Apocalypse's Prelude

by Carl Damen

  Edarus nodded solemnly. Something was going on here that Amanda didn't understand; Edarus and Jack shared some secret knowledge of Mistaren.

  "I still can't let him restart the war. As I said before, things are just getting back to normal. Having someone this high killed after Terstein was arrested will send a very negative message."

  "Oh, so you have been paying attention." As soon as the words were out, Amanda clamped her hands over her mouth, as if trying to stop more words from coming out.

  Edarus looked momentarily offended, then impressed, then amused. "You think you're a pundit, huh? You're going to judge me? Just because I haven't been out and about doesn't mean I haven't been paying attention."

  Amanda flung her hands wide. "We're about to get invaded!"

  "And why do you think it's taking so long, huh? Why do you think Mexico hasn't followed the LCR up here, or Iran hasn't taken over D.C.? I've been talking to fucking everybody, making sure things aren't getting out of control. Hell, why do you think I had Mitch arrested? He was getting everyone riled up!" He was breathing heavily now. "The truth is, the crazies have almost burned themselves out, and as long as travel's restricted, they can't get together to egg each other on. Now, just as soon as your uncle gets his ass in gear and gets the E.H.U.D.s off my back, I go to New York, calm everyone down, and get back to the way things are supposed to be. Got it?"

  Amanda flushed; he was certainly charismatic.

  "So..." Edarus leaned back in his chair and slowed his breathing. "What's it going to be?"

  "He—Jack, I mean..." She swallowed. "He said that he knows a way to eliminate Mistaren without raising any suspicions, and that he can make it look like the NSA is still out and about."

  "Those were his exact words?"

  "He spoke in code, but... yeah."

  "Hmm." Edarus scratched at his beard again, then lunged towards his cast, stopped himself, leaned back. "I get the impression your uncle is going through with this no matter what I say."

  Amanda nodded.

  Edarus returned the nod. "Well, I guess that's that." He clapped his hands together, then tilted them to point at Amanda. "Congratulations on your first policy change."

  A thrill of excitement swept through her, and she had to fight not to giggle. Oh, when Tara heard about this...

  "Now the question is, 'What to do with you?'"

  "What?" The excitement had instantly changed into trepidation.

  "You just infiltrated a top secret government facility. Yes, on orders and information provided by Defenders, but in any case... I can't allow you to leave."

  There was no response to that.

  "How old are you? Fifteen?"

  "Seventeen."

  He nodded once. "Where are your parents?"

  "My dad's a nurse at the Philadelphia FEMA camp, and my mom's in LA."

  "Got any plans for college?"

  "I was... I was looking at doing political science at Yale."

  "Hmm..." Edarus was staring intently at his cast; it was shivering slightly, seemingly moving of its own accord. He looked up. "How'd you like an internship?"

  "What?"

  "I can't let you leave, not yet, and my chief of staff could use an assistant. What do you say, White House-in-exile intern?"

  "Um..." She had to tell Tara, her mom—her guidance counselor. "Yeah."

  Edarus extended his hand, and she half stood to shake it. "Good. Hopefully we'll be hearing from your uncle or his friends any day now."

  "Yeah..."

  Edarus dropped her hand, then rotated his chair to face the door that led into the rest of the facility. "Follow me, then. Have any questions you want answered right off the bat?"

  She followed him through the door, down a dark hall, her mind reeling. "Uh, yeah. How'd you get away from Melana?"

  7

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 28

  Philadelphia was a ghost town. Smoking husks of buildings lined the streets, windows smashed, furniture and electronics and clothes and anything else people couldn't cary strewn out into the street. Alice carefully edged around obstacles in the road, trying desperately not to destroy the car's tires. She drove slowly, taking in the desolation. A shape jutting out of an alley caught her attention; it looked like a pair of legs. She swallowed, tried not to think of the men laying on the floor of the Cohen and Associates building. She had managed to avoid their faces for the past week, managed to not see their accusing eyes as she slept. But coming back... it was stirring memories she didn't want to have.

  The streets became more congested as she drove, abandoned cars lined the road, doors wrenched off, trunks open. Up ahead she saw a green sedan, the hood crumpled, the frame twisting away in small ripples. This was where her life had changed.

  Beyond the line of cars was the barricade, now abandoned, the thin concrete barrier lined with garbage and covered with graffiti. She pulled through a gap, felt metal scrape on metal as she squeezed past a utility vehicle that had been left here.

  Once through she drove for another quarter mile, then pulled to the side of the road and got out. Over the line of buildings ahead she could see the shining cylinder of Sky Crest.

  Down the street, turn, another street, and—

  Her path was cut off by a high chain-link fence stretched across the road, with planks of blue plastic backing it, making it impossible to see inside. Here, there were signs of life—children's shouts, vehicles moving, the clatter of a city living just beyond the fence.

  Here, there were people. Four National Guard troops in armor, standing by a tightly sealed gate, wide-barreled rifles aimed at the ground but ready to be leveled at her.

  "Freeze!" one of them shouted. "You are approaching a protected area. Leave immediately, or stand by for a search."

  She slowly raised her arms, waited as they approached her, patted her, unzipped her jacket, felt inside. A week ago, this would have been a violation of her person, a gross defilement of her rights as an American citizen. Now, this was routine. Now, they had a good reason to search her, though they couldn't know it: she was a spy.

  "Identification," the nearest barked.

  She carefully reached inside her jacket, came back with a drivers license and Social Security card.

  "Suzanne Brin?"

  She nodded.

  "Aren't you a little late getting here?"

  She took a deep breath, let a little of her fear show through; Cyd had said that would make her more believable. "I live in West Philadelphia. It was... It was really bad out that way. I only felt safe enough to leave today, and, and I can't go to my sister's in New Jersey—" She took another deep breath and let it out slowly, haltingly, turning the end into a sob.

  She didn't need to be a Defender to see the story develop in their minds: a single woman, mid-thirties, trapped all by herself in the worst part of town, waiting through the three days of open fighting, waiting until there was no chance that it would start again, then walking all day to cross the city and get to the one safe place left.

  The soldier nearest her straightened a little. "This area is under the administration of the Federal Emergency Management Administration, and by entering these premises you are duly required to operate under its authority and abide by its regulations. Any failure to comply by these regulations will result in fit discipline by its deputized agents, up to and including expulsion from the compound. Do you understand?"

  Alice swallowed, allowed herself a moment to appear to consider, then nodded.

  "Further, in conjuncture with U.S. Military forces stationed inside and for the continued safety and security of all residents of this compound, you are prohibited from leaving this compound under any circumstances until such a time as the current state of emergency is lifted. Do you understand?"

  This time she gave herself a longer pause, allowed herself a longing look behind her at the dead city, then faced her interrogator and nodded. The soldier returned the nod, then escorted her through a small door set into the ga
te.

  And she was in. It took everything she had not to smile. Ever since she had jumped into the 'Defend the Defenders' movement, she had felt that what she was doing for their cause wasn't enough. Now, she was doing their dirty work, infiltrating their target, communicating with their inside man, all under the super-powered nose of General Loblen Mistaren. It wasn't exactly fun, but that was the best word she could think of for it. It was certainly more fulfilling than what she had been forced to do to those men...

  The soldier dropped her off at a small trailer just inside the fence where she was processed, assigned a tent and work rotation, given a meal plan, and then escorted out to the clinic in the main tower.

  "But I'm healthy," she protested.

  "Sorry, ma'am," her bored sounding case-worker replied, "but everyone has to be screened. We haven't had any outbreaks yet, and we want to keep it that way."

  Alice could appreciate that. As they trudged through the endless rows of blue tents that filled the plaza around the mall, she could see the disease potential as an almost physical miasma hanging over the compound. People milled around, looking worn and dirty, half-a-city's worth of frightened women and children pressed into maybe two square miles of space.

  Beyond the tents, away from the mall and tower, were smaller buildings that had been caught up in—or formed—the compound's perimeter: a handful of squat office buildings, a row of houses, several clustered high-rises with storefronts on the street.

  "What are those for?" Alice asked, gesturing to the buildings.

  "Most of it isn't your concern. If you get put on a work rotation that takes you in one, you'll find out."

  Alice let the question slide.

  They arrived at Sky Crest proper, and she felt a thrill as she entered the stone-floored lobby she had seen so often in the computer at work. Up the elevator, out into an open-plan floor that had been divided by countless fabric walls into a maze of wards and examining rooms. Her guide left her sitting on a stool in a large cot-filled room, dissapearing with a perfunctory, "I've got some other work to see to," tossed over her shoulder.

  Two other patients were with her in the room. She nervously waved to them, they nodded back.

  Twenty minutes of waiting, then a harried-looking man in grubby scrubs bustled in, his face buried in a tablet. "Suzanne Brin?"

  Alice raised a hand.

  "Right. Fill this out." He thrust a clip-board into her hands, then turned his attention to a man sitting at the edge of a cot. He knelt next to him, began to pick carefully through his hair.

  "Excuse me."

  The doctor—nurse—orderly—whatever he was—looked up.

  "Um, I'm looking for someone. Do you know a Grant Dolad? He's a nurse here—"

  "You know him?" He was back into the other man's hair.

  "We went to college together—"

  "Grant!" The yell cut through the background noise that permeated the space, and a moment later there was an answering "Yo!" followed by another man walking into the room.

  Alice swallowed. It could have been Jack. Hair, that was different, thick and wavy, and the man was bulkier, thicker in the face, but he was unmistakable. She felt a momentary pang of loss: this was the man who should have been her coworker, the man who she had graduated with, worked with for fifteen years, not the shriveled pink thing that lay in the bed, twitching and muttering as his burned flesh melted and reformed, each time a little less red, a little less blistered.

  "This lady's looking for you."

  Grant glanced at her, blinked, looked momentarily panicked. "Yes, uh..."

  She began to silently mouth her name.

  "Suzanne, yeah, we went to college together."

  She sighed in relief; he had remembered the cover story. Not that it was strictly necessary, but Jack had been in full super-spy mode when he had prepped them.

  Grant was nodding now. "Yeah, after you finish up that paperwork, we should meet and catch up. Just shout when you're done and I'll take you down to the mess. Okay?"

  "Yeah."

  Grant gave a final nod then left.

  The man who had given her the clip-board—she went ahead and decided he was a nurse—was glancing at her now.

  "What?"

  "You, uh..." The nurse let go of the hair he was looking through and cleared his throat. "You ever meet Grant's brother?"

  "Once or twice."

  "Before, or—"

  "Before."

  "Oh."

  He returned to his task, and Alice returned to the paperwork. She spent maybe ten minutes filling in her medical history, then handed the clip-board off to the nurse.

  "Great, thanks. I'll go find someone who can give you an examination."

  "That's okay, Grant can handle it."

  His eyes widened. "It's a full physical."

  "We went to college together; it's nothing he hasn't seen."

  The eyes were even wider now, looking like they would pop from his skull. "Grant!"

  Grant came and escorted Alice to a small personal booth with an examination table inside. She sat on it as he closed the curtain behind them, giving them the semblance of privacy.

  "Can we talk here, or do you think we're being monitored?"

  Grant shrugged. "Here's a good a place as any, I guess. Be a big lawsuit if they were recording in here."

  Alice nodded, then dug into her pocket and retrieved her mobile. She pulled the battery out, then gestured to Grant's pocket, expecting him to do the same.

  "God, you're paranoid," he complained, even as he complied.

  "Okay." Alice closed her eyes and ran her hands through her hair, then repeated, in a whisper, "Okay. Look, first, thank you for everything you've done so far—"

  "Save it. He's my brother, I'll look out for him. I'm glad he's not dead, and I'm glad he's trusted me enough to bring me in on this. Now let's focus on the future."

  Good advice; Alice opened her eyes. "Alright. They're planning on infiltrating the compound. They'll be a group of soldiers coming in from New Jersey, brining in a truckload of supplies. Then they're going to rig a bunch of scramblers to the tower to disorient the landlord. From there, it's into his apartment and elimination."

  The sounds of a busy clinic invaded their little space as Grant mulled over her words. "Three question. One, where did they get scramblers? I thought those were top-secret. Two, why do they need them on Lob? Three, what the hell does any of this have to do with me?"

  She frowned and nodded; they were fair questions. "One, I don't know for certain, but I assume they made their own. It's basically a vibrating unit and and an amplifier, and they're capable of reading minds. Two, I have no idea; they don't tell me everything. Three, you've had access to the penthouse and we need your key."

  And there it was, his face changing from curious to stone-wall stubborn; she had seen it on Jack throughout their collaborations.

  "No. I'm willing to feed you intel. The fact that the first lady personally consoled me on behalf of the president—that I owed to Jack. If she had had her way, it would have been him she was talking to. The fact they set me to working on that agent, that I owed, too. Jack was concerned for him. But this? I'm not going to sneak a bunch of dangerous fanatics into someone's house to kill him."

  "I thought you said you'd look out for him?"

  "This goes a little beyond looking out for him. We're talking about killing someone; I won't be a part of that."

  Alice couldn't believe Grant would betray his brother like this. "They're going to kill the man that imprisoned them for ten years!" It was hard to keep herself from yelling it.

  "Everyone keeps saying that, keeps reminding us the Defenders were the victims. But you know what? That doesn't justify what they're doing. They want restitution? Fine, they ask for it. They want justice? They find an impartial judge and see that it gets done. They want revenge? Don't come to me for help. Ever since he came out of that coma, I've been watching Jack, taking care of him. Even when I suspected that he was one
of those terrorists—"

  Alice gasped.

  "Yes, terrorists who were out on their rampage of revenge, I still looked out for him. He needed me. But now he's back on his feet and proven that he's able to take care of himself. You know how many times he told me that Amanda was growing up, that I should just accept it? Well, now I'm saying it to him. He can find another way in to kill the landlord; I won't be a part of this."