“Have official documentation ready!” the voice said, brokering no argument.
Li Na spotted a man in military green and gold standing on a jeep, motioning with an arm.
“I repeat, please have official identification and documents ready!” the man shouted.
Li Na tucked her chin down to peer through her purse, fingers fishing for her identification card. She spotted a ragged green jacket and short black hair in the crowd. Her head whipped in the direction of the familiar figure.
“Zhang Min?” Li Na said, pushing through the crowd.
People churned, making Min appear and disappear like a magic trick.
“Zhang Min?” Li Na said. “Zhang Min!”
Li Na shifted her weight, moving amongst the people like a river, the tide constantly changing, swaying and using her elbows to push through the crowd. Voices protested, but no one stopped her, recognizing her desperation that had become so common in recent weeks.
Li Na got to the last position she had seen her, but there was no sign of her.
“Zhang Min?” Li Na shouted, spinning on the spot.
She needed to get high, to look upon the crowd from an superior vantage point. Where the man on the jeep with the megaphone was. If Li Na could get to him, perhaps she could find Zhang Min. She waded through the crowd in his direction.
“Sir!” Li Na shouted, getting close. “Sir! Please help! I’m trying to find a young girl!”
But the officer was still speaking through the megaphone, Li Na’s cries falling on deaf ears. The officer had a duty to do, and by God, he was determined to carry it out.
Li Na reached for the officer’s pants leg and gripped his shin. The officer looked down and saw her face. His face curled up into one of rage, and kicked at her, knocking her back.
Li Na screamed and hit the ground. She knew she was in trouble immediately.
The gray skies were covered with the press of the horde above her, and they would not hesitate to stamp on her if she didn’t find her feet quickly.
She did, tucking in her legs and using the people around her to pull herself to her feet. Her co-worker Fu Han was beside her.
“Stay quiet and follow the crowd,” he said. “They’ve been taking people away and forcing them into jeeps for disturbing the flow. You don’t want to make trouble now. If Zhang Min is here, she’ll be waiting for you wherever we’re going.”
A rush of helicopter blades thundered overhead, near knocking the crowd off their feet. This was chaos. The officer on the jeep was looking into the distance, waving his arm at something she couldn’t make out. The Chinaman in her way turned his head and moved aside.
The blood froze in Li Na’s veins at what she saw.
A Jeep tore through the street, threatening to bulldoze people in its haste.
Screams. People had been hit. The people screamed, turning away from the jeep as it blasted through them.
The crowd rushed toward an immense barricade curled with barbed razor wire and sandbags. A squad of officers guarded the wall, rifles in their arms, eyes narrowed over everyone who wandered too close without authority.
The people were panicked, deathly afraid, but they hadn’t yet lost their self control.
“Identification,” an officer with an ice cold glare said.
Li Na pulled out her identification with shaky fingers, a million and one possibilities of being turned down rushing through her mind. She kept her head down. The officer tossed Li Na’s papers back at her. She waved her arms to grab them.
Li Na was pushed into the arms of another officer who jerked her upright and began to frisk her. Li Na saw him nod before pushing her toward a man with a blue medical badge over his neck. He nodded at her through a face mask and plastic visor.
“Hold still,” the medical assistant said without preamble.
He pulled out a hand-held panel. He placed it over her face. A blue light burst from a lens. Li Na gasped, her eyes blinded for an instant as the tech scanned her.
The light flashed green. A thumb slipped into Li Na’s mouth and pulled her bottom jaw open. A swab was shoved inside and scraped her tongue. Li Na stifled a squeak of protest at the brusque force. Another green light.
“She’s clean,” the medical officer said. “Move along.”
Another scream from this crowd, this one widespread and more terrified than the last.
A swell of unrest burst from the crowd. Voices shouted, dogs barked. The soldiers raised their rifles at the crowd, eyes scanning. Whatever they were attempting to avoid had evidently presented itself to them. And the soldiers were afraid.
If they were afraid, armed with all their weaponry, how should Li Na, unarmed and with no training, feel? Damn right terrified. She obliged the expectation.
Li Na’s stomach fell in horror, seeing the terror in the people’s faces.
“Remain calm,” the officer with the megaphone said. “Everything is under control.”
But it was no good. The people were spooked, and no amount of coaxing was going to calm them.
“Stay back!” soldiers shouted, but the people had already succumbed to their fear.
A man rushed the wall, climbing over the sandbags in a panic. A shot cracked, and the man’s body lost all power, falling back. His death did nothing to cower the courage of the rest of the crowd, who followed their panic and rushed the barricades.
The soldiers had lost control.
Li Na spotted a girl among the chaos, eyes wide, mouth parted in a pained gasp, blood pouring down her chin. It was Zhang Min. Li Na had been wrong. There was no helping her. Not now. Whatever she was, whatever she had become, there was no longer anything Li Na could do to help her.
Another shot. Screams rose and fell like a storm striking the high seas. The people ran, forming a stampede. An old woman fell to the ground. Blood burst from a wound on the woman’s neck.
Li Na shrieked and covered her head with an arm. Fu Han shouted something, but Li Na didn’t hear it.
People fell to their deaths. Tears of horror spilled down Li Na’s cheeks. If I don’t keep running, I’m going to die here.
Something collided hard against the back of Li Na’s head. She tasted dirt. Her body struggled as bodies fell on top of her. Darkness, weight, body odour. Hell.
Adrenaline burned through Li Na’s veins. She was not a big nor strong woman, but she forced herself up onto her elbows and crawled forward. She tasted fresh air and headed toward it. Flickers of natural light. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself to her feet.
Li Na whipped stray locks of hair out of her face. They weren’t even hers. She spotted a caravan of military jeeps a hundred strong. People rushed in the caravan’s direction, desperate for salvation.
Li Na followed the tide, gasping as she limped in pain. She glanced down and spotted blood on her knees through her ripped pants. Li Na shook her head and pushed on. There was no sign of Fu Han. She hoped he was okay.
The crowd tightened into a claustrophobic herd once more, shouting and begging as they approached the jeeps. After her last experience, Li Na refused to let herself fall to the ground again.
“They’re coming!” the soldier with the megaphone shouted. “They’re coming!”
Li Na turned away, her eyes looking to the caravan of soldiers ahead. Her body slammed to a stop. The soldiers pulled out their weapons. Hope, salvation. They could save them, they could save them all.
Li Na skidded to a stop as the rifle barrels turned in her direction, upon the crowd.
A blink of light from a soldier’s rifle. Something like a small child’s fist slammed into her chest, and she stumbled back. Her body moved slowly. She looked down at her chest and pressed her fingers to something that was spreading there, small, dark and red.
Her breath gasped in her throat, tightening like her lungs were filling with fluid. Li Na pressed shaking fingers to the weeping wound on her chest and stumbled past people as they fell to the rain of bullets. She felt another pinch of pain shove her shoulder.
> Li Na landed hard on the ground, her body swaying. She couldn’t feel it. Her eyes stared and saw the sky above, a merciless gray. She stared and stared but saw no more.
29.
MOSCOW, RUSSIA
IT WAS a few minutes after 5 PM. A teardrop landed on the glass face of a wrist-watch, distorting Mickey Mouse’s happy expression.
Vera Borgov stared at her watch in tearful silence. She couldn’t focus on the sound of the official speaking at the funeral service. She didn’t hear the words of comfort and sadness that people had shared before they sat down in neat, uniform lines and listened in silent reverence.
Vera’s attention didn’t move from her watch, unable to even swipe a thumb over the glass and fix the distortion. Surrounding her were people who had lost loved ones, like her, if not quite in such a spectacular way.
The official had a pale face, with too much gray in his hair and not enough age on his tired face. The tears in her eyes continued to swell until they carved trails down Vera’s cold cheeks.
Vera’s eyes blinked in surprise and it was shared in the space between everyone there. The official didn’t take note of the widespread astonishment, and if he did, he didn’t show it. He turned away to gesture to the mass conglomerate of black carton coffins stacked high behind him.
Vera saw people ahead of her exchange worried expressions, yet the silence was undisturbed. The official pushed away from the pulpit and walked towards the row of sitting authorities who shot looks at him before glancing away.
Vera’s eyes fell away from the men and the people around her. She gazed at one of the many black boxes waiting to be placed in the giant furnace. No less bright and terrifying were the memories that returned to her now, fiery and fierce as a newborn sun.
The door to Bogdan’s office had been crisscrossed with yellow police tape. It did nothing to hide the blood splatters dripping from the walls. Vera couldn’t recall a time when she had been so frightened.
It had been no surprise to Vera that Anton had snapped after the insults issued constantly upon him by Bogdan, but she would never have expected the fierceness with which he had performed it, tearing at his boss with his teeth and hands.
He hadn’t been the only one to have done it that week, or even that day, as the population of Russia had gone insane, tearing each other apart.
A cold shiver ran through Vera’s body and reawakened the grief and trauma she had worked so hard to bury inside her. She could not shake the feeling of guilt and agony from her bones. While those around her wept for their family, Vera felt ready to scream in frustration.
She tucked her hands around her elbows and hurried to find a seat to sit on. She kept her head bowed until the seats filled and the officials started the final part of the ceremony, when the bodies would be slid into the large furnace.
A strangled noise drew Vera from her focused reverie. It was coming from the throat of a little boy. He was pointing at something. One of the black boxes had a man sitting inside it, the lid resting to one side.
The man rubbed at his eyes, as if waking from a long disturbing dream. A middle-aged woman at the other end of the hall rose to her feet.
“Viktor!” she said. “You’re alive! I can’t believe it! He’s alive!”
People stood from their chairs, exchanging words of confusion. The lids of a dozen other boxes began to stir, flipping open, to reveal the ghastly figures inside.
But Anton’s coffin hadn’t budged an inch. How could it? He was full of holes from where the police had mercilessly slayed him.
And then even Anton’s coffin began to stir.
Vera could not stand. She could not find the power in her legs to do so. Her heart rammed against her throat. White hands appeared on either side of the coffin and a square-headed figure began to pull himself upright. He was stiff and slow, but he gradually appeared, and though Vera knew what to expect, it still came as a shock.
It was Anton.
He peered about himself, at the other coffins, at the audience, and his gaze didn’t seem to penetrate far, but Vera could swear that when his gaze swept past her, his eyes lingered for a moment on her, before continuing their journey and heading away again.
“Anton!” Vera said, barely a whisper.
Loved ones and friends approached the coffins with deliberate steps, toward their fallen family members, who were still recovering from awakening. Vera herself approached Anton’s coffin.
“Anton?” she said.
He heard her and groaned under his breath. He didn’t look well. But then, how would anyone look if they were full of holes? Vera wrapped her arms around him.
“Anton!” she said. “I thought I’d lost you!”
And for that brief moment, before all the horror kicked off, she was happy, absolutely and resolutely, consumed with the light of life and the hopes and dreams of an exciting future stretched out before her.
And then reality closed in, as did Anton’s jaws, around Vera’s throat.
30.
CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.
A MEAT CLEAVER sliced a tough piece of thawing red meat. Alice sawed the blade through until it was cut up into thick chunks. Her fingers ached from the cold, but she didn’t pay much attention to it.
On the stove was a bubbling pot of beef stew. The lid shuddered, foaming trails of broth trickling over the edge. Alice peered through the kitchen window towards the work shed near the edge of the backyard. Her fingers twitched over the handle of the knife, her lips quivering. She tore her gaze away and swallowed down a sob.
“Mom. . .” Tori said.
His sudden appearance startled her. She cut her thumb with the knife. Alice bit down on her tongue to stop the hiss of pain. She tucked her thumb into her palm and squeezed before turning round to face her eldest son.
“Lunch will be ready soon,” Alice said, faking a smile.
Tori looked at her with a weary expression, his brown hair hanging down his face in half-curls.
“Mom,” Tori said softly. “The evacuation order will be coming any minute.”
Alice said nothing. She hadn’t wanted to say anything since Lewis had changed.
“Sit down,” Alice said. “I’ll be serving lunch in a moment.”
Alice jabbed her hands under the faucet. The water ran cold over her skin. She blamed her trembling on the frigid temperature. Alice turned off the water and dried her hands on a towel.
“That’s a lot of meat for two people,” Tori said.
Alice slapped the towel back on the counter. She crossed her arms and turned around, shoulders tense as she faced her son.
“We can’t stay here, Mom,” Tori said through a clenched jaw. “It’s not safe.”
“Lewis. . .” Alice said.
“Lewis is gone,” Tori said. “Whatever happened to him, it took away everything he is.”
“But he’s still in his bedroom—” Alice said.
“No, he’s not,” Tori said, putting his hands to his mother’s shoulders and looking deep into her eyes. “He’s not.”
Alice knew that, of course, but it still wasn’t easy to have to hear it. She felt her entire core squeeze with a terrible pain, frigid and cold like the pricks she had felt in her fingers when she cut the frozen meat.
“He’s gone, Mom,” Tori said, and he sounded like he found it difficult to believe too. “If you keep going on like this, I’m going to lose you, too.”
Alice wrapped her arms around her eldest son, tears spilling down her face.
“You won’t lose me, baby,” she said. “You won’t, I promise. And as soon as Lewis gets better, and Jeff comes home, we’ll be a family again. You’ll see.”
“Lewis isn’t going to come back,” Tori said. “He just isn’t. There’s no returning from what he is. I don’t want to give up on him either. But we have to be realistic.”
A loud siren tore through the neighborhood. Alice rushed to the nearest window and spotted a caravan of military jeeps pass down their street. Tori moved to the w
indow and pulled the curtain aside with a finger.
The armed forces were scooping up the last of the survivors, bringing them to so-called ‘safety camps’. Alice would have gone with them, but she needed to take care of Lewis first.
She moved back to the kitchen, but Tori was no longer there. Let him sulk. He would come round, Alice knew. He wouldn’t give up on his younger brother, no more than Alice could give up on either of her sons.
She returned to the kitchen and continued cooking. She left some of the meat uncooked. Strange, she thought, that Lewis had changed the way he liked his meat cooked. He usually liked it well done, not rare. She shrugged. But they were each of them allowed to change their opinions.
She fried the last of the meat for herself and Tori, scooped the meals onto plates, put them on a pair of trays, and carried them into the hall that led to Lewis’s room. She paused when she saw his door was ajar.
There was movement inside the room, and though there were noises, Alice couldn’t hear them. She knew what was happening inside that room already.
The tray dropped to the floor, spilling food and smashed china.
She ran for the door, knocking it open with her shoulder. Her hands wrapped around her mouth before she even saw what was there.
A body lay on the floor, blood spilling from the gash to his neck. The second figure stood over the first body. But they weren’t in the places Alice expected them to be.
Tori lay on the floor, having come in to end his brother’s life. . . Only Lewis had turned out to be not so defenseless as he had thought, and overpowered him.
“No!” Alice said, falling to her knees. “No!”
Lewis heard her, turned, and Alice, weeping, knew what was coming her way. In her attempt to save one of her sons, she had ignored the other, and it had cost her both.
Death awaited her. So be it.
31.
“CALIFORNIA has fallen.”
A deathly hush pervaded the War Room. The situation had just become very real. They were losing. And if California could fall, so could any state.
After the Fall- The Complete series Box Set Page 75
