Pat listened as if the voice was coming from somewhere else other than his own mouth. Because it was. The voice was a recording simulating his voice exactly. It was streaming from the speakers all around the stage, and most likely from speakers that had been deposited all around the country.
They did not need him, they had his voice.
Another set of jets cut through the skies above. The Secret Service approached and in a calm yet rushed manner hustled him off the stage and back inside the building, yet his voice continued to flow from the speakers as if he were still delivering the State of the Union address.
“We are going to take you to a secure location to reunite you with your family, Mr. Callahan,” the man in the suit, sunglasses, and earpiece said to him. “Is that understood, Mr. Callahan?”
Pat looked at the fifty or so men in similar attire surrounding him as they ushered him down the hallway. He stopped in his tracks, as did all his surrounding security. He saw some put their hands on the guns in their belt clips, some tightened their grips on the sub machineguns they held.
Pat looked down the hall and off in the distance. Watching, always watching was Max Gold.
Pat turned to the agent who had addressed him. “From now on, you will refer to me as Mr. President.”
Across the nation, citizens watched, listened, and streamed the broadcast of the sole living member of the elected federal government. To the eyes of the nation, continuity of government had worked even in the midst of a pandemic that seemed to have escaped the bowels of Hell, unaware that it had been a coup within a coup, a government attempting to overthrow itself, and to fill the nation with those all too willing, too accepting, or simply too afraid to oppose absolutely authority. No one to watch the watchers. They never suspected they too could be reached behind their white marble walls and consumed, literally, by the implements of their own insurrection. And while the country caught glimpses of leaked footage of a collapsing New Jersey and a Capitol Hill full of cannibals, they did not see what was occurring across their own neighborhood, outside their office, just beyond their kitchen window. Nothing can ever be fully contained, and the virus was fighting for control of new hosts and new territories. But for the moment, they had put their hopes in a new president, one whom they knew nothing about, who was suddenly thrust into the role by both circumstance and lineage, but one whose words seemed to stop the carnage, at least for the moment. And sometimes the moment is all you have.
As for the boys from Holy Friends School, their purpose in the plan was not yet complete. Chess is not over until someone declares checkmate.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Appetizers/Illustrators
Nicholas Spender
David Walker
Main Course/Consultants
Isha Datar
Adam Jack
Dana Perkins
Dr. Stephen Colmant (the real Dr. Woody)
Desserts/Editors
Janine Naimoli Frederick
Tristana Giunta
Aaron Brodniak
About the Author:
Neil A. Cohen is a first time author who wanted nothing more than to contribute something to the Zombie Literature Genre. To research this book, he consulted with members of both foreign and domestic military and government agencies on how a true zombie pandemic would be handled. In an attempt to make the story based within the realm of the possible, he received input from professionals working for the World Health Organization, NATO, United Nations, FEMA, and Emergency Management and First Responders agencies nationwide. While unlikely, nothing in this story, including the inception of the virus, is impossible.
Neil currently lives outside of Washington D.C. with his wife and two daughters.
www.exitzerozombie.com
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