General Bhagat placed a cold, dry hand over hers to quiet her. “Ms. Dunn, there is nothing to be gained from second-guessing yourself or your organization in this. Believe me, I fell victim to doing that as well when I discovered that a former colleague and friend was a traitor. It’s been a trying year with lots of mistakes, but also with a whole lot of successes. The only thing we can do is move forward, learn from our errors, and take care of the people who are left. Understand?”
She nodded, wondering what he meant by a friend being a traitor. Regardless, she was thankful when he removed his sandpaper-like palm from her hand. “Please, continue.”
For the next forty-five minutes, Hannah recounted the operation she was a part of in the days before the worldwide infestation of crazies. She finished her narrative by telling the group of her personal failures at the Brazilian site to save her teammates after her weapon jammed, including her own shameful actions of running away. It was the third time in as many days that she told the entire story and it felt good to get it off of her chest, even if the men at the table all looked as if they didn’t believe her.
When she finished with the part about landing the Blackhawk at the airfield, the general looked to Colonel King. “Carol, does this jive with the story she told you?”
“Yes, sir. All the details are the same. I believe her.”
“Thank you,” General Bhagat said, shifting his gaze back onto Hannah. “You have quite a fantastic story, Ms. Dunn. One that I certainly wasn’t privy to before all of this. What do you think we should do with this information?”
Hannah’s blood froze. “Um, I don’t know, sir. I was just told to brief you on how I ended up here in a Mexican helicopter. I mean, it’s good background information, sure, but I don’t know—”
Once more, the cold hand fell upon hers, silencing her. “Ladies and gentlemen, I see an opportunity here. There’s no telling what information we could glean about the virus from that facility.”
Bhagat paused, but did not remove his hand, making Hannah feel immensely uncomfortable as it lingered there. “As I’m sure you’ll all remember, we had a research facility here on base when this whole thing started, ran by my good friend Dr. Aarav Sanjay. He was working on a cure or at the very least a vaccine to prevent further infections based on individuals who were immune—like Ms. Dunn here. When his research ended abruptly, all work stopped on a cure as far as we know.”
Hannah slid her hand out from under his and picked up her pencil, scribbling a couple of notes as an excuse to separate herself from him. The general didn’t seem to notice as he continued, “This is our opportunity to begin again where Sanjay’s research ended. We have the means to deploy a team down to that facility and gather all the research notes, specimens, and whatever else there is, and bring it back here. The government is still functioning from…well, I can’t say where from on this phone line, but they have scientists working on a cure. If we can present them with data that talks about how the virus was created, then that might jumpstart their program.”
Hannah wrote the word “jumpstart” and underlined it several times. It wasn’t a bad idea, but it was a very dangerous one. She’d been on the ground with some of the world’s best operators and they got wiped the fuck out in minutes. Wouldn’t sending in another team just create the same problem?
“Sir?” she asked when the general paused, holding up her hand like a kid in school.
“Yes, Ms. Dunn?”
“I agree that there’s an opportunity here, but…” She allowed herself to trail off.
“You can speak freely, here,” General Bhagat prompted.
She glanced again at the sergeant for a moment. “I was an anomaly on my team, sir. I was the pilot. Everyone else had a special operations background with years of clandestine operations under their belt. And we were completely wiped out in minutes down there. Are there SF teams here at Bliss? You know, people who are trained for this sort of mission or is everyone here a conventional soldier?”
“That’s a good question,” he replied. “Simply put, no. We do not have a Special Forces element here. From what I gather, they were mostly eliminated trying to secure government officials and protect key facilities in the first few days of the outbreak. However, the infected that we see these days are vastly different than the ones we faced a year ago. Your team faced newly turned, healthy,” he made air quotations with his fingers around the word, “infected. The pathetic, starving wretches we see these days are a far cry from those first cases. You’ve been out there amongst them recently, so you probably know that more than we do.”
“Yes, sir,” Hannah answered. “They may have a diminished capacity to act or pursue their prey for long periods of time, but they are absolutely still dangerous. They hunt in packs and people end up getting trapped, then overwhelmed. The damned things are dumb, but numbers are on their side and that’s how they get survivors now.”
“I understand that, Ms. Dunn. We’ve been fighting these things from day one, first during the establishment of the quarantine zone, then securing El Paso, the collapse into the cantonment area when the FEMA camps fell, and we see them every day—almost every day now, I guess.” He glanced at the Division Operations Officer.
“That’s right, sir,” Colonel Tovey stated. “We haven’t had any contact in about four days. But with the Air Force close air support, we
