“Dumb klutz,” said Kwang-Sun. He prodded Chogan in the small of the back with the M4’s muzzle. “Let’s go.”
Chogan headed back to the bus.
The soldier who had fired over Meers’s head was ushering Meers toward the bus. The soldier had taped Meers’s hands behind Meers’s back in the same manner that the other soldiers had used on most of the other passengers.
“Don’t worry,” Chogan told Meers as Chogan neared him. “They won’t kill you.”
“Why not?” said Meers.
“I don’t know yet, but they want us alive for some reason.”
“For the time being anyway.”
Chogan nodded as he and Meers returned to the other passengers who were being tied together near the bus. “Yeah. For the time being.”
“Our chances for survival aren’t good.”
“You sound like an actuary.”
“I’m a CPA. It’s a lot like being an actuary. We deal in numbers. Life’s all about numbers and probability.”
“What do the numbers say?”
“They say our chances for coming out of this alive are about as good as a snowball’s chance in hell.”
Chogan looked around, weighing their situation. “We can’t give up. We have to keep trying.”
The soldiers were marching the last of the passengers off the bus.
“The laws of probability don’t lie,” said Meers.
“It might help if we could figure out why they brought us here and what they intend to do to us.”
“Maybe they’re gonna abandon us here in the desert to die of thirst.”
Chogan screwed up his face. “Why? What’s the point?”
Meers shrugged. “Maybe they’re trying to cut down on the population in Vegas. Maybe they don’t have enough food to feed all of us. Did you ever read Malthus?”
“No,” said Chogan, puzzled.
“Malthus says populations grow faster than their food supply with starvation as the end result.”
“Then why not just shoot us and be done with it?”
“Maybe they can’t psych themselves up to shoot us in cold blood.”
Chogan guffawed. “That’s a good one. You should have seen what they did to those medics distributing the vaccine at the shelter. You never saw such a bloodbath.”
Quantrill strutted up to Chogan and Meers. “I’ve heard enough out of you two.”
She told Kwang-Sun to tape their mouths shut.
Kwang-Sun followed her orders and shepherded Chogan and Meers to the other passengers that were huddled together and bound together by a rope. Kwang-Sun ran the rope between Chogan’s and Meers’s tied wrists then tied the two ends of the rope together so that all the passengers were secured together by the rope.
Kwang-Sun bound Chogan’s legs together with a length of rope while a soldier did the same to Meers’s legs. Instead of walking, all Chogan and Meers could do was hop.
Quantrill addressed the passengers. “I hate doing this to you, but some must be sacrificed so that others may live. Everyone in town has an equal chance of being selected. You were selected at random. I don’t play favorites. It was just the luck of the draw.”
She ordered her soldiers to board the bus.
She followed them.
Once inside the bus, she leaned on the horn for the better part of a minute and then hammered it again and again.
Hearing the ruckus, the walking dead that had been plodding aimlessly around the desert zeroed in on the bus. Hordes of the creatures coming from all directions massed together and halted toward the passengers.
Eyes bugging out of their heads in fear, the passengers started bounding around, trying desperately to escape.
With a frisson Chogan realized why Quantrill hadn’t killed them. She was sacrificing them to the walking dead, who ate only living flesh.
CHAPTER 64
Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center
President Cole was standing up beside his chair in the Situation Room when it happened.
The entire building began trembling violently and creaking.
Cole grabbed the back of his chair to steady himself so he wouldn’t fall over.
Mellors eyeballed the cement ceiling, expecting it to crack and cave in. He scurried under the table.
Slocum, Harold Paris, Sheila Klauss, and Hilda Molson followed Mellors’s lead and scrambled under the table. On their hands and knees on the floor they waited out the shaking of the bunker. It wasn’t long before Cole crawled under the table and joined them.
“What was that? An earthquake?” said Molson, eyes wide.
“I didn’t know they had earthquakes around here,” said Klauss.
“They’re not supposed to,” said Slocum. “We wouldn’t have built this bunker here if it was on a fault.”
The vibrating of the building diminished.
Mellors heard the door to the Situation Room fly open. From under the table he made out a pair of legs charging into the room.
“Mr. President! Mr. President!”
It was Secretary of Defense Byrd scuttering around the room seeking Cole.
Cole and his administration crawled out from under the aegis of the table.
“Are you injured, Mr. President?” said Byrd, sweeping over to Cole and helping him to his feet.
“I’m fine,” said Cole, standing up with the aid of Byrd’s hand around his arm. “What happened?” Cole brushed the dust off his trouser knees.
Byrd was holding a satphone in one hand. “I just got a call from one of my men. Apparently, a missile hit us.”
“Missile?”
“Nothing to worry about, Mr. President. This bunker was built to take anything they can throw at us. A-bombs, H-bombs, bunker busters, EMPs, you name it. Nothing can hurt us here.”
Mellors got to his feet and brushed off his knees. Straightening up he noticed the white streamers tied to the vent in the wall were still fluttering as recirculated air continued to pour into the room. The ventilation system hadn’t been damaged in the blast, he decided with relief.
“Everybody OK?” asked Cole, searching the faces around him.
“I bruised my knee, but I think I’ll survive,” said Molson, massaging her kneecap below her dress’s hem.
Cole turned to Byrd. “You were saying somebody fired a missile at us?”
“No fooling. The chowderhead, whoever it was, thought they could harm us here. Au contraire, Mr. President. This is the Taj Mahal of bomb shelters. We’re invulnerable here.”
“The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum, General.”
“OK, already, you know what I mean. You’re taking my words too literally.”
“I hope we don’t end up buried here,” said Molson.
“Nobody’s getting buried anywhere.”
“Let’s change the subject,” said Cole, annoyed at the direction the conversation was taking.
“How did they know we were here in the first place?” said Molson.
“Mount Weather isn’t much of a secret,” said Slocum. “It’s common knowledge it’s a government hideout in times of crisis. Anyone with access to the Internet could have found out about it. It’s hard to keep a secret anymore what with the Internet and hackers.”
“But the Internet’s down,” said Molson.
“They could have gotten the information before we began jamming the Internet,” said Slocum.
“Terrorists?” suggested Paris. “They know our country’s weakened by the plague, so they launch an attack?”
“We need more intel before we can figure out who did this,” said Slocum.
“The sons of bitches are gonna pay, whoever they are,” said Byrd. “If they think we can’t defend ourselves because we’re down here, they got another think coming.”
“Are you sure we’re safe here?” said Molson.
“Positive. Nobody can touch us here. We’ve got over ten feet of reinforced concrete surrounding us, plus an entire mountain on top of us.”
Cole w
aited for silence. “How did it go with Dr. Laslo, General?”
“Laslo’s not gonna be a problem.”
“Why not?” said Paris anxiously, dreading Byrd’s answer.
“He suffocated. He had a perforated lung.”
Face wan, Paris bowed his head. He had hoped Laslo would pull through. Paris had not wanted to kill Laslo. Paris pulled the trigger only because he had no choice. He couldn’t allow Laslo to shoot Byrd.
“Are you sure, General?” Mellors asked.
Byrd fixed a steady gaze on Mellors. “No question about it.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I was standing right next to him when he flatlined.”
Mellors could read Byrd’s unblinking gaze. He figured Byrd had played a hand in Dr. Laslo’s death by suffocation. Byrd would do anything he could to protect Cole and what was left of his administration. The wagons were being circled.
Cole heard his satphone hum in his jacket. He dredged out the red phone and answered it, his expression intense.
Everybody in the room fell silent as Cole listened to his phone.
Cole grimaced.
“Nuts!” he said at last and ended the call.
He shot the satphone a dirty look before he thrust it unceremoniously into his jacket pocket.
“Who was that?” asked Byrd.
“Guess,” answered Cole.
“Not Ho?”
Cole nodded.
“What did that clown want?” said Byrd.
“He claims he was the one who fired the missile at us. He demands that I surrender.”
Byrd guffawed. “And you used General McAuliffe’s line from the Battle of the Bulge on him. Good one, Mr. President.”
“Thank you, General.”
“Where did Ho get a missile?” said Klauss. “The UN doesn’t have missiles in New York City.”
“Probably on the black market,” said Byrd. “The Russians have nukes coming out their ears. He could have gotten one from them.”
“Do you think Ho’s capable of building an arsenal to take over the world?” said Cole.
“I wouldn’t put anything past the guy. He sees the world’s falling apart because of the plague. He’s obviously trying to exploit the situation and gain power.”
“But he doesn’t even have a country,” said Klauss.
“He figures he’s the secretary-general of the UN, so the whole world’s his oyster.” Byrd shook his head, his mouth downturned. “He’s gone around the bend. A certifiable nutbag.”
“What are we going to do with him?”
“When we nuke New York, he’ll be dead meat. He’s not gonna get an evacuation warning this time around.”
“What about everybody else who’s still alive out there?”
“She’s right,” put in Cole. “We need to warn the public to seek bomb shelters before we punch in the rest of the code in the football.”
“The football’s gonna reset if I don’t punch in the rest of the code right now,” said Byrd, noticing that the equipment had a red light flashing on its keyboard.
The speed of the flashes was increasing.
“Let it reset. I’m going to the TV studio to issue the warning to evacuate.” Cole turned to Klauss. “I’m glad you reminded me, Sheila.”
Cole headed for the door.
Byrd sighed, watching the football with resignation, his hands tied. “Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER 65
Nevada
Tied to the other bus passengers by means of the rope between their bound wrists, Chogan watched the bus drive away. The bus ran over several of the walking dead that got in its way and squashed them like flies on the dirt, where they writhed on their backs then got up and lurched away, except for the ones whose skulls the bus had crushed.
The urge to kill Quantrill consumed Chogan. Glaring after the bus he saw her jut her hand out one of the windows and wave good-bye to him.
Graveled by her gesture, he fought to break his bonds so he could hunt her down and take her out. His obsession with killing Quantrill blinded Chogan to the fact that the vanguard of the legions of the walking dead was now less than ten feet away from him and his fellow prisoners.
The sudden realization of his plight brought him to his senses. He had to escape.
But how? he wondered.
Terrified, the other prisoners were pulling against each other as they frantically hopped around trying to go in different directions—with the result that none of them was getting anywhere. Without a common direction they fought each other to a standstill, as the ghouls continued to hem them in.
Gagged, they couldn’t even talk to each other in order to agree on what to do.
They hopped and bumped into each other like terrified rabbits, waiting to be torn to pieces by predators.
Pulled every which way by the other prisoners, Chogan was having trouble maintaining his balance, especially with one of his legs out of commission. The prisoners elbowed and jostled him in their panic to flee.
The flesh eaters descended on the prisoners nearest them and commenced to tear them apart.
Chogan tried to back up toward the ghouls, hoping they would rip apart the duct tape binding his wrists in their eagerness to get at his flesh. Then he might be able to break free and escape. It wasn’t much of a chance, he decided, but it was better than nothing.
The better part of two feet away from Chogan, a ghoul in a priest’s dirty black soutane was tearing off the head of a fortysomething woman as he bit into a large chunk of her throat. Arterial blood geysered out of the woman’s ragged neck and drenched Chogan as the ghoul tore the slab of flesh out of her throat.
The blood on Chogan’s face blinded him momentarily. His arms tied, he couldn’t wipe the fluid out of his eyes. He had to wait for it to drip away. Eyes stinging, he could see at last.
But maybe it would have been better if he couldn’t see.
He saw a ghoul grab Meers’s arm and bite a hunk of bloody flesh out of it. Meers’s eyes bugged out of his head as his face drained of color. Blood jetted out of his shredded arm.
Chogan wondered absently if the vaccine would prevent Meers from turning into a zombie, if there was anything left of him after the creatures got through tearing him to ribbons. What good was the vaccine if you bled out? And what good was it if the ghouls picked your bones clean?
What looked like thousands of the ghouls to Chogan laid into the prisoners. Blood and gobbets of flesh were spraying everywhere. A runty sixtysomething ghoul wearing a tan fedora, a scarlet button-down shirt, and beige slacks shuffled toward Chogan. Chogan wondered why the hat was sitting so low on the ghoul’s head, all the way down its brow, in fact.
Then he saw the reason. The ghoul had no ears to support the fedora. What the ghoul had was a partially decomposed face. Chogan gagged on the stench of the putrid flesh.
Chogan felt the tether go limp between his fettered wrists behind his back. One of the ghouls must have torn through it during their assault on the prisoners. Now at least Chogan could try to hop away from the massacre.
But shoals of ghouls surrounded him. Where could he go? he wondered frantically.
The eerie silence of the carnage unnerved him. Gagged, the prisoners died mute, even as the zombies ate them alive and splashed through their spurting blood.
Clouds of dust rose from the outdoor abattoir as ghouls and prisoners scrabbled in the dirt in the onslaught. Dust blew into Chogan’s eyes, irritating them. His eyes teared.
Chogan didn’t like Meers’s chances. Through the veil of swirling dust Chogan could make out three of the walking dead pinning Meers’s blood-soaked squirming body to the ground as they got down on their haunches and hunched over it.
Chogan couldn’t help Meers. Chogan couldn’t even help himself.
He started hopping backward toward a thirtyish female redheaded ghoul that was wearing a black police uniform with its pant legs torn off, hoping she might slash the bonds around his wrists with her claws. Blood drip
ping from her mouth, she waded through the mob of creatures toward him. Chogan kept hopping backward toward her, offering his bound wrists to her.
Once his hands were free, he would be able to wield a weapon and make some kind of an effort to defend himself. In his current state, trussed like a turkey, he had no chance against the ghouls.
Of course, there was nothing to prevent the cop ghoul from ripping Chogan’s arms off or sinking her jagged teeth into his neck as he backed into her, Chogan knew.
CHAPTER 66
Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center
His face somber, President Cole sat behind his desk in the TV studio and eyed the camera whose red light glowed at him.
“I sit here before you today with a heavy heart,” he said. “I am saddened by the plague that has brought so much grief to this country, to your families and your loved ones. The battle is joined between us and the pandemic—and I’m sorry to say we are losing.
“We must do something decisive to break the back of the disease and save our country.
“It is with this in mind that I have decided to initiate the launching of nuclear missiles to eradicate the disease from our hallowed land. WMD are the only weapons at our disposal that can wipe out the disease.
“We thought the vaccine would effectively put an end to the plague.” Cole’s eyes welled with tears. “Sadly, we were wrong. We have discovered that the vaccine is only 60 percent effective.”
“The liar,” Mellors told Slocum, who was standing beside him behind the camera watching Cole. “Zero percent effective is more like it.”
“He’s covering his ass,” said Slocum, holding his voice down so Cole couldn’t hear it and the studio mikes couldn’t pick it up.
“I’m surprised he even admitted it was 60 percent effective—even if it is a lie.”
“He had to in order to justify his launching of nuclear weapons,” said Slocum. “If the vaccine really worked, we wouldn’t need to drop nuclear bombs on the populace.”
Mellors nodded. “Everything he does is to protect his image.”
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