by David Poyer
For a moment she was puzzled, then realized: she still wore her white lab coat. “Um, not exactly,” she said. “Medical researcher.”
“At the hospital? Harborview? VA?”
“No, no. Archipelago.”
“That’s government work, right? Defense work?”
“Um, that’s right. I work on … new drugs.” She coughed; the smoke was catching in her throat.
“For the troops. Got it. And what? Roller skate run out of gas?” He took off his glasses and bent to give her undercarriage a shaggy-browed inspection. “Right front’s gone.”
“It’s electric. But yeah, it’s out of charge.”
Levi-blue eyes were fixed on her, so unblinking she had to drop her gaze. “What’s your name, li’l honey?”
“Dr.… Dr. Lenson. What’s yours?”
“Call me Ish. You hurt? Where you headed, so soon after the fucking slants clobbered us?”
She glanced back up the street, hoping to spot a cop car. But of course none appeared. Looters, or bikers? Some choice.
But when she turned back he was looking even more closely at her face. At her eyes … “Say, you ain’t a fuckin’ slant yourself?”
Her half-Asian heritage. “No,” she lied. “Portuguese. Look, I’m on a—a mission. To rescue some, some vaccines. For the … for the Marines.”
That seemed to be the magic word. He nodded and grinned, exposing stainless steel front teeth. “Oh, yeah? Where to?”
“Qwent Pharmaceuticals. Over by the golf course.”
He patted the seat behind him, and blipped his horn in a long-short-long signal. She looked to where he’d turned his head. The other bikers were U-turning, heading back toward them. Re-scabbarding rifles and shotguns, tucking pistols back into leather vests. Pushing the wandering, shocked, zombie-like survivors out of their way.
She gnawed her lip and felt for her phone. Then remembered: It wasn’t working.
“I get it,” the big biker said. His grin was terrible to see. “Look, ain’t no need to be afraid of us, honey. We’re on the same side.”
She frowned. “Side?”
“Yeah. Mobilized Militia.” He rotated his offside shoulder to brandish a red, white, and blue armband. “Here to protect the good people and eliminate the bad ones. Which’re you?”
She glanced at the nearest storefront. Make a dash? She considered that foolish idea for only a second.
Ish waved to the oncoming bikers and they braked, surrounding them. “Little lady needs help,” he yelled. “She’s a doctor, gettin’ meds for the troops. Needs to go to Qwent. Anybody know where that is?”
She could feel them all examining her, but tried not to stare back. Tried to keep smiling, to not look terrified. “Cute,” said one. “She can warm my back,” muttered another. “Any day.”
A smaller biker with an enormous red walrus mustache hoisted a fist. “It’s over in Dunlap, I think.”
“Okay, Rollvag, take point.” Ish turned back to her. “Throw a leg over, Doc. Feet on the buddy pegs, but keep them pretty stems off the engine, it gets hot down there. Grab them two handles down by your sides. And hold on tight.”
* * *
SHE wasn’t sure of the route they took, and for a time wondered if they weren’t just kidnaping her. Taking her somewhere they could do whatever they wanted. There wouldn’t be much she could do in that case. The bikes tore along the highway at a frightening speed in a rolling blare of sound. They speeded past whole blocks on fire. A ball of ice settled into her belly. But finally they slowed, took an off-ramp, and she sort-of-recognized a street sign.
Quent was housed in a former shoe factory above a golf course, with Lake Washington beyond. The pharma building was set away from the rest of the facility. She rose in her pillion seat, clinging to Ish’s broad shoulders, to look. The damage came in sight as they swept around the curve and motored up the rise.
The main building had taken the brunt of the blast, but it didn’t seem to be on fire. Its roof was twisted wreckage and loose bricks littered the ground outside the fence. On the other hand, the metal roof lay canted across the chain link.
Meaning she could get in, whether or not anyone was around. She pointed. The motors roared, then slackened as the mass of machines and men rolled to a halt.
“This it?” Ish craned back at her.
“Yeah.” She unslung her leg, fighting a cramp and wishing she was in jeans instead of a skirt under the lab coat. She kept looking for security, for the Qwent staff, workers. They should be here somewhere, but she didn’t see anyone.
She turned, then, and looked out over the city.
Into the mouth of Hell.
To her left, the normally blue-gray waters of the Sound looked muddy and darker than before. The black thunderhead had drifted on north, though it still stained the horizon, but smoke streamed up from a hundred thousand fires, tinting the sunlight orange-red and making it impossible to see past the city center. Beacon Hill was on fire, its turn-of-the-previous-century mansions of brick and wood smashed and toppled, the rubble aflame. CenturyLink and Safeco Fields were gone, blasted from the earth, apparently; she couldn’t make out any sign of them in the haze. The high-arching viaducts of the 90/5 Interchange lay collapsed in an avalanche-rubble of concrete, with here and there a sparkle of torn metal and broken glass. Whatever unfortunates had been on them when the warheads had fallen … she drew breath in a choked sob, fists to her mouth. It didn’t seem real. Didn’t seem possible.
Ish dismounted and came up beside her, laying a heavy arm over her shoulder. The assault rifle dangled in his other hand. He limped heavily as he walked, placing his boots carefully, as if he had spinal or hip damage. “There s’posed to be anybody here?”
“The drug … it was in production. Yeah. But I don’t see any staff.”
“Uh-huh. Still got to get inside, right? Know where you’re going?”
She breathed deeply, trying to recover some calm. Pointed toward the pharma building, and stepped cautiously up onto the metal roofing. It creaked and shifted under her weight, and she grabbed for the big man as she started to fall. He stepped on too, counterbalancing the levering steel, and with arms linked they walked together across the crumpled chain link, then jumped down onto the scorched, smoking grass.
When she stepped through the empty floor-to-ceiling panels of the lobby of Building Four, employees were rushing to and fro inside, carrying extinguishers. She searched for a familiar face and finally found one. “Heremy. Heremy!” she yelled.
The manager, blue suit rumpled and neck smudged with soot, stared at her uncomprehendingly before recognition dawned. “Dr. Lenson? But … what are you doing here?” He switched his gaze to Ish, then dropped it to the black rifle. A frown crimped his eyebrows. “Uh—what’s going on?”
“I’m here about our production run.” Self-consciously, she took a step away from the huge man in gang colors. “He’s my … security escort. Look, what’s the status? Is our first shipment ready?”
“It’s ready. Yeah. But we’re evacuating.” He cast a worried glance at the sky. “If that wind shifts, and sooner or later it will, it’s going to drop fallout all across here. We’ve probably already have been exposed.”
“That’s pretty much what I thought about too. And another issue. What about refrigeration?”
The manager staggered as a worker carrying a desktop server caromed off him, and pushed him away. “Out on the lawn,” he snapped. Then, to Nan, “Still working. Until the freezer warms up. But we don’t have more than an hour’s power on the battery banks. Once those go down, we lose power, we lose the cold.”
Unfortunately, LJL 4789, named after Lujaks, Jhingan, and Lenson, was a heat-sensitive molecule. They had only rough tests of stability at elevated temperatures and no idea yet of duration of storage. But based on related compounds, every hour at ten degrees above the freezing point meant a measurable loss of potency. And with the reports of outbreaks to the south …
But was she
just rearranging deck chairs? The whole city was on fire. If this was a nationwide attack, maybe it didn’t matter if they could forestall an epidemic. Like putting a Band-Aid on a chest, when the heart within was staggering from a massive infarction.
She shook the doubt off. The drug was their best hope against the virus, which would remain a threat to survivors no matter what else was happening. In fact, if this was a nationwide attack, weakening the population might mean it would strike even more virulently. “Um, have you heard any news? Is it just Seattle, or—?”
The manager shook his head, shrugged. “No idea.”
“Well, look, dude,” Ish said, stepping up. “Got a reefer?”
“A reefer.” The manager stared at him, from his shaved head to the massive black boots studded with steel spikes.
“A reefer truck.—I’ve driven ’em,” the biker asided to her.
She rubbed her face. Her hands came away black. How much of this soot, this smoke, was radioactive already? The wind had blown the thunderhead north, but it couldn’t have dissipated all the fission products. “Um. So, you’re a trucker?”
“Until the fucking layoffs, when they automated.”
“Can we get a refrigerated truck?” she asked the manager.
“We had one … hey, Jerry, that white fridge truck still run?”
It seemed that it might, but hadn’t been used for a while. “If we can get it cranked up, where would you take this important shipment of yours?” the big biker asked her.
She thought hard. The FEMA Region Ten Support Facility was in Lynnwood, about fifteen miles north … no. the plume would have passed directly over it. Even if the facility was still intact, no point going there. A hospital, then. Overlake? Issaquah? A hospital would have a blood bank or plasma center, with low-temp storage and emergency generators.
Or a military base? No, they wouldn’t let her in without a long explanation. Endless complications. They’d see the looting as their biggest problem. Restoring order. Deploying the National Guard. Setting up to handle mass casualties.
“You know the roads pretty well, right?” she asked the biker.
“Oh yeah. We run the pipelines, the power lines. Protectin’ ’em. Got in a shootout with some copper thieves last week.”
“Could you get me to Issaquah?”
He tapped steel teeth with the rifle muzzle, reflecting. “Have to go east, then north. Stick to back roads. What, you want a hospital? I’d go south on Five. Tacoma. Be faster. Tacoma General? We took brothers there once when we had a run-in with the Pagans.”
When she nodded he beckoned to the small biker. “Get ’em out of the saddle, Roller. We got some work to do.”
* * *
IT took an hour to pull the ampules, already boxed, wrapped, and palleted for shipment, out of the freezers. A million doses. They were still cold, but wouldn’t stay that way long. Ish got the truck started and backed it up to the loading dock. He left it running, air blasting out of the back with the refrigeration unit turned to high, then stood watching as the Qwent people forklifted the pallets in. “There any mercury in this stuff?” he asked her.
“What? Oh—this isn’t a vaccine. It’s a drug. No, there’s no thimerosol.”
“I heard it was bad shit. Toxic.”
“No mercury. No.” Great, an antivaxer. She almost rolled her eyes, but stopped herself. So far the bikers seemed to be on her side. The last thing she wanted to do now was to show disrespect.
The manager came out holding a clipboard. “My tablet’s dead, so I drew up a paper receipt.”
She pushed it away. “Come on, Heremy. It’s just gonna go bad if it stays here.”
“We’re on FEMA contract. No way can I release it without at least a signature. And what about our truck?”
Beside her Ish stirred. The manager cut his eyes at him apprehensively. “This asshole hassling you, Doc?” the biker growled, hefting the rifle. Behind him the other Berzerkers wheeled as one to face the manager, each man putting a hand on a gun or knife.
The manager held his ground for a moment, then buckled in the face of dozens of tattooed, scowling gang members obviously eager to unleash carnal violence. “Uh, uh, sure … I guess it’s all right,” he said hastily. “Sure, whatever, take it. It’s just gonna degrade, once the batteries run out. Right?” He scrawled something on the clipboard.
He started away, looking relieved, then wheeled back. “Oh. I forgot. One of the guys just pulled CBC in on his scanner. Public radio, from Canada. They said Seattle, Montana, and North Dakota got hit. The White House launched on Shanghai and another city in retaliation. I forget which.”
The bikers cheered. Nan stood silent, turning it over in her mind. Imagining it. And what might come next. “And if they hit us again?” she said at last.
“Then fuck ’em,” Ish grated. “We’ll wipe every yellow monkey off the face of the earth.”
Rollvag sauntered up. The diminutive biker looked at the truck, then at Ish’s Harley. “You drivin’?”
“Oh, yeah.” The big man clambered awkwardly back on his hog and revved it. He gunned it, let out the clutch, and piloted it skillfully up the ramp to the loading dock, then into the back of the truck as the others climbed onto their hogs and started up.
Nan closed her eyes. Apparently they were all coming with her.
Ish climbed out of the back of the truck, lowered himself clumsily and obviously painfully to the ground, and slammed the doors. He jerked a thumb at her and limped around to the cab. Beckoned her to climb up.
When she was belting in he peered over at her again. “Hey. Sure you’re not a chink?”
“Told you. I’m Portuguese.”
“I guess that’s okay … but maybe you better wear this.”
He fished in an inside pocket of the vest, and held out a patch. It read PROPERTY OF BERZERKERS. “Put it on. There’s a pin stuck in the back.”
What the … “Put it on…?”
“On that pretty white coat. Yeah. Right there.” He poked a big index with a blackened nail into her upper breast, and leered again, just as he had when he’d pulled up beside her stalled car as she sat wondering what to do.
She wanted to ask what this meant, exactly what she was signing up for, then realized she didn’t have a choice. Reluctantly, she pinned it on.
The roar of Harley engines resounded like a wing of bombers readying for takeoff. The bikers maneuvered complexly, to some silent drill they all knew, wheeling into what looked like rehearsed positions. Their touring formation, probably. There had to be two dozen of them in front of her and just as many behind the truck. All armed. They faced forward, ignoring the Qwent employees who’d come out of the annex to watch.
Ish leaned out of the window, spun a finger in the air, and jabbed it ahead. The lead bikes, Roller up front, leapt forward, front wheels popping off the road, then thumping down as they gunned the engines. When the wave of motion reached the truck Ish jammed the gear in and they started rolling. Surrounded by sound so thick it was nearly a solid wall, the vibrating throbbing roar of heavy, large-displacement pistons, the column inchwormed into motion. A right turn out the gate. Another right, through the streaming, stinking black smoke of a burning gas station.
The convoy, two hundred yards long, two bikers abreast, charged up the exit ramp onto the highway. The reverberating clamor of their approach alone cleared the street. As they accelerated the noise rose in pitch and volume until it rolled out over the crushed, burning city.
Crouched tensely in the passenger seat, Nan glanced out the side window, up at the sky. It was empty. Shrouded by smoke. The sun barely peered through, an obscured, lusterless, ruddy disk. Ish drove with utter concentration, eyes narrowed, face intent. His rifle was propped against the console between them.
The caravan hit fifty, then sixty, then eighty. The engines bellowed all around her. She clutched a hand grip on the headliner and squeezed her eyes shut.
Motors roaring like a pride of lions, swerving violent
ly between stalled cars and trucks, the glittering column of silver and black thundered southward, out of the dying city.
24
USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, the South China Sea
DAN lay with one arm over his face, trying to fight through anxiety and nausea toward something resembling sleep. After days of half-hour naps in his command chair, every cell yearned for unconsciousness. For a few seconds after he’d kicked off his shoes, turned off the light, and rolled into the narrow bunk in his flag cabin, they’d sighed in relief.
But sleep was still far away.
It wasn’t his body.
It was his mind that was in the way.
After years at sea, the sound of rotating machinery was a lullaby. One arm anchored him to the bunk frame. After years in destroyers and frigates, he could only sleep clutching some solid handhold. Even before the war, in the rare times he’d spent at home, he needed a fist wrapped around the headboard. Which had made it complicated years before, when he’d slept cuddling a little girl. His daughter. So small. So vulnerable.
He lay with eyes closed, listening to the whoosh of ventilation, and gave way at last to the burning tears he’d held back since getting the news.
* * *
FDR was still under way. Escorted by two destroyers, south of Dongsha Island, also known as Pratas Reef. The circular atoll had been neglected during the war, until a Japanese landing force occupied it for the Allies. Now Lee Custer was there setting up the shore facilities, barges, tugs, and floating piers of the Mobile Logistic Force and coordinating ground-based antiair and missile defense coverage.
Dongsha was only a hundred and fifty miles from the coast. With a landing strip suitable for F-35s and C-17s, the island and lagoon were being converted into a base for the next campaign, into southern China.