Today we were paying the price for complacence. Did the blame belong to me? Church? Or was this a cultural failing? If I lived through the day I"d have to take a closer look at those questions; but social philosophy doesn"t help you in the heat of a firefight, so I pressed on.
There was still no sign of backup coming for me, but I couldn"t wait. I crept forward, going room by darkened room. I tried light switches in the hallway and in several rooms but got nothing. Someone must have thrown the circuit breakers. The only light was the dim red glow of emergency lamps. I had to check every locked room, every closet to see if I could locate the First Lady, or Agent O"Brien, and throughout I could feel a hot spot between my eyes as if Ollie Brown was laying his laser sight on me and waiting for the right moment to punch my ticket.
Five rooms in I heard wet sounds coming from the far side of a row of desks. I knew what those sounds would be and I really didn"t want to look; but I had no choice. Taking a fresh grip on my.45 I rounded the desks on the b.a.l.l.s of my feet.
There were three of them on their knees, heads bent forward, like lions around a zebra carca.s.s. Only the carca.s.s was that of a Secret Service agent and the lions were office workers-two women and a man wearing business casual and sporting Liberty Bell Center IDs around their necks. Their hands and mouths were black with blood.
Bile rose in my throat and I gagged. Just a tiny sound, just enough so that their heads snapped up like the wary predators they were. The closest of them, a woman, hissed at me.
I shot her in the head. The impact flung her back and she toppled over the dead agent in a perverse imitation of intimacy.
The other two rose up and lunged but I was ready.
Two shots, two kills.
I stared at the bodies, and then at the dead agent. His throat had been savaged. Would he reanimate, or was this beyond the pathogen"s wound-repair mechanism? I pointed my gun at his head and just as my finger was tightening around the trigger I heard three separate sounds at the same moment.
From far behind me I heard Top Sims calling my name. At my feet I heard the first feeble twitch as some new and monstrous force fired the engines that would raise this fallen hero up as an undead killer. And up ahead I heard the First Lady scream.
Chapter One Hundred Fourteen.
Gault and Amirah / The Bunker GAULT WHIRLED AND pointed his pistol into the shadows. Five figures crowded the narrow corridor, their bare feet scuffing the floor. In the pale glow of the LED panels their faces were a ghostly white, but their eyes and mouths were as black as sin.
He recognized one of the monsters: Khalid, the soldier who had been the first of El Mujahid"s men to take Gault"s money for personal services. Gault had liked him. The man had always been tough and crafty, but now he merely looked dead. His skin hung slack on his skull and his mouth sagged open to utter a moan of mindless need.
"I"m sorry," Gault whispered. His first shot took Khalid in the shoulder and spun him around so that his outstretched hands slapped the second zombie across the face. If Gault had watched the scene in a movie it would have been comical, a dark slapstick; but this was no zombie comedy, no BBC pantomime. This was death. This was horror.
The creatures behind Khalid pushed him forward so that he kept moving toward Gault even though he was facing the wrong direction, like flotsam on a current that flowed from the bowels of h.e.l.l. Gault gagged and fired again. Khalid"s face disintegrated and he collapsed. Two others stumbled over him, falling down to crack bones on the hard concrete. Gault shot them each in the head; but the final two were already climbing over them, their mouths working as the scent of blood filled the air.
He fired and fired and fired. Behind him, through the narrow observation slit in the wall, he heard Amirah"s mad laughter.
Chapter One Hundred Fifteen.
Grace / The Bell Chamber / Sat.u.r.day, July 4; 12:11 P.M.
"FOR G.o.d" S SAKE help me!" The junior senator from the state of Alabama raised his head and stared pleadingly at Grace Courtland. His skin had already turned from a healthy tan to the color of old parchment. There were two puncture marks on his cheek from where a pair of the gla.s.s darts had struck him.
Grace raised her pistol and pointed it at him. "Get against the wall, sir," she said tightly.
"I don"t feel " He shook his head as if trying to clear muddy thoughts. "I"m sick "
"Sir for the love of G.o.d, please get against the wall with the others."
Behind her a woman"s voice slashed the air. "Agent what the h.e.l.l do you think you"re doing? Lower your weapon immediately." It was not the first time the Vice President"s wife had yelled at her in the last few minutes. Grace stood her ground.
The room was silent except for sobs from the wounded. Grace, Bunny, Dietrich, and Brierly had worked through the crowd, separating out anyone who had been stung by the darts. Over sixty people, all of them sick and shivering with fever, were huddled together in a cl.u.s.ter by the wall farthest from the STAFF ONLY door. Rudy moved among them making quick and purely visual a.s.sessments of them. His face was rigid with shock. A line of Secret Service agents, fifteen of them, stood with their pistols pointed at the sick and wounded, but even the toughest agents among them looked confused and frightened. Outside, on the other side of the thick gla.s.s walls, the National Guard were setting up machine gun emplacements, and the sky above Independence Mall was filled with army gunships.
Things had started brewing to a panic and so Grace had climbed to the top of the podium and fired a shot into the ceiling to get them to listen. "Listen to me!" she shouted.
Bunny and Dietrich took up positions around the base of the podium, their guns at the ready. The fifteen remaining Secret Service agents stood in a line between the infected and the rest, their faces showing the terrible doubt and conflict they each felt.
In a few short sentences Grace told everyone that the Freedom Bell had been rigged by terrorists and that anyone who had been struck by the darts was likely to become infected with a highly contagious disease. That helped with the separation as the uninjured moved quickly away from them. The disease, she told them, would cause erratic and violent behavior. As she spoke she looked for signs of infection in anyone who had not admitted to having been stung.
That"s when Audrey Collins, the VP"s wife, had suddenly spoken up to champion the cause of the infected. Collins was a thin woman with a hatchet face and fierce blue eyes, and despite the agony from three cracked ribs, she managed to muster enough personal power to take a commanding position in the conflict. "You will lower your weapon, Agent, or so help me G.o.d, I will make sure that you are punished to the fullest extent of the law."
Grace stepped down from the podium, and Dietrich turned and brought his gun up to cover the infected junior senator. Grace said, "Ma"am, you have to be quiet and let us do our jobs-"
Collins cut her off. "Do you know who I am?"
"Yes, ma"am, I know who you are and I know full well that your husband can have me jailed, deported, and probably stood against a wall and shot but right now I am trying to save the lives of most of the people in this room and probably all of the people in this country. If you interfere with me or prevent me from doing what I have to do I will knock you on your a.s.s."
"You wouldn"t dare."
Grace took a step closer and the savage look in her eyes was so ferocious that the people who had gathered behind the VP"s wife faded back, leaving the woman alone with Grace.
"Ma"am, if you do anything-anything-to try and stop me I"ll put you against the wall with them. Believe me, you don"t want me to do that."
"Ma"am," said Rudy, stepping up beside Grace. "I implore you to listen."
"Slow down here, Major," Brierly said, coming up on Grace"s other side. "Everyone"s scared here."
The remaining Presidential Detail agents milled uncertainly near Mrs. Collins. Brierly had briefed them and had even channeled the President himself on to the team"s command link. The President"s voice had been trembling with fear and rage but he had been clear: Grace Courtland was in charge. Even so, threats to their princ.i.p.al went against all of their training.
"No one more than me, sir," Grace said, but her eyes locked on the VP"s wife. "But this is not something I can back down on. You know that."
Bunny moved to Grace"s right with a good shooter"s angle to the presidential agents.
"Mrs. Collins " implored the junior senator.
Audrey Collins, apart from being married to the Vice President, was a career politician in her own right and she was used to giving orders rather than taking them. But for all her bl.u.s.ter she was no fool. She shifted her furious stare from Grace and looked at the young senator; and changed her expression from anger to wretched concern.
"Do what the major says, Tom," she said to the frightened congressman. "Everything will be okay."
She turned to Grace and the look they shared insisted that nothing was going to be okay. Not now, and maybe not ever. "If you"re wrong about this," said Mrs. Collins, "I"ll-"
"I"m not," Grace interrupted. Then she softened her own expression. "Thank you."
"f.u.c.k you," said the Vice President"s wife.
Grace almost smiled, but then someone screamed.
"My G.o.d! She"s biting him!"
Everyone turned toward the wall, to where the anchorwoman for the local ABC affiliate was hunched over the unconscious body of a tourist in a Hawaiian shirt. The anchorwoman, a pet.i.te blonde with sculpted nails and Prada shoes, was chewing on the tourist"s arm.
"No," Bunny said. "Come on no!"
"G.o.d help us all," Grace said and raised her gun.
What happened next was unspeakable.
Chapter One Hundred Sixteen.
The Liberty Bell Center / Sat.u.r.day, July 4; 12:12 P.M.
THERE WAS NO time to think. I put a shot into the head of the agent and spun on my heel before he flopped back against the ground, sprinting in the direction of the scream. That wasn"t the hunting-cat screech of a walker-it was filled with very human terror. I just hoped it wasn"t her last scream.
Screw caution-I ran. I tore through room after room. Twice white-faced figures lunged at me out of the shadows and each time I put them down with single shots without breaking stride. I could still hear voices behind. Top and Skip calling my name. They were smart enough to follow the trail of bodies.
The First Lady screamed again, just ahead, on the other side of a closed door.
I hit the door with a jumping kick that tore it off its hinges. The door crashed onto a walker and crushed him underneath. I leaped into the room, taking in the scene as I landed in a combat crouch.
The First Lady was huddled in the corner of an office cubicle. Her Secret Service detail had been slaughtered. Only one agent remained and there was a crowd of seven walkers trying to bring him down. The agent was bleeding from half a dozen bites and his face was white with pain and panic. Two of the walkers were the last remaining agents; the rest were employees of the Liberty Bell Center. No sign of Ollie or O"Brien.
I opened fire and took one of the walkers in the back of the neck. He crashed forward and dragged down two others as he fell.
"Help!" the First Lady screamed. "Oh G.o.d, please help us!"
The nearest walkers had turned toward me at the sound of my shot and they rushed me. I shot one but then there was a blast from behind me and the walker to my right pitched back with a gaping hole in his temple.
"On your six!" I heard Top growl and then he and Skip were rushing the group of walkers from either flank. Top used double taps each time, stalling them with a chest shot and then putting one through the brain. Skip"s shots were more random and he hit walkers over and over again in the body, wasting shots.
"Head shots, G.o.dd.a.m.n it!" Top yelled at him and blew away a walker that was rushing at Skip from his left.
The remaining Secret Service agent fired his last shot, a wild blast that nearly hit Top, and then the last walker tackled him so that they fell into the cubicle, crashing down at the First Lady"s feet. She screamed but then she s.n.a.t.c.hed a laptop off the desk and used it to beat in the back of the walker"s head. None of us could take a shot because she was so close, and she laid into the monster with a will, her fear becoming fury. The walker shivered and collapsed into a terminal stillness. Beneath him the agent groaned and reached out an imploring hand to her.
"Roger!" she said and reached for him.
"No!" I yelled and darted forward to slap her hand away. "Don"t! He"s infected."
Around us the room became unnaturally still as the gunshot echoes faded. The only sound was a painful wheeze from Roger, the wounded agent.
"I"m sorry, ma"am," he said, struggling to get the words out.
The First Lady looked at me. "Help him, for G.o.d"s sake!"
I stepped between her and Roger, then squatted down and offered him my left hand. He closed his hand around it with ferocious desperation as if it was a lifeline that could pull him up from h.e.l.l. "Listen to me," I said gently. "Your name"s Roger?"
"Agent Roger Jefferson."
"I"m Joe Ledger. Listen, Roger there"s been an outbreak. A plague. You understand? From the Freedom Bell."
He nodded. His breathing was getting worse.
"That"s what happened to your men. One or more of them must have been exposed. It changes people."
He nodded again. "I saw. Barney Linus all of them. G.o.d "
"I"m sorry, man."
"Is is she " He turned his head, looking for the First Lady, but I don"t think he could see her anymore.
The First Lady put a hand on my shoulder and leaned over. "Roger. I"m right here."
"Are are you all "
"I"m fine, Roger. You didn"t let them get me."
Roger smiled and his eyes drifted shut, but his grip was still strong. He whispered something that I had to bend close to hear.
"Cap"n," warned Top.
Roger said, "I saw how it works." Blood seeped from the corners of his mouth. "You do what you have to do."
"I will," I promised. "Rest easy, Roger. You saved the First Lady."
With his last strength he gave me a trembling smile. "All part of the job." He tried to laugh but there was not enough left of him and he settled back.
"Get her out of here," I said to Top. "Do it now."
"What do you mean?" she protested as Top closed in. "We can"t just leave him here."
"Ma"am," Top said, "you saw what happens. Let the captain do what he has to do. It"s the best thing it"s best for Roger."
"Top get her out now!"
The First Lady straightened her back and though tears flowed down her face she walked away with great dignity. I hadn"t voted for her husband, but I sure as h.e.l.l admired her.
When they were out of the room I disengaged my hand from Roger"s slack grip. I reached over and took a cushion off the nearest chair and put it over his face. I was counting seconds. I felt the first twitch in less than forty seconds since his last breath and I put the barrel of my gun against the pad and fired. Maybe it was because the pad would m.u.f.fle the shot and make it easier for the First Lady, or maybe it was because it would cover his face and grant him a slice of dignity. Or maybe it was that I couldn"t bear to see another good man become one of those things. Probably all three.