The Flood by Michael Stephen Fuchs Page B

lifetime. I’m telling you, if this works, it could be the salvation of the world. And if we don’t get this guy, that could be it. This could be the one thing that actually— listen, they said the noose is closing on London, right? That Britain is hanging on by a thread. That they’re out of time.”
    “Yeah.”
    Park nodded, touched the corner of his eyeglasses, and steeled himself. He said, “Okay. Well, listen, the vaccine’s going to take a few days even to start protecting people who are inoculated with it. And that’s after we finish perfecting it – and get it back to Britain. Which is only going to happen after Alpha gets back with the sample I need. These are all critical-path tasks – a delay at any stage pushes the whole thing back.”
    Abrams seemed to slump slightly in his chair. Great, more bad news.
    “But if this guy, Aliyev, has a working biowarfare agent that destroys the dead, and is highly contagious among them… well, that starts working, and having an effect, almost instantly . Picture thousands of undead just spontaneously falling over. It could take the pressure off London. It could relieve the siege. It could save Britain.”
    Abrams saw the logic of this. He also wasn’t insensible to the force of Park’s argument – or his adamance. They had moved mountains to get him out of Chicago, because he was supposed to be the one man who could cure the plague. Maybe they’d better listen to him.
    “Okay,” he said. “I can try to contact CentCom again. And I can put this to them – but I don’t think they’re going to be enormously enthusiastic about yet another air mission out into the shit to pick something up for us.”
    “Perhaps they should generate some enthusiasm for something that could save them all – save all of us. And, anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’ve got to convince them. Because I’m telling you the fate of the world hangs in the balance. This mission could save the world – for real. It will give us the breathing room we need to finish the vaccine, and for it to start protecting people.”
    Abrams sighed. “You are a damned insistent son of a bitch, aren’t you?” He had only just approved Park’s DNA sequencer shore mission. And now he was pushing hard for another one.
    “Okay, okay,” Abrams said, picking up a handset. “You win.”
    Park nodded – plus crossed his arms, threw his shoulders back, and stood up to his full height. He was a very different man than the one who had been cowering in his bunker, waiting for the end of the world. It was obvious he wasn’t going anywhere. And he was going to keep pushing on this – all of it – until it was done.
    Or until they were.

Take the Fat Cow
    CentCom Strategic HQ - JOC
    Major Jameson – former officer of a very small unit of Royal Marines, now seemingly commander of all of CentCom, for all eternity, ever since the outbreak there and immolation of the helo flight of senior officers who were supposed to relieve him – put his radio phone handset back down. He was standing, but hunched over, both his hands pressed into the desktop. They were holding his weight. For now.
    He looked up and directly into the eyes of Sergeant Eli, his best friend, long-time troop sergeant, and now unflappable second-in-command. Luckily, Eli had been in the JOC when this latest call from the USS John F. Kennedy came in. Jameson had quickly got him on another extension, so he had heard almost all of it.
    This was good, because otherwise Jameson might not have believed his ears.
    One person among many there who hadn’t heard the call was Lieutenant Miller, one of the two surviving operations officers from the original staff of the Joint Operations Center – and who Jameson now saw standing looking at him, no doubt needing something else from the nominal commander of this royal shit-show. But Miller instantly saw from the expressions on both of the Royal Marines’ faces that something had changed.
    “What is it,