“I’ve told you a dozen times to call me ‘Mac’ like everyone else. You’re in the inner circle now, Reverend.”
“Mac.” Ingram didn’t offer to let the president call him by his given name.
Fifteen minutes later, Ingram took the oath of office in the living room of the retreat house. Sarah Beth was in attendance, beaming with pride but a little dismayed that she didn’t have time to select an appropriate outfit. Cyrus likewise participated, and the moment was duly recorded by a White House photographer and a field reporter for the Washington Post. MacMillan signed the executive order with a flourish, shook Ingram’s hand, and just like that he was one of the most powerful men in the world.
At fifteen minutes before midnight, he rose to the top.
Ingram and Sarah Beth had gone to their cabin on the secluded property, preparing for a full night’s sleep before returning to Promiseland in the morning. They hadn’t even finished undressing when the knock came at the door. “Mister Vice President!”
It took Ingram a moment to realize the person was talking to him. When he answered, an anxious lieutenant accompanied by two armed privates and a Secret Service agent said, “Sir, you’ll have to come with me. It’s important.”
“Wait here,” Ingram said to Sarah Beth, ordering one of the privates to stand guard at the door until his return.
They arrived at the president’s house to find a swarm of Secret Service agents, medical personnel, and officers. Ingram entered the kitchen to find President MacMillan lying on the tiled floor, two medics attending to him. Blood oozed from a cotton pad pressed against his collarbone, and Ingram could see shreds of torn flesh around the edge of the gauze.
Ten feet away, leaning slumped against the wall at an awkward angle, was the aide in the pants suit. Her mouth foamed with blood and saliva. A single gunshot wound dotted the center of her forehead.
MacMillan was conscious, but his eyes fluttered in panic. When he saw Ingram, he tried to speak. Ingram knelt close enough to hear him, knowing words were useless now.
“I’m…suh…sorry,” the president said.
Ingram understood. MacMillan should have required the aide to accept the mark and he would’ve discovered she was sick. He could’ve taken the mark himself and obtained the protection of God. Instead, he’d relied on luck. MacMillan had damned himself to hell.
Now Ingram understood why the aide had avoided him. She’d probably already been feeling the stirrings of unholy hunger. And Ingram offered no sustenance for demons. Ingram had already rejected the devil’s touch.
“Mr. President,” Ingram said. “I understand.”
MacMillan sighed in gratitude, pain twisting his facial features. Sweat laced his pale skin. He clutched Ingram’s hand, but already the strength faded from the man’s fingers. “Pray for me, Reverend.”
“God’s will be done. Amen.”
Ingram looked to the ranking officer for direction. How did one order the murder of a president? But this was no longer the president, nor a person. This was a demon. Ingram would waste no more prayers on it.
“This way, sir,” said the lieutenant who’d summoned him from the cabin. Ingram returned to the living room where he’d earlier been sworn in as vice president. Justice Moretti was already there, presumably with a slightly different script than before.
“Sarah Beth should be here for this,” Ingram said. “And my personal assistant, Cyrus Woodley.”
“We can’t risk it,” the lieutenant said. “We need to transfer power as quickly and peacefully as possible. People need the comfort of stability.”
Ingram would’ve laughed if the entire matter wasn’t so ludicrously serious. With the apocalypse arriving at the doorstep of the human race and demons flooding the gates, the government’s primary mission was still one of self-preservation. Perhaps hell was one ever-expanding, tedious bureaucracy instead of a lake of fire.
Ingram waited for the single gunshot that would signal the end of MacMillan’s life. The attendants and Secret Service agents must’ve taken him outside. Would MacMillan give the order himself? Would he demand they kill him before the infection raced through his veins and aroused the deepest evil? Or did he even now embrace the approaching darkness, as Satan whispered promises of carnage and bloodlust in his ear?
A silver-haired officer that Ingram had not seen before entered the room. He bore four brass stars on each of the shoulder straps of his uniform. The lieutenant saluted him and one of the staff members addressed him as Gen. Ridley. Ingram recognized the name. This was MacMillan’s secretary of defense.
As Ridley and Ingram were introduced, the general saluted. Ingram was pleased to see the general’s tattoo of an eye and the numeral three. This man understood the stakes.
“It’s done,” Ridley said to Ingram and Moretti. A Secret Service agent produced a Bible, and Moretti instructed Ingram to place his palm upon it. The book seemed to radiate with heat. That sense of divine and righteous power once again flowed through Ingram like electricity.
Moretti then read the oath aloud. Ingram repeated the words without emotion—render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s—and in moments, he was the most powerful man on the planet.
Just as the Book of Revelation foretold.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Where are you going, kid?”
The voice came out of the darkness, amid the rubble of a collapsed building. This section of the city had been heavily bombed, which had slowed Bill and Kit’s progress. Night had arrived suddenly, crawling up from the horizon and down from the clouds to merge into a murky smudge suffused with the deep red of lingering fires. Kit, with the recklessness of youth, hurried ahead of Bill, flitting back and forth among the twisted cars and shattered buildings.
Whoever had called to Kit hadn’t seen Bill, so he lurked in the shadows behind her.
“Nowhere,” Kit answered in her precocious and fearless tone. “Which is exactly where I’ve ended up.”
“Deaders are gonna eat ya,” the unseen man responded.
“Maybe. What do you care?”
A flashlight switched on, trapping Kit in its wide orange beam. Bill pressed against a jagged brick wall, squinting to make out the silhouette behind the flashlight.
“You’re a smart-mouthed little girl, huh?” the man said. “Well, I’ve seen a few like you. Well, a least pieces of them.”
“What do you want?” Kit asked. Bill could see the tension in her legs. She was coiled to launch into a sprint at the first sign of trouble.
“I’m trying to be nice here,” the man said. He coughed and spat. “We got a safe place.”
“Are you holding a gun?”
“Course I’m holding a gun. Deaders, you gotta shoot ‘em in the head.”
“You’re not a creep or a pervert, are you?”
Bill figured most creeps and perverts considered themselves normal people, and the ones that didn’t would lie about it. Maybe she was buying time for Bill to get a good bead on the man in case he needed to be shot. He eased into firing position, careful not to scrape the rifle barrel against mortar and give himself away.
“I’m just a solid citizen trying to do some good,” the man said. “Hard times like these, we all have to help each other. The ones that are left, anyways.”
Another figure stirred behind the first, and a woman with a scratchy voice said, “You keep playing that light around, you’re going to bring them out for sure.”
The man said. “Right.” Then, to Kit, “Last chance. You wanna camp with us, you’re welcome. Otherwise, good luck.”
“Wait,” Bill said, which caused the flashlight beam to whip toward him. He poked one eye around the stack of bricks and said, “How many are with you?”
“Five. My wife Doreen, my cousin, and three kids. Are you pointing a rifle at me?”
Bill lowered his gun but didn’t step into the open. Kit hadn’t moved, waiting to see how the confrontation played out. He wondered if she was enjoying herself.
�
��Listen,” the man said. “We got nothing to fight over. If you don’t want our hospitality, just move on along. Only make up your mind before the deaders smell you.”
“Okay,” Bill said, holding his rifle to the side and walking toward Kit. “We don’t have anything worth stealing anyway.”
“Follow us,” the woman said, and the man with the flashlight turned down what had once been an alley but was now a few smoky mounds of rubble. Shards of broken glass glinted in the flashlight’s beam. A ruptured water main pushed a rivulet of gray water down the cracked pavement. The man and woman were obviously familiar with the area, as they dodged easily between the scorched vehicles, warped utility poles, and sagging steel frameworks that had been stripped naked of their walls.
“Why are we doing this?” Kit whispered so their two alleged benefactors couldn’t overhear. “These people might be cannibals.”
“Get eaten by the living or get eaten by the dead,” Bill said. “Some choice, huh?”
“Seriously. We can make it to the church.”
“We’re lost. I can see the glow in the distance, meaning Promiseland is probably powered by generators, but it’s too dangerous to keep going in the dark.”
“You’re the grownup,” Kit said with sarcasm. “But if these people turn weird, we’re bugging out.”
“Deal.”
The flashlight beam disappeared for a moment, and Bill thought the pair had abandoned them, but then the light appeared shining up from a rectangle in the ground. “Down here,” the man said.
Bill and Kit reached the concrete lip of a set of stairs leading down to a door. Bill was a little uneasy despite his assurances to Kit. If they went inside, they’d be trapped and at the mercy of whatever this man’s group decided. It might not even be his family.
But noises in the rubble suggested that deaders were prowling for meat. Those soft skittering sounds, wet growls, and occasional distant screams and gunshots meant anything was safer than the streets right now.
When they descended and entered the underground chamber, the man shined the light on his bearded face and then flicked it over to the woman.. “I’m Chuck, and this is Doreen.”
“Howdy,” Doreen said. Her skin was tan and leathery, creased like a longtime smoker’s, but her dark eyes were warm and kind.
Bill introduced himself and Kit, noticing that Chuck wore a firearm in a hip holster as well as a rifle slung across his back. Chuck led them down a narrow hallway lined with cinder block walls. Before they turned the corner, Bill saw the flickering orange firelight and smelled hamburger. He hadn’t eaten fresh meat in days and the aroma made him salivate.
Maybe I’m the ones who’s a zombie.
The hallway opened up into a large room that had once been a music club. A bar ran the length of one wall, a stage for musicians took up a section of the floor, and a number of chairs and tables had been shoved to one side of the room. The walls were lined with rock posters and energetic modern art, a strange contrast to the almost Neolithic cave setting of the people gathered around the campfire.
Chuck had told the truth: the only other people with them were three kids ranging in age from maybe four to eight, and an older teen in a baseball cap who was struggling to grow a patch of facial hair. They sat in chairs, with a nearby table piled with loaves of bread, canned food, tubes of various cheeses and smoked meats, and jugs of water.
“Jordan, get them a chair,” Chuck said, and the teen shot him a sullen look before obeying.
The hamburgers simmered in a cast-iron pan placed on a makeshift grill. “Are you guys hungry?” Chuck asked.
“Hell, yeah,” Bill said, laying his rifle on the concrete floor beside his chair. “Smells wonderful.”
To the eight-year-old girl, Chuck said, “Fetch them some bread and ketchup, Minnie.”
Minnie got up from her own meal without complaint.
Chuck studied Kit in the firelight. “You’re not a vegan, are you?”
“Why, do I look high-maintenance or something?”
“Just being polite. It’s not good to make assumptions under the current conditions.”
“I love meat,” she said. “But I’ve got nothing against a good salad, either.”
Get her some chips, Minnie,” he said to the eight-year-old, who brought over a bag of potato chips. “That counts as a vegetable, right?”
Doreen served up one of the burgers onto a piece of white bread, and Bill took it with gratitude. He dolloped it with a squirt of ketchup and ate it with embarrassing smacking sounds. Kit soon joined him, only taking smaller bites.
Bill paused when he was halfway through. “This is great, but where did you find fresh beef? Power went out days ago.”
“N. C. State raises its own dairy cows,” Chuck said. “I guess some of them got out when the air force blasted the city back to the Stone Age. I put one down yesterday and we dressed it out a little. Found a grinder in a hardware store. We smoked and salt-cured some of the rest of it. It’s hanging in a building down the street. Not sure how long it’ll keep.”
“You don’t sound like city folks,” Bill said. “Nothing personal.”
“We’re country proud,” Chuck said. “But I needed a job, and construction crews are hiring, so here we are. Didn’t exactly expect to end up like this, but we’re making the best of it.”
“How did you find this place?” Kit asked.
“I did,” said the teen, acting cool. “I used to come to shows here. Sneak in with a fake I.D.”
Bill almost chuckled. The kid couldn’t pass for sixteen, much less twenty-one. Although it was cute how he was trying to impress Kit.
“And none of you got sick?” Bill asked before indulging in his hamburger again.
“The two little ones did,” Doreen said. “Gave me a terrible fright for a day or two, but then it passed. We were lucky to find this place. There were shops around, and we scavenged food and some medical supplies. Lucky for us we were down here when the bombers flew over.”
“Gives the underground scene a whole new twist,” the teenybopper said, and Kit favored him with a grin.
“What about you two?” Chuck asked. “Related?”
“No!” Kit said with mock horror. She gave a brief account of her story—she described the deaths of her parents almost matter-of-factly—and then Bill took over narrating the most recent part leading up to their arrival here.
“So you’re headed for Promiseland,’ huh?” Doreen said. “Careful what you wish for.”
“Why’s that?” Bill said. “The radio said they have army units, FEMA, and steady air drops of supplies, and you can see they have electricity.”
“Oh, it’s paradise, all right, but there’s an admission price.”
“What do you mean?”
Chuck lifted his hand to the firelight. Bill saw the symbols on his flesh but couldn’t make sense of them. They looked to be etched in blue ink. “A tattoo?”
“Doreen calls it the Mark of the Beast,” Chuck said. “Anyone who enters has to get inked if they want to stay. It was Reverend Ingram’s idea, apparently. Inspired by the Zombie God or some shit.”
“Don’t cuss in front of the kids, hon,” Doreen warned. “What he means is Ingram thinks the Biblical apocalypse is underway. The news said he was bitten by a zombie but didn’t show any signs of infection. Took it as a sign from God.”
“I went in to get a look,” Chuck said. “Maybe see if I could get a doctor for the kids. They examined me and said I had to submit to the tattoo before I could receive any services. I went ahead and waited in line, seeing if I could learn more about the place. Then I found out they turned away sick people and non-believers. A couple of people even told me they took out sick people and shot them beyond the walls.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Bill said. “I can see some fringe radical preacher snapping under the strain and having delusions. But the army and FEMA are government agencies. They wouldn’t do that to civilians.”
“Ingram wa
s appointed by the president to some high-up office. So I guess this is official policy now. It rubs me the wrong way because the rest of us are out here living in holes in the ground.”
“Aren’t they fighting the zombies?” Kit asked.
“Sure. The army sends out patrols every day. They’re protecting Promiseland and pushing back, but it’s plain the army doesn’t give a damn about the rest of us. Why else would they bomb us to powder?”
“What’s your plan, then?” Bill asked before shoving the last of the hamburger into his mouth.
“We’re stocking up to head west, toward the mountains. Blue Ridge if we can make it. I reckon the roads clear up once you get out of the city.”
“You’ve got the mark, and your kids look healthy now. Why don’t you go back to Promiseland?”
“Because I don’t want them belonging to no cult. Maybe it’s sick people today, but tomorrow he might not like your haircut or the color of your eyes or the number of vowels in your last name. I was kind of shocked at the low numbers of minorities I saw there, especially considering how diverse Raleigh is.”
“Was,” the teenybopper corrected. “The population’s mostly zombie now.”
“And whatever you call those things that come up from the grave,” Kit said.
“Whatcha mean?” Chuck asked.
“Super-special double-rotten deaders,” Kit said. “They were already dead even before the virus hit, and now they’re walking around like they belong here.”
Doreen put her finger to her lips in a shushing motion. “Kids already have nightmares. Speaking of which, time to get ready, Munchkins.”
As Doreen herded the kids to a bathroom to brush their teeth, carrying a jug of water, Chuck said, “You guys are welcome to stay the night. In the morning you can go as you please. If you want to come with us, we’d have to talk it over as a family first.”
“Thanks,” Bill said, “We’ll gratefully accept your offer to stay but I think we’ll try Promiseland tomorrow.”
Promiseland couldn’t be as bad as Chuck made it out to be and, besides, both of them were healthy.
Revelation: A Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Thriller (Arize Book 2) Page 12