Chapter 2

A handsome man in a dark suit comes on the communication devices around the planet and a disembodied voice says,"

Hello and welcome to News2night with John Champion. Music swells and the well dressed man is held in frame with only his head and shoulders showing.

Hello I am John Champion. This is the news tonight. The top story is the capture of the rogue scientist who set off the viral plague that wiped out most who were of Middle Easter descent. Go are going live to a camera feed in an undisclosed location to bring you the following story over to our on the scene reporter Stephanie Younger. Stephanie can you hear me?"

"Yes John I can!" The helicopter gunship that helped capture the scientist that is accused of ending the lives of so many in the Middle East and causing wide spread illness is now landing".

The sound of a heavy helicopter circles in to land on a prepared tarmac circle with an 'H" emblazed in its center. As soon as the skids of the craft touch the ground Marines boil out of the helicopter like ants. Soon a non-descript man of middle age with manacles on his wrist is help out of the chopper. He has a shaved bald head and is heavy around the middle is lead by the arm by a Colonel of the Marines to a building. The Marine guard is immediately on edge and alert. During the walk the reporter on the scene records this into her floating recording/camera:

"The Doctor is now being taken from the Marine helicopter and escorted directly into a holding facility where his fate will be decided. At this time we still do not know the entirety of what he has done or what he has released. Other nations are clamoring out for him to be extradited to their country to stand trial. At this point our nations leaders are refusing to say what will happen with the man who they say ended life in the Middle East. It is still unclear what the final death toll will be and if the virus will mutate or somehow effect the rest of us in any way. The President is asking that we remain calm while the situation is sorted out and tells our sister station in Washington DC that an announcement will forthcoming as soon as any new information is learned."

"The virus has worked exactly as programmed. It has eliminated the ongoing threats from the increasingly unstable Middle Eastern nations. Gentlemen, I have done you a favor. You may sneer at me and through all of the rhetoric you want towards me and yet in your hearts you are grateful that the regimes in that portion of the world are no longer a threat." That is all I want to say at this time." Replied the man who was seated a huge walnut table that barely fit into the cavernous room.

A general who had the name plate of on his uniform covered stated, "Gentlemen, we have a possibility here. If we can exploit it then we can thoroughly secure our future energy needs for this country for the next several hundred years. We will have no loss of life to obtain it and no regime to keep it bottled up to the whims and winds that desert blows across their harsh country. We also have a convenient scape-goat in the person of the good doctor here. That is what I call a 'win-win' situation." He prompt seated himself. No further speakers took the open space to voice their opinions.

Meanwhile in the world outside~

Cathy and her new husband Matt were just getting over the cold or flu that everyone seemed to have. She and Matt had taken their flu shots and while there were some reported deaths in the Middle East no one she knew of had passed away. The really neat thing is that the news was reporting no fatalities from this outbreak. It was being heralded as the first season on record where the flu had been so light.

Cathy was a simple housewife. She had two young ones at home and stayed with them while Matt went out and did work as a construction worker. This job was still mostly manual labor and required strength and stamina to complete tasks. Matt had bulked up since he and Cathy had been married. How could you not when you had to carry heavy mortar in a HOD, which is a box-like contraption that carried the mortar with a pole that allowed the worker to maneuver it around various obstacles, all day long for masons who were trying to finish walls and basements? Matt liked the physical part and really missed going to work the past several days. He was told that the whole job site had been shut down due to the illness being so widespread.

Ken and Barb, yeah everyone made fun of them as Ken and Barbie. She eventually came to hate those dolls. She had had one when she was a little girl but now was really tired of the same old jokes. Ken was an architect who worked mostly at home in an office within the home that he had designed and built. Barb was a Nurse. She had many types of training including ER, Anesthesia, Critical care and OB/GYN. She also had done some time in a surgical unit. This made her in demand anywhere she went. This couple saw each other mostly as they passed coming off a round for Barb and when Ken was in the house and not on a job site somewhere throughout the world. The flue had hit them both and they both were chagrined enough to admit that they had forgotten their flu-shots this year. It did not seem to matter much as they were both on their feet and working in a couple of days. The hospital had called her non-stop but she had to turn them down as she was afraid of contaminating or re-infecting the patients.

A lonely man sits on the top of a mountain. Where his home is no one would think to look. The forest surrounds his compound and camouflages it to near invisibility. He knew that satellites flew over his home and had yet to pinpoint it. He knew this as a former intelligence officer in the military. He had tried many times to find it among the heavy over growth to no avail.

Samuel was a man who was still in mourning for his wife Tula of 30 years. She had been his reason for wanting to live and breathe. When a sudden urge to go to work early on that fateful morning had been made Samuel thought little of it, he just kissed her and she left to her job as a records administrator in the World Trade Center. He was among the first to be able to glimpse at the devastation that had happened to the building where his wife worked. He knew that when the aircraft had hit her desk had to be direct in line with the flight path of the airplane. Several of his co-workers looking at him in that moment had later recounted how he had gone as white as a ghost. He was nowhere near any information outlets at the time. He had been in a high level meeting with several cabinet-level secretaries and more stars on collars than could be seen in the sky of his apartment building. He knew immediately something had occurred to his wife. He did not know what but he felt a rip at his soul. He was positive she was dead. After the memorial in Tula and the nearly 3,000 others who had died in attacks Samuel had never fully recovered. His reason for being had been ripped out of him. He withdrew and the military and plain clothed psychs all agreed that he needed to go rest far from his former career. It was decided to retire him with a full pension and gift him with a portion of land that bordered what his family currently owned in a National Forest Area. The acreage was welcome in a way. He realized that this was supposed to be a way for him to self-rehabilitate. He only wanted Tula. He moved into the family home and decided to use a famous architect he knew to build a secure compound. His buddy was Ken Johns. Ken and his wife Barb had been close friends in the past when they were all in the military together. Ken and Barb left and Tula decided she would finally hook Samuel and marry him. This was to Samuel's surprise as she was a real looker and he always thought that she could have done so much better that a lowly intelligence officer who dabbled in electronics and read too much sci-fi. Tula never saw it that way though and so his goose was cooked.

After the Towers fell Ken left the military and soon had his compound setup and going to his specifications. He had everything: water, air, food, power, you name it. He had a cavern that was on his property turned into a machine shop that included metal and wood working, welding fabrication and parking garage that would have been the envy of any military dictator. Several different Armored Personnel Carriers or APC's; two tanks of late Cold war era vintage; a half track from world war two mounting a Ma-Duece (Browning 50 caliber machine gun); a couple of heavy four by fours and a military grade Hummer all sat in this area in various stages of disrepair to bright and totally rebuilt. A smaller cave held an Art and crafts storage and workroom. This had leather, sewing machines from light to commercial/Industrial harness makers, cloth and nylon in all weights. Ken had a corner partitioned off for experimentation on solar type projects. He had the whole cave system down below wired with copper wiring to make it a Faraday cage that keep any EMP from frying his precious equipment. He thought that this idea was nuts when he had put into the specification of the compound ... but you never knew.

All of them watched the TV that night as a nondescript man in plain clothes was escorted from a helicopter that was obviously military in full shackles. This man stood 5'9" tall and was pair shaped to say the least. Most would have been a trifle more unkind and called him fat. He weight appeared to be in the neighborhood of 340 pounds that was easily handled and said that he had been heavy all of his life. The TV camera followed him and the talking heads said that this man had created a virus that had taken cause the recent flu pandemic. The building Ken knew was one that was used to transport prisoners from to other facilities that were out of the sight of the public. This man would soon face a military court then face whatever fate that they deemed fit. The talking head female reporter blathered on but by this time all each of our people above had lost interest. It might have done them some good if they had watched just a little longer.