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Chapter 146 – CrazytownSheriff’s deputy Russell Clank was used to Dave being the calm one who always knew what to do. But Dave was upset. Dave was way past upset. Dave was freaking.
Russell tried, “Dave! Slow down, Dave! Was that the plane the Bureau was looking for?”
Dave snapped, “Hell, yeah. And whatever those Orphan creeps were going to do to Minneapolis? It’s in our town water system now!” As soon as Dave got to dry land, he flat out ran for the patrol car, even though he was wearing hip waders.
“Slow down, Dave!”
Dave insisted, “There’s no time. There’s maybe twenty farms that get their water straight out of the lake, and the whole town water supply comes out of the lake, goes through a real simple treatment system, and then all over town. Call the mayor and have him shut off the water supply until the CDC and the EPA can check it. I’ve got to call the FBI first, and …”
“Slow down, Dave!”
Dave was feeling incredibly frustrated. The FBI guy hadn’t been helpful, because Dave was just a measly county sheriff and Agent Cotton was currently checking out a ‘maybe’ four counties away. His wife hadn’t answered her phone, which happened all the time when she was seeing a patient, but it still made him nervous. He’d called the state highway patrol but hadn’t been able to reach the guys he knew, so he’d left a message there, too. Even worse, Russell hadn’t been able to talk the town mayor into ordering the town water supply to be shut off.
They got back to the little sheriff’s office, and Dave rushed Russell inside. “Look, we need to call everyone in town, and everyone who gets water right out of the lake. I need you to get right on that.”
Russell frowned. “Slow down, Dave!”
So Dave took a deep breath. Maybe he was over-reacting.
Liz walked over and asked, “Would you like some sun tea?”
A chill ran down Dave’s spine. Town water. No boiling that might kill something in the water. He looked over, and the gallon jug was half empty. And there was a mug on Russell’s desk. Liz had one in her hand.
Liz walked off, repeating, “Would you like some sun tea? Would you like some sun tea? Would you like some sun tea?”
Russell picked up his phone and said, “Slow down, Dave! Slow down, Dave! Slow down, Dave!”
The hair on the back of Dave’s neck stood at attention.
* * *
FBI agent Jerry Cotton answered his cellphone. “Agent Cotton.” He listened to the message and he just gritted his teeth until the idiot finished. “This is a possible state-wide terrorist attack and you blew this guy off because he’s just a county mountie? ARE YOU A MORON? You WILL alert everyone on the CTU list. RIGHT. NOW. The CTU, the CDC, the National Guard, the IBI, the IHP, and anyone the CTU tells you to call. NOW!”
He scrolled through his contact list and dialed the county sheriff’s office and got the guy he hadn’t had a chance to talk to when he’d driven through.
“County sheriff Dave Dutton speaking.”
“This is FBI Special Agent Jerry Cotton. Do you have the terrorist plane?”
“Oh, hi, honey!” the sheriff said a little too loudly. Okay, that sounded really bad. Jerry signaled for his partner to start calling for possible reinforcements. If the sheriff was already trapped in a hostage situation with Orphans and this toxin …
Jerry listened as the sheriff moved the phone away from his mouth and called out, “Hey, Russell, I’m gonna have a personal chat with the missus. Keep working on those phone calls.”
A few seconds later, Jerry heard a door slam over the phone. “This is Sheriff Dave Dutton. We have a major crisis here, agent, and the more manpower you can get, the better it’s going to be. And you can’t count on any of us, because Lizzie has been brewing sun tea, and she and Russell have been drinking it, and they’re already acting … weird. They’re both repeating themselves over and over, instead of doing what they need to. We haven’t been able to talk the mayor into turning off the municipal water supply, and now I don’t know if it’s because Russell was talking crazy on the phone to him. And besides the town, there’s maybe twenty farmers who get their water directly out of the lake. Russell and I found the plane. There’s two dead guys in the front seat. Whoever opened fire on that plane deserves a marksman’s medal or something, because he put all three bullets right in the door of the plane and into the pilot. And there’s a ton of fifty gallon drums in the back. Only problem is the crash busted all the barrels open. It also busted the plane open, so all this crap is in the water now!”
Agent Cotton tried to will the sheriff to remain calm. “The Air Force guys who did the overflights didn’t spot anything. Where’s the crash?”
The sheriff said, “It’s in Ogden’s Marsh. The swamp, not the town. Just under the last few trees before the marsh opens up into the east side of the lake. Twenty yards west, and the plane would’ve been out in the open. A hundred yards west, and it would’ve been down at the bottom of the lake, and the crash might not’ve busted the drums open. A hundred yards east, and it would’ve been so far in the really muddy parts of the marsh it might’ve been weeks before this stuff could’ve seeped through the marsh and into the lake. This is just … What’s going to happen to everyone?”
Jerry admitted, “They’ll probably develop peculiar tics, and then they’ll go off the deep end. We don’t know how long it’ll take, but maybe a day or two. They’ll think everyone they see is an enemy, and they’ll think they have to kill every threat. Everyone who drinks enough of this contaminant is going to turn into a killing machine.” He took a deep breath and added, “The DC office thinks this stuff may be what happened to Beirut.”
“Oh, my God.” The sheriff cringed audibly. “Judy’s pregnant!”
Jerry calmly said, “Get her somewhere safe and protected. Make sure she doesn’t drink any more lake water. We’ll have people there within hours. And give me her phone number, so I can make sure someone gets to her.”
The sheriff said, “I’ve got to get the water supply shut off.”
Jerry said, “Stay on the line while you do that. If you’ve got a hands-free system, go with that. And give me the name and address of every farm that takes water directly out of the lake.”
* * *
Dave’s car skidded on the gravel behind the doctor’s office, and he scrambled for the back door. Judy was sitting in her office talking to her receptionist Becca, and lifting a teacup to her lips.
Dave suddenly felt a sense of mounting horror. He yelled, “Don’t drink that!”
Judy and Becca both looked at him like he’d gone crazy. Judy worried, “Dave?”
He gasped, “There’s a poison in the water system. Everything out of the lake is at risk. I don’t think the town water treatment facility is doing the job, and everyone who draws straight out of the lake is at risk!”
Judy frowned at him. “I haven’t been drinking the town water since we started trying to make a baby. This is some herbal tea I made at home last night.”
He blew out a relieved breath. His house was on well water, and they had a reverse osmosis system in the basement to treat the water, because Judy was concerned about nitrates and pesticides and herbicides that might possibly get into the well water from the surrounding farmland.
Judy asked suspiciously, “What’s this poison, and why’s it in the water?”
Dave decided he’d better tell the town doctor, even if he wouldn’t want to alarm his pregnant wife. “It’s the stuff from the Orphan attack the FBI stopped in Minneapolis a couple days ago. Russell and I found the crashed plane in the marsh at the edge of the lake. They think it’ll make people go wacko and kill everyone they see. And Russell and Liz are already repeating themselves and acting abnormal, so I don’t know who we can trust until the FBI and the CDC and the National Guard get here.”
Becca nervously asked, “Repeating themselves? That’s what Rory was doing.”
Judy looked at Becca and told Dave, “We have Rory in exam room one right now, and he’s presenting with palilalia and some odd behaviors. I thought maybe he’d had a mild stroke, and I called his wife to come get him. I don’t want him driving like that, and I need her to sign some consent forms so we can get him over to Mason City for an MRI and some therapy.”
“What’s he saying?”
Becca said, “He keeps saying ‘not my farm, not my farm’.”
Dave frowned. “He’s the one who called in and told us about the plane crash. If he thinks that’s a threat …” He stepped into the short hallway and took a look. “Exam room one’s open. So is the side door.”
Dave quietly made sure his automatic was ready to draw. He walked as quietly as he could down the hall to the first exam room. He leaned in and jerked back before anyone could launch an attack.
The room was empty. He moved the rest of the way down the short hall, checking the other two exam rooms before he just walked past an open door that might have a threat inside. Still no one.
He carefully stepped over to the side door, and took a peek. Rory was leaning into his pickup truck and rummaging for something.
Judy and Becca were suddenly crowding Dave from behind. Becca whispered, “What’s going on?”
Judy hissed, “Don’t let him drive off in his condition!”
Rory stood up. He was holding a shotgun.
Dave knew there wasn’t much chance it was unloaded. He whispered, “Get back in your office. Now!”
Rory held the shotgun like he was ready to fire it, and he walked right toward the open door. Dave noticed that Rory was walking like he was sleepwalking, or maybe drunk. Dave figured that was another tell when someone was affected by this stuff.
Dave was also figuring that he wasn’t going to be able to talk Rory into putting that shotgun down. And that meant killing someone who he knew, or else getting killed and being unable to save his wife and their little friend Becca.
* * *
Riley’s tPhone rang in the tone that meant it was General O’Neill. He still thought of the man as ‘the colonel’, just as he kept thinking of his tactical phone as the tPhone instead of the SRI tac line.
Maybe the tPhone was a better name. Terawatt was probably a lot more important to the security of the country and the planet than the SRI was.
He had his earjack in as a matter of course, so he just tapped the ‘answer’ button. “Finn here, sir.”
“Bad news, Finn. The Feebs are telling us we’ve got Minneapolis II: The Attack of the Clones going on right now. A little town called Ogden’s Marsh, if you can believe that.”
Finn quickly said, “I know where that is, sir. It’s pretty much due west of our position, on the other side of Mason City.”
“Walter’s already getting your chopper on the flight line and Captain Eddings ought to be scrambling for his helmet by now. You need to get Valentine and Marshall loaded up so you can meet up with him at the nearest helipad. Body armor, tac vests, M203s or M4s, and Marshall’s CBW injectors just in case.”
Finn was already signaling Valentine to move to his position. “What are we facing? Another Beirut?”
“Could be. The county Mounties found that prop plane. We got a worst-case scenario. It crashed under the trees in the marsh just east of the lake and it sank, so it didn’t show up on visible light photos, or false color infrared, or even NOAA’s special imagery to look below the lake surfaces. But the sheriff reported to the Feebs that the plane was full of barrels, all of them were broken open, and the stuff was getting into the lakewater already. A couple dozen farms take their water directly from the lake, just like the town does. So you’ve got up to the listed town population of possible insane killers. Manny and Moe tell me the town’s listed as population 1,638 and that should include all the nearby farms that might be affected. Some of the townspeople are on well water, and are probably safe. The sheriff told the Feebs that he thinks the people on the town water are not safe. Including his deputy and staff.”
Riley was writing down notes for Valentine so she could get started on pulling their loadouts and making sure Marshall was ready. He replied, “Sir, the National Guard may be ready for a riot, but they won’t be ready for this. And this is beyond the CDC’s tasking, too.”
“I know. I can pass along warnings, and I’m also going to lie about your level of authority if I have to, just so people will listen to you. But have Marshall confer with Guard medics and the CDC while you’re en route. And maybe I can get Tera there ASAP.”
Riley smiled briefly. “Having her there is always helpful.”
The general muttered, “I just need to convince her of that.”
Riley had to admit that Terawatt, despite all her powers and all the good she’d done over the past year, still had Alex’s self-esteem issues. He personally thought that Alex would really benefit from going to college at West Point, or even the Air Force Academy if it was absolutely necessary. She had already learned a lot of valuable lessons about self-reliance and being willing to stand up for what was right, but after four years of West Point, she would have much better self-esteem and self-confidence. Granted, the issue of Cadet Mack regularly vanishing for a few days at a time would be sticky. The ‘mentoring’ ploy General O’Neill had dreamed up for Corcoran College’s structure was a lot slicker, and could be achieved just by reading in one good DHS cooperator. It was a great idea for Terawatt. Riley just wasn’t convinced Corcoran College would be the best university for Alex.
Riley also thought Graham was wrong. Graham thought Alex needed to go to Cal Tech or MIT and focus on a really heavy-science curriculum, because Terawatt used that kind of knowledge pretty regularly. Riley didn’t think Alex needed to go to a place like MIT for that. He thought you could get a darn good science education at West Point. And really, Alex seemed to be pretty intent on building her own science support team. She had Willow, and she was obviously planning on bringing in her sister and Captain Samantha Carter. Riley thought they needed to find Alex a trustworthy genetics guru who wasn’t tainted by Maggie Walsh or Howard Locke. That was harder than it sounded, given the breadth of research the twosome had done, and the number of places the two of them had worked. Bill Lee was good, but pure genetics wasn’t one of his fields of research. And from what Bill had said, the number of people who even understood Maggie Walsh’s computational genetics papers was really small, so they could probably forget about finding someone in the related fields who was as smart as she was.
The general finished up with a bad imitation of President Ulysses Grant out of an old TV show. “All right Agent West, you get out there and stop Dr. Lovelace’s latest evil plot, and don’t forget to use whatever weird stuff Artemus Gordon stuck in your shoes.”
He just said, “Yes, sir. Over and out.” But he did wonder — not for the first time — how much time the general spent watching TV.
Valentine was standing there waiting for him to wrap up, and she’d apparently heard the last bits of the conversation. She gave him a raised eyebrow. “Agent West? Does that mean I’m the Floozy of the Week?”
Riley groaned. “I really don’t know. It’s not a show I ever watched a lot.” He paused. “How do you know so much about it?”
She rolled her eyes. “My mom had the world’s biggest crush on James West. She has all the seasons on DVD.”
Riley confessed, “I’ve seen two episodes, ‘courtesy’ of General O’Neill, but ‘James Bond meets Rawhide’ isn’t really my favorite genre.”
She grinned a little. “Don’t say that in front of my mom, or you’ll get a ten minute lecture on how ‘The Wild Wild West’ was a fabulous, ground-breaking show that single-handedly created the ‘cattle punk’ genre.”
He nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind. But trust me, it can’t be as bad as if you say something uncomplimentary about ‘The Simpsons’ around the general.” He watched the SUV rushing toward them. Lieutenant Marshall was behind the wheel. “Are we ready?”
She answered, “We had everything ready. Standard gear, plus the anti-CBW injectors, plus two tranq rifles and Marshall’s drug for them. I just don’t think shooting armed berserkers with a tranq dart is a high-percentage move.”
He just said, “I don’t believe that’s what he has in mind. He’ll explain while we’re in transit.”
She told him, “I trust him. It’s not like he’s some egghead who’s never seen combat any closer than watching ‘Saving Private Ryan’ on DVD.”
He agreed, “Miller made some very smart choices for his team.” Sometimes Riley wondered if he had ruined Graham’s career just by being in the same graduating class at West Point. Riley had ended up being first in the class, and getting the bigger promotions, and getting the bigger medals. Would Graham be a lieutenant colonel by now, or at least a major, if he wasn’t living in the shadow of an Orphan? And what had happened to the guys who finished behind Jo Lupo at The Point and in Special Forces training? Did finishing behind ‘a little girl’ hurt their careers?
He should probably ask General O’Neill and General Hammond if they would have someone investigate that.
* * *
Dave moved to where he could look through the crack on the hinged side of the door. That way, he could see Rory coming, and Rory couldn’t see him. And he had a steel security door between him and Rory’s shotgun.
He yelled, “Rory Hamill! Put down your weapon!”
Rory just kept trudging forward.
“This is Dave Dutton, the county sheriff! Put down your shotgun at once!”
Rory stopped and turned his head at an angle, like he couldn’t figure out what to do next.
Russell came running from around the corner, and Rory instantly pulled up the shotgun to blow Russell’s face off.
Russell dived to the side, as Dave carefully put one round right in Rory’s leg.
Rory fired at Russell. Then he fell to the ground and pumped his shotgun. Dave ducked back just before Rory put two shotgun blasts into the doorway. Fortunately, it was a steel outer door and not a flimsy hollow-core inside door, or Dave would have been picking splinters and shot out of his hide for weeks. A couple of pellets still made it around the door and ricocheted down the hall along with vicious little noises.
Russell put another round into Rory, and the guy still tried to get back up. Rory pumped his shotgun once more and pointed it right at Russell’s head as Russell lay on the ground.
Dave and Russell fired at the same time. Rory fell backward and didn’t move.
Dave rushed out the door with his gun still pointed at Rory’s head. He kicked the gun out of Rory’s limp hands, and then checked Rory’s pulse.
Russell walked over, and Dave sadly shook his head. Rory was gone.
Russell said, “Slow down, Dave. Slow down, Dave.” Then he shook his head a little and asked, “Why did I say that?”
Dave sighed. “I think you need to give me your service revolver, and you need to let Judy look you over.”
How was he going to explain this to Rory’s wife and son?
A shiver of horror raced down his back. Rory’s family drank the same water he did. Had they gone crazy already, just like Rory?
* * *
The two black Iowa Bureau of Investigation cars drove down the gravel driveway. The setting sun was shining right into the right-hand side windows, which was a pain in the ass. The man in the passenger seat of the lead car spoke into the car’s radio. “Team Two approaching Hamill farmstead. No sign of trouble. Over and out.”
“Leader to Team Two. Watch yourselves. The National Guard’s still setting up a perimeter, and the Army forces won’t be here for a couple of hours. Don’t drink or eat anything she offers, even if she gets upset about it.”
“Roger that.”
He hung up the radio mike and looked over at his driver. “This is a milk run. I don’t know why the head office is pissing their pants over it. We go get some farmboys to stop drinking out of their pond. Big fucking deal.”
His driver grumbled, “It’s that dickwad fed Cotton, I bet. He’s got this big rep, Mister Important FBI Guy, so he’s gotta try and make every single thing into some giant case.”
They pulled up in front of a quaint old farmhouse. He got out and motioned for the other guys to stay with the cars while he and the driver talked to the lady of the house.
He walked up onto the small porch and knocked. The door swung open, revealing a decent-looking middle-aged woman. Before he could even show her his IBI card wallet, she waved them in. “Come on, come on, I got cookies in the oven, can’t keep ’em waitin’.”
She turned her back on them and walked into the kitchen. He followed.
She opened the oven and leaned forward, reaching into the oven.
There was a sudden roar of a tractor, and the screams of the other IBI men outside. He turned and looked out the kitchen window. The tractor had a huge thresher hooked up to its front instead of being dragged behind it, and the men by the car were quickly run down and chewed to shreds, while blood and gore flew everywhere.
His driver cursed, “Holy f–…” But a loud explosion stopped the agent as a bullet crashed into the guy’s skull.
He looked over at the woman just as he realized she had reached into the oven with no oven mitts. She had pulled a .45 out of its hiding place in her oven, and she was pointing it at his chest. He went for his gun. He didn’t get it out of its holster in time. The bullet felt like she’d hit him right in the ribs with a sledgehammer.
He hit the floor hard. As he lost consciousness, he was sure he heard her say, “Can’t keep ’em waitin’.”
He felt it as she fired three more bullets into his chest. He didn’t feel the round she put into his skull.
* * *
Alex heard her tPhone go off in a ringtone that was the opening to ‘My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic’. So it was Jack, and Willow was still messing with her ringtones.
She’d have to remember to tell Willow to leave this one just the way it was. Unless Willow found a special Pinkie Pie theme song.
She pulled the phone over to her hand with her TK, and she switched to her Terawatt voice. “Tera here. Is there a crisis?”
Jack complained, “Unfortunately, yeah.”
“Oh, crud.”
He went on, “It’s Hate Plague 2: Electric Boogaloo. They just found the plane. It crashed in the worst place possible. In a marsh under some trees so it wasn’t visible from the aerial photography or the sat imagery, but it was just close enough to a lake that the ruptured barrels are leaking into the lakewater. And the lake is the water source for a small town and a few dozen farms. The sheriff who called it in told the FBI that some people on the town water system are already showing effects. We’ve got to cordon off the town and the whole area around the town, and check every person for brain lesions, and treat everyone we can, and lock up everyone who’s already brain-damaged and a threat to anyone they see. We could use some h–…”
“How fast can you get me out there?” Alex interrupted. Like she was just going to sit on her hands and hope everything went perfectly without her around to help.
He said, “Just fly down toward Edwards as usual, and we’ll have a chopper meet you and ferry you the rest of the way to the Blackbird. I’ve already got Finn and Marshall and Valentine on their way, along with the National Guard, the CDC and EPA, the FBI, and the Iowa Bureau of Investigation. Big Cheese is working on getting some Army units to back up the Guard, too. Expect a quarantine line around the entire town and swamp, and assume every townie you see is already an armed berserker.”
“Will do,” she replied firmly, even if she didn’t feel firm about treating everyone like that.
He added, “Finn will be glad to hear you’re on the way. Over and out.”
She dived into her gym bag and did her quick-change into Terawatt. She grabbed four energy bars, too, and she flew downstairs. Her mom was working on dinner stuff so she could have it ready shortly after the martial arts lesson.
“Mom, I gotta go. It’s the poison thing, and we may lose an entire Iowa town. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Her mom looked like she wanted to run over and hug Alex for a long time, but she just said, “Be careful … Terawatt.”
Alex flew into the garage and off into the storm runoff system. She hoped she wasn’t too late. She hoped she wasn’t already a couple of days late.
* * *
Lieutenant Hank Marshall, Ph.D., knew he was only running the conference call because of his agency, and he felt a little overwhelmed. The CDC had two M.D./Ph.D.s on the call, along with two M.D./M.P.H.s. The EPA had a couple of Ph.D.s who were serious names in environmental toxicology. On his end, he had a colonel who was an Orphan and another Orphan who probably deserved to be a captain in Delta Force by now. The Army and National Guard participants included three colonels and a freaking general. He would have felt better if General O’Neill was running the call.
Granted, the general would probably manage to insult at least half the groups involved before the call was over. Hank still hadn’t decided whether the general’s insouciance was a good thing or a bad thing. If O’Neill thought you were incompetent or arrogant or annoying, he would go out of his way to burst your balloon. And if you happened to outrank him, then he’d just pretend to be polite in the process. Lupo had told Hank all about the ‘Orphans’ meeting at Andrews AFB, where O’Neill had basically told a couple three-stars and four-stars where to shove it while protecting his people. That was another thing that Hank admired about General O’Neill. The guy protected your ass no matter who he had to face down, and no matter what he had to do. Captain Miller had once told Hank and Pete Bailey a story about Forrest Gates screwing up big-time in Siberia, and O’Neill reaming him out in private, but then protecting him from American and Russian higher-ups who would not have been kind. As a result of that incident and a couple others like that, O’Neill had earned the kind of loyalty that you just could not find in most places nowadays.
Hank continued, “… and so our biggest challenge is going to be triage. Even if we see someone actively trying to kill someone else, that doesn’t mean he’s one of our victims. It may just mean he’s desperately defending himself from a horde of attackers or possible attackers. Even if we see someone being calm, that doesn’t mean they’re not a victim preparing an ambush, or a victim who has yet to show secondary and tertiary symptoms.”
One of the National Guard officers muttered, “At least this isn’t contagious, like the Davenport outbreak.”
Another CDC staffer disagreed. “It could be. Prions usually replicate under the right circumstances, so we need to treat this like it is somewhat contagious.”
One of the EPA staffers complained, “We still don’t know how this stuff will percolate through the vadose zone, or if it will break down before it can get into the local wells or even the aquifer.”
Hank said, “Based on what we’ve seen, we’re figuring that even in aqueous solution, the macromolecule ought to break down into much less toxic components within a week or so.”
“If you could get us some samples, we could do some toxicity testing and permeability studies.”
Colonel Finn contributed, “I believe the FBI’s CTU pulled some samples for the DHS, and I’ll look into that for you.”
“Thank you, colonel.”
Hank added, “We have reason to believe that sufficiently high concentrations may work a lot faster than the sort of dose from a contaminated municipal water system, so you may need as many samples as we can provide.” He glanced over his notes he’d typed up on his tPhone app. “All right, the next key point ties in with this. The only way to be sure someone isn’t already a victim is a brain scan to check for lesions. We’ve got three MRI trailers being brought in from nearby areas where they can’t afford a dedicated MRI set-up, so they rotate usage. We’ll also have four portable CAT scan systems. Each one of the MRI trailers has its own power system, but the CAT scanners will need external power: one 240 volt line will do for each.”
“We can handle that off the portable generators pretty easily.”
He still needed to talk about the loads for his tranq rifles: a prion-denaturing chemical mixed with a hefty dose of anesthetic. Shooting a berserker might not have much effect, but shooting a victim who only had minor lesions might save the rest of their cerebrum and keep them from turning into a berserker. And shooting a non-victim would knock them out and make them sick afterward, but it wouldn’t do any lasting harm.
Then he’d have to lead and re-direct the discussion — more like angry argument unless he missed his guess — about how to manage the triage area. The CDC was concerned about maintaining the quarantine first and protecting the innocent second. The National Guard and the Army were a lot more concerned about taking down the berserkers before their people could be hurt. And it wasn’t like they already had a large, enclosed area they could pen the townspeople in, so they could take them out one at a time for careful evaluation. Fortunately, there were some Army Corps of Engineers guys on the call who were bringing in trucks of fence equipment that would go up pretty fast.
Hank Marshall made sure he had his night vision goggles on and his M203 at the ready. It was just dark, and they were landing a quarter mile inside the picket line the National Guard had assembled on the east side of the town. Until more Guard troopers arrived, the east and south borders of the control zone were being held by fairly thinly-spread Iowa Guard units, the north border on the other side of the lake was being monitored by some Army units that had rushed in from a bivouac in southern Minnesota, and the western border was only patrolled by helicopters from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. So this could go wrong in a lot of ways.
Colonel Finn delegated responsibilities. “Lieutenant Marshall, I need you to monitor the triage process as townspeople get brought in. The CDC is going to be treating this like an outbreak of typhus, not like a zombie apocalypse. The Army and Guard are going to be treating this like a round-up of Iraqi terrorists, not like triage for a bunch of sick people, some of whom are a danger to others. I trust you to intercede when the agencies start fighting each other instead of dealing with the problem.”
“Yes, sir.” Well, what else could he say? He really didn’t think people would listen to him when some full-bird colonel and some bigshot bureaucrat started butting heads. But he’d do what needed to be done.
Finn continued, “Valentine, I need you to be Captain Valentine, Delta Force, and go with the Iowa Guard troops over there. We just got word that the IBI sent four two-car teams out to handle the farmers around the lake and the marsh. Two of the teams never even managed to call in an alert, one team called in an alert and hasn’t been heard from since, and one team called in an alert but managed to get one car back to the picket lines. One agent was safe, two were injured, and the fourth never made it back to the cars. Those three agents are currently in quarantine, just in case. So we’ve got over a dozen dug-in positions we’re going to have to clear, before the Guard forces will move in close enough to deal with the town proper.”
Valentine just nodded. She took her beret out of its holder, snapped it into shape, and adjusted it smartly at an angle on her head. Hank had to admit it: Valentine made that stupid beret look damn good. Granted, Valentine could make a burlap bag and a tinfoil hat look sexy.
Finn finished up, “I need to meet with a couple of cranky colonels and generals, and we’ll see how well General O’Neill’s directives have gone over. Good luck, you two.” He hopped back on the helo, and was swiftly flown off toward some rear command post on the other side of the picket lines.
Hank wondered if that was for the best. Colonel Finn still had accelerated healing. There was no way of telling whether that meant this particular prion would get eradicated by his system, or if his system would replicate the prions extra-fast. That meant he was either the best person to have on the front lines here, or the absolute worst. Hank really, really didn’t want to find out the hard way which one it was.
* * *
Alex bailed out of the Blackbird and flew in without slowing down. Well, without slowing down on purpose, because she knew she was slowing down some just because of wind resistance. She could see the lights of the town, even if there were weird bits that were black in the middle of the lighted areas. And she could see fires going here and there.
“Terawatt to SRI, come in please.”
“Terawatt, this is Colonel Finn. This comm channel is open and unencrypted, so maintain operational security.”
“Roger that, Colonel Finn,” she said as officially as she could.
Other voices broke in, so Riley sure wasn’t kidding.
“Finn, how the hell did you get us Terawatt? You’re a miracle worker!”
But another voice, some guy who sounded pretty much panicked, yelped over the comms, “Terawatt, oh thank God! The easternmost MRI trailer! Quick! We’ve got a berserker attacking two of our techs with a scythe!”
Eww, that sounded bad. She zipped as fast as she could over the heavy fences that were still being assembled, and past the trailers and buses and RVs, to the big MRI trailer with the two guys wildly waving flashlights at her. She zoomed in and saw at the far end, on the other side of the MRI equipment, a big burly guy lifting a scythe into the air. She darted forward and grabbed his scythe with her TK.
She couldn’t seem to get a TK grip on the thing. It was like it wasn’t really there. She flew over the huge MRI unit to tackle him directly.
Four clear plastic walls slammed into place around her, trapping her between a steel ceiling and the solid plastic top of the MRI unit. If it really was an MRI unit, and if it really was plastic.
The rear doors slammed shut behind her. The berserker and the two injured techs blinked out of existence the way she’d seen holograms do when you turned off the lasers. She dropped onto the MRI unit and used her TK to hit two of the clear walls right where they pressed together. Nothing. They hardly even trembled. And there was some sort of clear goo that looked like it was sealing the clear walls to each other. Extra crud.
A flat-panel monitor on the wall on the other side of the heavy plastic clicked into life.
Margaret K. Walsh’s face appeared on the screen. “Terawatt. How good of you to drop in. I’d like to have a little chat, if you’re not too busy.”
Alex made an effort not to gulp.