Page 10 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

“No, no!” It was important for him to understand.

“The infected are not the undead. They are very much alive and once they die they stay dead. It might seem like they are—are zombies because they can walk on broken limbs and seem not to feel pain. I think the pain receptors are wiped out. That’s very dangerous to them, by the way.

You’ve heard the stories of people who have no pain receptors and who sometimes burn to death because they can’t feel pain.

The same with the infected. They have absolutely no sense of self preservation.

And they are dying. Let me show you. Do you have a thermal scanner? ”

He took a scanner, tapped the side and a hologram popped out. Their two bodies showed, glowing pale yellow.

“Now aim it out the window.”

He held his arm up and the hologram showed the street scene outside. There must have been a hundred infected outside on the street. They showed up crimson, with trailing tails of red when they moved fast. They were so hot they managed to heat the air in their wake.

“Let me show you something else,” Sophie said, swiping her finger left to right along the bottom of the hologram. Instantly, the outline of the bodies darkened but digits appeared above their heads, following the infected in their almost Brownian movements. The digits ran from 99.5 to 104.

“Whoa.” Jon frowned. “I didn’t know it could do that.”

She looked up at him briefly, then concentrated on the scanner’s image. “We have these in the lab.” She closed her eyes in pain. “ Had them in the lab.”

For an instant, Sophie allowed herself to mourn for the lab.

Except for the past few months which had been weird, she loved her job.

Loved the camaraderie of science. Everyone striving for the same goal—knowledge.

Everything orderly and rational, everything this new world was not.

Maybe science as she understood it was gone.

Maybe the generations that would come— if there were to be any generations and mankind didn’t simply die off—would worship the moon and the stars.

She trembled at the thought. Jon put a big hand on her shoulder, almost as if he could read her mind. It steadied her, stabilized her. Science wasn’t quite dead. Not as long as she was alive. And if Elle was emailing her, she was somewhere safe. Elle was a brilliant scientist.

“So what are we looking at?” Jon asked.

Sophie shook her thoughts off. This was no time to be mourning what was lost. Now was the time to fight hard to keep what was left. “The infected’s temperatures.”

Jon’s eyes widened. “They’ve all got…”

“A fever. A raging fever. It’s why they show up so red on your scanners.

There’s obviously been massive damage to the hypothalamus, which is the body’s thermostat, regulating body temperature.

Everyone out there is close to heat stroke.

I’ve seen a couple of infected fall down suddenly and twitch.

I didn’t have my scanner with me but it looked like they were having a seizure and if their core temperatures reached 105°, it was a seizure.

One way to fight a high temperature, besides pharmacologically, is fluid and electrolyte replacement but I don’t think they have the brains to look for water.

Fevers this high for any sustained period is incompatible with life, as medical texts say.

The infected are not doing anything at all to bring their temperatures down.

There’s nothing they can do in their state.

So they are all dying. It’s just a question of time.

So we need to set your scanner to scan for bodies with a temperature of 98° and up.

That way we are almost sure to capture only the infected. Another thing…”

Sophie swiped from left to right again and the digits above the glowing outlines showed different figures ranging from 140 to 200.

“There,” she said, pointing. “Look at those numbers and then look outside.”

“Okay.” He studied the hologram then watched the scenes below carefully. “What am I seeing? What are those numbers?”

“What you are seeing, first of all, is an exclusively young population. I’d guess there isn’t anyone over forty down there.”

Jon’s face tightened as he observed more closely, watching in silence for five minutes. “You’re right,” he said finally. “No old people at all.”

“Beach street is a tourist street. At any given moment, there will be lots of people 65 or older. Lots of retired people on vacation. But not now. Not with those numbers. What you’re seeing is heart rates.

Their hearts are pumping painfully fast in their chests.

The maximum heart rate you can survive is 220 minus your age.

So if you have a 65 year old, whose maximum heart rate should be 155 and it’s 190, that heart is going to explode in his or her chest. Soon.

They’re dying, Jon. All of them. Even the hardiest won’t survive more than a month, assuming they can learn some basic skills like looking for water.

And that’s being generous. The people outside on the street right now? They’re the walking dead.”

His jaw muscles clenched. “A month? That’s enough to break down civilization. Reduce us to rubble. Reduce us to the Stone Age. Wipe us out.”

“Yeah.” Sophie’s voice wobbled. She cleared her throat. “That’s what we’re going to prevent. We’re going to produce as many doses of vaccine as possible and inoculate as many people as we can as fast as we can.”

“How fast can that be?”

“I don’t know what the lab facilities are…where we’re going. Where Elle is. If you don’t have the equipment we’d have to—I don’t know. Invade a lab, secure it and produce the doses on an industrial level.”

“Do you want to talk to Elle? She’s with another scientist, Catherine Young.”

Sophie’s eyes widened. “ The Catherine Young? She’s a genius! Oh my God! With Elle and Dr. Young we might really have a fighting chance!”

Sophie was practically hopping with excitement.

Elle was superb at lab work and Dr. Young—she was an expert on dementia.

The virus inflicted huge neurological damage, which was Dr. Young’s specialty.

And Dr. Young knew a lot about virology.

The three of them were like a sports Dream Team, only for viruses.

Jon’s mouth lifted at the corners. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it lightened his features. “So. Would you like to talk to Elle? And Catherine?”

Oh God yes! She almost shouted the words when she remembered and her heart sank. “The internet’s down. The heliostat will keep the electricity on as long as it remains undamaged but I lost internet contact yesterday.”

Jon had reached down to pull out a flexible tablet that had been rolled up in a pocket of his magic suit and spread it out. “We have our own internet, no problem.” He unrolled the tablet, tapped it, the hologram bloomed in the air and oh my God! There she was!

“Elle!” Sophie instinctively reached out to touch her friend, her hand going right through Elle’s cheek. Elle was flanked by a tall, tough looking guy. Dark-haired. Grim.

The image was so life-like it was as if Elle were right here in the room with them. Sophie realized she’d had low level anxiety that Elle hadn’t made it. She’d sent an email but that wasn’t the same as actually seeing her.

Elle held her hand in front of her mouth, stifling a sob. “Oh my God, Soph, you’re alive! I was so worried!”

The tall dark guy put his arm around Elle’s shoulders, hugging her to him. Elle had a boyfriend? Elle was even pickier than she was. For just a second Sophie forgot the marauding infected, the violence on the streets, the end of the world. Elle had a boyfriend!

Then she dismissed the guy and concentrated on her best friend. “Elle, I’ve got the virus and the vaccine. Do you have any lab equipment where you are?”

“Oh yeah.” Elle glanced up at the man gripping her shoulders and even in the hologram Sophie could see Elle’s pale skin flush. “There are some…guys here who are very good at, ahm, liberating things.”

She meant steal. Very cool.

“What equipment do you have?”

“We have it all. Including a Step Facility.”

“Wow.” The Step Facility was brand new, revolutionary. A system that cut the production time to less than 24 hours and allowed for immediate mass production.

Another woman stepped to Elle’s side. Pretty, slender, dark-haired. “Dr. Daniels, I am Catherine Young. If you can get those viruses here as fast as possible we can start mass manufacture immediately.”

Wow. Catherine Young in person! Sophie had never met her but had read her papers. “Dr. Young! It’s an honor to meet you!”

A huge man stepped to her side. If he hadn’t put a protective arm around her, Sophie would have shouted at Catherine Young to run like the devil.

He was enormous, even more heavily muscled than Jon or the guy with an arm around Elle and had badass, scarred features.

He looked like something out of a horror movie.

They kind of guy you ran from the instant you saw him.

Dr. Young didn’t look afraid though. She reached up to touch the huge scarred hand cupping her shoulder, glancing up at him and smiling. She didn’t look like she was running away from him any time soon.

“Please, call me Catherine and I’m hoping I can call you Sophie.”

“Of course. It would be an honor.”

“And the two gentlemen here are Mac and Nick.” She gestured. Mac was the Hulk and Nick was the Brooder holding Elle. Sophie noticed that no one mentioned last names.

“Sweetie.” Elle leaned forward, her pretty face filling the hologram. “I can’t thank you enough for warning me the other night. You saved my life. You gave me just enough time to get away. Arka goons were after me and after the whole project group.”

“I know. I think they got Les, Moira and Roger.” It pained Sophie’s heart. The only saving grace was that they had probably been killed before the virus was released and had been spared the end of the world.