Colonel J. T. Moyer was no stranger to conflict. His first tour of duty in Vietnam had lasted six months; he'd been relocated to Laos for his second as part of the combat troops deployment in 69, where he'd stayed until he'd taken a bullet to his calf that had required surgery and extensive therapy to rebuild muscle. Even so, he was put back on active duty once he'd passed his physical aptitude tests, and he'd done a stint in the Gulf War in early 1990, and three tours in Iraq as an army physician from 2005 to 2007.
In short, he knew what it looked like, when violence took its toll on a man. He was familiar with scars, with limps, with injuries that became barometers in bad weather. He was familiar with the haunted looks in the eyes of the men (and later, women) who'd taken personal tours of Hell and lived to tell about it.
Yet for all his years of service, he'd never seen anything like this.
He'd been pulled out of retirement when the infection got bad. When they lost New York University Hospital, the government had quarantined the entire island, but it had been too little, too late. The infection spread, running rampant, and the military had been activated when it was clear CEDA alone wasn't up to the task. The president, vice president and Joint Chiefs of Staff had been relocated to a secured facility, though no one knew precisely where for security purposes.
Privately, Moyer found the cover extremely stupid. The Infected had no strategy. They weren't fighting an enemy that could plot and reason, think and deduce and scheme. They weren't even fighting an enemy, not really. They were fighting their friends and neighbors; they were fighting family. Not because their ideals differed, or because they needed territory or resources or power. Because of a sickness. A disease. A disease that struck at children, adults, and elderly without discrimination. A disease that took a thinking, rationing human mind and turned it into mush, so the creature left behind was little more than a storybook monster. Even the most stout military heart could crumble, faced with that reality.
Who was immune was really just the luck of the draw. And those left behind were fighting to stay alive, fighting to survive, often with no preparation whatsoever. These weren't soldiers, hardened by years of training and experience. These were civilians, thrown into a nightmare beyond anything that even a soldier could've been prepared for.
And the hell of it was, some of them were not only surviving--they were thriving. In the two months since the first case of the Infection, Moyer had seen more astonishing, heartbreaking and courageous things than he had seen in forty years in the service. He'd seen ordinary citizens charge hordes to protect loved ones; he'd seen children sacrifice themselves for their friends, their siblings. He'd seen complete strangers managing to form more cooperative teams than half the units he'd served in--and without the strict rules of the military to keep their bonds professional, he'd seen them form families more close-knit than many actual blood relations.
And woe befall the man who dared keep them apart.
He eyed the man sitting at the table across from him. The man stared right back, cool green eyes revealing nothing but a faint challenge. He was wearing white scrubs, issued after his decontamination shower, and his dark hair was falling forward into his face. Moyer could see the wounds on his bare arms--some old, some fresh, some hidden altogether with patches of gauze--and several days' worth of scruff covered his jaw. He'd not spoken to any of the others who'd come in to debrief him, which was why Moyer had been called himself. But from the looks of things, this man would sooner talk to one of the damned zombies than reveal anything to him. He knew the type who'd fold under pressure, and this guy wasn't one of them.
After surviving what he must have, Moyer wasn't surprised. Even if he tried leaning on the guy, there was no way he could look half as threatening as the creatures he'd been up against for the last two months.
He decided to cut to the chase. Nodding at the soldier at the door to close it behind him, he moved over to the video camera set up beside the desk, and pushed the power button, turning it off. Let them slap his wrist for the breach in protocol; they needed cooperation more than they needed the video records. There was still someone taking notes behind the one-way mirror, and Moyer never forgot anything, anyway.
"Nicholas Moretti?" he stated unnecessarily as he turned around, moving to settle across the table from the sullen man.
"Who's asking?"
"I'm Colonel Moyer," Moyer told him, refraining from reaching out to offer a handshake, even if it did go against his upbringing not to. He'd foregone the surgical mask only because they'd managed to prove conclusively that the virus wasn't airborne. "Welcome to Fort Hood."
The man snorted, scratching at one arm, whose skin still looked red and raw from the shower. "Some welcome," he muttered.
Moyer graced him with a small smile. "Sorry about that," he said. "Security precautions. We can't be too careful."
"Yeah, yeah," Moretti said, settling back in the chair a little. "So are you gonna shoot us, or...?"
"Nothing like that, I can assure you," Moyer said, wondering if the man's distrust of military predated the virus. He seemed awfully hostile toward the people who had, by all accounts, saved his ass. "It's just a routine quarantine."
"Great. Fantastic. Can I see my friends?"
Moyer hesitated, glancing at the glass. Though he only saw his own reflection looking back, he knew his superiors--as well as CEDA and CDC representatives--watching as well. And he had his orders. "I'm afraid not," he said after a moment. "Not yet, anyway."
Moretti snorted again, not looking at all surprised. "Do I get to know why, or...?"
"We have to keep you isolated," Moyer said.
"Why? We're immune."
"You're carriers," Moyer corrected him. "Which means you haven't contracted the virus, but you still possess the potential to pass it on to others. You can still spread it."
"Didn't you guys decide it was only contagious of someone bit you?"
"Well...yes, but..."
Moretti leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and folding his hands, eying Moyer scornfully. "So if I promise not to chew on anyone, will you let me go?"
"It's not that simple," Moyer said. "Mr. Moretti--"
"Nick."
"Nick, then." Well. Maybe they were getting somewhere, finally. "Do you understand what I mean when I say mutation?"
Nick arched an eyebrow at him. "I may not have graduated college, Colonel, but I'm not an idiot," he said.
"Fine. Then you'll understand when I tell you that it looks like the virus that caused the Infection may have mutated."
That seemed to throw Nick for a loop, but to his credit, he didn't reveal much. The only way Moyer knew was the way Nick's face went studiously, carefully blank. The sergeant who'd briefed him on the guy had mentioned he'd been a gambler; Moyer suspected he was getting a good look at Nick's poker face. "I thought the whole thing was a mutation," he said after a second, not quite a question.
Moyer answered it anyway. "It was," he said. "A mutated strain of an experimental vaccine--" another derisive snort, which Moyer chose to ignore--"was injected into a laboratory rat."
"And it bit the guy, yeah, I know," Nick said, waving a hand. "I get it already. He got infected. He bit a few people in the hospital before he 'died.'" He made dramatic finger quotes for the word 'died', letting Moyer know Nick suspected the real cause of Kenneth Barnett's death. "And the people who were bitten there all went zombie, and no one got their heads out of their asses fast enough to do anything about it. I know this part, Colonel, it's Apocalypse 101. Get to the point."
"The point," Moyer said, "is that it looks like a certain strain of the immunity may not be resistant for much longer. The virus is evolving a way to attack the antibodies."
Nick blinked, then frowned, and for the first time, he looked alarmed, not just annoyed. "But we're not sick," he said slowly. "None of us are. We're not infected."
"No, Mr. Moretti, you're not," Moyer said softly, staring hard at Nick, wanting to make sure he understood before he continued:
"Not yet."
* * *