Scott Sigler - Contagious

The attack was less than forty minutes old, yet Ogden had taken out the airports, clogged the roads and tied up every cop, firefighter and paramedic.

“Look at this,” Gutierrez said. “Look at what’s happening. How many men does Ogden have in Detroit?”

“Maybe sixty,” Murray said. “We’re not sure.”

“Sixty men,” Gutierrez said. “Two platoons and he’s paralyzed a major city. What happens to America if the contagion spreads to six hundred people? Six thousand ? We have to bottle this up here. We can’t let it get out.”

Murray looked at the screens and cursed Charlie Ogden. That man knew exactly what he was doing. All that would end when the five C-17s came in from Fort Bragg. Those planes carried two full companies, plus vehicles and heavy weapons. Ogden’s party was about to come to an end.

“General Cooper, we need an airport,” Murray said. “We have to assume that Ogden will take out anything that comes near DTW.”

“God damit !”

The room fell silent as all eyes turned to General Luis Monroe. The normally soft-spoken, God-fearing Monroe had just cursed at the top of his lungs. He held a phone with both hands, squeezing it as if it were the cause of all this misery.

“The C-17s,” he said. “Two of them just went down. There were reports of automatic-weapons fire in the cargo sections, where the troops were. Some explosions, possibly grenades. We’ve lost most of Zulu and Yankee companies, plus the crews. At least two hundred men.”

Silence fell over the Situation Room.

Another gift from Ogden—that guy really knew his stuff.

Gutierrez glared at Murray. “What else do we have that can get there before one-fifteen?”

“Dew Phillips and the sixty-three men left from Whiskey Company,” Murray said. “With the shape Detroit is in now, that’s all we’ve got.”

“We have no idea where the gate is,” Gutierrez said. “We have no forces on the ground. We have little or no communication into the city, and we have no reinforcements that can be deployed in less than six hours. I want Phillips in there now. Let’s not leave it up to our Strike Eagle options, shall we?”

Murray nodded. “General Monroe, you need to saturate the area with air assets, see if we can take out more of Ogden’s men and draw fire from the Stingers he has left.”

Monroe nodded and went back to his phone.

Dew and Perry had to find that gate and shut it down, because Murray most certainly did not want to leave it up to the Strike Eagles. They carried both the big two-thousand-pound bombs… and the nuke.

Gutierrez, he noticed, hadn’t specified which option he’d use.

Wake up, sleepyhead.

Detroit police officer Carmen Sanchez opened his eyes. It took him a second to get his bearings. He was weak, could barely move. Well he was weak, sure, but the reason he couldn’t move was that his wrists and feet were tied down.

“He’s awake,” he heard a muffled voice say. There was a woman to his left, dressed in some crazy black Halloween costume.

It hurt to breathe. How messed up was it when it hurt to breathe? Pretty messed up, true, but not as messed up as God talking in your head.

“Officer Sanchez, can you hear me?”

He nodded. He could hear her, from speakers in the walls, and that was weird because she was standing right next to him.

Ahhh, there you are!

He’d never bought into the whole God thing. Never. He got married in a church, sure, but that didn’t mean shit— everyone got married in a church unless you were a fucking hippie. Now that God was chattering away, right in his head… well, that made it just a wee bit easier to believe.

“Officer Sanchez, my name is Doctor Montoya. You are very sick. Nod if you understand.”

He nodded.

Would you like to join us?

“Can’t,” Sanchez said. “Tied down.”

“Ah, you can talk,” Montoya said. “That’s great. Do you think you can answer a couple of questions about how you feel?”

Sanchez nodded.

Your thoughts feel very weak, Mr. Sanchez. I’m not sure you’ll be of much use to us.

“So try to take a deep breath for me,” Montoya said.

“Maybe… not,” Sanchez said.

“Maybe not what?” Montoya said. “You can’t take a deep breath?”

Well then, Mister Sanchez, the people who are with you are very bad. What should we do about this?

“Kill me,” Sanchez said.

“Mister Sanchez, we’re not going to kill you. You’re going to make it.”

I understand. We are on our way.

He turned his head to look up at the woman. He smiled at her. “She’s… coming,” he said. “Isn’t that… nice?”

Montoya leaned back, away from him. She suddenly looked guarded, afraid. “Who’s coming?”

“Ch… Ch… Chelsea.”

He didn’t see her hand move, but he felt gloved fingers on his jaw, forcing his mouth open.

“No,” Montoya said. She sounded like she might cry. “No.”

“Margaret, what is it?”

A man’s voice. God would probably kill him, too.

“His tongue,” Montoya said. “Blue spots, he’s got it.”

“Get to the decon chamber and wait for me,” the man said. “Move.”

Sanchez heard footsteps, a door open, then a little farther away a bigger door open. It was all kind of a whirl. He hurt soooooo bad, and his brain wouldn’t process things fast enough.

I’m sorry you can’t join us, Mister Sanchez, but you really helped out, because we’ve been looking for the bad people who are doing this to you.

“I’m… glad,” he said.

Another black suit on his left. Bigger. A black man inside. A black man with a broken front tooth. Pointing a pistol.

“I’m sorry about this,” the man said.

Sanchez saw a flash, and then he was gone.

Margaret waited in the decontamination chamber for Clarence. She knew what he was going to do, and she knew that it would only take a couple of seconds.

She needed out. She just wanted to go home to her apartment in Cincinnati. She wanted to spend way too much for a Starbucks and sit down and read People or US Weekly, something truly brain-dead, because she wanted to be brain-dead.

Maybe she already was.

Her brain didn’t seem to amount for much anymore. It hadn’t saved Amos. It hadn’t saved Betty Jewell or Bernadette Smith. And it hadn’t saved Officer Carmen Sanchez.

Too much death. Too much failure.

Clarence entered the decon chamber and closed the airlock door behind him. She activated the spray. Thanks to her earpiece, she could hear Clarence’s orders despite the high-pressure spray.

“Dan, get outside, back of Trailer A,” Clarence said. “Gitsh, Marcus, we’re out of here. Check north, up by the tractors. Make sure no one is coming down the old train tracks.

“Got it,” Marcus said.

Margaret shut off the spray, then opened the other door. Seconds later, dripping with bleach, they both walked out of the trailer and into the shade of the overpass. Dan was standing there in his biohazard suit, holding a pistol, looking scared.

“Okay,” Clarence said. “We’re going to walk out the way we drove in and head for the water. There we only have to watch for attacks from three sides. I’ll take point. Gitsh and Marcus, you’ve got the rear. Dan, you’re in the middle with—”

Gitsh’s voice, urgent and sharp in her earpiece, cut off Clarence in midsentence.

“Company!”

Gunfire erupted, amplified by the overpass’s brick walls. Margaret’s arms flew up around her head, an instinctive reaction, a panicked reaction. A hand grabbed her wrist, yanking her into a run.