General Graham picked up the microphone for the public address system. His voice echoed all over the base. There was nowhere his men couldn’t hear him.
‘This is General Graham. Prepare for evacuation. We will be leaving in ten minutes. Neutralise all infected areas and destroy all remaining samples. Upload all data from local computers to the global servers. Repeat: we will be leaving in ten minutes. If you’re not top-side by then, you’re walking home.’
With that announcement, everyone doubled their efforts. Deep inside the base, the soldiers who were sorting through the remnants of the regional headquarters stood aside as their squad mates fired up their flame throwers. One by one, huge bursts of fire engulfed the laboratories, the morgue and every corner where blood had been spilled.
The bodies of the victims had all been removed but there were still pieces of flesh and limbs dotted around the base, which started to crackle and fill the corridors with the stench of burning meat as they were roasted by the retreating soldiers.
The men inside the operations room were hastily removing all data from the local systems and transferring it to the global servers, where it could be accessed by anyone within The Brotherhood or the World Health Organisation. As they finished and left their stations, a soldier with a flame thrower arrived to neutralise the places that Captain Stein’s bloody and disfigured body had come into contact with.
Meanwhile, Captain Stein was being carried out of the base on a stretcher and guarded by a large group of soldiers, all ready to fill him with silver bullets if he made a wrong move.
‘Put him in the lead chopper. He’s coming with me,’ the general shouted to his men.
Stein lay still, complying with the wishes of his aggressors but that didn’t stop them jabbing him in the back with their rifles as they loaded him into the helicopter, just to make sure he knew who was in charge.
All equipment that had been sitting on the tarmac above them was being moved back inside the base. One day The Brotherhood may need to use this facility again and it was necessary to keep any evidence of their tactical capability from this location out of reach of satellite surveillance. There wasn’t enough time to arrange the equipment neatly so the soldiers outside the base dumped the crates inside the main doors as quickly as they could.
General Graham looked at his watch. ‘Ten minutes are up, people. Let’s go,’ he shouted to the soldiers still inside. He hit the button to lock down the base. The siren sounded and the main doors began to close. Everyone still inside ran up the ramp and through the doors before they closed with a loud metallic clang, sealing the scene of one of The Brotherhood’s greatest failures. It was their second in as many days.
The pile of bodies at the end of the tarmac was burning furiously, sending a huge cloud of black smoke into the heavens above. General Graham picked up the radio as he boarded the lead helicopter.
‘Good work, everyone. All other choppers head for Hartley House. Make that your base of operations. We need to stay close to the city in the coming days.’
He put down the radio and turned to the pilot. ‘We’re heading for Lake Arcadia.’
‘Yes sir,’ the pilot said and fired the engine into life. The sound of the rotating blades grew louder and louder until the heavy gunship lifted off the ground and headed in the opposite direction to the other helicopters.
General Graham turned round and looked Captain Stein in the eye. ‘Keep a close watch over him,’ he said to his men.
‘I’m not exactly in a fit state to run away from you,’ Stein said.
‘Maybe not, but you’d better help us find the doctor, and fast. The sun will be coming up in a few hours so you haven’t got much time.’
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