“But why?”
Halverson was putting it all together in his mind now, remembering what Quantrill had told him about positive reinforcement.
“To keep the creatures away from the strip,” he said. “Quantrill has them trained like Pavlov’s dogs. Certain areas are feeding grounds. The creatures hang around these areas waiting for their next meal and stay away from the strip as long as they continue to get fed.”
Victoria cringed at the thought. “It’s revolting.”
“I can’t believe she’d stoop to something as low as this.”
“Where are Meers and Emma?”
“Meers is probably one of the corpses here. Emma, too.”
“I had no idea,” said Victoria, unable to grasp the scope of Quantrill’s monstrosity.
“I’m gonna hunt Quantrill down and make her pay for this if it’s the last thing I do.”
Jaw set with determination, Halverson snagged his pistol from the dirt.
Another one of the walking dead was shuffling toward him. It was a male with long grey hair and a desiccated complexion that was peeling off its skull.
Halverson shot the creature between the eyes.
He noticed that the mobs of creatures that had trudged away from the feeding ground to pursue the Mustang were now returning to their dining scene and its lure of fresh living meat. The creatures were shuffling less than twenty feet from Halverson and Victoria.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He and Victoria bounded for the Mustang.
MeLellan put the car in gear and met them halfway as the legions of ghouls pressed closer to them.
Victoria jumped into the car, Halverson right behind her. He slammed the door shut after him, even as another ghoul groped for him.
Seeing the car’s path blocked by mobs of ghouls, McLellan threw the Mustang into reverse. He spun the car around in the dirt and drove in the opposite direction through clouds of dust his tires had stirred up, fleeing the pack of zombies that was undulating and jerking after the car.
CHAPTER 70
Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center
His administration seated around him, President Cole was sitting in front of the football in the Situation Room punching his secret code into the device.
“No more interruptions this time,” he said.
Punching in the last numeral of his alphanumeric code on the keyboard, he signaled to Secretary of Defense Byrd.
Byrd rose from his seat and strode to the football.
The plastic “biscuit” in his hand with his confirmation code on it, he commenced hunting and pecking on the football’s keyboard.
Mellors noticed that every single state on the image of the map of the United States on the high-definition flat-panel TV screen mounted on the wall had by now turned red.
“What are the initial targets?” asked Sheila Klauss, eyes glued to the football.
“New York’s number one,” answered Byrd.
“But you already bombed New York with thermite.”
“That prick Ho escaped somehow. We can’t let him live or he’ll throw another missile at us.”
“Miami, San Francisco, Chicago,” said Cole. “All areas of high-density populations.”
“What about Las Vegas?” said FBI Director Paris. “I have a man undercover in Vegas.”
“Vegas is one of our targets,” said Byrd.
“What about my agent?”
“What makes you think he’s still alive? The only living things roaming the country now are these infected cannibals.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
Cole cleared his throat and leaned forward. “The point is, we can’t wait any longer. The cannibals and the plague must be purged from our country before it’s too late.”
“After we cleanse our country, we’ll launch ICBMs with MIRVs from underground silos at Canada and Mexico and nuke our whole continent, exterminating the plague,” said Byrd. “Then we won’t have to repel cannibals invading our country over our borders.”
“MIRVs?” said Sheila Klauss.
“It means the ICBMs can support multiple nuclear warheads.” Byrd gestured with his hands in front of his barrel chest. “We can hit multiple targets using just one ICBM.”
“And then you intend to use the MIRVs to purge the rest of the world?”
“Exactly. If the explosions don’t kill the infected, the radioactive fallout will. No living creature can survive the amount of radiation they’re gonna be hit with.”
“But they’re not living,” said Mellors. “They’re walking corpses.”
Byrd shrugged it off. “Semantics.”
“Enough radioactive dust for a nuclear winter?” said Slocum.
Byrd raised his shaving-brush eyebrows. “Anything’s possible.” He paused. “Personally, I don’t subscribe to the nuclear winter theory. It’s a bunch of PC hogwash. The climate’s not gonna change just because we drop a bunch of nukes.”
“I guess we’ll find out pretty soon.”
Byrd completed punching in the code. “Game on. Your order to initiate nuclear bombing is confirmed, Mr. President.”
Byrd stepped back from the football, whose green light on the top of its keyboard set to flashing.
“How much time do we have left?” said Cole.
“At least half an hour before the first A-bomb is dropped.” Byrd consulted his wristwatch. “A little after three o’clock our time it’ll be bombs away.”
“God help us,” said Cole.
“He hasn’t so far,” muttered Slocum.
CHAPTER 71
Nevada
McLellan drove the Mustang through the desert away from the raft of walking dead that skittered after him.
“Where to now?” asked Victoria from the backseat.
“We go after the bus,” answered Halverson.
“Do you think Arnold and Emma are still on it?”
“No. Quantrill left them to die in the desert with the others.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“She has no reason to keep them alive. If they won the lottery, their bodies are back in the desert getting their bones picked clean.”
“Poor bastards,” said McLellan, at the wheel.
“If Arnold and Emma are dead, why are we following the bus?” asked Victoria.
Halverson didn’t hesitate before answering. “To kill Quantrill.”
Victoria yawned. “Why don’t we just go back to Vegas, find Emma, and make tracks out of here?”
“I doubt Emma’s alive. I’m betting Quantrill wanted all of us to be on that bus, not just Chogan and Meers. She wanted to feed all of us to the living dead.”
“But she didn’t know where we were,” put in McLellan.
“So she left without us to take care of Chogan and Meers first.”
McLellan pointed up ahead. “Isn’t that the bus up there?”
In the distance, under the sallow sunlight that dripped like poison from the white disc of sun above, a bus was parked with the walking dead teeming around it. The sporadic sounds of gunfire cackled from the bus’s interior as soldiers shot through the open windows at the hordes of walking dead that surged and pressed against the sides of the bus in their eagerness to gorge on living flesh.
Several of the creatures jerked and dropped dead in their tracks, their heads split open by bullets.
“I wonder why the bus stopped,” said Halverson.
“Let’s check it out,” said McLellan.
He drove toward the bus and the walking dead that swarmed around it.
As the Mustang neared the bus, Halverson noticed that the bus was canting toward the front. “They got a flat tire.”
“That’s what they get for driving on this dirt,” said McLellan.
He slowed the Mustang.
“What are you doing?” said Halverson.
“You don’t want to go into that mess, do you?” said McLellan.
Halverson shifted restlessly in his seat. “I�
��m gonna kill Quantrill.”
“She may already be dead for all we know.”
“Let’s just get out of here and look for Emma back at the strip,” said Victoria.
“Emma’s gone,” said Halverson.
“If Quantrill’s not already dead, she will be soon,” said McLellan. “Look at all those zombies attacking the bus.”
“We have to make sure she’s dead,” said Halverson.
“We may end up dead if we get mixed up in that fracas. All we have are two handguns and a few rounds of ammunition. There’s gotta be at least five hundred of those things over there, if not more.”
“It sounds like they got a lot of firepower in the bus,” said Halverson, listening to the drumbeat of gunfire and watching ghouls fall dead.
“What makes you think the passengers on the bus are gonna put out the welcome mat for us? They’ll probably start shooting at us when they see who we are.”
McLellan had a point, Halverson decided.
Halverson could see ghouls climbing onto the top of the bus and shambling on the roof, their bony hands clawing the air. Other ghouls were trying to haul themselves through the open windows as shots rang out from inside the bus. Two ghouls fell out of the windows with bullets in their heads. Two other ghouls immediately took their comrades’ places trying to scale the side of the bus and enter through the windows.
The ghouls on the bus’s roof got down on their knees, crawled to the sides of the bus, and tried to lower themselves through the open windows, feet first. Gunshots pelted their feet but cut no ice. The shots didn’t even slow the creatures down. Their feet and legs torn to shreds by bullets, the ghouls kept lowering themselves through the windows and into the bus’s interior.
Running low on ammunition, the soldiers commenced clubbing the invading creatures with the stocks of their M4 carbines at close quarters.
With the soldiers preoccupied battling the zombies inside the bus, more creatures climbed onto the bus’s roof and lowered themselves through the windows. Crammed inside the bus with the soldiers, the creatures chewed living flesh and tore out throats, spraying the interior with fountains of hot blood from their screaming victims as the bus rocked and shuddered with the tumult inside it.
CHAPTER 72
“We need to make a run for it,” said Quantrill at the front of the bus, watching the chaotic hand-to-hand combat her soldiers were waging with the ghouls surrounding her.
M4 in hand, Kwang-Sun stood at her side in the din with blood streaming from the side of his head where his ear used to be before a ghoul had chewed it off. He fired a burst into the mob of creatures. It was difficult to get off a clear shot at them because of their proximity to the remaining soldiers, who were punching, kicking, and clubbing the ghouls that converged on them. Another geyser of arterial blood sprayed the bus’s ceiling as a soldier succumbed to a ghoul.
“We can’t stay in here,” said Kwang-Sun.
“Did I ever tell you why I always wanted to be boss, Kwang-Sun?”
Quantrill shot one of the ghouls in its eye. The thirtyish male ghoul jerked its head back and collapsed in the aisle and prevented the other ghouls from advancing on her for a brief time.
The hiatus wouldn’t last long. The other ghouls were already trampling the dead ghoul underfoot.
“No,” said Kwang-Sun.
“My father-in-law raped me when I was eight years old,” said Quantrill. “After that I swore I’d never let anyone boss me around when I grew up. He looked sort of like that ghoul I just shot.”
“Damn.”
Quantrill whipped her head around, seeking out a means of escape.
“The front door’s jammed with ghouls trying to get in,” she said, backing up to the head of the metal steps that led to the door and watching through the door’s window as the ghouls flailed away at the glass.
“We’ll have to force it open,” said Kwang-Sun.
Quantrill stepped aside and let Kwang-Sun descend the steps to the door that was chattering in its frame as the ghouls pressed their bodies and faces against its window’s safety glass.
He slung his M4 over his shoulder. Against the weight of their bodies, he strained to wrench the door open.
As the door cracked open, a ghoul stuck its hand through the gap between the door and the frame and scratched Kwang-Sun’s bald head.
Starting, Kwang-Sun yelped and cursed.
He released his grip on the door and it sprang shut, crushing the ghoul’s arm. Kwang-Sun retreated up the stairs.
“We’ll never get out that way,” he said, blood trickling from the gash in his head down his face.
Quantrill wondered if she should shoot Kwang-Sun. Ghouls had scratched him and chewed off his ear. Was he infected? Or was the vaccine protecting him? If he hadn’t gotten the vaccine, she would have shot him by now. But the vaccine would prevent him from becoming infected.
She had her pistol trained on Kwang-Sun’s stomach at the moment.
Kwang-Sun wasn’t aware of it. He was too busy trying to figure a way out of the bus that was fast becoming a death trap.
Quantrill decided not to shoot him. She trusted the vaccine would work. After all, why would the government lie about its effectiveness? In any case, she needed Kwang-Sun’s help to get out of the bus. She lowered her Glock 17 and concentrated on finding a way out.
She turned to the front windshield. For the moment the bus’s hood was clear of zombies.
“What if we kick out the front windshield?” she said.
Kwang-Sun studied the windshield. “The hell with kicking it.”
He leveled his M4 at the window and fired a burst into it, perforating the glass with ragged holes. He flipped the M4 around and battered the punctured, weakened glass with the M4’s stock, crashing through the glass and splaying shards on the hood until there was a hole in the windshield wide enough for him to crawl through.
Arms thrashing, ghouls stumbled toward them down the aisle from the back of the bus.
Quantrill fired a round from her Glock into the forehead of the nearest one, a twentysomething male wearing a pair of metallic earphones that hung askew on its head.
The creature’s head jerked back. Occipital bone spalls and brains slid down its spine, as the creature collapsed to its knees then was shoved forward onto its face and trampled by a ghoul behind it.
Muzzle in hand, with his M4’s stock Kwang-Sun bashed out the jagged pieces of glass that remained in the windshield’s frame.
He wheeled around, spun the M4’s stock so it rested against his shoulder, and scythed down two approaching ghouls with two three-round bursts to their heads, providing cover fire for Quantrill to escape.
Careful not to cut herself on the toothed glass that protruded from the frame, Quantrill pulled herself through the broken windshield and wormed her way onto the bus’s hood. As Quantrill stood up, a middle-aged female ghoul with shoulder-length dyed blonde hair crawled onto the hood, half pushed by the ghouls mobbed behind her.
The fortyish blonde creature had large bloodshot milky blue eyes that betrayed her fondness for booze. She looked like she had downed about ten drinks too many. Her splotchy complexion and carbuncled nose confirmed the impression.
The blonde must have turned while she was soused, decided Quantrill. Strapped to the bottle blonde’s back was a papoose with a baby squirming in it.
Sickened by the sight, Quantrill didn’t want to think about it. She was sure the baby had turned, as well.
Quantrill kicked the bottle blonde in the face with her combat boots. To Quantrill’s relief, under the impetus of the blow, the creature did a backflip off the hood and tumbled into the phalanx of zombies that engulfed the bus.
Surveying the perimeter around the bus, Quantrill didn’t like her chances. Rows of ghouls at least ten deep surrounded the bus. The rows extended too far for her to bound over them.
“Not looking good!” she shouted back to Kwang-Sun, who was still in the bus.
All arms and legs
, Kwang-Sun clambered out of the broken windshield and stood beside her on the hood.
Then he took a bite out of her throat. Blood from her carotid artery jetted from her mutilated throat.
She screamed in pain. She whipped her hand toward her wound to stanch the flow of blood. Blood poured through the interstices between her fingers.
His milky eyes staring blankly out of his head, Kwang-Sun munched on the slab of Quantrill’s neck in his mouth.
Losing blood rapidly, Quantrill thought she would pass out any second.
Kwang-Sun snatched Quantrill’s hand away from her throat so he could lap the stream of blood that gushed from her wound.
Quantrill fired her pistol two times into Kwang-Sun’s chest, too weak to aim the muzzle high enough to shoot his head.
The bullets penetrated Kwang-Sun’s heart and one of his lungs with no effect.
Kwang-Sun kept coming at her, eager to consume more of her flesh.
Quantrill tried to push him away from her, stumbled over her own feet on the hood, and plummeted into the horde of frenzied ghouls that ringed the bus. The creatures crushed against each other in their lust to consume her living flesh.
The ghouls started tearing her limb from limb, drenching themselves with her gushing blood.
Her screams rang out, piercing the silence of the empty desert.
It seemed to take forever for her to die. She kept screaming and screaming.
Then abruptly she stopped.
All that could be heard was a smattering of gunshots that popped inside the bus. Then they, too, fell silent.
CHAPTER 73
“I guess we don’t have to worry about her anymore,” said McLellan, watching Quantrill’s demise from the driver’s seat of the Mustang.
He stopped the car.
“She couldn’t survive that,” said Victoria, turning her head away from the scene of the massacre at the bus, visibly shaken by the bloodshed.
“She got what she deserved, if you ask me,” said Halverson.
“Nobody deserves to get killed like that.”
“She got a dose of her own medicine. How many hundreds of people did she have sent to be slaughtered and eaten at the feeding grounds?”
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