He wasn’t hard to find. Ross was the only person doing nothing but staring up into the sky.
“I really doubt you’ll see it coming,” Clarren told him. “Those missiles go up into space. Or almost into space. So, are you going to stay? Chances are you’ll get eaten before you get vaporized. All this action has got the zombies on the move.”
Ross didn’t know what he wanted to do. It felt wrong of him to leave while there were still people pulling back from the line. “I need you to get ahead of all this,” he told Clarren. “We need to set up a quarantine zone. Well, first a new defensive line of some sort, one that’s just outside the city. Then we need what we’ll call a quarantine buffer.”
“I’m sure that you…”
In the middle of Clarren’s sentence, Ross sucked in a violent breath and stepped back, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping. “Shiiiit!” Ross said, gagging slightly on the word. High above them in the night sky shot eight, nine, a dozen streaks of orange flame.
4-11:50 p.m.
The White House, Washington D.C.
With a wet gurgle and a soft, ineffectual hand clawing at her arm, the President died. He slumped to the side and his blood made a pattering sound as it dribbled out onto the carpet. Trista Price stepped back, her once delicate, refined lips now twisted downward in an ugly grimace, her face lined and pinched, her manicured nails lacquered in blood.
Her first response to murder was to erase the evidence coating her hands and she almost wiped them on her own jacket. She used a napkin instead, tossing it on the President’s ice cream when she was done. Red and white mixed but did not become pink as it should have. It became something inedible and un-seeable. She turned away, took a deep breath and opened the door.
The two agents glanced at her. One blandly, the other cocking an eyebrow just a little. Otherwise they were expressionless.
“The President is dead. We have to release the Vice President so that he can…” Her next word was spun out of her as she found herself yanked around and slammed into the wall. In the span of that second, the other agent darted into the room and pulled the dead man back.
“I am pardoned!” Trista cried. “The Vice President is now the President and he will pardon me. We have to get to him and free him. He’s the only one who can stop this.”
“He’s behind this?” one of the agents demanded.
Trista tried to shake her head, but couldn’t with her cheek pinned to the wall. “No. I did it, but he will pardon me. He’s the only one left to pass judgement, and he’s the next in line to lead. Who else is there? Damn it. Take me to him or ten million deaths will be on your heads!”
The two agents shared a look. One shrugged and the other took a bewildered breath. “He is only three doors down and he is sort of the next in line.”
“What about the director?” the first asked, feeling the weight of responsibility. “Shouldn’t we get him involved?”
“There is no time!” Trista shouted. “We have minutes to stop this. The army is winning. We have to give them the time they need.”
Another look and then Trista was yanked from the wall and marched down the hall. They took a single left turn and found a third agent sitting in an incongruously placed antique Louis XV style French Country chair that had been pulled from the storage room that the Vice President was currently being held in. The agent didn’t move from the plush, purple cushion; he only gave the three of them a curious look.
“The President is dead,” Trista declared. “We need to see the Vice President. He’s now the Commander in Chief.”
“It’s true,” one of the agents said.
Trista didn’t have time for more explanations. She pulled away and stepped into the storage room. The Vice President, once a tall, waspish, vanilla politician who’d had the wonderful ability to tell everyone exactly what they wanted to hear, was now a shattered wreck. He sat huddled in on himself, shaking and crying. Blood seeped through a cheerfully robust quilt that someone had tossed over him.
“Sir,” Trista said, going to one knee. “The President is dead. I killed him to save the country.” His eyes focused and narrowed; disbelief and desire warring within them. “You can be the new president but only if you issue a blanket pardon for me. Will you do that?”
His eyes darted around, making him look like a weasel with a pack of foxes surrounding him. “Sure. Why not. You’re pardoned. Am I free to go?”
She felt half a second of relief and Trista considered trying to get David Kazakoff a pardon as well, but she feared that this would turn the new President against her. “Yes. sir. We need you in the Situation Room. The Pres…the old president has launched…” She paused to snap at the Secret Service agents, “Get him up. We need to hurry. Sir, the old president has launched a nuclear strike against our own troops and against cities that haven’t shown any sign of the infection.”
“He’s really dead?”
“Yes, sir.” Two of the agents stood the new President up and he immediately crumbled back to his knees. “Carry him by his arms if you have to! Yes, sir, he’s dead. I’ll show you.” She marched straight to the little room and pointed inside without looking. “He’s dead and you are the new president. Now, let’s get to the Situation Room.”
One of the agents had disappeared and now there was a flurry of activity. People were running; there was an angry shout. “Hurry!” Trista demanded. They rounded a corner and were confronted by four different Secret Service agents, who froze in confusion. “Out of the way! The President is coming through.” They moved aside and then followed after as Trista barged into the nearly vacant Situation Room.
The big screen was alive now with more red arcs. They practically obscured the map. Eight-hundred missiles were in the air and more were being launched. “He really did it,” the new President gasped. “That bastard. That fucking bastard!” He tried to make a fist, but his broken fingers screamed in agony and he groaned at the pain.
“You can still stop it, can’t you?” Trista asked. “You can abort the mission, right?” When he didn’t answer right away, she pulled out her laptop. “Look. These are the quarantine lines. They haven’t changed all day. We’re winning, sir, and we have more units coming. Think about it, you can be the president who ‘won the war.’ But if you let those bombs explode, you’ll be the president who killed millions of innocent, uninfected people.”
She drew in a big breath to go on, but he stopped her. “How much time do I have until the first bomb goes off?”
A new screen overlapped the main map. This one added the detonation times to the missiles. They were all over the board. Warren, Ohio was five miles from Youngstown, but their detonations were an hour apart. She found the first. “Midnight. Seven minutes from now, here in Columbus.”
“Jesus Christ,” the new President whispered through bruised and swollen lips. “There are zombies all the way out in Columbus?”
Trista flicked to a different map. “The areas shaded in green have known infestations. Yellow are possible areas. And look,” she drew a line from Hagerstown, through Pittsburgh and into the northeast section of Ohio, “this is all clear, and so is all of this area here.” The western third of Pennsylvania was blank, as was a chunk of Ohio and a huge part of western New York.
“The current plan will trap or incinerate millions of innocent people. And in Massachusetts, the bombs are going to fall right on the Army’s head. If we just gave them time, they could get out of the bomb blast radius. It’s only logical and compassionate to put a pause on this, sir.”
He shifted his gaze back to the main map. New purple arcs were coming from the west. They were B2s out of California launching AGM-86s—cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. The new President asked about them and their targets. He asked about reinforcements and supplies. He asked about the Navy and the Air Force, and all the while the seconds ticked, ticked, ticked by and the warheads began to rain down.
Chapter 25
1-Midnight
Columbus,
Ohio
The bank in which Corrina Troost had worked for the last six years had a wonderful view: she could easily see the 600-foot high Rhodes Tower. A little to the west of that was the slightly smaller, but prettier, Leveque Tower, and in the background of both was the Green Building. For some reason she couldn’t name, seeing them standing amid the smoke was a great relief to her.
Also, from her vantage in the bank, if she stood on tiptoe so that her wide, flaring nose broached the very edge of the high little window, she could see the dead prowling around the city. There were a great many of them and their numbers seemed to multiply every hour. Columbus was completely overrun.
Unlike in so many other places, the zombies weren’t fanning out in search of fresh blood, and Corrina guessed that there had to be thousands of people holed-up just like her, waiting to be rescued. Rescue was her only hope since her truck, the same truck that had been giving her fits for the last five years, had been dead for a week now with a broken alternator and a million-pound battery that she couldn’t lift.
The truck had been a bad idea from the start. Her boyfriend, Zach had been a worse one. He and his flashy BMW had disappeared the day before without even leaving a note. She hadn’t been terribly surprised. Mentally and spiritually crushed, yes, but not surprised or heart broken. She had known from the beginning that he wasn’t “the one,” and this just proved it, yet again.
His ditching her had left her stranded and alone in the middle of Ohio. Too late, she had called her friends, but they were gone as well, speeding off west, along with half the state. “Maybe it’ll be okay,” she told herself the night before when the zombies were still in eastern Pennsylvania. They are a long way away, she told herself. Hundreds of miles, she told herself. I have time, she told herself.
With a will and a great deal of wishful thinking, she had barricaded her apartment.
Then at noon she heard the first gunshot and all the lies she had told herself crumbled to dust, as the truth of her situation blossomed in front of her: It wasn’t going to be okay; the zombies weren’t hundreds of miles away; she had run out of time; and her apartment, with its flimsy lock, hollow doors and thin, brittle windows weren’t going to keep her safe for more than five minutes.
Oh, but the bank was another story. Unlike so many modern banks, with their tall windows, airy spaces and cold attention to money, the John C Reedy Bank was a squat, ugly little brick building; the only windows it had were high, narrow and nearly useless, even for letting in sunlight.
It was ugly but very definitely safe she decided. Summoning what courage she had left, she grabbed a bag of clothes, a sharp knife and a pillow, and hurried through the nearly empty late afternoon streets feeling dreadfully weak and pathetically vulnerable. She saw zombies in every shadow and wasn’t wrong at least twice, or so she judged by the inhuman moans and sickening stench.
Once in the bank, she wasted no time and was soon telling herself more lies. “I’m probably as safe as anyone in America,” was the first. This seemed like a fact. It couldn’t be denied that the building was completely zombie proof. The high windows were one and a half inches thick, and composed of nine separate layers. Although the door to the foyer was only strong enough to stop a bullet or two, the second “front” door was massive. With its thick metal core, it was a throw-back to an earlier time.
“I can hold out in here for weeks,” was the next lie she told herself as she puttered about, taking stock of her situation. Along with about a thousand lollipops, she had a refrigerator filled with the leftovers from a poorly planned and sparsely attended retirement party for the bank president, a penny-pinching grouch of a man whom no one liked.
The next lie was plausible as well: “They’ll come for me.” It was a mantra that she repeated seven or eight times an hour. It was almost a prayer and indeed she frequently said it with her hands clasped together under her chin. There was even some basis for her belief.
All afternoon and into the evening, the sound of fighting gradually increased. And there were bombs and explosions. Immense flashes of light lit the sky, followed by sharp bangs or the rolling grumble of thunder. To her, it sounded like the army had finally arrived, when in truth there were only a few thousand police and some National Guardsmen ringing the city. The explosions she’d heard were the fuel tanks just south of the airport erupting one after another.
“I have time. I just have to be patient.” Corrina did not have nearly as much time as she thought. This was the biggest lie by far.
Three states away, the new president, his body twisted from pain, was stuck in a terrible position: he had the fate of millions of people hanging on this one decision. Which way to turn? Was it cowardice to let the bombs fall? Was it wisdom to order the override system into effect?
“Sir?” Trista whispered, crouching next to his chair and staring up into his face. She tried to smile but her lips fell slack after each attempt. “You can save thousands of lives! You can be a hero. Just stop the bombs, please.”
His mind veered and seesawed. “I don’t know. What if you’re wrong? What if the President was right? I-I have to believe he decided on the missiles as a last resort.” He looked to the Secret Service agents, but they were plank-faced.
“He was paranoid,” Trista insisted. “Dangerously paranoid. He wanted to have your daughters raped and he wanted to film it. Just to get to you. That’s the kind of man he was. He only cared about himself, but I know you’re not like that. Now, do the right thing and save lives!”
The new President sucked in a long breath, tuned out Trista, ignoring the darting, uncertain eyes of the junior staffers and the silent military officials, none of whom had been around the day before. He concentrated on the maps, the Army units in place and those rushing to help. He took in the estimates of the undead…and more moments slipped away.
While he procrastinated, Corrina Troost was beginning to feel a building anxiety within her. It was an unnamable fear that was worse than anything she’d yet experienced and she was just then dragging a chair over to one of the high windows so she could see the lights of the city better. They weren’t as bright as usual, but she needed their comfort. In her modern American mind, electricity meant that things were still, if not hunky-dory, then at least manageable. The chair, once belonging to the penny-pinching grouch, was heavy and she had never been what anyone would call strong. She had to drag it like it was a body and it was when she was turned away that the entire city exploded in light that was so spectacular, that even though she was facing away, it struck her nearly blind.
“Christ! Oh, God! What was that?” she gasped. A part of her was afraid she knew. With a last heave, she had the chair close enough to the window to see outside. The night was gone, banished by a spectacular brilliance, the like of which she had never seen before. It was like looking into a hundred suns.
Squinting and shielding her eyes, she peered through her crossed fingers. Her mind was that of a deer with a car bearing down on it. She was stunned and shocked, frozen in place as the brilliance took on a fantastic purple hue. Within it she saw a shimmering, spectral wall of silver light heading right for her at a fantastic speed. It was fire unlike any fire ever created. It was a fire that consumed reality. As it came on, trees turned to ash, windows instantly crystalized into trillions of particles of dust, asphalt streets ran like black rivers and bricks began to burn.
Corrina shrieked in fear as she leapt off the chair and ran for the vault. It was all of ten paces away, but before she could fling herself inside, the hurricane of fire roared around the building with a noise so terrible that no mortal could withstand it. Her eardrums exploded and in complete mindless terror, she threw herself into the bank vault. Earlier, she had hauled the door practically closed, “just in case.” Now, that “just in case” moment had come, but she lacked the wit and the strength to close the door. The air pressure, fluctuating madly, slammed it shut for her. The five-ton door might as well have been five ounces as it thundered closed with
concussive force.
She was splayed out on the thick metal floor, shaking from more than just fear. The vibrations from the vault doors had not diminished, but were growing until she skittered like a bean on a hot skillet to the wall and when she touched it, her skin instantly blackened and turned to what looked like tar. Pain tore through her and yet it could not hold a candle to her fear and confusion. She had no idea what was happening.
Simply put, she was about to die. The bank sat two miles from where a 450-kiloton nuclear bomb had exploded. The temperature outside the vault door was an astonishing 6,000 degrees Kelvin or just a shade over 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The bank itself had already disintegrated around the vault and, had Corrina not been deaf, she would have heard a crackling sound as the reinforced concrete walls dissolved and the steel melted.
The vault withstood the effects of the blast for five and a half seconds. Unbelievable heat radiated over her, blistering her skin, setting her hair alight and shriveling her lungs in mid-scream. “Nooo…” A fraction of a second later, the air inside the vault ignited in a flash, killing her instantly and turning her to ash.
The new President knew nothing of this, and yet he felt a great pain inside of him that had nothing to do with his torture. Seconds passed and all he could do was stare at the clock on the computer screen as it flashed 0:00 at him. There was silence in the Situation Room until he was able to finally pull his eyes from the clock. He turned them on Trista and rasped out, “It’s too bad for them that you found your courage two-hours too late.”
“My courage!” Trista cried, jumping to her feet, her face flashing instantly red. She was grabbed by the nearest Secret Service agent, but ignored the pain as her arms were thrust behind her back. “You of all people know what I risked by saving you. And don’t forget, I saved your wife and daughters. That was me. Now it’s your turn to take a risk…sir!” She spat out the word as if it tasted of shit. “Stop this before anyone else has to die.”
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 39