The room was silent except for sobs from the wounded. Grace, Bunny, Dietrich, and Brierly had worked through the crowd, separating out anyone who had been stung by the darts. Over sixty people, all of them sick and shivering with fever, were huddled together in a cluster by the wall farthest from the STAFF ONLY door. Rudy moved among them making quick and purely visual assessments of them. His face was rigid with shock. A line of Secret Service agents, fifteen of them, stood with their pistols pointed at the sick and wounded, but even the toughest agents among them looked confused and frightened. Outside, on the other side of the thick glass walls, the National Guard were setting up machine gun emplacements, and the sky above Independence Mall was filled with army gunships.
Things had started brewing to a panic and so Grace had climbed to the top of the podium and fired a shot into the ceiling to get them to listen. “Listen to me!” she shouted.
Bunny and Dietrich took up positions around the base of the podium, their guns at the ready. The fifteen remaining Secret Service agents stood in a line between the infected and the rest, their faces showing the terrible doubt and conflict they each felt.
In a few short sentences Grace told everyone that the Freedom Bell had been rigged by terrorists and that anyone who had been struck by the darts was likely to become infected with a highly contagious disease. That helped with the separation as the uninjured moved quickly away from them. The disease, she told them, would cause erratic and violent behavior. As she spoke she looked for signs of infection in anyone who had not admitted to having been stung.
That’s when Audrey Collins, the VP’s wife, had suddenly spoken up to champion the cause of the infected. Collins was a thin woman with a hatchet face and fierce blue eyes, and despite the agony from three cracked ribs, she managed to muster enough personal power to take a commanding position in the conflict. “You will lower your weapon, Agent, or so help me God, I will make sure that you are punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
Grace stepped down from the podium, and Dietrich turned and brought his gun up to cover the infected junior senator. Grace said, “Ma’am, you have to be quiet and let us do our jobs—”
Collins cut her off. “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, ma’am, I know who you are and I know full well that your husband can have me jailed, deported, and probably stood against a wall and shot… but right now I am trying to save the lives of most of the people in this room and probably all of the people in this country. If you interfere with me or prevent me from doing what I have to do I will knock you on your ass.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Grace took a step closer and the savage look in her eyes was so ferocious that the people who had gathered behind the VP’s wife faded back, leaving the woman alone with Grace.
“Ma’am, if you do anything—anything—to try and stop me I’ll put you against the wall with them. Believe me, you don’t want me to do that.”
“Ma’am,” said Rudy, stepping up beside Grace. “I implore you to listen.”
“Slow down here, Major,” Brierly said, coming up on Grace’s other side. “Everyone’s scared here.”
The remaining Presidential Detail agents milled uncertainly near Mrs. Collins. Brierly had briefed them and had even channeled the President himself on to the team’s command link. The President’s voice had been trembling with fear and rage but he had been clear: Grace Courtland was in charge. Even so, threats to their principal went against all of their training.
“No one more than me, sir,” Grace said, but her eyes locked on the VP’s wife. “But this is not something I can back down on. You know that.”
Bunny moved to Grace’s right with a good shooter’s angle to the presidential agents.
“Mrs. Collins…?” implored the junior senator.
Audrey Collins, apart from being married to the Vice President, was a career politician in her own right and she was used to giving orders rather than taking them. But for all her bluster she was no fool. She shifted her furious stare from Grace and looked at the young senator; and changed her expression from anger to wretched concern.
“Do what the major says, Tom,” she said to the frightened congressman. “Everything will be okay.”
She turned to Grace and the look they shared insisted that nothing was going to be okay. Not now, and maybe not ever. “If you’re wrong about this,” said Mrs. Collins, “I’ll—”
“I’m not,” Grace interrupted. Then she softened her own expression. “Thank you.”
“Fuck you,” said the Vice President’s wife.
Grace almost smiled, but then someone screamed.
“My God! She’s biting him!”
Everyone turned toward the wall, to where the anchorwoman for the local ABC affiliate was hunched over the unconscious body of a tourist in a Hawaiian shirt. The anchorwoman, a petite blonde with sculpted nails and Prada shoes, was chewing on the tourist’s arm.
“No,” Bunny said. “Come on… no!”
“God help us all,” Grace said and raised her gun.
What happened next was unspeakable.
Chapter One Hundred Sixteen
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:12 P.M.
THERE WAS NO time to think. I put a shot into the head of the agent and spun on my heel before he flopped back against the ground, sprinting in the direction of the scream. That wasn’t the hunting-cat screech of a walker—it was filled with very human terror. I just hoped it wasn’t her last scream.
Screw caution—I ran. I tore through room after room. Twice white-faced figures lunged at me out of the shadows and each time I put them down with single shots without breaking stride. I could still hear voices behind. Top and Skip calling my name. They were smart enough to follow the trail of bodies.
The First Lady screamed again, just ahead, on the other side of a closed door.
I hit the door with a jumping kick that tore it off its hinges. The door crashed onto a walker and crushed him underneath. I leaped into the room, taking in the scene as I landed in a combat crouch.
The First Lady was huddled in the corner of an office cubicle. Her Secret Service detail had been slaughtered. Only one agent remained and there was a crowd of seven walkers trying to bring him down. The agent was bleeding from half a dozen bites and his face was white with pain and panic. Two of the walkers were the last remaining agents; the rest were employees of the Liberty Bell Center. No sign of Ollie or O’Brien.
I opened fire and took one of the walkers in the back of the neck. He crashed forward and dragged down two others as he fell.
“Help!” the First Lady screamed. “Oh God, please help us!”
The nearest walkers had turned toward me at the sound of my shot and they rushed me. I shot one but then there was a blast from behind me and the walker to my right pitched back with a gaping hole in his temple.
“On your six!” I heard Top growl and then he and Skip were rushing the group of walkers from either flank. Top used double taps each time, stalling them with a chest shot and then putting one through the brain. Skip’s shots were more random and he hit walkers over and over again in the body, wasting shots.
“Head shots, goddamn it!” Top yelled at him and blew away a walker that was rushing at Skip from his left.
The remaining Secret Service agent fired his last shot, a wild blast that nearly hit Top, and then the last walker tackled him so that they fell into the cubicle, crashing down at the First Lady’s feet. She screamed but then she snatched a laptop off the desk and used it to beat in the back of the walker’s head. None of us could take a shot because she was so close, and she laid into the monster with a will, her fear becoming fury. The walker shivered and collapsed into a terminal stillness. Beneath him the agent groaned and reached out an imploring hand to her.
“Roger!” she said and reached for him.
“No!” I yelled and darted forward to slap her hand away. “Don’t! He’s infected.”
Around us the room
became unnaturally still as the gunshot echoes faded. The only sound was a painful wheeze from Roger, the wounded agent.
“I’m… sorry, ma’am,” he said, struggling to get the words out.
The First Lady looked at me. “Help him, for God’s sake!”
I stepped between her and Roger, then squatted down and offered him my left hand. He closed his hand around it with ferocious desperation as if it was a lifeline that could pull him up from hell. “Listen to me,” I said gently. “Your name’s Roger?”
“Agent… Roger Jefferson.”
“I’m Joe Ledger. Listen, Roger… there’s been an outbreak. A plague. You understand? From the Freedom Bell.”
He nodded. His breathing was getting worse.
“That’s what happened to your men. One or more of them must have been exposed. It… changes people.”
He nodded again. “I… saw. Barney… Linus… all of them. God…”
“I’m sorry, man.”
“Is… is she…?” He turned his head, looking for the First Lady, but I don’t think he could see her anymore.
The First Lady put a hand on my shoulder and leaned over. “Roger. I’m right here.”
“Are… are you… all…?”
“I’m fine, Roger. You didn’t let them get me.”
Roger smiled and his eyes drifted shut, but his grip was still strong. He whispered something that I had to bend close to hear.
“Cap’n,” warned Top.
Roger said, “I… saw how it works.” Blood seeped from the corners of his mouth. “You do… what you have to do.”
“I will,” I promised. “Rest easy, Roger. You saved the First Lady.”
With his last strength he gave me a trembling smile. “All… part of the job.” He tried to laugh but there was not enough left of him and he settled back.
“Get her out of here,” I said to Top. “Do it now.”
“What do you mean?” she protested as Top closed in. “We can’t just leave him here.”
“Ma’am,” Top said, “you saw what happens. Let the captain do what he has to do. It’s the best thing… it’s best for Roger.”
“Top… get her out now!”
The First Lady straightened her back and though tears flowed down her face she walked away with great dignity. I hadn’t voted for her husband, but I sure as hell admired her.
When they were out of the room I disengaged my hand from Roger’s slack grip. I reached over and took a cushion off the nearest chair and put it over his face. I was counting seconds. I felt the first twitch in less than forty seconds since his last breath and I put the barrel of my gun against the pad and fired. Maybe it was because the pad would muffle the shot and make it easier for the First Lady, or maybe it was because it would cover his face and grant him a slice of dignity. Or maybe it was that I couldn’t bear to see another good man become one of those things. Probably all three.
I stood up and looked at Skip. The young sailor wouldn’t meet my eyes. He just turned away and I followed him out of the cubicle and into the next room. The First Lady was sitting on a leather office chair and Top had brought her a cup of water from a nearby cooler. She sipped it and when she saw me she just stared at me, her expression un-readable.
The office was big and looked to be the graphic arts department for the center, with worktables, advertising sketches pinned to the walls, and machines for printing posters. Two offices led off from the main room, both with doors that stood ajar. I had just opened my mouth to order Skip to check them out when two figures stepped out of the shadows of the left-hand office. They came in quick and they had guns in their hands.
Ollie Brown and Special Agent Michael O’Brien.
Chapter One Hundred Seventeen
Grace / The Bell Chamber / Saturday, July 4; 12:13 P.M.
“MAJOR… WATCH!” BUNNY yelled, and Grace whirled just as the anchorwoman for Channels 6 News leaped at her from the podium. The anchor’s skin was wax-white and her eyes as round and empty as silver dollars, but she growled with hunger as she lunged for Grace’s throat.
“Bloody hell!” Grace shot the woman twice in the face. Blood splattered the faces of the three snarling figures that were mounting the steps behind her.
“What the hell are you doing?” screamed Mrs. Collins, and she made a grab for Grace’s gun arm and succeeded in pulling it down so that the next round chopped a divot out of the marble floor and ricocheted up to punch a red hole through the thigh of the Canadian ambassador. The ambassador dropped with a shriek of pain and instantly two of the walkers leaped from the podium and pounced on him. Grace wrestled with the Vice President’s wife, who had a surprising amount of wiry strength and in the end she had to let go with her left hand and chop Mrs. Collins on the side of the neck. It dropped the woman to her knees and Grace tore her gun arm free just as the third walker dove at her. Grace put two rounds in him and the corpse skidded to a stop inches from Mrs. Collins.
IT WAS COMPLETE pandemonium in the Bell Chamber as the infected who had lapsed into comas instantly snapped awake as walkers and attacked the crowd. Even with the warnings Grace, Brierly, and Rudy had given them about the nature of the infection the fifteen remaining Secret Service agents faltered, hesitating, unable to open fire on citizens, congressmen, and dignitaries.
Bunny muscled one dazed agent out of the way just as a journalist from the Daily News was about to grab him. The hulking sergeant snaked out a hand and caught the walker by the throat, buried his borrowed polymer pistol against the creature’s head and fired. He flung the corpse into the path of a second walker and killed that one, but then six of them came at him in a bunch and he fell back, dragging the startled agent with him.
“Fire, goddamn it!” Bunny yelled, and the agent seemed to snap out of his stupor. They found a clear patch of floor and the pair of them made their stand, opening up with both guns. Bunny had four shots left and used them all; the agent wasted an entire clip to bring down just one walker.
That left two from the pack still on their feet. Bunny stepped in and kicked the lead one in the stomach and when it doubled over he arched up and then brought his balled fist down as hard as he could on the back of the exposed skull. The walker immediately went into a boneless sprawl; but his companion just kept coming. He was three steps out when a shot snapped his head back. Bunny turned to see the agent, reloaded now, holding his smoking pistol in a two-hand grip.
BEHIND THEM RUDY, holding a flagpole, stood his ground between a huddled group of Girl Scouts and a walker in a Hawaiian shirt with toucans on it. The walker took a step forward but then ducked back away from the swing of the pole. Rudy frowned. He’d seen all of the tapes of the DMS encounters with the walkers, and he’d noted that they never flinched, never dodged. They lacked the cognitive powers to do it, and even their unnatural reflexes did not include any defensive reactions. And yet this one dodged once, twice.
And he smiled.
He pointed a crooked finger at the little girls behind Rudy and then he did something else walkers can’t do. He spoke.
“Mine!”
“Dios mio!” breathed Rudy, and the idea of a walker still capable of thought and deliberate action nearly took the heart out of him. But the whimpers of the girls behind him put strength in his hands. He held his ground.
AHMED, BROTHER OF Amirah, lover of Andrea Lester and El Mujahid’s chief agent in the United States, leered at Rudy and the girls. He felt amazing, immensely powerful and more completely alive than ever. The Generation Twelve pathogen burned like wildfire in his veins and when he had come awake moments ago he was overwhelmed by the clarity of focus it bestowed. Even after a life lived in dedication to the teachings of the Prophet he had never before understood so completely. The will of Allah was a white-hot light in his brain.
Consumed by his purpose and bursting with immortal power, he rushed forward to do the will of God. As the flagpole swung at him he caught it with one palm and with the other he grabbed Rudy Sanchez by the throat.
Chapter One Hundred Eighteen
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:14 P.M.
I RAISED MY pistol and put the laser sight on Ollie Brown who had a Glock in his hand though the barrel was pointed down at the floor.
“You fucking bastard,” I said, and slipped my finger inside the trigger guard, but before I could fire a gunshot shattered the air. Ollie gave me a crooked smile and when he opened his mouth blood gushed over his chin. Ollie dropped his pistol and staggered forward and I realized that O’Brien had shot him. The CIA assassin stumbled, dropped to hands and knees, fighting to keep his head raised. He looked up at me, his eyes glazing.
“S… sorry…” he said, though his voice was a gurgle. “I… I…”
And then he collapsed onto the floor.
O’Brien began to raise his gun toward me.
“Drop the weapon!” I snarled. “Do it now!”
“Or what?” he asked, and suddenly his voice was different, no longer the bland American accent he had used before. Now he sounded British. “What will you do? Shoot me?” He laughed. “What do I care?”
“Say the word,” Top murmured from behind me, “and we’ll waste this shitbag.”
“Drop it,” I warned. “Last chance.”
O’Brien closed his eyes for a moment. He was bathed in sweat and his color was bad. He lowered his pistol and then took a sagging sideways step; but his hand snaked out fast as a cobra and caught the doorframe to keep him from falling.
I took a cautious forward step, my pistol rock-steady, the laser sight tattooed on the front of his muscular chest. The agent shook his head as if trying to clear his thoughts, the pistol hung from his hand but he had not dropped it. On the floor I could see Ollie’s fingers open and close slowly. There was a bullet hole in the back of his sports coat from which blood still bubbled sluggishly. I couldn’t have cared less, though. If he was dying, then let him die. Saying that he was sorry didn’t hold much weight for me.
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