Fluid Shock: The Holocaust Engine, #2

By David Rike and Stephen Patrick

A team of investigators and military operators join the survivors in a race to stop the spread of an otherworldly plague.

After one year of quarantine, the Lower Florida Keys have descended into madness. The last of the local officials cling to power, hoarding supplies and using sheer brutality to force submission. When a second strain of disease burns its way through the enclaves of survivors, the military targets the islands for purge... until a cryptic message from inside the cordon halts the bombing.

Now, a broken former detective and a group of military operators race to unravel the claim that the disease is already out, weaponized, and ready to bring the world to its knees.

EVOLVED PUBLISHING PRESENTS the second book in the thrilling, award-winning post-apocalyptic horror thriller series, "The Holocaust Engine." [DRM-Free]

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evolved Publishing LLC
• Release date: Sep 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781622535613

David Rike

I didn’t grow up wanting to write. In fact, when I finished college I’d all but stopped reading. Then I took a job at a local police department as a whistle-stop on the way to some great destiny, got hurt early on and, faced with long days of much-needed bed rest, limped into a local book store, and left with an armful of novels. Two decades later and I’ve served that police department as an officer, supervisor and, now, investigative lieutenant, all the while bleeding the book stores dry. As for the great destiny, I simply offer this: we are never fully human until we find some outlet for our innate creative impulses. My outlet is the novel, particularly the dystopian science fiction and horror stories that resonated with me those years ago. Perhaps, one day, I’ll find that something I’ve written has influenced another, the same as that armful of books once did for me.

Book preview

Imagine a book.

A young man opens the cover and begins writing. This book is his life, and it’s written in the language of his innermost being, but he believes that since he is no one of consequence, no one will ever read it. This thought needles him. It whispers discouragement, but it never completely quenches his fire. A certain freedom comes with anonymity, and this young man basks in that freedom. For this reason, he writes his book in large, exuberant letters that slant down each and every page—his dreams, his desires, the sum total of a life’s experience.

Even though he is no one, he knows that something greater than himself exists, and he lives his life for that greatness and for those around him—particularly for the woman he loves. He had known her since elementary school, had pined for her since middle school. The first time he asked her on a date, she said no, but when he worked up the courage to ask again, she felt sorry for him and said yes. An attractive girl, she could have picked from any number of young men, but even though he was no one of any consequence, she came to see in him a simple dignity. They grew closer and closer until, finally, a life spent together seemed perfectly obvious. They were married and bought a house with the money he had saved working as an electrician for the city’s power department. For years, coworkers came and went around him, moving on to bigger cities and better paying jobs with titles and offices. Not the young man. He could see no future for himself anywhere but in this place.

The city he and his wife lived in covered a beautiful island frequented by rushed tourists and clamorous businesspeople, but in the midst of this, as the years passed, the two of them lived a quiet life, full of children and grandchildren, weddings and retirement parties. After all of this, one day his wife suffered an aneurism and went into a coma. This was the book’s final chapter, and he, now a little old man, resolved to write it down just as he’d written all the rest, in humble devotion to the things he cared for most. He visited her every day at the hospital, surrounding her with flowers and cards. He turned the television to her favorite channels and spoke to her softly of the old times while stroking her hair. If the virus had never come, he would have stayed with her until the very end. He would have kissed her goodbye and seen to the funeral arrangements. Then, his final duty completed, he would have put his own affairs in order and closed his book for the very last time.

Instead, in this final chapter, the story changed. With Sinatra playing on the stand next to his wife’s bed, new words found their way into the story: encephalitis, Bontrager’s disease, military-enforced quarantine. He wanted none of it. His time had passed, and the little old man prayed that the chaos would simply leave him and his beloved alone.

It would not.

He was seated at her bedside the day the hospital lost power. Suddenly, the last trickle of freedom that he’d cherished in his youth vanished. He had no choices left—none at all. He could only stand up with a sigh as he watched the nurses struggled to keep his beloved alive with a manual ventilator. As they worked, he shuffled out of the room, left his wife’s side for the final time, and went to work.

At this point in the story, the sentences became terse and sharp. Even the words shrank to the minimum required to keep pace. Only the old man knew how to restore power and keep his wife’s ventilator running. Only he knew how to reroute and connect to a secondary source. It took all he had. While manning the turbine night and day, he heard stories of this disease raging around them—his neighbors fighting each other for shelter and food, the zombie-like cases of early onset dementia, the whole buildings of people gone missing. For him, it changed nothing. He had only a single purpose: keep the power on at the hospital.

On the last page of his book, they came for him. A door creaked open down the hall. He shouted out to be left alone, that he could not be distracted, but the noise continued. His anger led him to investigate, to find those who would pull him away from his task. In the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow. Before he could chastise them for disturbing his work, he felt something grab him from behind. In a snap second of motion and searing pain, a hand jerked his chin upward and a razor-sharp knife slit his throat. He fell, gurgling on the floor, as two sets of shoes walked away. Clearly, they believed him finished. He struggled to his feet, but he slipped in the sticky wetness of his own blood. He got up again, blood leaking from his throat, and pulled the wrench out of his belt as he saw them.

They looked almost human. Almost. As if some warped, depraved electrician had taken two men off of ventilators just like his wife’s, then plugged a socket into their spines and charged them upright using a voltage of concentrated lust and madness. The one with the Rorschach pattern of writing on his face ripped the wrench out of the old man’s hands and struck him with it, impossibly hard.

Again, he collapsed, whether for minutes or hours, he didn’t know. As he lay on the floor, blood soaking his clothes, eyes swelling shut, he heard them torturing Herb Costins, and heard them destroying the turbine. He wiped the streams of blood away from his eyes and got back up. One last time. He stumbled onto the factory floor, feeling his way to the worktable, and found the handle of the ball peen hammer.

As the metal hammer scraped across the table and into his grip, they stopped. For a single instant, both creatures froze in place. Something flashed in their eyes, a kind of fearful recognition—something he had that they never could.

The next moment, they struck him like a car wreck.

The little old man would die on the floor next to his final creation, having barely slowed the spreading darkness that would soon claim his beloved and so many others. Bleeding from a dozen wounds, his last thought was how little he’d accomplished—a man of no consequence—of how little he’d changed. He couldn’t even save his own wife, who could have had anyone, but took him, a simple electrician, and in the grand drama playing out all-around, he would have been correct, except....

Reagan Castaneda and Captain Perry Nelson had met on several occasions, but they never talked until Perry’s quarantine. The hospital had too many exposure cases to house them individually, and Perry had been confined to a room with a young girl who had gotten Level Two Bontrager’s blood not just on her, but in her. No one believed she would survive.

Every night, Perry watched as Reagan came to see her. She clearly liked him, and even though Reagan couldn’t physically touch her, he talked and winked and smiled and let her feel like they were falling in love before the inevitable took hold and the disease began to change her—before it forced them to end her young life.

Perry wanted to like Castaneda, but the young man was brash and gratingly self-assured. On top of this, fear that Perry himself might be infected had worn his patience thin.

On the last night before he moved back inside the Republic’s defensive perimeter, Castaneda told the girl the story of his fight against Gene Cauthron, the infected Navy SEAL that had single-handedly murdered every man, woman, and child sheltering in place at the Casa Marina hotel. Castaneda held himself out like a demigod. When he claimed to be the only one who had ever fought Cauthron one on one, Perry could bear it no longer.

Other.

What? asked Castaneda.

Perry adjusted his tongue in his swollen mouth and said, "Other. You’re the only other person to do it. Sorry, Cowboy, you have to share that award with a 78-year-old city electrician."

Castaneda scowled, but the girl wanted to hear the story, and so Perry told them both about the little old man who had rigged the power grid with an old factory turbine after the government knocked out the transmission lines running down Highway 1.

Castaneda listened in silence.

That night, as he lay awake on his mattress surrounded by the sounds of crickets and the snores of people sheltering with him inside the hospital, Reagan mentally opened the book of Donald Tiune’s life. It could have been read a hundred different ways, but Reagan was a survivor and he translated it into the language of the survivalist.

This is what it said: When faced with death, there is one question that determines survival more than any other. It has nothing to do with food stockpiles or ‘bugout’ vehicles, bunkers, or water filters. It stands above even the more important questions of natural ability, acquired skills, and flexibility of mind.

The question is this: when the time comes and everything falls apart, do you have a family that is depending on you for their survival?

In the summer of 1941, the German Blitzkrieg was unstoppable. It had overrun western Europe. France had lasted just weeks. Smaller countries, only days. In June of that year, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. All along this ‘Eastern Front,’ resistance collapsed. Already disillusioned with the failed promises of Stalin’s regime, soldiers were unwilling to die for their nation. Whole divisions fled with barely a shot fired. Over two million surrendered. The German war machine advanced without slowing... everywhere except for the fortress of Brest.

Because Brest Fortress not only housed soldiers, it also housed their families. The surprise attack trapped those families inside its walls. In Brest, the soldiers did not fight for their nation; they fought for their wives and children. And fight they did. Using nothing more than outdated small arms, they stopped the Germans in their tracks—artillery, tanks, flamethrowers. The German soldiers reported, ‘We hear them screaming, but still they fight.’ Day after day, it continued. In the end, the mighty German war machine had to retreat, and wait for heavy bombers. For the first time in the war, and not the last, superior equipment would falter when face to face with superior resolve.

Bontrager’s disease had taken hold in a world of ‘swipe right,’ a shallow, self-serving world. It had begun to chew that world apart. But what if it had to face something else?

The creation of the ‘Hulk’ comic book in the early 60’s was inspired by a phenomenon called ‘hysterical strength,’ a condition whereby a person suddenly displays ‘increased’ abilities under extreme stress. Occurrences typically involve a threat to a person’s loved ones, and are believed to stem from the body suddenly flooding itself with adrenaline in a last-ditch attempt to save their lives.

How great of an increase? The most weight ever clean/pressed at the Olympics is 576 pounds, lifted by giant of an athlete who trained much of his life. The most weight ever known to have been lifted by someone saving a family member is 3,514 pounds, lifted by a mother whose young son was trapped under a 1964 Chevy Impala.

In the Lower Keys, months after Donald Tiune’s death, Doctor McCaffrey of the CDC evacuated with the two ‘special infected’ bodies. Initially, the surviving islanders had buoyed with confidence. They received thousands of doses of the first Bontrager’s vaccine along with much-needed supplies. Two low-flying aerial dusting flyovers had knocked down the mosquito population, reducing the cases of yellow fever which had popped up in the early days. That attention to detail added to the sense that someone was in charge, that someone could help all of them, that there was reason to hope.

Inside the quarantine zone, apart from government control, days turned into weeks and the initial optimism faded. It nearly disappeared when the dog Maximus and his human handlers tracked the scent of the infected former Navy SEAL to the old Truman Annex on the far side of the island. There, it was discovered that Protest City, as the islanders had dubbed it, now included an armed camp, complete with weapons and enough soldiers to overrun every confine on the island. Doctor White and the remaining hospital staff met with former Mayor Pro Tem Elmond Hutchins and the rest of the old municipal leaders, and representatives from nine of the other confines to resolve the situation. Driven by competition, rather than cooperation, the meeting was a catastrophic failure, with each confine intent on surviving alone, even if the others did not. For his part, Hutchins, representing the Conch Republic, railed against any sort of confederacy that would pull power from him. If they wanted unity, they would have to acknowledge him as their leader. Eventually, the shouting stopped and all of them returned to their walled-off neighborhoods—and more lives were lost with each passing day.

With diplomacy failing, Reagan finished the book.

In June of 1967, a multinational force invaded Israel. Using Soviet-made weapons and possessing a huge advantage in manpower, the multinational army attacked the tiny country on all sides. If the Israeli soldiers had lost, their families would have faced extermination.

The engagement is called The Six Day War because it only took six calendar days for the desperate defenders to utterly annihilate the combined forces of the invaders.

Reagan took the words of Donald Tiune’s book to heart. He moved out of the hospital, and went to the confine at the Doubletree Resort. The Doubletree Grand Key Hotel was the home of the Wharf Rats, who had fought alongside him before, as well as a large number of residents who had yet to truly involve themselves in the horror and bloodshed all around. Many of the occupants were young, few had families, and fewer still seemed to connect with anything other than their next breath. Reagan had seized his chance. He thought the manager, Sri Patel, would be hard to convince, but that was only because he did not know at the time that Sri had a wife and five young children that lived in the hotel with him.

A social experiment began.

They started slowly. The lady’s hall on the east side of the second floor suddenly had three rooms occupied by single men. Reagan and Sri dreamt up ‘mixers’ to encourage interaction. The hotel’s occupants began to leave their confine in groups. Missions were doled out, some of which were necessary, while others were pure invention. Orphans were assigned to mothers. Women sent outside were assigned strangely compatible guards. Sri gradually allowed more and more outside information to reach his patron’s ears. Fear began to drive them together. By New Year’s, the little island in the swimming pool had hosted its fourteenth wedding. By late January, they had a plan.

It could not be called an optimistic plan. Reagan and Sri agreed that few could know. Even if it worked, many would die, but it answered another question: How do you stop the unstoppable? And how can anyone survive a threat that has crawled out of hell itself?

To that, it said, by remembering what our world has forgotten, what a man of no consequence taught, that humanity has one final resort when faced with extinction: devotion to those you love. It would be an ultimatum between the people that rely on you, and the forces that want to murder those people. This contract would have no escape clause—you will put yourself in front of the ones you care for, no matter the cost, and you will turn and face the thing that wants to destroy them. Then, and only then, you will learn just what exactly you can survive.

As January turned to February, and the year after the quarantine of the Lower Florida Keys began, Reagan, Hunter Grant, and the twins went to the Grotto and its plaque that promised that as long as it stood, Key West would never again experience the full brunt of a hurricane, and they destroyed it completely.

Operation Direct Hit had begun.

I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures.

Ezekiel 1: 4-5

Like the Cat

Aboard the Carrier USS Hagler, at Anchor Southeast of Key West, Florida

Admiral Tisdale watched with rapt attention as the doctor explained.

The word comes from Africa. No one knows the exact extraction.

The image flickered: grainy black and white footage of four natives, seated in front of a thatched wall, chins down, jaws slack, unfocused eyes staring off at nothing.

"The surrounding mythology has its origins in the rituals and practices of the local shamanistic religion, which—on this side of the Atlantic—is known as Voodoo.

On the screen, white arms reached out and pressed a needle into the palm of an unresponsive hand.

Legend held that anyone in this state could be dominated by the power of the shaman.

One of the comatose natives stood up, naked except for a loin covering. Two men sauntered into the screen on either side of this one, dressed in the sort of loose-fitting pants and British pith helmets that Admiral Tisdale would have dated to the early 1900s. The image stuttered while a dark shape passed directly in front of the camera lens. The footage ran without sound, but the standing native cocked his head as if in response to a spoken command uttered from off camera—his face... that expressionless face. His body dipped and his arms reached out to embrace the men on either side. Then he rose, straight up, the explorers cradled on his raised arms like toddlers.

If this reel is genuine, then they could be quite strong.

The image on the screen changed: modern day, a single figure, male, young, strapped to a hospital bed. These images had sound. While the man’s eyes flitted at something above his bed, a soothing horn section played Dancing in the Dark, a background of the kind of big band music that would have made a fitting accompaniment to the black and white footage they had just seen.

Suddenly the music stopped. A piercingly sharp note replaced it, which made the dignitaries in the briefing room, shaped like a section of 747 passenger compartment aboard the USS Hagler, press their hands against their ears. The face on the screen went wild. It bucked against the straps. Then, muscles contracted visibly all over its face and in a single concerted movement, it began to rise. The strap over its forehead strained, then frayed.

That strap is a level 6 leather restraint inlaid with carbon mono-fiber threads.

The strap burst. The image froze. The sound died.

Admiral Tisdale took the opportunity. Hold on a minute, Doctor. Tisdale looked over the darkened room of top members of the CIA, CDC, Homeland Security, FEMA, Military Intelligence, and his own staff, and found Major Murphy. Major, give them the update.

The Army intelligence officer nodded. Yes sir. Without notes or any reference screens, he started, We now have over 20,000 confirmed cases worldwide. ‘Possible cases’ are edging toward 40,000. Over 50,000 direct-result deaths and counting. Hong Kong is at forty-seven. Tokyo had their first confirmed case last Monday, contained without casualty.

So much for Fortress Japan.

I thought they locked down the ports?

Murphy nodded to the FEMA contingent. Came off an unregistered whaler. The manifest said it ranged all the way over to the Aleutians. Nearly all major population centers in the western world are now fully involved. Rate of transmission is picking up in the east, even while it drops here in the west. Like Dr. Elkins said earlier— He nodded in the direction of the seated CDC personnel. —the next batch of vaccinations should be ready in a few weeks, but I can tell you that the White House is talking about keeping some as foreign aid bargaining chips. Domestically, no one at the Pentagon wants to see another Arizona disaster. I don’t think any more vials hit the public until they feel like they’ve got distribution worked out. That could be months.

Two of the CDC doctors started in on Murphy, and Stephanie Banks from the State Department yelled back.

Admiral Tisdale sighed. Every briefing was the same. The doctors wanted isolation, to close the airports and shipping hubs. Lock down, be like Japan. The State people gnashed their teeth. Close the country and you start a ticking clock attached to an economic warhead. Close them and they’ll never reopen. Food prices in Japan were up 300% in the last six months. And the question remained: how do you stop a disease that moves like an STD and kills more by fear than by direct exposure? Of those dead, many of those weren’t from Bontrager’s? Many were murdered because they acted loopy and someone thought that just maybe they had the disease. If the disease was not bad enough, fear and paranoia killed even more.

Just then, Deputy CDC Director Tricia Wang cut in. "Is any of this going to explain the so-called Operation Clean Sweep? Or why none of us were notified of this rather dramatic change in policy concerning the Lower Keys Containment Area?"

The room turned deathly quiet.

Totality of circumstance, said the Admiral softly, almost dreamily. Murphy, why don’t you go ahead and set up Dr. Williams.

The Major continued. For the last six months, we have been... committed... to a particular profile of the Level Two strain of infection. That profile, drawn up largely by your office— He made eye contact with Director Wang. —assessed Level Two as a kind of slow burning variant of Level One. Higher order thinking is retained, but other than that, you are basically just dealing with a smarter Level One.

So far, Wang said, the Lower Keys seem to be the only place where this strain can be found. Since we can’t isolate it at as a separate strain, that makes sense, don’t you think?

Admiral Tisdale looked behind him. Seated against the wall, dressed in a slate-grey business suit, was a man they addressed as Mr. Fincher to his face, but all called The Smoking Man behind his back. He was nominally the liaison to Secretary of State Dennis, but it was obvious that was only a fraction of the truth. He was deep state, and he was there to keep tabs on the others. He was a part of the power behind the power, and as much as Admiral Tisdale had distrusted him at first, their relationship had now changed. These two men understood each other. Subtle looks, changes in tone.... They were alike. They both wanted the same things. The Admiral wore a uniform and Fincher wore a suit, but Tisdale sensed a similar background: public service, military or paramilitary, decisions of life and death for the greater good. When this was all over, Tisdale might invite this man out to his ranch house on the Platte River, where they would sit on the balcony, stare at the water, and tell war stories while they laughed over brandy. He was nothing like beady-eyed Dennis, with his fear of bond market reactions. Fincher had a look that Tisdale understood. Right now, the look they exchanged said that Fincher already knew what was coming next. More importantly, he knew what they had to do: end this.

Of course, Murphy continued, the people inside the containment area had a very different profile, one which we discounted entirely as hysteria.

Doctor McCaffrey, said a voice up front.

Murphy nodded. Doc, have you got that footage?

Doctor Williams took his spot at the podium. The white hair and red power tie gave him the gravity that the moment required. Doctor McCaffrey spent eleven years with the CDC before his infection. Doctor Williams’s voice broke, and he clicked at the screen until it showed a shadowy figure frozen, mid-charge, in front a car’s headlights. After the, um, killings, he was confronted at a traffic checkpoint. Seven deputies fired a total of 178 rounds of ammunition, striking him at least seventy-three times at close range.

The image continued with the maddened figure running, surrounded by puffs of bullets striking the pavement and bullets tearing through its clothes. Then it stopped and crashed to the ground.

The doctor pointed at the screen. We thought this was the kill shot. Severed spinal cord. He drops. They keep shooting. On and on. They.... The doctor took a moment to compose himself, then continued. All of Dr. McCaffrey’s actions prior to this point—the attack on CDC personnel and his ex-wife—seemed to be tied to his former life, which fit nicely for the profile we developed for the infected Lt. Cauthron and the other suspected Level Two cases inside of the containment zone. For the last several months, we have been studying tissue samples in the lab, including tissue from Dr. McCaffrey, while observing the events unfolding inside of that zone.

And spreading disinformation, thought Tisdale. Williams had no doubt helped fuel the days of news stories, black and white explanations of McCaffrey being stoned on heroin cut with meat tenderizer, all to hide the existence of the Twos, to restrict it to the minds of the wild conspiracy theorists.

Deputy Director Wang’s eyes bounced over the others, looking for understanding. What changed?

Dr. Williams, Major Murphy said, would you summarize your analysis of patients A and B?

The Doctor clicked to an image of two brains, then on to a body of a handsome, dusty blonde-haired man in his twenties, eyes closed, with a line of red around his throat, his pale cheeks almost angelically peaceful.

Type Ones’ actions are disjointed and uncoordinated. Type Twos seem exactly the opposite. They take on a kind of persona. This one covered his face with masks and was known to tie up and abuse young women. He did this intentionally and consistently. The question is why.

Because that’s what happens when the brain fails, called out a man from the CDC contingent. Schizophrenics don’t hear soothing voices telling them to give to the needy. If they hear voices, the voices tell them to hurt people, or hurt themselves.

That doesn’t answer the question, responded an aged doctor in the front row. "Why do they only hear malevolent voices? Is it because that’s the default setting for a human brain incapable of higher order thinking? Or is it because we humans actually are surrounded by a world of malevolent voices, and that we can hear those voices most clearly when our thinking becomes muddled?"

A few in the room made scoffing sounds.

Finally, Doctor Williams continued. The first part of the equation has to do with the samples themselves. Of the specimens we were originally presented, the one called Mr. Grey was the most complete. Like with McCaffrey, we assumed that death was the result of a severed spinal cord, although it was hard to be certain due to the prevailing trauma. The subject’s blood loss was nearly complete due to an injury to its throat and several precise incisions made at other points on its body. There was also a catastrophic brain injury from an object inserted into the nasal cavity.

One of the FEMA group snorted. Whoever did that, he’s a savage.

Her, said Tisdale. A girl, age seventeen.

The doctor cleared his throat. We would have liked to have attributed death in all of the Level Two subjects that we were given to the loss of brain-body functioning, but they turned out to be... complicated.

The toxin.

Williams nodded at the Deputy Director. The curare-based nerve agent, so effective in stopping the already overstressed hearts of the Level One Bontrager’s cases, had little to no effect when your man used it on the Twos. The other unsettling piece of evidence was the body of the one they called Colossus, confirmed to have third- to sixth-degree burns across every visible inch of its body, wounds not survivable by a One. For a moment, his voice cracked. Or anything else that we are aware of. Lead Doctors Gupta and Henshaw had the idea for a kind of test. He wiped something from his brow and turned back to the view screen.

"By the time we were able to coordinate with the survivors inside the Containment Area back in September, the body of the one they called Jones had absconded. The image on the screen showed a cadaver with only the bottom half of its skull remaining. However, the one called Chains was still accessible where it had fallen on the beach and... I’m not sure how to say this."

There’s no reason to dance around it, Murphy cut in. The real dividing line between our synopsis of the Level Two capabilities, and the model they’ve got on the island, is a question of physical versus metaphysical.

Which is why we discarded theirs, said Assistant Director of FEMA operation Craig Danvers with some pique, while staring at the seated doctor who had spoken of ‘malevolent voices.’ Official government operations don’t do black magic.

We might need to rethink that, said Murphy.

For the second time, the room fell silent. Without words, the space was filled with ever-present thrum of the aircraft carrier’s engines. A few subconsciously held their breath.

We were looking for signs of life, Williams started sheepishly. Uh, physical movement where the basic machinery of a human body was compromised to the extent that movement should have been impossible.

Deputy Director Wang spoke over the murmurs. Her voice had turned to iron. We almost bombed a civilian population, our own citizens, because we couldn’t account for a time of death?

That’s not quite—

We better get our story straight on this one, Doctor, said Deputy Director Wang. Because right now, this is sounding less like a debriefing and more like the prelude to a war crimes tribunal. If the press gets a hold of this—

Please, said Tisdale, hear him out. Reserve judgment. I promise you, we did not come to this point quickly, or lightly. He nodded to the podium, all the while thinking of the president gazing down at the situation room map and muttering over and over, ‘We’ve got to take some of these pieces off of the board, Jack. We’ve just got to take some of these pieces off of the board.’

The screen flashed to an image of a large truck in the center of pair of crosshairs. The image was framed by the scrolling data and directional readouts from a missile closing in on a target. Seconds later, an explosion detonated in front of the cab. The video froze.

The body of the driver was obliterated by the missile’s detonation, said Doctor Williams. The body of the passenger on the back of the vehicle was not. And this presented us with a conundrum.

The video rolled. As did the truck, what was left of it, until it came to rest off-road on the sand of Smathers Beach. Then the impossible happened. A figure jumped from the rear of the wreckage and charged, chains swinging from its arms.

The question to answer concerned the condition of this subject’s body at the moment it emerged from the sanitation truck. You see, even though the vehicle shielded this body from the shrapnel and much of the heat, that explosion still should have killed it. The air to ground missile that struck directly in front of that vehicle generated enough air pressure to shatter cement masonry well beyond the impact site. Even the rear of the vehicle was within the kill radius.

The doctor’s entire body began to shake as he railed at the frozen figure on the screen. Even with the other injuries that it suffered.... Forgive me, Admiral, I’m not going to play this any further. I’ve seen it a score of times and I... I would prefer not to do so again.

The doctor took a deep breath before continuing. "We examined it, and there’s no question. None. Even with the early stages of decomposition and the multiple gunshot wounds, there is simply no doubt. That body, that thing, suffered the exact tissue damage that we would expect from the pressure wave. At impact, the air wave transferred its energy to the body, sending a fluid shockwave through the tissues of the body. Ear drums burst. Both lungs nearly liquefied. And more than that, water displacement inside the cells caused the cell walls to burst. There is simply no way—no possible way—that it can even be standing, let alone running. Almost half of the soft tissue cells showed compromise. Almost half!"

FEMA Director Lauren Younger threw up her hands. Then the disease gets the most out of the other half!

No, Director, you don’t understand. If the brain is dead, then the body stops. We’ve assumed that any interruption in the physical signaling stops the infected body, just like with the body of Dr. McCaffrey. No, don’t interrupt me. Somewhat like the classic zombie mythos. What I’m telling you is that the level of damage that this... this thing had to its nerve cells—the fluid shockwave tearing apart its tissues like a surgeon—would have made any connection between brain and body impossible. Imagine an electrical grid with 40 percent of the lines unplugged, but still keeping the lights on. His finger stabbed out. "At this moment, it is dead! It has to be! Cause and effect."

One of the CIA deputies muttered, Looks like cause and effect just left the building, and now we all get to watch voodoo on the big screen.

From the back of the room, Mr. Fincher spoke. Which should explain why Operation Clean Sweep was assembled, and why we didn’t go through the normal channels.

I don’t get that at all, said Deputy Director Wang. All I’m getting is that we’ve left a significant number of our own people trapped with those things for almost a year now, with barely any assistance, and I’m still waiting for the reason why.

Madam Director, said Mr. Fincher, coldly. The real theatre in this operation is still Cuba, which has yet to get its house in order, and has a pretty neat slice of our entire naval fleet making sure nothing comes in or out. We were about to have a heart-to-heart with the Calzado administration and give them an ultimatum. That ultimatum would have looked a whole lot more menacing after we just bombed 13,000 of our own citizens, or however many of them are still alive in there—a bombing that would have ensured that no one ever found out about the second strain. Then he looked back to the Admiral. The only real question now, Jack, is what on Earth could have made you scrub the mission.

Tisdale nodded to Murphy, who reached down between his legs into an attaché case.

The Admiral cleared his throat. What you are about to be handed is a heavily redacted English translation of a memorandum sent from an asset in the currently contested Chechnyan zone. It should go without saying that nothing you are about to see leaves this room. Any leak, even a single word, will be dealt with—not investigated, but dealt with. Aggressively

As the copies circulated, the seated dignitaries came alive with reactions: gasps and groans.

Deputy Director Wang began to cry. You did this, she said softly, looking down at the paper. This is your fault.

Tisdale knew that she was probably referring to him.

They grew louder. Several in the room stood. In a moment, he would lose them, and it would all be over.

It’s not just out, Craig Danvers marveled. It’s on the market.

The Admiral called out for attention and cleared his throat. We were still monitoring movements inside the containment area and debating a change in policy, when we started getting rumblings that they’d somehow made contact with the outside world. The Joint Chiefs decided not to take any chances, and put together Clean Sweep on the fly. Then we got this. Tisdale took a deep breath. In short, parties unnamed are offering eight Level Two bodies. The implication is that those bodies are currently not active, but that these bodies are already outside of our cordon—inactive, dormant, ready to be sold to a highest bidder willing to put a price on Armageddon. His voice boomed as he tried to talk over the grumbling filling the room. We’ve traced the source. He waited for them to settle down in order to hear the rest. Key West. Specifically, from a satellite phone we gave to Police Captain Perry Nelson some months ago.

Then we have to find him! screamed Danvers.

Tisdale gave a pained nod to the assistant FEMA director. Yes, Craig, that would be a good place to start. He looked for a moment at Deputy Director Wang, who had just regained her composure, and sighed. For those of you who do not know, Captain Nelson succumbed to what we believe was Level Two infection shortly after the massacre on Smathers Beach. His current whereabouts are not known, but spotters are active.

They’ll know him if they see him, said Tisdale’s second with a scoff.

The Admiral met the CDC Deputy Director’s livid gaze. The captain had an injury, a wound running across his face as a result of the battle on Smathers Beach. After he... turned, he began treating it himself.

He’s only been seen once by spotters since his escape, said Murphy. The islanders have given him the name Cheshire. Like the cat.

Detective Ari Schaeffer

Salvation (Formerly the Ocean Key Resort and Spa), Old Town, Key West

You’re taking too long.

Ari Schaeffer, a Key West Police Detective in the old days—the sane days—said, I’m tired, Pearl. Give me a minute.

Above her, seagulls wheeled and screeched as the sun peeked above the eastern horizon, spreading golden arms across the Atlantic. Ari caught the glimmer of the yellow sun on a cracked mirror dangling from a strand of piano wire. It swung gently in the dim light, part of an undulating curtain of mirrors strung around the hotels of Mallory Square, hanging at ground level from the outer walls to ward off the shells. She caught her own reflection and swallowed hard, knowing what they were designed to thwart—empty shells like her.

For the White Witch’s remaining followers, the confine known as Salvation had turned Mallory Square into their last best refuge, secured behind a makeshift barricade erected from hotel furniture, repurposed kiosk carts, and anything that was not nailed down. Though not as well-developed as White Street, it slowed intruders to give a semblance of safety. It also protected the only deep-water port on the island, where rumor had it that the long-awaited repurposed cruise ship might someday arrive to take them to safety. The survivors inside had checked the horizon every hour for their salvation.

Now, Ari turned away from that hope. Totally alone, she couldn’t even bear to look out at the water. Instead, she took her salvation into her own hands.

We need to leave, Ari.

She stood and turned toward the voice, catching a hazy glimpse of a young girl in pigtails and a yellow sundress. Ari stepped forward, but the effort sent her back to her knees. She peeled the gray hood from her head and unwrapped the gold and purple scarf, still caked with her blood, from her face. The pain as she tore it free made her wince. In a different time, the gold fibers threaded through it would have made it an elegant accessory, looped twice around her neck and dangling over a designer dress. For now, it looked better than a puffy socket or an eye patch. The gash above her left ear was healing, but her left eye had only begun to open. Worse, her left wrist was still raw and scorched, and her right was swollen with enough purple that she thought it must be broken.

She took a deep breath and wasted it on the girl. Any idea what happened to Fortuna and the others? She knew the answer but had to ask anyway.

Dead, I guess, said Pearl.

You’re dead. It hasn’t slowed you down.

The little girl tapped the ground with one foot. I said you’re taking too long, Ari. Her voice sounded soft, innocent, angelic... and impatient.

Ari had first met the seven-year-old Pearl Delgado in crime scene photos splayed out on Ari’s father’s desk at work. She never knew for certain, but Pearl’s death seemed to have pushed him away from Ari. Worse, it pushed him toward alcohol, toward depression, and ultimately cost him everything—all but the love of his only daughter. Recently, the tiny face, the bouncy pigtails, the yellow sundress, had returned, adding to the voices shimmering in Ari’s head, and the demented vision growing in her brain.

Pearl had been with her even before Salvation, ever since the White Street Confine. There, the former identity-thief-turned-palm-reader Mandy Steckline—Lady Fortuna—had taken her in after Ari went AWOL from the disintegrating police department. At first, Ari had dismissed Pearl as a hallucination, but they’d recently been through too much together. Now the girl was her hallucination. Now she was family, the only family Ari had left.

She steadied herself on both feet and checked her reflection in one of the hanging mirrors. She barely recognized herself, but thought her lips looked normal. With all the damage, it was hard to be sure. Besides, everyone knew the disease attacked the mind more than the body. Could she even trust her own eyes? If she did have Bontrager’s, what would it do to her? Render her mindless and staggering or turn her into a shell? Is that why Pearl was here? Pearl inside a shell?

This is my life now, reduced to a stupid oyster joke.

She remembered the man from yesterday, the one outside the mirrors. She’d led the hunting party, tracking him down Duval St. onto Petronia.

Inside the restaurant, young Andy Dukes held a walnut vanity in front of him like a shield. Gunfire ensued, and flames, and more pain than she could catalog. Then he, the shell, drug her into the bathroom. She knew him, or who he once was. He’d changed his look, grown out his hair, worn the top half of a leisure shirt over jeans, was as if about to troll the bars on retro night. But the face—purple lips, and red, bloodshot eyes with a gleam that said he wanted this moment to last forever. In another age, they’d arrested him, the man he once was, after he’d wrapped a coaxial cable around his wife’s neck and choked her unconscious. Now, whatever he had become grabbed Ari by the back of her neck, wrenched her up into the air, and forced her