He started in his seat as the phone on his desk broke into a strident ring.
Sitting up he decided that was one good thing about living in this bunker—at least it had a dedicated internal phone system that worked. Of course, they could not contact the outside world with it, but what was left of the world to contact anyway?
Mellors answered the phone.
“Hello, Scot. I want to see you in my office ASAP,” said Slocum.
“Yes, sir.”
It sounded urgent, decided Mellors.
CHAPTER 25
Mellors rapped gently at shoulder height on Slocum’s closed door.
“Come in,” said Slocum.
Cracking the door Mellors was surprised to see NSA Director Holmes sitting in a chair opposite Slocum, who was seated behind his desk watching Mellors enter his office.
“Sit down, Scot,” said Slocum.
Mellors felt the deep-set blue-grey eyes buried in Holmes’s pasty face track him as he commandeered a chair.
There was something porcine about Holmes’s eyes as they peered from behind his rimless wire-bowed spectacles, decided Mellors. The thought that this was the man entrusted with reading everybody’s e-mails and eavesdropping on their phone conversations discharged an involuntary frisson through Mellors. Holmes was wearing an ill-fitting navy blue suit and a peach bow tie.
Watching Mellors and Holmes, Slocum folded his hands on his desktop before he launched into his speech.
“After Hilda’s suicide, the president has asked me to speak with the other employees here and set them straight as to the true nature of our situation,” said Slocum.
“In what respect?” said Holmes, whose mountainous girth fit uncomfortably into his chair like a cork that was too big for a wine bottle.
Much of the excessive flesh around his hips spilled out over his chair’s armrests, which were digging into the bottom of his rib cage and maximizing his discomfort.
“He wants to make sure that everyone here understands this isn’t the end of the world,” answered Slocum.
“Must be pretty close, though,” said Mellors.
Slocum’s face remained implacable, not responding to Mellors’s witticism.
“You think we’re gonna get depressed like Molson and off ourselves because of our lousy accommodations?” said Holmes.
Slocum blinked rapidly several times then proceeded by ignoring Holmes’s remark. “He wants me to talk to a few of you at a time—”
“And make sure we’re not going around the bend,” cut in Holmes.
“Just let me finish, Tony,” said Slocum, patting the air down in front of him like it was a mound of invisible dough, signaling Holmes to hold his tongue.
“Let me remind you, I’m not one of your employees at the CIA.”
“I know that. The president has other things to do and he wants me to take care of this for him in light of today’s tragic events.”
“That’s fine with me, as long as you remember I’m the director of the National Security Agency,” said Holmes, puffing out his ponderous chest.
And I have your phone tapped, thought Mellors, reading between the lines. He noticed no reaction on Slocum’s part to Holmes’s subtext.
With great difficulty, grimacing, Holmes shifted in his chair and fished a white silk handkerchief out of his trouser back pocket and dabbed at the film of perspiration slicking his brow.
“Basically, this is a sitrep,” said Slocum. “I’m trying to give you men the lay of the land.”
“I wish they’d turn down the heat in here,” said Holmes, breathing heavily as he twisted in his seat, scowling, in order to return his handkerchief to his pocket.
He plucked at the bow tie fastened around his neck to loosen it a tad.
“If you’d just sit still a moment, Tony, and let me go on,” said Slocum.
Holmes gave a dismissive wave. “Don’t concern yourself with my misery.”
“That’s what this powwow is all about.”
“My misery?” said Holmes with a hike of his sparse eyebrows.
“Our misery. We have to adapt to our current situation.”
“We have to adapt to the apocalypse,” said Mellors.
“That’s what the human race does in order to survive,” said Slocum. “We adapt or we die out.”
“Just like any other species.”
“How many persons are left in the world now, do you think?”
Eyes blank, Mellors shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“For sake of argument, let’s say a million.”
“That’s a million more than I expected. The world’s population was wiped out by the plague and then for good measure by our nukes.”
“There are plenty of bomb shelters out there,” said Holmes. “I bet there are more than a million people still alive.”
“My point is this,” said Slocum, trying to maintain control of the conversation. “There were over 7 billion human beings on this planet before the plague struck.”
“That many?” said Mellors, unable to get his head around the stratospheric numbers.
“That’s a drop in the bucket,” said Holmes. “It’s nowhere near our national deficit of $17 trillion.”
“Can we stick to the subject, please?” said Slocum, losing his patience.
Holmes bridled. “What is the subject, for Christ’s sake?”
“When the plague hit, the world was overpopulated. The sustainable population on earth is only 1.5 billion human beings. If the plague hadn’t struck, it would have been some other calamity that winnowed down the population. It was inevitable.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Mellors, unsure he was grasping what Slocum was getting at. “Are you saying the plague was a good thing because it wiped out almost 7 billion persons?”
“We were heading to an abyss of chaos if we continued to overpopulate the earth.”
“We got there faster with the plague and our A-bombs.”
“The spectacular growth of the world’s population is directly attributable to petroleum. The population has grown more since the advent of petroleum-based societies than it has at any other time in history.”
“What are you driving at?” said Holmes.
“Before the plague hit, the world was heading toward a cataclysm the likes of which it has never seen before. The fact of the matter is, there is only a finite amount of oil on this planet, and, gentlemen, it most assuredly is running out. When it does run out, there will be mass starvation, riots, and wars on an unprecedented scale culminating with the end of civilization.”
“Except the plague and our A-bombs wiped out civilization first,” said Mellors.
“I’m trying to inculcate the fact on you that the plague may have prevented an even more horrible fate for man of starvation, the breakdown of societies, and blood-soaked world wars.”
“So you’re telling us we should be cheering here in our bunker?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” said Slocum in frustration.
“Frankly, I don’t.”
“Did you ever hear of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?”
“No.”
“It’s a psychological theory postulated by Abraham Maslow. Basically, it says humans strive for the ‘basic needs’ of survival before they proceed to the ‘safety needs’ of comfort. Then they’ll try to attain ‘psychological needs,’ ‘self-actualization,’ and, at the top of the hierarchy, ‘peak experiences.’”
Holmes harrumphed. “Psychobabble. I never put any stock in it.”
“What’s this got to do with our predicament?” said Mellors.
“When the oil ran out, and it would have,” said Slocum, “all societies would have collapsed and populations would have been forced to seek ‘basic needs.’ When populations are forced to seek basic needs, they become ungovernable with the result that a complete breakdown of law and order ensues. We were heading for an inevitable world cataclysm before the plague struck.”
“So we’ve
got it good now. Is that what you’re saying?”
“We’ve got it good, compared to what we were heading for. Yeah, we’ve got it good. So stop griping and moping like Hilda did, and let’s not think about suicide anymore.”
“Everything is relative.”
“You sound like a psychiatrist, Ernest,” said Holmes. “Is this a therapy session?”
“Call it what you want.”
Holmes kneaded his brow. “I just don’t see it. I would rather take my chances with societal breakdown than with the plague and nuclear annihilation.”
“It’s not like we have a choice. The point is, we need to adapt. Otherwise, we’ll all end up like Hilda.”
Except Mellors was convinced Molson did not whack herself. Which meant there was a murderer stalking the bunker. The question was, why did he kill her? And would he kill again?
CHAPTER 26
Nevada
Halverson watched from inside the bus as it drove down a cement ramp to a steel accordion door and halted. The bus driver snapped up a remote, pressed a button, and watched the three-foot-thick steel door rise with a loud hum. He drove the bus into an underground garage, which resonated with the engine’s chuffing.
Halverson could not believe how thick the steel door was. It must weigh tons. This was a bleeding-edge blast shelter, no doubt about it, he decided, not the prefab kind that could be purchased online like the one he and Victoria had been sheltering in earlier. This place was colossal.
The garage alone was big enough for a mall, decided Halverson, his hands bound behind his back in his seat.
“Looks like somebody knew what was coming,” said Probst, sitting beside Halverson.
“What do you mean?” said Victoria from behind them.
“Look at the size of this garage. This bunker must be the size of a football stadium . . . or two . . . or three.”
“And?”
“And somebody was prepared for a nuclear attack. You don’t build an underground garage this humongous in your backyard on a whim.”
“Some fat cat invested a boatload of dough into this complex,” said Simone, perched beside Victoria. “That’s for sure.”
“Some fat cat or some well-fixed organization,” said Halverson, scoping out the capacious garage, which looked all but full to capacity with parked cars.
“Beaucoup bucks were involved in this deal, all right,” said Probst, nodding.
“And there must be a slew of people living here.”
“Which means what?” said Victoria.
“That these guys may’ve known that the nuclear attack was coming.”
“Or maybe they were playing it safe like anybody else who builds a bomb shelter.”
“Why would you invest this much money into a bunker the size of a couple of football stadiums unless you were certain of a nuclear attack?”
“How could anybody be certain of a nuclear attack?”
“Some of these rich guys are paranoid eccentrics. That’s all,” put in Probst.
“But there had to be more than one person involved in the building of this shelter,” said Halverson. “Look at all the cars parked here. I doubt they all belong to the same guy.”
“You never can tell. Some of these billionaires own garages stuffed to the gills with their own cars.” His expression smug, Probst paused. “Besides, how could anybody know for certain there would be a nuclear attack?”
“What with the size of this place and the fact that it’s underground, it must’ve taken a couple years to build,” said Simone.
“Yeah. How could anybody know a couple years ago that nuclear bombs would rain down right here from the sky?”
“Nobody in his right mind would invest this much money into such a monster bunker unless they knew something,” said Halverson.
“Knew what?” said Probst.
“They were just playing it safe,” said Simone. “When you have that much money, you can take precautions that us regular people can’t.”
“This is a damn expensive precaution.”
“A couple million bucks mean nothing to fat cats,” said Simone in a streetwise voice. “It’s peanuts to them.”
As a CIA agent for the National Clandestine Service, Halverson possessed intel of which the others were ignorant. He knew the US government had been complicit in the creation of the mutated H5N1 virus created in the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. This man-made virus, aka the zombie virus, was the selfsame one that had wiped out the world’s population.
The virus, he knew, had escaped from its biosafety level-3 lab in Rotterdam and had proceeded to contaminate the world in a matter of days. But the fact that the US government had a hand in the creation of the plague meant nothing by itself other than the fact that the government had to share responsibility for the plague’s contaminating the populace.
He had not told the others of the government’s involvement because he was a CIA agent sworn to secrecy. Only a handful of people knew what he knew of the derivation of the plague.
But the way things were playing out he figured there might be even more to the story than he knew. Before fellow agent Coogan had been murdered he had muttered something over his satphone about the “apocalypse equation.” It was gibberish to Halverson. He had no idea what it meant.
He had assumed that the escape of the zombie virus into the atmosphere had been a horrible accident. Could a terrorist or some crackpot have leaked the virus deliberately? Insanity! Halverson decided. To even think such a thought was insanity. Nobody sane would deliberately infect the entire world with plague. It would mean the death of everybody—except those individuals who were fortunate enough to have airtight blast shelters. No. He shook his head. To even consider such an idea was the height of madness.
Not only had the plague wiped out most of the human race, it had also precipitated the nuclear explosions that had wreaked havoc on the world. Nobody sane could plan a catastrophe of such magnitude. It was beyond comprehension, decided Halverson. What would be the point? The mastermind would inherit a devastated uninhabited world.
The leaking of the plague had to be an accident, Halverson decided. There was no other reasonable explanation.
Still, Halverson suspected there were things that even he didn’t know about the plague and its infection of mankind.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The plastic zip ties secured around his wrists were cutting into his flesh and drawing blood. He could feel the warm liquid trickling down his wrists.
The bus groaned to a halt.
“Looks like we’re here,” said Probst.
“Wherever here is,” said Swiggum from the seat across the aisle.
“I don’t think I’m gonna like this place.”
CHAPTER 27
The leader stood up in the front of the bus and ordered the front contingent of his men to disembark. Then he told Halverson and his group to do the same.
Halverson saw no point in refusing. He had no inclination to stay on the bus. On the other hand, he didn’t know what he was getting into. He had no inkling of what would happen to him once he set foot in this bunker. The bottom line was, he had no choice.
He stood up and marched off the bus into the waiting hands of the soldiers that were congregated there awaiting him and the others.
Probst, Victoria, and Simone followed him.
His M4 at the ready, the leader watched them leave.
Nordstrom wanted to follow, but Swiggum refused to stand up, forestalling Nordstrom from leaving his seat.
“Let’s go,” said Nordstrom, standing up and facing the aisle.
“Let’s not,” said Swiggum.
“What do you want to stay in here for?”
“Why do I want to go in that bunker?”
“Why not?”
“I got a bad feeling about this place. These guys are up to no good.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” said Nordstrom, trying to figure out how he could maneuver himself past Swiggum’
s long legs that blocked his way to the aisle.
These seats had scarcely any legroom. There was no way he could scooch past Swiggum’s legs. Swiggum would have to leave first in order for Nordstrom to be able to leave.
“What’s the problem here?” said the leader, strutting toward Swiggum.
“Where are we going?” asked Swiggum.
“We’re leaving the bus. That’s all you need to know.”
“Maybe I like it here,” said Swiggum, his jaw set.
“What happened to your arm?”
“A zombie tore it off.”
“Want me to tear off your other one?”
Swiggum laughed. “You’ll have to untie me first.”
Nordstrom didn’t know why Swiggum was laughing. Nordstrom didn’t get the impression the leader was joking. Of course, Nordstrom could not see the leader’s face thanks to the tinted facemask shielding it.
“I’m not playing games with you,” said the leader.
Swiggum hiked his eyebrows indifferently, face expressionless.
“Take him out of here,” the leader ordered one of his soldiers.
The nearest soldier, about five nine, accosted Swiggum and reached for Swiggum’s collar with his blue latex-gloved hand. The soldier’s hand latched onto the collar and wrenched it.
Flinching, Swiggum pulled back from the soldier.
The soldier leaned toward Swiggum and seized Swiggum’s neck with both of his gloved hands.
With his hand bound at his side, Swiggum had no means to fight back.
The soldier proceeded to throttle Swiggum.
“Knock it off!” cried Nordstrom. “How can he get up with you all over him strangling him?”
Swiggum’s face was turning blue in the soldier’s stranglehold.
“Let him go,” the leader said.
The soldier obeyed.
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