Forty feet to go.
Thirty. Twenty. Then he heard it. A voice whispering in the darkness somewhere behind him.
“Sebastian,” she called. Low and sweet and dreadful.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Two
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday July 4; 12:19 P.M.
I STAGGERED BACK from El Mujahid as he lumbered forward out of the darkened office.
“Mother of God,” I heard Top whisper.
The makeup on El Mujahid’s face had run, giving him a weirdly melted look. It revealed a wicked cut, like a knife slash, that bisected his face. It was the first time I’d been this close to him. He had to be six five and two-fifty if he was an ounce. He pulled off the jacket he’d worn as part of his Secret Service disguise, then jerked the tie loose and tore that off, dropping it on the floor. His white shirt was soaked with blood, and he touched the bullet holes. They were in the right place, they had to have clipped his heart. He smiled.
“It worked,” he said in wonder. “My princess has found the way…”
Skip said, “Here’s an incentive for you, boss. My employers may not have been trying to bring about the end of the world… but this asshole? Shit, he’s one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. He gets out of this place and it really will be game over.”
El Mujahid snarled at Skip, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Skip staring at the big terrorist with a mixture of admiration and disgust. Then I noticed that Top was looking straight at me, his dark eyes intense and unblinking. My hands were at my side and as I turned my face toward El Mujahid I curled the thumb and pinky of my left hand so that I showed three fingers. Then I curled the ring finger up, then the forefinger. Then the index, hoping that Top had read me the right way.
Abruptly I lunged at El Mujahid and chopped him across the throat with as hard a knife-hand blow as I’d ever used on a human being. At the same instant Top pivoted, his speed powered by adrenaline and fear and a hell of a lot of indignation. He grabbed Skip’s wrist with one hand and drove his opposite elbow back into the young man’s stomach. Skip’s finger clutched in a spasm of pain and the bullet burned across the side of Top’s temple. Top bellowed in pain but he came up off the floor and tackled Skip, driving him halfway across the room so that they both crashed onto a desk. The pistol flew into a corner.
Skip shoved Top back with a curse and with a shake of his wrist a knife dropped from a sleeve holster into the palm of his hand. He opened his mouth to taunt Top, but First Sergeant Sims moved forward in a blur and slammed into Skip. They hit the desk and then rolled off on the far side and out of sight.
I couldn’t go help. I had my own problems.
The blow that I’d used on El Mujahid should have killed him. At very least it should have crippled him. It would have done that to any man.
But El Mujahid was no longer a man. He coughed but then he expanded his chest and I could actually hear the fragments of his shattered hyoid bone click together. It was the creepiest sound I’d ever heard.
In a hoarse rasp of a voice he growled, “My princess has made me immortal. Praise Allah!” His eyes had looked dazed and dull when he’d first come out of the room, but I could see them becoming more focused. I didn’t understand it. If he was a walker, then why was he able to talk? Or think?
He took a step toward me. The first step was wobbly, as if he was uncertain how to use his body. But the second step was firmer. The third step showed no instability at all.
Crap.
His face took on an expression that was half triumphant leer and half naked hunger, and a fanatical light burned like a solar flare in his eyes. “Allah is the only God and I am his wrath on Earth!”
“Whatever,” I said as I dodged to one side and kicked him on the meat of the thigh with the steel toe of my shoe, a blow that would cripple anyone. But again it did nothing to him.
“It’s funny,” he said in Farsi, “but it doesn’t even hurt. Oh, Amirah… how I love you.”
I made a lunge for my fallen pistol but El Mujahid leaped at me. Any awkwardness he might have experienced upon returning to life was gone. For all his size he moved with cat quickness and he body-blocked me away from the piece and kicked the gun under a desk. I slewed around and came up into a fighting crouch. Okay, I thought, c’mon, Joe, you’ve done this before. Break the neck and you stop these buggers.
So I jumped in and tried to grab his chin and hair. Most people have only seen this move in movies. They won’t recognize it when someone tries it on them, and it’s such a fast move that by the time they figure it out they’re on the cold side of being dead.
Unfortunately for me El Mujahid wasn’t a novice. He parried my lunge and hit me in the ribs with a short chopping punch that lifted me completely off the ground; then he combined off that and planted an overhand right that nearly took my head off. I managed to get a shoulder up in time to save my head, but El Mujahid was a tank and his punch dropped me. I landed hard and immediately tucked into a sideways roll and barely managed to avoid a stamp that would have crushed my skull.
The First Lady was screaming over and over again and I wondered if her mind had snapped.
I came out of my roll on fingertips and toes and tried to reach for the .38 on my ankle, but he rushed me with a flying tackle that sent us both rolling over and over across the floor. At the end of the roll I managed to get a knee up between us and braced it against his chest as he tried to pull me into a bear hug. With his arms he’d have splintered my back. I drove my shoulders back and used the greater power of my legs to break his grab. He skidded back and I again went for my pistol, this time getting it out; but El Mujahid threw himself forward like a dolphin jumping out of the water onto the side of a pool. It was a sloppy move, all momentum, but it worked and he made a big reach and swatted the pistol out of my hand.
So I kicked him in the face and back-rolled to my feet.
I had my back to the wall and he was between me and any guns. He rose slowly, head down, shoulders hunched, hands forward and out. This was a son of a bitch who really knew how to fight. Without rules, just react and destroy. Like me.
Past him I could see parts of the tussle that was going on behind the desk. Legs and arms, and a lot of cursing. I had no idea who was winning that fight.
El Mujahid stalked me, cutting left and right to try and box me into the corner. Against most opponents a corner is a pretty good place to make a stand, it allows for a lot of options when flight is no longer in the mix; but with a fighter like this bruiser it would be a death trap.
He leered at me and bit the air with a clack of teeth. “I think I’ll take a bite out of you,” he said, pitching it to sound like a joke. I wasn’t laughing.
I could still hear gunfire and screams coming from the Bell Chamber. It must be one hell of a battle in there. Would Grace survive it, or had she already fallen? Would she rise as one of the mindless walkers or as a new and improved thinking monster like the one I faced?
What would Church and the President do? Let everyone in the Liberty Bell Center kill each other and then torch the whole place? Could the President risk any other response, even with his wife here?
Then I realized that the First Lady was no longer screaming. El Mujahid noticed, too, and we both turned to see that she had picked up my .45 and was pointing it at the big terrorist. She fired, but in her panic she jerked the trigger instead of squeezing it and the gun bucked upward and the shot punched a hole in the ceiling.
I rushed in her direction, wanting that damn gun, but El Mujahid lunged in to cut me off, pawing at me with a fast grab. I parried it, but it was a fake and he snaked the other hand in and caught me by the sleeve of my suit jacket.
The First Lady got off another shot but it just tore a chunk out of El Mujahid’s hip.
He jerked me forward with such force that I flew off the ground, and he hit me with an elbow shot that broke a black bomb in my head. I sagged in his grip and as he bent toward me I could feel his hot breath on my exposed t
hroat.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Three
Gault and Amirah / The Bunker
GAULT SCRAMBLED FORWARD in a panic, feeling for the etched markings as Amirah’s eerie voice floated through the darkness toward him, louder each time she called his name.
“Sebastian!” She drew it out, making it a perverse song.
His fingers scrabbled across an uneven spot on the wall and he stopped, fumbling at it. Yes! He felt for the upper-right corner of the panel and then punched it with the side of his fist. The corner folded inward and he gripped the edges and tore the whole panel away. A small red light flicked on inside the compartment, illuminating the rubber-coated handles of six big levers.
“Sebastian!”
“Witch,” he breathed and grabbed the first handle and pulled. It was much harder than he thought it would be, and the angle was bad. He had to stand hunched over and throw his entire weight backward to move the handle. On the first pull it only moved five inches.
“Bastard!” he growled and tried again, screaming with effort. This time the handle tilted toward him and locked into place. There was an anticlimactic silence for a few seconds and then far away there was a heavy rumbling that he felt more than heard.
He grabbed the second handle and again it took him two pulls to lock it down.
“Sebastian!”
Her voice was close. God, he thought… God!
Even as the rumbling started for the second collapsing vent pipe he threw himself back with the third, and this one locked down on the first try. The rumbling started at once.
“Sebastian!” Now there was a different tone in her voice. Perhaps a faint flicker of doubt. He grabbed the fourth lever and pulled. It was so hard, so stiff that it took him five tries to lock it down, but finally it clicked and the rumbling started.
“Sebastian!” He could hear the hurried scuff of her feet and her voice definitely had a note of alarm in it. It gave him strength to hear the fear and he tackled the fifth lever with a will and in two grunting pulls it locked down. Already the ambient temperature was rising as the superheated gasses began recoiling from blocked vents. A deep red glow was reflected through the steel passages and it bathed him in a bloody light.
“Sebastian!”
He turned and she was there, not twenty feet away. Her robes were torn and she was covered in blood. God knows whose blood it was. In the fiery glow of the lava she looked like a monster from hell itself. The blood on her lips and hands was black and her eyes were so shadowed that she looked more like a skull than a woman whose beauty had once made him gasp with but a single slanting glance.
“Listen to me, Sebastian,” she said, her voice thick and heavy. “Stop this… I can share Generation Twelve with you. If you truly embrace the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet I can make you one of us; I can make you one of God’s immortals.”
“You’re insane, Amirah. You’ve turned yourself into a monster.” He put his hand on the sixth lever.
“I am Seif al Din,” she retorted, her dark eyes flashing. “Don’t you understand? I am the plague, I am the Sword of the Faithful. We don’t need laboratories or test subjects anymore. I am the breath of God that will blow across the entire world. The faithless will die and the faithful will become immortals. Like me. Like El Mujahid.” She reached a hand toward him. “Like you, Sebastian… if you only accept.”
He shook his head and tears spilled down his cheeks. “I’m a greedy heartless bastard, Amirah… but I’m not a monster.”
Amirah spread her hands and smiled at him. “Am I a monster, my love?” she said in that old familiar voice that turned a knife in his heart. It was so bizarrely at odds with the bloodstained thing she had become.
“Yes, you effing well are!” The answering voice came from the shadow behind her. Toys.
Amirah turned to look behind her and there was Toys, his clothes torn, his face streaked with blood, his eyes swimming with pain. He leaned one bloody hand against the wall and with the other he held his pistol aimed at her. The barrel trembled.
Amirah hissed at him; and Toys managed a mean little smile and hissed back. He looked past her at Gault and at the lever he held in his hands. Toys took a ragged breath.
“Do it,” he said.
Amirah swung back toward Gault.
“No!”
“God,” he said softly as the mountains rumbled around him and the heat scorched the air between them. “I loved you, Amirah.”
“Sebastian…” They both said it, Amirah and Toys.
Gault tightened his grip around the handle and tensed his muscles.
“God help me,” he murmured, “but I will always love you.”
She lunged at him as Toys fired the gun and Gault threw his weight back and pulled the lever. Their screams were lost in the rumble as tons of rock collapsed onto the last pipe. In the bowels of the earth, in the furnace of hell, the hand of Satan clutched its fiery fingers into a fist and punched upward toward the Bunker.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Four
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:21 P.M.
HIS BREATH WAS as hot as the wind from hell and I recoiled from it, twisting in his grip, turning my hips as hard and fast as I could. I drove my knee up into his crotch and at the same time drove the stiffened tips of my fingers up under his jaw, crushing tissue and cartilage above the Adam’s apple. Another killing blow that I knew couldn’t kill him; but it jolted him so that his head jerked back just enough for me to hit him right over his left ear. Once, twice, three times, rocking his whole body with each shot. I could hear his neck bones grind with the third shot and then El Mujahid suddenly flung me away from him. Maybe when he felt his vertebre start to shift he realized his one vulnerability.
I landed hard and tried a back roll but I didn’t have the room and crashed into a filing cabinet so I ended up nearly standing on my head. My own neck sent a lance of pain through my shoulder and back, but I bit down on it, planted my palms on the floor, and hopped backward onto my feet. It wasn’t gold medal gymnastics but it got me right side up and I pivoted fast as El Mujahid rushed at me again.
The First Lady shot again and missed and then the slide locked back on the gun.
I knew I couldn’t keep this up. I was getting tired and I was getting hurt and this son of a bitch was immortal. He was a monster who couldn’t feel pain. Sooner or later he was going to wear me down and then he’d go to work on me with his teeth.
Across the room I heard someone howl in pain and couldn’t tell if it was Skip or Top, and I couldn’t spare the second it would take to look.
I crabbed sideways to circle him, but he lunged forward to cut the line. That was fine because as he dodged in I jumped sideways to pass him on his left. His sweeping grab clipped my ear and though it rang my chimes it didn’t stop me. I used the impact to spin into a sloppy pirouette that sent me halfway across the office toward one of the artist’s tables. At the far end of the table I’d seen what I wanted, but El Mujahid was already coming at me, his face almost black with rage and his teeth snapping as he rushed forward.
Rage, in an opponent, is a very useful thing. It makes smart people do stupid things. If you backpedal from the enraged attacker you simply get smashed against a wall and then he proceeds to beat you to a pulp—or, in this case, tear you apart with his teeth. So I didn’t backpedal; instead I went forward to meet him. Not chest to chest like a pair of bulls. I lunged in and down and tucked myself into a cannonball and rolled hard at his lower legs, hitting him full onto his left shin and clipping his right. With his greater upper-body weight and my two hundred pounds of rolling mass he went flying forward and smashed facefirst into a row of metal cabinets.
I came out of my roll, pivoted, and leaped back toward the artist’s table, grabbing at the item I’d seen: a big paper cutter that was bolted to the metal tabletop. I yanked the cutter arm up, grabbed the handle with both hands, and surged my weight to my right. The bolt that hinged the big blade to the cutter boa
rd was not designed for sideways resistance and the whole cutter arm tore off with a loud snap of broken fittings. I whirled and El Mujahid was already in motion, coming hard and fast, deadly and fearless, completely unhurt by the collision with the cabinets.
Again I rushed to meet him in the middle of his lunge, but this time I swung the big cutter like a sword, the curved blade whistling through the air. I caught him square, right on the left side of his neck, and the edge of the blade bit deep. The impact jerked El Mujahid to an abrupt stop and he goggled at me, his eyes and mouth gaping in shock. His fingers reached up to feel the heavy blade buried into muscle and tendon. It hadn’t cut all the way through his neck, but the very edge of the blade must have buried itself in the big man’s spinal cord.
Half an inch was enough.
His immense strength immediately began to melt away as his muscles lost all order and control. He dropped to his knees like a supplicant preparing to abase himself. Gasping for breath, I braced one foot against his body and then ripped the handle free in a spray of blood.
“You can’t stop the will of God…” he said with a throat that was filled with blood.
“This was never about God’s will, you stupid bastard!” I growled as I raised it above my shoulder and then with a scream of pure rage I swung the blade again.
The blade sheared all the way through what was left of his neck and the force of the swing tore the cutter from my hands. It buried itself point first in the linoleum floor and stood there, quivering.
El Mujahid’s head bounced and then rolled to a stop, his wild eyes staring with infinite shock up to the heavens.
I staggered back and almost fell.
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