General Knight was not an expert. Neither was Jim Poe, or anyone else in the room. The President considered making a call to the Director of the CIA, but rejected the idea. He clawed his hands through his hair, then stared at the ceiling one last time before passing verdict.
“Do it.”
“Mr. President!” Walter Ford began to protest. “We’re talking about violating things like the Geneva Convention. You might even be accused of war crimes…”
Patrick Austin swatted the words away.
“I’m sorry, Walter. Believe me, I don’t like this any more than you do. I don’t like that circumstances have put me in this position, but they have – and I have to make the best decisions I can based on what’s best for the American people.”
“Even if it’s against the law, sir?”
“Yeah, Walt,” the President smiled thinly. “Because the law wasn’t written for the momentous circumstances the world is currently threatened by. And if I don’t do something – what’s left of the world might cease to exist.”
*
The knock at the Oval Office door was polite and almost apologetic. President Austin blinked himself alert. He could barely hold his eyes open.
“Come in.”
Walter Ford entered the room. His demeanor was conciliatory.
“Walt. What’s up?”
“Mr. President, I wanted to talk to you about your black-site decision,” the National Security Advisor began, his tone calm and mollifying. “Not to talk you out of what you have decided,” he added hastily, “but to be sure you fully understand the implications and ramifications.”
“We’ve covered it, Walt. I’ve made up my mind.”
“Yes, sir,” Ford nodded. “But I have an obligation…”
“You’re worried about your own legal liability?” the President’s voice became testy and irritated.
“No. I’m worried about my friend, Pat.”
He slid a letter across the Resolute desk. “As your National Security Advisor, I will back you completely, sir. As your friend, I felt obliged to do all I can to protect you. This is so you fully understand the risks you are taking on behalf of America.”
President Austin picked up the letter and read silently.
Mr. President,
It is my duty as the Attorney General of the United States of America, to advise you against the establishment of a black-site in the U.S. Territory of Guam. I am concerned that the unauthorized holding and interrogation of enemy combatants would be in direct violation of the Geneva Convention and International Human Rights Law. My concern primarily applies to direct violations of Article 3 of the Convention, which provide inalienable protections and due process guarantees for every enemy combatant captured by any nation.
If it were to be discovered publicly that you ordered the establishment of a black-site within the territorial borders of American soil, the ramifications would be endless. It has been the goal of each American President to extend our basic principles of justice, due process, and equality before the law to not only our citizens but to all enemy combatants captured by our armed forces and imprisoned. Further, I have been advised by the Director of the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs that you may be subjected to harsh international criticism, an internal investigation, and compelled to answer not only before an International Human Rights Court but numerous hearings before select Senate and House of Representatives Committees.
I, on behalf of the DOJ, therefore advise against the decision to establish a black site in Guam and encourage you to abandon contemplation of this action. We are in trying times, Mr. President, and any action you take will ultimately become part of our nation’s vibrant tapestry. It is therefore vital that you take appropriate actions to remain on the right side of history, not only for our nation, but also the world.
Respectfully Submitted,
Margaret Yawl
U.S. Attorney General
President Austin laid the letter down on the desk. His face became unaccountably sad. He smiled, but it was watery and emotional.
“Thank you, Walt,” Patrick Austin said softly. “I appreciate what you’ve done, and I value your friendship. But if America is going to survive the apocalypse, I will have to learn to live with my conscience… and my nightmares.”
BADU USLAND
TORRES STRAIT
AUSTRALIA
“Have you ever seen anything like it, sir?”
Commander Nigel Gough lowered his binoculars and shook his head. “XO, I don’t think anything like this has ever happened before. I’ve been in the Navy for over twenty years and I’ve never witnessed a vaster fleet of ships – not even in times of war.”
The two Australian naval officers were standing on the bridge wing of HMAS Brisbane, a Royal Australian Navy DDG that was based on the Navantia designed F100 frigate.
The ship was stationed in the shallow waters off Badu Island on the edge of the narrow Torres Strait, standing guard like a sentry as the largest naval armada that had ever been assembled sailed past. The massive Chinese fleet covered the eastern horizon, sailing in line ahead formation with a shadowing escort of warships from the American Seventh Fleet.
Because of the narrow navigational passage between the northern tip of Australia and New Guinea, the vast fleet had been forced to organize itself into a long procession. Commander Gough saw aircraft carriers alongside freighter ships, behind a luxury liner and an American cruiser. He shook his head in a slow kind of wonder.
The ocean was calm, the sky achingly blue. A haze that made the massive flotilla seem endless had smudged the eastern horizon.
The crew of the Australian warship who were not on duty lined the starboard side and watched the spectacle in mute awe.
HMAS Brisbane’s XO put his binoculars back to his eyes and once again traversed an ocean that was choked with Chinese warships and freighters. “This is going to change everything, sir. It’s the dawn of a fragile new world.”
Commander Gough grunted. “Tell that to the Kiwis when this armada arrives off the coast of New Zealand,” he said with dark foreboding.
ANDERSON AIR FORCE BASE
GUAM
The moment the wheels of the Grumman C-2 Greyhound touched the tarmac, a fleet of four black SUV’s with darkened windows broke from the cover of a hangar and came racing across the runway at high speed. The transport plane taxied to a remote corner of the airbase and swung broadside. The aircraft’s twin propellers continued to roar at full power.
The vehicles arrived in a column and swept around the rear of the aircraft. The plane’s loading ramp descended and Nathan Power stepped down on to Guam. He was grimy and exhausted after the long flight. He shook hands with a man wearing denim jeans, an open-necked shirt and Aviator sunglasses who climbed out of the lead SUV.
“How many packages?” the man asked, shouting above the bellow of the ancient aircraft’s twin props. He had a hard face and thinning, sandy hair. He did not introduce himself.
“Three,” Power said.
“You staying or going?”
“I’m staying until they talk.”
Twelve heavily armed soldiers appeared out of the shadows of the Greyhound’s cargo hold, formed around the three prisoners. The North Koreans were shirtless and barefooted, their hands cuffed behind their backs and their heads covered with black cloth bags. They tottered blindly down the ramp and were bundled into separate vehicles.
FRANCE
The calamitous news spread quickly through radio stations and television networks right across France: there would be no gallant NATO defense of Western Europe.
The infection had leaped the Rhine River containment line and mankind was on the brink of extinction. The media speculated that a young child had carried the plague across the bridge at Mainz. News bulletins predicted, ominously, that within hours everyone left in Europe would be infected.
France plunged into anarchy.
*
In the town of Thaon-les-Vosges
, Yves Cotillard went to the bedroom and took the gun down from the top shelf of the cupboard. It was an old hunting rifle, wrapped in a blanket and hidden at the back of the shelf behind his wife’s dusty romance novels.
Yves checked the weapon carefully and loaded it. He stuffed extra shells into his pocket and then stepped out into the warm sunshine with the rifle tucked carefully under his arm.
He strolled the three blocks from his little house to the Rue de Lorraine and turned left. The street was choked with traffic and pedestrians running in panic. Yves smiled. He wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or elated. He had always known this day would come.
He strolled past a woman with a child in her arms and an elderly couple who clung to each other, their faces tight with angst and alarm. The news of the approaching plague had been broadcast non-stop by the radio stations. Everyone was running for their lives – only there was nowhere to flee. Yves gave the old couple a neighborly nod.
He reached the pharmacy at last and turned left down a narrow alley. He climbed the back steps two-at-a-time. When he reached the first floor apartment above the florist, he stopped to draw a deep breath and settle his racing heart.
Through the opaque glass in the front door he could see smudged shapes moving around the interior. He pressed his ear to the door and heard a man’s voice, guttural and coarse. Yves grinned with malevolent anticipation.
He put the heel of his foot to the door and lashed out. The door flung back on its hinges. His naked wife screamed. She was pale in the gloomy light; her skin white as alabaster. She had a pair of lace knickers in her hands, and her hair was tousled. She was freshly arisen from her lover’s bed.
Michelle saw Yves standing dark and looming in the doorway and screamed again. A man came like a wounded bull from the bedroom in his underpants. He was unshaven and overweight, his arms and chest covered in dark mat of hair. He had a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He saw Yves in the doorway and threw up his hands to protect himself.
Yves shot the florist in the face. The man’s head seemed to explode in a pink cloud. The corpse fell to the floor, heels beating a nerveless tattoo on the floorboards.
“Yves!” Michelle screamed. Her mouth was wide open, her eyes huge with wild fear. Her body glistened with the sweat of torrid lovemaking. Her legs turned to rubber, and she fell back against a wall.
“For three years I’ve known,” Yves said calmly as he chambered a fresh round. “Every Tuesday and Friday you’ve been coming here and giving yourself to that fat pig. Three years, Michelle!”
His wife began to weep uncontrollably. The sight of her terror and shame and fear distressed Yves. He felt himself choke with emotion. He shot her in the chest. The bullet flung her down to the ground, gasping in pain. She stared up at the ceiling, her eyes wide and astonished. Yves stood over his dying wife and shot her a second time – just to be sure.
Satisfied she was dead, he turned the rifle on himself. He could taste the coating of gun oil as he wrapped the barrel around his lips…
*
Brigitte Mératt did not have time for the apocalypse.
She had shopping to do, and a dinner party that night to cater. The last thing she needed was a traffic jam on the outskirts of Chartres.
She changed radio stations, searching for music. Every channel was broadcasting an urgent plague alert. In frustration, she shut the radio off and parked the car on the hard shoulder of the road. She would walk to the damned market instead. It was only two blocks away.
She had environmentally friendly cloth shopping bags in the trunk of the Citroën. She got out of the car, but the moment she turned her back to close the driver’s door a man in a dark jacket knocked her off her feet and bludgeoned her on the back of the head. Brigitte fell to her knees with a groan of pain and fright. She landed on the gravel. She could feel wet warm blood running through her hair. Her eyes were unfocussed; her ears ringing. Rough hands dragged her away from the car. Brigitte was in a dazed delirium of pain. The man who had attacked her snatched the car keys out of her nerveless hand and flung himself inside the vehicle. Brigitte heard the car’s engine roar and then a flail of loose stones and gravel struck her as the Citroën skidded back onto the road.
Brigitte staggered to her feet. She clamped a hand over the wound above her ear. She could feel blood trickling through her fingers, dripping onto her blouse. She felt herself sway giddily. She blinked her eyes, still numb with shock. She felt too stunned, too frightened to move. People were running from nearby houses. She heard glass windows breaking. She turned in a slow circle. There was a plume of smoke in the distance, coming from the direction of the open-air vegetable market. It looked like a house was on fire. She staggered in that direction, walking drunkenly along the side of the road. Cars screamed by. Then a truck blew past her and swerved through a fence, straight into the side of a house. The sound of the collision was deafening; an explosion of noise and screeching brakes and screams.
A young couple in a Fiat braked to a sudden halt in the middle of the road and flung themselves from the car. They ran straight past Brigitte knocking her over. The girl spun in a pirouette and shouted something that Brigitte didn’t understand. The girl’s face was bloodless white. Her boyfriend seized her by the arm, and they disappeared behind the cloud of dust thrown up by the crashed truck.
Brigitte’s arm ran red with blood still pouring from her head wound. She felt a sudden wave of nausea. She took a few more tottering steps before a car loomed through the veil of smoke and ran her down.
The impact flung Brigitte over the hood, and momentum slammed her head through the windshield.
*
The barricade on the Champs-Elysées in Paris had been started by rioters to prevent police from attacking the rampaging crowds with water cannons and armored police vehicles. Trash cans, pieces of furniture, steel railings, flags – everything the rioters could find was thrown across the road, then doused in gasoline.
Benoit Lebrun stepped up to the mound of rubbish, urged on by the chanting rabble that choked the wide boulevard.
“Death to the Police!” they cheered.
Lebrun turned and leered at the crowd, then punched his fist in the air.
“Death to the world!” he cried out. He threw a cigarette lighter on to the rubble. The barricade caught alight with a ‘whoosh’ and a searing wave of heat washed over the front ranks of the crowd. Thick black choking billows of smoke boiled in the overcast sky.
The crowd cheered their defiance – and then turned and ran riot through Paris’ streets.
They were like a pack of wild dogs, wielding iron bars and knives. Young women were dragged into narrow alleys and raped by street gangs. Other women were so insensibly drunk they put up no resistance. Lebrun found a pretty girl passed out on a park bench. Her blouse hung open, the buttons torn off. The woman’s hair was matted with dried vomit. Lebrun rucked the girl’s short skirt up around her hips and splayed her legs apart. Still she did not move or wake.
Two men came from behind a bush. They had bottles in their hands. They saw the girl on the bench and then saw Benoit Lebrun standing over her. One of the men leered lecherously and smashed the top of the bottle he was carrying, pointing the jagged edge of glass at Lebrun’s guts.
“Leave the bitch for us, or you’ll die,” one of the men sneered. His partner was a huge, hulking figure with tattoos on his arms and a wild untamed beard.
Lebrun backed away. He could hear sirens in the distance, but they were coming no closer. He glanced over his shoulder. People were running in all directions, screaming, shouting, wild with panic and an insane kind of frenzy. They were making inhuman, animalistic sounds as they wreaked violence and damage. The retort of sudden gunfire punctuated the air and made Lebrun flinch.
The man wielding the broken bottle like a knife stood over the girl and unzipped his jeans. Lebrun turned away and merged into the haze. Smoke from the burning barricade had blanketed the surrounding streets in choking clouds.
The swarming figures became grotesque apparitions. Lebrun tripped over a body lying on the sidewalk. It was an old man. His head had been crushed. On the ground beside the body was a blood-caked broken brick.
Lebrun realized then that the police were not coming. The authorities had surrendered Paris. Law and order had been abandoned. The capital was a place for lawless madness.
Like everyone at some stage in their lives, Benoit Lebrun had pondered the question, “What would you do if you only had six hours to live?”
He couldn’t remember how he had answered the hypothetical. But now the question was very real. The plague was sweeping through France, annihilating the population. Soon it would reach Paris and he too would die. It was only a matter of time – and how he chose to spend the few precious hours left to him.
He clenched his fists, armed with sudden resolve, and picked up the broken house brick in the gutter.
Stalking his prey, using the smoke and the bushes for cover, he circled back around to the park bench. The man who had threatened him with the bottle had his jeans down around his knees. The drunk girl lay spread beneath his weight, while the tattooed accomplice stared on, watching with hungry wanting eyes. Lebrun hit the standing man hard over the back of the head with the brick and saw him fall. He snatched up the broken bottle and used it to cut the man’s throat.
The man on the park bench had his eyes closed, his face screwed up in a moment of rapture. Lebrun stabbed him in the back, driving the jagged glass between his shoulder blades. He dragged the bleeding man off the prostrate girl and kicked him hard between the legs.
The half-naked girl groaned dully. Benoit Lebrun picked her up like a sack of potatoes and flung her limp unresisting weight over his shoulder. There were apartments not far away. One of them, he was sure, would be abandoned. He would spend his last hours fulfilling every depraved perverted fantasy he had ever harbored, until the girl was no longer useful to him, or until another, prettier one, could be seized.
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 61
