Sergeant Teddy Polk stood in the rain, waving his men forward and pushing them up into the back of the troop truck. A line of troop transport trucks stood idling in the downpour.
One of the soldiers, a corporal named Nick Wyckoff, from Pine Deep, the same small town as Polk, nodded at the convoy. “What’s the op? Sandbagging streams and shit?”
Polk shook his head. “Nobody’s saying nothing, Nickie. ”
Wyckoff nodded and reached for the strap to pull himself up into the truck, but Polk tapped his shoulder and Wyckoff bent close. “Couple weird things about this, man. ”
“Yeah? Like what?”
Polk spoke as quietly as he could given the roar of the rain. “We were told to handpick single men. No one with family in the area, no one with kids. Married guys are to be used for flood control and emergency evac only. None of them roll with us. ”
“What’s the—”
“No, wait,” said Polk, “it gets weirder. … I saw them loading some crates into a couple of the trucks. ”
“Crates of what?”
Polk licked his lips. “Hazmat suits. ”
“Oh … shit, man,” murmured Wyckoff.
“Yeah. ”
A few minutes later the trucks were rolling through the gate.
* * *
Major General Simeon Zetter stood at the window in his office, hands clasped behind his back, face impassive, eyes fixed on the line of vehicles heading into the storm. He was alone in his office. All of his senior officers had gone with the convoy. This wasn’t an operation that could be trusted to lieutenants.
The rain troubled him. It was like a thick gray veil and even from where his office was set it was hard to see the line of trucks. With these winds his Apaches and Black Hawks were grounded. That was bad. If there was ever something that was a perfect operation for the air cav, this was it.
Ground troops? Stebbins County was sparsely populated, but it covered a huge amount of ground. Fields and forests and barns. So much natural cover. In any other situation he could rely on thermal scans for target acquisition, but during the conference call with the governor, the president, and the national security advisor, he had been told something that still echoed in his head. Something that screamed in his head.
“Hostiles may display variable heat signatures,” said Blair, the national security advisor.
“Sir?” Zetter had asked.
“We have to prepare for the possibility that a fair number of the infected may not be trackable by body temperature. ”
“How so? Are they using thermal suppressors or—”
“No,” said Blair, “these are civilians. ”
“Then I don’t—”
“Their body temperatures are dropping. On average, one degree per hour. Faster in this cold. ”
“Is … is this a symptom of the disease, sir?”
Blair said, “No, General Zetter, it is proof of the absence of life. ”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
MAGIC MARTI IN THE MORNING
WNOW RADIO, MARYLAND
“This is Magic Marti at the mike with an update on the storm that’s currently chowing down on our area. A hurricane warning is in effect for Stebbins and Fayette Counties. Take my advice: if you don’t have to go out, don’t. I have an updated list of school and business closings…”