by Munson, Brad
“We’re gonna tell everybody what we know is true – even if we can’t prove it yet, we know it’s true,” Whitehead told them. “Morningstar is way more contagious than they’re admitting. It can travel through touch, though vapor, through the fucking air. So we’re going to inject this between his toes and let him turn, and then we’re gonna lead him out into the Center Square and show everybody what liars they are, what’s really happening. Shit, they’ll hand us this town on a platter. You know they will.”
“Wow,” Adelina said, her dark eyes very wide. “That’s cold, Tanner. I mean, I get what you’re saying, I know we have to take control of this situation, but—”
“But nothing. This is it. If we let those eggs and that fuel ship out of here, it’s over. We’re slaves forever. We’ve held things up a couple of days already; everybody’s out looking for him, wondering what happened – even those dumbshits from Omaha – so everything’s set. We’ll take control. All we have to do now is infect him and wait a few hours. Then—”
Keaton tensed all over again as the door at the far side of the barn opened a fraction and a new figure stepped in. She was tall, smooth, graceful as a dancer.
Shit, Keaton thought, though he was careful to keep his mouth shut no matter how mad he was. Shit, I’ve been played.
The Dentist walked slowly and carefully into the room. Her bright blue eyes traveled from one face to the next, assessing, weighing the odds. “You told me to come when it was safe,” she said to Whitehead. “Sorry it took so long.”
Whitehead forced a smile through his tension. “No. No, that’s cool. Glad to have you. Good to know you understand what we’re trying to do here.”
She nodded, never taking her eyes from his. “I do. I totally do.”
“Well if we’re gonna do this thing,” Harrison said, “let’s just fucking do it, and stop pussyin’ around.”
Whitehead almost snorted at the skinny man’s impatience. “You got a point,” he said. He turned to another man in the group, an older fellow with a head full of bushy gray hair, wearing a Pendleton that had seen better days. “Jerry, bring him out here. “Let’s get it done.”
Jerry peeled off from the group and walked directly towards Keaton where he stood on the other side of the wall, his eye pressed to the crack between planks. The sudden approach made him take a step back. He looked down and to his left at the door lock. He could tell he was no match for the massive cast-iron mechanism. A moment later he heard the lock go chunk and the center shaft turned. Keaton tensed. He brought his bound wrists up as the door cracked open, swinging outward for all of two inches –
– and the sheriff hit it, shoulder first, with all the strength he had, slamming it open and knocking Jerry, totally unprepared, halfway across the room.
He barely stumbled as he surged into the room and ran, flat out and shoulders down, straight at Tanner Whitehead. Harrison, the rebel leader’s skinny friend, was faster than he looked. He darted forward and got between Keaton and Whitehead and threw up a roundhouse kick that caught Keaton squarely in the thigh. It knocked him away, but the sheriff was a tough son of a bitch and he didn’t lose his balance. He just kept running, using the kick’s momentum, turning full circle and coming back again, straight at the ringleader who stood there gaping at his attacker, empty hands at his side.
Harrison had a pistol up, gripped in his fist. “STOP!” he bellowed “DON’T YOU FUCKIN’—”
“NO!” The Dentist screamed. She lunged forward herself, her staff appearing out of nowhere and hissing through the air. It knocked Harrison’s gun down with one swipe; the other end arced downward and drove itself hard, hard, into Keaton’s shoulder. He didn’t even have a chance to gasp before The Dentist took a step to the side, pivoted the staff in her hand, and drove the butt end deep into his stomach.
He fell. There was nothing else he could possibly do. He went straight to his knees, growling like a dog. The pain was a ball of fire and blood deep in his belly.
“What the fuck!?” Harrison said, massaging his wrist where The Dentist’s staff had connected.
“How stupid are you?” she snarled. “We need him alive if we’re going to pull this off. If we kill him, he’s just another martyr.”
“Right,” Whitehead said, just a beat too late. He’d lost control of the situation, and he knew it, but now he was going to wrestle it back. “Right: We need him alive. Quick: Grab him. Hold him down.”
Four of Tanner’s crew, burly men who were already wound too tight, descended on the sheriff and pinned his arms and legs. He struggled and kicked, but every time he pushed one away another took his place.
“Get his boot off! Get his fucking boot!”
Keaton kicked one of the men, a beer-gut with too much beard, square in his over-sized jaw, but it didn’t help. Within moments, they had peeled off his boot, ripped away his sock. His foot was so winter-white it was almost luminous.
“Grab it! HOLD it!” Tanner spun on the tiny red-headed woman. “Between the toes!” he ordered her. “Now, now, shoot it between the toes, where no one will see!”
Charmaine’s eyes got even bigger. There was a ring of white around her glittering irises.
The Dentist stepped forward, more grim than ever. “Let me,” she said, and put out her hand. “I’ll do it.”
Whitehead looked momentarily confused. “But … no. Charmaine knows … um ...”
She turned her own luminous eyes on the ringleader. “No,” she said, her voice deep and full. “I know how to do it. I can handle a needle. Let me do it.”
Charmaine was only too happy to let her take control. She held out the case and The Dentist plucked the syringe from its padding and held it high.
Keaton looked up at her from the ground. “Really?” he grated, and tried to break free one last time. It did no good. “Really, Janine?”
Her smile was wicked. Almost predatory, Keaton thought. She took a step forward and raised the needle –
– and fumbled it. Dropped it into the dirt.
“Oh, shit,” Whitehead said, sounding more like a little boy than ever. He started to bend for it and The Dentist put up a hand. “I got it,” she said, and bent over from the waist. “I got it.”
She reached out for the syringe, fumbled a moment …
… and when she came up, she was holding a Sig Sauer P239 instead of the needle. Without a pause or a moment’s hesitation, she lifted it, straight-armed, and shot Tanner Whitehead square in the chest. Three times.
He staggered back from the force of the rounds and banged against the wall of the shed. As if on cue, the door to the shed burst inward and the crew from Omaha – Stiles, Brent, Boyarsky, with Rebecca in the rear – roared in, bellowing for the others to drop their weapons, get down, give it up.
They did. Every one of them. Even The Dentist dropped her pistol, just to avoid confusion. “Right on cue,” she said. “Thanks.”
Stiles didn’t say anything until he was sure the entire ten-person crew was disarmed. Whitehead was dead. Harrison was unconscious or pretending. Adelina Arctura had her face in the dirt, which was exactly where he wanted it.
He turned to confront The Dentist, face stern, eyes narrowed. He actually frowned at her as he confronted her.
“Really,” he said. “‘Janine’?”
*****
The rescue mission took place at four in the afternoon. Three hours later, Keaton – throat still burning from The Dentist’s home-made chloroform – put in an appearance at Eileen’s, to show everyone he was safe and to explain what had happened in the tractor repair shed at the far edge of town – one of the few structures that hadn’t been destroyed when the first Abraham burned.
When the worst of the questions were over and the crowed had dispersed, he sat at a large table in one corner of the saloon and bought drinks for all his new best friends with IOUs he’d be paying off for
months. But it was worth it.
“I have to admit,” he said to The Dentist as she finished her third shot glass of ‘shine, “I was pretty pissed when I saw you hanging with that crew. Why didn’t you tell me you were working undercover?”
She shook her head. “Nobody was supposed to know,” she said. “I told Stiles and Rebecca when that moron Whitehead first approached me, and we agreed way back then: I’d infiltrate, keep an eye on them, but we’d keep it to ourselves to see what developed. We didn’t know whom we could trust.”
He snorted. “Even me? We could sl— ah, we could date, but you couldn’t tell me about the armed insurrection?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“And the chloroform,” he said. “What was all that about. I’m gonna taste that for a month.”
“What, you’d prefer repeated blows to the head to keep you docile? I was doing you a favor, Keaton.”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure.”
She tilted her head at him. “Are you really going to bitch because I didn’t save your life the right way?”
Keaton admitted it – part of him wanted to, but he recognized it as all ego. After a moment’s more thought, he let it go. “No, I’m not,” he said. “I just want to thank you.”
“The worst part of the whole thing was waiting outside for your signal,” Stiles said, staring into his ‘shine more than actually drinking it. “Might have helped if we’d actually worked out a specific signal, too, but—”
“The gunshot worked well enough, I think,” The Dentist said drily.
“Yeah, it was fine.”
“Wait,” Keaton said. “You didn’t—”
“The important thing,” Rebecca said, stepping in before the conversation got completely out of hand, “is that you’re safe and Whitehead’s little rebellion is over.”
Keaton looked around the room and shrugged. “I don’t know about that. There are still plenty of people who aren’t quite sure about this whole thing. And like somebody said just before Whitehead died: We don’t need another martyr.”
Now it was Stiles’ turn to shrug. “Hey, if you need help again,” he said, “you know where to find us.”
“I do indeed,” Keaton said. “Now: another round?”
*****
“... so I think I’ll hang out here for a while,” The Dentist said.
Stiles tried not to smirk. He knew it could be annoying. Instead he looked at the cracked asphalt floor of Jose Arctura’s garage and shrugged almost demurely. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”
“There’s a lot to be done. Plenty who think the sheriff took out Whitehead and his dupes to keep his position of power, so I think I should stay and kind of take the rap. Straighten things out.”
“I get it,” he said. He looked up and past her, at the eighteen-wheeler that Arctura was still tinkering with. The mechanic had not spoken to them about his daughter since her capture the day before, but the light had gone out of the big, happy man. That was the saddest part of the entire bullshit affair, as far as Stiles was concerned.
“Lieutenant Castillo’s gonna kill us,” Stiles said, still not looking at the tall, beautiful woman who had saved Keaton’s life – and maybe their own – just the night before. “We promised her we’d bring back the only tooth jockey left in this world.”
Rebecca, close by his side, snorted. “‘Tooth jockey’? Really, Mark, where do you come up with this stuff?”
He shrugged again.
“I’m thinking of starting a dental school here,” The Dentist said. “Teach at least the basics to a few people, so, you know, the secrets of flossing don’t die with me.”
Now it was Sheriff Keaton who cleared his throat. “No more dying around here,” he said. “Not for a while.” He cocked an eye at Stiles and Rebecca. “That goes for you guys, too. Take care of yourselves.” He thought about it for a second, then made a vague waggling gesture at the space between them. “You know: Take care of each other.”
“Oh, Keaton,” Stiles said, sighing like a schoolgirl. “You’re such a romantic.”
Keaton scowled. “Get the hell outta here.”
Arctura came forward, wiping his hands on a red bandanna as he always did, and announced that the rig was ready to go. The fuel trucks were ready as well, and already idling by the front gate.
Stiles could see the man steeling himself: lifting his shoulders, sticking out his chin and chest. He came forward and thrust out his thick-fingered hand. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything. I’m … I’m sorry about Adelina. I don’t … I just don’t know. I don’t.”
“It’s not your fault,” Rebecca said. “It’s not really anybody’s fault. It’s just … what it is.” The man’s traitorous daughter was languishing in the sheriff station’s lock-up. The town would decide what to do with the rebels all on its own.
Jose nodded and looked at the ground. “Have a good trip,” he said. “Kill a few infected for me along the way.”
“Oh,” Stiles said, “I guarantee you, there will be bodies all along the way.”
That made Jose smile, if only a little bit.
*****
They rolled through the gates as the sun came up. Storm clouds were clustering far to the northeast. They seemed to tower over the distant, invisible city of Omaha, still two days away. Stiles and Rebecca took the two front seats in the eighteen-wheeler. Boyarsky drove the MRAP, fully stocked with frozen chicken, close behind. Brent and a set of new recruits for the vaccine project in Omaha caravanned behind, each one steering a fully loaded fuel truck, all of them running on Jose’s unique recipe of corn-fed ethanol.
“This is gonna be an interesting place in a couple of years,” Stiles said to his fiancée.
“It’s already an interesting place,” she said. “Maybe a little too interesting, in fact.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Yeah, but … maybe a place to settle down. You know, someday. Raise a family.”
“Raise a family” she said and gave him a sly, sidelong glance. “You keep dreaming, Stiles.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Keep dreaming.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Spring was just beginning to show itself in Omaha when Francis Sherman and Adan Forrest called for a war council.
It took place in Sherman’s office in Omaha. Even from that distance, five stories above the street, he could see the first signs of green peeking out of the frozen Kansas landscape: a pale leaf here, a sprig of grass there. Sherman was happy to see anything at all. It seemed to him that the world had been cold and dead for far too long. Far longer than it should have been.
He turned back to the large oval table that had been hauled in and set up in his office just for this occasion. Everyone who mattered in this operation was already here, waiting patiently: Angela Castillo, fully recovered from her salvage operation weeks before; Mark Stiles, still beaming at the success of his chicken-and-egg operation, or maybe just completely in love. Boyarsky and Krueger, the two other field commanders for the new initiative. Their presence gave Sherman a painful jolt; he wondered if they’d be here at all if Stone and Allen hadn’t died at Edwards. And then there was Boyd, perched at one end of the table, toying with his laptop, looking just as swollen and self-righteous as he ever had. They still hadn’t found a decent replacement or even partner for him, no matter how hard they tried. How was it that computer geek-boys seemed to be so rare in post-Morningstar America? Sherman had been sure a whole army of them would have climbed out of their moms’ basements days after the apocalypse.
Never mind: This was his team. It was time to get serious about the final assault on Mount Weather.
“Any of you people remember what happened before Pearl Harbor?” he asked.
Stiles made an amused huffing sound. “Pearl Harbor? That was more than sixty years ago, General. Even you aren’t that
old.”
Sherman glared at him but let it pass. “I don’t mean the attack itself. I mean what happened here in the States, before the attack.”
The men and women around the table shook their heads; they didn’t have a clue.
He didn’t think so.
“The Japanese sent some of their best diplomats – top men, not low-level functionaries – to visit FDR in the White House. They wanted to talk about diplomatic relations, they said. They wanted trust. In fact, they were still in Washington, still talking peace, when the first bombs fell in Hawaii.”
“Smart move,” Boyarsky grunted. “Catch us when we least expect it.”
“Damn smart move,” Sherman said. “And we’re going to do the same thing.”
A duplicate of the regional map that was mounted in the Situation Room, scaled down just a bit, was being projected on the wall behind Sherman. He let Castillo be the one to lower the lights and brighten the image for him.
“So here’s the plan,” he said.
A small light glowed in the northwest corner of the map: McCoy Field, where the President and his people were waiting.
“One week from today, the President and his party – six in all, including our own Mbutu Ngasy, will depart from McCoy Field and fly here to Omaha in the recently designated Marine One, the President’s own Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King, the same chopper that brought him to McCoy from Washington when the outbreak first occurred. He will fly here, to Omaha, where he will deliver a national address announcing the official re-establishment of the U.S. Government and the deployment of the first shipments of Morningstar Vaccine, just as he promised.”
A second light, a comforting amber, began to glow on the map: Omaha, Nebraska. It could have been right over their heads. “Duncan Boyd will be responsible for the hook-up, to be broadcast on all civilian and military channels – audio, video, and digital. And that is under control, isn’t it, Boyd?”
