They all knew. They all had up to the moment access to the state of emergency going on along the entire border. The loss of Harrisburg and the Susquehanna River had unleashed a flood of zombies. Most had cooperated and were sweeping towards the 3rd ID, but nearly half a million of them were marching straight to the Maryland border which was being weakly held by a recruiting and retention battalion, the 290th Military Police Company, the 291st Digital Liaison Detachment, the 110th Information Operations Battalion, and similar 9-to5 remf units.
Altogether, these quasi-military units numbered about four-thousand men and held twenty miles of rolling farm land and scrubby hills. The next twenty miles were being defended by the Virginia Defense Force. A week before, the full strength of this “unit” amounted to three-hundred weekend warriors with an average age of forty-seven. They held yearly drills and had potlucks and mostly bitched about their wives while dressed in camouflage.
Their numbers had surged in the last three days and now there were currently thirty-seven thousand men, women, and in some cases, children serving in impromptu companies under their own elected captains. They carried every sort of missile weapon, from crossbows to machine guns to reproductions of Kentucky muzzle loading flintlock rifles that used black powder straight from the horn and fired huge fifty caliber slugs.
About a third of these companies figured it was far better to fight the zombies in someone else’s backyard instead of their own, and were nervously waiting the onslaught of the horde south of Gettysburg. No one figured they would last five minutes.
All of the borders were being precariously held, but just then the southwestern border of the zone was as fragile as an eggshell. The situation was only going to get worse if the 3rd ID actually attacked. It would leave huge gaps in the weak lines, and containment, what little containment they had, would go right out the window.
They had all been anxiously busy doing everything they could to stop the coming disaster.
“How long do you need?” Axelrod asked Taylor.
“Twenty minutes, maybe. It’s hard to tell. There’s channels within channels. But it won’t be long, I promise.”
Major Palmburg raised a hand. “A strong argument could be made that we don’t have twenty minutes. We could be targeted right now and if we believe in Dr. Lee’s work, we should not risk it.” He wondered if anyone saw through this. Just at the moment, he didn’t give a fig for Dr. Lee. He was afraid that they’d be dead in ten minutes if they didn’t get out of the building.
“We don’t have to shut down completely,” Courtney suggested. “We could move to a different building every twenty or thirty minutes. How long does it take to like shoot a missile or a bomb?”
Three of the officers said: “Seconds,” at once. To which she answered, “Oh.” The question, feeble as it was, brought the absolute danger of their position to the forefront and each person looked over at the general. It was ultimately his decision. The choices before him were not good: on one hand, he risked getting evaporated in a blink of an eye, and on the other, he risked becoming zombie chow by running around in the Zone.
“We need a van or a truck,” he said, quickly, deciding that as much as he feared getting eaten alive, he had full faith in the Air Force’s ability to find a target and take it out in a blink. “We’ll stick and move, staying in one place for only ten minutes. Agent Pennock, you’ll be in charge of getting a vehicle. You can hotwire a car, right?”
This seemed like a rhetorical question and there was a scurry as everyone began shutting down their laptops and stowing them away. In the midst of this, she answered with a simple, “No, sorry. I was in the cybercrime division and really there isn’t an agency-wide need for stealing cars. Besides, I’m not going with you. I still have a mission given to me by the President. I’m supposed to be bringing back a cure or, at the very least, the building blocks of one.”
She decided not to bring up the fact that she also had an obligation to arrest, not just Dr. Lee, but all of them. It was an obligation that she could dodge, justifying letting them go because they were military. If questioned, she could point out that they had their own set of laws and courts, that they were operating under a declared emergency, and that they fell outside her jurisdiction.
“If anyone asks, I thought you guys were legit, okay? And I was just trying to help things run smoothly.”
A few of them shrugged, confirming in an altogether listless way that they would…perhaps.
“I mean it. I could get in serious trouble,” she insisted.
“Trust me, we won’t be talking to anyone,” Axelrod told her as he hiked his pack onto his broad shoulders. “The President had the damned Secretary of Defense executed for the crime of trying to save him from himself. What do you think he will do to us?”
She saw from their grim faces that they had already decided they weren’t going to be taken alive. “I-I didn’t know. Sorry.”
It was something of a shock to Courtney Shaw, though it shouldn’t have been. The airways were alive with chatter about the mass arrests, and the executions. They hadn’t stopped with Heider, Phillips and Marty Aleman. Fourteen others had been killed for crimes far less serious than the ones Courtney had been perpetrating.
The consequence for what she’d been doing had always been in the back of her mind, but death by firing squad hadn’t felt like a real thing…like a real thing that could happen to her, that is. Now that it was front and center, she couldn’t look past it. “They’re going to kill me,” she whispered to Katherine as everyone rushed for the stairs.
“You can stay here with me and help Dr. Lee,” Katherine suggested. “Once everyone leaves, we probably won’t be targeted. Maybe.”
Even with the weak “maybe” added, it sounded like a great idea to Courtney. She didn’t know much about science, but she was a fast learner. And besides, she thought, I’ve done my part to save the world.
The only problem with this rationale was that the world wasn’t saved yet. “No. People still need me.” It took a lot out of her to walk away from the offer. She was in a bit of a daze and it was up to Colonel Taylor to take her by the hand and lead her down the stairs.
Stung by unexpected guilt, Katherine followed them to the lobby and even found the keys to the van parked in back. When they were all gone—the helicopter pilot and Sergeant Carlton had happily scurried into the van as well—the building felt completely empty and she was suddenly struck by the notion that when she went to the labs, she would find them deserted.
Looking up at the ceiling, she cocked her head, hoping to hear the hum of the generator or some sort of whir from one of the machines Thuy was using two floors overhead. The building was dead silent. The only noise that came to her was the rumble of an airplane. She froze, her body tense, wondering if there was a bomb in free fall hurtling towards her.
When a minute passed, she shook herself as if waking from a dream and then hurried up the stairs. She was greeted by Specialist Hoskins, screaming and spitting in rage from the clean room next door. His eyes were now coal black and wet. His flesh, what little she could see, was bruised, purple and blue, except around his wrists where the cuffs were digging deep and bringing up dark, dark red blood.
Dr. Lee glanced up. “Are we on the verge of being blown up again?”
Katherine was going to say no; however, she saw that Dr. Lee had every machine in sight running full bore. “Maybe. Any chance some of these can be powered down for a bit? The spy planes are coming back.”
“And Miss Shaw can’t reroute them?”
“Not for a bit. They…everyone’s gone. They’re going to try to move around to confuse the people flying the planes.”
Thuy frowned at this. “Then I guess I don’t understand why we would need to shut down anything at all.”
“They’re drones,” Katherine explained, wondering if Thuy’s head was stuffed more with theorems and formulas than with common sense. “They’re unmanned. They don’t care who is in a building. All th
ey care about is making sure the bomb goes in the front door.”
“A drone might not care, but surely its pilot does,” Thuy replied, stepping over to the next work station, and stepping over a sleeping Anna Holloway in the process. “If our military friends are gone, then a bomb would be a waste. I assume you are not a target and, as I am in your ‘custody,’ and Anna has her beloved pardon, we would not be either.”
Katherine laughed at herself. “I guess not.” She had retained a sat-phone, and as she began dialing the Deputy Director of the FBI, Matthew Bradbury, she gestured at Anna. “I bet things would go faster if you used her in some capacity.”
“I would but her IQ is only slightly larger than her bust measurement.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Katherine said, remembering the merry chase Anna had led the combined might of the FBI. She was anything but stupid. “You’re letting your anger get in the way. Anna’s smarter than you might th…” She suddenly held up a finger as the line was answered by a woman.
“This is Special Agent in Charge Katherine Pennock. I need to speak to Deputy Director Bradbury, asap.”
There was a long pause before the woman whispered, “I’m afraid Deputy Director Bradbury has been arrested.”
Katherine jerked in surprise, barely able to wrap her head around what she had just heard. How could the most senior law enforcement officer in the country be arrested? It made no sense. “And the Director?” she asked, already knowing the answer in her bones.
“Arrested, too,” the woman said in an even lower voice.
This took the strength out of Katherine and she had to sit on a little spinning stool. “Then who…who…who’s in charge?”
“John Alexander, Assistant Director for National Security. The old Assistant Director, I mean.”
Relief washed over her. Alexander had been the one who’d sent into her into the Zone in the first place. “This is a priority one call. Tell him who I am and tell him it’s about a cure.”
This lit a fire under her and Alexander was on the phone in seconds. “Agent Pennock? I can’t believe you’re alive. We had a live feed going last night right up until we saw your chopper pilot get killed, then the President cut it. Where are you? Are you still in the Zone?”
“Yes, and I need your help. Eng was killed, but we found Dr. Lee. She’s working on a cure right this second, but we have drones overhead and we think they might be targeting us. Is there any way for you to call them off? We’re in the R & K research facility in New Rochelle.” He started to say something, but she cut him off. “Sir, please. I’ll explain everything just as soon as you get these drones away from us.”
“That’s what I was trying to say,” he said, lowering his voice just as the secretary had. “I don’t know if I can. Dr. Lee is on the kill list.”
“The what?”
“There’s a new list that’s being circulated by the White House,” he said so quietly that she had to crush the sat-phone into her ear. “The people on the list are to be killed on sight.”
Chapter 17
1-4:00 p.m.
The White House, Washington DC
Each name on the kill list was accompanied by a “reason to kill” statement. One of the President’s speech writers was employed full time to find the exact right syntax of these statements. It was harder than it looked since everyone was essentially guilty of the same crime: treason.
The most difficult to write were those of the junior staffers of some of the bigwigs. Their transgressions were always very vague and the actual fact of their guilt, even more so. Because of this, the writer found himself at his computer with a thesaurus on his lap, rearranging the same phrases over and over, so it didn’t look like the President was after them simply due to their associations.
Dr. Lee was one step removed from the number one position on the list—that first rank belonged to the Vice President, who had fled into hiding. In part, Dr. Lee’s read: “As she did knowingly construct a virus with the full intention of destroying America for all future generations…” Another line accused her of: “A deep-seated hatred towards, not just Caucasians, but also Hispanics, African Americans and Jews.”
The President looked at that last word with something of disgust; his PC filters were still in place, but not as firmly as they had been. Marty would have advised him to have the word changed to “Jewish people,” or better, “people of Jewish heritage.” These were big campaign contributors, after all.
“Fuck him and them,” he muttered, leaving the word in place. He had officially run his last campaign a year before, winning his second term. Legally, there couldn’t be a third term, so he had decided, by presidential fiat, to simply extend his second term indefinitely.
It only made sense that elections in a time of emergency would have to be put on hold, and it was supposed that every other elected official’s terms would be extended as well, but they wouldn’t be. Whether they would be allowed to stay depended on how accommodating they were to the President. So far, he had more people on the naughty list than the nice list, and he had to restrain himself from moving people on his naughty list over to his kill list.
“Not yet,” he muttered. The country was not yet his to command as a king might. It wouldn’t be long, however. Fear was turning the people into sheep. They were begging for someone to protect them and he would be their savior. And he would save them; he had full faith in his powers as Commander in Chief—the war would be won, there was no doubt about that—before it ended; however, he was going to make some sweeping changes for the good of the country.
Clearly, the entire notion of state governors elected by a popular vote was antiquated and unwieldy. Instead, they would be handpicked by him and would swear fealty to him and not some piece of red and white striped cloth, again for the good of the nation, of course. That was going to be his bold mission statement: everything would be for the good of the nation.
The constitution would be rewritten, for the good of the nation.
The two parties would be abolished for the good of the nation.
Congressional candidates would be appointed by the governors for the good of the nation.
The freedom of the press would be untouched…except that all news stories would have to be examined and approved by a new Presidential board of “Public Programming,” for the good of the nation.
And so on. And if there was the least bit of womanly hysteria over the eroding of rights, the President would be able to point at the zombie plague and say: “Is that what you want to go back to?”
He had glanced at the kill list simply because the new FBI Director was going on about a cure. A cure was a fine thing, but just then the President was supposed to be watching as his attack commenced. “Where are the bombers?” he asked the new Secretary of the Air Force, craning his head around Alexander.
“Just a minor delay,” the Secretary answered before turning back to the phone and hissing frantically into his cupped hand.
The President glared furiously at him for a moment, his face bright red, right up to the tip of his ears. He then sneered once more at the name Dr. Lee, before tossing it aside and demanding of Alexander, “What are you going on about? What’s this about a cure? I thought that was over and done with.”
Alexander had been about to mention that Dr. Lee had been found but thought better of it. He forced a smile onto his face. “That’s the good news I wanted to give you, sir. Our agent is alive and she managed to get the pure Com-cells out of Walton.”
“Okay,” the President said, cautiously. A cure was all well and good as long as it fit within his time-table. In other words: not yet. “And those scientists with her, are they alive?”
“One of them is, and she’s begun experimenting. Our agent has even managed to capture an infected person for testing purposes. There’s just one problem, they’re in the Quarantine Zone, in an area that is possibly being targeted by drones. I looked into it and there are illegal transmissions coming from a nearby so
urce, but it’s not the same building…”
The President cut across him. “What do you want? Just spit it out.” He expected Alexander to ask for an extraction for his agent, which had been the plan from the beginning. But the President’s plans had changed. A cure was a promise held in reserve for demonstrated good behavior, not something to be developed at great expense and then shelled out to undeserving masses.
“We need for the drones in the immediate area to be called off, and…”
“No,” the President answered, flatly. “I understand perfectly what is meant by ‘illegal transmissions.’ It’s your nice way of saying there are traitors operating in the area. Trust me, Alexander they will be hunted down and destroyed without mercy. All of them have to die, and if your agent happens to get killed in the process, her death will be for the good of the nation.”
Alexander saw that the President was working himself into a fever and that he might just order a bombing run on a whim. “What about the specific building they’re in? Can we protect that one? It’s the R&K research facility in New Rochelle.”
It was disconcerting seeing the President’s eyes turn dark with paranoia. He stared up at Alexander. “The R&K research facility? How interesting. That’s where this all started. Why would they want to go there, hmm? Are they after some other germ that’s even worse than these zombies? Is that their plan? To kick us when we’re down?”
“No sir,” Alexander said, quickly. “They explained to me that the facility has all the equipment they need to develop a cure. It’s a BSL-4 lab and has been strictly inspected and regulated by CDC officials. There are no bioweapons there, I promise. It’s a cancer research facility.”
“Oh.” The suspicion in the President’s eyes dropped away by degrees. “Maybe. I guess. A cure would be good. But, if we do this, I want a Predator orbiting over the building at all times and if they try to send even one message out, I want that building turned to dust, got it?”
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 23
