Chapter 12
Now that his meeting with the Board of Directors was done, Kelly felt like he could relax a little bit. Things had gone rather smoothly, which he was grateful for, but unfortunately it only gave him more work to do in the long run. Coordinating the UBCF, briefing their Commander, preparing the city for occupation, planning the stages of engagement, and possibly authorizing the decontamination, all still had to be done. Kelly mentally reminded himself to schedule in some sleep at some point in the next couple of days.
His office was one of the cleaned rooms in the mansion above the lab. The hazard teams had gone through some of the rooms on the second floor in the right wing and declared them safe. They had bagged up and removed all the bodies and scrubbed clean any residues or possibly infected fluids. Personally, Kelly felt that the only real way to clean the mansion was to burn it to the ground, but he wasn’t going to argue.
The mansion wasn’t really dangerous at all, except for the remains of the infected hosts, of course. Kelly wasn’t going to get infected just by walking around, because the Progenitor virus, and all of its variant strains and related viruses, were not communicable by air alone. The original infection event was long enough ago that any trace of the virus would have long since settled out of the air or died off. But Kelly, after seeing the aftermath of the infection, was not about to take any chances. He had balked at wearing a hazmat suit when he first arrived there, but he was not so careless about the virus now, after witnessing the damage it had caused.
Of course, that original infection event was one detail conspicuously left out of his meeting with the Board. They had already been informed of the infection, and during the meeting they were too concerned with the possible consequences to ask for further details. But none of them had asked the one very obvious question. It was something so blatantly obvious that no one bothered to question it, assuming it had already been explained and they simply missed it.
How had the virus escaped in the first place? What was the cause of the original infection event? How did it happen?
The virus itself was not located in the mansion, it was located in the lab below. In theory, the mansion was effectively sealed off from the lab. If an accident occurred in the lab, or the virus was released for whatever reason, it was nearly impossible for the mansion to become exposed, unless an infected host somehow made it all the way back to the mansion and managed to spread the virus there.
But nothing like that happened. And the implications of that were staggering. The fact that the virus not only reached the mansion, but the guardhouse, which was a completely separate building, was more than simply suspicious. It was the smoking gun.
The scientists performed tests on all the dead bodies and still active secondary hosts found at the Arklay lab. The original time of infection could be roughly estimated by calculating how quickly the body deteriorated and how certain bodily functions broke down. It was hardly accurate, but the time of death could be estimated within perhaps twelve hours.
All of the bodies found so far, except for those of the dead police officers, were infected within the same twelve-hour period, based on their investigation. In fact, the scientists performing the tests were of the opinion that everyone was infected at roughly the same time. In retrospect, that was the only possible explanation for the suddenness of the infection. It had happened so quickly that no one had managed to escape or send a warning.
The lab, the mansion, and the guardhouse were all infected in the same time frame, but that was impossible. There was simply no way that the virus could have spread to all those locations simultaneously. It must have been released into the lab first, and then spread to the mansion and the guardhouse afterward. But that’s not what the pattern of infection showed. Hosts from all three locations became infected at around the same time. It was impossible, simply impossible.
Acting on that information, Kelly ordered the investigators to check the ventilation system. And that’s how they discovered the method by which the infection occurred. The water system was contaminated with the virus. The ventilation system was then sabotaged to allow the water system to spray vaporized water into the ventilation ducts. That vaporized water then was distributed simultaneously to all three locations, where it then infected the hosts.
Of course, there were safeguards to prevent something like that from ever happening. Very complicated systems were in place specifically to prevent infection from spread by way of the ventilation system. And when Kelly ordered those systems to be checked, they found more sabotage. Someone had deactivated the safety protocols on the ventilation system and reprogrammed the entire thing.
The infection at the lab was no accident. It was a deliberate act. The virus didn’t just escape, it was purposely set loose. And the person responsible was very thorough in making sure it struck everyone at the same time, so that no one would be able to get away in time. The entire thing was planned.
The Arizona Director knew of this, but he and Kelly had wisely decided to keep it confidential for the time being. They had to focus on handling the problem here and trying to contain the infection of the city. If the other members of the Board knew that it was a deliberate act of biological terrorism, the entire focus of the investigation here at the lab would be shifted to discovering the culprit. Planning to counter the infection in Raccoon City would become a secondary goal, something to be done later, if time allowed.
Kelly gave them enough information to let them make their own conclusions about Ozwell Spencer’s possible guilt, but he had managed to avoid getting into concrete details. Once they were done in Raccoon City, then the results of their investigation could be given to the Board, and the search for the guilty individuals could begin in earnest.
By the time Kelly left the mansion and walked outside to see how things were progressing, it was already dark outside. Half a dozen trucks were parked in a semi-circle around the front lot, and tall flood lights cast long beams of light across the expanse of concrete. Two large command tents were set side-by-side off to Kelly’s right, closer to the mansion. Men in black and green military gear, with army boots and crew cuts, unloaded crates and cases from the trucks, setting them in rows facing the mansion. Kelly stood on the front steps and slid his hands into his pockets, watching the men unload their gear with a detached sense of interest. There was an army gathering.
He went down the steps and marveled at the precise organization of the soldiers. He had only seen UBCF troops deployed two other times since he first joined Umbrella, and each time it was a very informative experience. The troops said nothing as they worked, unloading crate after crate, setting up security and monitoring systems, and splitting up all the equipment equally among each unit of soldiers. Such organization would help them in the next day or two, when twenty more units of soldiers arrived to join the force. Some of them would surely arrive in the next ten or twelve hours, and the command center here at the mansion had to be ready for them.
The flaps on one of the tents spread open and the UBCF Commander walked out. He was a muscular bear of a man, and although Kelly was taller than him by three inches, he still felt intimidated by the Commander that Umbrella sent there to take control of the mission. His name was Nicholai Ginovaef, and he was built like a bodybuilder. Every movement gave away his harsh, violent nature. Kelly had taken an immediate dislike to the man.
“Good evening, Mister Kelly,” he grunted in his deep voice, with his distinctive Eastern European accent. He had a habit of always calling him “Mister Kelly.”
“Sergeant,” Kelly said. “The new units are on their way. The Board agreed to our suggestions.”
Nicholai chuckled. “That is good news. I have good men here, but not enough. Not enough at all, for what we have to do.”
“No problems so far with your equipment?”
“No problems with that.”
“Good,” Kelly said. “Will you be ready
in two days?”
“Yes, I believe so. Are we going to wait so long?”
“We don’t have to. Two days is as long as I’m willing to wait. If you and your men are ready before then, that’s even better.”
“We will be ready then,” Nicholai assured him, nodding toward the swarm of soldiers working in front of them. “Lots of good men here. We will be ready.”
“Can you show me your initial plan of action?” Kelly asked. “My superiors will want to know what steps you’re taking.”
“Of course,” Nicholai purred. “Come, into the tent.”
The inside of the tent was a random assortment of tables covered in computers, radios, and other electrical equipment. All of it was powered by an independent central generator, and a huge spiderweb of cables and wires was strung up on poles above the tables to all of the various devices and machinery. Half a dozen men were seated at various computer stations, some of them talking into microphone headsets. As Kelly and Nicholai walked into the tent, no one so much as glanced at them.
“Shutting down entire city is no easy task,” Nicholai said as he wove his way around the tables and computers to a large square table at the other end of the tent. Maps were spread out before them, of the city and the mountains beyond. “But this city is not too bad. There are only three main roads into the city. Blocking them is the easy part. Some smaller roads as well, we can close them too.”
He pointed a thick finger at the map at the locations where the roadblocks were planned. Raccoon City was such a good location precisely because of its isolation from other metropolitan areas. Three main routes to the city, none of them even a major highway. Most of the people who worked in Raccoon City lived there as well, and the city had few commuters from other areas. Blocking the roads was indeed the easy part.
“What about communications?” Kelly asked.
Nicholai pointed to a series of red marks on the map. “Cell phone towers. Those are easy to shut down. I do not think anyone could get a signal here without the towers. Just in case, also have cell phone jamming devices due to arrive tomorrow.”
“What about land lines?”
“Two main telephone cables go through the mountains. Tomorrow I will send men to disable them. No one will be able to call outside of the city.”
“Good. What about satellite phones?”
“Jamming them as well.”
Kelly set his hands on the table and looked at the map. Phones were out, but there were other ways to contact someone. They had to cover all their bases.
“What about television stations and radio stations? Can you jam all of those?”
“Do not have to,” Nicholai said. “There are four television stations and five radio stations. I will send men to the stations themselves and shut them down.”
“What about the internet?”
“Disabling the phone lines will also disable the internet. We are trying to track down cable lines as well. You do not have to worry about anyone sending an email,” Nicholai said with a chuckle.
“That’s good,” Kelly said. “You can have all communication shut down by tomorrow night?”
“Yes.”
“And you can block the roads the following morning?”
“Yes. As I said, that is the easy part.”
“Are you sure that these are the only roads out of the city?” Kelly asked, pointing at the roads shown on the map.
“There are some little dirt roads in the mountains,” Nicholai said. “Some of them are not shown on our maps. But we will find them all. I think that most of the people here will not try to escape.”
“Sure they will,” Kelly said. “But not right away. In a day or two, once they figure out that the city is cut off, some of them will try to get out.”
“They will not escape us,” Nicholai said confidently.
Kelly nodded and looked at the map for another few moments before stepping away. He wanted to assert some kind of authority, but he knew that he was out of his league here. He was an administrator, not a soldier. As much as he disliked the idea, he would have to trust Nicholai and give him room to control the operation as he saw fit.
“We’re going to shut down the Raccoon City lab tomorrow,” he said. “You can spare some men to handle that, correct?”
“Of course. One unit will be enough.”
“More than enough, probably. All they have to do is show up and wave their guns around. Once they escort everyone out of the lab, I’ll have my men show up and take over from there. That part of the plan, at least, should be no problem at all.”