08:10 AM
Vice Admiral Reed gulped; he and the chiefs of staff at the Pentagon heard the news in shocked disbelief. He addressed the empty video-link screen, connecting them to the White House. “Mister President? Sir?”
“I’m here,” replied Hamilton Parker, his face filling the screen. “What can I do for you, Admiral?” he looked tired and drawn.
“We’ve, erm, we’ve lost all communication with General Malloy, Mister President. Everything, sir, radio, sat-links, the lot.”
08:20 AM
Luke and Sophie watched the flaming hotel in silence. The aircraft was firmly wedged into the foyer of the hotel and burned fiercely. Black smoke billowed up into the sky. Soldiers operated fire trucks valiantly, but losing the battle to extinguish the flames. The fire had gotten a hold and the structure of the forty-floor hotel was in danger.
While the fire distracted the soldiers, Luke and Sophie ran up behind a slow moving open-topped truck. They jumped on the footplate, climbed the ladder, then Luke helped Sophie hop over into the back of the cargo hold, where to their utter horror, discovered it was full of dead plague victims.
Sophie screamed and landed heavily on the bodies, slipping down amongst them. The smell made her retch and gag, as sore-covered limbs appeared to suck her down to the bottom of the heap. Luke got a grip of her arm and yanked her up out of the rotting corpses. She spluttered and choked at the stench.
He stared in horror at the victims’ wounds, at their weeping, oozing sores, the congealed blood from the eyes, ears, and nostrils, their blackened, torn skin. Each face had their agonizing death etched deeply upon it and he shuddered. He peeked over the top of the cab as it trundled towards the coast. He watched grimly as groups of soldiers shot civilians in execution squads. Seemingly having little regard for whether they carried the Bubonic Plague or not. The truck stopped abruptly with a squeal of airbrakes and Luke wondered if they'd been caught.
Luke listened to the distorted voices of the truck-crew talking through the radio mikes of their hazmat suits, but couldn’t hear clearly. Suddenly a body flew over the side of the truck and Luke just managed to duck in time, as the carcass passed over his head to land in a crumpled heap.
A second body sailed over the side of the truck. Luke yelled as he was half-covered by the woman and splattered with the blood pumping from her stomach wound.
“She’s not dead.” Sophie hissed.
“How do you know?”
“When the heart stops pumping, the blood stops flowing. She’s bleeding - she’s alive.”
The woman’s eyes widened, looking at Sophie. She couldn’t comprehend the smiling pretty woman, crawling across the pile of rotting corpses towards her.
“Don’t be alarmed, I’m a doctor, I can help -” she halted abruptly as another body flew over the side of the truck and landed awkwardly on the woman, breaking her neck, and killing her instantly.
Sophie sobbed in despair and Luke hugged her to him, she let him comfort her for a moment, then the truck crunched into gear and chugged on it’s journey. “She would never have survived a gut-shot,” he whispered to her gently.
“But I needed to try and save her. I really did.”
“I know,” he said soothingly. She rested her head on his shoulder and saw the woman’s dead eyes staring at her accusingly. Luke hugged her some more, when the truck slowed to a halt and released its air brakes with a squeal.
They moved to the cab-end of the cargo-hold assuming the soldiers wouldn’t throw the bodies near to the cab, fearing it might land on the top and be a hazard.
Luke helped her climb up the pile of bodies acutely aware that they were clambering up and over human beings. The back of the truck began to rise on its hydraulic lift, he tried to hold Sophie away from the mass of bodies, but as the cargo-hold tilted, the floor was too slippery, covered with blood, vomit and excrement. As the angle steepened, Luke lost his grip and they tumbled down the slope head-over-heels, along with the rest of the corpses to the bottom. . . .
CHAPTER 23
08:40 AM
President Parker screamed. “They blew up what!” He looked to the sky for help. “With a what?” his face flushed puce and the veins in his forehead were visible.
At the Pentagon War Room Vice-Admiral Reed watched Hamilton Parker rage around the office popping in and out of view on the giant video-link screen. He looked to his compatriots around the conference table and shrugged. “According to the latest intel., Mister President, General Malloy’s command post at the Four Points Hotel, has been destroyed by an aircraft.”
“You were meant to be watching for flights. How did this happen?” he screeched.
“It erm, wasn’t a flight, Mister President. They didn’t fly the airplane into the building.”
“Explain?” he said with malice in his voice.
“They drove it down the street, sir,” he said and gulped waiting for his next outburst.
“What!” He slapped his hand on his desk so hard that objects jumped into the air. “You said they, who are they – foreign terrorists?”
“The reports are sketchy, Mister President. But it looks like local survivors.”
“Say that again?”
“It appears to be survivors, sir – fighting back.”
At the White House President Hamilton Parker swept the objects from his desk, then overturned it and kicked his swivel-chair out of view, he followed after it and they could hear him curse as he destroyed more of the Oval Office furniture.
Quinn Martell calculated the cost of precious antiques reduced to matchwood by the President acting like a vandalizing, drunken, spoiled frat-boy.
Vice-Admiral Reed leaned over to the surgeon general. “He’s losing the plot, Quinn.”
“What can we do?”
“We need someone at the White House, for when the time comes, who has the authority to section him.”
“You said, ‘when’ surely you meant ‘if’?” Quinn pointed out.
“I know what I said. He’s out of control and hopefully his lunatic side-kick General Malloy got killed in the attack.”
“Who can section a serving President?”
“Well, let’s see,” drawled the vice-admiral. “That’d be you.”
Quinn paled, his skin ashen. “Me? But how?”
The vice-admiral shifted his weight. “There’s a few of us waiting for the right moment,” he paused knowing the gravity of the conversation they were having. “That time is now, while Hamilton’s vulnerable without General Malloy to support him.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“We’re going to attempt a coup.”
Quinn stared wide-eyed. “You’re talking treason?”
“We’ve had interesting information leaked from the former President’s compound.”
Quinn gazed around the table to check no one could overhear. “I’m listening.”
“Well, for one thing, that girl did not assassinate President Burgess -”
“I knew that.”
“We watched CCTV footage smuggled out and she wasn’t even in his room when the gunshot is audible. The motion detectors have her in the President’s personal bathroom.”
“Do we know who did kill him?” Quinn asked slowly.
“Rumor has it there was only one armed person in the room at the time of the gunshot.” he paused and let Quinn finish the sentence.
It came to him like a thunderbolt. “General Malloy.”
The vice-admiral allowed himself a slight smile, knowing he’d won him over. “So, are you with us?”
08:50 AM
Luke tried not to cry out as the putrid, rotting corpses buried him. When the pile of human cargo was finally still, he opened his eyes to find that he was half-submerged beneath the crushing heap.
The driver and his buddy had already dragged Sophie from the mound of bodies. “Hey, what have we got here?” the driver asked.
“She sure is pretty!” said his colleague. He approached her making smacking noises
with his lips.
Sophie recoiled imagining the worst, but any sort of sexual attack meant the soldier would have to remove his hazmat suit and expose himself to danger. Surely he was not that stupid?
“Don’t be shy my pretty one. We only want to be friendly with you.”
“Have us a little ‘R’ and ‘R’,” his pal said, leering and showing broken teeth.
Sophie stood erect. “Never! I’d rather die.”
“Well, see that’s option two – death.” He chuckled. His colleague whispered in his ear. “Good one! We’ve now got an option three; we kill you AND have sex with you. You’ll still be warm. Don’t bother me neither way, in fact -” He raised his weapon. “- Option three is looking better and better!”
He chuckled some more, and sent his buddy into giggling fits. He aimed his rifle at Sophie’s head and she closed her eyes welcoming death over what they had in mind for her.
They took it in turns to cover her with a rifle, while they stripped out of the hazmat suit.
“You don’t want to remove your suits,” she said.
“Oh, I think you’ll find we do,” he sniggered.
“I meant you’ll catch the Plague.”
“No we won’t, we’ve been injected. We only wear the suits as an added precaution.”
“Injected? There is no injection for this strain of the Bubonic Plague,” she told them.
They stripped out of their shorts. “Enough of the sweet-talk, lady. What’s it gonna be, dead or alive?”
“Most definitely dead,” she said glowering at them defiantly.
“Very well, it’s your choice.” He picked up the rifle and aimed it at her chest. “Say bye-bye to this cruel world, bitch!” He taunted, when Luke erupted from the pile of corpses and smashed the gunman in the face with a severed arm, knocking him out cold.
His pal stared frozen in fear at Luke’s gruesome appearance, covered in blood and slime and looking as if one of the dead had come back to life. Luke took advantage of the man’s inability to move and caught him on the backswing with the severed arm, an upper cut that sent him sprawling into the pile of bodies.
“Run!” Luke grabbed Sophie’s hand and they fled into the welcoming darkness.
The men looked at each other dumb-founded, choosing not to speak of the incident, quickly dressed, and climbed back into the truck to fetch their next consignment of bodies.
Sophie let out a sigh of relief as the truck disappeared, but moments later, a yellow dumper truck replaced it. The driver lowered the shovel and scooped up the corpses like firewood, and added them to the top of a funeral pyre, then repeated the procedure.
Luke wiped the slime from his face as best he could, when the odor of burning flesh reached him and he gagged. “Come on, we’re nearly at the docks.”
“We’ll get caught. We need a disguise,” she told him. “Got any more brilliant ideas?”
He smirked and nodded. They waited for a break in the activities, and then sneakily entered a trailer that was doubling up as a changing room and donned camouflaged hazmat suits. They lumbered from the trailer and walked anonymously amongst the soldiers, who were too busy robbing the carcasses of their jewelry, to notice them.
Sophie shuddered as they passed the burning human remains, glad that the suit has breathing apparatus so that she did not have to smell roasting flesh ever again.
09:00 AM
General Malloy made it two floors down from the roof when he felt the building tremble. The hastily rigged string of emergency-lights attached to a portable generator flickered. A soldier behind him lost his footing and fell onto him pushing him face first into the wall. Goddamn it, son!” he snarled.
“The stair came loose. I tripped, sir,” he mumbled in apology.
“How in hell can a concrete stair come loose? Lemme see it, gimme that flashlight, son,” He shone the beam onto the concrete stairs and sure enough one of the steps had eroded away. He scratched his head pondering the implication and followed a hairline crack up the wall and sighed deeply.
The sergeant crossed himself. “You ain’t thinking, 9-11, General?”
“That was a one off, son, but we ought to keep moving.” He signaled for the small group to continue their downward flight, when a muffled explosion from below rocked the very foundations, the building trembled and Malloy held onto the wall. He shone the torch back at the crack, which had widened considerably. A dust cloud billowed up the stairwell, “get going,” he instructed.
“What if that’s a fire down there, General? asked a young private nervously.
“It’s dust - not smoke. Get moving, that’s an order, on the double,” the soldiers made hast as they ran and jumped the stairs to get to the bottom and fresh air. With a mighty roar the ceiling above them collapsed, large slabs of concrete dropped down killing some outright and blocking the passage of the rest. The dust swirled upwards clogging the general’s throat, and stinging his eyes. He choked on the dust, filling his lungs and drying his mouth. “Goddamn terrorists, they are going to pay for this,” he croaked.
“What now, General?” the private asked.
“We continue -” He paused as the hotel groaned and trembled, loosening more debris upon them. Dust poured through the newly formed fissures, like sand in a never-ending hourglass. The poor lighting flickered, and the private whimpered.
“Man up." Snapped the general. “And start digging - all of you. We’re getting out of here, one way or the other. All construction these days has to withstand the impact of aircrafts, and stairwells are the designated escape routes, therefore - safe. Now stop you’re whimpering and get moving!”
The soldiers moved the slabs of masonry blocking the stairwell, teaming up to heft the heavier chunks. Sweat poured down the private’s face, he heaved and grunted to move a door-sized reinforced concrete block, but it wasn’t happening. The general looked around and shone the flashlight beam on the ceiling above, noticing cracks spidering across, a rumble from below brought more dust and debris down upon him. “Hurry, you useless grunts, put your backs into it, or you’ll be on a charge!” The soldiers re-doubled their efforts, more scared of the general, than the impending collapse of the building. They grunted, groaned, and managed to lift the slab a few feet up in the air. “Go, General!” the private shouted through gritted teeth. The general did not need telling twice, he ran towards the newly formed gap and slid through on his side, Indiana Jones style, and it slammed down behind him with a deafening roar, trapping the others.
He brushed himself down and made a mental note that he would send troops to find them when he reached the safety of the ground. He smiled to himself and his constant good fortune; he had a knack of getting out of sticky situations unharmed. He took the stairs two at a time; he rounded another floor, twenty more to go, he thought, when with an ear-splitting screech the walls started to tremble, and the floor moved as if suffering from an earthquake, making him fall through the gap to the floor below. He tried to stand, as parts of the ceiling dropped around him, and dust billowed up the stairwell engulfing him in a choking dirt cloud.
CHAPTER 24
09:30 AM
On the video screens in the Pentagon War Room, a wobbly picture from a hand held camera showed images of the Four Points Hotel collapsing like a deck of cards, “Oh . . .my . . .God,” whispered Vice Admiral Reed. The dust cloud appeared to topple the cameraman and dust obscured the screen. The forty-story building fell down on itself as if demolished with controlled explosions set by experts.
The men stared in wide-eyed amazement. Hamilton Parker asked; “Any news on General Malloy?”
A high-ranking air-force officer said, “Our latest reports have him in the building, his last message from on top of it.”
“Any chance he could have survived that?” the President asked.
“There’s always hope, sir. The troops will do their best to find him.”
The President took the news badly, looking decidedly ill, seeming to have lost all his former
vigor. He said no more, leaned forward and switched off the monitor filming him, leaving a black screen and the men in the room looked to one another wondering what to do next without the President to make executive decisions.
09:31 AM
A rumbling of what Luke first thought might be thunder drew his attention back behind him, he watched in disbelief as the forty floor structure, that had once been a shining example of how wondrous a skyscraper could be, collapsed in on itself. The soldiers ran to hide from the approaching dust cloud. Luke felt the vibration through the pavement beneath his feet. A cloud of billowing dust swirled towards him at speed. He instinctively knew they could not out run it, especially in the hazmat suits. He signaled for Sophie to follow him in taking refuge behind a truck and sit low as the dust cloud whooshed past them. Once again, the hazmat suit’s breathing apparatus saved them, but is was still a claustrophobic, disorientating feeling as the dark cloud obliterated the sunlight.
“Where did that come from?” Sophie asked, wiping a film of dust from her visor.
“I’m guessing it’s what’s left of the communications post.”
“Yes!” she said triumphantly. She smiled brightly. “Strike one for us!” They high-fived.
He grinned widely. “We’ve gained ourselves a few hours grace while they regroup,” he told her. “And more importantly, it’s a perfect diversion; all eyes will be on the military bases and installations, expecting more attacks. They’ll go into defensive mode.”
“Thank God, maybe someone will break through the cordon and get news to the outside world of what is going on down here.”
“And I’m gonna make sure that ‘someone’ will be us.”
09.35 AM
In the war room, the intelligence came in fast and furiously and without exception each new piece contradicted the last. The heads of the divisions promoted their own intelligence as being correct and the most accurate information. Without the President to oversee the chaos and make decisions it resembled an all out knock ‘em down and drag ‘em out schoolyard scrap. Each division putting their latest predictions onto the giant monitors, each one inevitably predicted a dire future, not one had a glimmer of optimism.
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