Courtney had to drag her eyes away from the creature. At the far end of the room, Thuy was simultaneously looking down into a microscope and jotting notes with a furious hand. “Meds?” Courtney asked Anna, hope leaping into her heart, before she remembered, “Right, the opiates. The stuff that makes them, like half-zombies.”
“I’d rather be half a human than no human at all. So, anything going on upstairs? You guys need any help? I’m not doing anything here because Dr. Lee doesn’t trust me, even though my ass is on the line just like hers.”
Without looking up from the microscope, Thuy said, “When it’s time to test a cure, you’ll be the first person I call on, Anna.”
There was no time for bickering. Courtney cut off Anna’s retort. “We actually do have a situation. There’s a drone of some sort heading our way and if it locates us we can expect a missile to follow within minutes.”
Anna blanched, while Thuy only muttered, “Don’t waste my time with ‘ifs’ when they don’t immediately pertain to me.”
“I’m afraid this one does. This drone can sniff out electronic, uh, noise, I guess is the right word. The general wants us to shut down everything that isn’t needed.”
Thuy shrugged. “The only thing that’s not needed is Anna and whatever she’s doing on that computer. Something treasonous, I have no doubt. All the rest of this is completely necessary.”
“Maybe if we shut some of the stuff down temporarily.”
“Impossible,” Thuy stated.
Courtney wasn’t easily stopped. “Certainly, you don’t need both of your computers running simultaneously. And there’s…”
Finally, Thuy turned her dark eyes from the microscope. “I said it was impossible. I have isolated both sets of Com-cells and am currently running eleven tests, simultaneously. Stopping now would ruin two hours’ worth of work. We don’t have minutes to waste, let alone hours. You will just have to think of something else.”
“Like what?”
Thuy stuck her face back to the microscope, saying, “I have faith in you, Miss Shaw. You’ll figure something out. Now, if you don’t mind, I have my own work to do.”
Anna made a point to turn off her computer with something of a flourish. She then gave Courtney a look that she read as: Do you see what I have to put up with? Courtney made no reply as she left. She hated when Thuy was like this. Only she saw Courtney’s supposed genius. “Is it a girl power sort of thing with her?” she muttered as she hurried back up the many flights of stairs.
Courtney knew she was the dumbest one in the building. Among them were pilots, scientists, army officers who had to go through West Point, a school that was notoriously difficult, and finally an FBI Special Agent. “And all I ever did was drop out of college…community college, for fuck’s sake!”
She was thoroughly dejected by the time she came huffing up to the tenth floor. There was no need to ask whether the drone was still coming. The men were sweating and Special Agent Pennock kept looking up from her computer to glance out the window. Courtney sighed before giving the bad news, “We’re going to need to come up with a new plan. Dr. Lee won’t budge. She says her experiments are in a critical phase and that she can’t power down anything.”
“Didn’t you tell her about the damned drone?” Axelrod asked, his face growing brilliantly red.
“And I told her about the missile that’s sure to follow.” She had to hold her eyes steadily on his to keep from glancing out the window. “She thinks…she thinks we can come up with an idea to stop it. Do these drones have, like a self-destruct sequence on them?”
She knew right away that it was a stupid question. Axelrod rolled his eyes before heaving himself up. “I’ll talk to her. In the meantime, find that damned frequency.” Everyone went back to work. Everyone except Courtney, that is; she didn’t know the first thing about network protocols or super-secret spy planes. Embarrassed, she dropped into her chair.
Colonel Taylor saw her not doing anything. “I could use your help. Why don’t you get us some coffee? Black for me.”
Coffee orders were yelled her way and, dejectedly she went in search of a break room, saying to herself, “This is about right.”
2-11:39 a.m. Eastern Standard Time
Beijing, China
It was just after midnight in China as General Weilei, high commander of the People's Liberation Army Ground Force, made his way through the great double doors that towered twenty-five feet over his head. After a deep breath, he strode into the Great Hall of the People.
This was the first time he’d ever entered the building without feeling that wonderful patriotic fervor come over him. He had failed his people completely. Of course, he had his excuses: the unforeseeable nature of the event, the shocking quickness with which the virus spread, the mass panic, the complete breakdown in the societal structure in certain areas of the country, the insane refugee situation that was still clogging every road in the eastern half of the country…
The excuses were meaningless and embarrassing, and he would never utter them aloud, not even under torture. He would stick to the truth: he had not been prepared and thus he had not prepared his people properly.
He did not expect to live long enough to be tortured.
General Okini, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, had been arrested earlier that day and had been shot in the back of the head in less than two hours. Weilei felt he deserved pretty much the same punishment.
Sucking in his breath, he marched into the beautiful auditorium and was surprised at how deserted it was. Two days before, it had been crowded with every heavy-weight party official within thirty miles of the capital; now it was less than a third full. Only three of the Politburo Standing Committee were present.
Embarrassed to be in the same room with me, Weilei figured. He came to attention, snapped off a salute to the General Secretary and waited on his judgment.
“You have heard about the fate of General Okini?” the General Secretary asked. Although it was, in form, a question, the General Secretary didn’t wait for an answer. “Then you know his position is currently vacant. You have been chosen to succeed him.”
Weilei blinked in surprise. “This is an honor I do not deserve and cannot accept. It would be a slap in the face to the people of China. If you will allow me to name a person that would be eminently more qualified…”
“Shut up,” the Premier snapped, fire behind his narrow eyes. “You are right, this is an honor you do not deserve. That is something we can all agree on. But it is an honor you had better live up to. The future of China depends on you.”
The General Secretary cleared his throat so that all eyes were on him again. “What my colleague means to say is that as the leader of our ground forces, you are preeminently qualified to take over the Vice Chairman’s position. Your staff is already in place and you know the situation better than anyone.”
Quickly, Weilei’s look of surprise morphed, becoming the flat expressionless look of a card player trying to disguise a weak hand. They weren’t in a “situation,” they were in the midst of a catastrophe. The nukes had somehow failed to wipe out all of the zombies and now the creatures were mixed in with the refugees who were flying in every direction but east. His situational intelligence officer had estimated that the refugees numbered more than fifty million.
There was no way of knowing how many zombies were among them. The only estimate Weilei had of their numbers had been given by a trembling blank-eyed scientist; one of the embedded “experts.” When forced to give a number, he had spat out, “Maybe seventy-five hundred. Maybe twenty thousand. There’s no way to come to a number. Because of the virulence of the disease and the short incubation time, half of Wuhan may be infected.”
And that hadn’t even been the bad news. The expert was on much firmer footing when discussing the exponential growth in zombie numbers. With Shanghai as a model, he believed that the zombies would triple in numbers every hour. Weilei had met with the man three hours before
and if his low guess of seventy-five hundred had been correct, they were currently facing over two-hundred thousand zombies in the heart of China. By morning that number would be in the tens of millions.
Containment had completely broken down and the chance of getting it back was essentially gone.
A third—the best third—of China’s military had perished over the past three days. At least another fifth was mixed in with the refugees, meaning they were no longer considered viable. A stand had to be made somewhere and with every available soldier rushing helter skelter against the grain of the fleeing refugees, Weilei didn’t think it would be more than a symbolic stand.
“The situation is…precarious,” he lied to the committee.
“We all know that it’s far worse than precarious,” the General Secretary said. “Do you have plans to defend the capital?” Weilei said that he did. “And the rest of China?”
Before he could answer, the Premier snorted, “Of course he has plans. There’s a plan for everything, perhaps even this. The only question that I want answered is: will you win?” The old man had cloudy eyes and yet seemed to look right through Weilei. “That’s what I thought,” the Premier whispered, sitting back in his chair. “We should clear the room.”
A long sigh escaped the General Secretary before he agreed. With a nod, an aide began snapping his fingers and shooing the lesser officials out into hall beyond. In the hubbub, Weilei was gestured to come forward. He stood at attention before the three men, his spine straight and stiff as steel.
“I want you to be completely honest with us,” the Premier said, softening his tone. “Do we have any chance of saving the capital?”
The mood in the streets was one of panic. It was no secret that the army had been defeated and that nukes had been used. And it wouldn’t be long before it was leaked that there were still zombies on the loose. When that happened, Weilei suspected that there would be a complete break-down in civilization. It would be every man for himself.
“I believe it’s doubtful. We haven’t been able to rally the outlying provinces as we had earlier. The peasants are far more willing to risk the execution squads and, in a number of instances, they’ve turned on the squads themselves. Also, we have begun to see the first instances of Scenario 16, only in reverse, of course.”
Scenario 16 was the theorized situation in which the pressure of overwhelming numbers of refugees led eventually to an unstoppable chain migration as the resources of each province were wiped out by ravaging waves of out of control peasants. The scenario envisioned a north to south path, kicked off by a Soviet invasion. In this case, the direction was on an opposite track.
“In response, we have fortified a number of rivers in the…”
“So, your answer is no, you can’t save the capital,” the Premier barked, cutting him off.
Ever the politician, the General Secretary patted the old man’s hand. “He is trying his best.” He gave Weilei a smile that didn’t touch his dark eyes; they glittered like wet coal, a terrible secret behind them. “Would it be possible if nuclear weapons were involved?”
Weilei leaned back, suddenly nervous. “But we have shot our load, so to speak, in that regard. Even if we were to empty our reactors and use dirty bombs it would be too little, too late.”
“We are not talking about dirty bombs,” the General Secretary said. The smile was gone. “We are talking about full-use nuclear weapons. With these, could you protect the capital?”
All three men were staring intently at him. This wasn’t a joke or a hypothetical, which begged the question: how many nuclear bombs did they have squirreled away? And where? After clearing his suddenly dry throat, he gave a measured response. “Yes. If enough of them were used. I should warn you that if other measures are used, lesser measures that is, saving the city would be only temporary.”
“Explain,” the Premier ordered.
“The menace is not only aimed at Beijing. The entire Yangtze watershed has been affected. Unless most of Hunan, Hubei, Jianxgi, and parts of Shandong providences are…” His throat was now so dry he could barely swallow—he was about to advocate killing upwards of four-hundred million people. “If these, uh lands are not similarly treated, then we can expect the capital will fall eventually.”
With amazing indifference, the Premier asked, “And how many nuclear bombs would that take?”
Disgust finally weakened Weilei’s rigid position and he turned his head to stare directly at the premier. He answered glibly, “Depending on their size, fifteen hundred, give or take.” It was an impossible number and yet the three old men didn’t bat an eye. This made no sense because no one had that many nukes except…suddenly, Weilei understood where they were planning on getting their nukes from. “The Russians? You’re going to ask the Russians to bomb us?”
“No,” the Premier answered. “We would never do that. You are going to do it. This is the punishment for your failure. Draw up the plans and don’t skimp on your estimate. This will be our only chance. You will meet with the Soviet…I mean the Russian Ambassador at six, sharp.”
Weilei, soon to be the architect of the greatest mass murder in history, was dismissed and he left the room pale and trembling.
When the door shut, the General Secretary dropped his head for a moment, tired beyond his sixty-seven years. If China survived, she would be a shadow of her former self. She would be vulnerable and weak. Her greatest ports destroyed, her rivers boiling with radiation, the heart of her ripped out. How soon would it be before the hated Russians came to pick over her bones?
And what of the Japanese and the traitors on Taiwan? They would all swoop in and take a piece until there was nothing left but the scraps.
He turned to the one man who had yet to speak. Since he was only a minister, he did not officially belong at the table, but some matters of protocol were best ignored in time of crisis. His name was Jia Yun and he was the Minister of State Security. He was the Chinese equivalent of the head of the CIA.
The General Secretary explained what he wanted and then asked, “Can it be done?”
Yun had been a spy since the age of twelve. Cool beyond his years, he had got his step whispering information concerning Chairman Mao’s fourth wife, Jiang Qing. What the General Secretary had in mind was child’s play for him. “It will be my intense pleasure,” he said, a sly fox’s grin making his wisp of a mustache curl.
Chapter 13
1-12:23 p.m.
New Rochelle, New York
General Axelrod came back into the conference room, grumbling under his breath and slamming the door behind him. He glared around the room until his eyes fell on Courtney Shaw.
“Who does she think she is!” It wasn’t a question, or if it was, he left no time for anyone to answer him. “Since when does a civilian have the brass balls to even think they can order about a three-star general?” Courtney got midway through a shrug—lifting her shoulders—before he went on, “She dismissed me! Me! Like I was some sort of servant.”
In fact, it had been worse than that. The little slip of a woman had the audacity to actually suggest he “run along to the kitchens” and fetch her something to eat. Axelrod had turned red in the face and was so apoplectic that spit flew from his lips as he pointed to the ceiling. “We have drones hunting us and you want a fucking sandwich!”
“Or a salad,” she had answered with unbelievable cool. “A Cobb salad would be nice.”
He had exploded in a string of partial curses before he could manage to control his tongue. He then snarled, “What about her?”
Axelrod was referring to Anna, who had made a nest of sorts and was trying to sleep. Thuy went back to her notes, saying, “I would never put anything in my mouth if she’s handled it. She’s poisoned people before.”
This took some of the steam out of the general, though he still wasn’t going to play waiter even if a sandwich sounded good at the moment. Seeing Courtney sitting meekly at the tenth-floor conference room table, blowing on a mug
of coffee, had brought the anger rising again.
“I-I’m sure she was busy,” Courtney began. “It can’t be easy. The cure rests squarely on her…”
“She told me to talk to you,” Axelrod added, the glare making Courtney feel like a fly with a rolled-up newspaper looming over her. “She said you were going to come up with a plan.”
Now everyone was staring at her. “I-I told her that I couldn’t. I swear. There aren’t even pilots to talk to.”
“Sure, there are,” Major Palmburg told her. “The drones have cameras and instruments the same as any plane. The pilots are probably sitting in fancy leather recliners out in Nevada. But they don’t really matter if we can’t intercept their signals. It’s not like you’ll be able to guilt a drone pilot. Trust me, his C.O. is probably sitting in the same room with him.”
Courtney had a vision of a few scruffy guys in Cheeto-stained camo sitting around playing video games—these types couldn’t be reasoned with. They were too far from the action. “But what about their boss?” Courtney asked. Just like Axelrod, she wasn’t looking for an answer to her question. She dropped into her chair and fired up her laptop, tracing the chain of command for the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron—Lieutenant Colonel Lorber, to the 432d Air Expeditionary Wing—Colonel Bell, to the 12th Air Force—Major General McPeak, to Air Combat Command—General Doss. From there it was the Pentagon—General Berrymore, the Secretary of the Air Force.
Next, she checked the names against her compiled list of political officers and, as far as she could tell, Doss had one, Berrymore had three and the rest didn’t have any.
“General, I’m going to need you to call this guy, Colonel Bell.” Axelrod came around the long table and hunched over her laptop like a flat-headed bear. “You’ll be the deputy…
“There it is,” Colonel Taylor said, in a whisper that was somehow both loud and harsh. The room went dead silent as everyone stared out the long window. To Courtney, the jet-black Sentinel was far less frightening than she had anticipated. It looked like a much smaller version of a stealth bomber. It was maybe sixty feet long and was so compactly thin that it couldn’t possibly hold any missiles or bombs. It didn’t even have a machine gun as far as she could tell.
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