Standing in the shade behind the vast old palace’s walls, Henri Pelletier shivered. He was flanked by Captain Devaux of the Police Nationale, and Colonel LeCat. Both men stood over the mayor like tall bodyguards, their faces grim and expressions set. Henri Pelletier felt like his tie was a noose around his neck. His palms were sweaty. He licked his lips nervously.
“It is time?”
LeCat nodded. He handed the mayor the megaphone he had seized from the back of the police car an hour earlier.
Pelletier stepped through the high arched entrance to the palace, known as the Porte des Champeaux, and into the sunlight. LeCat and the Captain of Police stayed a pace behind on either side of the mayor.
The entrance opened onto a raised platform, accessed on one side by a long stone ramp, and from the other side by steps. In years gone by, it had been here that Church officials would greet visiting dignitaries who arrived for an audience with the Pope.
The platform stood like a high stage. Pelletier could see clear across the space of the square to the buildings that faced the palace. There were people watching him from every window.
Directly below the stone ramp were parked the two blue VAB armored personnel carriers. A line of armed soldiers defended the approach to the ramp and a dozen policemen were blocking access to the steps. There was another VAB parked in the middle of the square, standing like a steel island in a sea of sun browned faces.
“Citizens of Avignon,” Henri Pelletier’s voice squeaked nervously. He had addressed large crowds before, but those masses of people had never teetered on the brink of rioting. He cleared his throat and began again.
“Citizens and Avignon, we face a terrible moment in the history of the world.” Speaking into the megaphone distorted his voice and filled his ears with a numbing crackle like electronic feedback. He winced and turned to LeCat for reassurance. The Colonel of the gendarmerie urged the mayor of the city to continue.
“Much of Europe, including France, has been overcome by the so-called Raptor virus. Millions upon millions have been infected, and much of society has collapsed. Our government and our military cannot be contacted. We have tried. Paris has been overwhelmed by the infected. Soon all communication and power networks will fail.”
It was ominous, shocking news. The crowd in the square seemed to sway like a field of corn in the breeze, and a sound like a strangled wail of fear washed through them. It was news they had been hearing on their televisions and radios for days, yet somehow it seemed more shocking to hear it in person, the message delivered by their mayor surrounded by armed police and soldiers. The surly impatience that had bubbled through the crowd just an hour before evaporated. They listened with growing horror.
“Avignon stands a chance of surviving this apocalyptic plague,” Henri Pelletier went on, gaining confidence. “Provided we all work together. We must ration our food and water. We must be patient behind these high walls that protect us. Rescue, I fear, may not come, and so instead we must wait until the infection burns itself out – until there are none left to infect, or until the virus runs its course.”
The crowd had fallen eerily silent, hanging on his every word. Henri Pelletier was their mayor. He wanted to say something more; something Churchillian that would galvanize his people in this moment of unprecedented crisis.
“We are proud Frenchmen,” he puffed out his chest and put fire into his voice. “And we stand defiant and united against this undead plague because here at Avignon we must survive. We represent the last stand of man. We cannot fail. There can be no surrender. We must be stubborn in the face of danger and brave in the face of death.”
They cheered him. It started as a ragged cry by just a few men and women standing closest to the platform, but it spread quickly, the salute taken up by ten thousand voices until they were hoarse. Pelletier felt tears of pride sting his eyes and a lump of emotion choke in his throat. When he handed the megaphone over to Colonel LeCat, he was weeping.
LeCat let the cheering subside. He stood with his feet braced, his shoulders squared and his back straight. He stared out into the sea of faces and when they fell silent at last, he explained their new reality.
“Martial Law has been declared across the entire old city for the duration of this emergency. Everyone within these walls is compelled to abide by instructions issued by my soldiers or the police. Mayor Pelletier has handed over control of all normal civilian functions to the Gendarmerie.”
The Colonel paused, letting the news and its implications sink in. He saw heads turning, but there were no defiant cries of objection. Satisfied, he put the megaphone back to his lips.
“All retail and service businesses within the old city will be closed and remain closed. This afternoon, troops and police will go to each food store and commandeer all non-perishable items. The university will be closed and the buildings used for the secure storage of all food and water supplies. Rationing will commence in two days time. The town hall will become the headquarters of all civilian operations, and staff will be on hand day and night to deal with any issues that arise.”
The crowd murmured and LeCat could sense the first rustle of their rising resentment. He went on remorselessly. “Looting and civil unrest will not be tolerated. Armed patrols will operate around the clock patrolling the streets, and my men will have orders to shoot.”
He had laid down the law. Now at last he could rally them.
“Within hours, the undead infected will be swarming around the walls of Avignon. They will try to breach our defenses. If just one of the infected gets inside the city, it will be the death of us all. Everyone must remain vigilant. Everyone must perform their duty. We need men to defend the walls. If you have a weapon of any kind, you will present yourself to my officers at the Post Office within the hour. They will allocate you a position and provide you with ammunition. If you are an able-bodied man and you do not have a firearm, you will present yourself to the Gendarmerie barracks on Boulevard Raspail where you will be provided with a weapon and rudimentary training. Any woman with military or law-enforcement training must also report to the barracks. The walls will be manned in shifts until the crisis is averted.”
LeCat set the megaphone aside but stayed in the foreground, watching the crowd with narrowed eyes, gauging the sentiment of the masses. He had told them brutal reality of their situation. The time before the undead attacked the city would be dangerous, the Colonel knew. Until the people were confronted with the desperate reality of survival, there would continue be elements of skepticism and bitter resistance.
Once they were fighting for their life, they would conform and obey.
LeCat handed the megaphone to Benoit Devaux, and the Captain of police explained to the crowd how his officers would maintain order and work with civilian authorities until the crisis had passed. The radio on the LeCat’s webbing belt squawked and he snatched at it, turning his back on the vast crowd and disappearing from the platform, into the shadows of the Papal Palace.
“Oui?”
“Colonel LeCat, this is Captain Gireau at the university. The convoy of supply trucks we dispatched this morning has just returned from the city’s supermarkets. Every vehicle is fully loaded with food and water.”
“Good. Store everything in the university buildings and post guards,” LeCat said gruffly. He was relieved. The steel-gated entrance that connected Avignon University with the outside communities was the last link to a secure perimeter.
“I have ordered the Port Saint-Lazare gates closed and padlocked.”
“Good,” LeCat said again. “Did your troops meet any resistance or see any signs of the infected?”
“There was an incident,” the Captain’s voice remained clinical and detached. “Two of my men were confronted by a woman. She demonstrated and shouted at the soldiers. She was covered in blood, sir. She refused instructions to move away… and was subsequently shot and killed.”
LeCat said nothing. A chill of foreboding ran down his spine. If the inf
ected had reached the outer suburbs, it would not be long before they were attacking the old city’s walls. He was about to end the call when a sudden sickening lurch of alarm struck him.
“Captain? The trees outside the Port Saint-Lazare gates…” he gasped.
“Sainte merde!” Captain Gireau swore.
A dozen tall leafy trees with spreading branches grew dangerously close to the university entrance. In the panic and chaos, their perilous threat had been completely overlooked.
“Get men with chainsaws at work immediately!” LeCat barked the order. “Cut every tree down and clear a field of fire.”
“Sir!” Gireau snapped.
LeCat cut the call and swore bitterly. He cursed his oversight, and as he did, fear came creeping upon him. He prayed that Gireau would have the time to rectify his mistake.
Part 2:
Outside gendarme headquarters on Boulevard Raspail, lines of men and women were already forming by the time Tremaine arrived at the barracks and was shown into Colonel LeCat’s office.
It was a sparsely furnished, functional room with a large window behind the Colonel’s desk. The French flag was displayed in one corner and there were oil paintings depicting famous battles hanging on the walls. Prominent was a painting of France’s greatest soldier, Napoleon Bonaparte. The image showed Napoleon on a rearing white horse, pointing the way ahead with a golden robe draped over his uniform.
“It is, alas, a copy,” LeCat rose from behind his desk and smiled a vain apology. He gave a Gaelic shrug of his shoulders. “Napoleon was always my inspiration.”
Tremaine nodded. “Napoleon Crossing the Alps, right?”
“Correct,” LeCat seemed impressed with the American professor’s knowledge. “It’s one of several versions of the same work painted by Jacques-Louis David. This happens to be my favorite.”
It was just after midday and Tremaine already felt himself fading with fatigue. He noticed on the Colonel’s desk a detailed map of the city, weighted down at one end by a platter of cheese. Benoit Devaux arrived.
“The crowds have dispersed from the papal square,” the Captain of police announced with a sigh. He snatched off his cap and clawed his fingers through his hair. There were two empty chairs in front of the Colonel’s desk. Devaux slumped down into the closest with the weary groan of an old exhausted man.
LeCat went to his own side of the desk and stabbed at the map with his finger. “The university,” he said. “It is the last gate that remains vulnerable. At the moment men are taking chainsaws to the nearby trees that encroach on the battlements. Once that work has been done the gate will be padlocked. Then, maybe we can relax a little, yes?”
“Any word on the infected?” Captain Devaux asked.
Tremaine shook his head. He had spent the past hour trying to contact Paris. “I can’t reach anyone on the phone, and the television coverage has become intermittent,” he said. “Parts of the world are simply shutting down, or being overrun. We’re blacked out. French television went off the air an hour ago. The only broadcast I could pick up was from Berlin. The plague is sweeping through Germany, just as it has here, America and the United Kingdom.”
“The soldiers who brought supplies back from the suburban supermarkets encountered a person they believe was infected,” LeCat spoke into the dark ominous silence. He gave the two men across the desk a brief outline of the incident.
“Then they must be nearby,” Tremaine flicked his glance out through the big window as though he might see a tide of undead somewhere in the distance. All he could see was a haze of smoke. France seemed to be ablaze.
Neither of the Frenchmen took up the thread of speculation. Instead, LeCat drew Tremaine’s attention back to the map on his desk. “We have a little more than two hundred gendarmes and about forty police,” the Colonel said grimly. “Twenty of my best men will be kept in the plaza near the town hall with two of the APC’s. They will be our reserve, able to respond and mobilize immediately should the undead find a breach in our defenses, or if they somehow threaten to overwhelm a gateway. The rest of the troops and Captain Devaux’s police will be spread along the battlements to supervise and set an example to the volunteers beside them.”
“Do we have enough people to man the walls?” Tremaine asked.
LeCat shrugged. “We are processing the volunteers as we speak,” he said, referring to the long columns of men and women beyond the barracks gatehouse. “And my men at the post office have had sixty three people bearing weapons present themselves for duty. They should already be on the ramparts.” It wasn’t an answer. The French Colonel shrugged and picked up a biro and lowered his voice like he was confessing. “We could always do with more,” he said obliquely. “With so much wall to defend, even four thousand might not be enough if the ramparts were lower and the enemy intelligent,” he scribbled the number on the map. “But they are mindless, professor. Savage, yes. We have seen ample situations on the television news that show us the vicious brutality of their attacks. But our best defense is the height and thickness of the walls we defend. They cannot be breeched. They cannot be climbed. The only danger is that the blockaded gates might fail in some way.”
Captain Devaux sat back in his chair and Tremaine fell silent. Each of them were imagining the dreadful carnage if the undead were able to breach the city’s defenses. No one would survive, and there was nowhere to escape. The entire world would soon be infected. Mankind teetered on the very brink of being rendered extinct.
The door to the Colonel’s office suddenly flung open, jarring Tremaine and the French Captain of Police from their dark fears. A woman wearing the gendarme uniform of a lieutenant came from the outer office. Her face looked pale, her eyes wide with urgency and agitation.
“Forgive me, Colonel,” the lieutenant blurted. “But I have an urgent message. Guards at the Porte De La Republique gates report that large masses of people are gathering outside the walls. We have also received frantic reports from men at Porte Saint Roch gates and Porte Magnanen.”
“The undead?” asked Tremaine.
The lieutenant looked devastated. “No, monsieur. They are the soon to be dead. They are refugees, and they are begging for our protection.”
LeCat’s eyes turned dark and flinty. “Have there been any reports from the troops guarding the western wall?” All the gates reporting in were on the southern side of the old city.
“No, Colonel,” the lieutenant said.
LeCat grunted. He glared at the two men on the opposite side of the desk and made his decision. “Captain Devaux, please return to the town hall and continue with your preparations to seize all available supplies. You must send your men to every shop, every restaurant and every retail store before goods can be horded or sold on the black market. Professor Tremaine; you will come with me to the city gates.”
* * *
“We will disperse, and meet again tonight,” Preacher Kane announced. He could hear police sirens criss-crossing nearby streets, and through the dusty cracked windows of the old building he saw crowds of people moving about the old city with urgent, panicked strides. It was unsafe to stay here. He imagined police patrols searching the narrow alleyways for the ringleaders of the morning riot. He was a hunted man.
“Return to your homes. Go about your business,” Kane urged them, waving his hands as if to shoo them away. “Come back here after nightfall, for there is much we must discuss. I must speak with God, and listen for His answer.”
They shuffled timidly from the warehouse in small groups, merging into the passing crowds and blinking owlishly in the sudden bright light of the day.
When they were all gone, Kane hastily discarded his black robe and changed into a fresh shirt and trousers. He took the girl by the hand and led her through the narrow streets towards his apartment. “Follow me, Mary,” Kane’s voice cracked treacherously, edged with the thrill of anticipation, and fueled by the memory of the girl’s slender squirming body in the dark shadows. His heart raced in his chest,
and the sweat that beaded his brow was not from exertion. He was sick with lust, and trembling with wicked desire.
* * *
It was a short drive from the gendarme barracks to the Porte De La Republique gates. Driving one of the jeep-like Peugeot P4’s, LeCat took the corners like a grand prix driver, stomping his foot hard on the gas pedal and scattering pedestrians that blocked the way. They raced past the post office that was the staging point for the men defending the southern perimeter, and Tremaine saw armed civilians sprinting across the road towards steps that lead to the top of the walls.
Other entrances around the city were vast towers with arched gateways built into the sandstone, but the main entrance was a wide thoroughfare. The 14th century remains were solid towers erected on either side of the roadway, each with crenelated battlements. Between the two stone sentinels were the overturned carcasses of four buses.
LeCat braked to a halt at the bottom of the closest tower and snatched the megaphone off the backseat of the P4. Beyond the barricade and thick stone walls he could hear a roar of screaming, pleading voices undulating like the sound of a storm-tossed ocean.
“Come with me,” LeCat took the weather-worn stone steps up to the top of the tower two-at-a-time, and Tremaine struggled to keep up with the French Colonel. Other parts of the wall no longer had steps leading to the ramparts and soldiers had erected ladders in their place. Here the old stone slabs were moss-covered and treacherous. When Tremaine reached the battlements, he was wheezing for breath and sweating from the exertion.
What he saw made him gasp.
Crowded outside the main gates were over a thousand people, pressed together in swarming knots of terror and desperation. Some were trying to clamber over the stacked bus carcasses. Others were hammering on the solid stone walls with their fists.
“Please!” women wailed, their faces wrenched in the agony of their fear. “Let us in! We have children.”
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