“You can count on me, sir.”
“Nobody tells the media about any of this.”
“I don’t know if any of the media are still left.”
Cole sighed, placed his palms on the tabletop, and leaned back in his chair. “There’s always somebody out there who wants to get out the word.”
“What’s our spin on the situation?”
Cole heaved another sigh. “It might be better if we said nothing.”
“If we act like we don’t know about the plague, the public will think we’re out of touch and distrust us. They might even try to take things into their own hands.”
Cole thought about it. “I see your point. We’ll have to come up with some explanation for what’s happening.”
“Any survivors out there can see for themselves what’s going on.”
Cole nodded. “What if we blame al-Qaeda for using germ warfare against us?”
Pacing around the table, massaging his chin with his left hand, Slocum mulled it over. “That might work.”
“Tell them anything. Just don’t tell them the truth—that we were involved in the engineering of the plague.”
“Maybe the best thing for us is to keep the media out of Mount Weather.”
Cole pulled a face like he was smelling a skunk. “That might incite them to make up stuff that’s going on. Which could be even worse than what really is happening.”
“How could it be any worse?” said Slocum dejectedly.
“They could say we the government are the ones that are contaminating everybody.”
Slocum stopped pacing and watched the TV screen. “We could invoke HSPD-20 to put a muzzle on the press.”
“Homeland and Security Presidential Directive-20, which guarantees Continuity of Operations Plan, aka COOP, during a crisis,” said Cole as if to himself. “It might work. We could cite it to block any media questions.”
“Why not?”
“They’re still gonna want to know what the crisis is.” Cole watched the state of Florida turn from orange to red on the TV screen. He shook his head. “Who’s providing us with this information about which states have become overrun with plague?”
“The FEMA National Radio System, also known as FNARS.”
“The same Federal Emergency Management Agency that blew the handling of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans?”
Slocum ignored Cole’s question. “FNARS is a high-frequency radio system that links federal public safety agencies and the US military in all of the fifty states. When we stop receiving signals from any state linked to FNARS, that state is considered lost to the plague and appears red on the TV screen here.”
“Like I said before, FEMA has a spotty record.”
“FNARS gives you access to the Emergency Alert System, where you can address the entire nation within ten minutes.”
“What about TV? Can’t I address the nation on the TV?”
“Not the whole country. TV signals aren’t functioning in every state. Radio waves are the way to go if you want to reach the entire populace during a crisis.”
Cole shut his eyes and pressed his fingers against his eyeballs. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“We’re safe here, Mr. President. The Russians could nuke this place and we’d still be safe. The walking dead can’t touch us here.”
Cole snapped his eyes open and stared at Slocum. “Are you saying the Russians are gonna take advantage of this plague and attack us while we’re preoccupied fighting it?”
“I’m speaking hypothetically. Who knows how the rest of the world is going to react to this international holocaust? Some countries might try to exploit other countries’ collapses and seize the opportunity to attack them to further their own worldly interests.”
“Yet something else to worry about,” murmured Cole.
“Like I said before, we’re safe here from nuclear attack.”
Cole folded his arms across his chest as he sat at the table. “We may be safe, but what about the rest of the country?”
Slocum had no answer. He watched Illinois convert from orange to red on the TV screen.
At length he said, “If we have to flee, we can hole up in ‘Nightwatch.’”
“The National Airborne Operations Center?”
Slocum nodded. “It’s a Boeing E-4, a survivable mobile command post for the National Command Authority.”
“It sounds like we’re ready for everything—except the fucking plague. God damn it!” In a fit of impotent rage, Cole slammed his fist against the tabletop.
CHAPTER 6
Halverson didn’t like the looks of Marina del Rey, not with all the living dead congregating on the wharf.
He felt depressed. All he had to do was fight a billion zombies and win. He snickered.
“What’s so funny?” asked Victoria.
“Our chances of surviving.”
“You’re the one who wants to go back and fight the ghouls.”
“If we run away, they’ll take over. We can’t let that happen.”
“I’m tired of arguing about it.”
Halverson was tired of thinking about it. It was depressing him and wearing him out.
Hundreds of the walking dead were skittering along the dock.
Halverson wondered if they could see him and Victoria with their dead white-filmed eyes. The creatures seemed to be waiting expectantly for him to moor at the dock.
“We can’t land here,” he said.
He sailed down the coast to Playa Azul, leaving the creatures behind him.
He scoped out the dock. It looked deserted. He shrugged off the Heckler & Koch MP7 slung over his shoulder. He ejected the magazine and inspected it. It was a full clip. He was down to his last thirty-round magazine. He slammed it back into the MP7’s receiver.
He tied up at a weathered bollard on the wharf. He and Victoria piled out of the sailboat. The surf crashed below them, slamming into the pilings and boiling around them.
The duo piked along the quay to the waterfront restaurants and bars that skirted the beach. As he was eying the establishments, a woman in her thirties ambled out of a hole-in-the-wall some twenty feet from him.
She had long brown hair and looked like she was preoccupied with something she was cradling in her arms. The thing was, Halverson could not see anything in her arms. She looked like she was talking to her empty arms. It didn’t figure.
The woman shuffled down the sidewalk away from Halverson and Victoria.
“Is she infected?” asked Victoria.
“I don’t know,” answered Halverson. “If she was infected, she would be attacking us. The creatures are always hungry and attack when they see people.”
“Maybe she didn’t see us.”
“They don’t have to see us. I think they can smell us.”
Victoria was preparing to call out to the woman when Halverson held her forearm and shushed her.
“We don’t want to attract any of the creatures if they’re nearby,” he said.
They jogged after the woman, who was still facing away from them. When they caught up to her, Halverson greeted her.
She looked at him as if in a daze.
“Are you OK?” asked Halverson.
She seemed to gather her wits. “Yes. My baby and I just ate. We feel better now.”
“Where is your baby?” asked Victoria.
The woman looked down at her cradled arms. “Right here. Can’t you see?”
Victoria exchanged looks with Halverson.
“I don’t see anyone,” said Halverson.
“How can you not see Millie?” said the woman, who commenced rocking her arms and smiling down at them.
“I don’t—,” said Halverson.
Victoria cut him off before he could finish his sentence.
“She’s a sweet-looking girl,” Victoria told the woman. “Her name’s Millie?”
“Yes,” said the woman.
“What’s your name? I’m Victoria, and this is Chad.�
��
“I’m Emma, and you’ve already met my daughter Millie,” said Emma, continuing to gaze down at her cradled arms.
Halverson cut a bemused glance toward Victoria after watching Emma.
Victoria shook her head at him imperceptibly as if telling him not to bring up the subject of the “baby.”
Halverson started at a noise in the alley that they were passing. He whipped his head around and picked up on one of the walking dead standing beside an overturned galvanized steel trashcan at the back door of a shop twenty-odd yards down the alley.
Its sixtyish face wizened, its eyes popping out of its head, the creature was taking stock of Halverson’s trio.
“We better beat it,” said Halverson.
He and Victoria peeled off down the sidewalk away from the creature in the alley. It wasn’t long before they realized Emma hadn’t accompanied them.
Halverson stopped running and turned around to find Emma.
She was still idling down the sidewalk, absorbed with cooing to her baby.
He dashed back to retrieve her. “Come on, Emma. We have to go!”
He grabbed her elbow to nudge her along. She resisted at first, scowling at him as if he was disturbing her baby.
“Millie’s trying to sleep,” she said.
Halverson heard the flesh eater shambling down the alley toward them.
“She can sleep later,” said Halverson. “It’s not safe here.”
Grudgingly, Emma whispered something to her cradled arms, kept them folded, and broke into a run with Halverson.
Three more of the walking dead stumbled out of a greasy spoon as Halverson bucketed past it.
“Why did we come back to this?” said Victoria as Halverson and Emma caught up to her and she saw the additional creatures that were now giving chase to them.
“Just another obstacle to overcome,” said Halverson.
Victoria realized Newton the iguana wasn’t with them. “What happened to Newton?”
Halverson looked around as he sprinted. There was no sign of Newton.
“I saw him get off the boat with us,” said Halverson. “Then I lost track of him.”
“He must not like suicide missions,” said Victoria.
At the corner up ahead, Halverson spotted two of the creatures crouched over a longhaired fat man in a cobalt blue polo shirt who lay supine on the sidewalk. They were digging spools of intestines out of the fat man’s blood-soaked prominent stomach that they had ripped open and were scarfing down the bloody innards.
The fat man’s blood dripped from the creatures’ sere lips as the creatures chewed strands of gut with their broken sallow teeth. It looked like the creatures were eating taffy as they yanked on the bloody intestines with their teeth.
“Those things tried to take Millie from me!” blurted Emma, clapping her eyes on the two creatures huddled over the man’s corpse.
She clutched her arms tighter under her breasts as if shielding her baby from assault.
The two creatures heard Emma’s exclamation and looked up from their meal. Seeing her they stood up and made their way toward her, shuffling along the sidewalk and moaning.
Halverson latched onto her elbow, steered her to the right out of the path of the ghouls, and pelted across the street, Victoria close on his heels.
“Now where do we go?” asked Victoria between gasps for breath.
“That looks like a police station down there,” answered Halverson. “Maybe we can find some more weapons there.”
A one-story brick building stood three blocks away. A flagpole loomed in front of its entrance with the flag fluttering in the sea breeze.
“How can you tell?” asked Victoria.
“There are squad cars parked in the lot next to it,” he answered.
Two more creatures lunged out of a souvenir shop at them as they scurried past it.
CHAPTER 7
Halverson put on a burst of speed as adrenaline shot through him.
Victoria and Emma tried to keep pace with him but lagged behind. Still, they easily outstripped the creatures that scrabbled after them.
The world might be coming to an end, but they had to keep going, decided Halverson. As long as they took breath, they had to fight for their very survival. A million zombies. A billion zombies. The numbers didn’t matter. Halverson and his band had to keep going.
Halverson pulled up at the police station, his lungs burning.
Two bloodstained corpses in ragged black police uniforms sprawled on their stomachs near the front door. Both corpses were headless.
At least the bodies wouldn’t reanimate, decided Halverson. Only corpses with brains could reanimate.
Wary of the front door, he decided to make for the back entrance of the police station. He waited for Victoria and Emma to catch up to him.
Like him, they were gasping for breath when they reached him.
“What’s up?” said Victoria, face flushed from running, mouth gaping.
“There are bodies at the front door,” said Halverson. “Let’s try the back.”
The three of them wended their way through the half-full parking lot to the back of the building.
Gingerly, Halverson angled toward the rear plate-glass door. As he was nearing the door, he noticed a small stable in the parking lot behind the police station. Half a dozen chestnuts and bays were tethered in the stable. They were busy devouring hay.
Halverson detoured toward the stable.
“I thought we were going into the police station,” said Victoria.
“We can use these horses to get out of here,” he said.
“Why don’t we just get a car?” said Emma.
“The roads are clogged with cars,” said Halverson. “We can’t drive anywhere. We can ride these horses on the sidewalks.”
“Why didn’t the flesh eaters kill the horses?” asked Victoria.
“Maybe they didn’t see the horses,” answered Halverson. “Let’s mount up.”
They hustled into the stable and took down the tack that hung from the wall. Except for Emma. She stood and looked puzzled as she watched Halverson and Victoria saddling two of the horses.
“I’ve never ridden a horse before,” said Emma.
Halverson retrieved another saddle and strapped it on a horse for her. He harnessed his horse and then hers.
“All you do is sit in the saddle and hold the reins,” said Halverson. “If you want him to turn right, you pull the reins to the right. It’s easy. If you want him to stop, pull up on the reins.”
“I won’t know where to go.”
“Just follow us.”
“What if I fall off?”
“Just keep your feet in the stirrups. Then you won’t fall.”
“What about my baby?”
“You don’t have a—”
Victoria snagged his elbow and squeezed it before he could complete his sentence. She shot him a warning look and held her forefinger to her lips.
“I know what I’ll do,” said Emma. “I’ll put her in her papoose.”
She maneuvered her arms and looked like she was looping a papoose’s lanyard around her neck.
“That’s a good idea,” said Victoria.
Perplexed, Halverson drew Victoria aside until Emma was out of earshot.
“Do you think it’s wise to let her keep believing this fantasy that she’s carrying her baby around with her?” said Halverson.
“She might have a mental breakdown if we tell her the truth. She probably lost her child to the creatures—like I did,” said Victoria, remembering with grief her seven-year-old child Shawna who had succumbed to the plague.
“But you’re coping with it. Emma isn’t.”
“I don’t think we should confront her about this. Her mind’s too fragile at this point to handle the truth. We need to leave her alone for now.”
“I don’t know. It might screw her up even more if she continues believing this fantasy world she’s created.”
“She c
an still function, can’t she? As long as she can continue to function, let’s let her be. Otherwise, she might go into shock and stop functioning.”
At that moment, two of the ghouls stumbled into the parking lot and headed for the stable.
Halverson boosted Victoria up onto her horse. He did the same for Emma, who looked uncomfortable at first but then seemed to settle into her saddle.
Halverson was of two minds. He needed more ammo, but he also needed to pike out of here before more creatures cropped up.
He bolted for the back door of the police station. He figured he could dash into the police station, score some ammo, and return to his horse before the klutzy walking dead reached the stable.
He yanked open the back door and darted into the hallway of the unlit station.
He came to an abrupt halt.
In front of him a cadaver with its face eaten off lay in a pool of coagulating blood. One of the corpse’s legs was missing. Its black police uniform was bloody and shredded.
A clutch of ghouls was milling around in front of the watch commander’s desk.
Halverson didn’t like his chances. If he shot the creatures, his gun’s reports would attract more creatures. If he didn’t shoot the creatures, how could he get past them and retrieve more ammo? Time was running out. The zombies in the parking lot would reach the stable in a few minutes, and, for all he knew, there could be hundreds of zombies right behind them.
He sized up the creatures in front of him. There had to be at least a couple dozen of them stumbling around foraging.
He had thirty rounds in his clip. He would have to make each shot count. Each shot would have to take out a creature. Not only that, there might be more creatures that he couldn’t see lurking in other rooms.
He decided he didn’t have enough time to kill them all and gather more ammo.
He crouched, snagged the Glock 17 semiautomatic from the dead officer’s holster, and beat a retreat into the parking lot. In full flight he snugged the Glock into his waistband behind the small of his back.
He didn’t have to set the safety because it was located in the trigger. That was one of the things he liked about Glocks—their safety system. Besides the safety on their triggers, they also had two internal safeties. Otherwise, he’d have to worry about the gun discharging into his spine.
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