The Dying of the Light (Book 3): Beginning

by Jason Kristopher

  Another knock. “Your Grace, if you need me to come back…” Barnes saw Mancuso point to the locked doorknob, and he could hear it rattle from the closet entryway. “Your Grace, is everything okay?”

  Mancuso reached down and yanked the door open, then pulled the man inside and shut it once more. Barnes barely had time to realize the man was the other hallway guard before Mancuso had put a bullet in his head.

  Jordana took that moment to make her escape. She twisted out of Barnes’s grasp and bolted through the side door of the office. The secretary ran screaming from the room, somehow dodging the shots that came her way from Mancuso. Barnes didn’t understand how she avoided them all, but it didn’t matter. The door led to a short hallway and a few offices… and the elevator bank. Her screams had no doubt alerted the other guards, and now he and Mancuso had been dropped in the shit.

  “Sorry, Rev, you’re done,” Barnes said and clamped the other handcuffs on the man, then slammed the closet door shut. He could hear Wright yelling, but that didn’t matter now either.

  Mancuso had shut and locked the door, but there was already banging on the other side as he joined Barnes in the center of the room.

  “So much for making it look like an inside job,” Mancuso said. “What now, Major? What’s your exfil?”

  Barnes ran a hand through his hair. “You’re not gonna like it.”

  “Is it better than dying?”

  Barnes shrugged. “Marginally?”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  Barnes nodded and grabbed the dead guard’s rifle. “We need to get to the lobby. I’ve got a bomb hidden in the basement, but we need to be almost out before I set it off. There’s a very short timer.” He grinned. “Last resort sort of thing.”

  Mancuso snorted and waved toward the door. “After you!”

  Splinters of wood from the double doors exploded inward as the guards outside finally got tired of trying to break them down and just shot through them. Bullets whizzed over Barnes’s head as he took cover behind the desk, but he waited to fire until he could see at least a few of the guards coming in. Then he stood and used their hesitation against them.

  After all, wasn’t Harper Grey on their side?

  Four guards, four shots, and they hit the floor. Barnes ran forward and grabbed what equipment he could from the bodies. He tossed a rifle to Mancuso. “Can I trust you, Major?”

  Mancuso ignored him and ran out into the hallway. Barnes followed, and they covered each other with textbook military precision. The few guards that came their way were dealt with fast, and they reached the elevators in good order. The general building alarm was going off, and Barnes was confident everyone else had evacuated.

  Mancuso glanced at Barnes. “I think we’ll skip the deathtrap today,” he said, with a nod toward the elevators.

  “Damn right,” Barnes said. “The stairwell’s this way.” He pointed past the elevators at the red exit sign at the end of the hall.

  They burst through the door and ran down the steps, taking them two at a time. They made it down the four flights of stairs without incident and paused at the bottom.

  Barnes reached for the exit door and frowned as Mancuso put a hand on his arm.

  “Something’s not right,” Mancuso said. “This is too easy. That door doesn’t lead outside, right?”

  Barnes stepped back from the door and thought for a moment. “No, it goes to the lobby. There’s another door at the far end of the hall. You’re right, though. Give me a second.” He stood to one side of the door, then pushed it open a crack, slow and steady so as not to attract attention.

  It didn’t work.

  A fusillade of bullets struck the door, and a couple punched through and ricocheted through the stairwell. Mancuso grunted, and Barnes looked over at him.

  The soldier grimaced and held a hand to his lower side, where Barnes could already see a dark stain spreading. “This blows,” Mancuso said and took a couple deep breaths. “At least we got the asshole.”

  Barnes rushed over, but there wasn’t much he could do without some emergency equipment, and they both knew it. They stood with their backs to the wall, and Barnes knew the other man was trying to think of a way out as much as he was.

  “I knew this was a one-way trip, Major,” Mancuso said. “The things I’ve done, the spying, all of it. This is my penance. I was a believer once, you know. Not in the Church, but in the word of God.”

  Barnes glanced down and saw the man’s pants leg was almost all red with blood. Mancuso didn’t have long. “What’s your first name, Major?”

  “Brian.”

  “Got any family, Brian? Anyone you need me to pass word on to?”

  Mancuso shook his head. “Family’s all dead. Got no one. You got a way out?”

  Barnes nodded. “I might, but I can’t do it with you like this.”

  “Nah, I’m not going anywhere. We both know it. I can cover you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Like I said, one way. Just…” He gasped and his eyes widened. “Wow. Just make it out. And set off that fucking bomb. Tell them I was a good person at the end.”

  “Roger that. It’s been a pleasure, Major.”

  “Likewise, Major.” Mancuso kicked away from the wall and staggered toward the door. “Come get some, bitches!” he yelled, then ran out into the corridor.

  Barnes didn’t wait to see Mancuso’s last stand. As soon as the brave soldier had drawn the other’s fire, he booked it for the other end of the hall and freedom. He paused just once and looked back as he pressed the trigger on the mechanism he carried in his pocket everywhere he went.

  Mancuso was going out in a proverbial blaze of glory. And in a locked cabinet in the basement, a timer was now counting down to the end of the First Church of the Divine Judgment.

  Johnny stopped looking back and raced out of the building. It was finally time to go home.

  Archbishop Reverend Wright fought against the steel that chained him to the building that had been his headquarters for nearly twenty years. He pulled and strained until his arms felt like they were coming out of their sockets. Until the blood flowed freely down his arms from the scrapes and cuts and tears given him by the handcuffs he’d been forced into.

  After a time, he stopped pulling and straining and began to pray. He prayed for forgiveness, for the souls of the damned, and for all those who had followed him for so long. He prayed that his just and righteous God would save him from this imprisonment and that he would be given the chance to yet again bring the truth to the unbelievers.

  It was the flickering lights that snapped open his closed eyes, followed by the utter surprise when they went out completely. The fluorescent tubes crackled with static electricity, and he could see it arcing back and forth along them.

  The building began to rumble, and he wondered if they had earthquakes in Pennsylvania. As it worsened, he realized it wasn’t an earthquake at all. A moment later, he and the rest of his office disappeared, vaporized in an instant in a fireball that lit up the sky for miles around.

  People would talk about the end of the First Church of the Divine Judgment for years afterward. How a wrathful God had sent lightning to purge them of their unclean reliance on technology and destroyed them for their blasphemy.

  That God had had enough of war and killing and zombies and death and had decided to put an end to it once and for all. People would talk for years, and the stories and legends would grow. In the end, what people in Pennsylvania would remember about the Church is that once, a long time ago, a crazy man had created pain and fear in the name of their God, and they were glad that man was gone.

  A fitting end for Archbishop Sebastian Wright, they would say.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Mayor’s Office

  Town Hall

  Eatonville, Washington

  Angela Gates was bored. She’d never been so bored in all her life, in fact. She’d gone from being responsible for over ten thousand souls to managing ju
st a handful of hardy folks who’d rather not have her tell them what to do every day. A victim of her own success, she’d set everything up well enough that it ran almost without her direct action. She wasn’t really needed.

  Hence the boredom. She looked over at her husband as he snoozed in one of the armchairs next to the window. For a wonder, they had some sunshine today, and that, combined with a comfy chair, always flipped Daniel’s switch to the OFF position. Despite his apparent calm and unconsciousness, though, she knew he could be up and ready for anything in a heartbeat. She’d seen it happen more than once, in fact.

  Angela rested her chin in the palm of her hand, one elbow on the desk as she gazed at the man who’d been by her side, literally and figuratively, for more than thirty years. What would he think if she told him she was bored out of her gourd? He’d most likely laugh and tell her to be careful what she wished for.

  There was a knock at her door, and her aide leaned in. “Mayor, there’s a Priority One video call for you. Eyes only.”

  Gates shook herself out of her reverie. “Seriously? From who?”

  “I think it’s the president, ma’am.”

  Gates turned to look at her husband, only to find him predictably awake and aware, coming over to sit beside her. Gates would’ve laughed if she hadn’t expected it. “Thank you, Shannon,” she said. “See that we’re not disturbed.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Gates raised an eyebrow at her husband, who shrugged one shoulder by an infinitesimal amount. Still, after that long together, she could almost read his mind and knew he had no clue either.

  She sat a bit straighter in her chair, shook her head to clear the daydreams, and then punched the button on the computer monitor in front of her—one of only a dozen extras that had been allowed outside the Bunker as yet. The mayor of the Seattle Free Zone rated one.

  The screen lit up, and she was pleased to see her old friend Ennis Norman on the monitor. His smile never failed to elicit one from her in return. “Mr. President,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”

  “And you, Angela,” Ennis said. “Why am I not surprised you’ve been keeping up on current events?” Normally, she preferred people address her as Mayor, but this was the president, a man she’d known for longer than her husband. He could call her anything he liked. Well, almost.

  “You know me, Mr. President, never one to be out of the loop.” She ignored the slight snort from her husband. “Congratulations on all your successes, sir.”

  Ennis nodded. “Thank you, but it wasn’t my success. It was ours as a country. We fought hard and won, but we lost too many in the process. And we may never be the same again.”

  “Too much of the same is boring, Mr. President, if I may,” Daniel said from her left.

  “I’m inclined to agree with you, Mr. Taylor, but in this case, a little bit of stability and consistency is exactly what we need.” He smiled again. “Which brings me to the reason for this call. Angela, I have a question for you.”

  She shared a look with her husband, but neither of them had a clue what he was going to ask. “Anything, Mr. President.”

  “I’m not in great health, as you know, and I’m certainly not in any shape to be doing what I’m doing, trying to run this country.”

  Gates frowned and glanced to the side to see Daniel trying to cover a smirk. He waved her off as the president continued.

  “We need—I need—someone to take my place for the near future. Someone who can do what needs to be done to get us all back on our feet.”

  Gates shrugged. “That makes sense, sir. Now that everything is nearly done with, we can hold elections, find some candidates…”

  “No,” Ennis said. “That’s not what we need right now. Eventually, sure, we’ll hold elections and do things the way we’ve done them for hundreds of years. But right now, we don’t need that divisiveness. We need someone in this seat who can bring us all together and get us on the path back to civilization.”

  “I can give you some name—”

  “There’s only one name I’m interested in, Angela.”

  Suddenly, Daniel’s smirk and the look he was giving her and the smile on the president’s face, not to mention his steering of the conversation, hit her all at once. “Oh.”

  The president smiled wide. “Exactly.”

  “You mean, you want me—”

  “To be the next president of these United States. Yes.”

  “That’s crazy!” Gates exploded out of her chair and began pacing. “I’m just a mayor! Well, yes, I used to be a governor, but that was… No, there’s got to be someone better than me.”

  “There isn’t, and everyone in that room and this one knows it.” Ennis sat back in his chair. “Besides, a little birdie told me that you’ve been bored to tears out there running that half-a-horse town. You need something to occupy your time, Mayor.”

  Gates glared at Daniel, knowing exactly who the president was referring to as his “little birdie.” “You! You traitor!” she said, but there was no heart in her words, and she could see Daniel knew it.

  He shrugged. “You’re miserable, Angela. This could make you happy, and you would yet again be helping to save the world. It’s what you were born for.”

  “For what it’s worth, we agree,” David Blake said as he and Kimberly walked into the room without knocking and then closed the door behind them. “Don’t worry, we’ve told Shannon you’re not to be disturbed.”

  “Traitors, all of you!” Gates said with a laugh.

  “There are some other folks here, too, Mayor Gates,” the president said from her monitor, and she sat down once more. Suddenly, there were more faces on the screen, small but identifiable as the other governors and military commanders from the remaining bunkers. They all waved, nodded, or smiled at her as she looked at each in turn. There were murmurs of agreement from all of them.

  “We need someone everyone in the bunkers will know, and there’s no one more well-known than you,” the president said. “You’re a force of nature, and everyone has heard of you—in a good way. We need the public behind us for this to work, and they all know you—or they will after the videos we’re having the bunkers run. We’ve all voted, and it’s unanimous. By acclamation of the Bunker Council, which is the closest thing we have to Congress right now, you will be sworn in as the next president of the United States in a ceremony to be held in a few days, as soon as we can get you to Pennsylvania.”

  “This is all…” Gates swallowed, ignored the pride she felt, and spoke again. “This is all very sudden. And an honor.”

  “The honor is ours,” David said as he and Kimberly took the chairs across the desk from Gates and Daniel. “You were the only name we thought of when the president asked us.”

  Gates looked back at the president. “Are things really that bad?” she asked.

  Ennis shrugged. “I have my good days and some bad ones. But I’m not fit to lead the country anymore. I’m getting up there, and things ain’t working as well as they used to, and I’m not just talking about my amnesia. But mainly, I want to spend what few years I have left with my wife and children.”

  Gates found that she was holding Daniel’s hand and looked over at him. She didn’t need to see him nod and smile to know he would be with her, come what may, but it was still good to have that reassurance regardless.

  “I’m guessing I don’t have much choice in this,” she said with a chuckle.

  “None whatsoever, I’m afraid,” Ennis said.

  “Then I accept,” Gates said. “On one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “One term only. Four years. Then I’m out. I’m retired. No more mayor, no more nothing. Just a small farm and Daniel and that’s it. Agreed?”

  Ennis grinned. “We can make that happen.”

  “Thank you,” Gates said. She looked up at her friends and her husband, all of whom were smiling. “So what’s next?”

  ExForce Command

  Joint Base Lew
is-McChord

  Tacoma, Washington

  Kimberly didn’t get antsy or nervous. Life was what it was, and it didn’t pay to get all crazy over things that might or might not happen. She wasn’t like David, who worried first and then worked out a solution and only then let it go. She dealt with things as they came.

  At least that’s what she told herself as she waited next to her husband for her daughter’s plane to land. She ignored the restless shifting of her weight and tapping of her foot.

  She especially ignored the smirk on her husband’s face, because after all these years of being together, she knew exactly what he was thinking, and she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of being right.

  “One minute out, sir, ma’am,” their escort, a young man named CJ, said. Tall and lanky, Kimberly thought he looked like every surfer she’d ever seen a picture of, minus the long hair and board shorts. Neither were regulation, after all.

  “Thank you, Airman,” she said.

  David coughed and hid a grin behind his hand. Kimberly pretended not to notice. She focused on the plane as it hung in the sky and made its final turn before coming in for a landing. Sunlight glinted off the wings and made it almost too bright to look at, but Kimberly refused to turn away. Not when her Eden was this close to home.

  David leaned in and whispered, “You know that’s the guy she was seeing before she left, right?”

  Kimberly snorted. “Of course. He moped for weeks after she dumped him. Couldn’t get him to do a damn thing right. His CO was furious with her.”

  “He got over it, I guess. Heard he’s dating Fernandez now.”

  “Is that what they’re calling it? She’s…” Kimberly glanced over at her husband, saw his smile, and realized what he was doing: taking her mind off Eden. She reached down and took his hand in hers, gave it a squeeze, and smiled. “Got his first walker kill last week too, I heard.”

  “Yep. He’ll make a fine addition to ExForce, but I hear he wants to go chopper. Work SAR ops.”