Page 15 of A Wilderness Within

“What’s the plan?”

“The plan for now is containment. But…”

“But?”

“If that fails…Omaha.”

Omaha. The word sent a bolt of dread through him. Omaha was where the secret bunker for the president and other key staff would be housed in the event of a disaster or a massive attack.

“So we hide, like cowards?”

Adam frowned at him, the reprimand clear in his gaze. “You think I want that? I don’t. But what the hell are we supposed to do? You can’t shoot viruses. The country will need to have someone leading it while everything goes to hell. It’s our only chance. So if we have to sit in a concrete cell twenty goddamn feet belowground, we’ll do it.”

“What about placing cities under quarantine?” Lincoln suggested after a moment’s thought.

Adam shook his head. “It’s part of the overall strategy, but it won’t work. Quarantines cause riots, fires, death, and large-scale destruction. People always find a way through the walls. Nothing can ever be truly bottled up. The CDC is still trying to figure out the incubation period and infection rate. Some victims are hanging on for up to a week before the last stages set in and they die. If we have thousands of infected victims loose, it’s only going to spread faster. I just don’t know how we can effectively trap it or even bottleneck it in any of the major cities.”

Adam didn’t have to say it, but Lincoln could hear it in his words. Nothing can ever be truly contained. Which meant there was no stopping Hydra-1.

“There’s really nothing we can do?” Lincoln whispered as he stared out at the city as they drove through it. He could see groups of tourists like colorful birds as they flocked toward the entrances of museums and national monuments. For every one infected person, six more would catch the disease—and pass it on to six more each before they died. Whole cities would perish, states would empty out, and the world would go dark in a way it hadn’t since the middle ages.

He’d read about the Black Death when he’d been a kid, and the idea of a plague wiping out entire populations had been fascinating back then. The tiny bacteria had spread on the backs of fleas clinging to the fur of rats as they traveled in the bellies of ships and crouched in the corners of medieval hovels. That epidemic killed 25 million people and wiped out entire cities.

He’d even been interested in the Ebola virus. Scared shitless, but still fascinated. The virus had emerged from the remotest corners of Africa, pooled in the cold-water ponds inside Kitum Cave, where elephants scraped at the walls with their tusks looking for salt deposits and panthers trod underneath bats and monkeys. It was an ancient weapon that mankind was struggling to defend against.

And now, from somewhere in the Far East, this new virus had emerged, one that made Ebola look like the common cold. And it had its microbial sights set on humankind.

“You should call your family,” Adam said quietly.

“Will you tell the others?” Lincoln looked away as he imagined making the call to his mother. She’d try to get him to talk to his father, and that was the last thing he wanted. Even the end of the world didn’t make that necessary. When a man repeatedly knocked his kid around, the kid didn’t ever want to see him again.

“I’ll tell the rest of the team soon, once I know more.” Adam pulled back the sleeve of his suit and checked his watch. “POTUS is having a briefing at the White House in fifteen minutes.”

By the time they arrived, reporters were gathering around the gates, which usually wasn’t allowed for security purposes. But no one was paying attention. The world was facing a bigger threat than any terrorist group. Even those dirtbags were hiding in their holes, shaking with fear. A virus could get them anywhere, and they knew it.

Lincoln followed Adam and his security detail through the White House corridors before they entered a briefing room. Adam motioned for Lincoln and his team to stand at the back. The large conference table was full of generals, economic advisors, diplomats, and several people who wore WHO and CDC badges.

Adam took a seat beside President Whitaker. The man was in his late fifties, but he was toned and fit. His expression was solemn as he surveyed the room, even meeting the eyes of Lincoln and his team before he spoke. He was good leader and a man to be respected. Adam wouldn’t have agreed to run as his VP otherwise, which meant Lincoln trusted Whitaker too.

“We’re facing a crisis. What is spoken of in this room todaymust notleave this room. We can’t have the country falling into chaos, not before we can present a solution.”

Lincoln banished the memories from his mind as he stared into the darkness of the backyard. Those men and women were gone, ghosts who lived only in his memories.

Death was a funny thing. It robbed the dead of their blood, their breath, their very existence, yet within the mind of another person, they still somehow went on, even if they were faded copies, muted and limited. Flashes of Adam’s face, his sunken eyes pleading for the end, would never stop haunting him.

I did my duty. I did what was required of me.

But he could still feel the blood on his hands, invisible, yet there, burning into his palms like fire. He rubbed at his right hand, massaging the muscles, and tried to focus on Caroline. She needed him now. The past was the past, and he couldn’t undo any of it.

He wearily climbed the stairs and headed for the master bedroom. When he opened the door, Caroline was passed out, her lantern still on. She had either forgotten to turn it off or she had needed the comfort of a night-light. Either way, he could hardly blame her.

During those first few nights in the bunker, he’d listened to the sounds of the other men settling in the next room, making tense jokes and hearing the creak of metal cot frames as they all tried to get to sleep. He’d never been afraid of the dark until that first night. With twenty feet of earth and concrete between him and the sky, he’d felt like he couldn’t breathe. He was buried alive. They all were. His vision had blurred, and he’d struggled to get air into his lungs. He’d fallen off his cot, clutching his chest as panic got a death grip on his throat.

Then his door had opened, and Adam stood there, a camping lantern hanging from one hand. He’d set the lantern on the bedside table, touched Lincoln’s shoulder where he knelt by the bed, and then left the room without a word.

Seeing the light, knowing he wasn’t in a tomb, had given him back his ability to breathe. After a moment, he’d gotten back into bed, rolled onto his side, and closed his eyes, the light of the lantern illuminating the backs of his eyelids. In time, he managed to sleep.

Now Lincoln stared down at Caroline, hoping she didn’t suffer the same nightmares he had. They were free, aboveground, with the moon and the wind outside. Perhaps it was the emptiness of the darkness that scared her rather than the suffocation of it. He reached out and brushed a lock of hair away from her forehead. Her lips curved suddenly, just the slightest bit, as though she was dreaming of something nice. Thank God she still had good dreams. God knew he sure didn’t.

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