The Coming Storm

by Mark Alpert

  It was Lieutenant Frazier. Azrael, the Angel of Death, hadn’t forgotten her.

  She faced forward and ran faster, yanking her father’s arm. Hector and Carlos sped up too, and soon they dashed onto the footbridge that stretched over the Harlem River. The walkway was only ten feet wide and flanked on either side by a six-foot-high fence, presumably to stop would-be suicides from jumping off the bridge. The borough of Queens was to Jenna’s right and the Bronx to her left, but she peered straight ahead at Randalls, the smallish island in the middle of the river, a patchwork of baseball fields and municipal facilities. Where do we go now? Is there a place we can hide? There was a psychiatric hospital on the island, and a sewage-treatment plant too, but how the hell could they hide in a place like that? Shit! What do we do?

  Then Jenna saw something that extinguished all hope. On the closest part of Randalls Island were at least a hundred officers in helmets and body armor. They swarmed toward the foot of the pedestrian bridge and raced up the narrow walkway, running three abreast. They ran just as fast as the soldiers on the Manhattan side, and they were just as heavily armed. Each carried an assault rifle and several clips of ammunition.

  Jenna stopped in her tracks. Her father collapsed on the walkway and vomited. Hector and Carlos stopped beside her and looked in all directions, staring in disbelief. They stood at the midpoint of the bridge, and the soldiers charged at them from both sides. The men from the Strykers were fifty yards behind them, and the officers from Randalls were fifty yards ahead. Within ten seconds, they would meet in the middle and it would all be over.

  To Jenna’s dismay, Hector grinned. “Want to go for a swim?” He pointed at the anti-suicide fence running along the walkway. “We can climb over that thing. And this bridge, it’s not as high as the Triborough. Only fifty feet above the water, it looks like.”

  She shook her head. She might survive the jump, but her father wouldn’t. And she wasn’t going to leave him behind.

  Instead, she turned to the officers rushing toward them from Randalls. Maybe their commander was less of a monster than Frazier. One of the soldiers at the front of the column waved his arms at them and shouted, “Get down!” He wanted them to lie on their stomachs so his men could cuff them.

  Or maybe not. Jenna started to have second thoughts about their intentions. On closer inspection, she noticed something different about the officers coming from Randalls: Under their body armor, their uniforms weren’t black.

  They were dark blue. The NYPD color.

  Jenna flattened herself on top of her father. An instant later, Hector and Carlos threw themselves down and lay prone on the walkway. At the same time, the New York cops raised their assault rifles. They didn’t point their guns at Jenna or Abbu or Hector or Carlos. They aimed at the FSU officers on the other side of the bridge.

  Then the cops opened fire.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Vance had to lie to Congress. He told the leaders of the House and Senate that the president was staying in New York to oversee the military operations there.

  But the truth was, the president was dying.

  The relapse happened just an hour after his speech at Citi Field. He and Vance were in the backseat of the presidential limousine, en route to the airport, when POTUS started slurring his words. The amphetamine injection he’d received before the speech had suppressed the symptoms of his dementia, but they returned with a vengeance as soon as the drug wore off. Within minutes he could barely talk or swallow. Then he had a coughing fit that grew loud and violent. His face turned an obscene shade of orange, and strings of saliva hung from his chin.

  The Secret Service agents stopped the presidential motorcade. They halted the armored limos on the shoulder of Grand Central Parkway and transferred the president to the convoy’s ambulance. This infuriated him. He thrashed and screamed as the agents strapped him to the gurney.

  Vance went into the ambulance with him and ordered the Secret Service to change their itinerary. The president was too ill to fly back to Washington. They couldn’t take him to any of the hospitals in Manhattan either, because the doctors and nurses there might gossip about his condition. So the motorcade headed for Rikers Island. The FSU’s Medical Research Center was the best place for him anyway.

  The Research Center’s doctors managed to stabilize the president, and after a couple of hours they allowed Vance to visit him in the intensive care unit. POTUS lay in a hospital bed raised to a forty-five-degree angle to ease his breathing. A plastic tube ran under his nose, and a mechanical ventilator pumped air into his nostrils. The doctors had given him sedatives too, enough to quell his agitation but still allow him to stay awake. Although the president’s eyes were closed, he grimaced and muttered and seemed to be conscious. That was fortunate, because he needed to take care of some important business this evening.

  Vance sat down in a chair beside the bed. The ICU was full of medical equipment, but there were no other patients in the room and only one nurse, who was preparing the president’s dinner and keeping an eye on the heart-rate monitor. Vance asked her to leave the room for a moment so he could talk privately with the president, and after a moment of hesitation she stepped outside. Then he tapped his father-in-law’s shoulder, which was barely covered by the loose hospital gown.

  “Hello? Are you with me?”

  He nodded but kept his eyes closed. His face had paled to dull pink, the color of a Band-Aid.

  Vance pulled one of the folded documents out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “How are you doing? Do you feel well enough to talk?”

  He grimaced again, pressing his lips together. “I’m fine, Vance. What do you want?”

  The president’s voice was quiet and raspy, but each word was dense with anger. The man was difficult even under the best of circumstances, even when everything was going his way. But when things went wrong, he was a horror show, and today his life had fallen apart. According to the doctors, he’d entered the end stage of frontotemporal dementia. The damage had spread to his brain’s motor cortex, affecting his ability to speak and swallow. In a matter of weeks, it would shut down his whole body.

  Vance steeled himself. He needed to focus on the next step. He unfolded the document in his hands, a letter printed on White House stationery. “Well, there’s an urgent matter we need to discuss. The Federal Service Unit is facing more problems in New York. Rogue officers from the city’s police department have attacked and overwhelmed the FSU teams stationed on Randalls Island. It’s a major setback.”

  The president didn’t react. He didn’t even open his eyes. Vance had expected his father-in-law to get enraged at this piece of news, but instead he seemed bored. “Is that it?”

  “Please, this is serious. The New York police have become an army of insurgents. They took over the checkpoints on the Triborough Bridge and murdered dozens of FSU officers in a shoot-out on the 103rd Street footbridge. The cops killed every federal agent on that bridge except their commander, a lieutenant named Frazier. And he survived only because he jumped into the Harlem River.”

  The president opened his eyes and rolled them. “Jesus, why are you bothering me with this? Just take care of it.”

  Vance sighed. He felt like he was already running the federal government, and all he’d received for his efforts was aggravation. When Phase Three of Palindrome had begun, he’d assumed the Serenity sequence would squelch all opposition to the government, but the virus carrying that snippet of DNA wasn’t spreading as quickly as he’d hoped. In particular, it hadn’t spread to the traitorous New York police officers, because they had no contact with the people already infected. Vance had asked his researchers if they could use helicopters to disperse the virus over Randalls Island, but they dismissed the idea. Apparently, the aerosol sprayers worked much better in indoor spaces—like the rotunda at Citi Field—than outdoors. And Randalls was an especially windy place, making it difficult to deliver an airborne virus there.

  But Vance’s biggest problem was commun
icating all this to the president. Keep things simple, he thought. It’s like talking to a child. “Here’s why I need your help. The police officers on Randalls have plenty of weapons because the NYPD’s counterterrorism unit is based there. And because they’re on an island, they can fortify the place and defend it effectively with barricades on all the bridges. The only good military option is to launch an air strike against Randalls and destroy their headquarters. And the generals on the Joint Chiefs won’t like the idea of bombing a New York police station.”

  “But they’ll do it.” The president shrugged, moving his shoulders against his pillow. “They saw what happened to General Miller at the rally. I showed them what I do to people who try to screw me.”

  “That’s not enough. You need to give the generals the order in writing.” Vance held up the letter he’d printed, which still required the president’s signature. “This is addressed to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but we’ll send it to all the other generals and field commanders too. It’s an ironclad document. It gives them absolutely no choice except to follow your orders.”

  POTUS frowned. He’d always hated the day-to-day details of the presidency. They bewildered and frustrated him. “I can’t believe this. I’m sick as a fucking dog, and you’re pestering me with paperwork.” He grabbed the letter from Vance, who also handed him a pen. “Do you even realize what I went through today? Almost choking to death? You know how horrible that was?”

  Vance nodded. “Yes, it was horrible.”

  “I can’t go on like this.” He scribbled his signature on the letter, then threw it back at Vance. He was getting agitated again. “I’m not gonna lie here and turn into a fucking vegetable. I’d rather die than let that happen.”

  “Believe me, I understand what—”

  “No, you don’t understand!” He sat up in bed and clawed at his breathing tube. It looked like he was trying to rip it off. “I swear to fucking God, I’d rather kill myself!”

  Vance leaned over the bed and reached for the man’s hands. He gently grasped them in his own and set them back down on the mattress. He felt a surge of revulsion—he hated touching his father-in-law—but he didn’t let it show. This was the crucial part of their conversation, and it needed to go perfectly. “You’re right, this can’t continue. It’s time to take a risk.” Vance let go of him. “I think you should try the treatment. The gene-altering procedure that we’ve developed for your condition.”

  The president stared. He seemed confused and surprised. “I thought you said it wasn’t safe. That’s what you’ve been telling me for months.”

  “I won’t lie to you. It’s an experimental treatment, and that means it’s risky. But the Palindrome researchers have made great progress in the past few weeks. They’ve learned how to prevent most of the complications and control the side effects. So now I think we’re at the point where the risks of doing the procedure are less than the risks of not doing it.”

  The president kept staring. He was a cagey man, not easily fooled. But he was also desperate. He feared his disease so much and wanted a cure so badly. “All right. When can we start?”

  “Your condition’s worsening quickly now, so there’s no time to lose. We can give you the first round of injections tonight.”

  Again, POTUS looked surprised. “Tonight? You mean, right now?”

  “Everything’s ready to go. The scientists have prepared a CRISPR molecule that’s designed to treat your type of dementia. It’ll snip out the inherited mutations in your progranulin gene and replace them with the correct DNA sequences. Then your cells will produce a normal amount of the progranulin protein and your—”

  “Okay, enough with the mumbo jumbo. Just tell me one thing—do I have a fucking prayer?”

  “Yes.” Vance gave him an ardent look, meant to convey utter confidence. “I think it’ll work.”

  The president managed to smile. It was a grim sort of smile, tainted with skepticism, but there was also some hope in it. He was putting his trust in CRISPR. He was willing to give it a chance. “All right, let’s do it. Give me the shots.” He gripped the sleeve of his hospital gown and started rolling it up.

  Vance shook his head. “No, it’s not that kind of injection. The cells we need to repair are in your brain. The doctors will have to shave your scalp and drill several holes in your skull.”

  The president let go of the sleeve and raised his hand in a protective reflex. He touched his head, and an expression of doubt crossed his face. But it lasted only a moment. “Yeah, okay, I can handle that. I’ll do whatever I need to do.”

  “Good. You’re making the right decision.” Vance reached into the pocket of his jacket again and pulled out the second folded document. “You just have to sign one more letter, and then we’ll take you to the Center’s operating room.”

  “Seriously? More paperwork?” He scowled. “It can’t wait until afterward?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Vance unfolded the document and showed it to the president. “It’s a letter to Congress. At your request, they’re meeting in a special session this evening. And they’re waiting for you to submit this nomination so they can vote on it tonight.”

  The president took the letter and squinted at it. He usually disliked reading official papers—he didn’t have the patience—but this one was short and sweet, just a single sentence:

  To the Congress of the United States:

  Pursuant to the provisions of Section 2 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution, I hereby nominate Vance C. Keller of Washington, D.C., to be the Vice President of the United States.

  September 13, 2023

  His eyes narrowed as he read the letter. Then he dropped it in his lap and looked up. “Well, well. This is a surprise.”

  “It shouldn’t be.” Vance put a casual look on his face. He’d rehearsed this moment in his mind, so he knew exactly what to say. “The Constitution gives you the authority to nominate a vice president. You need to install a suitable replacement for our dear departed hero, that God-fearing Christian patriot.”

  “And you assumed I’d want to nominate you?” The president cocked his head at a jaunty angle, but his voice was furious. “I guess you felt pretty certain about the choice, huh? So certain that you didn’t even bother to ask for my opinion?”

  “Just think about it logically. Take it step-by-step.” Vance folded his arms across his chest, as calm and patient as a schoolteacher. “You and I have done many great things for this country, but some of our methods were unconventional. And if those methods ever came to light, our enemies would accuse us of terrible crimes. But we’re in this bind together, so I can trust you to keep everything secret, and you can trust me. Why bring in a vice president who might betray us, like the old veep almost did?”

  The president didn’t buy it. If anything, he grew angrier. His eyebrows tilted over his narrowed eyes like accent marks. “That’s bullshit. No matter who becomes the vice president, we don’t have to tell him a thing. The only reason why that stupid Jesus freak became a problem is because you screwed up. You let him figure out what was going on with Palindrome. You totally fucked up the whole situation.”

  Vance sighed again. He needed to try a different argument. “Okay, there’s another factor to consider. As I mentioned a minute ago, the treatment for your illness is risky. I think it’s a risk worth taking, but there’s a chance that—”

  “A chance that I’ll die? Is that what you’re worried about?”

  “Yes, in part, but—”

  “Because you’ll be in deep shit if I die and someone else becomes president, right? So this nomination is all about protecting you, isn’t it?”

  Vance shook his head. “It’s not just about me. There’s also a chance that the treatment will incapacitate you in some way. You might feel addled or stupefied while the CRISPR molecules are repairing your brain cells. In all likelihood, the problem would only last a few days or weeks, but it might be severe enough to prevent you from doing your job dur
ing that time. And if that happens and there’s no vice president in place to temporarily assume your duties, the Speaker of the House becomes president. Did you know that?”

  The president said nothing. He clearly hadn’t thought of this possibility.

  Vance was making progress. He pointed at the unsigned letter. “Do you see now why it’s important to take care of this nomination? Important for both of us?”

  POTUS still didn’t say anything. Instead, he started coughing. He raised his hand to his mouth and coughed into his palm several times, explosively loud. He seemed to be trying to expel something from his throat, without much success. After a few seconds he doubled over on the bed and hawked a wad of phlegm across the room. But he kept on coughing. His eyes widened in fear and his face turned red. Saliva spilled down his chin and soaked the front of his hospital gown.

  Vance stood up, alarmed. Luckily, the nurse waiting in the corridor heard the hacking noises and rushed back into the room. She nudged Vance aside, leaned over the bed, and slapped the president between the shoulder blades. Another wad of phlegm flew out of his mouth, and his coughing fit subsided. He caught his breath and fell back against his pillow, exhausted, his mouth gaping.

  The nurse grabbed a Kleenex and wiped his chin. At the same time, she turned her head sideways and shot an angry look at Vance. “What happened? Did you make him upset?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned back to the president. “It’s all right, sir. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  POTUS stared at the ceiling for a while, too weak to move. Then he took a deep labored breath and looked down at his lap. The nomination letter and the pen had slid off him and lay on the bedsheet. With trembling hands, he picked them up and scrawled his signature on the letter.

  “Here. Take it.” He spoke in a whisper, barely audible. The letter flapped in his hand as he gave it to Vance. “Tell the doctors … I’m ready … for the injections.”