The officer in the center places his elbows on the desktop and rubs his leathery hands together before clapping once to call the meeting to order.
“Dr. Price, I am Colonel Slater. This is Major McMahon, and this is Major Buckner. We have asked you to come here today because the General thinks you’re a person of interest. So they tell me you’re a scientist. I’m curious. Tell me, Dr. Price: What do you think of our current situation?”
Travis blinks. “You mean—?”
“I mean in the country.”
Travis studies the man’s face briefly, searching for clues about what he wants to hear for an answer, but gives up. The soldier’s rigid expression tells him nothing.
“I think we have less than a year before the winter finishes us or them.”
Slater regards each of the men next to him in turn before returning his hard gaze to Travis. “See? I told you he was smart. Please elaborate, Dr. Price.”
“We’re putting everything into winning Washington, but it’s a morale boost at best, not something we need to fight a war,” Travis mutters, trying to muster the energy to speak. “We should retrench in regions that produce things we need, such as the grain belt. We should draft people to fight instead of herding them into refugee camps. We should put those who cannot fight to work rebuilding industries we shipped overseas years ago. We need to be able to make everything ourselves now, weapons and ammunition in particular, and we need to do it fast. All fiat currency is worth nothing. Goods are becoming scarce. The government is going to have to start paying in room and board and some type of new money based on a gold standard, and it might have to employ almost everyone in the country for a few years. But even if we did all of this, and did it now, we cannot sustain even what little we have saved. When the winter comes, we will suffer another mass die off. Our one hope is it will be harsher for the Infected so we have a fighting chance in the spring. We’re so occupied with getting things normal again we fail to realize that no matter what happens, Infection has already permanently changed the world.”
He stops talking, hoping at least something he said was pleasing to this man who holds his life in his fist. The officers chew on his speech.
“So you think our current strategy pretty much sucks,” Slater says.
“I did not use that word,” Travis says. “And I may not have all of the facts.”
The officer laughs. “It’s even worse than you know. There were actually people in the government who did not want the military to be recalled. They were worried about our bases overseas. It’s easier to leave, they said, than to ever return.”
Travis realizes he is expected to say something. “I don’t think the military strategy ultimately matters.”
Slater’s leans forward. “Why do you say that?”
“Ultimately, bullets cannot win this fight, only science can.”
“Ah, right. The elusive cure, the Holy Grail.”
“Or a vaccine, or perhaps even a weapon.”
Slater smiles grimly at that. “Dr. Price, I’d like to show you something.”
The door opens; a soldier pushes a projector into the room on a wheeled cart. Crouching, the man taps a few keys on a laptop, which produces a grainy video image on the wall showing a compound filled with soldiers and workers in hazmat suits. Men load body bags onto a truck while others unload salvaged panes of glass from another truck. Another figure in a hazmat suit feeds clothes from a garbage bag into a fire burning in a metal drum. Travis does not know who these people are or where they are other than they are somewhere on the surface.
The video has no sound. The room is quiet except for one of the officers clearing his throat. Travis can hear Fielding, still standing behind him, breathe through his nose.
Sensing this is some type of test, Travis studies the image intently. He blinks in surprise; a man has collapsed and other figures race across the compound to see what’s wrong. Half of them never make it, falling as they run. All around the compound, people topple to the ground and lie twitching. Travis recoils, making his chair squeak loudly; it is like the Screaming. The survivors gesture at each other. One of the soldiers is shooting the victims in the head. Others gather around, waving at him to stop, unaware the rest of the fallen are returning to their feet.
“This is FEMA 41,” Slater says, startling him. “A refugee camp in southern Ohio, yesterday morning, at about oh-six-twenty.”
The video switches to a view of people scrambling around a lot filled with campers and trailers. People have been living here for some time; the space in front of each camper is cluttered with tarps and coolers and other junk laid out like a never-ending yard sale. Two of the figures tackle a third and fall into a fire pit.
“They never had a chance,” Slater adds.
“So it would appear,” Travis mutters. The violence is shocking; he swallows hard to keep from throwing up.
The video changes again, showing a mob of Infected surging over a retreating knot of police firing at them with shotguns. The bottom of a helicopter comes into view. Dozens of figures fly apart, filling the air with body parts. The image shakes. Smoke obscures the camera’s eye just before the picture cracks and turns to electronic snow.
This is not satellite imagery, Travis realizes. They had cameras at the camp.
“I think Dr. Price gets the idea. Corporal, skip to the next part.”
“Sir,” the soldier says, tapping keys.
The video changes to a view of an empty field cut by an old road. A vehicle lies on its side in the distance. A man enters the image, staggering across the mud while glancing over his shoulder repeatedly. Seconds later, he exits the image on the right.
“This is right outside the eastern gate,” Slater tells him. “Now wait for it.”
Travis watches a trickle of people wander onto the scene in the same direction as the running man. The trickle becomes a flood. From their jerky movements and the way they stumble into each other, Travis can tell they are infected. The image fills with a massive crowd following the running man. Hundreds, then thousands.
“In every major camp in the country where we sent troops, we set up a sophisticated video surveillance system feeding data to local commanders and analysis teams here at Special Facility,” Slater explains. “Our commanders use this data for rapid detection and response to outbreaks and riots. The cameras on the wall teach us how to improve camp defenses. In this case, it gave us a blueprint for how we lost more than a hundred thousand people to Wildfire.”
“That man in the compound, the first who fell,” Travis says. “Was he the index case?”
“You mean was he the first person in the camp who showed symptoms of Wildfire?”
“Yes,” Travis says. “The primary case. Victim zero.”
“He’s the first one who showed symptoms, that’s right,” Slater tells him. “But not the first who caught the bug.”
“Are you suggesting an Infected entered the camp who was asymptomatic?”
“Like a Typhoid Mary, you mean?”
“Yes. A carrier.”
“The analysis team narrowed it down to a single uniform mike—an unidentified male. This man entered the camp a short time before Wildfire appeared. And he was the last to leave. That was him we just saw.”
Travis stands, unable to contain his excitement. “But how? How did he spread it to so many people so fast?” Other questions race through his mind: Why didn’t the Infected attack him? Why are they following him?
He feels Fielding’s hand on his shoulder, pushing him back into his chair.
Slater shrugs. “We don’t know. The important thing right now is to evaluate him for response. We know he is a threat. What we want to gauge is his potential value as an asset.”