End Zone

by D C Alden

  ‘Ma’am, I need a definitive order,’ Clark pressed.

  The President turned to Schultz. ‘Thoughts, Charlie?’

  The Admiral spread his hands. ‘As I said before, Madam President, neither option is guaranteed to tell us what we need to know. Sure, the guys could get the pliers out and start pulling nails, but experience tells us that prisoners subjected to acute pain will say just about anything to make it stop.’

  ‘So we go with the chemical option?’

  ‘It does give us more control,’ Schultz advised.

  ’Madam President, we may not that have long,’ Clark insisted. ‘The Independence is still some way from the fleet and it could take time before assets are in place to carry out a chemical interrogation. In the meantime this Marion person could be anywhere in the world, deploying the infection as we speak.’

  Coffman gave her Secretary of Defence a long, hard look. ‘And if we get it wrong, Drew? If we shout Paris, and Moscow goes to hell, what then? Do we shrug our shoulders and say, sorry, guys, our bad?’

  ‘We have to do something!’ Clark blurted. ‘It could be New York next! Or right here, in DC!’

  Coffman glared at her. ‘Drew, we’ve just dropped fuel-air explosives on an American city. Thousands of infected people are dead, and thousands more will probably die, many of them unaffected by the virus. That will trouble my conscience for the rest of my life,’ she lied, ’so don’t think for one moment that I’m not aware of my responsibilities here.’

  ‘Can’t we do both?’ Grady piped up. ‘Couldn’t they rough the prisoner up a little first, get him to talk?’

  Coffman’s eyes flicked to Schultz. She’d stalled long enough. ‘It can’t hurt, right Charlie?’

  Schultz shrugged. He knew it too. ‘It’s risky, but what the hell. We might get lucky.’

  Coffman dragged the moment out a little longer before nodding her head. ‘Send word to the Task Force commander. Tell him the gloves are off.’

  Clark got up and moved to the back of the aircraft. Coffman locked eyes with Charlie, with Karen Baranski. They’d done everything possible to delay Philip’s interrogation without raising suspicion, but now events were out of their control. There was a very real possibility that Bob’s people would be stopped, and if that happened, if they talked, Coffman’s presidency would be over. And quite possibly her life.

  Next to her, Erik was on his phone, scrolling through a Twitter feed that was jammed with videos from Lubbock, uploaded before the plug was pulled and the city went dark. There was no sound, but that was probably for the best. Much of what Erik was looking at was very graphic, but that didn’t stop him from playing and rewinding constantly. Her Chief of Staff was troubled, that much was obvious. It wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on him, discreetly of course.

  She’d speak to Bob about it as soon as they arrived at Snowcat.

  ‘Where the fuck is everybody?’

  Leon had asked the question they all wanted an answer to. They were a mile south of the mall, driving steadily through the urban sprawl of south Lubbock. Felipe had pushed the freeway option, taking them south-west and away from the city. Leon had backed him, but Ray had talked them out of it. Did any of them want to be stuck on an elevated section of the freeway with the crazies on the loose? The freeway option was quickly abandoned. Now they were cruising through unlit suburban streets, and apart from the absence of electrical light, things looked pretty normal. There were cars parked on the street and in people’s driveways. Ray saw a few curtains twitch as they passed. Behind them, the sky pulsed with white flashes, and heavy concussions rolled across the suburbs. The centre of Lubbock was being levelled. Ray wondered when the bombs would start raining on the suburbs.

  ‘Where’re the cops? The National Guard?’

  ‘Fucking place is a ghost town,’ Leon muttered. ‘Leaving the poor folk to their fate. Motherfuckers.’

  ‘There’s probably a cordon somewhere,’ Ray told them, though he didn’t feel too hopeful. Everything to the south was cloaked in darkness for as far as the eye could see. Ray heard the same emergency message playing on the radio as Leon scrolled through the channels. People were being instructed to seek shelter, to stay in their homes and to lock the doors. They should’ve added, don’t make a sound.

  Brian drove with the lights off at less than twenty miles per hour. The streets around them were narrower now, the homes more densely packed, the cars a little older. Ray looked out over the cab; suburbia appeared to stretch for miles —

  He rapped an urgent knuckle on the roof. The vehicle jerked to a stop. Kyle and Felipe stood up and leaned on the cab roof alongside Ray. There were people ahead, moving soundlessly across the intersection, more people crossing the intersection beyond that one. They moved in that strange way, their legs and arms thrown awkwardly, but they made no sound other than the collective shuffle of their feet and clothing. The numbers were difficult to estimate but Ray assumed there were at least several thousand people moving east to west through the southern suburbs of Lubbock.

  Distant shouting carried on the night air. He heard glass breaking and several screams. New victims, Ray assumed, and then the relative silence returned, the crowd continuing their strange march west.

  ‘Let’s get the fuck outta here,’ he heard Leon whisper.

  No one argued. Ray held on tight as Brian swung the vehicle around. Ray took a squat and whispered through the cab window. ‘What now?’

  ‘We head east,’ Leon told him, pointing through the windshield.

  Brian shook his head. ‘Not advisable. There’s a lot of new construction out there, a lot of new roads that lead to nowhere. If we get jammed up we might not be able to get out.’

  ‘Well, we can’t go north, and those things are to the south and west of us, so what d’you suggest, college boy?’

  Brian stopped the vehicle and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘I say we keep that group in sight. We stay north, drive parallel until we get ahead of them, then cut south, take Route Eighty-Two all the way to Brownfield. I’ve got a cousin there, a cop. He’ll know what to do.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ Ray said. He couldn’t wait to get out of the city.

  ‘I can’t go.’ It was Felipe. He was crouched down next to Ray, listening to the conversation. ‘I got family in Melonie Park, a wife and son. I was gonna bail out as soon we got close. I can’t leave them.’

  Explosions rumbled in the distance. There was no time for arguments or persuasion.

  ‘I understand,’ Ray said. He reached for Felipe’s hand. ‘Thanks for everything. I doubt we would’ve made it without you.’

  ‘If you’re getting out, git,’ Leon snapped through the hatch.

  ‘Good luck,’ Felipe whispered, and then he dropped over the side of the truck and scuttled into the shadows between two houses. Ray watched him go, admiring the man’s bravery and hoping he’d make it.

  Brian dropped the pickup into gear and headed north for a couple of blocks, before turning west. Ray leaned against the cab, his arms wrapped tightly around him. It was getting colder, and next to him, Kyle shivered too. After a few minutes, the kid pointed silently past Ray.

  The reporter turned his head, saw the black mass of infected marching through the suburbs a couple of hundred yards to their south. Brian’s pickup was blue or maybe black, Ray couldn’t tell, but with the lights off they were about as stealthy as they could get.

  Ray spoke to Brian through the window. ‘We may not want to get too close,’ he advised. ‘If those planes come back we could be in the firing line.’

  Leon stared up through the windshield into the night sky. ‘He’s right. Go north for another block or two.’

  Brian kept his eyes on the road ahead, his hands resting on the wheel. The kid was calm beyond his years. ‘I’m taking Frankford Avenue north until we hit Sixty-Sixth street, then we’ll head west. That should put us on Route Eighty-Two in less than fifteen minutes, if we’re lucky.’

  ‘Fucking-A,’ Leon s
aid, sitting a little straighter. ‘Sooner we get out of this rat’s maze the better.’

  ‘Hey Leon, any chance we could switch seats for a while? Me and the kid are freezing back here.’

  Leon glared in the darkness. ‘Get used to it. I ain’t moving.’

  ‘Appreciate it,’ Ray snipped.

  The wind whipped across the back of the pickup as it increased speed. Ray saw a road sign in the opposite direction and saw they were on Route 82, heading south west. Kyle scootched next to him, his arms folded tightly across his chest. Body warmth was about the best they could do right now. Neither of them spoke, the evening’s events still fresh in their minds. Ray was already formulating the outline of a narrative, imagining the headline. Or a book cover.

  The Life and Death of Lubbock, Texas. Not a bad title —

  The pickup shuddered violently, tyres screeching as it slewed to a stop.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Move! Go, goddammit!’

  It was Leon this time, screaming at Brian. The engine roared and rubber squealed. Ray was thrown against the side panel as the vehicle swung around violently and headed back towards Lubbock. He glimpsed bloodied, infected faces. A forest of hands reached for the tailgate, some slipping off the metal, others gripping hard. The pickup swerved dangerously left and right, and the hands disappeared. Brian kept driving, doing forty, maybe fifty miles an hour.

  ‘Slow down!’ Ray shouted through the hatch.

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Leon barked.

  After a couple of hundred yards or so the vehicle decelerated and turned left off the Eighty-Two. They were on a side road now, wide and quiet, and Ray watched the houses thin out, the outer suburbs giving way to scrubland and dry pasture. Ray felt a little safer knowing that they were finally out of the city. Before long they would be in Brownfield, where they could get warm and find out what the hell was going on. Ray’s priority was to get back to Washington. Lubbock was a dead end. Literally.

  The stars were bright overhead, and the temperature felt like it had dropped another degree or two. Then the pickup slowed and turned left. The smooth asphalt had been replaced by a dirt road.

  Ray looked over the side. The road stretched into the distance towards a dark tree line, the fields either side of them flat, empty and endless. He settled back against the cab. The sky above Lubbock glowed orange. Kyle leaned into the window.

  ‘What gives with the dirt road?’

  Ray heard Leon’s voice in the darkness.

  ‘There was a whole bunch of them motherfuckers on Eighty-Two, hundreds of ‘em. They were just standing across the highway, blocking it. We nearly drove into them. College boy got us out of trouble.’

  ‘Good work, Brian,’ Ray said over his shoulder.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Ray made a promise to himself there and then; if they got out of this alive, he’d help the kid through college, give him the financial support he deserved. It was the least he could do.

  ‘We’re heading cross-country,’ Brian explained. ‘Hopefully we can avoid any more trouble and approach Brownfield from the west. I’m guessing another hour, tops.’

  Ray’s stomach cramped, and he clutched his belly. It had been a long day, and as the adrenaline receded, Ray’s body decided there were other priorities to take care of.

  ‘Can we stop?’ he asked Brian through the window. ‘Call of nature.’

  ‘Just piss over the side,’ Leon told him, squinting ahead through the windshield.

  Ray pulled a face. ‘It’s not that kind of call.’

  Brian pointed up ahead. ‘Hop out, then. We’ll wait at the edge of the wood. Here.’ Brian handed him a pack of tissues. ‘Don’t be long, okay? You see or hear anything, you holler.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The pickup squealed to a stop. Ray climbed over the side and waited for Brian to drive a little way down the road. He saw a ditch running along the verge. It was choked with weeds but relatively dry. As good a place as any. Ray unbuckled his trousers and squatted down amongst the vegetation, grunting as his bowels moved. The pickup was lost in the darkness somewhere up ahead. Ray turned around, saw the pale dirt road behind him, stretching back into the darkness. The wind moaned across the fields, stirring the weeds around him. Or maybe it was something else. Ray cursed his imagination, willing his body to get on with the job. A minute later, he was done. He cleaned himself and yanked up his trousers —

  A blinding light lit up the road and Ray dropped back into the ditch. He squinted through the weeds, saw the pickup fifty yards away, bathed in a pool of blinding white light. A searchlight, Ray realised, and not just one. There were two of them. And then he saw the soldiers; well, he assumed they were soldiers because all he could see were silhouettes. They lingered at the edge of the light, their weapons held at the ready, and something about their posture made Ray think twice about breaking cover and racing down the road to gratefully shake their hands.

  ‘ — off the vehicle!’

  ‘ — just civilians — ’

  ’Now! I won’t repeat — ’

  Ray could only hear snatches of the exchange, but it sounded tense. He thought he heard Brian’s voice, compliant, then Leon’s angry tones. There were more shouts now, the voices angry and overlapping.

  Then he heard feet running on the dirt, getting louder. A shadow sprinted towards him, backlit by the searchlights. Ray flinched as a volley of shots cracked overhead. He heard an awful, wet thump and the body fell close by.

  Ray stared into Kyle’s face. The kid lay on his belly, his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish, his eyelids fluttering. His fingers twitched, as if he was trying to tell Ray something, and then life left him and his whole body seemed to deflate.

  Ray yelped as another, sustained barrage of gunfire ripped across the fields. He heard glass breaking and rounds hitting metal, like a storm of hailstones on a tin roof. It seemed to go on forever, but Ray figured it probably lasted no more than a few seconds. He inched his head up very slowly and risked a look.

  Definitely soldiers. Their uniforms were clearly visible as they advanced on the eviscerated pickup. The bodywork and windows were shot full of holes and steaming water hissed from beneath the hood. One of the soldiers yanked open the passenger door and Leon’s body flopped sideways, hitting the road. He stayed that way, a crumpled heap of soiled and bloody clothes.

  ‘Two dead,’ he heard a voice report in the darkness.

  ‘They didn’t stop, right? It was them or us.’

  ‘Damn straight.’

  ‘Call it in. And knock those lights off!’

  Bile rose in Ray’s throat. The searchlights blinked out and he got down on his belly. Slowly, and as quietly as he could manage, he began crawling across the field and away from the road. It took him thirty minutes to reach the trees, by which time his clothes were filthy and he was exhausted from the stress and effort.

  He lay just inside the tree line, shivering, listening to the voices of the soldiers carried on the wind. They were faint, distant, so he pulled himself up behind a thick tree trunk. He watched and listened for several more minutes until he was sure he hadn’t been detected. Then he turned around and headed through the trees, staggering faster as he got further away, desperate to put as much distance between himself, the dirt road, and the men who lay dead at its side.

  Mike Savage had to shout to make himself heard.

  ‘What?’

  Tapper motioned to his ear and leaned in close as the USS Independence planed across the waves of the Arabian Sea. Both men held on tight to a bulkhead rail as the two-thousand tonne combat trimaran bucked and swayed as it headed west at thirty-seven knots.

  ‘I said, we’re running out of fingers to break,’ Mike yelled above the roar of the wind and the ship’s powerful turbines.

  ‘He’s a tough sonofabitch,’ Tapper yelled back, his free hand cupped around his mouth.

  ‘Guy’s a player too. Those passports are clean, credit cards too. He man
aged to lose his phone and laptop before we breached, which means he was tipped off.’

  ‘By who?’

  ‘Someone on our end. There’s no other explanation.’

  Tapper shook his head in disgust. ‘Well, they’re sure buying this Marion broad a lot of time.’

  ‘How long before we link up with the rest of the fleet?’

  ‘An hour.’

  Mike turned away and looked across the helipad towards the back of the ship. A thirty-foot rooster tail of water followed them as the ship powered towards the setting sun. Mike didn’t like torture, sanctioned or otherwise, but it was an option in dire emergencies. Like now. Every minute lost interrogating Philip was a minute gained by Marion, and they all knew it.

  Philip was on his knees at the edge of the helipad, his face white with shock and pain, his wrists and elbows bound behind his back with plastic ties. Ty Miller stood over him, his boots spread wide as he rocked with the motion of the ship. Miller had broken four of Philip’s fingers, yet so far the violence hadn’t worked. Mike grimaced. It was time to apply a little more.

  He weaved across the moving deck and stood in front of Philip. The prisoner looked up, his eyes bloodshot and filled with painful tears, his face a chalk mask. Mike leaned forward, his hands on his knees, his dirty blond hair whipping in the wind.

  ‘I can make all this go away, Philip. I can make the pain stop, get you fixed up. If you want to talk about a deal, we can do that too. You’re not going to walk, but I can keep the needle out of your arm. I have that power.’ Philip’s chin dropped and Mike lifted it up. ‘Where’s Marion right now?’