D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

“What now?” Steve Strange asked Arthur.

Arthur glared at the agent, whom he was beginning to really like. “I just spoke with the President. Get everyone together in ten minutes.”

“Will do,” Steve said as he moved away, pulling his phone from his pocket in the process.

Arthur looked across the hangar at the Rapid Response Team. They were busy analyzing the corpse in one of the isolation chambers. He gathered the energy to get up and walk over. The Sergeant, dressed in a full-body protective suit said, “This kid is definitely hot.” His voice came through a speaker.

Arthur stopped. The man leaned back down over his microscope. Another man was furiously typing on a computer attached to a large machine. The keyboard had been enlarged to allow someone wearing the thick gloves to type.

“What do you know right now?” Arthur yelled.

The man lifted his head from the microscope and snapped, “We’re not sure, but there’s definitely some sort of virus in his blood. It’ll take a while to figure out; hell, it could take months, but this kid is hot – he’s carrying something and, just a hunch, I bet it’s exactly what we thought it was.”

“Keep me informed,” Arthur said as he turned and walked away. He stared at the phone on the table – willing it to ring with Chris Foster on the other end. He was wired with nervous energy and the super-intense portable lighting that had been set up inside the hangar made everything glow, and was adding to a growing headache.

He walked outside into the cloudless night. Even with the bright full moon, the sky sparkled with stars, the glow of the Milky Way sliced across the darkness. In D.C., only the brightest stars shone through the ambient light of the east coast megalopolis that stretched from Washington to Boston. The myriad of stars soothed him, tension flowed down his back and his head cleared as he took a deep breath. The underlying sweetness of the northern California air was still present even though he stood in the middle of a vast expanse of pavement. He held his breath momentarily and let it out in a long, slow exhalation.

The plan had sounded too easy when he had originally talked to Chris this morning. Things never went that smoothly. He stretched some more as he walked around on the dark tarmac gathering his thoughts. Even from out here, he could hear a phone ringing back in the hangar. He turned and stared at the building that seemed to have liquid light pouring out of it, hoping that it was Chris Foster on the hotline. He was just about to turn away and continue on his walk when one of his men emerged from the light and ran toward him.

“It’s Chris Foster.”

Arthur sprinted back to the hangar. His heart raced as he ran into the building and over to the desk where the receiver lay on its side like a wounded animal.

He paused and took several deep breaths before picking up the phone, “Kent.”

“Damn it!” Sarah exclaimed as she disconnected the call.

“Please tell me that wasn’t what it sounded like?” Jerry said.

“It was. He can’t take off. The government has grounded all aircraft in the area.”

“You’re kidding me. What are we going to do now?” Jerry said as he pulled out his phone.

“I have no idea,” Sarah replied. She held her phone in her hand, obviously wanting to hurl it but knowing she needed it.

Chris sat in a chair against the wall. His arm a simmering blaze of pain, his right eye a swollen mess and his body feeling like it was on the verge of total collapse. The fight with Sarah and Jerry had been too much. It was looking less likely that he could survive this ordeal with each passing minute. Now their evacuation plan was dead. The helicopter that was supposed to whisk them away under the cover of darkness was not coming.

“Jesus, look at this,” Jerry said holding his phone up.

Sarah walked over and looked at the screen. An old picture of her was on the screen next to a recent picture of Chris. Jerry turned the phone back and read highlights of the story out loud, “Sarah Burns an apparently reclusive and idealistic genius created a virus. Blah, blah, blah Stop the over-population crisis. Government has instituted a dramatic, never before instituted containment policy. Roads are being blocked. All mass transit shut down, including airplanes, trains, boats. Massive influx of federal agents and they’ve called up the National Guard! We’re fucked. The FBI lost contact with Chris Foster this morning.” Jerry lifted his head and turned to Chris.

Sarah stood next to the small galley kitchen and she glared silently for a moment at Jerry, her face trembling. Then she shrieked. Her feet lashed out at the counter and she started kicking and thrashing uncontrollably. A cabinet door broke off and she jumped up and down on it as she howled. She slammed into a table, overturning it. Empty bottles and cans tumbled noisily across the tile floor. She kicked a fire extinguisher from its mounting bracket on the wall. As it crashed to the floor, its handle broke off. A thick cloud of carbon dioxide erupted from the nozzle with a loud, throaty squelch. The metal canister spun wildly around the tile, slamming into walls and the preparation table until finally jamming under a counter and ejaculating the last of its fire retardant with a loud pop.

“Sarah!” Jerry exclaimed as he stepped back while the fog of CO2 and the temper tantrum consumed Sarah. She thrashed in the cloud, howling and crying in a fit that lasted for several minutes before finally collapsing on the floor. Her raging fury reduced to uncontrollable sobs.

“Why, why, you son of a bitch?” She moaned as the CO2 dispersed across the floor in a thick ground fog.

“All the preparation, the years of planning,” she moaned. “You ruined it. All of it! Look at us, we’re trapped!”

“You’re a dead man,” Jerry said as he pulled out his pistol, cocked the hammer and walked toward Chris.

“Wait, don’t!” Chris said but Jerry marched toward him.

Sarah rose to her feet and wiped the tears from her face and said, “Stop, Jerry. Stop!”

“No, Seth was right all along. It was him the whole time.”

Sarah walked to him, “Give me the gun.”

“No.”

“Give me the fucking gun.”

“No. I’m going to kill this son of a bitch just like we should have done when he first turned up back in Maine.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

Sarah stepped in between Jerry and Chris, “Give. Me. The. Gun.”

Jerry’s face quivered with rage but he slowly handed the gun to Sarah. She took it from him saying, “I want to be the one.”

Chris rose from the chair as Sarah faced him. She was five feet away with the gun leveled at his chest. There was no way he could physically attack her or attempt an escape. In his condition, she would win either situation easily. The only way to hold off on her pulling that trigger was going to be with his wits.

“You need me,” he said.

She barked a sharp laugh. “No we don’t.”

“What are your options, Sarah? Are you going to hit the woods and become a survivalist? Live off the land and off the grid?”

“Maybe.”

“You going to go back down and get in your car and try to evade the road blocks and National Guard? Think that will work?”

She narrowed her eyes and chewed on the inside of her cheek but didn’t respond.

“Your only hope is to make a deal with the FBI. That’s the only way to guarantee you don’t end up like Albert and Seth.”

Jerry was listening, he was clearly in panic mode but he wasn’t the one Chris was worried about. He had to get Sarah to listen to him.

“Look, this whole thing sucks for you. I get it,” Chris said. “Eighteen years down the shitter. I can’t imagine it, especially when you were so close but it is what it is. You’ve lost. All you can do now is try to save yourselves.”