“We should head downstairs to the ground floor. From there, we can cut across to the West Wing. I know my mom kept some pictures and personal things in her office.”
Tanner led them down the dark stairs, through a couple of small rooms, and out into a wide hallway. The thick red carpet would had been worthy of any dignitary, had it not been for the strong smell of urine soaked into it. Directly ahead was the marble-framed entrance to the Diplomatic Room. The busts of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln stood beside the door, like totems to a forgotten religion.
“Which way?” he repeated.
She pointed to the right.
“The West Wing is that way. If we—”
A crash of plates sounded from deep inside the Diplomatic Room.
Tanner swung his shotgun around.
“Apparently, we’re not alone.”
“Zombies?”
He shook his head. “Too bright for them.”
“Do we have to go see who it is?”
“Let’s just grab what we came for and get out of here. How big is this place, anyway?”
“When we first moved here, they told me it had six floors and a hundred and thirty-two rooms.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t build it.”
“Let’s hope we can find what you’re looking for in the West Wing.” He turned and headed down the hallway to the right.
At the end of the hallway was a set of glass doors exiting out onto a paved walkway. Tall white pillars lined the outdoor corridor.
“We’re going back outside?”
“Sure,” she said, pushing open the doors. “The West Colonnade is the easiest way to the Oval Office.”
“West Colonnade?” Tanner was starting to feel like he was maneuvering through a castle rather than a home.
“Everything around here has funny names. Come on,” she said, skipping ahead, “you can see the Oval Office.”
Tanner detected movement to his left.
“Sam!” he shouted, spinning and bringing his shotgun up.
Three men rushed toward them, stomping through a cluster of rose bushes. Lars led the way with his machete in hand. Yo-Yo was right behind him, carrying a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. And the third man, who Tanner didn’t recognize, was raising a small-caliber pistol.
Tanner let loose with a load of buckshot at the man with the pistol. The blast caught him full in the face, and his head nearly exploded, sending warm blood splashing across his two friends.
Samantha had stopped and was looking back and forth between Tanner and the men as she started to ready her own rifle.
“Get to the Oval Office!” he shouted. “Go!”
She hesitated for a moment and then turned and raced ahead.
Tanner shuffled after her, keeping his body facing the remaining two men. They were only a few steps from him now. He fired another shot, catching Lars in the belly. The man doubled over and fell, clutching his gut as intestines bulged out.
Yo-Yo slammed into Tanner, knocking him back against the colonnade wall. He cocked the bat back and tried to land a home run on Tanner’s head, but the space was tight, and the bat struck the pillar behind him with a loud clack. Before Yo-Yo could bring it back into play, Tanner was on him, whipping the butt of the shotgun toward his face. Wood met bone, dislocating the man’s jaw and sending teeth flying out into the grass.
Yo-Yo swung the bat low like a golf club, catching Tanner on the side of his left calf. His leg buckled, and he pitched forward, dropping the shotgun. Rather than fall to the ground, he scooped Yo-Yo up over his shoulder, wheeled around, and body slammed him onto the stone floor. Yo-Yo rolled to his side, coughing out a mouthful of blood as he scrambled to get back onto his feet. Leaning against the pillar for support, Tanner kicked out with his good leg, catching Yo-Yo under the chin. The bald man’s head snapped up, and when it finally rested on the ground, his eyes remained open. A pool of urine slowly spread on the floor beneath him.
Tanner put weight on his injured leg. It hurt, but it would hold. He scooped up his shotgun and scanned the North Lawn to see if others had taken notice of the fight. A large crowd of men stared back at him through the hole in the front fence.
“Tanner!” shouted Samantha. She had managed to open the exterior doors to the Oval Office and was frantically waving him in.
He slid fresh shells into his shotgun and half-skipped, half-limped his way to her. As Tanner hurried into the Oval Office, he couldn’t help but feel that he was stepping onto hallowed ground. Arguably, some of the most important decisions in the nation’s history had been made from the same room. The only thing separating him and Samantha from the men making those decisions was a nebulous thing called time.
Others, however, had obviously not shared his sense of reverence. Books and paintings had been ripped from the walls, couches puffed tiny foam particles from where they had been sliced open, and the burned remnants of two flags were stomped into the carpet’s presidential seal. The dried remains of a dead marine lay draped across the president’s desk.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Peachy,” he said, slamming the doors behind him and shoving the top and bottom slide locks into place.
Despite their delicate appearance, the doors felt incredibly sturdy. The frame was constructed from reinforced fiberglass and the glass from bulletproof Lexan. Tanner suspected that the entire room was well fortified, given its previous occupant.
He stared out through the small windows set in the doors. The gang had spread out and was advancing through the Rose Garden. Several of the men had splintered off and were entering through the front door to the White House.
“Did you stop them?” she asked, looking at his leg.
“Those three, yes. But there are others.”
“How many?”
“Too many.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Leave that to me. You find what you came for.”
“Are you sure your leg is okay?”
He squatted down and stood back up. It hurt like hell.
“See. I’m good.”
“Okay,” she said, apparently satisfied.
Samantha turned and began inspecting the room. As she worked her way around, picking up a few photos and trinkets, Tanner did a quick defensive assessment. Not good. Not good at all. Beside the door to the West Colonnade, there were three other entrances into the room. There was simply no way that two people could defend them all. It was only a matter of time before someone got through.
When he turned back to Samantha to tell her to hurry up, she had a gray and white scarf tied around her neck.
“Was that your mom’s?”
“His,” she said, pointing to the dead marine.
“You took a dead soldier’s scarf?”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t count as stealing if they’re dead. You said so yourself.”
He stared at her for a moment, smiling, honestly admiring how far she had come.
“Okay fine,” she said. “I guess I’m a thief now, too.”
“Well, you’d better get a move on, Finieous Fingers. We need to vamoose. Like now.”
She quickly stuffed several photos and a silver hairbrush into her backpack.
“Okay, I guess I’m ready.”
Two men suddenly appeared in the northwest doorway. One of them carried a pipe wrench and the other a snub-nosed .38 revolver.
“Freeze, asshole,” Snubby said, raising the pistol with one hand.
Without hesitating, Tanner swung the shotgun and fired from the hip. The buckshot peppered both men, sending them back into the hallway, screaming in agony. He fired again, and Snubby flipped backwards, smashing his head into the wall behind him. The man with the wrench wheeled around and raced out of sight.
Tanner hurried over to the doorway. Directly across from him was some kind of conference room with a long nondesc
ript table and portraits of Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt hanging cockeyed on the walls. The wounded man was nowhere in sight, but a trail of bright red blood led down the hall to the right. He stepped back into the Oval Office and locked the door behind him.
A sharp gunshot sounded, and Tanner whirled around, bracing for the sting of a bullet. None came. Instead, Samantha stood with her rifle raised as a man dropped to his knees in the doorway of the north entrance. He clutched at his throat before toppling over sideways. Tanner raced over, shoved him into an adjacent secretary’s office, and secured the door.
Before either of them could say a word, two of the men outside rammed their shoulders against the colonnade door.
The door held.
Tanner quickly surveyed the room. Which way to go? None of the exits seemed viable. He looked over at Samantha and was surprised to see more determination than fear. She had seen things worse than violent men. Even so, if he didn’t find a way out, they were both going to die.
He turned toward the door along the west wall. It was the only exit no one had yet to come through. Tanner had no idea where it led, but it was their only chance. Just as he was about to usher Samantha out, two men appeared in the doorway. One was the man with the crescent wrench, his shoulder still leaking blood. The other wielded a samurai sword in both hands.
Tanner fired his sawed-off shotgun three times in rapid succession, the heavy gun slapping against his shoulder and cheek. Blood sprayed the walls as the men fell under the onslaught of pellets. He waved the smoke aside to find Samantha standing with her hands pressed over her ears.
Before he could decide their next move, a revolver bellowed outside. Once, twice, three times. Small dimples formed in the Lexan window, but they in no way threatened the integrity of the door.
“Sam, we’ve got to get out of here!”
She spun slowly in place, as if finally realizing how dire things had gotten. When her eyes came to rest on the desk, they opened wide.
“What is it?” he asked.
Without a word, she hurried over to the desk and squatted down behind it.
Tanner backed toward her, sweeping his shotgun across the room’s four entrances.
After feeling around for a moment, Samantha pressed two small buttons on the front legs of the desk. When she pressed the second one, there was an audible click. She stood up and lifted the front edge of the desk into the air. It was the weirdest trapdoor Tanner had ever seen, not that he had seen many. The desk remained affixed to a section of the floor, but that section now pivoted up to reveal a large hole with a ladder leading down. A headlamp and gas mask hung on the wall beside the ladder.
“You’re just now showing me this?”
“I forgot all about it.”
He shook his head, still amazed at the discovery.
“Mom told me that it leads down to the duck,” she continued.
“The duck?”
“That’s what she said. I personally don’t know why they would keep a duck underground. I’m sure it’s not good for him.”
Tanner took a quick look around at the room. The men outside had given up and were making their way to the main entrance. The one door that remained open in the Oval Office was clear for the moment. It was now or never.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll pull everything closed behind us.”
CHAPTER
18
The table was crowded and buzzing with suspicion about the purpose of the unscheduled meeting. Representatives from the highest levels of government were in attendance, but everyone seemed particularly surprised to see Dr. Sara Green, the Director for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, sitting quietly at one end of the table.
“Your attention, please,” President Pike said, raising his voice.
Everyone quieted and became still, except for Yumi who continued walking around the table, offering a generous round of insults to everyone in attendance.
“I’m afraid I’ve called you here on the gravest of matters. It has come to my attention that there has been a fresh outbreak of the Superpox-99 virus.”
The entire room burst into frenzied conversation, everyone turning to the person beside them to help understand what this meant. Was the world about to end… again? Certainly, if recent history was to be believed, that would be the likely outcome. The first outbreak had killed more than ninety-five percent of the world’s population. A second wave would surely take care of mopping up the last bit of mankind.
“Please!” shouted Pike. “Please,” he said again, more quietly as the noise slowly quelled. “I’ve asked Dr. Green to brief us on the matter. Let’s hear her out before surrendering to panic.”
Everyone turned to face Dr. Green. Even at nearly fifty years of age, she remained a beautiful woman, with short brown hair, rich green eyes, and a slender body.
She took a calming breath before addressing them.
“Yesterday, we received word of three new cases of Superpox-99. These are the first cases in thirty-four days, and we had naturally assumed that the virus had run its course.”
“How’s this even possible?” demanded General Carr. “I thought the virus wouldn’t stay viable for that long.”
“It won’t,” she said. “And yet, somehow it appears to have done just that. Perhaps by passing from person to person in very small circles or by mutating in some way. We’re really not sure at this point. The bodies were all cremated by the military upon discovery.”
At the mention of the military’s involvement, Carr looked over at Pike, clearly wondering why he had not been briefed prior to the meeting.
“Why were they cremated before they could be examined?” asked Jack Fry.
“They feared secondary spread of a mutated virus. While I don’t necessarily agree with their decision, it was understandable.”
“What now?” he continued. “Is Superpox-99 back in all of its horror?”
She lowered her head. “There’s no reason to think it wouldn’t spread for a second time, albeit at a much slower pace.”
“Slower because people are more spread out now?” said Pike.
“That’s part of it, yes. Plus, all forms of public transportation, including airlines, buses, and trains are offline. That will slow the spread considerably.”
“But you’re saying it will still spread?”
“Yes,” she said, pressing her lips together. “It will still spread.”
“Dr. Green,” Vice President Stinson said, struggling to keep his composure, “what I think we all really want to know is whether it’s already too late.”
“To be honest, sir, I don’t know.”
“What do you think? The truth please, ma’am.”
Many people at the table nodded, seconding his request for an honest assessment.
“As far as we know, the most recent outbreak has only appeared within the city of Lexington, Kentucky. That would indicate that it is still very localized.”
“There’s hope then,” said Jack. “We can contain it—seal off the roads, create a keep-out zone. Do it right this time.”
“Is that possible?” asked Pike.
“Of course we should try to set up a quarantine zone.”
“But?”
Dr. Green sighed. “But our actions are unlikely to contain the outbreak. There are so many ways in and out of a city the size of Lexington that, once word gets out of the outbreak, survivors will flee. Stopping them, and thus the spread of the virus, will be all but impossible.”
“What are you saying, Dr. Green?” asked Stinson. “That this is it? The end of humanity?”
“I… I don’t know. Maybe.” Despite her grave message, she managed to keep her voice from breaking.
The room fell silent. A few people began to sob.
President Pike stood up. “I can’t accept that.”
Dr. Green looked up at him. “Sir?”
“I’m not going to let that happen. Hi
story may judge me the worst of men, but I won’t allow this virus to destroy mankind. I just won’t.”
“Sir, as I said, there’s really no way—”
“You’re wrong,” he said forcefully. “There’s always a way. We just have to be willing to take it.”
Nearly everyone looked up at President Pike with a measure of hope. The lone exception was General Carr, perhaps the most hardened man left in the government. He looked on only with suspicion.
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