By now it was clear there was a mass evacuation. We were an air bridge, a quick and easy way out for those higher up the ranks. I tried to keep my thoughts away from my family back home.
None of us were surprised when we were turned back to the air, to return three times more. The base more desolate with each arrival.
Landing for the fourth refuel, we were relieved, but confined to our quarters, not allowed to leave the base.
I tried Skype the moment I got into my bunk, but nothing was going through. There was no connection. I tried the phone; all the lines were out, but only the externals. I rang around and quickly found they'd been disconnected. No contact was allowed with the outside while the operation was underway.
A senior officer's voice cut into the call. I hung up and tried to take his advice to get some rest. I was dog tired.
A fist woke me as it hammered on the door. It was Stubbs. We had five minutes to get to the operations room.
I tried Skype again, but still there was no connection. I didn't bother with the phone. We arrived in the ops room to find it packed full, the admiral from last night still in his fatigues, looking like he hadn't had a moments sleep. Like the rest of the ops room, his eyes were red, sunken and slow moving.
He finally told us what the hell was going on.
27
Every other word told us they were making most of this up, assumptions based on the limited data the government had gathered in the short space of time since the world had gone to shit.
The cause of the power cut was certainly an educated guess, thought to be an explosion at a distribution site. Most of us standing here had seen for ourselves the electricity was out across the entire South West. The details were hazy because they were in a hurry to tell us a surge of power from the unbalanced grid blew out the protection to an MOD containment facility in Truro. Think Boscombe Down, but on steroids. The admiral's exact words.
The upshot was the release of a contagion. A virus or bacteria. They didn't know which and none of us were doctors. We couldn't tell the difference. All they knew was it was important enough to trigger a huge evacuation the like of which had never been seen in a western country.
Protocol was out the window. Shouts came from gathered officers; people wanted to know what the contagion did and why there was such a panic. When the responses didn't come, more questions fired their way. Should we be worried about our families, came the chorus?
The admiral cleared his throat and looked at his notes, but we all knew he was buying time for hard answers. And they came. The contagion acted fast, infecting as it blew through the air.
“What about us?” came a cry from near the front.
“You're all fine. We would know by now. The contagion is too heavy to drift at anything greater than a few metres off the ground,” he said, and a rumble of discontent rose again.
“And we predict with great certainty the exposure was nowhere near Culdrose when the air bridge was in operation.” His words didn't help the murmuring. No one bought his bullshit.
Still, he told us the contagion was already changing. It was no longer airborne; the cold had killed that element off but was still spreading by contact alone.
He told how the infected would become stuporous, unable to converse, could barely control themselves. The pathogen attacks the hormones, sending adrenaline, testosterone, and cortisol flooding around the system. The mix sends the victims into fits of irrational anger.
Then came the answer to the question no one wanted to hear.
There was yet to be a cure.
Everywhere I looked I could see confounded expressions, their fixed stares not changing as the admiral continued to tell us the evacuation went long into the night, stopping as the first signs of the virus showed up in the lines.
“What happened to those people who didn't get out?” I said.
All eyes fell on me, then back to the admiral.
He let the pause fill the space until forced to answer by the rising discontent from the audience.
“It is our understanding all those not infected have been successfully evacuated.”
There was an uneasy silence across the room. No one questioned it. No one wanted it to be a lie and before we could find the courage we found out the reason we were being told.
They were sending us back into the exclusion zone.
We didn’t need convincing; were more than willing to go behind the line and take the only action we knew would stop our families from suffering.
It was night again as we stepped outside. The chopper was heavy with ammo, stacked rifles and a general-purpose machine gun.
We took to the air and after half an hour, began cruising around our designated sector. The place was properly dark. Night vision picked up a few glowing white spots of light, but nothing like we were looking for. It looked like the admiral might just have been right.
We flew for the four hours our load would allow, with the worst sight being the fires, the sky glowing orange at each turn.
We were glad to refuel with no shots fired, glad to take a quick break, even if just to reassure ourselves the air station was still operational. Our houses were fine, too. A short diversion showed the lights still on in each and served us well as a reminder why we were doing this job.
We stayed at the base for another couple of hours after a debrief replayed what we'd found. We reported the locations
