15:00 PM
Sophie eyed the driver nervously, he didn’t look good. She could see that his eyes were watering and blurring his vision, as he was unable to wipe them. He’d said that he only took his helmet off for a few moments, but she knew of course, that’s all it took to be exposed to the bacteria. It also meant the virus was further north than she had hoped. The soldier said he had made a call, while at a rest stop on his way down the I-95 to collect her. She knew the place, an ugly, brutal looking building, utilitarian, with no redeeming features, but functional, with the services you would expect. But now all those travelers would have been in touch with the airborne virus. She’d have to let the surgeon general know as soon as possible so he could revise his plan and extend the exclusion zone. Although, she privately thought it may already be too late.
The driver sneezed again, and swung hard on the wheel, Sophie screamed, and almost tipped from the motoring vehicle. He braked harshly, leaped from the jeep, and ripped off his annoying helmet.
“No, don’t!” she shouted, then stared in amazement as she realized that his face had taken on a black hue, mainly on the tip of his nose and ears. “Put the helmet back on,” Sophie said in an even tone.
“I think it’s goddamn obvious that it’s too late for me, don’tcha think?”
“It’s not for your safety it’s for the others. You are spreading the disease around.”
“Put it back on, that’s an order,” snapped the sergeant.
“No point wearing it now, I’m gonna die, and that’s a fact,” he replied.
“Calm down, soldier, we’ll get you attention,” the sergeant said. Yet the soldier stubbornly ignored his superior, enraging him further. “Put your helmet back on, or I’ll put you on a charge.”
The soldier sneered, “I’m dying. Do your worst.”
“That’s it, I’m writing you up. You’re on a charge, disobeying orders, get in the back of the jeep, I’m driving the rest of the way.” He hopped into the driver-seat and fired the engine, Sophie scrambled back into the front passenger seat. The soldier crouched down and vomited a thick, black, foul-smelling discharge.
He reeled back on his heels, and looked at Sophie pleadingly. “Help me… please.”
“Get in the jeep. We must get to the compound,” the sergeant told him.
“There’s nothing you can do for me. We were told that in orientation.” He wiped the black-colored blood from his nostrils. Sophie noticed his skin getting darker. She calculated that he would not make it as far as the compound.
The sergeant turned to the soldier. “Get in the jeep, soldier. Do not disobey me again.”
“Fuck you, Serge. I’m staying here.”
“Negative, soldier. You’ll infect anyone you come into contact with.”
The solider stood and stared out his superior challengingly. “So what? I don’t give a flying fuck about them.” He glared, then turned on his heels and walked in the opposite direction.
“I can’t let you do it, soldier, do not disobey me. Come back, halt or I will shoot.”
Sophie stared in disbelief as the sergeant raised his rifle and she yelled. “What are you doing?” She moved into his line-of-sight stopping him in his tracks.
“I’m following my orders, doctor. Stand aside.” He re-aimed, and shot.
Sophie starred open-mouthed as the bullet hit between the soldier’s shoulder blades; and exited his rib cage in a plume of blackish blood. She watched in horror, as the driver dropped to his knees, turned and caught her eye, blood bubbled from his mouth, his eyed registered total surprise. He tried to stand, wobbled, then flopped face first into the dirt.
CHAPTER 9
She steeled herself and tried to match the sergeant’s defiant glare. “I’ll report you for murder, when we reach the compound,” she declared, feeling her
self tremble with rage as she spoke.
“I followed orders, ma’am, nothing more, nothing less,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What orders?” she asked.
“For your information southern Florida is under martial law, and I have the authority to shoot on sight if I deem it necessary.”
“Oh yeah, sure, since when?” she scoffed.
He checked his wristwatch. “Since about thirty minutes ago.” He smiled mockingly, watching her face drop, taking in the information. “Now,” he said, indicating the vehicle, “Get back in the fucking jeep… ma’am.”
15:30 PM
General Malloy prowled the war room deep in the heart of the Pentagon. At last, finally the moment he’d been waiting his entire life for — martial law. Now, he’d be able to get the American people under control. To make the country great again, like it had been when he was a boy.
He remembered growing up in Alabama, and how his chest used to burst with pride when his parents acquired some new toy, be it a brand new Cadillac, boat, or camper van, flaunting their wealth and living the American dream. He and his elder brother, who he utterly adored, wanted for nothing. They regularly had new clothes, no hand-me-downs for Jack or his brother. They were always turned out smartly, kept their hair short and tidy, and had the latest must-have toys. Same with the other kids in the neighborhood, they had played in little league baseball and any sport they could discover.
Then desegregation was pushed through by the numb-nuts in Washington, where the lily-livered liberals forced their Northern standards upon them, what did they know? The South had gotten along for several centuries doing things their own way. They had stood up to them, until they sent in the National Guard to safeguard passage for the black kids to attend his school. He could remember even as an infant in the 1960s as the first black faces entered the school. Then as predicted, not so long after that they moved into the neighborhood and then the rot set in, first the graffiti, then stolen cars, and then burglaries.
Fifty plus years later and he still felt the slow toxic drip of the mixing of the races, which he thought patently obvious, would not work. It would weaken American blood and the American race. He’d noticed over the years that each new in-take of raw recruits were inferior to the last, as the American gene pool mixed and diluted.
Since then, there had been feminism and worse, far worse, as part of some mad, touchy-feely population experiment, they had even had a black President. Jesus H. Christ. A black President! Truly, the pinnacle of everything that was wrong with the once great country.
His pappy had never been the same since his elder brother died in Vietnam, one of the last, while they were evacuating from the American embassy. His father had collapsed and never fully recovered, falling into a gradual and irreversible decline. Young Jack had been mortified to hear of his brother’s death in Vietnam, the very day he was due back home. To die was bad enough, but for his brother to die on the last day of the conflict, was too cruel for them to suffer as a family.
Jack had signed up to join the same regiment as soon as he was able and had taken to the military life like a duck to water. He loved the discipline, the smartness, the order of life. He needed the rules and regulations to live by and rocketed up through the ranks to his current position, a four star general. He used every ounce of his forceful nature to make the Joint Chiefs of Staff quake in their boots and as he prowled around the enormous mahogany conference table in the war room, he had the floor and he had their attention.
Most were riveted, listening to his innovative plans and applauded his no nonsense approach to the impending disaster, his declaring of martial law and more importantly passing a law that plague carriers and objectors disobeying the military’s commands would be shot. No argument, no discussions, they would be shot dead and that’s the end of it. The Vice President had given him complete freedom to solve the Florida problem.