“Better angry than panic-stricken.”
Mellors inspected a gold Arabic puzzle ring on his finger, a present from a Saudi prince that he had done an execution for as a field agent in the NCS.
“If the people can’t trust their elected government officials, who can they trust?” said Mellors.
“You’re not seeing the big picture.”
“Which is?”
“It’s not only about the American people. It’s about how the rest of the world perceives us in our time of crisis. We can’t let them know our country is succumbing to the plague. They might make hay of our plight and try to invade us.”
“The last I heard, they have their hands full fighting the plague themselves.”
“There’s always a Hitler wannabe out there somewhere waiting to pounce when the time is right.”
“If we lose credibility with the people, they’ll reject us.”
“And replace us with what? We’re the only option they have. It’s us or nothing. Without us, they’re on their own and have no chance.”
“They may not see it that way.”
“There’s another reason we have to present a strong image to the American people.”
“Even if it’s bogus?”
Slocum ignored Mellors’s question. “We don’t want any of these crackpot militias trying to take over the country. And they will try, mark my words, if they perceive the federal government as incapacitated.”
“We don’t have to worry about those kooks. They may have guns, but they don’t have arsenals of missiles and bombs like we do. When we lie to the people all we’re really doing is losing our credibility.”
Straightening his spine, Slocum smoothed his bespoke Brooks Brothers jacket. “We’re doing what’s best for the country. It may not seem that way at the moment, but in the end you’ll see we’re doing the right thing for America’s survival.”
“I’m not arguing with you. I’m just trying to find out why Cole is lying through his teeth on the TV.”
Slocum gave Mellors a look. “The people didn’t elect him to tell them the truth.”
“They didn’t?”
“They elected him to tell them what they want to hear.”
“Don’t let them hear you say that.”
“The truth hurts. I know that.” Slocum paused. “You’re right, though. The people can’t handle the truth. That’s why we give them long-winded rah-rah oratory instead.”
Mellors sighed. “He’s been speaking for hours. How long can he go on like this?”
“Quite a while, actually. Oratory is his chops.”
“You could have fooled me. I stopped listening to him after his first lie.”
Slocum smiled with half his mouth, but it ended up a sneer. “You’re on the fast track to demotion, if you keep up the wisecracks.”
Mellors rolled his eyes. He had been in Washington long enough to know that dissimulation was part and parcel of politics. He saw no point in pursuing the matter. He had his own neck to look after.
At last, Cole wound up his speech. He strutted over to Slocum after the camera’s red light died out.
“We can win this battle,” said Cole, beaming, juiced up from his oratory. He looked like he was fixing to cut a caper. “We’re gonna wipe this plague out.” He pumped his fist.
“Yes, Mr. President,” said Slocum. “Have you decided what types of bombs we’re gonna use on the infected?”
Cole’s expression did an about-face, waxing grave. “I haven’t made that decision yet. I need more input on that.”
“As much as I hate to say this, Mr. President, we may have to consider the nuclear option. Thermite bombs might not yield enough firepower.”
“We’ll do whatever we have to do to take back our country.”
“Is that a yes for nuclear weapons?” asked Slocum, jacking up an eyebrow.
“I’m taking it under advisement, along with a slew of other options.”
“You’re gonna nuke our own country?” said Mellors in consternation.
“If that’s what it takes to obliterate the plague. Let me remind you, gentlemen, all options are still on the table.”
“Meaning no disrespect, Mr. President, but if you blow up the whole country what will be left?”
“What will be left if we don’t exterminate the infected before they exterminate everybody else? If you have a better solution, tell me. The clock is ticking.”
Slocum and Mellors said nothing.
CHAPTER 17
Southern California
“Do you ever wonder why we’re still alive?” said Chogan, as he, Halverson, Victoria, and Emma regrouped after their escape from the ghouls and the rabid rats.
“Yeah,” said Emma. “Why are we the only ones alive and everybody else is infected with plague?”
“Dumb luck?” said Victoria.
“If you want to call it that,” said Halverson.
Wincing, he could still hear dogs yelping in pain in the distance as the rats and ghouls tore them to pieces. Then the ghouls would turn on the rats, he figured, if they hadn’t done so already.
“We’re lucky to still be alive,” said Victoria.
“Yeah, but what kind of a life is this?” said Chogan, ears tuned to the screeching mayhem while he took stock of the charred ruins that remained of the ghost town around him.
“But why us?” said Emma.
“A roll of the dice. A spin of the wheel,” said Halverson.
“I’d rather be lucky than good,” said Chogan.
“One of the mysteries of the universe,” said Victoria, putting in her two cents.
“You know why I wear boots?” said Chogan, astride his Harley, eying his toecaps.
“I can’t say that I care.”
Chogan ignored her response. “I wear them to protect my legs from snakes. I grew up in a small town in the desert, you see.”
“What’s your point?”
“It’s a hostile, indifferent world. We need to prepare to be attacked. We need to be always on our guard.”
“So how do you prepare for a zombie virus that has no cure?” said Victoria, gazing down at him from her horse.
“Get a shaman,” said Chogan expressionlessly. “And a machine gun.”
Victoria’s horse commenced whickering and shifting about on its hooves.
“I think my horse is hungry,” she said.
“We should ditch the horses once we get to Barstow,” said Halverson atop his horse, which snorted and nickered at Victoria’s horse.
“And how do we get through the Mojave?”
“We commandeer an SUV.”
“The 15 will be clogged with abandoned cars,” said Chogan. “What good will an SUV do us?”
“We don’t ride on the freeway. We get a vehicle with four-wheel drive and ride cross-country, right through the desert.”
Chogan thought about it. He nodded. “Better than riding a Harley through the desert. At least you have A/C.”
“What if we get lost?” said Victoria. “The last place I want to get lost in is the desert.”
“We’ll hug the 15 and follow it to Vegas,” said Halverson.
“I’m fine with it,” said Emma, shifting on her saddle, grimacing. “I’m not cut out for horse riding. This saddle’s rubbing my butt raw.”
“Too much information,” said Victoria.
Emma looked over her shoulder. “It’s OK, Millie. Calm down.” Emma turned forward. “Millie doesn’t like all this excitement. She needs rest.”
“I’m getting tired of you talking to yourself,” said Chogan. “It’s driving me crazy.”
“I’m not talking to myself. I’m talking to Millie. Can’t you hear?”
“I can hear. That’s the problem. I hear you talking to yourself.”
Face screwed up, Emma glanced over her shoulder. “Shush, Millie. Everything will be all right.” Emma faced Chogan. “Now Millie’s crying because of you. You’re upsetting her.”
“You’r
e the one who’s upsetting me,” said Chogan. “There is no Millie. Why do you keep looking over your shoulder?”
“Just leave Emma alone,” said Halverson. “Can’t you see you’re stressing her out?”
“She’s stressing me out talking to herself.”
Emma began sobbing. “Why do you hate Millie?”
“I don’t hate Millie,” said Chogan. “There is no Millie to hate.”
“There you go again, hurting her feelings. How would you like it if we said you didn’t exist?”
Chogan shut his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
“Will you stop picking on Emma?” said Victoria. “You’re gonna send her over the deep end.”
“She’s already there. I’m trying to bring her back to reality. She needs to get her feet back on the ground.”
Victoria’s horse was rearing its head and neighing. She patted his neck to soothe him. “Are you a psychiatrist?”
“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to see it’s as clear as the nose on your face that this woman is flipping out.”
“Can’t you see you’re making things worse for her?”
Emma was sobbing uncontrollably.
“She needs a strong dose of reality to jolt her out of cloud-cuckoo-land, wherever the hell she is,” said Chogan.
“Let her work it out for herself,” said Halverson.
“She’ll come around if we leave her alone,” said Victoria.
“No, she won’t,” said Chogan. “She’s in denial. She needs to be shocked out of it.”
“Thank you, Dr. Freud. How about a lobotomy for her too?”
Chogan bridled. “I know when someone’s not right in the head when I see them.”
Halverson picked up on one of the living dead lolloping out of a Laundromat across the street and scrabbling toward them. Half the creature’s face was missing and a good part of its scalp. It looked like it had just got through sticking its head in a washing machine during the spin cycle, Halverson decided.
“We need to save this kaffeeklatsch for later,” he said.
Victoria rode over to Emma and held her forearm. “Are you OK?”
Emma sniffled as she stopped sobbing. “I’m all right. I don’t know about Millie. She needs formula.”
“What did I tell you?” Chogan told Victoria. “She’s gonna be a drag on us till she gets her act together.”
“You’re the one who’s disrupting our group,” said Victoria. “We were all right till you joined us.”
Chogan shot her a scathing look. “I can take off any time I want and leave you all behind.”
“Toodle-oo.” She waved at him. “It was nice knowing you.”
Victoria turned to Emma. “Millie will be OK, dear. We just need to get out of here first.”
Chogan tamped down his anger. Why was he angry anyway? he wondered. If the woman wanted to go loco, let her go loco. Why should he care? It was all the same to him. It was just that she was getting on his nerves with all that talking to herself.
All Chogan knew was he didn’t want to be alone. If left alone, he would start obsessing about Maria again. Then he would start talking to himself and end up as batty as Emma. He knew what Emma was going through, but she had to come to grips with reality. Maybe if she talked about her job or her life before the plague, maybe that would help root her back in reality. Of course, he wasn’t a shrink, but it didn’t seem good for her mind the way she was headed now.
He said nothing. He stood his ground on his Harley. He wasn’t going to leave them.
The Laundromat ghoul was now negotiating the derelict cars in the street as it approached Halverson.
In a fit of pique, Chogan gunned his motorcycle toward the ghoul, steadying the vehicle with his boots brushing along the sidewalk, withdrew his pistol, and blew away the ghoul’s head.
“I’m not scared of those things,” he said, watching the creature topple over and fall on a sedan’s hood.
“It’s his friends we need to be scared of,” said Halverson. “They’ll have heard your gunshot.”
As if on cue, three more of the walking dead stumbled out of the Laundromat, drawn to the sound of the gunshot’s report.
“What’s the rest of the country like?” said Chogan. “You think it’s as bad as it is here?”
“If it is, we’ll have to keep moving,” said Halverson. “That’s why we’re headed to Washington. To find out if we’ve got any government left. No government, no country.”
“I could care less about the government. The only people who benefit from the government are the hypocritical politicians. We can live fine without the government.” Chogan paused a beat. “Probably better without it.”
“Does that mean you’re splitting?”
“No. I’m sticking with you guys—for now, anyway.”
The three ghouls wended their way through the junked husks of cars and trucks, closing in on Halverson and company.
“Let’s beat it before the Three Stooges get here,” said Halverson.
Halverson roused his horse to a gallop.
“These horses aren’t gonna go much farther without food,” said Victoria, exhorting her horse to follow in Halverson’s wake.
“Lunch sounds good to me,” said Chogan, zooming past Victoria’s horse. He grinned. “I could eat a horse.”
CHAPTER 18
Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center
President Cole, DCI Slocum, Scot Mellors, FBI Director Harold Paris, General Eugene D. Byrd, ASH Dr. Laslo, DNI (director of national intelligence) Hilda Molson, and DHS Director Sheila Klauss sat around the conference table watching the wall-mounted flat-panel HDTV that displayed a map of the US depicting the states that had succumbed to the pandemic and those that still contained uninfected inhabitants. A glass of bottled water stood on the tabletop in front of each delegate.
“We’re fighting a losing battle, it seems,” said Klauss.
“It’s just a matter of time before we get the upper hand,” said Cole.
“How accurate is that map anyway?” said Slocum and took a swig from his glass of water.
“Impossible to say,” said Dr. Laslo. “That map reflects the findings that the doctors in each state are reporting to me. It’s pretty subjective.”
“And what about the states that aren’t reporting to you at all?” asked Slocum, setting his glass down.
“We can assume they’re overrun with plague.”
“How are the doctors reporting to you?”
“They’re using satphones.”
Slocum nodded. “They’re about the only things you can rely on to communicate with nowadays.”
“Does anyone have any good news to report?” asked the president, surveying the glum faces around the table.
Nobody said anything.
“Then let’s move on,” said Cole. “It’s looking more and more like we’re gonna have to use bombs to halt the advance of the plague. The carriers of the plague, the infected, must be destroyed.”
“Why not send in the marines?” said Paris. “You wouldn’t have so much collateral damage.”
“What marines?” said General Byrd.
Paris’s hatchet face stretched downward in bemusement. “What do you mean?”
“The marines have been infected by the plague, like everybody else.”
“Then what about the army and the navy?”
General Byrd shook his head. “Same deal. We have no manpower. We’ve got ordnance but nobody to operate it. What we have here is a clusterfuck.”
“Are you saying we’re defenseless, General?” said DNI Hilda Molson.
“Absolutely not. We have bombs and missiles.”
The initial strains of the “Star-spangled Banner” sounded.
Everybody’s eyes darted around the table, trying to locate the source of the music.
Cole withdrew a top-of-the-line red Iridium satphone from his jacket pocket and snugged the phone’s earpiece in
to his ear. Everybody watched in astonishment as he answered the phone.
Cole listened to the receiver expressionlessly.
A few minutes later he said, “Over my dead body.”
He ended the phone call.
“Who was that?” asked General Byrd, hiking his beetle brows. “Was that the Russians?”
“That was Secretary-General Ho,” answered Cole.
“Of the United Nations?”
Cole nodded yes.
“What did he say?” asked Byrd.
“He said that since all the world’s countries have been destroyed by plague, he is declaring himself sovereign of the world.”
Hilda Molson laughed out loud. She couldn’t control herself.
Byrd grinned sardonically. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“He sounded serious,” said Cole. “He believes the UN charter gives him the right to declare himself sovereign during a worldwide crisis. He is assuming full authority and leading the battle against the plague.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” said Slocum.
“Let’s teach him the facts of life and bomb his ass,” said Byrd. “The nerve of that guy. Nobody pushes the US of A around.”
“First thing we do is call him persona non grata and toss him out of New York on his ears.”
“I say we clap him in irons in Gitmo for making a terrorist threat against the United States.”
Cole held his hands up, calling the room to order. “Gentlemen, let’s think this over before we do anything rash.”
“I say we ignore him,” said Molson. “Why dignify the upstart’s nonsense with a response?”
Slocum thought about it. “That’s true. By heeding him we’re giving Ho credence.”
“What’s he gonna do? Invade us?” said FBI Director Paris.
“The UN does have a peacekeeping force. They do have military power.”
“The UN’s military power is a joke,” said Byrd. “Everybody knows the US is the main military power behind the UN. Without us they’re nothing.”
“You just got through telling us we have no army, navy, or marines,” said Slocum.
Byrd hemmed and hawed. “We still have bombs and missiles. Nobody’s got more bleeding-edge bombs and missiles than we do. We could waste the UN forces in a New York minute.”
Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series Page 90