Quaranteam: Phil's Tale Ch. 10

Chapter 10

When Linda had told him, early on after they first hooked up, that he was going to have to get used to a life "under fire," he absolutely, positively hadn't thought she meant it literally.

In addition to the drone dropping grenades, Phil heard the CRACK CRACK of a couple of bullets striking the bulletproof glass of the car's rear window, bouncing off without doing much more than causing some half dollar sized impact scars. Linda continued to weave the car as best as she could through the foliage, but it was difficult, since there was no clear road, and the trees were close enough together that speed wasn't much of an option.

"Fuck this," Linda said, bringing the car back towards the street once more. "We're too slow in the woods so the only choice is forward and fast. Hang the fuck on, baby," she said to him, as she pulled the car back onto the pavement once more. "Audrey, I need you to play drone spotter for me. Let me know if you see it."

"Dammit, Linda, I'm a doctor, not a sniper!" Audrey said, even as she was craning her head, looking out the windows, trying to get a bead on where the small flying vehicle had gone. The buzzing sound was still lingering in the air around them. "There! Two o'clock!"

"I see it," Linda said, swerving to her left to avoid another drop. Drones typically didn't carry large payloads, and so it was likely that it would be out of ordinance after another strike. "And it looks like we've got unfriendlies coming up the rear."

There was a black SUV slowly pulling up behind them, with a big burly guy hanging out of one window, trying to get a good line on shooting their car, even as Linda kept the vehicle shifting in constant motion, making it hard for the soldier to get his shot lined up.

"Dammit, Linda, give me your sidearm," Phil said.

"What? No! Are you crazy?"

"Linda, goddamnit, gimme your gun!"

She growled and with one hand reached down to grab her pistol, a Colt .45 that she treasured dearly, holding it back to him. "Don't fucking drop it, and don't put your head out the window, and don't make me fucking regret this."

"Relax, baby, it's just like 'Duck Hunt,'" he said with a laugh, hoping he could convince himself that he was more confident than he actually was as he rolled the window down a little bit before sticking his arm with the pistol out of the window, firing a couple of wild shots back at the vehicle behind them. Crazy enough, however, one of Phil's shots actually cracked into the center of the vehicle's front windshield, although he thought that he had missed both the driver and the gunman. It was enough to cause the vehicle to come to a screeching halt, however, as Linda sped off, driving away from the SUV at top speed.

Once far enough away from the SUV, Linda's phone finally connected with the base, the call having been jammed during the brief but harrowing conflict. "Hey Chief, what's up?" Niko's voice said from the other end of the line. Good, Phil thought to himself, she was on base tonight. That meant they definitely had someone they could trust there.

"Listen, Redwolf, and listen good," Linda said. "We have a hostile incursion within the New Eden borders. Black SUV, no plates, and at least one enemy drone in our airspace. They were after the principal, but we have evaded pursuit and are doubling back to base. Send up the alarms, and alert the border guard to be on watch for anyone attempting to breach the perimeter, most likely on foot. That means I want patrols in the hills, on the gates and on the fences. I do not want these motherfuckers who threw fire from the sky at my man to escape custody this time."

"Understood, chief. Any indication as to who the hostiles are?"

"I saw bullets and bombs, Lieutenant, and not much fucking else. Phil?"

"The big guy with the rifle hanging out of the truck looked wide and mean and blonde. Large bushy blonde beard. Nordic, maybe?"

"Russian?" Linda asked.

Phil scowled. "Honestly, I don't think so, but who the fuck am I to tell you the difference between a Russian soldier and a Swedish one?"

"Yeah, okay. Anyway, I want the base hot and lit up when we get there, Redwolf. You get every last member of the security detail either on their principal or on this fucking manhunt. I don't want it done now, I want it done yesterday."

"Then I'd better stop yapping with you, boss, and get to work."

"That's my girl," Linda said before tapping the end call button. "Any sign of the SUV or the drone?"

"Nothing in the rear," Phil replied.

"Nothing up front,"Audrey said.

"Let's just hope it stays quiet on the way back," Phil said.

"Shit, babe," Linda grumbled. "Don't jinx us."

The jinx didn't take, however, and the rest of the trip back to the base was quiet, or as quiet as could be expected with the three of them utterly riled up, hearts still pounding full of adrenaline. Before this year, Phil had never been in a shootout before. Now he was starting to think of them as regular occurrences, and he didn't like how easily that seemed to be coming to him.

Once they got to the base, Phil was glad to see that everyone was taking it seriously, as the security forces were glancing behind them, making sure they weren't still being pursued. Colonel Layla Robbins met them at their parking space. She was the woman who had taken over the top down security of New Eden, and as soon as they were out of the car, Robbins was slipping in to pull out the thumb drive connected to the Tesla's camera systems. The footage wouldn't be incredibly high resolution but it would give them a start as to identifying who had just tried to take a shot at them. "Glad to see you're all okay," Robbins said to them. "Give me an hour to download and process this, and we'll debrief after that."

"Got it, boss," Linda said to the woman with a curt salute. Once she was gone, the three of them headed down into the intense security of the underground bunker. As soon as the elevator doors opened, he saw Bill McKenna waiting for him, a giant goofy grin on his face as he tossed something Phil's way.

Phil caught the object, realizing it was a rolled up t-shirt, as Phil unfurled it and saw that it read in giant black letters "I GOT SHOT AT YET AGAIN AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT" across the center of it. He chuckled. "Cute."

Linda and Audrey headed off in one direction. While Linda generally liked being at Phil's side all the time, within the security of the base's lower quarters, she felt comfortable letting him move about on his own for a while, knowing it made him feel a little less like a rat in a cage.

"You need to stop making a habit out of getting shot at," Bill told him. "Since you're back on base, I've got some new data for you we should probably talk about." Of all the people he was glad were on the base still, Phil was most happy that Bill was still working with him. They'd been on the project together since the beginning, and despite the fact that Bill was almost twenty years older than he was, the two had a very natural rhythm that had allowed their partnership to reach all sorts of incredible things.

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a play-by-play of your favorite Manchester United highlights and ten is Linda playing Tekken in the buff, how much am I really going to care about this data, having just been shot at?" Phil grumbled, walking alongside of Bill.

"Call it a very solid eight," Bill replied.

Phil stopped, making Bill stop with him, as he turned to look at his colleague, then sighed deeply, turning directions, as Bill moved with him, the two of them heading over towards the older doctor's lab. "Good or bad?"

"One of each."

"Jesus Bill," Phil laughed bitterly. "You really can't just make it a little easier on me. I just got fucking shot at."

"Oh lighten up, Phil," Bill grinned. "When you finally have a scratch on you, then I'll consider laying off, but until they draw blood, Superwoman's record remains unblemished." The two men headed into Bill's office, which had gone from a disaster area before DuoHalo to a literal explosion of papers after. Most of the windows were covered in dry erase marker, formulas and notations scribbled all over the place. There were no less than five plugged in laptops scattered around the room, each of them no doubt running some long-form computations or analysis of something or other.

If there was anyone Phil considered completely trustworthy inside of the building, Bill was it. They'd been brought into the Air Force together, gotten their clearances together. Phil generally liked to avoid making friends at work, but Bill had been the total exception to that.

"So, you want the shitty news first or the good news first?"

"Let's end on a high note."

"Shit upfront it is, then," Bill sighed, moving to sit down at his desk. He picked up one laptop, looking at it for a moment before deciding it wasn't the one he wanted, setting it back down on the desk before picking up the other one that was on the desk. "Ah," he nodded, tapping it a few times, scrolling through a wall full of data before stopping on a section of it. "So the shit is that the virus has some pretty aggressive target vectors when it comes to a specific classes of people, kids specifically. Anyone between the ages of 10-18 who catches DuoHalo, that's game over. What's worse is that we can't give the Quaranteam serum to anyone under the age of 18."

"Presidental veto finally came through?" Phil asked.

"Worse. You know Mary Pope?"

"McCallister's old research assistant? I wasn't even aware she's still on site."

"She is," Bill said, looking down. "She has... had a 15 year old daughter, Nikki. Apparently Nikki contracted DuoHalo. Still not sure how, considering she's been in New Eden for the last three months, but she still caught it. So Mary smuggled out a dose of the Quaranteam serum off base. Was apparently going to try and get Nikki imprinted on some boy she went to school with, but the minute Mary injected Nikki with the Quaranteam serum, her body rejected it and she went into shock."

"Jesus, Bill, there are loads of reasons we haven't been giving it to anyone under the age of eighteen, and I thought we'd been very fucking clear on that with everyone on the base."

"I thought we had too, Phil, but the woman was desperate. She's seen the same data you and I have, how anyone between 10-18 who catches DuoHalo is basically dead, so I guess she felt like she didn't have anything to lose."

"How bad did it go for Nikki?"

"You've seen how bad it is giving a drop or two to someone that age, Phil," Bill said, taking his glasses off, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Mary gave her an entire dose. Nikki was dead in under a minute. Heart exploded."

"I get the 'life in a bubble' isn't a great way for these kids to have to live for the time being, but we don't have any other options," Phil said, finding just enough space available on Bill's couch for him to slump down onto it without knocking much loose. "Not only can't the Quaranteam serum help them, it's actively fatal to people that age, just like it is when given directly to men."

"Unfortunately, I think that problem's going to solve itself, Phil," Bill replied. "The data makes it look like we're just going to see an entire removal of that slice from the age spectrum across the board, and almost nothing we can do about it. It seems harsh to say that if you're born between 2004-2010 you're basically a dead person walking, but shy of locking them in a sealed chamber until they're old enough for Quaranteam not to kill them, I don't know what else we can do."

"We keep looking for solutions, but we let the people above us make the hard calls about when to say let it go, I guess," Phil said, scratching the back of his neck. "So that's the bad news. Gimme the good news so that I don't have to feel so utterly despondent about all of this."

"The survival rate of DuoHalo for ages 0-9? It's 97%, Phil," Bill said, optimism creeping into his voice.

"Are you sure?" Phil said as he stood up immediately, making his way over to look at Bill's laptop. "That seems insanely high, especially compared to the main spectrum numbers."

"It's not fatality free, but basically it seems like anyone in that age group who catches DuoHalo is going to recover from it, mostly without too many complications," Bill said, pointing at a column of data in his spreadsheet. "And while that's mostly good, it's also a bit bad."

Phil snapped his fingers, gesturing down at the sheet. "It's a spread vector. Fuck sake, Bill, it's a fucking carrier wave. It's designed to linger in kids and while it doesn't kill them, it can reinfect parents, teachers, fuck, any fucking adult around them who isn't protected by Quaranteam. It's designed to make sure that this virus keeps killing people off for at least another ten to twenty years, just as if it needs to make sure there isn't a scrap of population on this planet who hasn't been reached. Tell me that's fucking random chance and not active design and I'll spit in your eye."

"That's just it, Phil," Bill told him. "Anymore, anything we're encountering is an offshoot of the original DuoHalo virus. We're never encountering the OG in the wild any more. We've got so many variations, and I'm sure at least some of them show deliberate signs of human tampering."

"Is it someone's trying to make it weaker and just fucking up? Is it someone trying to make it go faster, hoping it'll burn out quicker if it does? Who's fucking doing this, Bill?"

"For fuck's sake, Phil, you think if I knew I wouldn't tell you?" Bill had taken up swearing a lot more over the past several months, and as shocking as it had been at first, now it all seemed so warranted that Phil rarely remarked on it. "I've got just as much caught up in all of this as you do."

Phil let out a very deliberate slow breath, nodding. "Sorry. Sorry, I know you do. How's Jen handling all of this anyway?"

"Not fucking well," Bill aid, tossing his glasses onto the laptop he'd left on his desk. "She's tried to put on a brave face about all of it, but the poor girl missed the last half of her senior year of high school. No senior Prom. No senior skip day. No graduation ceremony. Her and her friends were going to spend the summer backpacking across Spain and France, and instead, they've barely left the house in months. Now she's imprinted on her high school boyfriend, and you know how I think those sort of early relationships are for stunting emotional growth. But she refused to listen to me and to go through the Oracle system, because I'm only her fucking father working on the goddamn project that'll keep her alive. What the fuck could I possibly know about anything?"

"How bad is he, your daughter's boyfriend and now partner?"

"Tony?" Bill asked. "He's fine. I mean, he's fine for being eighteen, but shit, Phil, we're all basically savages at that point in our lives. We don't know the difference between our eye sockets and our asshole, most of the time. Tony's less of a big deal than Kenna was," Bill said with a laugh. "I mean, I turned her down, and that still didn't make Jen happy, but I think it made her less unhappy than it would've if I'd accepted her."

"Who's Kenna?"

"Girl she grew up with. Known her since she was like twelve. Oracle wanted to pair her up with me, and Kenna had apparently been harboring quite the crush on me growing up, but no way in hell was I going to get paired up with one of my daughter's friends," Bill bristled. "No way, no how. Jen yelled at me because I wasn't keeping her friend safe and close, but when I reminded her what being safe and close would've entailed, I think she realized she lost the argument and stormed off. Couldn't really fucking win, no matter what I did."

"Well, Jen's living with that Tony guy now, right? So maybe out of sight, out of mind?"

Bill shook his head. "No fucking way I'm doing that to myself, my wife or my daughter. Everyone would pretend like it was fine right up until the moment it wasn't, and then there's no undoing all that damage. Hell, I've already been saddled up with a couple of girls barely older than Jen anyway, so the very least that I can ask is that they don't already know my daughter..."

"How's Grace handling all of it?" Phil said, referencing Bill's wife.

"I think she's finally in her element with all of it," Bill laughed. "After the first month or so, she started treating the new family like another one of of her non-profits, giving orders and coordinating appointments, and while she's still very much not interested in sharing with any of our new housemates, she makes sure they all get their fix and that nobody's feeling neglected."

"Your wife's never sat in on any of your sessions with any of your new partners? Not even once? I find that hard to believe."

"Oh, she's been around a few times. With me and Julia's first time she wanted to be around, not because she was worried what I might do with Julia, but because she was worried I wouldn't do anything with the girl," Bill smiled. "So Grace stuck around and played counselor and cheerleader, making sure I knew that I was worth it, although who the fuck would ever believe that, I dunno."

"Have I seen a picture of Julia?" Phil asked him.

"She only showed up last week, so maybe I didn't show you yet," he said, fishing his cell phone from his pocket. "Here, take a look and see what I mean." He tapped on his phone to bring up and image and then handed it over to Phil.

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayum," Phil said, his eyes widening a little at the photo. "That girl isn't just actress pretty, she's model pretty. In fact... hang on... wait. Is she-?"

"One of the Victoria's Secret models? Yeah. Yeah she is."

"Fuck. Bill. If you didn't get performance anxiety around her, I'd be asking you what your secret was," Phil laughed. "There are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of men who have jerked off to that girl you now call a partner."

"Know what's funny about it all though?"

"Wassat?"

"She's only been with three guys in her life before me, and they were all utter shit in the sack," Bill laughed, slapping his knee with one hand. "Once I found that out, well, my confidence came back to me a bit. I expected she'd had every piece of dick this side of the Mississippi she ever wanted, but it turns out that because of her job as a model, she'd always been keeping guys at a distance. So she didn't know shit about fuck all when it came to getting off, so I made sure I got her off a couple of times before I imprinted her. Made me the hero of the house for the last week and change. And now that Julia's talking about how cool I am, it's made me slightly cooler in Jen's eyes."

"Grace's too, I bet."

"Nah," Bill said, waving his hand in the air. "Grace and I have been together almost thirty years at this point. Not a whole lot's going to sway her opinion one way or the other."

Phil shook his head with a smile. "You've got an internationally recognized supermodel cumming out of the palm of your hand, and it's not even worth an attaboy from your wife? Tough crowd."

"Friend, you don't know the half of it! But it keeps me honest, so I can't complain too much, and Grace is still happy, so, happy wife happy life. It'll just be weird when I'm eventually showing up to Jen's college graduation with women who are clearly out of my league."

"It's going to be a very weird future, Bill," Phil said. "Let's just worry about getting you to that graduation before we worry about what your daughter's friends think about you having one of your wives model lingerie for a living. Was that the good news? The stuff about young kids not being fatally affected?"