He didn’t realize it then; no one did. But the President’s innocent offhand reply would soon inadvertently cause another catastrophic crisis for America.
THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
It happened so suddenly – so violently – that for long seconds the French skipper at the wheel of the cabin cruiser could only blink in mute shock. One minute the boat and her twenty-five wealthy passengers were making eight knots north towards the coast of Dover – and the next, the night was torn apart by savage screams and a bright search light.
The forty-foot luxury cruiser had left the seaside port of Le Touquet an hour before sunset, nosing out into the waters of the channel and hugging the French coastline until darkness had fallen before finally setting course for the English coast. The boat was dangerously overloaded and although she had a top speed of over thirty knots, the skipper was loathe to push the throttles wide open and make a mad dash for England. Instead he chose quiet stealth, with a man on the flying bridge as a lookout and another at the bow. Everyone aboard felt the straining tension. They spoke in whispers, moved about on exaggerated tip-toeing steps. Some barely dared to breathe as the cruiser inched its way closer to England and safety.
Then suddenly a snarl of violent screams ripped the night apart. The skipper was at the controls inside the boat’s cabin when he heard the brutal noise. The screams had come from somewhere on deck. The skipper felt a sudden stab of alarm, then saw running feet swarming towards the boat’s bow. A second later a bright spotlight had cut through the night from a few hundred yards abeam, catching the cruiser in its piercing glare.
The skipper panicked.
He rammed open the throttles and the big engines heaved the boat forward with a sudden howl of noise and a white churning wake of foam. Another scream cut through the night and then bright red blood splashed across the deck, right in front of where the skipper stood, wide-eyed with shock.
He swore in panic and alarm. The boat dug its shoulder into a rolling swell and the deck beneath his feet shuddered from the impact.
“Cruising vessel, this is the British cutter HMC Vigilant,” A crisp voice called loudly through a megaphone. “You are to halt your progress immediately and cut your engines!”
The skipper swore again. He spun the wheel, throwing the motorboat into a series of erratic course-changes, futilely attempting to escape the blinding searchlight. The boat plunged gamely into the rolling swells but the glaring light followed her every move.
“Cruiser vessel. Cut your engines, or you will be fired upon!” the commander of the British Border Force cutter warned. The UK only had four cutters to monitor over seven thousand miles of coastline – and none of the sleek boats were armed. But there were British destroyers active in the channel. They were stationed off the Kent coast, working hand-in-hand with Border Force to protect the mainland. The destroyers could respond to an emergency call within minutes of the alarm being raised.
The skipper of the cruiser thrust out his jaw and growled his defiance.
A woman came staggering into the cruiser’s cabin. She was middle-aged. The skipper remembered her boarding the boat, because when he had insisted that no luggage be brought on the journey, the woman had belligerently draped herself in several layers of clothing and decorated herself like a Christmas tree with every piece of jewelry she owned. Now she stood in the narrow cabin doorway, her face a mask of blood, her expensive clothing torn to shreds.
The woman stood panting like a dog. Her eyes were wild and bulging. She lurched across the bucking space and threw herself at the skipper. Blood sprayed across the floor. The boat’s captain screamed in pain, then staggered sideways to the ground. The woman straddled his chest and tore out the man’s throat with her teeth.
The cruiser veered out of control and turned broadside to the black rolling swells that marched across the channel. The boat wallowed dangerously, then turned turtle as the next wave struck her with the force of a mighty hammer-blow. She sank in the icy cold waters, just two nautical miles from the safety of the English coast.
BLACK SITE ECHO-59
GUAM
When Angie, Black and White re-entered the cell, Ju Young-sik was hanging limp from his chains, his legs buckling beneath him so that his arms were stretched and turning blue.
The prisoner looked up groggily when he heard the door open. Angie regarded the North Korean with cool contempt.
Black and White carried a small box into the room and set it down in a corner. The North Korean’s face was slack and puffy, as though the muscles that controlled his features no longer worked. His jaw hung slack and a dripping stream of drool hung from his mouth. There was a wet stain on the floor.
“I must… I must evacuate my bowels,” Ju croaked. He swallowed hard and the small movement caused him fresh pain.
Angie shrugged. “Do it,” she said.
Ju whimpered. “Please. I am not an animal. I deserve some decency…”
“Decency?” Angie’s face darkened with rage. Her voice became high and shrilling as she berated the man, battering him with the tone of her voice and the contemptible disgust in her eyes. “Fucking decency? You created a weapon that has led to the murder of over a billion people you fucking piece of filth. You’re responsible for a plague that has wiped out your own homeland, your own people – and most of Asia. And you say you’re not an animal? You claim you deserve decency?” she heard the edge of hysteria in her own voice, a wild almost maniacal sound. She cut herself off, shaking and panting. Anger broke over her like storm surf. Her eyes turned black as coal.
White stepped between Angie and the prisoner, his voice calming.
“Why don’t you take a short break?”
“I’m fine!” Angie hissed. She prowled around the edges of the room and raked her clawed hand through her hair. When she spoke again her voice was calmer, but still carried traces of her temper.
“If you’re going to shit, Ju, do it now, because after I cut off your fucking fingers, you’re going in the coffin.”
Ju Young-sik flicked a glance at the small box the two men had brought into the room. It was just twenty-one inches wide, thirty inches deep and thirty inches high.
He licked his lips; it was a nervous self-conscious act beyond his control.
“Well?” Angie stood with her arms folded across her chest, tapping her foot impatiently. She turned her head and her long golden hair swished across her shoulders like a twitching cat’s tail.
Ju Young-sik closed his eyes and endured the most crushing, humiliating degradation of his life. Faeces dribbled down the back of his leg and the stench of his bowel movement rose like a thick cloud to fill the room. Angie curled up her lip in disgust.
“You’re not a man, Ju. You look like a man, but you’ve got a little boy’s cock. You should be wearing dresses.”
She went to the table and selected a knife. It had a four-inch blade and a wicked stiletto point. She held it under the North Korean’s face. The cold steel glinted in the light.
“Unchain him and drag him over to the table,” Angie ordered. Black and White unfastened the iron manacles while Angie watched dispassionately.
“Christ, I wish you were half the man that Bahk is,” she taunted the scientist mercilessly. “He’s cooperating with us, Ju. He’s meeting with a man from the CDC right now to tell him everything. Do you know what the CDC is?”
Ju Young-sik did not answer, but Angie saw the recognition in his eyes.
“He’s going to be a fucking hero, Bahk is. We’re going to make a hero of him; the man who saved the world from the plague,” Angie continued. “He’s going to be famous Ju. His photo will be on every newspaper’s front page and on every television set around the world. Every woman in America is going to want to spread their legs for him.”
The chains sagged suddenly and Ju Young-sik’s arms fell to his side. He whimpered with relief and excruciating pain. He fell to the hard concrete floor into a stinking smear of his own bodily waste. It only added to his indig
nity. Black and White hooked their hands under his armpits and dragged him across the floor to the table on his bare knees.
“You on the other hand…” Angie seized a fistful of the North Korean’s hair and wrenched his face back until he was looking up at her, “…you are going to lay dead and forgotten in some deep dark fucking hole.”
White got in position behind the prisoner and wrapped his huge arms around the man’s chest like tight steel bands. Black forced the North Korean’s right hand flat on the small table, squeezing the wrist and burying his fingers into nerves until the prisoner’s fingers splayed wide. Dramatically, as though unveiling a monument, Angie unbuttoned her blouse and peeled it off her shoulders. Ju understood what that gesture meant. He broke into fits of pathetic, sobbing tears. Angie held up the knife to be sure Ju Young-sik could clearly see what was about to happen.
“That’s the thing about heroes, Ju. The world only needs one of them. It’s like the astronauts that first landed on the moon. Everyone remembers Neil Armstrong. The others don’t matter so much, right? I’m afraid Bahk’s willingness to share the results of his research means we no longer need you. You’ve become surplus to the US Government’s requirements.”
She set the tip of the knife against the edge of the prisoner’s index finger in line with the proximal crease and let it rest there. Her face was flushed, her eyes hectic. She could hear her breathing, excited and panting in her own ears.
“It was my research!” Ju Young-sik cried.
Angie looked puzzled. “Your research?”
“Yes,” Ju croaked.
Angie’s face split into a beatific grin of gasping laughter. “Ha! So you did all the important research for the biological weapon and now Bahk is going to get all the worldwide acclaim, the credit, the fame, the money and the women that you earned?” She laughed again. “That makes Bahk the real man and you, the real fool.”
She could see the indignant fury in Ju’s expression. It twisted his mouth into a trembling, simmering line. Angie’s instincts told her the prisoner was on the very precipice of breaking. She had to keep pushing.
“Now, to be sure you can never masturbate again,” she went on matter-of-factly, “I have to sever two fingers and your thumb. I’ll take your index finger first, then your thumb. I’ll cut your middle finger off last. That way we’ll be able to bind the stumps. Hopefully you won’t bleed to death…” she added carelessly.
Ju Young-sik began thrashing against the strong hands that restrained him. His eyes were huge with horror.
Angie put her weight against the knife.
Ju Young-sik started screaming.
Angie sliced down hard, severing the man’s finger neatly in a rush of warm spurting blood. Ju Young-sik watched on in agonized terror, a hoarse open-mouthed scream in his throat. Blood gushed across the table and a drop landed on Angie’s wrist. She looked down at it like the droplet was some precious red gem. Wicked mischief filled her eyes. She dabbed at the blood with the tip of her tongue, delighting in the taste, then shivered with a delicious thrill.
Angie poked the severed finger with the tip of the knife, discarding it like an offcut of sliced vegetable, then rested the blade against the North Korean’s thumb.
“This next one will probably hurt a lot more,” Angie confessed. “At the moment your body is in shock. But that will wear off soon enough – probably in a couple of minutes. We’ll wait. I want to make the most of each amputation.”
To pass the time she drew pictures in the blood with the tip of her finger. She drew a flower and then a house while Black and White watched on with fixed stony expressions. The drawings were innocent and childlike diagrams. She looked up smiling.
“Okay,” she said brightly. “I think it’s time to sever your thumb.”
Ju Young-sik was truly terrified. He was convinced the American woman was an insane sadist. He realized nothing was beyond her limits. He felt the small room begin to spin dizzily around him. A wave of nausea left him weak as a kitten.
“Wait!” he gasped. The words were no more than a whisper “Wait. I will talk.”
“No,” Angie frowned. “I don’t believe you.”
She sliced through Ju Young-sik’s thumb before he could say another word. His mouth opened into a high-pitched scream of excruciating agony. Angie took her time, sawing through the thumb to draw out the moments of pain. A fresh gush of blood spilled across the table and washed away her finger paintings.
Angie set the knife down. She seemed bitterly disappointed. Ju Young-sik was sobbing pathetically, his face a mask of raw agony. He was weak and unresisting in White’s embrace. He shook like a leaf.
“Bind up the stump,” Angie sighed. “And then stuff him in the coffin. If I take the last finger right now, the bastard will faint.”
*
Black handed White a cup of coffee from the machine in the corner of the office and then carried another cup to Angie, slumped over the desk. She had her head resting on her folded arms, her face turned to the side. Her eyes were closed. She breathed deeply and regularly like she was sleeping.
“Any progress?” the agent supervising the interrogation asked. He had taken his Aviators off. His eyes were hard, set within a web of fine wrinkles.
“I think so,” Angie said. She acted like a drug addict, coming off a high. Her voice was a flat monotone.
“Is he ready to talk?”
“He’s close,” Angie sat up and blinked her eyes like she struggled to stay awake. “We put him in the coffin to end the session, and White turned off the lights. Right now the prisoner is in pitch black darkness listening to deafening heavy metal music.”
“How much longer?” the agent drummed his fingertips on the table.
“We’ll get him in the next session,” White interrupted from the corner of the office. “He’s close to cracking. He just needs one last nudge.”
*
Ju Young-sik was in a nightmare world of dark tortured pain. He lay curled up, his knees pressed to his chin, his back against the hard raw timber planks of the suffocating box. His arms were pressed to his side and he lay with his weight on the stump of his butchered, bleeding hand so the agony of his injuries was relentless. The dark was absolute and disorienting, and the abominable sound of thumping music became an assault on his senses. All he could smell was the reek of his own filthy body.
He could not sleep.
He could not move.
His mind lurched between what was real and imagined, skittering from thoughts to nauseating fears. The Angel of Death’s face haunted him. He swayed on the brink of quivering insanity.
But through the waves of numbing pain, a single thought burned, and Ju clung to it as desperately as a drowning man to a life preserver.
Jealousy.
His comrade Bahk was cooperating with the Americans. It was treasonous: an outrageous betrayal of the Dear Leader who was father to them all. But that Bahk was to be so celebrated for stealing the rewards that he had worked for and deserved insulted Ju on an intensely personal level.
Envy kept the small flame of his sanity burning. It was all Ju had to save him from screaming madness until the woman came back to kill him.
HEADQUARTERS CMN (CABLE MEDIA NETWORK)
NEW YORK
“A new crisis on America’s southern border,” the CMN presenter declared dramatically. She sat off-center of camera wearing a simple black blouse. Behind her flashed a ‘Breaking News’ banner that changed to a live footage feed from a helicopter flying over desert roads. The presenter went on, speaking with urgency. The picture changed to a close up of the woman with a photo of the president behind her shoulder.
“Did President Patrick Austin’s recent broadcast interview spark a fresh crisis on the Mexico border? Take a look at the graphic evidence as thousands of Mexicans form caravans and begin the long arduous trek towards the USA. They’re men and women and children… and they all have one dream – one demand of America.”
With the end of t
he monologue, the TV image changed to footage of a long column of Mexicans marching through the streets of a nondescript village. Many of the people waved placards. Two men at the front of the caravan shared a Mexican flag between them. A haze of kicked up dust hung over the crowd as they cried their chant for the benefit of the TV networks.
“We demand to be vaccinated! Don’t leave us to die! We demand you share your plague antidote!”
The reporter’s face became superimposed over the images.
“Special correspondent Will Sheer is marching alongside the caravan and joins us now by phone. Will, do we have any idea yet from local authorities about the size of these caravans heading towards our border?”
The man’s voice on the phone sounded breathless. “This is a real and pressing crisis, Terry,” the reporter in Mexico declared. “Up to one hundred thousand Mexicans, and thousands more from neighboring countries like Guatemala and Honduras, are all heading northwards. Some have travelled by bus to get this far. Some tell me they stole motorbikes and cars. It’s a mass exodus towards America.”
As the journalist made his report a banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen announcing in bold lettering, ‘Caravan of migrants heads toward US-Mexico border’.
“This is literally a wave of humanity,” the correspondent in Mexico said. “Thousands of ordinary people are marching in groups. You can see the look on their faces as they pass by. They’re grim, and fearful.”
“Where are you reporting from, Will?”
“Tapachula, Terry. It’s a town on the far south coast of Mexico. Organizers of this caravan expect their numbers to swell to almost a quarter of a million people as they move north through the country. And CMN has learned that there are at least three other caravans already on their way to the border.”
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 65