“So we drive without headlights,” she suggested.
He laughed. “Sure. Then we blow out a tire on something we can’t see. Or run into a tree trunk that fell across the road. One accident like that, and we’re walking to Florida.”
Eventually, she agreed to go to sleep. Whitman took the first watch.
Not that there was anything to watch. Outside the van, the moonless night was just a flat plane of black, as if someone had spray-painted over their windows. He forced himself to stay awake, punching himself hard in the thigh at one point just to clear his head.
At some point, he realized he was being watched.
He turned around and saw Bob’s eyes, just two smudges of pale gray in the unrelieved blackness.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
The boy blinked at him.
“I’m sorry you got scared back there when those bikers came at us,” he told the kid. He didn’t know what else to say. “I didn’t want to scare you.”
“My mom said you would keep me safe.”
It was the first thing Bob had said to Whitman, other than to give his name.
“She said to obey you.”
“Who, me specifically?” Whitman asked.
“She said they would send a man. Then she just cried.”
Jesus, Whitman thought. He imagined the scene. The mother, probably on the far side of a pane of glass, looking at her child — her potentially infected child. How could she give him up?
But of course they wouldn’t have given her a choice. They would’ve taken the boy away the second they realized he was a positive. And who knew? Maybe she had looked at the tattoo on little Bob’s hand and maybe — maybe she hadn’t put up much of a fight.
Everyone knew the risk. Everyone knew the rules.
Whitman tried to keep Bob talking. It would help pass the time, help keep him awake. He asked the boy how he’d become positive, but Bob didn’t seem to understand. So instead he tried to talk about the future.
“You know where I’m taking you?”
The boy just blinked.
“It’s a camp. Not exactly like a summer camp, though. There’s no archery or making lanyards or anything, but —”
“I don’t know what a summer camp is,” Bob said.
Oh. Of course he didn’t. Bob was maybe ten years old. The Crisis began ten years ago. There hadn’t been summer camps in a long time.
“A camp. I’ll be safe there,” Bob said, because his mom had told him so, no doubt.
“That’s right. You’ll be safe from zombies and . . . and bikers. They’ll feed you and make sure you don’t get sick.”
Which was about all Whitman could promise.
“You like baseball?” he asked, to change the subject.
Bob blinked. Maybe they didn’t have baseball in Atlanta anymore, either.
After a couple hours, Whitman woke Grace up so she could take a watch. When he opened his eyes again, it was dawn and pink light smeared across the roof of the van.
“Anything to report?” he asked Grace.
“I thought maybe I heard engines, once,” she told him. “Except I’m not sure. Maybe it was just animals or something, growling in the trees.”
Whitman put the van in gear and moved out.
• • • •
“It’s the business of this committee to hear a lot of reports,” one of the senators said. Whitman didn’t even look to see which one. He was watching his lawyer, the one they’d assigned to his case. He realized he’d never even caught the man’s name.
The lawyer’s eyes were glazed over, and his mouth was open in a rictus of horror. Whitman could only wonder what he saw, what moment of the Crisis he was reliving.
“What we hear disturbs us,” another senator said. “Director Philips presented the most optimistic data we’ve heard in a while. He didn’t mention the outbreaks of cholera and hantavirus in the cities of the Southwest. He didn’t say anything about the nutritional deficiencies we see — pellagra, beriberi, even childhood blindness.”
“You can hardly blame us for that,” Philips said.
The senator wasn’t done, however. “We were very alarmed to hear about conditions inside the so-called hospital camps. The camps are beyond overcrowded. Positives are herded inside and all but forgotten. They are given some food and clothing, yes —”
“Now, now,” the white-haired senator broke in. “We’re talking about people who might be zombies, here. The resources we have should always go first to healthy people. People who can live productive lives.”
“Nevertheless. Medical care is non-existent in the camps. The guards refuse to even touch the inmates. Riots and violent altercations kill more of them than zombie outbreaks ever could.”
Whitman turned and looked at the podium. The senator who had been talking had flecks of spittle on his lips, and his eyes burned with outrage.
“Mr. Whitman, you speak of blame. We’re more interested in justice. You don’t think the people of America — the people we represent — deserve better than this? You don’t think they have a right to know who was responsible for the Crisis?”
He might have answered, if he wasn’t interrupted by a sudden strangling noise.
Whitman swiveled around to see the lawyer jerk spasmodically upright in his chair. At first he thought the man was having a seizure. A clear, lucid light came into his eyes, though, and he stood up, his chair squeaking across the floor.
“Senator,” he said. “Senator, I — I object to this line of . . . of questioning,” he announced. “You can’t suggest that my clients were personally . . . personally . . .”
Everyone waited. Time stretched out, but the lawyer didn’t come up with any more words.
Eventually, he sat back down.
“Director Philips was responsible for all CDC operations when the first zombies were discovered. It was his set of recommendations,” the senator went on, “presented to the President in the first days of the Crisis, that led to the formation of the hospital camps, those prisons for the sick. That led to hundreds of thousands of healthy people dying because he did not prepare us for just how quickly the prion infection would spread.”
The white-haired senator cleared his throat and leaned forward. “On the other hand, it was Mr. Whitman who recommended the partition of the cities. Who suggested that we wall off our urban areas, stranding millions of Americans out in the wilderness.”
“Saving millions more,” Whitman said, but it came out as barely a whisper.
“The position of this committee is that the two of you are responsible for the incredible suffering and hardship that ensued from your recommendations. We would like to bring official charges today that will give the American people some peace of mind, some relief. Some closure.”
The five of them, the senators, stared down at them from the podium. They looked so damned indignant. So sanctimonious. Whitman wanted to shout imprecations in their faces.
It was Philips who broke the silence, however.
“If I may,” he said, weakly. Then he stood up and said it again, nearly shouting. “If I may!”
“Go ahead, Director,” the too-young senator said.
“I have just one point to make in defense,” he told them.
Whitman wondered why he bothered.
“Just one point,” Philips said again. He took a deep breath. Then he looked down at the table in front of him and said, “It was Mr. Whitman who came up with the plus sign. He was the one who created the idea of positives.”
Whitman was too shocked to even laugh.
• • • •
The sun beat down on a road surface almost as pristine as the one he remembered from his youth — a stretch of concrete and asphalt wide and clear like a manmade river, pointed right in the direction he wanted to go. Say what you like about the world before the Crisis, they’d built well; they’d built to last. He didn’t see a single abandoned car or significant pothole for miles.
It couldn’t
last.
It wasn’t anything he saw that warned him, it was something he felt. A kind of rumbling in his stomach, a little like hunger, a little like nausea. Soon, he could hear it, but he told himself it was the engine of the van making that noise.
Right up until he couldn’t deny it. Until he saw the motorcycles in his mirrors.
“They’re — they’re coming for us again,” Grace said, in a whisper. She swiveled around in her seat, her arms everywhere, one elbow hitting him in the side of his head as she turned to look through the rear window.
He glanced back and saw Bob looking back at him. Just watching him. I’m supposed to keep you safe, he thought. Your mom told you I would.
The bikes roared as they surged down the road straight toward the van. Now that he had a chance to actually look at them, he saw they were ragged junk. Pieces of dozens of different bikes strapped together, mismatched components hammered and beaten until they joined up. Only the leader’s had a headlight, and it was broken. Many of them didn’t even have mudguards.
Crazy. You had to be crazy to ride a bike like that. Which might explain how they dressed — like the leader, with antlers sewn on his sleeves like armor. One of the others had a pair of baby dolls hanging around his neck, their long blond hair tied together behind him. What was that even supposed to mean?
They came up fast, black smoke belching from their exhaust pipes. Babydolls had a sledgehammer that he brandished over his head. Antlers twisted his throttle and came racing ahead of the pack. He came up even with Whitman, though a full lane away. Whitman supposed he didn’t want to get shot.
Antlers gestured with one hand, telling Whitman to pull over.
Not much chance of that. Whitman shouted for Grace to get the shotgun. Then he veered toward Antlers, thinking maybe he would get lucky and knock the biker off the road. No dice — Antlers just swerved away, a big shit-eating grin all over his face.
That was when Babydolls attacked. Whitman had been too focused on the leader to see the other bike coming up on the passenger side. Babydolls smacked the side of the van with his hammer and the whole frame rang like a bell. Grace screamed, but she had the shotgun off the dashboard, cradled in her hands.
Whitman craned around trying to see what was going to happen next. Babydolls had his head down, below the level of their windows, but Whitman could just see the curve of his back. “Shoot him,” he told Grace, pointing through her window. “Don’t let him get any closer.”
She raised the gun, but Whitman grabbed the barrel. “Roll down your window first,” he told her.
Meanwhile, Antlers took a long knife off his belt. He veered in toward the van, the tip of his weapon pointed not at Whitman’s broken window but at the left front tire. Whitman wanted to swear. If he slashed the tire, at this speed, the van would spin out and probably roll over half a dozen times before it came to a stop.
He waited until Antlers got close, until he could almost have reached out his window and grabbed the bastard’s arm. Antlers lifted his knife and started to bring it down.
Two things happened at once. Grace fired her shotgun, screaming into the noise. Whitman twisted his wheel hard over to the left.
The van briefly went up on two wheels. There was a screeching sound as the deer antlers bit into the van’s paint job. Whitman expected the pirate leader to go flying, to fall off his bike, but apparently he was too skilled for that — instead he recovered, leaning deep into a turn and spinning around until he was riding the other way. When the van’s four wheels touched the pavement again, Whitman glanced over to his right and saw Babydolls receding, slowing down and falling back. There was blood on his face, but he was smiling, blinking one eye to keep it clear.
“I got him,” Grace said, whooping. “I got him!”
Except he was still alive, and still in control of his bike. Whitman expected the two of them to catch up and make another run any second now.
Except — they didn’t. They fell back and rejoined their pack. Kept pace with the van but didn’t try to catch up to it, just stayed a set distance behind. Out of range of firearms.
Antlers still had that shit-eating grin.
“Seatbelts,” Whitman said. “Get your seatbelts on!” Then he poured on the speed, potholes be damned.
• • • •
They took Philips and Whitman to a waiting room, a pleasant little chamber just off the Senate floor. There was a fridge full of cold water in plastic bottles and a basket full of cookies in individual foil wrappers. After the MREs he’d been eating for the last few years, Whitman just stared at the little snacks, amazed such things still existed. He had the urge to fill his pockets with them. Then he looked back and saw his personal guard standing there, unsmiling. Waiting to shoot him if he went symptomatic. Always watching.
Philips, on the other hand, wouldn’t look at him. The Director curled up in a padded chair, almost in a fetal position. He covered his scarred face with one hand as if he expected Whitman to hit him.
Well, that would probably feel pretty good, honestly. Whitman wasn’t a violent man by nature, but the years since the Crisis had required him to gain some skill in that regard. He could probably break the Director’s jaw before the soldier pulled them apart.
He chuckled to himself.
“I’m sorry,” Philips said. “I’m so sorry.”
“What, for selling me out back there?” Whitman asked. He considered what to say next. What he came up with surprised him a little. “Don’t worry about it.”
Philips uncurled a little. “I’m —”
“They’ll probably be happy with one sacrifice,” Whitman said. He tore open a cookie and took a bite. Oatmeal raisin. Never his favorite, but it was free. “Crucify me. Hold me up as an example. What do you think, a quick firing squad, or will they drag me through New York in chains, first?” He laughed. “Maybe it’ll make some people feel better. That’s what we swore to do, right? As medical professionals? Relieve suffering.”
Philips shook his head. “I have to say — you’re being awfully good about this.”
“I’m exhausted.”
Philips licked his lips. “I’m so sorry . . .”
“I feel sorry for you.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Because if they do just take me, and leave you alive — you’re the one who has to keep fighting. You know the funny thing about the end of the world?”
“I . . . no,” Philips said.
“There is no such thing. The world doesn’t end. There’s always more work to be done, more digging out the rubble. More fucked-up shit to live through. Well,” he said, taking a deep breath, “I’m done. Let me have my ending. Let me have some peace, for a change.”
The senators kept them waiting for a good half hour. Plenty of time to decide questions of life and death, these days.
• • • •
“What the hell are they doing back there?” Whitman asked. In his rearview, the bikers had fallen well back, barely increasing their speed at all as the van outpaced them.
He needed to concentrate on the road. One bad patch of asphalt, and this chase could end very, very badly. “Grace,” he said, “keep an eye on them. I need to watch —”
“Mr. Whitman?” Bob asked from the backseat.
“Not now, Bob,” he said, a little louder, a little harsher than he’d meant to. The road ahead looked well-maintained, but he knew from long experience that —
“Mr. Whitman,” Bob said again.
Had he seen it coming? It didn’t matter.
Up ahead, a long curving ramp cut away from the highway. Whitman didn’t bother looking at it, being far too busy looking for road obstructions he might have to negotiate. So he didn’t see the truck coming up the ramp at high speed.
It was a semi rig, a big rusting hulk of a vehicle eleven feet high with six bald tires that smoked as they bit into the asphalt. Mounted across its grille was a snowplow blade dented and bent from repeated collisions.
It slamm
ed into the front of the van at thirty miles an hour. If it had hit them a split second later it would have sliced right through the passenger compartment, killing all of them instantly. Instead it just pancaked the van’s engine, blew out both front tires, and turned the windshield into a storm of flying glass daggers.
Whitman flew forward, the shoulder strap of his seat belt cutting deep into his armpit, crushing his chest so he couldn’t breathe. He felt like he’d been picked up and dropped from a height, like he was dangling from his belt as a planet of metal and glass and plastic came rushing toward him. His head bounced off the steering wheel, and a high-pitched scream roared through his head. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel his own body.
For a long time he could hear nothing, see nothing. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think . . . little by little the world came back to him.
The first thing he heard was Bob screaming behind him.
It shook him up. Woke him, a little. He looked around, trying to figure out where he was. Why he hurt so much.
Straight ahead, through the place where the windshield used to be, he saw the tall curving shape of the snowplow, now thoroughly embedded in what remained of the van. Beyond that he could see the cab of the semi rig. Its windshield was gone, too, though it hadn’t shattered as cleanly as his. The driver of the rig hung half in, half out of that frosted plane of glass. Blood poured out of him. He was very clearly dead.
Whitman turned, looking for Grace, but he couldn’t see her. The impact had torn off the passenger side door, and he saw the road surface beyond, littered with glass and twists of broken metal. He couldn’t see her or any part of her.
Bob was still screaming.
He wrestled with his seat belt. Somehow got it loose. He pushed open his door and wriggled out of the wreckage, dropped to his feet on the road. He pulled open the side door and saw Bob unhurt but very upset, staring at him with wide eyes.
Bob stopped screaming. Which allowed Whitman to hear something else.
Motorcycle engines, coming closer.
• • • •
“Mr. Whitman, they’d like to see you now,” the page said. She was still smiling.
The End Has Come Page 16
