The Death: The Complete Trilogy

by John W. Vance

  Devin interrupted and said, “We know, no need to explain, plus I smell something burning.”

  Daryl put his glass down and ran out.

  “This is nice. I, for one, want to enjoy this brief moment,” Devin said.

  “The game, let’s play the game,” Brianna pleaded.

  “Okay, it’s simple, each person will name one thing they miss in the world, and the others will judge it. The person with the most votes wins.”

  “Can I start?” Brianna asked, raising her arm like a schoolgirl.

  “Sure.”

  “I know this sounds silly, but I miss ice cream,” she said with pure innocent glee in her voice.

  From the other room, Daryl blurted out, “Me too, great one!”

  “Me second,” Devin agreed.

  “Ice cream, really?”

  “Grumpy back so soon?” Devin asked.

  “I miss movies, new movies, going to the theater, the greasy fake butter on the popcorn, the whole experience,” Daryl hollered from the kitchen.

  “Yes, that’s a good one too!” Brianna squealed. She was enjoying the game immensely.

  “I have to say, I like that one too. I think we have a tie right now. Tess, what do you say?”

  Tess motioned with a thumb down.

  “Tess, what will you miss or do miss?” Devin asked.

  “I miss feeling safe,” she answered seriously.

  “Boo!” Daryl bellowed as he strolled in with a bowl of pasta covered in red sauce.

  “Yeah, not fun at all,” Brianna agreed.

  “Fun?” Tess challenged.

  “Tess, we all agreed meals would be casual. We’re just trying to have a bit of relaxation, and you keep messing it up,” Devin reminded her.

  “Whatever, I’m out of this stupid game,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “I’m the last one, and I miss Christmas. When December rolled around, I couldn’t help but think about it. I know it sounds pathetic, but I missed it.”

  Brianna nodded.

  Daryl said, “We made sure we had Christmas so Hudson would still feel as normal as possible.”

  Tess raised her hand and put her thumb in the air in agreement.

  “Looks like we have a winner. To Devin, the winner of the missing game,” Daryl said, holding his wineglass in the air.

  They all clanged their glasses together and in unison said, “Winner, winner, chicken dinner.”

  Denver International Airport

  Getting past the guards at the entrance was nerve-racking for her. She used every ounce of composure she had to fake a calm demeanor. She had playacted before in life, but if given an award, she’d have won an Oscar.

  Once past them, she raced at a near sprint to the stairs. Her destination was the Cockpit Lounge; she hoped to find Travis and safety.

  She pushed the door to the stairwell so hard it flew open and hit the cinderblock wall, nearly hitting Chance Montgomery, who happened to be there.

  “Damn, Lori, you almost hit me!” he yelled.

  She was breathing heavily, and sweat was sliding down her face. She gave him an uncomfortable grin and said, “Sorry.”

  “Where are you going in such a damn hurry?”

  Several different scenarios were playing out in her mind. She didn’t know what to do. Here was her immediate supervisor and colleague of Horton’s. He clearly had been briefed on her condition and their personal situation. She felt he had to be looking at her and wondering to himself what exactly she was up to.

  With no time to come to a rational decision, she acted pragmatically. Using her gut instincts to guide her, she punched Chance squarely in the face.

  The sucker punch sent him reeling backwards and farther into the stairwell. He let out a grunt as he fell onto the railing.

  With ruthless vigor she pursued him and kept punching. She was fighting for her and her baby’s very lives.

  Chance had no time to respond to the barrage of punches. One after another she landed them on his face. Soon his nose, lips and right cheek were bleeding.

  “Lori, please,” he cried out as he collapsed to the hard floor.

  She was now acting on pure animal rage and was on top of him. She grabbed his head and banged it several times into the concrete floor till she heard a loud crack, and blood soon followed.

  Seeing the deep red blood flowing and his eyes rolled up into his head, she stopped the attack. She looked at her small hands and saw his blood. Frantically she wanted it off, so she smeared it on her jeans.

  With Chance presumably dead and the first man either dead or gravely injured, she couldn’t go back. She had to find a way out; she just prayed Travis was her ticket out of there.

  Jenks Residence, Reed, Illinois

  The four enjoyed the home-cooked meal more than they could express. The experiences they had mutually shared had drawn them together in a way that never could have occurred before.

  Devin smiled to himself when he thought about how close he felt to Tess, Briana, Brando and now Daryl. It went without saying that they’d do anything for each other. Besides Cassidy, he hadn’t had tight-knit relationships with people. He had been an awkward man before, who kept to himself, locked away in his midtown apartment, writing other people’s words. This feeling he had for them gave him something he loved; he just wished he hadn’t waited till the apocalypse to find it.

  “Who wants dessert?” Daryl asked.

  All agreed and Daryl left the room. They chatted, laughed and tried to guess what surprise sweet thing he’d serve them. It wasn’t until they heard the SUV start that they knew the entire meal and service had been a ruse to keep them busy and unaware of his plan to leave without them.

  By the time they reached the front screen door, Daryl had made the left onto Madison Road and was accelerating fast away from them.

  “What’s he doing?” Tess asked, exasperated that he just left them.

  “Come on. Let’s chase him down,” Devin said as he ran for the Hummer.

  “I’ll get Brando. Wait for me!” Brianna yelled.

  Tess ran to get her rifle and sidearm from the kitchen when she saw the note on the table.

  Devin blared the horn and hollered, “Hurry up!”

  Brianna was rushing around, but in the minute she had used to get Brando, she wasn’t any further along.

  With each passing second, Devin knew he was getting farther and farther out of reach, losing himself in the darkness.

  He laid on the horn again.

  Tess walked out and said, “Stop, turn off the Humvee.”

  “No, we need to catch him. He can’t do this alone!”

  “By the time we get loaded up and on the road, he’ll be miles ahead of us, running with no lights and deliberately taking roads to lose us; he says so in this note he left for us,” Tess explained, holding up a white piece of paper.

  Devin hit the steering wheel hard several times and screamed, “No, no, no!”

  “Conserve fuel; turn it off!” Tess ordered.

  Devin listened and shut off the Humvee. He got out, walked up to Tess, and snatched the paper out of her hands. He stepped over to the stairs and plopped himself on the steps.

  Brianna raced out, Brando by her side, limping, “Is that it, we’re letting him go?”

  “We’ll never catch him,” Tess declared.

  “We have to try,” Brianna countered.

  “I hate to say this, but Tess is right. He’s miles ahead of us, and I don’t know where he’s going exactly.”

  “Yes, we do,” Brianna confidently said.

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Yes, he’s going to…” Brianna said and then paused.

  “We don’t know. He never told us specifically. He did that for a reason.”

  “We can’t leave him out there to do this by himself,” Brianna said, her tone angry.

  “He says here he didn’t want us to go. We’re not leaving him, Bri, he left us,” Devin said, still reading the note.

  �
��That’s because he’s a proud man, but he needs us.”

  “Enough, we go and go now!” Tess barked.

  “Really?” Devin asked, confused.

  “Yes,” Brianna chirped.

  Denver International Airport

  Sweat was pouring off her brow as she tore through the concourse. Up ahead she saw a large sign that read Terminal C.

  As she sprinted past people, they all looked at her strangely or with concern. Seeing someone run with fear in their eyes wasn’t a daily occurrence for them.

  She knew she was drawing unwanted attention, but time was everything.

  Banking hard to the right once she entered Terminal C, she saw the glowing lights of the Cockpit Lounge. Not fifty feet away and she’d be there, but was Travis there?

  “Stop!” a voice commanded from behind her.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she saw two uniformed DIA guards running after her. The DIA guards wore black fatigues that distinguished them from the regular military.

  “Travis!” she yelled out.

  With the guards’ commands to stop and her yelling, all eyes were on her now.

  “Travis, are you here?”

  “Lori?” he called back as he stepped out of the bathroom.

  Seeing him, she sprinted and ran into his arms. “Help me, please!”

  He was alarmed to see her in this condition. Holding her trembling body, he asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Hold her, don’t let her go!” one of the guards commanded. They were forty feet away and closing fast.

  “Lori, what’s going on?”

  “Too much to explain, but I need your help. They’re trying to kill me and my baby.”

  “Baby?”

  “I’m pregnant, please help me!”

  “Let’s go,” he said, taking her by the hand and running away from the guards farther into the terminal concourse.

  “Stop!” the guards again commanded.

  Travis looked back and saw four guards; somewhere along the way two more had joined the pursuit.

  Seeing a stairwell, he said, “This way.” They reached it in seconds, opened the door, and disappeared inside.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Good question, what exactly have you gotten me into?”

  They raced down two flights of stairs and exited on the ground level. He kicked open a door and spilled onto the tarmac, which was illuminated with the brilliance and spectacle a sports arena or stadium would be during a night game. With the light exposing so much, it was hard for them to hide.

  “Tell me what happened, and I can figure out what to do and where to go,” he asked, trying to get some answers while they fled.

  “I’m pregnant, and the Chancellor wants to kill my baby. He’s taken me prisoner and has insidious plans to rule the world.”

  “That’s sounds crazy!”

  Between her rapid breaths she explained as best she could, but it was difficult for him to understand her.

  Finally seeing an old M-998 cargo Humvee, he took off for it. He flipped open the vinyl flap and looked inside to find it empty. “Get in,” he ordered.

  She did as he said. He jumped in behind her.

  “We’ll hide here for a moment. I need to collect my wits, and you need to explain what the hell is going on.”

  “Travis, you have to believe me when I tell you that everything and I mean everything, that is happening has been planned.”

  “Planned for what?”

  “All of it from the beginning. The virus, it didn’t come from Pandora; the asteroid was a ruse. It was released by Chancellor Horton and others like him, they…” She paused to catch her breath. “They did it to wipe out the world’s population. They’re creating their own world; they killed everyone so they can start over.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “There was no extraterrestrial virus or bug. The Death was man-made; it’s a bioengineered and weaponized virus created to kill off the world’s population!” she exclaimed.

  Travis sat motionless and speechless.

  “Nothing adds up, Travis, think!”

  “I was brought to the DIA because I’m a DNA match for the chancellor, he’s taken me…” Again she paused as she relived the first moment Horton raped her. “He took me as his; he’s raped me. He sent my husband and son away, and now he wants to kill my baby.”

  “What?”

  “Please believe me!”

  “I’ll be honest, your story sounds crazy, and I’d think you’d lost it if I didn’t have my own suspicions. Something stinks here, something odd is happening. Lately I’ve seen strange logos appearing on vehicles and such.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “Nothing I’ve seen before, a circle and inside it is a triangle with another circle inside that.”

  Travis paused, then began to rattle off things he had seen and odd circumstances and situations that he’d never seen before in his years in the Marine Corps. He detailed the shot protocol and told Lori that his entire unit had started the shots a month before The Death occurred.

  “I can’t be the only person around here seeing what is really going on,” Lori put forth.

  “Of course you’re not. I’ve asked similar questions, and so have my fellow officers, but to piece them all together and say that The Death came from our own government seems total tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist bullshit.”

  “Well, it’s not, Travis. I overheard them. How do you explain the shots before The Death hit? I mean, if we’re to believe the virus is extraterrestrial and came from the asteroid strike, then why give you a shot a month before?”

  “I know, but we just do what we’re told, and many of my men stopped asking when we were informed that those that challenge the shots will no longer receive them. You know what that could mean…”

  “Death for at least ninety percent who don’t get it.”

  “Bingo. They have us by the balls; we stay in line and don’t ask questions.”

  She reached over and took his hand. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  His natural protective instinct kicked into high gear as he scrambled through his thoughts to come up with an answer to her question.

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Lori. This is not going to be easy. I don’t know how we escape. Soon they’ll have this entire place locked down.”

  She began to sob after he told her that.

  “I didn’t mean to make you cry, just want you prepared for what’s ahead of us. I’m with you. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Do you have any ideas for getting out of here?”

  “No, none, I barely know how I got here.”

  “Think, Travis, think,” he said out loud.

  She gripped his hand tighter.

  “I hope this works; there’s an underground subway that goes from beneath the DIA to NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain.”

  “Is it safe at NORAD?”

  “No, not at all, but along the way there’s an abandoned rail station not a mile down the tracks. I’ve seen it, it’s old; they stopped using it decades ago. Someone told me that from that station there’s an abandoned track that leads to Riverton, Wyoming.”

  “What’s there?”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” he answered her as he returned her grip on his hand.

  She smiled at him and put her other hand on his clean-shaven face. “Thank you. I don’t know how to repay you.”

  “That’s not what this is all about. Let’s say that you have trusting eyes. I believe you; something has been strangely not right since before this happened.”

  “What about your fiancée, the note?”

  “What would you do? I’ve thought about that, but do I just leave you, do I abandon someone who needs help?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t quite come to grips with what will happen to David and Eric now that I’m a fugitive. I just couldn’t let them kill my baby.”

  A siren blared out, followed by an announcement.
“Attention, attention, all personnel be on the lookout for Lori Roberts, female, five foot five inches, long brown hair. She is accompanied by an unidentified Marine. Both are wanted and presumed dangerous. Attention, attention, all personnel be on the lookout for Lori Roberts, female, five foot five inches, long brown hair. She is accompanied by an unidentified Marine. Both are wanted and presumed dangerous.”

  “I think that’s our cue for getting the hell out of dodge,” Travis joked. He peered outside but didn’t see much activity. They had only minutes to make it to the railway before the entire place was crawling with security.

  “There’s no better time than the present,” she said.

  They jumped out and ran back towards the terminal building. Once inside, Travis knew how to get where he was going. He found the stairs that led to subterranean floor five. They sprinted deep into the belly of the DIA and emerged into a part she’d never seen nor heard of. Calmly they exited and began to walk towards a large metal gate. Above it was a sign that read ‘Tube Shuttles’.

  Travis wasn’t surprised to not find anyone because the system didn’t run at night. The timing of everything meant that they’d be able to sneak onto the track.

  “Hold on,” she said, stopping him from jumping onto the tracks. “You can just let me go. I’ll figure it out from here. They don’t know who you are and might not.”

  “I think me being the unknown Marine won’t last long. I made my bed when I ran off with you. I have a distinct feeling that if I went back, they’d retire me, if you know what I mean.”

  “Then let’s go,” she said, taking his hand.

  He jumped onto the tracks and helped her down. They turned and looked down the dark circular tube.

  She was scared for a variety of reasons. It wasn’t the walking into the darkness that frightened her; it was where it ultimately led. She took one last moment to glance back at the world she’d never see again. Her fate was sealed when she killed Chance and the councilman, and after overhearing the council members’ dissatisfaction with Horton, she knew he’d be powerless to defend her even if he wanted to. He had been right when he said his power wasn’t limitless and that he had to answer to the council. What she regretted above all after taking the first step of many before her was that she not only sealed her fate but that of David and Eric. She had no plans for helping them and couldn’t imagine how she could; she could barely help herself.