by Frank Tayell
Tom sighed. His chances of survival weren’t great. No one’s were. The truth had to be told, and this soldier deserved to know it.
“The orders came from the White House, but not from the president,” Tom said. “There was a coup of sorts. A conspiracy that began before the election. Farley and Sterling were both involved. Whichever of them won the election, the cabal would own the White House. It’s why Grant Maxwell ran. When he did, and when it became clear that he’d win, the conspirators recruited Charles Addison, his chief of staff, to their cause. He was to be the fall guy, and when he realized, he created his own plot, bringing the cabal’s plans forward. After it had begun, he killed off the other members of the conspiracy, drugged the president, and had himself appointed to the cabinet. He had the crazy idea that in the chaos of the nation’s collapse that would be viewed as legitimate. Then he began killing those in the line of succession. I don’t think he killed them all, but the president’s dead. So are the VP, the speaker of the house, and the secretary of state. You, and the rest of the military were deployed to rural and remote areas so that you’d be relatively intact after the country had fallen apart. He intended to use you to regain the nation and, through that act, secure his place as leader. Except the bombs fell.”
“Addison? Seriously?”
“The plan is as deranged as the man was. I don’t know who was behind the outbreak, except I think it was a pre-emptive retaliation in response to the cabal’s earlier plans. They created a vaccine that would be effective against most of the world’s most deadly diseases. They intended to blackmail the planet and destroy those parts of it that wouldn’t bend the knee. As I say, deranged.”
“How do you know this?”
“I tried to stop it,” Tom said. “I failed. They captured me, and I was held in a cell with the president. They killed him.”
“And the conspirators?”
“Addison killed most of them. I shot him in the shadow of that mushroom cloud.”
“Then it’s over?” Russell asked.
“All that’s left is what we can create from the ashes.”
“Why did—” Russell began, but stopped and shook his head. “I don’t care. You can’t promise no more bombs will fall?”
“No.”
“They say the devil is in the details, but if a missile might already be winging its way to this very spot, the details don’t matter. You said you’re heading to the Atlantic coast?”
“I think so. What about you?”
“South and west. Might have to change our plans, but we’ll stick with them for now.”
“Sarge!” Private Jenson called. She was pointing down the road.
“Zombie?” Russell called back.
“Yes, Sarge.”
“Then shoot it. It’s time we left. You could come with us.”
Tom considered it, but there was his last obligation to Max. “No. There’s a place I want to go. That I want to see.”
“I understand. Good luck to you.”
“And to you,” Tom said.
The private fired. It took her three shots to kill the staggering creature. The soldiers piled back into the trucks and drove away.
Tom had considered asking them to come with him to Claire’s house. He was glad he hadn’t. Telling the sergeant the truth, or at least that brief summary, had been wise. If they met others, the story would spread. Perhaps it would prevent any remnant of the cabal from seizing power. A moment’s reflection told him that wasn’t the case. Somewhere, someone would be in a bunker, sworn in when all those above them in the line of succession were assumed dead. Perhaps there were dozens of presidents now, each in their own isolated refuge, all thinking themselves the sole ruler of these devastated states. It hardly mattered. The bombs had wrecked civilization. The zombies would prevent it being rebuilt.
He climbed back in the truck and drove north. He thought about the email he’d sent three weeks before, the warning sent to military commanders and journalists the world over. Perhaps some had read it and heeded its message. Maybe one of them had deliberately changed the targeting on a missile, and that was why it had struck the middle of nowhere, just north of the border. Or maybe not.
“But you’re still alive.”
Chapter 18 - Family First
Washington County, Vermont
Claire Maxwell’s father had been a pilot in the USAF. He’d won the house in a poker game, the legality of which had created a lawsuit that had dragged on until shortly before his death. Claire had said she thought her father had only clung onto life to confirm he really had won. That spoke volumes about the relationship she’d had with the man, so it had always surprised Tom that she’d not sold the property. He suspected it was something to do with her husband’s move into politics. The rambling house offered a home that a governor’s mansion never could. She was the brains in that particular couple, and excelled at personal politics, but she’d never enjoyed it. Her PhD was in archaeology, and her heart was forever in the classical world. Before Tom had asked Max to run for the presidency, she’d said that she didn’t mind him trying politics while the children were young, but as soon as they were old enough to join her excavating ruins, he’d have to resign. After he’d announced his bid for the presidency, she’d smiled and waved, and accompanied him on the campaign. She’d given interviews, and posed for photographs, but he’d always thought she wouldn’t have minded if Max had lost. His victory had meant any trip to Italy or Greece could only ever be a state occasion and a media circus. A journey to Afghanistan or the Middle East would be impossible.
The previous owner of the forty-acre property had called it “the compound.” Tom had been there a few times before the campaign, and a few more during its early days. Back then, Max had been manufacturing credentials as a candidate local to the northeast, rather than as some way-way-out-of-stater.
He got lost twice before he spotted the double-thick chain-link fence topped with razor wire. He slowed, following the road around the property, stopping briefly when he saw the first guard tower. It was empty. He drove on to the main gate. It was closed, but the sentry box next to it was empty. Tom stopped the truck and got out. He didn’t shout or sound the horn. If there had been anyone nearby they would surely have heard the engine. There was nothing but silence. He grabbed the shotgun, knowing that the worst of his fears were fact. He didn’t want to confirm them, but knew he had no choice.
His boots clicked on the freshly repaired road as he crossed to the sentry post by the gate. Inside, a man in a suit and tie was sprawled in a chair. His eyes were open, his shirt stained from a neat trio of bullet holes. He’d been there long enough for something to gnaw on his fingers. Not a zombie, but something smaller. Precisely what, Tom couldn’t guess.
Shotgun raised, he stalked toward the house. He saw the second body fifty feet from the gate, lying on a path to the side of the road. It was another Secret Service agent, though she was dressed in more practical, rugged outdoor gear. He recognized the face as someone on Jane’s detail. The agent had been shot in the chest, again three times. Tom stared at the corpse, telling himself he was piecing together the details, collecting evidence. In truth, he was only putting off the inevitable.
He didn’t recognize the third body. Unlike the first two, this one was dressed in military uniform. He rolled the corpse over. It was a man in his late twenties. He’d been shot once in the stomach, and then again in the head. Tom’s brain leaped to a conclusion, but he didn’t want to give voice to it, not yet.
Tom walked up to the house. There were two bodies just inside the hall. One was a man dressed as a soldier. He’d been shot once in the face. The other was the head of Claire’s detail. He stalked through the house, going from room to room, up to the attic, then down to the basement, seeing everything, but not allowing himself to feel a thing. After half an hour, he’d found twelve more bodies. Three wore uniforms, the rest were Secret Service agents.
There was a surveillance post in the basement.
From the position of the two agents, dead in their chairs, both facing the now-blank screens, they’d been killed before they’d seen anything to make them raise the alarm. It suggested they’d died first, and that the cabal had someone working on the inside. Perhaps more than one person. With Addison’s involvement, that was more than likely. Missing, however, were Claire, the two children, Jane and Rick, and six members of the protection detail. He went to the back door and looked outside. Behind the house were two old barns. On the path leading to them were two more agents. He pushed open the door and walked toward the buildings. There was an inevitability to what he would find, but it wasn’t inside either of the barns.
Between the barns was a narrow path. Two more agents lay dead along it. The fifth was at the edge of the trees just beyond the buildings. He followed the trail of disturbed leaf litter, occasionally spotted with blood, until he found the sixth agent.
He stopped. There was no obvious trail leading into the woods, but he knew that Claire and the children hadn’t escaped. The chain-link and razor wire built to protect the compound also turned it into a prison. The agents had done their duty, and died to save their protectees, but there were no vehicles in the driveway, nor on the road leading to the property. However the cabal’s soldiers had gotten here, some had driven away. They wouldn’t have left until the job was done. Claire’s body, and those of the children, would be in the woods somewhere nearby. He didn’t want to find them.
He went back to the house and sat in the kitchen – one of the few rooms without a corpse. He’d promised Max he would come and look for Claire. He’d come here and done that small thing, and it didn’t seem enough. On the counter was a photograph of the family, taken before the campaign stylists had gotten their hands on them. They looked happily ordinary, smiling, at ease. The Max in the picture was a far cry from the ragged man he’d seen in the corridor outside their cell. He tried to remember when he’d last seen Claire and the children. He guessed it was a few days before the inauguration, though he couldn’t now remember. Rick had been excited about living in the White House. Jane had been permanently grumpy since realizing, sometime before Christmas, that a move to Washington meant she’d be leaving her friends behind. Claire had been worried, Tom remembered that. Not for herself, but for her family, and how the next four, or perhaps eight, years were going to change them. He put the picture down.
There was another possibility, of course; that the cabal had captured Claire and taken her and the children away. He forced himself to his feet and went looking for the generator. With power restored to the property, he went back to the basement and searched through the security footage.
He saw a Jeep and truck, both painted in desert camouflage, drive up to the gate. It opened. They drove through. The agent in the sentry post must already have been dead. The two vehicles stopped just beyond the guardhouse. Men in uniform jumped out.
By that stage, someone working for Addison must already have killed the agents in the basement. Quite what alerted the rest of the security detail that these weren’t the real military didn’t matter. He skipped forward to the end, four hours after the murderers arrived, and saw four soldiers walking slowly back to their vehicles. Claire and the children weren’t with them.
Tom cycled through the other cameras, trying not to look at the faces of the Secret Service personnel as they died, until he found one positioned on the rear wall of the house. He saw Claire and the two children being hustled toward the barn. He saw an agent turn around and then collapse. Claire disappeared. Tom changed the view until he found a camera on one of the barns. He saw Claire and the children, together with an injured agent, run into the woods. A moment later, three of the uniformed men ran into the forest after them. It was thirty minutes before they returned. Their weapons were held casually as if they were certain there was no threat facing them. He’d seen enough, yet he still hadn’t seen it all.
He forced himself back outside and into the woodland. He walked in a straight line from the barns until he reached the fence, doubling back, trudging through mud, searching for the bodies. Hours passed. A light rain began to fall, and he still hadn’t found them. The rain grew heavier. He ignored it. Lightning cracked and thunder roared.
“They’re dead,” he said. He knew it. Their bodies lay somewhere in the grounds. He tried to tell himself that if he hadn’t found them, they might still be alive, but he knew it wasn’t the case. If they were alive, then the cabal would have destroyed all evidence they’d been there. The bodies of their dead would have been taken, the camera footage destroyed. That it hadn’t suggested a supreme confidence that could only have come from success. He’d promised Max he’d come and look for them. He had and wished he hadn’t. He trudged back to the house.
Listlessly, he searched the kitchen for food. There was lots. More than he could possibly eat, and most of it canned or packaged. He had no appetite. He forced himself to wash, standing in a hot shower, methodically scrubbing at his skin. Max’s wardrobe provided him with clothes.
He went back to the kitchen. The idea of cooking was beyond him, but he was ravenous. He opened a pack of cereal that was more chocolate than grain and ate it dry, watching the rain fall outside.
Chapter 19 - The Prisoner’s Dilemma
March 14th, Vermont & Maine
By dawn, the storm had passed on, leaving the skies almost clear and Tom no reason to stay. Before he left, he walked to edge of the woods, but didn’t venture in. Perhaps Claire and the children had escaped. Not destroying the evidence could have been an oversight on the part of the cabal’s killers. He decided to believe the fantasy and take comfort in it.
There was enough food in the compound to feed forty people for a month, and enough fuel to get a convoy to Mexico. He loaded up a Secret Service SUV with enough to get him to Maine, and a thousand rounds of ammunition for a carbine he’d taken from a locker in the surveillance room. After a moment’s consideration of the number of people once living on the American continents, and so the number of zombies he might now face, he added a thousand more. What he didn’t find was a Geiger counter, or much by the way of medical supplies.
“So look for a hospital, and find both,” he murmured as he finished loading the SUV, though beyond aspirin and bandages there was little medical equipment he knew how to use. He left the rest of the ammunition, and everything else in the house, for anyone who might come after him. He hoped that it would keep them alive, but he didn’t leave a note. He no longer saw the point. He drove east.
America stretched out before him. Ruined. Broken. Lifeless. Empty fields, abandoned homes, crashed vehicles; the scenery changed, yet stayed the same. He told himself that there were other survivors. The soldiers were proof of that, yet it wasn’t enough. He needed there to be some other, more immediate sign of life.
With his attention only occasionally on the road, he didn’t see the pig until it was almost too late. He stamped on the brakes as it dashed from the undergrowth. The SUV came to a rest ten feet from its snout. The animal’s beady eyes stared at him, and he stared back, baffled. It was a pig, not a boar. From its size, and the bright red tag on one ear, it wasn’t a wild one.
“Where’d you come from?”
It had to be a smallholding or maybe an organic farm, and it had to be nearby. The pig gave a disdainful snort before walking sedately across the road and disappearing into the undergrowth.
A fence must have broken. Or perhaps a dying farmer had released the animals so they could forage and so have a chance at life. It was as likely a story as any other, and the notion pleased him. He decided to believe it was the truth. He reached for the door handle, intending to step outside and see if he could spot the farm. He stopped. There was a reason that animal was running. An obvious threat that it was trying to escape. He put his foot on the gas and continued.
He’d seen few cars – far fewer than during the days before his capture. There were no contrails in the sky, and no voices on the radio. The only humanoid figu
res he saw were distinctly dead. He’d always considered himself a loner. He’d been happy living alone, dining alone, working alone. Now that there was nowhere to hide from that lie, he saw it for what it was: an excuse for having no one to live, eat, or work with. That was why he’d created Sholto. For that matter, it was why he’d created Tom Clemens. It was why he’d delayed taking revenge for his parents’ death when he’d had the chance. He’d been holding onto the idea that he could have a normal life, even when he knew it was impossible. He’d spurned companionship because nothing based on the lie he lived could ever last. But now, above all, he wanted to see a living person, and know he wasn’t alone. As such, even if it wasn’t for the need to find a Geiger counter, when he saw the sign for the town of Fairview, he decided to stop.
Half a mile from the town, he came to a checkpoint. Five-foot-high corrugated metal sheets stretched across the road, supported at either end by cement-filled oil-drums. It was deserted, at least by the living. Three zombies had been squatting in the road, almost touching the metal barricade. The sound of the engine had woken them from their torpor.
He stopped the vehicle fifty yards away, climbed out and reached for the carbine. He raised it to his shoulder, but hesitated. There was something desolate about the checkpoint and the town beyond. He checked behind and to either side. It did appear that there were only these three zombies in front of him. All wore bright colored fleeces, now covered in a fine coating of mud and dirt. There was nothing unusual in their clothing, yet something felt wrong. He reached for the axe he’d brought from the farm.
One of the zombies had a limp. Tom wondered if the person it had been had sustained an injury, or whether it was something that had occurred since its undeath. It was an idle thought, something to distract his mind from the snapping teeth and clawing hands. He raised the axe, resting it on his shoulder, and walked away from the truck. When he felt he had room enough to swing, he stopped, waiting.