“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.
“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:
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.”
“If that man is a carrier,” Travis says, “he may carry a pure strain of the Wildfire Agent, which offers amazing research opportunities.”
“You see, Dr. Price, that’s just the thing we’re curious about,” Slater tells him. “From where we sit, we can’t tell if he represents a cure, or whether he’s a superweapon created by the virus.”
The corporal brings up another image. Glowing blotches of red sprawl across a black landscape, like diseased cells under a microscope. Travis realizes he is looking at a thermal image of a large area of ground, taken from the air. The blotches are large crowds.
“As you can see,” the Colonel continues, “the uniform mike has built an army for himself. They were all moving southeast as of an hour ago, when they stopped and surrounded the farmhouse you see at the center.”
“Does he know what he is?” Travis asks.
“We don’t know anything about his range of free will. He might be a mindless agent of Wildfire, some poor guy who can’t understand why everyone he meets falls down and turns into a monster, or something in between.”
“We need to study him. This man’s blood. . .”
Slater points at the thermal image and whistles, imitating a falling artillery round.“Boom,” he says.
“. . . can end Wildfire,” Travis finishes awkwardly, confused.
“The Chiefs want to drop some bombs and put an immediate end to the threat. That’s the smart move, don’t you think?”
“You—you can’t be serious!”
“I’m dead serious. He’s a little over two hundred miles from Washington, Dr. Price. If we do nothing and he shows up with a hundred thousand Infected tagging along, we’ll lose everything. Even if he shows up without them, he could infect our troops.”
“You don’t know where he’s going to go.”
“Doesn’t matter. The region is filled with refugee camps. The man’s a threat to us wherever he goes.”
“I know it’s easy to see this man as a threat—”
“A threat?” Slater laughs. “He’s a walking, talking biological superweapon, Dr. Price. Less than a day’s drive from our front lines.”
“Colonel. Sir. You have to listen to me. As far as we know, this man is a unique mutation of Wildfire. He’s the chance we’ve been waiting for.”
“What kind of chance are we talking about?”
“To beat Wildfire, we need to characterize it,” Travis explains. “To characterize it, we need to identify it. We haven’t been able to do that yet. This man’s blood might be the key to a vaccine or even a cure.”
“What about a weapon? A virus to kill the virus and anyone or anything that’s got it?”
Travis considers this, and nods. “Yes. That’s possible as well. A weapon, or maybe a repellent.”
“You’re sure, then, he’s got such a thing in his blood? You’re one hundred percent positive he could produce material we need to win?”
“Of course not,” Travis says.
“Well, see, that means all you’ve got is a theory.”
“A hypothesis, yes. If he does carry a pure sample, though, it could end all this.”
