Resistance: Pandora, Book 3

by Eric L. Harry

  Smoke curled from the muzzle of Rick’s M4. He kicked the pistol from the dead cop’s hand and began to rummage through the cop’s pockets. Through his fucking pockets, Isabel thought in total outrage until she saw Rick extract car keys.

  They jumped into the squad car and sped back to their helicopter. Rick said nothing. Isabel avoided looking his way. The Black Hawk’s crew had already started the engines.

  “It’s falling!” was all the door gunner said.

  “No shit!” Rick replied. “Let’s get back to Mountain Home.”

  “No! Mountain Home is falling! They’re recalling everything that can fly for fire missions! We were just about to ditch you here!” Inside the cabin sat the town’s mayor and what must have been his wife and two young daughters.

  Guilt prevented anyone from saying anything on the short flight. On final approach into the beleaguered airbase that Isabel had earlier thought of as an impregnable refuge, Rick pointed out landmarks through the large side window as firefights slid by underneath like in a video game. A line of tanks turning a corner. Rapid puffs of smoke from the slender gun atop an armored fighting vehicle. A broken line of infantrymen retreating from a huge and ragged crowd of Infecteds. A car plowing through a barricade and into another mob before crashing into a lamppost.

  “Pay attention! If the base falls, we head that way,” Rick pointed. “North!”

  She shivered, literally, at the thought, but nodded again and again. The perimeter of the airbase was engulfed in open warfare. The fences lay somewhere beneath piles of bodies. Soundless explosions were drowned out by the Black Hawk’s thundering engines. But the tings of rounds striking their fuselage drew the same reaction from both Rick and Isabel, who put their helmets beneath their foldout seats as the mayor and his family huddled amid hugs as best as they could from theirs. As they descended at what seemed too fast a rate, Isabel saw, in complete contrast to the melee around them, what could only be a bomb slowly and with intense care being driven up a brightly lit ramp into a giant Air Force transport plane—probably the last of the nuclear weapons being evacuated.

  After the helicopter hit the tarmac hard, bounced twice, and its doors were opened to the tumult of gunfire and explosions, Isabel never saw the mayor or his family again. At the top of the stairs to the waiting 737, they met the copilot, who shouted over the noise that the ground crew had unloaded the supplies they brought in but was having trouble closing the baggage doors, so they hadn’t yet boarded anyone. He seemed stumped when Rick asked him whether they could fly with the doors open. Isabel and Rick took first-class seats and felt the thuds through their boots as the baggage doors were slammed, opened, and slammed again.

  They now had no backpacks, so their overhead bin was empty. But they kept their rifles at their sides with the muzzles resting on the carpeted floor and removed the magazines and bulky ammo pouches from their webbing so that the seatbelts fit. Isabel copied Rick, tucking the pouches and mags into the seat back in front of her and into the gaps between her thighs and armrests. Rick didn’t say why, but both kept their body armor and helmets on.

  The civilian copilot, now joined by the older pilot, both still in the uniforms of their respective airlines, came up to Isabel and Rick, bent over, and peered out the side windows at the now raucous and unruly crowd straining against the Guardsmen who prevented them from boarding. “I need some direction,” the pilot said. “We unloaded our cargo and burned half our fuel getting here, so we’re light. We can fly you two straight back to Houston.” He kept looking outside.

  “Or…?” Isabel prompted.

  “Or we fill every seat, and I’m fairly confident we could make Denver. If you’re willing to do some pioneering and risk getting shot fulla arrows, you can still drive it from Denver to Houston. Or you can hang out in Denver till we or someone else gets more fuel.”

  Neither Isabel nor Rick was willing to speak first. “What would you do?” she asked.

  Rick clearly hated answering. “My mission is to keep you safe. Period.”

  Isabel saw how much Rick was suffering. He’d just had to kill an innocent man, for God’s sake. His breath fogged the cool window. It wasn’t fair to force him to make this decision. Isabel looked up at the pilot. “Load the plane up and get us to Denver.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a finger to his forehead in salute.

  Chapter 32

  NEW ROANOKE, VIRGINIA

  Infection Date 96, 2400 GMT (8:00 p.m. Local)

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Emma announced—satisfied that the apology she had practiced on the drive over sounded appropriate—upon being ushered to the dinner table in the mansion now occupied by the former First Family. “We had some trouble at the New Christiansburg temperament testing center.” The infected ex-president, Bill Stoddard, and his wife Angela, eighteen-year-old son Bill Junior, and thirteen-year-old daughter Ginnie stared back at her from their seats as if not knowing how to reply. “We had several people fail at the same time, and before we could get them outside they rioted. It was a big mess.”

  “They were Infecteds, right?” Angela Stoddard asked.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Oh! Good. That sounds like an excellent program, by the way.”

  An Infected servant filled Emma’s water glass. Another Infected servant brought in the soup course. “Bread,” Mrs. Stoddard mouthed toward the waiters. A third Infected servant placed a basket on the edge of the table beside Mrs. Stoddard.

  “In the center,” the former First Lady admonished even though she could have moved it there herself. The expressionless middle aged man returned and placed the basket where directed. To Emma, the former First Lady sighed and shook her head. Her husband noticed nothing as he sat impassively at the head of the table, moving only when Mrs. Stoddard whispered for him to put his napkin in his lap. Ginnie wore a forced smile, which she directed toward Emma every time their eyes met. Her older brother stared at Emma, and specifically at her chest, but only when Emma wasn’t returning his gaze. Emma’s only bra was drying on the clothes line outside her one room apartment, and the silk blouse that Samantha had found for her to wear for this occasion was too small and too thin.

  “It’s so nice, isn’t it,” Mrs. Stoddard said, “to not have to interact with people who are wearing masks and all that getup? To have dinner with people who are vaccinated?”

  Emma promptly looked the former president’s way, but he remained oblivious to the conversation, more like Dorothy than Dwayne. Despite the medical care available to him on his flying command post, he seemed highly impaired by the damage from infection after being among the 6 percent who contracted Pandoravirus from the vaccine.

  “So, the president and I,” Angela Stoddard said while stirring her mushroom soup to cool it, “have developed some ideas for the uninfected community here.” She motioned toward a waiter, who seemed unsure what she wanted. “Those papers I told you to bring?”

  She passed the stapled sheaf across the table to Emma. When Emma reached for them, she felt more than saw Bill Junior eyeing her blouse, which opened slightly amid the straining buttons. He’s cute, said the voice in her head.

  “Red or white?” asked the Infected waiter, who held both bottles out to Emma, again drawing a sigh from Mrs. Stoddard.

  “Oh, no, thank you.”

  “Please!” her hostess interjected. “Surely infected people haven’t all become teetotalers.”

  “I’ll have some red, please,” Emma replied in order to be polite.

  “Just like your sister,” Mrs. Stoddard mumbled, grinning as she sipped soup from her spoon. “Oh! Too much salt.” The waiter had no idea what to say in response.

  Emma had abandoned all dinnertime etiquette since the outbreak. She normally read memos and reports at the battered countertop in her apartment’s kitchenette over plates of macaroni and cheese from the boxes stacked high in her pantry
once Sam had learned it was her favorite meal. But without knowing why, exactly, Emma reverted to the proper manners she had learned as a child and took a dollop of butter from its cup with her butter knife, not her dinner knife, and deposited it onto her bread plate, not directly onto her bread. The waiter refilled her wine, but his face revealed nothing. No complaints about mistreatment, or longing to return to some exalted prior life, or desire to escape the service of demanding Uninfecteds. Just a simple Infected, satisfied so long as he was fed and sheltered.

  “Where is your sister?” It was little Ginnie.

  “I don’t know. Dead, probably.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” She made some face, curling her upper lip.

  Emma looked around the table. The former First Lady stared at her daughter with brow arched. The ex-president gazed at his soup until his wife told him it was cool enough to eat. “You look just like her,” said Bill Junior.

  “Bill!” his mother censured, though Emma was uncertain what he had said that was wrong. She assumed he was referring to Isabel. And they were, after all, identical twins.

  “I was just saying they looked alike. Jesus. Except for their hair and, I guess, ya know, makeup and all.”

  Emma reached up to her cheek. Makeup! She knew she had forgotten something.

  “I’m sure Dr. Miller is too busy these days for trips to the salon, right Emma?” Mrs. Stoddard, herself, was well dressed and well coifed. And she was grinning at what must have been a joke. Emma tried smiling. Ginnie laughed on seeing Emma’s attempt, turning to her mother as if at some shared joke. Her mother, however, castigated the little girl, again for reasons lost on Emma, then did the same with her son, whose gaze, on Emma’s check, was averted from her blouse.

  Isabel told you he was a “horny little bastard,” the voice in Emma’s head reminded—the exact words Isabel had used after her dinner with the First Family in the White House residence. The voice must have been listening. But Bill Junior was also tall, athletic looking, with smart and sparkling green eyes—facts that Isabel had omitted.

  “If you’d like a moment to peruse those papers.…” Mrs. Stoddard began but didn’t complete.

  It took Emma a second to realize what papers she was referring to. The wine was settling around her like a warm blanket. “I’ll look them over tonight when I get back home.”

  “Oh, it’s going to be far too late for you to be out on the roads. They’re too dangerous after dark. We hear stories of roving marauders—looking for food, and other things.” Emma assumed she meant rape. They executed men, and the occasional woman, every morning for rape. “You’ll stay here tonight.” She turned to her household staff. “Prepare the guest room for our distinguished visitor.” None of the Infected men moved. “The room next to Bill Junior’s!”

  Off went one of the attendants.

  Next came a cold plate of cheeses, meats, and crackers—and more wine. All throughout that course, Mrs. Stoddard—“Please call me Angela”—described her plans for Uninfecteds. Greater supplies and variety of food. Regular entertainment and news oriented toward their needs. Elections for local offices—“But you should probably continue to appoint people to the top offices, like president, or head of state.”

  Emma was unsure what she meant given that they had established neither office.

  Angela then went on about the need for mass quantities of vaccine. “It’s really the number one issue for the uninfected community…after food and safety, of course.”

  By the time the fillet mignon with béarnaise sauce, russet potatoes, and asparagus was served, Emma was fully buzzed from the wine and wondered at, but quickly forgot to ask about, where they had obtained such huge quantities of food.

  “And so, if you agree, of course, I’ll see to an announcement of the appointment of the president as representative of the uninfected community.”

  Most of Emma’s troubles had melted away with the fourth glass of red wine. “Sure. Fine.” Her new friend Angela seemed inordinately pleased by Emma’s empty gesture. After all, Emma was still considering Sheriff Walcott’s plan to decimate—reduce by 10 percent—the number of Uninfecteds they currently had to feed. Maybe that could be the Stoddards’s first official assignment.

  It was almost midnight when they finished dessert and went to bed. Emma was shown to her room by Infected household staff, who did not expect or wait for a thank you. As she turned the knob to enter her room, the door next to hers opened and Bill Junior peered out. Emma hesitated there for a moment before she went into her room and didn’t shut her door. By the time she reached her plush poster bed, she heard the door close and lock behind her.

  Chapter 33

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  Infection Date 97, 2400 GMT (5:00 p.m. Local)

  Noah’s arrival in San Francisco aboard one of three empty commercial airliners was fortuitously timed. Pandoravirus horribilis had arrived just before him.

  The ride from the airport to the SoMa office tower was as inconspicuous as a brass band at a funeral. Police sirens wailed and blue lights flashed. Up armored Humvees manned by rooftop gunners screamed look at me. Noah and the other screeners rode in heavily tinted, bulletproof black SUVs. No one knew who they were. But every crowd they passed found their appearance to present an opportunity to express their grievances.

  A Red Cross tractor trailer in the parking lot of a shuttered grocery store by the intersection at which the motorcade stopped was out of whatever they’d been distributing. Volunteers in official vests stood aside impotently as wiry, shirtless men swung from the trailer’s doors and pumped fists in celebration of some imagined victory. Pierced girls in flowing skirts with green, pink, and cherry red hair hurled quilts out the back of the trailer like the ones used to ship furniture to the cheers of the raucous crowd, which chanted, “We, the people, will never be forgotten! We, the people, will never be forgotten!”

  When they saw the motorcade, it became the focus of their ire. A swarm of them like an Infected rampage leapt over the hoods of parked cars with the amazing agility of the young and bounded up to pound Noah’s SUV with fists and press faces wild with…whatever, just wild, into the side windows. The motorcade accelerated through the red light just as a brick chipped a pit into the window beside Noah.

  Three times, they had to abandon their intended route due to large gatherings in the streets. The first appeared to be a peaceful vigil in which people held candles stuck through little paper shields to protect hands from hot wax. The second was looting run wild, with one man in black wearing a black bandanna to cover his face as he kicked repeatedly and apparently futilely at the locked door of a jewelry repair business. The third detour, which required that the entire convoy awkwardly back up to the previous intersection, was due to the road ahead being dotted with flaming piles of furniture, a blazing overturned city bus, and at least three car fires. A half dozen weathered homeless men pushed their shopping carts full of belongings away from the anarchy being wrought by rioters who appeared both better dressed and better fed.

  But the worst awaited them at their destination. “Is that the line?” Noah asked the federal marshal in the front seat of the SUV, who simply nodded. The queue, four abreast, snaked around a corner. When the SUV turned, Noah saw that it went on for blocks. The well-behaved people in the line cowered when confronted by angry young men, and some women, who ranted at them and shook handmade signs in their faces, one of which read, “Say no to genocide!” in red paint that ran like blood.

  Most of the would-be interviewees had turned away from the harassment and tried not to make eye contact, many staring down at presumably long useless smartphones as their ungroomed tormentors sent spittle flecked abuse their way. Here and there, scuffles erupted over purses or briefcases yanked from shoulders, which were relinquished after only nominal fights so that victims didn’t lose their places in line or have to confront someone with nothing to lose. Noah watc
hed as the thieves skipped down the sidewalk, turned the stolen bags upside down, and emptied their contents with grins, tongues stuck out, and glee.

  High above the turmoil, Noah had his first interview—a man in his late twenties. The buzz from the packed waiting room, corridor, and elevator banks rose to a crescendo before falling silent as the guy closed the office door and confidently strode toward Noah’s desk. “How do you do. Nelson Krause. Senior software engineer. Facebook.”

  “Take a seat.” The guy was close shaved. Gone was what had surely been fashionable facial hair, along presumably with any egalitarian progressive views. He had even found a tie, though not one that matched his blue blazer, check shirt, skinny jeans, sockless ankles, and brown loafers. The candidate settled into his chair, rocked back, and crossed his leg in apparent ease. The accomplishments listed on his resume were impressive, but brief. The whole thing came in at under three quarters of a page. Summa cum laude, computer science, Stanford. Masters at Berkeley. Four jobs in four years, each a promotion at a bigger and badder Silicon Valley titan. Missing were the now unimportant high school varsity letters, club vice presidencies, near perfect SAT scores, and most likely to succeed yearbook votes. “What can I do for you?” the man-child asked Noah.

  Needless to say, Noah didn’t like him. “This doesn’t mention what computer languages you’re proficient in. Did you see the instructions?”

  “All of them. Perl. PHP. C-sharp. C-plus-plus. JavaScript. Python. Java.”

  Shit. “Okay.” Noah typed the man’s name into his laptop and hand wrote it on a roll of blank airline boarding passes removed from the dead ticket machines at the blacked out SFO counters. The laptop generated a random six digit number, not unlike an airline reservation confirmation, which he added beside the man’s name. “Here’s your boarding pass.” He tore it from the roll. “Welcome to Texas.”