Last Stand For Man

by Ryan, Nicholas

  “It is not a place, monsieur. It is the name of this gate. They each have a name.”

  Tremaine stared back at the wall, shaking his head in slow disbelief. In the distance cars were honking their horns and several drivers had abandoned their vehicles and come forward to the police motorcycle riders, gesticulating angrily. Tremaine saw and heard none of it. He pointed to the tower. “How many other towers like this one are there?”

  “Thirty five, complete with the battlements you see along the top of the tower, monsieur, and many more that are merely bulwarks.”

  “Gates?”

  “Fourteen, I think,” Devaux looked a little uncertain, “and there are also many small walking gates, especially along the western wall.”

  “Walking gates?”

  “Oui,” Devaux spread his hands, miming something the shape of a doorway. “Such as this,” he gesticulated. “For people to walk through.”

  Tremaine nodded his understanding.

  “And where are we now?”

  “Monsieur?”

  “Where are we in relation to the wall?” Tremaine asked more precisely. “We’re at a corner, right?”

  “Ah, yes,” Devaux understood at last. “We are at the south-west corner of the wall,” he said. The road we are on will take us to the main entrance into the ancient city. The corner tower marks the wall’s western face. It runs parallel to the Rhône River.”

  Tremaine put his hands on his hips and walked to a grassed and tree-lined area that stretched between the road and the wall. The ground was sprinkled with crinkled orange leaves. He looked directly up at the top of the wall.

  “Twenty five feet?”

  “Eight meters.”

  Tremaine frowned and tried to do the maths. Twenty five feet sounded about right. The wall had been built of huge limestone slabs, each cut and laid with incredible masonry skill. He walked slowly back to the police car and noticed several hotels on the opposite side of the road. He slumped into the back seat, his mind reeling but his hopes buoyed.

  “If all the gates can somehow be blocked…” he thought furiously, “and if we can maintain food, water and order…”

  The police car drew away from the intersection and cruised eastward. Tremaine kept his face pressed to the tinted glass window, following the unbroken line of the great wall until suddenly the car turned left at a set of traffic lights, and they drove through a breach in the wall, wide enough for two lanes of traffic in either direction. Standing like bastions on either side of the entrance were two more crenellated towers, but they were disconnected. Pedestrians scurried across the broad intersection and the police motorcade weaved their way through the crowd, the driver in the front seat pummeling his fist on the car’s squeaking horn.

  “This is Rue De La Republique,” Captain Devaux explained. “It will take us directly to the mayor’s office. And the gates we passed through are called Porte De La Republique. They are the main gates into the old city.”

  Tremaine felt overwhelmed. The police motorcade sped past huge government buildings on either side of the road with the French tricolor flying from every window, and then into a long tree-lined retail strip, populated with restaurants, cafes and designer clothing stores. The sidewalks were crammed with people, and the gutters filled with leaves.

  At the end of the boulevard the lead motorbike rider came to a standstill. The police car slowed and then braked. Ahead, Tremaine could see an open air plaza – a wide cobblestoned space in the shape of a rectangle with imposing stone buildings on the left behind more trees, and to the right, a long line of restaurants with outdoor table settings. The plaza was crowded with milling groups of pedestrians.

  “Are we stopping?” Tremaine sounded confused.

  “We have no choice,” Benoit Devaux said and pushed open his door. “There are steel bollards across the road. We can go no further. This is Place de L’Horloge – it is a pedestrian square. No vehicles allowed.”

  Tremaine got out of the police car with a weary sigh and the sounds of the old city came to him in a wave; the hum and bustle of a thriving marketplace filled with the voices of locals and tourists. The cobblestones were covered in a confetti of stiff orange leaves. Tremaine looked around him. To his left snaked a narrow side street that meandered down a gentle slope, and to his right were the tables, chairs and umbrellas of the restaurants behind which he could see more narrow streets, leading off from the plaza like arteries.

  “How far to the mayor’s office?”

  The police captain pointed to a grand stone building through the canopy of leafy trees. “A hundred yards on the left,” he said. “Follow me.”

  “You’re coming?”

  “Oui,” Devaux said. “As the senior policeman in the city I have been summoned to the meeting.”

  With the three motorbike cops still wearing their helmets and flanking them like bodyguards, Tremaine and Captain Devaux wound their way through the lunchtime crowds and stopped suddenly at the steps of a grand two story building with marble columns on either side of a high arched entrance and banks of long ornate windows. On the top floor, overlooking the plaza perched a balcony from which flew a trident of three flags. The middle one was the French flag but the two other flags Tremaine could not identify.

  Devaux gestured courteously and Tremaine went up the stone steps and in through the ornate doorway.

  “This is the Town Hall,” Devaux’s voice became hushed as if they had entered a museum. “It was built one hundred and seventy years ago.”

  The interior of the building was elegantly breathtaking – a mixture of grand design and French flair. The foyer was a vaulted open space and the staircases that wound around the outer walls were all decoratively balustraded. Tremaine’s footsteps echoed harshly on the checkerboard marble floor as he looked around the walls.

  He saw a reception cubicle to his right with a middle-aged woman behind the counter. Devaux approached the woman and spoke to her briefly. She nodded her head and reached for a phone. Devaux gently took Tremaine by the elbow and lead him to the back of the building where a wide stone staircase stretched up towards a mezzanine level. The steps were worn and rounded. Tremaine followed the French Captain of Police and they halted at a glass door to their right. Built into the wall beside the door was a security keypad. Beyond the glass outer doors, Tremaine saw a set of elaborate wooden doors and a sign; ‘Mayor’s Office’.

  Tremaine frowned. His eyes followed the staircase to where the steps ended at the upper level of the building. He had expected the mayor’s office to have a sweeping view that overlooked the square – perhaps an office that led out onto the balcony he had seen from the entry steps. He looked quizzically at Devaux but before he could raise the question, he saw a young woman come out through the inner double doors, and then pull them carefully closed behind her. She crossed to the glass door, smiled politely at Devaux, and then used a security card on a strap around her neck to swipe through the lock. She pulled the glass door open and stood aside. Devaux stepped into the air conditioned space and Tremaine dutifully flowed him.

  “Camille,” Devaux’s smile became charming. “What a pleasant surprise. I did not expect to see you here.”

  The woman shrugged her shoulders. She was in her mid-twenties with shoulder-length blonde hair and a slim figure. She wore a simple silk blouse and a knee-length skirt. She propped one hand on her narrow waist and stared at Tremaine with frank open appraisal for long seconds before flicking her green eyes back to the uniformed policeman.

  “Hello, Captain,” the woman smiled. “I have been asked to attend the meeting to represent the interests of the Avignon Chamber of Commerce,” she explained. Her voice was husky, her English very good but still accented. She lifted her chin and brushed a loose tendril of hair away from her face in a distinctly feminine gesture as she turned back once more to Tremaine. She wore a couple of sterling silver bangles around her wrist. They tinkled together like delicate little bells.

  “And you are the
Professor, yes?”

  “Yes,” Tremaine said. The girl’s eyes were bewitching – deep mesmerizing pools the color of a high mountain lake. “Steven Tremaine. Nice to meet you.”

  “I am Camille Pelletier,” she held out her hand. Her grip felt firm, her fingers long and delicate. “I wish that we were meeting under happier circumstances.”

  “Yes,” Tremaine said significantly. “So do I.”

  The girl held his hand for a second or two longer and then blinked her eyes. In that split second her demeanor changed and her body became stiffer, more formal. She turned on her heel and reached for the inner wooden doors. “Everyone else is assembled and ready,” she said over her shoulder to Tremaine. “They’re all waiting for you in the mayor’s office.”

  * * *

  The mayor’s office occupied a large area on the mezzanine level of the town hall building; curtained windows were built into the west wall and there was a closed door marked ‘Private’ on the far side of a vast board room table that dominated the space. The table was ornately decorated wood with vine leaves carved into the solid legs, the surface polished but chipped and marked with the signs of its antiquity.

  The room had been lavishly appointed; a high ornamentally plastered ceiling from which hung a crystal chandelier, and there was plush grey carpet underfoot, slightly worn into pale tracks around the doorways.

  Seated around the table were just four men.

  One of them pushed back his chair and got to his feet, striding towards Tremaine with a forced smile on his lips. He was a small-framed figure, aged in his fifties or sixties. He was thin and narrow shouldered, so that the expensive suit he wore seemed to hang from his frame. His face was round and fleshy, his hair thinning grey and swept carefully across the pink of his balding pate.

  “Professor Tremaine,” the man shook his hand, speaking in accented English. He smelled of coffee and garlic. He stood an inch or two shorter than Tremaine with brown eyes hidden in a web of wrinkles. “I am the Mayor of Avignon, Henri Pelletier.” He looked askance at the American and wrinkled his nostrils to suggest that he found the man’s rumpled appearance distressing.

  Tremaine shook hands with the mayor and forced a thin smile. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, sir,” he said. “You got the call from Minister Boudin?”

  “Yes,” the mayor nodded. “He phoned me personally at my home in the early hours of this morning. It is a grave business we are dealing with. Very grave indeed,” the mayor shook his head sorrowfully and his eyes darkened. “The Minister told me you were one of the world’s leading authorities on such matters. It is some comfort for us all for you to be here.” As he spoke the mayor turned and made a gesture that embraced the other three men gathered around the table. He took Tremaine gently by the arm and steered him towards the far end of the big room.

  “This is my Deputy Mayor, Jacques Lejeune,” the mayor introduced Tremaine to a very tall, gaunt-faced man with sallow cheeks and a sickly, pallid complexion. The man was stooped, and bony angled within his suit. He had a shaggy cut of coarse black hair. Tremaine and Lejeune shook hands.

  “And this is Colonel LeCat, of the Gendarmerie. He is the current commander of the men stationed within Avignon.”

  The Colonel shook Tremaine’s hand. He was a tall, rangy man with close-cropped grey bristle and the heavily weathered, suntanned face, of someone accustomed to the vast outdoors. He had steely blue eyes and broad squared shoulders. “Temporary commander,” LeCat clarified. He had a grip like a vice. Tremaine nodded, already confused. He had never been good with names, and the weary sense of fatigue that numbed his mind became overwhelming. He shook hands with another man, though could not remember his name or position.

  Everyone in the room had turned towards him expectantly. Camille Pelletier had her arms folded across her chest, her weight thrown onto one leg so that the flare of her hip was accentuated. She watched him with level steady eyes, and an expression that might have been almost hostile. All the men in the room re-took their seats, and Captain Devaux of the Police Nationale, drew back a chair and sat heavily, dropping his cap onto the table and clasping his hands before him like a student in a classroom.

  Tremaine planted both hands on the edge of the table and took a deep breath. His head hung lowered, as though in some great moment of contemplative thought. Then, slowly, he lifted his face and made eye contact with everyone in the room individually, fixing their attention with the force of his dreadful gaze.

  “The world has collapsed over the edge of apocalypse,” he said clearly. “America was the catalyst for the contagion and since then it has spread consistently to several other countries around the world. The mortality rate is one hundred percent,” he paused for a moment to gauge the impact of his words. “No one who comes in contact with the virus survives. They turn,” he hesitated for another instant, seeking the correct word, “into some kind of predator. That’s why the media is calling this virus Raptor. It’s because the dead rise and become instinctive hunters. They kill in packs.”

  Tremaine swept his eyes around the table and saw heads nodding solemnly. “And last night the contagion arrived in London. I saw it on the news broadcasts. What began as America’s disaster has now become a catastrophe for the entire world. That includes France. England is so close… the contagion reached the United Kingdom from America. There is no reason to think that it will just miraculously stop. If it isn’t already sweeping across the northern reaches of France, then it will be – soon. Maybe by tonight, if not sooner.”

  Tremaine shrugged his shoulders and lowered his voice so that those gathered around him barely caught his words. “Death from this contagion is imminent,” he said. “It’s coming this way, and no one can stop it.”

  The silence around the room was morbid. At last the Deputy Mayor, Jacques Lejeune, shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He was shiny with nervous sweat. He wrung his hands plaintively. “But, monsieur, you believe that Avignon can be protected from this terrible disease, yes?”

  Tremaine nodded his head. “Yes,” he said, his voice flat and emphatic. “I believe that Avignon can be fortified and defended against the undead when they sweep down from the north of the country. I believe that with the urgent co-operation of the police and the gendarmerie that the twelve thousand people who live inside the walls of the ancient city can survive. But we must act urgently.”

  “And what becomes of everyone else?” the mayor asked. He had risen from his chair and come to his feet, the fleshy folds of his face paling.

  “They will die,” Tremaine said harshly. “Anyone who is not inside these walls when the gates are barricaded will ultimately become infected.” He shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the back of an empty chair then thrust his fists deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched as he studied the faces around the room. They were subdued and unsettled.

  A pall of despair had descended on the room, hanging like a toxic cloud over the table. LeCat, the Colonel of the Gendarmerie, folded his muscled brawny arms across his chest and balled his fists. They were lumped with scar tissue across the knuckles, huge as hammers. “And just how would you hope to fortify the gates, monsieur?” he asked.

  Tremaine shrugged. “I was thinking that we could use buses,” Tremaine mentioned an idea that had come to him on the train ride north from Barcelona. “We could turn them onto their sides, and stack one bus on top of the other.”

  “Why would you turn them on their sides?” Jacques Lejeune looked mortified.

  “Because the infected are hunters,” Tremaine said with a patient sigh. “They’ll climb under the wheels of the buses, or they’ll find a way through the windows. The gates of the old city must be barricaded and there can be no gap, no chance for a breach. If even one of the infected gets inside the walls, we are all dead. All of us.”

  Henri Pelletier made a suppressing gesture with his hands like he was quieting a noisy crowd. “Monsieur,” he said breathlessly, “as mayor of the city, I cannot sanc
tion any measures such as you are mentioning,” his voice rose an octave and consternation twisted his mouth so that he looked like he was in pain. “Yes, perhaps we could fortify the old city… but to leave so many people outside the walls… that is murder.”

  “No, it’s not,” Tremaine shook his head grimly. “It’s a question of survival. We simply cannot house nor feed nor control a hundred thousand people or more within these walls. It’s not practical, and it’s counter-productive. Those people you would seek to save, you will kill through starvation or even other disease. We are talking about a siege, gentlemen… and madam,” he nodded to the young woman inclusively. “And we have no idea how long the contagion will continue before it begins to burn itself out. It could be days – but it might be weeks or months.”

  Henri Pelletier sat back down heavily. His face seemed to have crumpled. He fidgeted with the watch on his wrist, gnawing at his bottom lip. Beside him, his Deputy sat staring blankly at one of the curtained windows. Tremaine clawed fingers through his hair and closed his eyes. He felt the first vertiginous sway of fatigue and had to clutch at the edge of the table to hold himself upright.

  Colonel LeCat gazed around the room and saw fear and panic on the faces of the men he knew and lived amongst. He cleared his throat.

  “Perhaps there is time, Professor, to begin at the beginning with your theories and your experiences? After all,” he shrugged to avoid giving offense, “we have only your word that these events will unfold. Can you explain how you have come to your conclusions?”

  “Yes.” Henri Pelletier sharpened his eyes, thankful for a chance to stall making a decision. “That is an excellent idea. We should make a considered judgment based on the facts, gentlemen. Not merely on the word of the Professor alone.”

  He glanced sheepishly sideways at Tremaine but did not meet his eyes. “First we must truly understand what is at stake here. If we barricade the city and leave eighty or ninety thousand people hammering at the walls to get in… and the contagion does not reach Avignon…” the mayor cocked his thumb and drew it slowly across his own throat. “We would be hung in the plaza.”