Red Eye | Season 2 | Episode 3 Read online

  No, we were not ready to fight against an enemy we loved.

  We were shadows now, those of us who remained. Those of us who were strong enough to do what needed to be done. Though every ugly, dirty, deed, every bone broken, every drop of blood spilled, every life taken, changed us.

  The world was broken now and so were we, every one of us haunted by the lives we once lived, by the people we once were, by everything we’d lost and damned from the lives we were now living.

  We had all become our own worst enemy, a foe much worse than the death that failed in taking us all.

  Now, the only threat, the only war left to fight, was the one happening inside each and every one of us.

  The Vaal fever might have killed our fellow man, but it was we who had destroyed ourselves.

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  Have you read…

  DRAG.N

  by Victoria Cage Author

  ELI Constant

  About the book:

  The DRAG.N units were invented to support the marriage of the Universal Health Initiative (UHI) and Green Nation. Their purpose: mass airborne vaccinations to ensure health for all U.S. citizens. The vaccines serve another purpose though.

  Laced with behavioral modification drugs, the REP inoculation has created a docile, drugged, and receptive American populace.

  Anti-UHI activists are determined to take down the DRAG.N and the corrupt healthcare system. Their planning has been meticulous, spanning nearly a year. Benton and Rachel Greer take the first steps towards raising the proverbial sword and slaying the DRAG.Ns.

  Will they succeed?

  DRAG.N- a brief dystopian- is an Orwellian take on an American future where human fundamental rights and freedoms are options rather than guarantees. This novelette chronicles three days in the lives of researchers, activists, a deceptive Presidential Cabinet, and a First Lady with secrets of her own.

  Read on for a sneak peek!

  I.

  The cloud of yellow mushroomed from the Universal Health Initiative building.

  Benton Greer watched the particulate matter float languidly towards the streets, towards the waiting and uplifted faces.

  He took off his backpack, unzipped it, and rem

  oved the black gas mask and small silver tank inside. It took precious seconds to screw the oxygen source onto the filtration mask.

  When next Benton looked upwards, his face was protected. His eyes roved the masses, watching how accepting they all were. The nostrils of millions around the country were inhaling dose six for the year. All the necessary vaccines rolled into one health-assuring cocktail.

  Benton knew better.

  He knew the truth about the additives; the truth withheld from the public. He wasn’t just another paranoid prepper – a guy with ten years’ worth of cans lining the shelves in his garage and a fallout shelter in the basement. Maybe paranoid and prepper were redundant terms, but Benton figured you can’t be considered paranoid when the source of paranoia is wholly factual.

  He’d known from the beginning… Dan gave his life to bring the truth to light. Benton would do everything he could to make his friend’s death mean something.

  The UHI’s Disbursement of Regular Antibodies for a Greener Nation – DRAG.N for short, pronounced ‘dragon’ – had been the President’s platform for reelection. Had the DRAG.N failed, the president would not have been reelected. So, the government made sure the DRAG.N did not fall, but fly.

  Benton knew that eventually they’d all realize – all of them, every lemming in the great, inhaling populace. Sooner or later, they’d know how very foolish they were to welcome the DRAG.N.

  Benton took a deep breath, filling his lungs with oxygen, his chest rising and then falling slowly.

  From a distance, he saw a neon green jacket – sign of a UHI employee. He moved quickly into a side alley and knelt down behind a city dumpster.

  His watch read 9:05 – five minutes to go before the inhalation period would be over and another ten minutes before the gas would be dissipated and ineffectual. Benton’s right knee was already aching – an ancient sports injury flaring.

  When the Universal Health Initiative was first proposed, no one had taken it seriously. Privatized insurance and choice of health treatment were part of free will in the country. Those who had it, had it; those who didn’t, well, they didn’t. Vaccines weren’t mandatory – unless required by employment or educational institution.

  It’s not that people were against providing healthcare to the less fortunate… no, that wasn’t it.

  The opposition to the idea stemmed from individuals refusing to accept the UHI for themselves. It was one thing to give medical assistance to needy people; it was quite another thing to force it on everyone.

  The government pushed its own agenda though – not all that surprising – the votes of the people rigged for the desired outcome. Benton couldn’t believe that eighty-one percent of Americans actually believed that the UHI was for the public good. If the vote hadn’t been rigged, then America was a land of the brave and the naïve.

  When his watch read exactly 9:20, Benton stood up, removed his mask and tucked it back into his pack – not bothering to detach the small tank.

  He walked casually out of the alley, looking neither left nor right. He’d learned from experience that if you searched the streets for danger, then danger was more likely to spot you.

  His car was only two blocks away.

  II.

  Gracie Phillips stood in front of the large, metal device and sighed.

  The DRAG.N had worked like a charm, yet again. When she’d first developed the disbursement machine, she’d had reservations. The large government check had changed her mind. Grace Phillips – full-fledged sell out, she thought self-deprecatingly.

  She walked slowly to her desk. On it sat a small, plastic bottle topped with a rounded head – similar to a decongestant saline dispenser. Gracie picked up the bottle, stuck the spray top in her left nostril and pressed a release button. The dosage shot out quickly. She bent over, pinching her nose.

  It hurt every damn time.

  “Bye Gracie, I’m headed home for the day.”

  “You just got here, Andy.”

  “Yeah, but the dosage is out; no need for me to be here.”

  “How about this – you can leave after you’ve run the sterilization cycle on the DRAG.N and prepped it for the next dosage dispersing.” Gracie pointed at the machine.

  “Come on, Gracie! That’s two months from now; why do I need to prep the machine today?” Andy sounded exasperated, but he knew the protocols. The machine was always cleaned immediately following a dosage.

  “Because I’m in charge, Andy.” Gracie tapped the badge clipped to her coat’s lapel.

  “Fine.” Andy walked away, a grimace plastered on his face. “What a complete joy-kill you are. I told Lindsey I’d be home for a late breakfast. She’s going to be pissed at me again.”

  “Not my fault, Andy. You know the drill. Shouldn’t have told Lindsey you’d be home. Don’t go blaming me if she’s mad.”

  Gracie smiled to herself. Andy Leech was always complaining. She watched his short, squat frame pull on a decontamination suit. As he bent over to yank the bright yellow overalls up, his glasses slid down his bulbous nose. He roughly pushed them back in place, using his characteristic middle finger gesture.

  Andy was near-bald and overweight. Lindsey was supermodel material. A classic nerd in a high paying job gets the sex-pot. Andy was a good guy though, bit of a complainer, but a good guy.

  The computer monitor on Gracie’s desk blinked to life.

  DRAG.N’s diagnostic program was initializing a re-boot. She sat down quickly, rolling her chair closer to the lab desk and began typing furiously. She stop-coded the re-boot and delayed it for one hour – plenty of time for Andy to sterilize and prep the machine.

  Crisis averted, she click
ed on the main DRAG.N folder. A screen birthed to life and she began scanning a file named DRAG.N Performance Reviews.

  There were DRAG.N devices all over the country now. And all over the country, people were receiving or had already received the free vaccines mandated by the government. Other regular medical services were available at UHI buildings. America was healthier than ever.

  At least, that’s what the PR advertisements touted in a bid to convince citizens that the healthcare program was the ‘answer.’

  Gracie opened the Houston UHI’s data folder and scrolled through their DRAG.N log.

  Houston, we don’t have a problem. Gracie smiled to herself.

  As lucky inventor of the DRAG.N, Gracie had access to the operating systems and output data of every device in the country. There were several hundred, all positioned equidistant from each other to cloak the entire country in airborne vaccination. She sighed. There was always so much to do in any given day.

  Gracie picked her customary second folder for review – Oklahoma City. She always looked over the data to Houston and Oklahoma City first as they roughly flanked her own location in Dallas.

  At first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the OK City DRAG.N, but moving to close the folder, something caught Gracie’s attention.

  The cooling manifolds were closed on the unit. This wouldn’t be unusual if the DRAG.N was already shut down for the day, but the real-time function log was showing the purge sequence was activated – the stage prior to the sterilization cycle that eliminated residual gases from the DRAG.N before the technician opened the inner chamber.

  With the manifolds closed, the device would overheat quickly, sparking the remaining residual gases that facilitated vaccine disbursement.

  If those gases sparked, the system would experience a complete meltdown. Not a pretty prospect when you consider half a dozen pressurized hydrogen tanks were stored with every DRAG.N unit.

  Once again, Gracie found herself typing furiously, trying to affect controls of the OK City DRAG.N from her administrator computer.

  “Andy! Get Oklahoma City on the phone. Their DRAG.N’s malfunctioning.” She briefly paused for air and then screamed his name. “Andy!”

  “I’m on it!”

  Gracie could hear the unmistakable eye roll in his voice. He always said she was too dramatic.

  Andy had the phone to his ear, having already hit the quick-dial number sequence for the OK City UHI.

  “Hello. Yeah. This is Andy Leech at UHI Main. Your DRAG.N’s …” Andy paused, looking to Gracie.

  “Tell them that their cooling manifolds are force-closed and they need to get them open ASAP.” Gracie yelled it, hoping the OK City personnel could hear her across the short distance from her to Andy.

  “Did you hear that?” Andy asked. “What do you mean the function’s being overridden in your system? Can’t you override the override?” Andy’s voice was slightly panicked now. Gracie knew something was really wrong if he was ramping up the drama. Andy turned to her.

  “They’ve already tried to override within the system and manually” Andy said. “Nothing’s opening the manifolds.”

  Gracie hung her head. She was going to catch hell for this. She always did – just part of being the DRAG.N’s designer. The DRAG.N was going to overheat and she was the one who’d get first degree burns.

  She pulled up her email tab and hammered out a quick message to her superiors, giving them advance notice that the OK City location was going to be on lockdown for the next few months and in need of major repair.

  Once the partition walls slammed down, any explosion would be contained at least. Cheers for silver linings. The whole top level of the UHI would have to be rebuilt and a new DRAG.N unit would need to be manufactured and delivered. And everything would have to be done before the next scheduled dosage. Talk about a rush job.

  After sending the email, Gracie returned to the OK City data folder and hit the small fire and shield emblems on the bottom corner.

  “Tell them I’ve already alerted the UHI in D.C. and the OK City fire department and police force are on their way. Signal to evacuate the building and initiate the fail safe.” Gracie listened to Andy repeating her words into the phone.

  UHI policy entailed that DRAG.N operators couldn’t contact authorities until absolutely sure the problem was impossible to resolve internally. The UHI wanted to avoid any possible bad press- especially after the DRAG.N meltdown in Denver that happened shortly after the devices were newly implemented. Talk about a bad takeoff. Gracie had been amazed the DRAG.N hadn’t crashed and burned after that catastrophe.

  Andy placed the phone back down on its receiver. He looked at Gracie, his face drawn ugly with worry. “Our phones are going to be ringing off the damn hook after this.”

  “Well, lucky for you, I’m the one who’ll catch hell. Get ready for a long day, Andy. I’m printing off the function log for that unit. You’re going to be hunched over two hundred pages of data for the rest of the day. Find me something I can use.”

  Andy knew what that meant. He wasn’t leaving the building until he had concrete evidence that the DRAG.N unit wasn’t to blame. Going to be a long freaking day.

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  Riley, Claire C., Red Eye | Season 2 | Episode 3

 

 

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