Chogan leaned toward Halverson and said under his breath, “Did you find a way out of here?”
Halverson shook his head. “The surface streets are blocked with abandoned cars.”
“We could walk.” Chogan cut his eyes toward his wounded leg and pulled a face.
“You didn’t let me finish. There are hordes of walking dead on the outskirts of the strip.”
“Christ. What’s keeping them out of here?”
Halverson rucked his brow. “I don’t know. There were a bunch of bones the ghouls were milling around in a clearing.”
“I don’t get it.” Chogan winced at the pain in his thigh. “It sounds hinky. Bunch of bones?”
Halverson realized Quantrill was squeezing a fluorescent lime tennis ball in her hand and staring at him from the dais. “We better talk about this later.”
Chogan picked up on the direction of Halverson’s gaze. “Why? She can’t hear us from there.”
“She may have spies eavesdropping on us.”
“You’re getting as paranoid as her.”
“She’s capable of anything.”
“I hear ya. Did you ever notice how it’s always the dullest tool in the shed that seems to wind up giving the orders?”
“That’s because the stupider you are, the more confidence you have in yourself.”
It was one of the ironies of life, Halverson decided.
“No wonder our brilliant leaders in Washington decided to bomb the crap out of us,” said Chogan. “They probably think with their overdeveloped brains that if they kill all of us, they’re saving us from the plague.”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m just hoping I win the lottery,” piped up Emma.
“Why?” said Meers. “I thought you liked it here.”
“If the winners never come back here, wherever they go must be even better than here.”
Halverson noticed that whenever residents drew lottery tickets from the wire basket, they had to write their names on the tickets and give the half with their name on it to Quantrill. In this manner, Quantrill would be able to keep track of all the winners.
“How does this lottery work?” asked Chogan.
“First everybody picks a lottery ticket,” answered Meers. “Then the General picks the winners.”
“But Quantrill knows who picked each ticket,” said Halverson.
Meers nodded. “She keeps a record of every ticket selected.”
“Sounds like this lottery could be easily rigged,” said Chogan.
The row of seats in front of Halverson emptied and the occupants paraded up the aisle toward the stage to draw their lottery tickets.
Halverson and his row would be next.
CHAPTER 43
Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center
President Cole, DCI Slocum, Mellors, DNI Hilda Molson, DHS Director Sheila Klauss, FBI Director Paris, Secretary of Defense Eugene D. Byrd, and ASH Dr. Laslo sat around the table in the Situation Room.
Their eyes riveted to the sixty-inch plasma flat-panel HDTV on the wall, they watched with consternation the images broadcast of the devastation that had taken place in New York City after the drones had fire-bombed it.
“Are these real-time pictures?” Paris managed to ask through a dry throat.
Byrd cleared his throat. “As real as it gets.”
“Who’s shooting this movie?” asked Klauss.
It was Slocum who answered, “A camera on a Predator drone is feeding us this video live from New York.”
His mouth open, Mellors sat frozen in front of the TV set. He couldn’t get his head around the scope of the devastation that was unfurling before him on the screen.
“Is that Times Square?” he said at last, his throat tight.
“Used to be,” said Byrd.
At the intersection between Broadway and Seventh Street was a massive heap of burning, smoking rubble. The streets were impassable. What was once known as “The Great White Way” was now the “Great Grey Trash Heap.”
“This looks worse than Berlin at the end of World War II,” said Klauss, brushing tears from her eyes.
It could have been Dresden after the Allies had firebombed it, decided Mellors. The sheer size of the devastation made the rack and ruin impossible to comprehend. The famed Gotham City skyline of imposing skyscrapers like the Empire State Building that challenged the heavens with man’s hubris was now no more than low-lying mountains of smoking debris. It was heart wrenching.
The architects of the destruction sat speechless around the table, never taking their eyes off the TV screen.
As the drone’s camera zoomed in on the junkyard of West 42nd Street, burning figures could be seen climbing through the rubble. Their telltale herky-jerky movements pegged them as the walking dead. Their clothes on fire, their purulent skin burning, the creatures scrabbled through congeries of broken cement and rebar.
“My God, they’re still alive,” said Dr. Laslo.
Indeed, the creatures in the charred ruins didn’t die until their heads caught fire and their brains exploded.
“Not so fast,” said Byrd. “Those buggers don’t like thermite bombs. It may take a while, but the creatures are dropping dead.”
Even as Byrd spoke, a middle-aged female ghoul’s grey hair went up in flames and the creature’s haggard, ghastly face exploded. The creature’s smoldering body crumpled in a mound of dust, embers, cinders, and hunks of concrete.
“I can’t bear watching this,” said Molson.
“We torch their heads, they die,” said Byrd, his large head craning toward the TV screen, enrapt in the debacle playing out before him. “The fire consumes the body and the virus inside it, destroying the plague, just like we thought.”
Thousands more of the walking dead lay crushed under the concrete and steel girders that had fallen from the decimated high-rises as fires raged everywhere.
“We can’t broadcast these images to the public,” said Slocum, visibly shaken by the devastation. “The people won’t be able to come to grips with a disaster of this magnitude.”
“Why not?” said Byrd. “When the people see those cannibals blowing up, they’ll be cheering in the streets.”
“They won’t be looking at the cannibals. They’ll be looking at what was left of New York.”
“I agree,” said Director Paris. “We can’t allow this film to be broadcast to the public.” He brought his hand down his hatchet face, his eyes bleak. “These images are just too overpowering.”
Klauss broke down and cried, folding her arms on the table and burying her head in them.
“I want everyone to understand what I’m gonna say,” said Cole. He paused and waited for total silence. Klauss’s sobbing died down. “This film doesn’t go beyond these walls. Am I clear on that?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” said a chorus of fraught voices.
“I suggest you make a public announcement to reassure the public, Mr. President,” said Slocum.
“I will.”
“The bombings have been a resounding success,” said Byrd. “We stopped the cannibals dead in their tracks in New York and California. Now that we have the things on the ropes, we need to deliver the coup de grace and wipe them out.”
“No more bombing raids till I say so, General.”
“But, sir, we have to crush them while they’re reeling—”
“That’s a direct order, General.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” said Byrd, champing at the bit.
On the TV screen a sixtysomething male ghoul wearing a panama hat and walking a black poodle was trying to negotiate the debris scattered on the buckled sidewalk as the conflagration roared around him. The poodle was barking frantically, fighting his leather leash, and trying to break free as smoking flotsam crumbled from nearby edifices and crashed onto the sidewalk around him.
Cinders and sparks drifted down onto the cannibal’s panama hat from a burning balcony. The hat flared into a burst of flames that engulfed it and t
he ghoul’s head, which exploded.
The leash fell out of the ghoul’s hand, and the poodle scrambled down the congested sidewalk in terror. A toppling cement cornice crushed the ghoul as the creature sprawled on the sidewalk.
A fortyish male ghoul with a Cro-Magnon head with bushy eyebrows, frizzy auburn hair, and tufts of hair protruding from his large nostrils shambled in singed, torn trousers and a ragged shirt over an overturned delivery truck that was leaking gasoline on the asphalt street. The ghoul was missing half of its left arm at the elbow. One of the creature’s legs had a compound fracture in its tibia that was exposed under its torn trousers.
A few steps behind him, a dyed blonde pushing thirty with a grimacing face that was missing half of its flesh hitched after him on a broken foot. One of her milky blue eyes was hanging from a stalk that protruded from its smashed socket and resting on her putrescent cheek.
The ugliness of the creatures was almost as terrible as their fates, decided Mellors, as the gasoline-soaked delivery truck burst into flames when a spark from above sailed down onto the leaking fuel and ignited it.
What was left of the blonde’s face melted in the blazes that licked it. Her flesh dissolved like burning candle wax. Moments later, the blonde’s brain and skull exploded. The blast flung her decapitated corpse off the truck and impaled her spine on the jagged green fluted metal edge of a broken lamppost that had been sheared in half and was now jutting ominously out of the sidewalk.
“How much longer do we have to sit here watching this nightmare?” said DNI Molson, wincing in disgust commingled with horror.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” said Cole. “Somebody shut that video feed off.”
Slocum aimed the remote at the TV, pressed a button, and killed the TV.
“Our bombing campaign is even more successful than I ever imagined it would be in my wildest dreams,” said Byrd with satisfaction.
His palms on the tabletop, he leaned back in his chair, a smug smile on his face.
“That video doesn’t get out of this room, General,” repeated Cole.
“Of course not. But now we know we’re finally winning this war, and we can tell the public about our victories.”
“I will do that.”
“We have routed the enemy. They are in full retreat.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” said Slocum.
Byrd turned on Slocum. “What do you mean? You saw the video. The cannibals are dying right and left.”
“Are you suggesting we carpet-bomb the entire country to kill off the rest of the infected?”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, we don’t have enough bombs to blow up the whole country.”
“Then we use WMD.” Byrd was becoming animated. “We don’t need near as many nukes as we need thermite bombs to accomplish the same ends.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” said Dr. Laslo. “Are you seriously considering dropping nuclear warheads on our country?”
“The infected cannibals have to be killed and cremated. What better way to do it than with nukes?”
“What about the innocent civilian survivors who are still out there? Have you no compunction about killing them?”
“We’ll tell them to evacuate before we start bombing—the same as we did in New York and LA.”
“It’s more difficult to evacuate a ground zero than it is to evacuate for a regular bombing,” said Slocum, “because of the wider kill range of nukes.”
“Anything’s possible. We can do it.”
“What about nuclear fallout? Radiation poisoning? Nuclear winter?”
Byrd harrumphed and shrugged. “It’ll put an end to global warming.”
Slocum rolled his eyes. He turned to Cole. “We can’t go to the next level till we’ve exhausted all other possibilities, Mr. President.”
“We’re not using nuclear weapons,” said Cole.
“Are you ruling them out, sir?” asked Byrd, worry lines creeping over his face.
Cole paused before answering. “No. I’m not ruling anything out.”
Byrd blew out his cheeks with a sigh of relief. “Mark my words. We’ll have to use them sooner or later.”
“I hope not, General. I fervently hope not—not after what we just saw.” Cole leveled his gaze at the blank TV screen, his face ashen.
CHAPTER 44
Las Vegas
Halverson, Victoria, Emma, Chogan, and Meers were standing on the auditorium’s stage waiting in line to draw their lottery tickets from the wire basket.
“What was your racket before this plague shit happened?” Chogan asked Halverson.
“Didn’t I already tell you?”
“Must’ve gone in one ear and out the other.”
“I was a journalist,” answered Halverson, employing his cover story.
Chogan smiled half-heartedly. “This would be a great story to write about if there were any newspapers left to print it.”
“And anybody left to read it.”
“What about you?” Chogan asked Victoria.
“I was a dress designer and owned my own dress shop,” she answered.
“That sounds interesting—having your own business.”
“It’s a lot of work, but I like being my own boss.”
“What about you?” Chogan asked Emma.
“I was a waitress. And I was caring for my baby—and still am.” Smiling, Emma looked over her shoulder. “Right, Millie?”
Chogan shook his head. “I knew I shouldn’t have asked.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Emma on the defensive, the smile vanishing from her face.
Chogan turned to Meers. “What was your gig, Meers?”
“I was a CPA. What does it matter? We’re never gonna get our old jobs back. Look at the mess we’re in.”
“I’m just making conversation. I know we’re all screwed.”
“We may never work again—at least doing what we used to do.”
“I hear ya.”
“We’re gonna have to work at staying alive,” said Halverson. “Our hands’ll be full doing that.”
“We’re going back to the Stone Age, it looks like,” said Chogan.
“It’s not the Stone Age here,” said Emma, sweeping her eyes around the auditorium. “We have all the comforts of home.”
“But at what price?” said Halverson.
“I don’t understand.”
“I keep getting this nagging feeling that something’s not right here.”
“Like maybe it’s too good to be true?” said Chogan.
“Something like that. But it’s more than that.” Halverson lowered his voice so Quantrill couldn’t overhear him. “I saw a bunch of bones last night.”
“Bones?”
“Your turn,” Quantrill chimed in, looking at Halverson.
Halverson stepped up to the spinning wire basket that Quantrill was cranking, mixing up the lottery numbers.
The basket stopped spinning. Quantrill opened the small door in its side. Halverson reached into the basket and plucked out a lottery number from the hodgepodge of tickets. He didn’t know why he was even playing the lottery. He could care less whether he won or lost. No matter who won, Halverson didn’t plan on staying much longer in Vegas.
“What’s this about bones?” said Quantrill, her eyes cutting back and forth between Halverson’s and Chogan’s faces.
“I was wondering if you shot craps around here,” ad-libbed Halverson. He wasn’t about to tell Quantrill about the piles of bones he had stumbled upon last night.
Quantrill smiled. “This is the gambling mecca of the world. It wouldn’t be Vegas without craps.”
“I don’t understand,” said Emma. “What do bones have to do with craps?”
“Bones is another term for dice.”
“Oh. I’ve never been much of a gambler. I guess it shows.”
Halverson wished Emma would keep her mouth shut. He wanted the subject of bones to be dropped
in Quantrill’s presence. He didn’t want her to find out that he had discovered the heaps of bones beyond the strip. The less he told Quantrill, the better, as far as Halverson was concerned.
He didn’t know why the bones were there or what, if anything, they had to do with Quantrill. But he wasn’t taking any chances unburdening himself to her. He had seen what she had done to Chogan’s leg with virtually no provocation and the massacre of the medics she had ordered at the shelter.
Halverson signed his name on the lottery stub, handed it to Quantrill, and made for the stairs at the other end of the stage that led down to the seats in the audience.
Victoria, Emma, and Meers drew their lottery tickets then followed Halverson. Limping on his crutch, Chogan brought up the rear after he drew his ticket. They huddled together in the aisle out of earshot of Quantrill.
“What was that all about?” asked Chogan.
“What?” said Halverson.
“The bit about the bones. Did you see a pile of bones last night or a pile of dice?”
“Bones. I didn’t want Quantrill to overhear us.”
“What kind of bones?” asked Victoria.
“Human,” answered Halverson.
“Where were they?”
“In an intersection in one of the surface streets.”
“Why would there be bones there?” asked Victoria, puzzled.
“They were strewn in piles all over the intersection.”
“But why?”
“And there was something else.”
Victoria hiked an eyebrow, her curiosity aroused. “Well?”
“The walking dead were there also.”
“Then they must have killed and eaten a bunch of people in the intersection.”
Chogan massaged his cheek. “How far away from the strip was this?”
“Only a few blocks,” said Halverson.
Screwing up his face Chogan shifted on his crutch. “Then how come there aren’t any ghouls on the strip?”
“That’s what’s bugging me. They’re only a few blocks away, but they don’t come over here. It doesn’t scan.”
“Maybe they don’t know we’re here,” said Emma.
“How could they not know we’re here?” said Chogan. “If they’re that close, they should be able to smell us or at least hear us when the cars drive down the strip.”
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