The huge gates of Aegis Haven wheezed shut behind him with a final, hydraulic sigh, barring from the world outside the ghost of his family and the yelling urgency of the command center. Reuben sat alone in the cab of a packed HON supply truck, its cargo bay stuffed with the last shipment of the experimental antiviral and ordinary medical gear. The rain had not ceased; it poured down in thick, grey sheets and rendered the world into a blur of asphalt and despondency.
He had calculated the math. The airlift to Capital Heights was a going operation, but the edge of the city—the far-flung suburbia and crumbling industrial cities—would be cut off, left to be inundated by the plague. The centralized response was a scalpel; he was now a hammer, headed for the regions the strategy had deemed expe
