Monster Nation(34)

'Great f*cking plan, Nilla.' Charles grabbed the map out of her hands. 'Look, now it's torn. This is so whack!'

Nilla looked through the windshield. The road they'd been following'one lane, only partially paved'ended in a T intersection. There were no street signs or any kind of indication of where they were. The level cultivated land aroundBakersfield had given way as they traveled north to trees and mountains and the roads had become sparser. They hadn't seen a human being or a car for half an hour and now, officially, they were lost.

East, Nilla thought. They should head east. Except that she couldn't see anything through all the trees. Sparse scrub pines and towering aspens crowded together on both sides of the road. East. Except they had turned around so many times and switched roads so often she had no idea which compass direction she was facing, much less which way was east. She felt something stir in her belly. Hunger, yes, of course it was hunger, it was always hunger. But the familiar pull was drawing her in a particular direction. It was telling her to go left.

Nilla had taken advice before from a naked man she had probably just hallucinated. 'That way,' she said. One of the few compensations of having no memory whatsoever was that you couldn't remember how many times your gut feelings had steered you wrong. 'Seriously. That way.'

No one will be allowed into or out of the quarantine area without official written permission. Violators will face criminal charges and possible lethal force for non-compliance. [FEMA Travel Advisory forLas Vegas ,NV andSalt Lake City,UT , 3/31/05]

Three hours and change in an Airbus from DIA to Ronald Reagan National on an empty flight, just Bannerman Clark and a pair of exhausted Air Marshals who took one look at him and started ordering drinks. When was a flight to DC ever empty? He realized that he hadn't been watching much CNN since the incident began but he'd had no idea people were scared enough to stay off of planes.

At least the quiet flight gave Bannerman Clark some time for the paperwork that had been piling up since his interrupted dinner at theBrownPalace . He couldn't concentrate, though, and barely made it through a single Incident Account Report before he had to give up and snap shut his laptop. In the vibratory space of the jet engines he couldn't seem to shut off his brain and things kept occurring to him, things he'd forgotten, things he needed to think about later. The girl's face kept jumping out at him, the look of terror in her eyes. The stuff that dripped from her nose. The fact that she could talk. She had to mean something. She was less affected by the pathogen than any other victim he'd seen or heard about. Did she possess some natural immunity? Or maybe she'd been infected with a different strain of the virus or bacterium or whatever it was.

He'd been putting together a requisition for some troops to go looking for her. He couldn't just grab men and women out of their barracks willy-nilly, even a Rapid Assessment and Initial Deployment officer had to formally request personnel from their commanding officer. He had a line on some really promising folks, veterans fromIraq who'd been pulling weekend warrior duty every since they got back and should be rested and ready for a new adrenaline rush. Then Vikram had come in to break the news. He was wanted for a breakfast interview inWashington with a DoD Civilian.

It was all over. Initial Deployment was his Military Occupational Specialty, his MOS and the initial deployment was complete. His role in the crisis was finished. He didn't resent it, really. There were other people, people far more qualified in dealing with widespread medical emergencies waiting to take his place. He just wasn't sure what he was going to do next. The world was on fire and he was holding a bucket full of water and he didn't know where to throw it.

When he touched down at DCA a limo was waiting to take him right intoGeorgetown . He was a little surprised he wasn't going to be debriefed in the Pentagon itself but he had a lifetime not questioning orders to quell his unease. After passing through a metal detector and an inspection by a nosy dog barely kept on leash by a man in a uniform shirt that simply read CANINE SUPPORT he found himself in a fourth floor office of lacquered cherry wood and office chairs wrapped in plastic. A stack of multi-line telephone units with no handsets had been shoved under the conference table. At the head of said table stood a chilled bottle of water and a cellophane-wrapped box of marshmallow Peeps. Clark knew they weren't for him. He decided not to sit down and instead stood by the window, peering through the Venetian blinds at businessmen in dark suits or dress casual jeans rolled toward their various offices like Pachinko balls falling into their appropriate holes.