January 4th 2010
"What do we do now?" Barnett asked to his senior chief of staff, General Kilbert.
"There are two places in the country that are KV free, NORAD had sealed all of their entrances off as soon as the plague began, and there also is a colony for the immune people somewhere in Vermont".
Great, NORAD can only house two thousand people, and the colony in Vermont is probably lost by now.
"What's the count?" Barnett asked knowing that the General knew what it meant.
"Almost five hundred million" the general responded sadly.
"In the entire world?" Barnett asked.
"Yes"
"Then I want you to execute Operation Last Hope"
There are days which I really hate this job…, he'd hoped that he would never have to implement that specific protocol, no President in history had had to do so.
"Mister President, I insist in your evacuation" Kilbert grimly asked.
"So, when do we leave for Vermont?"
"In two days"
January 6th 2010
The President and what was left of his cabinet left in an Army helicopter from a nearby airbase, they took off at sunset and expected to arrive a couple of hours later.
"How many people does this 'colony' house?" Barnett asked to the pilot.
"According to what we know, about fifty thousand sir" the pilot responded.
"What about military units?" Barnett asked.
"They had two Infantry Regiments belonging to the National Guard, however as most of them were infected with KV, they only have about a thousand Guardsmen left" the pilot responded.
The flight took a bit more than expected, as they left Washington, Barnett could see Highways full of people trying to escape the city by car and by foot, poor kid, he thought as he saw a kid run away, alone from the city.
The so-called colony was located in the middle of a plain; it had a fifty-foot wall made of pure concrete and a heavy military presence, it had a small church, a school, a small hospital and a National Guard barracks and Ammunition Factory, on the center of the colony there was a small airstrip and a couple of heliports.
How the hell was the army able to build this thing so damn fast? Barnett asked to himself as the helicopter started descending towards their new and only
When they landed in Vermont, all of the people of the cabinet were surprised to see thousands of refugees seeking refugee in the colony, it was rumored that the deaths caused by the virus were now reaching a number close to the billion, many countries had closed off their borders in order to prevent the virus from entering, they still were remote settlements in high-altitude or insolated areas that weren't vulnerable because the airborne virus died because of the lack of oxygen or that the terrain was so complex that the contact strain didn't have a way to carve its way through.
Many of the so-called 'colonies' were being established in the entire world in order to preserve civilization, they only accepted people immune to the virus because of the fear of infected inside the colonies' borders.