Jake puttered his boat up to where Luke and Sophie were on the lawn of a plantation style mansion. Sophie and Luke stood and started towards the building.
“You’ll never make it to the house,” Jake said, keeping an eye on the navel launch, which turned a large arc. “Wait here. I’ll act as a decoy.” He spun the steering wheel. “Trust me.”
“You must be joking,” Sophie scoffed.
“I owe you,” Jake said. He turned and saw the navy launch hammering down upon them. “And I’m sorry…”
Luke stared at him blankly, “For what, man?”
“This,” he turned an arc, opened up the throttle and targeted the naval vessel.
“No!” Luke yelled after him.
Jake aimed at the navy patrol who had no time to avoid the collision. “Oh, shit…” muttered Chen, when he saw the inevitable crash.
Jake grinned in deep satisfaction, he gritted his teeth, thinking of his redemption as he rammed them mid-ship, rupturing the fuel line and the ensuing explosion sent them sky high.
CHAPTER 30
DAY FOUR
MONDAY JULY 4th
09:00 AM
Sophie stretched in the luxurious king-sized bed of the plantation mansion. She heard Luke in the shower and smiled to herself. He had broken into the house the night before after their near death experience with the navy patrol and Jake’s ultimate sacrifice — at least he came good in the end, she thought.
She smiled because Luke felt about her as she felt about him, but she had to stop herself from making future plans, as right now they were living for the moment, and there might not be a future.
She found some clean clothes in a walk-in closet, selected a cool, flowing linen summer dress and went downstairs to the hotel-sized kitchen. She looked through the cupboards, opened the fridge, took out the milk, sniffed it and decided that it was fine. She turned on the stove delighted to find that the gas was still connected. She thought she would rustle up breakfast and realized that she was famished. She hadn’t eaten since… she couldn’t remember when. She wracked her brain and realized it was close to twenty-four hours. Had it been only two days since she awoke at the hospital to all this chaos?
She sighed and thought about what had happened over the last two days, the world, as she knew it, was over, and the government — her government, had ordered the population of southern Florida to be exterminated. Unbelievable, yet a fact. She’d seen it with her own eyes and had herself been seconds away from death. Yet, right now, she was cooking breakfast for her new boyfriend. What a crazy world!
She thought of Luke and smiled. She tried not to but couldn’t help herself. She shouldn’t be having these thoughts, the chances of them surviving the slaughter was slim, but still….
“That smells good,” Luke said, entering the luxurious kitchen dressed from head to toe in white cotton.
“Wow, look at you, don’t you scrub up good,” she teased.
“Not so bad yourself.” He pecked her on the cheek, and sat at the table, smiling at their seemingly ordinary, everyday domesticity. “Man, this kitchen is bigger than my apartment.”
“There’s a room there just full of food, it’s like a mini-mart, we could live here for a year before it’d run out, and we have gas for cooking.”
“Yeah, they have their own propane gas-tanks I noticed ‘em last night.” He gazed around the spectacular kitchen and let out a low whistle, “Man, I could get used to this.” He smiled as she put a fried breakfast in front of him. “Hey, why don’t we?” he said.
“Why don’t we what?” she asked.
“Why don’t we stay here? This house has got everything we need to ride out the Black Death.” He waved his arms around expansively.
“We have to get to Quinn Martell. He’s the only one that can help. He’ll know what to do. But we can’t communicate with him in the normal way.”
“The army are transmitting though,” he said.
“They’ll have their own wave length.”
“What if we find a set, find the right wave-length?” he suggested.
“They’ll scan the airwaves, and they can pin-point illegal transmissions.”
“What else, Morse code?”
“Do you know Morse code?” she asked.
“No.”
“Nor me. How would we send it? And to whom?”
The only way we can be sure to get a message to him is to deliver it ourselves. We must escape the zone. It’s imperative that his team of experts use us as live specimens, and find a cure.”
“How do you know they haven’t?” Luke said. “How do you know that they are not working on a cure for us now?”
“Because that’s not how this government works. Their mission will be to contain the situation, destroy the carriers, and then they’ll work on a cure. We’ve seen with our own eyes that they mean to massacre us all, they’re not making checks to see if anyone is healthy or could possibly hold a clue to a cure. They’re slaughtering everyone.” She paused for a moment. “I know this is not what Quinn Martell wants. He and the late President were all for survival, all be it in refugee camps, but a proper controlled, methodical check of the population.”
“Well, President Burgess is dead and President Parker is all gung ho with a, ‘shoot on sight’ campaign.”
“But that’s morally repugnant, he and General Malloy must be stopped, the world has to know what is going on down here in Florida,” she said.
“But it’s in the world’s interest to contain the virus to Florida, they will be aiding the government in any way they can, because if this disease got aboard, well… ”
She paced the kitchen. “So, countries that have been at each other’s throats for decades suddenly join forces to prevent this infection spreading? Incredible, all the multibillions these countries spend each year on weaponry to annihilate each other — money that is more than enough to save every starving child in the world, by the way — are now helping each other?” She shook her head in bewilderment. “It’s incredible that billions of dollars have been poured into creating germ-warfare, and this country has been brought to its knees by a bacterium that has been around for centuries.”
“I once did an in-depth report on germ-warfare, but the bosses sat on it. Didn’t think the American public was able to face the possibility of a chemical attack. They deemed it OK for families to watch the evening news, with rapes, murders and famine in far off countries, but mention foreign or domestic capabilities of germ-warfare and they practically fainted at the notion.”
“Well, all major countries in the world have signed treaties to claim that they are not developing chemical weapons, but it did not stop the US using Napalm or Agent Orange in Vietnam.”
“Shameful,” Luke agreed.
Sophie continued. “All the major players in the First World War had signed treaties not to use chemical weapons, but all sides used mustard gas, which their gas masks did little to help as it could be absorbed through the skin.” She gazed from the picture window down across the lawn to the river. “A spectacularly stupid weapon as it relied too heavily on wind direction at the beginning, and the powers that be regularly gassed their own troops.”
Luke leaned against the large oak table in the vast kitchen. “This is happening to the richest country in the world, with one of the largest armies, and unlimited resources, yet even I can see that they can’t patrol southern Florida forever.” He joined her at the window. “Say we make up one percent of the population, they’ll still be up to five thousand unaffected people trying to escape, and you can treble that with the infected that have some resilience. They can’t catch us all. They will have to come up with a plan.”