The Apocalypse

Chapter 11

Eric

Phillipsburg, New Jersey



After meeting the President and playing the part of personal servant to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who had practically moved into the CDC, it should've been nothing for Eric to speak to a simple two star general.

It wasn't.

Major General Fairchild wasn't an easy man for anyone one to speak to even under normal conditions. He kept Eric waiting half the morning on the hard wood benches outside his improvised headquarters. The 10th Mountain Division had its base of operations set up in the municipal building in the town of Phillipsburg, which sat right on the border of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It would've made more strategic sense to have his base two miles further west across the Delaware River, but there was the morale factor to consider. It would've been difficult on the men to give up New Jersey completely after losing so much ground already.

It had certainly done a number on Eric's morale to learn where the lines had been pulled back to. “What happened to holding the Hudson?” he asked his driver. After a chopper ride from Atlanta to Camp David, he had been given a lift in a hard-topped humvee to meet with the commander of the 10th.

The soldier had only shrugged at the question.

Now as the hours slipped by he couldn't even get that much out of the officers whisking past. Finally he grabbed the first man to come out of the general's staff office. “I have orders from the Secretary of Health and Human Services to see General Fairchild,” he said to the man. “I demand to see him.” Though his tone had been commanding, almost to the point of being imperious, the man, a full bird colonel only made a noise of dismissal and flicked his hand over his shoulder as he walked away.

“He's in there. Go on in.”

“Does that mean I can just go in? Really?” Eric asked, however the colonel was already out of earshot.

Summoning his courage he pushed open a door and slipped into what had at one time been a courtroom. In a way it still was. Now General Fairchild, sitting in the judge's seat, presided—he glared at Eric as the officer who had been speaking faltered at the interruption.

“Who the hell are you?” Fairchild demanded.

Eric had been about to sit in the back row but now he straightened and introduced himself, “Eric Reidy of the CDC with orders from the Secretary of Health and Human Services.”

“First, I don't take orders from that bitch. Second...what's with that get up?”

Over his three-piece suit, Eric wore a dun colored flak jacket and upon his head, sitting crooked, was a helmet—supposedly it was one size fits all, however it made his skull feel like a clapper in a bell. “I was told this was regulation,” he said defensively.

“I'm sure it is at the CDC,” the general mocked. “Out here, if a stiff gets close enough to bite you on the head, you're a dead man anyways. But hey, if they start planting IEDs or tossing grenades you'll be the safest one of us all.” This brought on a chuckle from the assembled officers. Red-faced and angry, Eric began to protest, but the general slammed his hand down growling, “Shut your damned mouth. I'll get to you when I get to you.”

Eric dropped onto the bench and steamed in an angry silence, though at the same time he slipped the helmet off and undid the heavy flak jacket as unobtrusively as possible. As he did he cursed his boss under his breath. Eric had asked for a gun and had been given the stupid heavy outfit instead.

With nothing better to do, he listened to brigade commander after brigade commander beg for more ammunition, more fuel, more food, more reinforcements, and really just more of everything.

The general seemed like a single mom trying to satisfy a dozen bickering children. “We can detach the 186th support battalion from the 3rd brigade...”

“With all due respect, Sir,” the 4th Brigade commander said. “Is that the Vermont Guard unit you keep pushing on everyone? The one with the God damned rainbow patch? No, sorry. The 3rd can keep them. I can't supply my own men, and now you want to give me a bunch of guys who are just a waste ammo? Those guys can't fight a lick.”

“Maybe if you tried a different strategy,” 1st Brigade suggested. “The men I find doubtful I use in other ways: I have them run ammo or dig trenches. I even have them construct little forts out of logs or cars. They give the men a base to rally around. Sort of like redoubts back in the day. I'm just saying someone carted these guys from Vermont to Denver and then out here, we might as well use them.”

4th Brigade blew out loudly. “Well you're lucky you can. You still have actual neighborhoods and actual houses to funnel the stiffs at you. Me? I got a hundred miles of open rolling land north of New York City to cover. If you can do the math I got 40 men per mile to guard the Q-zone. It's not nearly enough, especially when you realize we're fighting both zombies and civilians. A fort will just leave the men inside stranded when we pull back.”

“I don't want them either,” 2nd Brigade added. “There as bad as those Air Force pukes you tried to give us. They eat up my supplies and half the time they run off at the first hint of trouble.”

“Then how about this, we make another attempt to retake Fort Dix,” 1st Brigade put out. “We can re-establish it as the forward supply point for the Northeastern Theater of Operations. Just think of all the stores we had to abandon, there's enough fuel and ammo to last us weeks. And there are actual tanks and Strykers there. I say f*ck the rules of engagement. Give me five or six companies of infantry and I'll solve our logistics issue and gives us some fire power to boot.”


4th Brigade threw down his pen and scoffed, “And lose the country in the process. We can't afford to give up even one man on the lines and you want six hundred? That's absurd. What we need more than supplies are real soldiers who can fight. And not more of these damned REMFs! The last reinforcements I received were laundry specialists. What am I going to do with a bunch of guys whose main training have been in laundry services? I tell you they weren't worth a shit. What we need are 11 bang-bangs.”

“Bang-bangs?” Eric snorted. He thought he was whispering it in a mocking tone that no one would hear, however the room had quieted just at that moment and all eyes shifted his way. The general looked on him as if he were a previously undiscovered form of moron.

“11 Bang-bang is slang for the MOS designator 11 Bravo,” he explained. “An infantry man. A man trained to fight. What did you say you do again?”

“I'm a scientist,” Eric said, stretching the truth.

“Look, we have a scientist in our midst,” the general declared. “Why don't we put aside the defense of our fine country and deal with you?” Fairchild was no fool. He had seen that his colonels had been on a verge of a brawl and had decided to use Eric's intrusion to diffuse the situation.

“Ok, good,” Eric said, standing once again. “As I mentioned I have been sent by the Secretary of Health and Human Services...”

“Whom I don't answer to,” Fairchild reminded Eric.

Eric could only shrug at this, not knowing where in the chain of command a cabinet level appointee ranked. “She has the full faith of the President, and on this I think she is speaking for him,” he said. He came forward with a manila envelope and pulled from it a picture. “This is Yuri Petrovich, he was the managing supervisor of the Scientific and Technical Institute for Microbiology located in Stepnagorsk, Russia. According to new reports, it is believed that the virus might have come from there.”

“And?” the general asked at Eric's pause.

“And the CIA has just found out that he took a leave of absence from the lab just four days before the first known outbreak of the virus. This may be coincidental, however he also showed up in New York three days before the Atlantic Princess docked in Miami with its deadly cargo.” Eric paused again, for questions. The general only tapped his pencil angrily on the wood of his table. “And he may have been in contact with terrorists,” Eric said in a rush. Silence seemed to fill the room at the end of each of his sentences and it made him distinctly uneasy. “Supposedly he came into a lot of money suddenly.”

“That's it?” Fairchild asked, looking at his gathered colonels as if he had missed something. “A scientist leaves Russia and comes here? Why on earth should I care?”

“Yes...I mean there's more,” Eric stammered. The general was so much more of a force than the president that Eric felt his mind scattering to the wind. “Yuri was in charge of the chemical and biological warfare component of the lab. It was a Biopreparat facility. You must know what that is. It's where they prepared for germ warfare, and really it doesn't take a genius to see that his sudden moves coupled with his new found money, and the outbreak of a virus isn't coincidental.”

The 4th Brigade commander seemed confused. “And therefore what? Are we supposed to find this guy and arrest him? Or shoot him?” When Eric began to nod, the colonel threw his hands in the air and cried, “We can't even find the Vice president!”

“It won't be like that, we know where he was staying,” Eric replied. “He was at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan.”

“In New York?” General Fairchild asked in surprise. He then barked out a derisive laugh as the colonels whispered among themselves, none too quietly, with the word moron being more clearly pronounced than any other.

Eric grew angry. “You don't seem too concerned with finding an opportunity that may help us develop a vaccine. The president might want to be made aware of this.” Eric thought his implied threat would have some impact on the general, but he was wrong.

Fairchild glared under bushy brows and growled, “Do you think I give a rat's ass what this President thinks? Mister Good war—Bad war? Mister getting a damned Peace prize for just showing up? Hell the f*ck no! If he had spent even a tenth of the time studying war than he did in protesting it, he would know that even asking about a mission into New York City is idiotic as all hell. F*ck, even a Harvard educated dipshit such as yourself knows that there isn't anyone left alive in New York.”

“Maybe not,” Eric said in a small voice; he was pale from the general's tirade. “Maybe he is dead...probably he is, but that doesn't matter; we still have to try. We might find a clue to his present whereabouts, or perhaps notes on the virus, however the main reason for this mission is that he may have had an actual vaccine on him! This is the why we have to go.”

“We?” the general was quick to pounce. “Finally someone in the administration that's showing some balls. Good for you, Doc. Too bad I can't spare any men. Try the Navy. Them pukes aren't doing nothing but sitting out in the ocean wasting fuel. Don't worry, they have helicopters. They'll take you right in and out. You'll be safe and sound.”

“No, Sir, you don't understand, I can't go with you,” Eric said quickly. “I'm not authorized to go...and we tried the Navy. They said they were short fuel as well. With all the ports being in the Q-zones, they can't refit or refuel properly. At least that's what they say.”

“They're a damned bunch of cowards is what they are,” the general groused. He then sighed out the word: “Damn. Fine we'll do the job just like we do everything else around here.” He glanced to a colonel that had been relatively quiet. “Teddy, it's time for that aviation brigade of yours to finally do something besides taxiing politicians all over the damned country. Scare up a Blackhawk and see that the good Doc here gets a weapon.”

“But...” Eric began, however a bushy eyebrow and a hard blue eye shut him up quick.

“You're going, Doc,” the general ordered. “We could come across all sorts of crap, and so I'm thinking we need an expert on site. And that's you.”

“I'm not. Not really.” Eric wasn't an expert in any field, but there was no gainsaying the general when he had made up his mind. Though Eric did try, however all of his excuses only caused the general to take him by the scruff of the neck and push him out the door.

“Teddy, if he keeps up the whining,” Fairchild said to his Combat Aviation Brigade commander. “You have my leave to toss him from the chopper when the mission is complete.”

“With pleasure, Sir.”