Chapter Two
Brigadier General James Logan
He sat in silence at the bar, swirling his cold glass of Kentucky bourbon on the rocks a few times, and watched as the oily whisky ran down the sides of the clean glass. He was thinking. His eyes were vacant and he was in no particular mood to be disturbed.
He wasn’t really thinking about anything or anyone. Not really about the cases of flu that had been reported in most of the countries of the world. It was white noise anyway. What with the amount of media scares created in the last ten years? Swine flu and Bird flu had fallen short of the predicted millions they would each kill, and other such media frenzies had de-sensitized just about every literate person to the threat of another virus. It did seem like cases of this newest threat had grown a fair bit though. There was a lot of talk. A lot more than usual come to think of it.
He wasn’t a drinker per se, but enjoyed his favorite whisky It was, after all, the national symbol of the state of his birth. He had an air of the Deep South about him. Nothing of the accent but something of the slowness in his speech. Not religious at all. Not like the common stereotype might suggest.
But he was calm, polite, hospitable and genuine. A trustworthy guy at first meeting. He had not long been off the train that had delivered him to the border city of Istanbul. Before bedding down in the single bedroom of his budget hotel, he had wandered down into the nearest square to find the local bar he had drank at the last time he had visited.
The night had long since settled in but the city was still alive. Since retiring about two years ago from the WDC (Weaponised Disease Control) he had not spent even so long as a week in one place. He travelled alone of course. He had been married once before. He could have never re-married.
There weren’t a lot of other people in the bar. It was just a thin corridor in reality. But there was a varnished, wooden, unattractive but well stocked bar. There was no beer on tap, just bottles in a small fridge with a glass door. There were a lot of spirits on a shelf behind the bar. Ddelicacies from all over Europe and Asia. The man serving always had a gentle manner and a welcoming smile.
He had been there before a few months ago. Last time he had visited the bar it had been a little busier if his memory was right. That could mean anything.
He had noticed the man in a suit a long time ago though. The guy was sat in the other corner of the bar and was nursing a pint of water in a beer glass. He couldn’t have looked more out of place. There was no other reason this guy might have been there other than to talk to Logan. Hell with it he thought. Cut the drama.
Logan got up from his stool, finished off his drink, asked for another but pointed to the table where the suit filler was sat. He smiled as the barman nodded and started pouring another generous measure of whisky and added ice to it. He walked over the dingy bar. Eevery step caused the old wooden floor to creak and groan. There was a fan attached to the roof below the dim lights. It spun slowly in a clockwise direction and washed the room with an ever flickering and eerie light. The man in the suit jumped out of his seat in surprise that the General had made the first move.
He smiled, took off the ridiculous sunglasses that made him look all the more out of place, and held out a hand to greet Logan. Logan took it and shook. He had a pathetic, uninterested, limp grip and soft moisturized hands. Logan could already tell he wasn’t going to enjoy this.
‘What’s your name, kid?’ He asked as politely as he could. It was a little intrusive at best and downright ignorant at worst for this man to have been sent so far around the world to disturb Logan’s retirement. The barman appeared with the glass of whisky and another bottle of water for the still nameless man. They both said thanks but the server didn‘t say anything back. His eyes were distant and thoughtful and he returned quickly to the bar to continue reading his paper.
‘I work for Doctor Abraham Priest.’ The guy had no character to his voice. He was short, bald, and a little on the chubby side.
‘I’m sorry Sir but we need you to come back to the United States.’ He continued. Logan wasn’t going to be rushed though.
‘That’s not what I asked.’ He said calmly and slowly took the seat next to the nameless man. Beads of sweat started trickling down the chubby man’s exposed forehead. He daubed himself dry with an already filthy tissue that he took from his suit pocket.
‘I’m Agent Adrian Frasier, with the WDC.’ He cracked open the bottle of water and topped up his glass. Logan huffed at him.
‘You don’t want anything stronger?’ He asked and took a gulp of his whisky. Hell, he was supposed to be on holiday, why not? Adrian didn’t answer or even think about entertaining him.
‘Agent?’ Logan perked up after staring down at his glass for an unknown duration. ‘Since when did the WDC become a civilian body?’
‘You’ve been away a long time General.’ The agent began cryptically but went on to describe why. After years of public hostility to all things secret, with the likes of Julian Asange and Edward Snowden tearing down the old world of secrets and state security, the US government had been put on a of a lot of pressure to declassify the works of secret departments. They were Cold War relics anyway. There was no point fighting information in the digital age. Logan just sighed, almost with a hint of nostalgia for the world he had left behind, and continued.
‘Can’t resist the forces of change I guess.’ He remained calm. He was just seeing how long Adrian was going to talk for. That would give him some gauge of the severity of it. The agent grew impatient quickly though.
‘Can we de-brief you on the way?’ Adrian stood and ran his hands over his black suit to iron out the thicker creases. He was sweating profusely in the dusk heat.
‘When did I agree to come back?’ James remained seated and finished the last drop of his whisky before crunching on the ice left over with his back teeth. He didn’t have to go anywhere after all.
Adrian stood, scraped the bottom of his stool over the bare wood, and rested against the back of Logan’s stool. He tried to look menacing, failed, and glared Logan in the eye from a distance of no more than a foot.
‘Sir, with every drop of respect for you and for what you did in active service, there is no time.’ Adrian sighed. ‘Besides.’ He protested. ‘I read your file. You can pretend all you want but I know you’ll come back. You can’t resist. I know you go by your military designation of “General” but you are still a Doctor and I have people who need your help.’ Logan looked surprised. Adrian, though impatient in his delivery, had displayed a maturity and an analytical mindset far above his years. He was right though. Logan smiled a little and stared at his glass longingly for another drop of whisky.
‘I was going to try to hold out for just a little longer.’ He smiled, a grand smile but one that showed no teeth, and stood. He was excited to be going back. That was wrong, or so he thought quietly to himself, since he had left a for a good reason. He wanted to live out his life away from all of the violence and war.
But he had left behind a part of himself with it. He craved, in his new life as a retired General, the thrill of every day being an absolute. The thrill of knowing lives rested upon his shoulders. Or coffins if he got the answers wrong. That was God-like pressure he had left behind. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe he was too young to leave. He took the glass to the barman and thanked him in his native tongue before making his way back to Adrian who was already on his phone.
‘Who is Abraham Priest anyway?’ He interrupted the call and shoved his Lira back into his jean pocket and unfastened another button on his brown shirt due to the stifling heat. Adrian ignored him until the phone call was over and they were outside. The stars were out and the night was clear. They walked a few paces around a tightly packed square, around a few old sandy colored buildings, to a waiting car.
‘He took over your job as head of the WDC.’ He finally answered as the car door closed shut. A civilian. Logan though immediately. A civilian in charge of what used
to be an arm of the USAF (United States Air Force).
‘His file is in the car and there is a plane on standby as we speak. There is also a file on what we need you to look at. We need to be on US soil as soon as we can be.’ Logan assumed the WDC was still based in Alaska so didn’t ask. This was going to be a long flight and he was already travel weary.
Was he being dragged back to his old life because of the flu? Had it gotten that serious? Logan had to admit that he had been avoiding the news and travelling a lot. Maybe it had gotten out of hand and they needed every specialist there was to try and figure it out. He was probably being dragged to a lab to look at samples and argue at length with opinionated undergraduates about what it was.
Or was it more than that? The WDC after all stood for “Weaponised Disease Control”. Had this thing been a terrorist activity? Logan sat and immediately picked up the file waiting for him. He read it as the car raced through tight and winding streets, fired through angled and claustrophobic junctions, and to a plane ready and waiting at the international airport. They didn’t even have to pass through security.
Doctor Abraham Priest, 30, 5 foot, 11 inches. British national. Educated at Oxford in Medical Science and graduated 3 years early at the top of his class. Moved to the States 6 months later to work at an expensive private New York Hospital. He left only a year later stating his reason as a dislike for “hypochondriac rich kids with too big a trust fund and too small a brain.”
He took a massive pay cut to work at CDC (Centre for Disease Control) on something he considered to be worthwhile. His work on weaponised smallpox and counter terrorist measures to prevent potential outbreak caught the eye of the sole recruiter for the WDC. He worked on plans to contain any potential outbreak of Avian Flu, Swine Flu and mutated anthrax.
Abraham had worked on some of the nastiest, most distasteful viruses on the planet. He had become something of a containment expert and took a second, sponsored, degree through the University of New York on Disaster Management. After General James Logan retired and it was decided that the WDC would become a civilian arm of the CDC, reporting if needed to the CIA, Abraham was favored as the leader. His talent earned him the sponsorship of most of the WDC and many external parties including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President at the time. His appointment was made on the 20.05.2015.
Reading between the lines Logan could already tell that the Doctor was either going to be an outsider, a lonely sort absorbed utterly in his work. Or he was going to be a cocky, know it all son of a bitch, who didn’t understand the word “no”. His youth might make him arrogant and the success he had achieved so far in his pretty short life might have reinforced it. He might be an insufferable ass hole who was ill deserved of his station. Logan hoped it would be the former. Outsiders he could deal with, even understand and get on with, the other alternative he could not.
He thought about things long and hard on the plane journey. He had been running for so long and now his past had just raced up to meet him. He had never even entertained the notion of crawling back. Even if he had thought he might want to, his pride would have killed the thought dead. He hadn’t even realized there might be even so much as a fraction of regret in him that might draw him back.
But that was why he was running after all. So he didn’t need to look inside and actually deal with his own issues. So he didn’t have to come to terms with the things he had done in service or the things he had seen, or seen others do. He was surprised with himself though. He was amazed at how easily he had agreed to just abandon his ambition of living his life away from death and evil, and return to whatever it was that he left behind.
The plane was over Great Britain, after having stopped for fuel in Amsterdam, when Adrian came over and sat beside the General. He handed him a coffee. A little something to help him sober after the amount of whisky he had been drinking.
It was black with no sugar or milk just as he had asked for. He had another file in his hand that he handed over without saying a word. He also had with him a silver suitcase. He placed it down on the table and unfastened the locking clips at each side. He opened it to reveal two handguns.
They looked like any other handgun but bigger, bolder and more punchier than most. They were plated in Gold and heavy too. They were Logan’s 50 caliber Desert Eagles, just as he had left them on display in his old office at the WDC. There was a spare magazine for each weapon and the case was insulated with felt padding. It had been cut perfectly to the same shape as the guns it held safe.
‘The Doctor thought you might like these back.’ A peace offering? A welcome back gift? Or a warning of what was to come? Logan thought suspiciously to himself. Adrian handed over a leather belt which had two handgun holsters on each hip. It looked a little old, maybe a Wild West relic, or it at least had that vibe to it.
Logan was like that. He liked old things. He said they had more intensity to them than anything modern. He stood and fastened the belt around his waist. He only just noticed how much muscle weight he had lost in retirement. He didn’t holster the weapons immediately though. He took them out of the case and balanced them, each in turn, perfectly around his index finger.
He loved the weight of a Desert Eagle. He adored their majesty and power. The sound of them was exhilarating too. He spun one around and placed the spare magazine in the bottom, pulled the catch back and checked that one bullet was in the chamber and that the safety was on.
He finally holstered it and sat back down next to Adrian. Holding the weapons made his blood boil. A small part of him grew angry at the feeling of anticipation building inside of him. That fraction of him hated how easily he had been coaxed back into active service and hated him for how powerful and God-like those weapons made him feel.
The plane was small but comfortable. It was a businessman’s own that they had commandeered at the request of the United States Government. There was a TV that played the news non-stop at one end and a private bar at the other. He resisted the powerful urge to help himself to a glass of Bourbon.
It was obvious he used the intoxicating liquor to numb his mind so that he didn’t have to think too much about who he was these days, where he was going or what his purpose was in retirement, or for that matter about who he used to be. The silent visuals on the screen brought the flu he had heard so much whispering about screaming to life.
It showed more and more films and sequences at hospitals, where the death count raced and overwhelmed nurses sobbed and cried in the halls. The powerful images raced across the flat screen in vivid color and high definition. He hadn’t realized how bad it was. And he was mad as Hell at himself for shrugging off the rumors.
That wasn’t how he used to be. He was a General of the United States Air Force and a registered Doctor for heaven’s sake! Every lead would be followed, every case would have been blown apart, and every eventuality would have been planned for. That was how he used to run the WDC and it was no less than what he expected of himself. Angry and ashamed, he grabbed a hold of the file Adrian had brought over.
The next file was named, curiously and ominously, Case Zero and had a red line through it and the words “Sensitive Material” written across the cover in the same color. He opened it and started reading. It was a mutated and highly aggressive strain of Spanish Flu, which had oddly been crossed with a so far in-determined form of Rabies.
The virus passed from victim to victim in the traditional way one might expect flu to be passed. It was airborne and highly aggressive. But it also passed like Rabies did. Via the exchange of saliva in a bite. Some deaths, in certain epicenters of various outbreaks, were reported in a matter of days but some succumbed to the fever in less than one. The fever ran much higher than the 1918 Spanish Flu, the cousin from which this strain took its name.
The flu wasn’t the concerning part to Logan as he read and digested every bit of information. Flu was treatable with antibiotics. Rabies was not. The cross between the Rabies virus was not clear fro
m that file and the nature of how it blended with a 1918 pandemic was left at this time to only supposition. The connection between Rabies had been made only because of a behavioral element.
The flu seemed to send its patients into a maniacal rage until eventually the heart stopped beating and the fever burned out the victim, causing irreparable brain damage. So far cases had been contained, but lot’s had been reported. Not just in the US but in other countries too. Kenya, Great Britain, Ireland, Greece and Ghana so far.