Lisa would’ve liked to have her gun, but she was happy to have denied Lacey a weapon. Going for a gun first had been a tactical mistake on the woman’s part—despite appearances, she was fast and strong and should’ve started hand-to-hand. Now she had given Susan time to slide out of the driver’s seat and come up behind her.
Of course, Lisa had had the advantage of being forewarned—and knowing how securely David kept his weapon holstered. Lacey decided to give up her struggle with the latch and rose to square off against Lisa. In a traditional fighting stance which spoke of predictable attacks.
Boxed in and with few options, the woman was not going to give up without a fight, and Lisa would have to oblige. She stepped forward with her arms in front to protect her torso and leaving her head an open target. Lacey snapped a round kick up so fast it was a blur.
Lisa dropped a bit to remove her head from the path of that foot, raising her right fist to hit the back of the woman’s calf as it returned with a snap, at the same time punching with her left down through the woman’s hip.
Lacey cried out as she flopped around through the air on her way to the ground in an awkward pile of limbs. Susan bent down beside her with a zip-tie ready and yanked her arms around behind her and bound the woman’s wrists together.
So much for the dangerous infiltrator Kat had warned them about.
On the ground beside them, David groaned and tried to sit up as he clutched his head in his hands. Lisa helped him to his feet. “You’ll have to go to the sisters and have them check for concussion. I’d go with you, but it doesn’t look like this is over yet.” A loud screechy-thunk from Frank made that clear.
Lisa needed her own gun, and now. Taking her FURCS pad, she used her security access to re-open the case and find her weapon, then led David to take a seat on the back of the cart. She handed him back the case, closed again. “Hold onto that tight.”
Holding the side of his head with one hand and the case in the other, David smiled at her. “Good to have you back, partner.”
“I think you need to lie down. I’ll drive you to the clinic when this is all over.”
He nodded and lay down across a bench, using the gun case for a rather hard pillow. Lisa checked the clip in her gun and returned it to the shoulder holster where it belonged—safety on and under her jacket, safe from the increasing downpour.
A flurry of shots from the area of the main gate made her head turn. Before she or Susan could take more than a couple steps in that direction, they saw several people coming through the gate in the security fence as a couple of the guards were sliding the perimeter gate wide.
They know what they’re supposed to do without David telling them. Lisa wondered how much that rigid military discipline was really necessary. They certainly didn’t need it in Security. She gripped her gun and kept moving forward, ready.
At least she was there in time to see the party in through the gate and cover Paul and Sara while they locked the padlocks on the security fence. Cameron and his wife stalked in first, followed close by Chief Nelson carrying Kat on his shoulders. The boss ran straight to the large cart and laid her out the other side from David.
Torn between helping to cover the closing of the gate behind the last three straggling in and her concern for her colleagues, Lisa turned and ran back to the cart.
“Is she alright, sir?”
He shook his head as he hopped into the driver’s seat. “She’d better be. I didn’t go to all that trouble for nothing. Hop on and you can bring the cart back and give the others a ride—they’ll likely be beat.”
Lisa nodded and hopped in beside her boss. “Is this a bad time to ask for tomorrow off?” But Chief Nelson didn’t even try to scowl at her.
As he swung the cart around and they raced toward the clinic, all Lisa could think of was how Kat had to be in really bad shape.
Epilogue
The Cleanup
4:50 a.m. Tuesday, March 4th
VERITY stood in the doorway of Katherine’s room at the clinic and surveyed the scene. Jon just stood at the foot of his daughter’s bed, staring into space. He might be thinking about her, or about any number of things—if he was thinking at all. Chief Nelson sat in a chair on one side of the bed, his head bowed over his hands as he clasped them around one of the girl’s and prayed. Caroline was pacing up and down the short space on the other side of the bed, muttering under her breath. The woman might be praying, but Verity rather doubted it.
She stood watching this unchanging tableau for untold minutes, thinking her own thoughts. Her report for Jon wasn’t that urgent, and she hesitated to disturb him under the circumstances.
Standing there, she was the first to see Kat’s eyes flicker, then fly open—straight to Anthony.
In a hoarse voice, the girl croaked to get his attention. “You look awful, Boss.”
Chief Nelson’s head popped up and he grinned at her. “I’m not your boss anymore, remember. If I were, I’d have to be really cross with you. Somehow I think Chief Cameron will be more forgiving.”
She smiled up at him. “He won’t appreciate me lying down on the job. I’ve already had several days off.”
“He’s taking time off himself, to spend with his family.”
“Then I ought to be down at the Guard HQ right now, running everything in his absence.”
Anthony shook his head. “Sgt. Rose has everything well enough in hand. You worry about taking care of yourself. Though I’m not sure you know how to do that.”
She squinted at him. “Speaking of worry. You could have gotten yourself killed coming after me. And how did you find me, anyway? I didn’t have my FURCS pad on me to be pinged.”
“I just followed your path of destruction.”
“Tony, I thought I was going to die.”
“You very nearly did, Kat.”
Caroline had stopped pacing, and stood gazing down at her daughter, but neither her husband nor Katherine paid her any attention. Frowning, Caroline began walking toward Verity.
Verity decided this was a good moment to interrupt Jon. She cleared her throat to get his attention. “Would you like to step outside for a minute, sir?”
His mind came back from wherever it had been and he saw his daughter awake and smiling. Nodding at his daughter, he then looked over his shoulder at Verity to nod and smile at her.
She stepped outside, and Jon followed her into the hallway. Caroline came after her husband, took one look at both of them and heaved a dramatic sigh before stalking off down the corridor. Jon rubbed his neck and twisted it from side to side.
He saw her concern. “She’ll be alright now. The sisters said there were no critical injuries—Kat had just depleted her body’s resources to the point that her life was hanging by a thread. They did all they could to sustain her but said she might still slip into a coma—but that if she could regain consciousness, she’d recover just fine.” He smiled off into space. “And now I owe Anthony a huge debt for saving my daughter’s life.”
Verity glanced through the window at Anthony and Katherine in her room. “I may have to remind you of that, sir.”
Jon nodded vaguely. “And David?”
She had never been able to understand how he could be so intelligent and yet be so oblivious at the same time. “A mild concussion, but he’ll be alright. The sisters want him to stay at least a day or two for observation, but he wants to get back to work.”
“Ken made him a sergeant in the Guards, didn’t he? Or was that temporary?”
Verity shook her head. “The chiefs haven’t had time to work out the details, but apparently they’ve been looking at how they might integrate Security and the Guards. Starting with select people holding positions in both departments, working where and when as needed. Like David and Katherine.”
John shook his head. “The cultural differences between military and law enforcement—I don’t imagine integration will work well. And if you include that everyone in Security is college educated…”
“Ken needs to spend time with his family, and Anthony has had a rough few days of it.”
Verity nodded. “I suppose we can manage without them for a day or two. Sgt. Rose is supervising the Guards during the day, and MacTierney has taken charge of nights while Carruthers recovers. And Officers Courdray, Salazar and Kirkland are supervising at Security during their respective shifts, but I wouldn’t want to leave things like that for very long. At least the chiefs are available, if there’s a crisis.”
“You and I have had a relatively easy few days, considering—I think we can deal with any emergency that comes up.”
Verity nodded. “Though I think mostly we’ll be dealing with the fallout of the events of the past few days.”
Jon smiled again. “The cleanup work.”
“Speaking of which.” She looked around them to make sure no one was close enough to overhear—every now and then a nurse charged down the hall, but otherwise it was empty. And quiet, so she spoke in a low voice. “The sisters examined everyone who was injured, and gave all of our new residents a full check-up, including that new test you wanted them to run.” She passed her workpad over to him so he could examine the lab results for himself.
Jon adjusted his glasses as he read. “It could’ve been worse, I suppose.”
“I still think we should tell Dr. Harker about all this.”
“No. I’ve got Dr. Cummings working on a solution. And the more who know about it, the greater chance of a leak—which might cause a panic. That would be far worse.”
Verity squinted. Cummings was more her idea of a mad scientist than a medical doctor. “Harker’s an experienced epidemiologist, and she’s bound to be curious. She may investigate on her own.”
Jon sighed. “Let her. After all, maybe we don’t know what we think we know.”
“Speaking of which. We know enough now, we can paint a pretty good picture of what’s been happening here. Between Crystal’s letter and all we’ve been getting from the other conspirators.”
“Crystal’s letter?”
“She hid it at the bottom of a drawer in my bedroom. I only found it last night. She confesses her part in everything. If I’d found it sooner, she might still be alive.”
“Why would she hide it?”
Verity shook her head. “She explains that in the letter, but I have a hard time understanding it. Apparently she intended that letter to be a kind of time bomb to motivate her to confess to David first. She wanted him to intercede for her.”
Jon nodded impatiently. “And what did she say was her part in it all?”
“She admits to having been a spy for Governor Roberts all along. Though after Gray and Henson’s plot failed, she decided to pretend she’d not been a mole and try to become just another member of the community. But she claims Eric knew all about her past and threatened to expose her.”
“Claims? You don’t believe it?”
Verity shook her head again. “I don’t know. It could just be self-justifying spin. And I suppose we can never know for sure now. But she says she only used a small amount of arsenic, hoping none of the guards would die. I think maybe she did hope for a clean start, whatever her past sins might’ve been.”
“As you said, we’ll never know for sure.”
“No, but we do know that she was supposed to kill those guards, and her failure to do so was what started Eric suspecting her, which led to his killing her. At least according to Brandon Radley, who is talking some, since his father had a talk with him.”
“Poor Councilman Radley. He must be devastated to find out what his son’s been up to.”
“He is, but he’s soldiering on—he knows his duty and how much we need his help. But he says he will resign if and when it all comes out.”
Jon sighed again. “It will all come out. Including what happened to the wheat. Once they run out of flour. Then we really will have a riot.”
“That first night when Eric started trying to use the computer virus he’d been given, he realized the utility of the blackouts and used them to give Radley an opportunity to contaminate the wheat—without leaving a digital trail of the incursion.”
“What else do we know about this plot?”
“A lot of it is coming from that Lacey woman—turns out her real name is Lacey Petrovich, and she’s a Russian mercenary Henson knew and got in contact with, arranging this job for Roberts.”
“She admitted that?”
“She’s not holding back anything, though there is a lot she doesn’t know. Apparently her job was to infiltrate the compound, by getting herself brought in with the Camerons. The Aryans were meant for cover and as a distraction to facilitate the governor’s invasion. But apparently the Aryans got other ideas and decided they wanted the FURC for themselves. That’s Lacey’s notion anyway, and she spent enough time with them to know.”
Jon’s jaw clenched. “Henson. I thought letting him go might come back to bite us, but I didn’t feel I had any other choice.”
“Not only did he get Lacey to be a Trojan horse, but he also forged that temporary alliance between the governor and our local sheriff. And before he’d left, he’d given Eric a regular cell phone, which was how the governor got that computer virus to him to use against the FURCSnet.”
“And do we know where Henson is now?”
Verity shook her head. “We don’t know what’s happened to him. Though we can hope the sheriff has taken care of that problem for us.”
“At least he’s on the outside.”
Verity nodded. “Yes, sir. And it seems the sheriff didn’t know about the governor’s deal with those white supremacists. Our local law enforcement did deal with the ones that survived Katherine.”
“The governor must’ve been desperate to strike such a bargain—and it all blew up in his face.”
“The sheriff and his people must also be desperate, to have allied with Roberts and Henson. Surely they just want the relative shelter of the FURC. We could bring them in.”
Jon shook his head. “Where we would draw the line? Just the sheriff and his men? Their families? Everyone who still lives in the entire county? How would we, how could we, decide? You should know even better than I why we have to leave it alone.”
Verity sighed. “I may know, but I can’t say I understand it. Or like it.”
“At least after this, we shouldn’t have to worry about the governor anymore. Or about any threats from the outside.”
“Yes, sir. The next threat we face will most probably come from inside.”
Jon smiled. “There’ll always be another crisis to deal with, but we got through this one, and we’ll get through those as well. We’ve prepared as well as we can. And we have good people. And a lot of Help.”
“Yes, sir. Everything will be taken care of.” Including you, sir.
COMPROMISED INSIDE
(Slowpocalypse, Book 3)
The Slowpocalypse
Returning Characters
Prologue: Human Experiments
Chapter 1: Getting Out
Chapter 2: Falling Out
Chapter 3: Monday in the Hospital with Miles
Chapter 4: Know Your Enemy
Chapter 5: Setting an Example
Chapter 6: A New Situation
Chapter 7: Another Attempt at Escape
Chapter 8: Getting in the Ring
Chapter 9: Putting Out Fires
Chapter 10: Unanswered Questions
Chapter 11: Pushing the Limits
Chapter 12: Let Them Eat Potato Pancakes
Chapter 13: Remaining at Rest
Chapter 14: Medical Mysteries
Chapter 15: More Headaches
Chapter 16: Every Vote Counts
Chapter 17: The Gravity Bug
Chapter 18: Acting without Thinking
Chapter 19: Final Arguments
Chapter 20: Lone Wolves
&n
bsp; Chapter 21: Unexpected Reactions
Chapter 22: Elections Have Consequences
Epilogue: Often Go Astray
The Slowpocalypse
As much as everybody enjoys these dramatized accounts of the personal struggles of people surviving through this particular period (and rest assured that the details are as accurate as possible, based on first and second hand reports) many readers ask for more information about the larger events that were occurring. Especially how it all started.
Of course our records are spotty, but even when we know what happened, there are arguments over why things happened the way they did. With multiple factors involved, how does one specify the exact causes? Some blame the breaking of the internet or the subsequent collapse of the global economy. And others cite the rash of natural and man-made disasters and the pandemics or the inadequate responses to those crises. Many point their fingers at the gradual erosion of law and order.
My opinion (for what it’s worth) is that if there was one precipitating event, it would have to be The Election. The race to replace the extremely unpopular incumbent President of the United States was so close, and the results so bitterly contested, with the accusations of fraud on both sides so unfortunately credible, that the wrangling went on (and on) interminably. Congress voted and tried to declare a winner based on the old electoral college model, which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, the previous President remained in the White House without any apparent legal authority to do so (or perhaps no one wanted to recognize it if it existed.) The Joint Chiefs certainly refused to acknowledge him Commander-in-Chief, as they decided to run the military themselves—until it was all sorted out. (And as you all know, it never was, and a new election was never held.)
It was in these circumstances that the governor of Florida, claiming victory but thwarted in his ambition to become the President of the United States, pressured the state legislature to vote him emergency powers and then secede from the union. Governor Roberts was certainly desperate, and likely a little insane. He claimed all the federal property in the state, which caused FURC Director Jonathan Miles to seal the compound in central Florida.
Starting the Slowpocalypse (Books 1-3 Omnibus) Page 43