“Yes, Sir. I’ll do my best.” Here it comes he thought. Why did you get booted from the service? What the hell did it matter now to this guy he wondered? If he thought he was going to draft him back into active duty, have him running around doing rescue missions of VIPs or something, he had another thing coming. He was still trying to figure out what his angle was when the General asked: “Are you familiar with the order of presidential succession?”
Well, that came out of left field.
“Um, sort of.” He replied, wracking his brain trying to recall high school Government classes. “It goes to the vice president then the Speaker of the House then to senior cabinet members. I think.”
“Right.” The General said. “And if all cabinet members are presumed dead, including the Designated Survivor?”
What was all this about? What did his opinion on anything matter? He was a disgraced soldier and now just a truck driver.
“I don’t know, Sir. I guess the highest ranking military officer.” Was this guy making a play at becoming president? Was he actually campaigning for votes? And really, what did it matter? Who cares who the president is? President of what? Three hundred million dead people?
Cobb and Wire Bender both had big grins plastered all over their mugs and Gunny knew the joke was on him but hadn’t figured out what it was yet.
“No, Son” the General replied. “It has to go to an elected official. A person that holds or has held public office. The Constitution is clear on the separation of powers and the Commander in Chief has to be a duly elected civilian. If a military man just decides to take over because there is an absence of power, that would make this country no better than some third world banana republic.
“The succession of power starts at the Vice President and then goes all the way down to the lowliest dog catcher in the smallest municipality. The one requirement, other than being of age and a natural born citizen, is that they are a public official, chosen to hold office and elected to that office by their peers.”
Gunny waited for more, not knowing what to say. He’d never held public office, so the General wasn’t hinting at him to be a president. That was laughable.
When he didn’t reply, the General went on.
“Out of every name I have of every known, living citizen in the United States, you are the only one that has ever held public office. You, by the best guesses of everyone here at NORAD, are the only person left alive who is legally qualified to be President.”
“Um,” Gunny said. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ve never held any kind of office. I think you have the wrong guy.”
“It’s not an offer, Sergeant. It’s your duty. You swore an oath to the Constitution when you raised your right hand to join the service. That oath didn’t end when you got out. Weren’t you on the Greater Woodland School District Board?” he asked.
Gunny wracked his brain for a minute before remembering. “Yeah, but that was just a fluke. One of the board members moved out of state and they needed a fill-in until the next election. My wife was there for a PTA meeting and volunteered me as a joke. Since I was the only name presented they told her I was it. Nobody wanted that job. I never even went to a single meeting!”
“That doesn’t matter.” General Carson came back. “It is an elected position, you were duly assigned a role in local politics. As near as we can determine, you are the next in line for the presidency.”
“Is this a fucking joke?” Gunny asked, incredulously.
Cobb and Wire Bender both were quietly laughing, knowing what had been coming as they had discussed this with NORAD earlier in the day.
“No, Sergeant, it is not.” Came the reply, starting to sound annoyed. “You do, of course, have the right to refuse. But keep in mind, you are the only eligible person for the job that we have been able to find.
“Anybody could take over, claim to be President, but it wouldn’t be lawful, and that would make the United States as we have known her for over two hundred and forty years null and void.
Someone is going to be in charge, and as we start to recover from this, there needs to be a clear and undisputed lawful leader. If not, any jumped up warlord can claim he’s the president, the king, the emperor or the Grand Poobah!”
The General was starting to get worked up and was becoming more forceful.
“Essentially, this country will no longer exist and we will become another defeated state that has passed on into history. They will have won. The Continuity of Government is important, Sergeant! The longest America has ever been without a president before this was when JFK was killed. It took 99 minutes before Vice President Johnson could be sworn in aboard Airforce One. We haven’t had word of the President or any Cabinet members for almost 42 hours and we know they were all at the Friendship breakfast the Salaam Corporation had sponsored. This country does not exist without a government, without a president!”
The General was really getting passionate, starting to sound more like a pissed of First Sergeant. “So if you refuse the job, this nation as we have known it is over. Admiral Harris will assume the position as Commander in Chief but the old America is defeated and we will be starting a new one.”
Gunny didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t right, dumping this on him and then throwing a guilt trip on top of it. It all seemed so pedantic, so unnecessary. He wasn’t a politician. He didn’t want the job. He didn’t know jack squat about how to be the leader of a nation.
Hell, he could barely take care of himself. Besides, what did it matter? There were only a few thousand survivors left. It would be a hundred years before there were enough people to care about electing someone for office. It seemed like a waste of energy to even think about it. There were much more important things to be worried about.
Cobb was serious all of a sudden. “Gunny,” he said. “You’ve got to do it. It’s just for show, it’s only on paper. It keeps this country a country, not just a bunch of enclaves trying to do what’s best for themselves. If you don’t, them goat humping bastards won the war.”
“He’s right.” Wire Bender said. “It doesn’t change anything, Man. Just name General Carson as your vice and let him do all the heavy lifting.”
“I can do that?” Gunny asked, his mind racing, trying to find a way out of a bunch of responsibility he didn’t want to shoulder. The last time he had people depending on him, they all wound up dead.
“You can do anything, man. You’re the Prez.” Wire Bender replied. “You can find out what’s in area 51 or if we really landed on the moon. You can even order them to help you save your old lady and your kid.”
“It’s only for a year, election is next November. Besides, if they do find someone else, a mayor or something,” Cobb said, “You can resign, let him take over.”
“Sergeant Meadows?” General Carson said.
“Yes,” Gunny replied almost instantly, hitting the press to talk button, grasping at Wire Benders last words before he could come to his senses and change his mind; before he could tell them to keep looking, that surely they had missed somebody. “I’ll take the job. And I’m naming you as vice president.”
Carson balked then started rattling off names of various people who would be a much better choice. Gunny had never heard of any of them and he already knew the General was a tireless man with a good head on his shoulders.
“I think you’d make a great number two. You’re it. In addition to your current position. Um, Sir.” Gunny said.
“Now let’s get this whole swearing in stuff over with, I’m tired and I’ve got to get up at zero dark thirty. And please keep looking for somebody that’s actually qualified for this job.”
Lacy
Twenty-Eighth Floor
Day 3
They waited.
And waited.
One day turned into two.
Two into three.
They never saw a single airplane or helicopter out of the windows. They never saw the Army or the National Guard come, the streets n
ever changed. The jammed roads were never cleared, the freeways remained impassable.
The fires raged and consumed whole neighborhoods, entire swaths of town. They had eventually burned themselves out with the help of the thunderstorms on the third day.
They watched everything they could on the Internet as one by one websites and servers went down. They found a police scanner site and listened to the chaos of “officer down” and calls for backup on the first day. After that, nothing.
By the end of the second day, they had lost electricity and with it, the water pressure. Among the stores of supplies they had searched the floor for, they had discovered the maintenance closet with some five-gallon jugs of water for the two water coolers they had. The food supply was critically low, however. There weren’t many leftovers in the break room refrigerator and the only food they had were snacks scavenged from desk drawers.
Lacy had tried to text different people a few more times but most of the time they wouldn’t send and on the rare occasion they did, she didn’t know if anyone received them. She never got anything back. The message from Johnny was the only one that came through. He was fine, he had said. He was at a truck stop near Reno and was going to wait till things settled down a little and then head back to Atlanta. He’d do it, too. This she knew.
She was sitting at her desk, thinking back to years gone by. He was an obstinate ass sometimes, but he was as tough as they came. Had some hard bark on him, as they say back home. He’d been blown up, shot twice, had shrapnel from grenades in him, went down in a helicopter once, had been gassed… she couldn’t recall all the times he’d been hurt and he always went back.
Always seemed to be the guy who escaped with only a minor injury while others had legs and arms blown off. All that from a boy who had only wanted to turn wrenches at a local car dealership, maybe do a few odd jobs on the side for extra money. Then that incident at the tire shop and him having to join the Army.
Of course, Johnny couldn’t just be a cook or something, do his four years and get out. He had to go all gung-ho and join the infantry. Then he went airborne. Then the Rangers because all his buddies were. After that, he had to be a Green Beret. Be the best of the best he said. Special Forces. Might as well, he said. The rest of his friends he’d been training with were signing up. And you got hazard pay. Then he got recruited into Delta, and again he didn’t say no.
So more training, more missions he didn’t talk about, more deployments around the world doing who knew what to God knows who. She was proud of him, he had turned the old proverbial lemon into lemonade. He was taking out terrorists and doing his part to keep the world safe. All he had to do was keep himself alive and whole for another five years and it would have all been worth it.
They were already planning the ‘retirement at thirty-eight’ party. But then that incident in Afghanistan happened. She didn’t think she knew the whole story but she knew enough to know that the military didn’t want the world to know what had happened. They had kept him out of jail, out of a trial. They just wanted the whole thing to be forgotten, so they got rid of him and told him if he ever went public, they would press charges. Murder didn’t have a statute of limitations.
If he ever said anything, he’d be facing life in prison. She couldn’t even be mad at him for what he did. She probably would have done the same thing if she had walked into a room with a bunch of men raping a group of crying, bleeding boys. It didn’t matter that they were the local religious leaders and the police captain they had been training to fight the insurgents.
It didn’t matter that in the eyes of local Islamic law – they weren’t doing anything wrong. He had killed them all. It hadn’t mattered to him, either. He had his regrets, though. Whether from that or other things, she didn’t know. He wouldn’t tell her everything, but she knew he had nightmares for years. He had lost his whole team shortly after and he didn’t talk about that either. He came from the Solitary Meadows part of the family. They kept themselves to themselves where he grew up, way up in a holler. Getting him to talk about his feelings was damn near impossible.
The creatures in the hallway had stopped their pounding after a while and as long as everyone stayed quiet, they seemed to have forgotten there were people inside the offices.
On the third day, the city was eerily silent.
The city was dead.
The only life they saw was the occasional flicker of candlelight from the windows of nearby buildings.
They heard no more screams, no matter how faint or distant. No sirens wailing. No horns honking. Mr. Sato’s satellite phone hadn’t been able to reach anyone since yesterday, no matter how many numbers he tried. If they peeked carefully around the curtains and stacked up office furniture through the glass doors, they could see the ceaseless wanderings of the creatures in the hallway. They just seemed to shuffle around aimlessly, bumping into each other or the walls.
Eric and one of the ladies that had come in with Phil had put a bit of effort into making everyone dinner that evening with the last of what they had scrounged. Lacy was pretty sure a few of them were holding out, had hidden power bars or peppermints from everyone else but it didn’t matter. A few more bites of granola wouldn’t have made a difference. They needed to get out of here. This was their last meal and in a week, they would be as good as dead if they didn’t move out.
As they ate the last of the beef jerky and protein bars with the juice concoction the “cooks” had whipped up from the liquor cabinet in Mr. Sato’s office, Lacy brought up leaving. She was trying to get a feel for where everyone stood. In the end, it didn’t matter because she was going whether anyone else was or not. She just wanted to know if she was going alone or with a group.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said abruptly, loud enough so all of the other people could hear her. “Has anyone given it any thought? How do we make it down to the bottom?”
“We can’t go!” the plump lady from the architectural firm nearly squealed. “The Army will be here soon. We just have to wait. They won’t leave us like this.”
Lacy had dealt with these types of people before as a military wife. She had rammed her shopping cart right through protesters during a rally at a mall once, had tried to debate people at the opposite end of the political spectrum online but in the end their philosophical differences were so far apart, there was no middle ground. She was from the backwoods of Kentucky where everyone had a strong independent streak and disdain for people who wouldn’t help themselves.
“No one is coming,” she said, and turned her back to the woman who probably had a whole stockpile of diet bars hidden away somewhere, she thought to herself. She had dismissed Eric as any kind of help, he had completely frozen up and shut down the first day. He would be useless. She knew she was being cynical, but she didn’t want everyone to go. Most of them would just slow her down.
But a few of them would be an asset. Phil for one. He had the only gun. Carla. She was pretty fit, young and into hiking and biking. Alex from the accounting firm twelve stories above. He looked to be in pretty good shape. Robert… Maybe. Middle-aged and withdrawn but not too flabby. Mr. Sato was pretty spry for an old guy, they had talked about how he had beat one of those things off with his briefcase in the stairwell, smashing in its head.
“Phil?” she asked. “You have any ideas? Mr. Sato?”
“Sure, try to get the only man with a gun to go with you.” The annoying woman chimed in.
Lacy was starting to think she knew how Johnny felt now when he would just haul off and punch someone for talking shit. She ignored her and kept her gaze on the two men.
As it turned out, they did have some ideas. For some strange man logic notion of chivalry or some such nonsense, the men had been going over plans for the past day or so, running ideas past each other and trying to formulate something solid to get them down to the parking garage.
Their plan was pretty simple. Open the doors just wide enough to let one monster in at a time and kill it wit
h one of Mr. Sato’s golf clubs. They do that until all are dead and then make their way down thirty flights of stairs to the sub-basement. The emergency lights should still be on. No one knew how long they would stay that way, but Phil said they had all been upgraded to LED lights a few years back so the emergency batteries should last a long time. Once down the stairs, they could determine the next best plan of action depending on what they found.
It was a pretty good plan, and now that it was out in the open, the rest started to bring up ideas the men hadn’t thought of. They decided to break the ends off some of the putters and make stabbing objects out of them so they wouldn’t have to depend entirely on swinging a heavy driver in the confined quarters of the stairwell.
They were going to use both the head gripped in their fists as a stabber and the shaft as a short lance. Lacy found her fist spikes she had made from the shelf brackets and worked on them some more so they fit her hands better, using a lot of duct tape until they felt comfortable.
Phil went through the secretary’s drawers until he found a half dozen letter openers and taped the handles to make some pretty lethal daggers. In the end, they had hashed out something they all thought was workable, even the annoying woman whose name Lacy could never seem to remember. They were sure they would find some heavy-duty SUVs in the valet parking.
Once they decided which vehicles they wanted, it would be easy to grab the keys from the office.
Chapter 23
The Three Flags Truck Stop
Day 3
The president. What a joke Gunny thought as he woke up to the alarm clock on his phone. His one, and probably only, presidential order that he had given was a good one. He had made General Carson Vice President. It was all legal and constitutional, so if he got killed on his trek back home or even if he decided to disappear with his family, there was an established hierarchy again. Or chain of command. Or whatever it was called.
Zombie Road (Book 1): Convoy of Carnage Page 22