office. She insisted, “Oh, no, this is fine. My sleep schedule is all messed up from the Umbrella Corporation op.”
“That is what I wanted to talk to you about … Miss Farrell. Or may I call you Annie?”
Well, Alex had wanted to meet Hermione because Hermione was smart, so there was no sense in complaining because Hermione was too smart. She admitted, “That’s just a cover identity the SRI set up for me. Call me Tera. Colonel O’Neill does.”
Hermione said, “And I did want to thank you again for saving Ron and Harry. Ron said they were about ten seconds from dying in a really horrible way. I’m glad Ron could do something to help pay you back. And his grandfather is really happy with Ron for a change, now that he knows Ron is ‘heroically protecting the British Empire just like our ancestors’ as he calls it. The Wellesley men have done a lot of heroic tasks over the centuries, but Ron’s the first one to fight alongside a superheroine.”
Alex remembered something. “Oh, I forgot to ask. Is he really good at chess?”
There was dead silence on the line for a couple of seconds. Hermione finally replied, “I keep forgetting you know a Ron from another dimension. Yes, he’s disgustingly good at chess. He still beats me about half the time, and draws about half the rest of the time. I keep meaning to read a few chess books so I can even the playing field, but I just never seem to have the time.”
Alex asked, “So … did you want to talk to me about Umbrella Corporation?”
Hermione sounded like she was wincing. “Yes. We need to deal with Umbrella Europe, and very few people here are considering that things might get as grim as they did over there. Harry’s part of a team that is hitting the Ashford estates tonight, and the E.U. has a force going into a Spanish castle at the same time. Harry and Aart Hendriks both wanted me to ask you if you have any advice.”
“Yes!” Alex insisted. “I have a ton! Go over the video that’s on the net right now from security cams in the Umbrella Corp headquarters atrium. Anything you see there could show up. Zombies. Zombies with ten-foot lethal tongues. Zombie Dobermans. Things that look like they’re zombies with fly heads. Big spiders. Big snakes. Absolutely gigantic snakes. Flies the size of a Buick. Plant monsters. Four-legged plant monsters. And these things they call Tyrants that look like a deformed nine-foot-tall weightlifter without skin and one hand that looks like they read too many Wolverine comics.”
“Good lord.”
Alex went on, “Headshots will stop the zombies and zombie dogs. Fire will stop the plants. For the rest, I’m going to recommend your forces carry M203s and anti-tank weapons. Get some M32 multiple-shot grenade launchers or whatever the NATO equivalent is. And assume that any site you hit will have up to five or six basement levels somewhere for prison cells, labs, guard chambers, and God only knows what, with really complicated routes through the levels. Plus, there may be a self-destruct for the base, so make sure your forces have clear escape routes at all times. Contact the American CDC and ask for as much antiviral as they can send you, and get it on the fastest jet you can, because if anyone gets bitten and gets infected with this stuff, they may only have hours before they turn into another zombie, and once that happens, it’s irreversible. It does permanent damage to the brain, the skin, the eyes, the internal organs … At that point, there’s no hope for the victim and they’d want to be put out of their misery. I sure would.”
“That’s … more disturbing than I expected.”
Alex suggested, “Call Jack O’Neill right now and get his thoughts on the subject. He was with me in the Spencer Mansion, and he tackled the top floors of the Umbrella HQ while I tackled the atrium and his Team Two tackled the basement levels. And if you need help, I can fly out there as soon as he can line up a Blackbird for me.”
“Do you think we really need you?”
Alex thought it over. “Well … not if you’re prepared for what you might run into. And … Look, you dug up Alfred Ashford for the SRI investigation, so you should know what’s going on.”
Hermione paused. “Well … we saw what Colonel O’Neill and his IT staff were looking for. We have two orphanages in Europe that both had a bizarre spike in newborn admissions 25 to 31 years ago, with exactly ten newborns being turned in all at once in mid-summer every year. And Alfred Ashford and his sister were two of those orphans. We’re still trying to track down the rest, although someone at the orphanages went to a lot of trouble to ‘lose’ the files on the adopting families.”
Alex said, “This is top secret, but it could be critical. Ashford and his sister and anyone else in this group is going to be unnaturally good-looking, unnaturally strong and quick and tough, unnaturally dynamic and charismatic, unnaturally smart, unnaturally aggressive, or unnaturally athletic. Maybe most of those things. Maybe all of the above. The SRI used that profile to work backward. And these Orphans are all genetically engineered and part of a plot by Howard Royer Locke, who was on the board of your two orphanages and one in the U.S. and three others. And that connects up with —”
“Maggie Walsh!” Hermione gasped. “And Project Galinka! But that means the silicates … and the blob … and the giant spider … Was that Gojira thing part of this? Or the giant clam monsters in California?”
Alex admitted, “Yes. To both. Maggie Walsh is connected to a large group that the Orphans are connected to, and it’s an international terrorist organization with unique goals.”
Hermione thought it over. “With those silicates … and Gojira … and that blob … it sounds like the only thing they could be after is wiping out all life on Earth.”
Alex told her, “We’re figuring they really want to wipe out 999 out of every 1,000 humans, so they can take over the planet and rule the few million slaves who are left alive.”
“How charming,” Hermione muttered. “And I thought Miss Ashford was just a vicious, self-absorbed twit. It appears she’s far worse than that.”
Alex decided to go for it. “She may be a vicious, self-absorbed twit who can beat the snot out of an SAS team. And there’s a possible member in India you should watch for. Khan Noonien Singh. He matches the profile, but so do hundreds and hundreds of twenty-somethings world-wide. If he is one of these Orphans, then he probably has P$ychon4ut working for him out of Northern India where he’d be untouchable. So warn your people that they need to tighten up their computer security and block all the classic P$ychon4ut attack mechanisms. But they don’t know we know about the orphanages and the link to the international group, so you need to keep that part under your hat.”
Hermione carefully said, “I’ll spin it as Maggie Walsh being linked to these people. She’s already the most wanted woman in the E.U. after the silicate attacks.”
Alex added, “And tell Harry and Ron to be careful. Oh, and tell Ron’s grandfather that Terawatt personally extended her thanks for his phone call.”
Interlude XXIVHarry Potter moved through the underground passage with his team. If Hermione hadn’t gotten all that intel from Terawatt, they wouldn’t even have thought to look for these underground areas.
And they definitely wouldn’t have been prepared when they got down to level four and these mad scientists tried to get away by releasing every evil thing they had penned up down here.
That had turned out to be an exceptionally stupid plan, as was obvious from the bits and pieces of mad scientists that littered the floor. So far, it didn’t look like any of the researchers had survived. Not that he had a lot of sympathy for people who were experimenting on and killing other people.
The team was having to go with heavy weaponry and bounding overwatch now, because of the twisting corridors and the obstacles in the hallways, on top of the actual threats. It was almost as if the place was designed to be exceptionally dangerous to even an armed combatant once the zombies and such were released.
Hermione’s voice crackled in his earpiece, all the way from the armored personnel carriers that were set up around the Ashford estate just in case. “Base to teams one and two. Team three has cleared the mansion. Team four has cleared the outbuildings. Team five reports no escapees or attacks.”
Harry knew Ron was ecstatic that Hermione was safe from any of this madness. On the other hand, Ron was pretty peeved that he was stuck on team five, which was guarding the perimeter and the APCs. Even if Ron said Doctor Stanley was pretty funny for an old guy who had his hand eaten off by monsters.
Harry quietly replied, “Team one. Basement level four under the guardhouse. Terawatt-level threats have been engaged. Requesting all available support.”
“Team two to base. Basement cleared, can support team one ASAP.”
“Base to all teams. Teams two and three, support team one. Team four, move out and form CBW perimeter around guardhouse. Team five, remain in place and stay alert.”
Something that looked like a mutated wolf with nasty tentacles writhing from its back lunged around a corner. Harry’s pointman Wainwright retreated, firing his submachine gun the entire time until the tenta-wolf was visible to the entire team.
“Now,” Harry murmured into his mike.
The team opened up with everything short of their grenades, but even after a couple of headshots that dropped the wolf-body, the tentacles were still writhing dangerously.
Wainwright muttered, “That bloody Terawatt made this look easy.”
Thomas smirked. “It is easy … if you’re a super-strong invulnerable superheroine who flies at hundreds of miles an hour and can hurl lightning bolts like Thor. And you’ve got a rack like a porn starlet.”
Wainwright grinned. “I’ll skip that last part if you don’t mind.” Thomas and Hazlett guffawed, while the rest of the team snickered.
Harry admitted, “She makes everything look easy. Those silicates? Absolutely unstoppable. She tied ’em in knots — literally — and made them look pathetic.”
Thomas asked, “Did you see the news of her fighting that Gojira thing in Japan? I’m glad we just have zombies and wolf-octopus monsters that fit in a hallway. That thing was … what? Three hundred feet tall?”
Wainwright mentioned, “They say the Japs are still cutting that thing into pieces for disposal, and it may take them until next year to finish the job. Makes a dead whale on the beach look a laugh.”
Hazlett asked, “Hey, Potter, isn’t your pal Granger supposed to be besties with Terawatt or something? I heard from some Bellochs I know that she’s in the E.U. Terawatt Liaison Office, which is hot stuff.”
Harry admitted, “She did get most of this intel from ringing Terawatt up.”
Wainwright stopped and stared. “Wait a bloody minute. Granger can just fucking call Terawatt up on the phone whenever she feels like it? ‘Oh, hello Teri, how’s tricks? And what’s the word on these Umbrella monsters?’ That’s mad.”
Harry knew he probably wasn’t supposed to tell, but he still said, “Terawatt asked for Hermione personally for that liaison position. And she wanted Hermione to be the only liaison for the whole continent.”
“Oh, I bet that got some knickers in a twist,” snorted Hazlett.
Harry tilted his head toward the hallway ahead of them. “Let’s clear this level and see if there’s another level below it. Then once we’re out of here and having a drink, I’ll see if I can get Granger to tell you about Terawatt.”