Here We Stand [Surviving The Evacuation] (Book 2): Divided

by Frank Tayell

  As he was beginning to think they would let him die of thirst, the door opened. Powell stood framed in the doorway, almost as if he was posing.

  “Mr Clemens,” he said. “I’d like a word, if you please.”

  Seeing no advantage to rebellion, Tom pushed himself to his feet and climbed the stairs. Before he reached the doorway, Powell backed into the corridor.

  The table and chair were gone. There were two guards. One wore a corporal’s chevrons and carried an assault rifle. The other had sergeant’s stripes and a stun-gun.

  “Please place your hands behind your back,” Powell said, again with that tone of mock civility.

  “Where’s Max?” Tom asked.

  “Like yourself, he is a late addition to our drama,” Powell said. “Both of you are desperately miscast, yet we must each play our part. Opening night approaches, and there’s no one else to stand in front of the curtain.”

  There was a trace of the south in Powell’s accent. Not much, but enough to suggest he’d been born there but raised somewhere else. Tom found himself smiling. Details like that were useless. Even if he were to escape, and somehow find out where the conspirator had been born, what good would it do?

  “You’re smiling,” Powell said. “That’s good. An audience always appreciates confidence.”

  Tom’s hands were cuffed, and he was prodded along the corridor to a room beyond the fire doors. Twenty feet deep by thirty long, windows lined the exterior wall, but each was covered in thick black sheets. As in the corridor, light came from the freestanding electric lamps dotting the room. In the middle was a solitary wooden chair, facing the windows.

  “Sit down,” Powell said.

  Tom did. His hands were cuffed to the chair’s leg. Powell walked back out into the corridor and returned a moment later with a video camera already attached to a tripod. He positioned it in front of Tom.

  “I’ve wanted to talk to you for some time, Mr Clemens,” Powell said. “Of course, my interest is merely the curiosity of one professional with the work of another. My superiors, however, have some more pressing questions, and those must come first.” He turned the camera on. “And the first regards your interest in Dr Ayers?”

  Tom blinked. Of all the possible questions, he hadn’t been expecting that one. “Who?”

  Powell gave a jerk of his head. A fist slammed into Tom’s side, doubling him forward.

  “What aroused your interest in Dr Ayers?” Powell asked.

  “Never heard of her,” Tom spat.

  Powell gave another jerk of his head. A fist punched into Tom’s chest. It hurt, but he tried not to let it show.

  “You really aren’t as smart as you think you are, Mr Clemens,” Powell said. “Perhaps there isn’t that much I can learn from you. You’ve never heard of her? Her? How do you know the good doctor is a woman? Answer the question. Why were you interested in her?”

  “Who said I was?”

  “That won’t do,” Powell said.

  This time the blow came before Tom could open his mouth. It hurt, but he’d been beaten before. He could take the pain, and he knew he’d have to. This was just a warm-up.

  “You sound like you’re from the south,” Tom said. “Tennessee? No, it’s further north. Virginia?”

  A fist slammed into Tom’s jaw.

  “Not the face!” Powell snapped at the guard, and this time there was genuine fury in his voice.

  Tom spat blood onto the floor. “Why not in the face?” he asked. “Why am I still alive?”

  “Did Farley ever confess anything to you?” Powell asked.

  “Farley’s dead, isn’t he?” Tom asked.

  “Answer the question.”

  “Or what?” Tom asked. “You’ll kill me?”

  “There are worse things than death, Mr Clemens,” Powell said. “And you are about to find out what they are.”

  “Well, get on with it, then. What are you waiting for?”

  Powell smiled. “Tell us about Dr Ayers.”

  “Tell me about Farley.”

  Powell sighed and turned off the camera. “One hour,” he said. “And remember what I said about the face.”

  The guards took it in turns. Left, then right, chest, stomach, legs. Tom told himself not to scream. The pain went on, growing, until he had to give it vent. He began singing the national anthem. He made it almost to the end of the first verse before one of the guards changed aim and punched him in the face.

  “Not the face,” the other one hissed. “You heard what he said.”

  Tom spat a gobbet of blood onto the floor and grinned. He sang more loudly. The beating didn’t start again. Instead, he was taken back to his cell.

  Time passed. The door opened. A bottle of water was thrown in. The door was closed. More time passed. He tried to keep track of how much, but it was impossible. The lights never went out. He couldn’t even find where the camera was hidden. The door opened. A pouch of un-hydrated rations was dropped on the landing. The door closed. More time passed. Another bottle of water. Some time later, another pouch of food.

  In total, six bottles of water and three packets of rations were dropped inside before the door opened, and a guard barked, “Outside.” It wasn’t Powell.

  Stiffly, Tom pushed himself to his feet. The guard was the one with the sergeant’s stripes. Tom didn’t recognize the man standing behind him. He couldn’t remember how many faces he’d seen. It no longer mattered.

  “More questions, is it?” Tom asked.

  “Out,” the sergeant barked.

  Again, his hands were cuffed, but he wasn’t going to fight. Not yet. At best, he’d be able to take one of them with him, and that one was going to be Powell. He’d have to get through the coming torture, and this time he was sure it would be more thorough than an inexpert beating. Water boarding, stress positions, worse. He’d have to take it, and be ready when the chance came.

  He was taken to the interrogation room and tied to the same chair. He couldn’t quite say why, but something made him think that there were fewer people on site than before. He heard footsteps outside. The door was behind him, and he had to force down the impulse to turn to see who approached.

  “This is him?” a woman asked.

  “It is,” a familiar voice said.

  A chill shot down Tom’s spine. He knew that second voice. He knew it well. The figure stepped around the chair, and Tom saw him properly.

  “Hello, Tom,” Charles Addison said.

  Tom said nothing, just stared up at Max’s chief of staff.

  “Well?” Addison asked. “Don’t you have something to say?”

  “Life is full of myriad possibilities, yet none so strange as this,” Tom replied.

  Addison frowned. Tom forced his lips into a smile.

  “Shouldn’t we get on with it?” the woman asked.

  “Yes. Of course,” Addison said. “Why were you interested in Dr Ayers?”

  “Why were you?” Tom replied.

  “We don’t have time for this,” the woman said.

  “No,” Addison said. “We have time enough. Go on, Tom. You have questions, so ask them.”

  “Your presence gives me most of the answers I need,” Tom said. “There’s one thing I’d like to know. Who’s in charge? Who are you working for? You’re not in the line of succession, so you can’t take the presidency.”

  “Actually, that’s not true,” Addison said. “Before he died, President Maxwell appointed me to his cabinet. It’s all very official.”

  “You got him to sign something when he was drugged?” Tom asked. “That won’t stand up. The Senate can’t have approved it.”

  “Senate? Stand up?” Addison laughed. “In what court do you think it will be challenged? There is no Senate to ask for confirmation, let alone give it. Now, Dr Ayers. Why did you trek three hundred miles to see her after the outbreak?”

  “I thought she might have answers,” Tom said. The pieces were starting to slot into place. “Wait. Before he died? You�
�ve killed Max?”

  “No, you killed the president, Tom. It was rather tragic, and the manner of his death was somewhat theatrical. I believe you were trying to make a statement of some kind. Knowing that your plan had failed, you took this final revenge on the cat’s-paw you manipulated into office.”

  “He’s dead?” Tom asked again.

  “You should know,” Addison said. “You killed him. That is what the history books will record.”

  “You think there will be history books?” Tom asked. “There won’t.”

  “Enough,” the woman said. “Why did you go to Ayers’s home?”

  “How did you know I went there?” Tom asked. “Satellites? Cameras? That has to be it. You were keeping watch on the property? Why? You’d already taken her.”

  “Just tell us, Tom,” Addison said. “We asked her, and she has no idea why someone like you would want to speak to her.”

  Tom frowned. “You asked her why I went there? Why did you go? Wait.” He laughed. “No. Tell me it isn’t true.” He laughed again.

  The woman gave a frustrated growl. A fist slammed into Tom’s side. The laugh turned to a coughing rasp.

  “How can she help us, Tom?” Addison asked. “She doesn’t seem to think she can. What does she know that will stop the outbreak?”

  “You found the laptop,” Tom said. “The one I left in my apartment. The one I used to look up her address. I didn’t wipe the memory. That’s why you went there. That’s why you took Ayers. I was following you, but you were following me. Oh, come on, Charles, you have to laugh at that.”

  “But why did you go there?” Addison asked, desperation clear in his voice.

  “Because I thought she might know how to stop it,” Tom said. “I take it that she doesn’t?”

  “It’s as I told you,” the woman said. “He has nothing useful to say.”

  “So she doesn’t know anything?” Tom asked. “No one does, do they? This thing that’s been unleashed, you can’t stop it. Whatever your plans were, they’re in ruins. It’s over. It’s done. You betrayed Max for nothing. You betrayed your country. Your species. You destroyed us, Chuck. There won’t be any history books. Not anymore.”

  Addison opened his mouth to reply, but left before saying anything. The woman followed. Tom tensed, waiting for the torture to start. It didn’t. He was taken back to his cell.

  He’d read somewhere that a beard grew at some fraction of an inch per day. He rubbed his chin’s bristly growth, trying to remember what that number was, but his mind began to drift. Where had he read that? It was a magazine. Was it in a waiting room? A dentist’s, perhaps. Or a barber’s? He always enjoyed haircuts. Not the actual cutting of his hair, but there was something tranquil about sitting in a chair, unable to do anything except think for twenty minutes.

  Now he had nothing to do but think, and he’d been in the cell for longer than twenty minutes. Twenty days? No. It couldn’t have been that long. Perhaps five days. Probably less than seven. There were now twenty empty bottles of water, but he was sure that they were bringing them at uneven intervals. They’d delivered the unheated ration packs five times since Addison had questioned him. That was where he’d gotten the idea that it had been five days.

  “Addison,” he hissed.

  With hindsight, it seemed almost obvious. Almost. The chief of staff could relay orders on behalf of the president. Legitimacy would be provided by whatever documents Addison persuaded the drugged Max to sign. There was nowhere to which Addison didn’t have access. However, had the outbreak not occurred, his association with Max would have tainted any chance Addison had of seizing power. There had to be someone else involved, someone far higher up the chain of succession than an emergency cabinet appointment. Similarly, if Farley had decided to confess all to Max, then he would have warned the president about Addison. Unless Farley didn’t know. Addison had to be a recent recruit to the conspiracy, and one that Farley wasn’t aware of. Again, that confirmed there was someone else, someone high up. Or more than one.

  What Powell had said came back to him. His talk of parts and plays had been more than a verbose brag. It contained the key. The pieces fell into place, and he understood the events as they’d happened, and what they meant, and how they no longer mattered. The cabal had splintered. Addison was a recent recruit to the cabal, but was using the chaotic nightmare to seize power for himself. Hadn’t Max said the speaker of the house had gone missing? Farley had been murdered. Addison and Powell had killed the other members of the cabal. The tenuous legality of an emergency cabinet appointment wouldn’t stand up under any normal circumstances, but under these, with a fragmented nation, they might. There had to be more to it, something else he was missing, but it didn’t matter. The crucial piece of information was that Addison was doing what Tom had wanted. He was destroying the cabal.

  A smile spread across his face. Addison was here. He wasn’t in a bunker directing the military that he’d deployed out of harm’s way. Addison was grasping at straws, seeking an end to the undead, and had wasted his few resources in pursuing Ayers and Tom. The coup had failed. Perhaps the generals and admirals had already disregarded his cabinet appointment. Perhaps the Secretary of Agriculture had taken the oath on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Perhaps a real relief effort was now under way. Perhaps. It was a pleasing fantasy that, even now, Special Forces were hunting Addison and Powell. A strike force might by winging their way to this very spot. At any moment the door would be broken down and… and, no. It might just as easily be a missile, but was more likely to be nothing. He was being kept alive for a purpose, and it wasn’t so that he could be rescued and turn witness against the cabal. There was some part of the puzzle he’d missed. Something he’d overlooked, something that gave Addison hope that his schemes were not yet ash.

  Hope? What hope was there? The world was in ruins. Addison was clinging onto a fantasy of power no more realistic than Tom’s fantasy of rescue.

  The door opened, a bottle of water was thrown in. Tom watched it bounce down the stairs, coming to rest on the landing.

  The memory of when he’d first met Addison came back to him. It had been in Vermont, in the house Claire had inherited from her father, the day after he’d asked Max to run for the presidency. Claire had been the one who needed persuading. She’d had to put her career on hold while Max was in the governor’s mansion. She was a doctor of archaeology, and Max’s entry into politics had added a political subtext to any dig on which she went. Instead, she’d taught, written, and raised their young children on the understanding that when his term as governor finished, so would his political career. Tom still was unsure precisely what he’d said that had changed her mind. It was Claire who suggested they ask General Carpenter to join the campaign as an advisor on the military. Max had proposed Addison.

  No, Addison couldn’t have been involved in the cabal before then. He would have had no worth to them. Perhaps he was wrong. He’d been wrong about Addison’s character. He’d not liked the man, but then, there were few people whose company he did enjoy. Addison was competent, and Max had trusted him. It was for that reason Tom hadn’t investigated the man’s background more thoroughly.

  Who was the woman who’d been with Addison? He hadn’t seen her face and didn’t recognize the voice. He’d never know. He found he was smiling again. The cabal had fractured, and Addison had no idea how to stop the zombies. That was his ray of comfort, that the living dead tearing the nation apart would doom the conspiracy. It would doom him, too. He would die, but not in the cell. They were keeping him alive for some evil purpose, but whatever it was, it lay outside. That was when he would act. He’d kill Addison. That would be his revenge.

  Revenge. It had consumed his life, and the thought of it brought forth an image of his parents. The memory was from six months before they died. His father had arrived home unexpectedly, a Chinese takeaway in his hands. His arrival had defused the fight brewing between Tom and his mother. They’d sat at the kitchen table while hi
s father told stories about driving a delivery truck through Europe. The stories were lies. His father hadn’t been in Europe, and he wasn’t a long-haul trucker. He was a government agent. An occasional assassin and frequent thief who did jobs too unglamorous for spies, too low-reward for mercenaries.

  Tom hadn’t found that out until much later, and that particular truth had set him on the path that led him here. The stories his father had told were a lie, but that didn’t mar the memory. It was one of the few happy ones he had, and so he turned his mind away from the conspirators, and to it. He let the image of his father, his mother, and his infant brother fill his mind.

  The door opened. Another bottle of water was thrown in. Tom ignored it.

  Chapter 12 - Confessions

  March 12th, Location Unknown

  The door opened.

  “It’s time, Tom,” Addison said.

  “You’re on guard duty now?” Tom asked. “Are your troops deserting you?”

  “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” Addison said.

  Tom pushed himself to his feet and limped up the stairs, playing up how frail he felt. It wasn’t much of an act. “What day is it?” he asked as he neared the top.

  Addison took a step back before he answered. “March twelfth.”

  Tom nodded, but found he had no interest in the answer. The date was unimportant. There were three guards in the corridor. All had weapons drawn. It was only Addison whose hands were free. Tom held out his arms, wrists together.

  “No, Tom, there’s no need to tie you,” Addison said.

  “There isn’t? Then why don’t you shoot me here?” he asked.

  “We’re not going to kill you, Tom,” Addison said.

  Tom didn’t believe him.

  “Take him. Get him cleaned up,” Addison said.

  “That way,” the guard with the corporal’s stripes said. He gestured down the corridor, in a direction opposite to the room in which Tom had been questioned. The hallway was long and ominously unlit, save for a shadow of light from an open door at the far end. No, he didn’t believe Addison for one second. He cleared his mind, preparing himself. It was impossible to know when the moment would come, but when it did, he would be ready.