“Okay,” I said, my voice breaking. “Give me a second.”
I reached a hand out to the small figure, but he didn’t see me. He didn’t see much of anything. My hand spread across the glass as if I could pull him back with sheer willpower.
It’s my duty to save him, I thought. But first things first. Could I live with myself if I went through with it?
“Do it,” I said, dropping my hand from the window.
The steel door in the side of the chamber slid open, revealing a man in a hood — and what appeared to be a very nice suit — who was thrust inside the room. The smaller figure snarled and charged, only to be brought up short by the shackles on his wrists. The door clanged shut, and the man freed himself of the hood.
I de-polarized the observation windows so that Gardner could see me. He took no notice of me at first. He was busy cringing back from the still-snarling form of Eric, who should have become my son, as the chains made a sharp snapping and jingling sound in the air. Gardner huddled into a corner by the door.
Finally catching his breath and looking around, once he saw that the chains were secure, Gardner spotted me through the window, and flinched as I gazed at him with no emotion. He started speaking, and I punched another button on the wall-mounted control panel beside the window to turn on the communication system.
“…can come to some sort of accommodation, surely. There’s no need for any dramatics. You’ve made your point, Mr. Blake.”
When I didn’t respond, I could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down on that scrawny neck, and the sweat that appeared on his forehead as he tried to ignore the screaming, clawing zombie that raged not three feet from where he crouched.
“Really, this is unnecessary.”
I cocked my head at him, as though inspecting a heretofore unknown species of insect.
“Do you recognize the room?” I asked. “You should. You had it specially built, didn’t you?”
Gardner looked around at the room, seeing the grid of round holes in the floor as if for the first time, and he swallowed hard again.
“You wouldn’t…”
My hand hovered over the console again, and I saw the look in Gardner’s eyes as he realized that there was no escape for him this time. He stood up straight and tall then, obviously intending to meet his fate with some dignity. Good for him. Still, there were two unanswered questions, and I had to know.
“Why me? Why go to so much trouble over me?” I asked.
“Because you’re infected, Mr. Blake,” he said impatiently, as if I were an idiot for not already knowing.
For a split second, I reeled. Impossible! Me, infected? As fast as the shock came, though, I realized what he was doing: playing me, yet again.
“That’s impossible, and you know it.”
“Is it? Think back, all the way back to Fall Creek. You were injured, weren’t you? A splinter of wood, I believe. In your report, you mention a little girl…”
I thought back to that little girl in the yard that night. Could she have infected me? No, it just wasn’t possible.
“You’re just trying to save your own skin now, Gardner. You’d say anything.”
“Hardly. It’s obvious that I won’t change your mind about this. What reason would I have to lie at this stage?” He folded his arms and leaned back against the wall, the picture of confidence.
“This is nonsense. If what you’re saying was true, I‘d have become a walker a long time ago.”
Gardner moved forward toward the window, suddenly animated, but still careful to keep out of reach of Eric. “Exactly, Mr. Blake! Now you understand. What makes you immune to this? How do you walk around with these prions inside you — and we’ve verified that in your blood samples, by the way — without turning into a walker?”
He shook his head. “If only I’d been able to get you on the examination table, we might have discovered the truth. I know more than any other scientist on the planet about this disease, Mr. Blake; I could have found the answer That’ll never happen now, though.” He turned away and moved back to his corner, but I knew he was watching for my reaction out of the corner of his eye.
I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. It was such an obvious ploy. He just wanted to find a reason for me not to push the button at my fingertips. And I could not imagine any reason in the world powerful enough to stop me, though I gave him points for creativity.
Since I wasn’t going to get a real answer, I changed the subject. “What about everything else, then? Why all that?”
“Why what?” he answered.
“All of it! The secret experiments, the selling the samples to North Korea, all of it. You had to know what would happen. You had to know what you would help create, and what you would destroy.”
He laughed. Then he shook his head. “You’re hardly worthy of the trouble of explaining it,” he said dismissively.
I casually tapped my fingers near the buttons on the console until he noticed and took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said. “You see all the puzzle pieces together, finally, and you still can’t see the picture it makes? You want to know why I did it?”
“I do.”
“Why, Mr. Blake, for the only reason in the world that means anything at all.” His smile was chilling, this time. As if I gazed on pure evil. “Power.”
“How does killing off the whole human race give you…” I stopped, forgetting for a moment the button that would end his life and my misery. In an instant, it all became clear. “Oh, I see.”
“Ah, yes. There it is, the light of understanding, be it ever so dim.” He clapped his hands softly and slowly, a ‘golf’ clap if ever there was one.
“Only a hundred thousand of us left. And you’ve got a spot in the bunkers,” I said. “And not just any old bunker — the presidential bunker. With SecDef and the rest of them. With only ten thousand people to deal with, consolidating your power would be easy. You’d probably claim credit for Project Phoenix as a whole, or something similar. And once you were done with that bunker, there would only be nine others to bring under your control.
“A hundred thousand people, all owing their survival to Henry Gardner.” I shook my head. “Henry Gardner, ruler of the New United States.”
He turned and spat, sneering. “As if I would cheapen this great nation with all that rabble. I would have selected my followers carefully, and only they would have seen the light of the surface again.
“This country — this world — has allowed itself to be dumbed-down by generation after generation of idiots and whores. The world I was creating was to be an intellectual paradise, free of the fallacies of all the morons that had gone before, with pure untainted stock…”
“Shut up, Henry.” He spluttered to a halt as I took the opportunity to laugh, sickened as I was. “You really are a spy-movie villain, you know.”
“How so?”
“I’ve caught you monologuing.”
I pressed one button, and the special explosive bolts in Eric’s chains blew, letting him loose in the room. Gardner shrieked as the child came flying at him, far faster than any other walker I’d seen out there in the world.
No wonder he wanted to experiment on Eric. Someone like him could see so much potential in that sort of speed.
To Gardner’s credit, he fought the kid off for a few seconds, kicking and trying to run away. But there was nowhere to go, and he knew it. It took only one misstep, his immaculate and expensive loafers tripping him up, and Eric was on him in a heartbeat. That was when my buddy Henry really started screaming.
I was wrong, I thought. The question wasn’t whether I could live with myself if I did this.
Almost of its own volition, my hand lifted to the large red button on the wall marked “Flash Activation.”
The question was, how could I live with myself if I didn’t?
The question is, how could I live with myself if I didn’t?
I punched the button, staring into Gardner’s now-sightless eyes as Eric feasted on him,
not looking away as the 3,000° F flames roared by the window, consuming everything — and everyone — inside. After a full five minutes, the flames shut off, and the room was visible once more in the light shining through the observation windows. Everything temporary — the chains, the lighting fixtures, and especially Eric and Gardner — were gone, as if they never existed. Only blackened and cracked concrete remained.
I knew that I would be haunted for years by my actions here today, regardless of their outcome, and by Gardner’s. It felt like I had heard the cries of all of his victims. I’d dispensed an horrific justice for them, to be sure, but it was the least that he’d deserved. And what about all his future victims? Those whose only defender had chosen to stop his crimes before they’d even begun.
Yes, I will be haunted, I thought. But if that’s the price I have to pay for me to know that his evil is gone, then so be it. I can bear that pain, for Eric. And for all the others, past and future.
The door to my right opened, and I could feel Kim standing there, though I didn’t turn.
“It’s done,” I said, almost whispering.
“Are you back?”
I had to take a deep breath before I could answer, but it was time to put my demons to rest, once and for all.
“Yes.” I turned to her and smiled, finally at peace with Rebecca and Eric’s death, and knowing that I would fight — and if necessary die — to protect those who remained.
Kim nodded. It was a hard thing I’d asked her to do, but she had only hesitated for a moment. She’d seen the right of it, and knew the cost as well as I did.
We’ll pay it together, I hope. With her by my side, I feel like I can withstand anything. That will just have to be enough.
Suddenly our radios squawked.
“Blake, Barnes, report to the general’s office on the double.” Commander Anderson’s voice.
Kim half-turned toward the door, cocking one eyebrow at me. I took a deep breath and let it out, then walked out with her.
I had left the past behind me, and it felt good. Time to focus on the future, now.
Although, I would be crazy not to have my blood tested for prions, when I had an opportunity.
“Sir, I have something I think you need to see.”
The young soldier stood at ease in front of General Maxwell’s desk, while Commander Anderson leaned against the wall nearby.
“Oh? And what would that be, sergeant?” Maxwell asked.
“Sir, I… I was ordered to keep an eye on the labs, since Mr. Gardner’s detention, sir. I was walking through the security area and saw something on the monitor…”
The kid turned a bit pale, but continued. “I just think you should see this, sir,” he said, laying a flash drive on the general’s desk.
Maxwell glanced at Anderson, who nodded slightly.
“Very well, sergeant. You’re dismissed.”
“Thank you, sir,” the soldier said, saluting and exiting the office as Maxwell fitted the drive into his computer and brought up the only file on the device.
A few minutes later, Maxwell turned off the video of the security feed from the lab cameras and sat back in his chair. He glanced over at Anderson, leaning against the wall to one side of the desk. The stone-faced commander was silent, as he had been throughout what they had just witnessed.
“Nothing to say, Frank?”
“No, sir. I’d say it was the least he deserved. Not something I would’ve done – or you — but Blake? Of all of us, he had more reason to do it than anyone.”
“Well, what about Kimberly?”
“They’re a pair now, sir. Joined at the hip, as it were. She pulled him back from a near-coma, sir. I’ll bet she hesitated when he asked, but not long. After all, it was him pushing the buttons, not her.”
Maxwell grimaced. “Be that as it may — and I agree with you — the fact is that they disobeyed direct orders. I’m in a mess of shit now. I’ll have to justify this to the president, you realize. He’s going to want to know what happened to the bastard.”
Frank stared at the general, not moving from his perch near the window. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”
“Always, Frank. You know that.”
“Sir, I’d say if the president doesn’t see the right of this, then fuck him, sir. We’ve got too many other things to worry about right now than the death of some asshole who should’ve been shot a long time ago.”
Maxwell couldn’t help laughing. “Well, you did say ‘freely’, didn’t you?”
Anderson’s lips twitched in what Maxwell thought might be the ghost of a smile.
“Fact is, you’re right. Too much other crap. Better bring ‘em in, then.” He picked up the phone on his desk and punched a button. “Nancy, send them in, please.”
Anderson moved around behind Maxwell as the entirety of 1st Team filed in, taking spots wherever they could. It wasn’t a big office, and space was at a premium, even with all nine of them standing at attention.
As the senior operator present, Powell stood forward and saluted. “First Team, reporting as ordered, sir.”
“At ease, men.” Maxwell tapped a pencil on his desk as he watched them — his crème de la crème — fall into parade rest. He could see Powell was a bit nervous, and decided to be nice… for once. “Don’t worry, they’ll be here in a minute.”
Jake couldn’t help but glancing at the general, then returned to eyes-forward. “Uh, yes sir.”
As if on cue, they all heard the rhythmic thump of boots run into the hallway outside, clearly moving at top speed. A short mumbled conversation later, and Barnes and Blake arrived.
“Good of you to join us, major. Mr. Blake.”
Mobile, Alabama
A coalition of Baptist ministers and deacons organized their followers to protect the outlying areas of the city and its suburbs. Congregating in one of the larger churches, this fellowship stocked the church with food and other supplies sufficient to last them for months, if not years.
Construction began shortly after on a wall surrounding the property and a fortified structure in the rear of the church to house all the people and the supplies. One of the ministers gathered a couple of the farmers and walked them around a section of the land, explaining where he wanted the large garden to go.
The poor and destitute of the area weren’t turned away, and helped to construct the fortifications, and protect the followers from those who fear what they see coming. The clergy extended invitations to anyone willing to work, and promised safety and security.
One man arrived a few days after construction began with his sick wife and child, and the senior minister at the time turned him away, saying that they would pray for the survival of the small family, but couldn’t accept the sick. Tears streamed down the minister’s face as the man turned away with nowhere to go and all hope lost, but he stood his ground and just shook his head when the man looked back one last time.
The only others he turned away were a group of young men who drove up in a rusty pickup, piling out with their rifles and pistols, drunk and boisterous.
The senior minister, a large southern man, wasn’t flustered.
“What can I do fo’ you boys?” he asked.
“We’s here lookin fo’ the Church of the Divine Judgment. Y’all them?” One particularly feisty-looking young man stepped forward.
The minister looked at the boys, considering. He spat on the ground, a stream of dirty brown juice.
“We ain’t them. Don’t have no truck with that nonsense. You boys look like you’re from good folk. Hell, I even know some of ya.” He nodded toward one of the young men, standing at the back, who flushed and looked away. “Yeah, I know your ma and pa, Darrell. What would they say about this?”
When none of the men responded, the minister spat again. “Well, if ya ain’t gonna help, you can be on your merry. Lord save you boys.”
The leader of the men judged the will of the minister, one old man against his young pack, and gestured to the tru
ck. “Load up, boys, let’s go find ‘em.”
The minister waited until they were out of sight and then glanced skyward with a murmured, “Thanks, Lord.”
Soon, the six-foot cinder-block wall was finished, and the construction crew focused on the barracks. They worked hard; it seemed that they knew that they worked for the survival of everyone.
Fort Carson, Colorado
“So that’s the situation. We’ve managed to get some search and rescue crews into the area, but other than the wreckage of the convoy, they didn’t find anything of use. Just a few shredded bits of uniform fabric and some spent shell casings. No equipment, no bodies, nothing.”
The Dying of the Light (Book 1): End Page 37