Alastair Conway Dale, fourth Earl Conway of Darnesbury, House of Lords.
**
At the 30th Floor, he stopped to catch not only his breath, but to pause and gather both his strength and his nerve. The last time he’d made such a trip for this purpose, he’d had quite the physical struggle on his hands. And it had not been the kind of thing to which one had become accustomed over the preceding two years. This was not a battle with a dead thing that you could destroy with a round from a pistol or a blow from a truncheon. He didn’t want to kill this particular possible adversary. In fact, he wanted nothing more than to preserve the man’s life so that he might complete the task to which he’d been assigned. And it was Dale’s mission to see to that end.
And the Colonel was a man of determination.
Waiting, hearing only the very slight and very low whine of cool air whistling barely through the rubber seals of the doorway, he steeled himself and put his shoulder to the door. He would disengage the lock and push that door open swiftly, using it to shield himself somewhat before he stepped through. He’d never known Lieber to move about the hallways with one of the .50 caliber sniper rifles, but if he had descended to that level of insanity, the door would not really do him any good. Still, he would use whatever tools were at his disposal.
Silently, on hinges oiled and maintained by the Colonel himself, he pushed the door open, encountering only silence. But the images that met his eyes these days were like something from a fairy tale.
The hallway was covered in rust colored carpet that lay below walls of cream-colored paint. The acoustic ceiling tiles were pale and bright, electric panels showering the spaces with illumination that was adequate without being irritating to the eye. And cool air, set to an ambient 72 degrees no matter the conditions outside, greeted the Colonel. He felt that cool air caress and surround him. It was indeed a kind of Heaven.
Other than that, there was nothing. This world was preserved like some kind of miraculous bug in amber, and in total quiet. He couldn’t even hear those generators that he knew were laboring away in the depths, fed by what could only be described as a sea of diesel fuel. Those generators, that fuel, these floors, all were for the sole purpose of providing the last great living hacker access to the tools his species needed to conduct a final task. Now it was up to Colonel Dale to make sure that the programmer could recall why he was there, and to make certain that he was sane enough to do it.
Although he had a pair of pistols—both .45s—he kept them holstered. He was there to save the man, not kill him. Instead, he unzipped the belt pack on his right hip and fingered what was inside. It was safe, the seal unbroken. Clenching his jaw, he straightened his posture and set off. He couldn’t even be certain that Lieber was on the 30th Floor, but he suspected that he would be there. It was where he generally resided, preferring those quiet spaces to where the servers were kept on the two floors above. Keyboard and screens were the man’s tools—great memory banks and whirring hard drives seemed only to frustrate the man.
Methodically, the Colonel began to move down the central corridor. If the hacker was on that floor, he’d almost certainly have noted the change in air pressure when Dale had opened the door. It would have been hard for anyone—even someone suffering from psychosis—to miss something like that. But the other man could be anywhere. The Trust Building was enormous, and even a single floor such as this one contained dozens of rooms. The officer had familiarized himself with the place over the months, but that didn’t mean he could assume where Lieber would be. Especially now that his…episodes…were increasing in severity and occurrence. He walked on, stopping at each room to peer inside.
The latest event had been the worst for quite some time. He’d locked onto the Lund Family for obvious reasons, when you knew how to read the pitiful bastard. Lieber had been sitting up there in his protected tower looking down on the folk who scrabbled about below, eking out a bare existence while he lived in luxury. Somehow, spying Mrs. Lund through one of his half-dozen spy-scopes, the programmer had decided that he would take her for his own and all he had to do was kill off her family. First it had been her eldest son who’d been killed. That was when Dale had first taken more severe action. He’d actually come to the tower with one of the physicians in tow, to find Stan quite agitated and completely without reason, almost raving. The doctor—Watson Jordan—had helped to find a decent combination of medicines to get the hacker back on something resembling a sane footing.
But the medicines that had done the best work had dwindled. They’d moved to other combinations and compounds that either had lesser results or were ineffective. And the last time the Colonel had seen his most valuable of wards, the fellow was about as close to stark, raving mad as that tired epithet could describe. That had been just before he’d rushed back down to the street to rescue whatever was remaining of the Lund Family. Fortunately, they were already under the competent protection of that fellow in the little penthouse: Ron Cutter.
The Colonel rather liked Cutter. The man had proven resourceful beyond expectations. He’d not only survived this undead apocalypse, he was thriving in it. Such a man could be quite helpful in the coming months, to achieve what Dale hoped to see done before he took his leave of this mortal coil. In fact, the Colonel knew precisely how he wanted Cutter to help him and just where to put him to do the maximum…
He froze when he heard the shot.
It was that goddamned .50 caliber sniper rifle again. The Colonel cursed the day he’d thought to bring those guns into the tower. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. But the sound was coming, he knew, from the balcony on the northwest corner of the floor. So that meant that Lieber wasn’t lurking somewhere about to ambush the good soldier, and he was at least feeling competent enough to operate the gun. Also, he wasn’t firing at the Lunds, who were now safely inhabiting protected space in the west of town, where Colonel Dale ruled with a velvet glove.
There was a second shot and the soldier picked up the pace, all but running to get to the other side of the building before the shooting came to a halt. As long as the crazy man was shooting his gun, then he wasn’t going to be paying attention to the arrival of his only friend.
Halfway to the balcony, Dale heard something that all but brought him to a halt.
It was Lieber’s voice, but expanded dozens of times. The idiot was using a bullhorn! What the Hell? As he continued to trot, he focused on the oversized voice:
“I see you down there! You fucking giant! You fucking giant I’ll kill your babies so you can’t get in! I see you down there!” And then the voice stopped and there was a pause followed by another of the monstrous reports of the .50 caliber. Even now, Dale could see in his mind’s eye the jolting of Lieber’s shoulder as the weapon kicked.
What was he doing? To whom was he talking? Giants? Babies?
And then it hit him, just as he emerged at the great sliding doors that led out to the balcony. Stan Lieber’s back was to Dale as the officer stepped out onto the wide, shelter space. He could see over the madman’s shoulder and to the street very far below where the elephant herd had once again wandered into town. Lying on the street was the shattered, bloody remains of one of the elephant calves. And roaring back up at the tower was the lead bull, his head shaking in rage, his ears flapping as he torqued that massive skull, roaring at the tormenting murderer he could hear but not see.
Lieber had the bullhorn to his lips again. “Yeah, that’s right! Stan Lieber will kill you! He’ll destroy you all! Fucking spawn of the devil!”
Reaching into the belt pack, Dale produced the hypodermic he’d placed there that morning; the needle loaded and prepared by the physicians with whom he’d spoken. And without giving his charge time to so much as lower the bullhorn to retrieve that dangerous firearm again, the Colonel uncapped the business end of the needle and jammed it into Lieber’s neck, depressing the plunger.
He had to catch his hacker’s limp body to keep the man from sliding to the floor o
f the balcony.
**
From their perch in the shadows, Ron and his new family had watched in horror as the gunfire and screaming had erupted from the Trust Tower. It had started not long after the Colonel had vanished into that place. The voice coming through the bullhorn was obviously not that of the man with whom Ron had conversed so warmly only days before. And the name being used was one he’d never encountered. ‘Stan Lieber’. He had no idea who that was, but the three of them were stunned when it became obvious the shooter was targeting the herd of elephants.
The animals had appeared shortly before, suddenly standing in the middle of the adjacent intersection. There had been no warning at all that the enormous creatures were approaching. They were just there, as if by magic, padding up the street to stand in the center of the meeting of old avenues.
It had amazed all three of them that the enormous beasts had been able to surprise them. There had been no sound at all to warn them that the herd was coming, and then there they were. A dozen of the giants were standing amidst the ruins of automobile husks and testing the shrubbery with their questing trunks.
“Look, Ron.” Oliver had noticed them first and had pointed in excitement, going so far as to lean forward to peer out of the window where they were watching the building.
“I’ll be damned,” Jean had answered.
And soon after that the shots had come, muffled from 30 floors above, the elephant calf went down in a spray of red. Ron realized that the same awful weapon that had destroyed Lund and which had almost taken him apart was responsible. It had only taken a single shot to kill the calf, but several more had spattered their ways through the corpse of the baby elephant.
The rest of the herd had gone wild at that point, most of them scattering to flee into the concrete canyons of Charlotte, but a great bull and two cows had remained behind, the bull roaring up at the building. Then the voice on the bullhorn, taunting the remaining beasts.
Worst of all had been Oliver’s reaction. He’d rushed over to Ron, burying his face in the man’s chest, his boy’s arms wrapping tightly around his waist. But the boy had not cried out. He’d just crushed his face to Ron’s ribcage to hide the sight. The little boy had emerged from the shell of a person that had survived alone for so long, and this increased the guilt Ron felt for not having taken in the boy long before. How had he allowed a child to exist like that?
While Ron and Jean had put their arms around the boy, the firing stopped and even that hideous scratching voice over the bullhorn had stopped as suddenly as it had come.
The bull elephant remained in place, shaking that monstrous head, roaring at something he could not reach. Ron Cutter knew the feeling, and he also knew that the elephants would now be out for blood. They would have to tread carefully when they went back to the streets to return to the home they now shared.
It was possible they’d even have to lay low and make their way to one of Ron’s safe houses. He had one nearby, closer than his preferred home, and had all but decided that they would move there for at least a day or so.
“Why did he do that?” Oliver’s voice broke the silence. “Why did he shoot the baby elephant?”
Patting the boy’s shoulders, thinking of the daughter he’d lost the day society had finally crumbled, Ron answered. “I don’t know, Oliver. I swear to God I have no idea.”
Jean’s hands were at the boy’s hair, brushing those locks back, out of his eyes. “Sometimes people do horrible things. Sometimes there’s no explanation at all.” She was looking into Ron’s face, their gazes locking.
“We should probably hit one of my other places instead of heading back,” he told her. “I don’t want to be walking around the streets in that direction. Not with a herd of agitated beasts like those looking to kill someone.” He tossed his brow toward the elephants. The bull was standing his ground, and the two cows were caressing the bloody corpse of the little one. He wondered if one had been the baby’s mother. Probably so. One was rocking back and forth on its pillar legs. Was that elephant grief? He wondered.
“You have one of your safe houses close by?” She asked.
“It’s more like a safe room,” he admitted. “But it’s only half a block from here. We can go out the west side of this building and trot through one alley and we’re there. It ain’t the most luxurious place, but it’s safe and sound. We can crash there for a day or so.”
“I know where it is,” the kid said, finally breaking his grip on his foster father. “You showed it to me once.”
“That’s right,” he replied, smiling. “I did. I remember that.”
“Then we’d better go now, while it’s still bright outside. All of this commotion will stir up the walkers, you know.” Jean was peering out of the broken window. “I can see a couple of them now.” She pointed.
Ron looked out. There were indeed some of the things emerging from hiding. It probably hadn’t been the gunshots that had drawn them in—those had been hard to hear, having been fired from such a great height—but the voice on that damned bullhorn. That had been plenty plain and loud enough to draw out the deaders. Even as he looked out on the pair that Jean had first spotted, he noticed more of them piling out of the buildings, like workers emerging from offices to head home after a long day at work. In spite of trying to hide his emotions, he sneered. God, he hated the damned things. If only he could kill them all, put them each and every one down for the count at last.
“Yeah, we’d better move,” he agreed. And as the trio moved back into the building to find their way to the opposite side, he could hear the moaning calls of the zombies, that sound of mourning, rage, and unquenched hunger.
**
Stan Lieber opened his eyes.
He couldn’t move. He was not tied or dead—he could feel his arms and legs and body, but he just couldn’t move. It was as if in one of those dreams people talk about where they can see and hear everything and need to run, but they can’t.
He blinked his eyes and looked around. The room was familiar—one of the offices that his employers had transformed into a bedroom. Lieber never used it because the bed in it was a hospital bed—the kind that is motorized and can be adjusted. The hacker had always avoided that room. It had bothered him and made him suspicious, and now those suspicions were confirmed.
Scanning the room, he was aware that someone else was with him, and of course he knew who that was: Lord Dale. Oh, yes. He knew who the man really was. Not just an officer, not just a British citizen, but a member of the Royal Family, albeit of a distant branch and not at all in any kind of line of succession. Lieber had unearthed all sorts of bits of information along with everything else he was doing. He was, after all, the finest living computer hacker remaining on Earth.
He laughed, and that brought the Colonel to his side. For the first time since he’d been spotting the elephants far below, he saw the officer’s face. It was hovering over him and the expression on those fine, chiseled features was one of concern. Stan had to give the fellow that much. He really was worried about him.
But how had he gotten there? In that room? In that bed?
Peering up, he noticed for the first time that there was an IV drip hanging to his right. He looked down and could see the tube and needle leading down to the taped binding in the flesh below his biceps. And at that point, he realized that he was fully awake, he could sit up, and that he could speak.
“What the hell happened to me?” Stan Lieber asked.
Dale, standing beside the bed, stared with that same concern. It was a genuine exhibition and not at all feigned. “You had another attack, Stan. You’ve been in…well…quite the state for the past week or so. I tried earlier to get to you and administer some medication. But,” he paused. “I couldn’t quite do it.”
“I didn’t shoot at you, did I?”
The Colonel shook his finely manicured skull, his hair well cut and brushed, and his skin clean and gleaming. “No. Nothing like that. I just realized that it wasn’t t
he right time to try to talk with you. Or deal with…well…the situation.”
Finally, Lieber did sit up. He felt dizzy, but fairly alert. His arms and legs were going to do what he told them to do. “I hurt someone again, didn’t I?”
Dale nodded. “Lund,” was all he said.
“And Mrs. Lund? The rest of their children?”
The Colonel reached up and adjusted the IV bag, gave it a tap, and smiled as he saw that the drip was flowing perfectly. “She’s in safe hands. The children, too.”
Lieber nodded. His dark face was pudgy, and one would not have known looking at him that most of the world had been suffering severe privation for most of the past two years. His height was just less than six feet and his weight was 220 pounds. He was a good forty pounds overweight and not likely to get any thinner, as long as the great freezer and pantries from which he fed were all for his benefit. To date, it hardly looked as if either had been nicked, although he went to them at least twice a day to retrieve foods that were only memories for most of the rest of the world.
Dale moved in close again and took Lieber’s head in his strong hands. He leaned in close and peered into the sick man’s eyes, examining the pupils for dilation, the whites for signs of irritation and burst vessels. They appeared clear, fine. The Colonel knew almost nothing of medicine, but the doctors he’d slowly assembled to man the hospital in the western section of the city had told him what to do and what to look for.
Pointing to the IV bag, Lieber asked about it. “What is that? Last few times you brought me pills. Don’t tell me I’m too far gone for capsules.” He thought about what he had done, and how things had been going. His mind was regaining its old clarity and the memories of what he’d experienced the past few days both horrified and frightened him. His mind was surely going. What would become of him?
The Coalition: Part II The Lord Of The Living (COALITON OF THE LIVING Book 2) Page 5
