Ruddy folded her arms and said nothing.
“Please, Mr. President,” said Blair, not budging. “Two minutes.”
“This is ridiculous,” said Ruddy, but the president held up his hand.
“If you don’t mind, Sylvia?” said the president.
She stared at him as if he’d kicked her. Then she turned on her heel and stalked about, slamming the door behind her. The president sighed.
“That’s going to cost me.”
Blair shifted to stand between the president and the closed door, forcing himself into the line of sight. The president sat back in his chair and gestured for him to speak.
“Two minutes, Scott.”
“Permission to speak candidly?”
“You keep asking that.”
“I keep needing to.”
They regarded each other, then the president nodded. “Go ahead.”
Blair leaned his fists on the edge of the desk. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“What?”
“This isn’t like you,” said Blair, his voice low and even. “This isn’t even close to you. Yesterday you were in command, you were the voice of reason while all hell broke loose. Now you’re fumbling at the edges of this thing. Wait, hear me out. You said I could speak my mind and this may be the last chance I have.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not planning on firing you.”
“Christ, who cares about that? How can you still think that this is about politics or anything but a crisis? Sam Imura knows biohazardous threats better than anyone currently on U.S. soil. Anyone. He trained most of the people in the NBACC teams. He wrote their field response protocols. While Simeon Zetter was playing hide-and-seek with the Taliban, Imura was hunting—and bagging—world-class bioterrorists and he did so for four different people who sat in the chair on which you are currently resting your ass.”
The president didn’t respond, but his face grew steadily redder.
“Sam said that the checkpoints along the Q-zone aren’t adequate. There are a couple of thousand local and state police itching to be a part of this. I know that we pulled them because we didn’t want to deal with the complications of jurisdiction and we were afraid of how they’d react if they found out our ground forces had to terminate infected police officers inside Stebbins. That’s yesterday’s news and it does not matter. What matters now is getting armed, trained men and women to reinforce that Q-zone while there is still time. The National Guard reinforcements won’t cross into Stebbins sooner than two hours. We can put a thousand police officers on that line in twenty minutes.”
“And we’d lose all control of the situation in terms of media and—”
“—and that doesn’t matter.”
The president shook his head. “Scott, while I commend you on your passion, I simply do not agree that we are in danger of losing control of the situation. I’ve known Simeon Zetter too long and too well to doubt his word.”
“So have I, and it’s not his word that I doubt. It’s his ability to properly assess this kind of situation.”
The president spread his hands. “I’m not convinced, Scott. Sorry.”
Blair really wanted to hit him.
He wanted to kill him.
He took a breath and said, “Will you at least do this much? I have a scientist in my office, a Dr. McReady. She’s possibly the best virologist we have and she wants to talk to you. She has some things to tell you about Lucifer that you don’t know. And she would like you to open a dialogue with Dr. Price at Zabriske Point.”
“Who at where? I don’t know that person.”
“That,” said Blair, “is the point. Price is the man who knows more about the Lucifer project than anyone.”
“And Zabriske Point?”
“It’s a bioweapons research laboratory in Death Valley.”
“Since when do we have a lab there?”
“We’ve always had one there.”
“You knew about this and I didn’t?”
Blair offered a chilly smile. “Yes, sir. It’s my job to know about such places. Just as it’s my job to advise you when the national security is in genuine peril.”
The president’s eyes were hooded as he considered that.
“Okay, Scott. Go fetch your mad scientist.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
ROUTE 653
BORDENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
Goat squeezed himself against the passenger door, long legs pulled up, arms wrapped around them, trying once again to hide behind his own limbs. Once again failing to accomplish an impossible task.
Beside him, Homer Gibbon steered the Cube from lane to lane. Windshield wipers slapped back and forth. On the radio Townes Van Zandt was singing about how he was “waitin’ around to die.” Homer had the volume so loud that it hurt Goat’s head and made his eyes twitch. Homer sang along, knowing every word.
When the song ended and a softer outlaw song by Willie Nelson started playing, Homer turned the volume down. Outside the rain was so heavy that the wipers were doing almost nothing. Homer never slowed down, though. He cruised at a steady seventy.
Goat found himself praying for an accident. He was willing to take his chances in a head-on collision. He eyed the wheel, wondering if he dared grab it and spin them into the oncoming headlights.
Maybe.
Maybe.
As if he could read Goat’s mind, Homer said, “Don’t be thinking bad thoughts, son.”
Goat squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.
The killer beside him chuckled.
They drove.
Then Homer said, “Tell me about yourself, boy. What kind of reporter are you?”
When Goat could trust that his voice wouldn’t squeak, he said, “I … I’m a cameraman.”
“What—you ain’t even a reporter?” Homer’s mouth hardened. “The fuck?”
“No, I’m a reporter, but I mostly do camerawork. And video editing. And social media.”
“Social media? What’s that shit?”
“Twitter, Facebook, stuff like that.”
Homer grunted. “What’s that have to do with news?”
“Everything,” said Goat. He realized that this was a chance to reinforce his usefulness. “The Internet is a lot more important than anything when it comes to getting the news out there. Most people get their news from the Net.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen Yahoo News. But that ain’t that Twitter shit.”
“No, but a lot of people take URLs—Web address links—from sources like Yahoo News and other services, and they post them on Twitter and other social media platforms. Other people repost the links. Sometimes a news story only reaches a lot of people because of posts on social media. Everyone tweets these days. Even the president.”
“‘Tweets.’ Now ain’t that masculine as all shit?” Homer let loose a big horse laugh. “That’s hilarious. Look at me, Homer fucking Gibbon, public enemy number one, tweeting. That’s funny as balls.”
Goat shifted his position, still defensive but easing the stricture in his muscles. “It would get your story out,” he said. “To the biggest number of people. Millions. All over the world.”
Homer shot him a look. “For real?”
“Absolutely.” Goat paused. “That’s how we got this story out. Billy Trout sent me news feeds from town and I posted them all over the Net so they’d go—”
He chopped off that last word, not daring to say it.
But Homer reached over and jabbed him with a finger. “They’d go … what?”
“Um … there’s an, um, expression that, um…”
“Fucking say it, boy.”
Goat took a breath and said it in a rush. “When social media is used to break a story and it spreads really fast, it’s call ‘going viral.’”
It took Homer a moment to process that, and then he began laughing.
He was laughing so hard that he drove right off the road and slammed into a tree.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
When Gerry Dunphries could walk again, Trout took him back to the big classroom and turned him over to Mrs. Madison. The principal wrapped a blanket around Gerry’s shoulders and led him away.
Billy Trout looked at the children. Despite the sound of hammering and people shouting as they worked in teams to fortify the school, some of the kids were actually sleeping. It amazed him. As exhausted as he was, he was absolutely certain that he could not fall asleep. Not now and maybe never again. Too much possibility of things waiting for him in the dark shadows behind closed eyelids.
There was still no word from Goat, and with every passing minute Trout grew more convinced that it somehow meant that everyone in the school had slid from the frying pan directly into the fire.
Just for the hell of it he tried the satellite phone once more.
Nothing.
“Fuck,” he said, then immediately apologized, though none of the kids seemed to have heard or reacted. He spent a few minutes wandering around checking on the kids, tucking blankets more securely around them, studying their faces to fix them in his mind, pulling names out of the air for as many of them as he could. He saw one face, a black-haired chubby little girl with a beautiful face who slept with her arms wrapped around a small pillow, holding it to her chest as if it was a trusted teddy bear. Trout realized that he knew this girl very well but hadn’t seen her in the crowd before. He’d been to her first birthday party, to her christening. To at least five barbecues at her aunt’s house. Her name was Belle, and she was the only niece of Marcia Sloane, the woman who had handled phones and done research for Regional Satellite News. Marcia was a curvy retro-Goth woman, north of forty but always possessed of a timeless sexual appeal that was a legend throughout Stebbins County. Fiercely intelligent, saucy, and the very best of company under any circumstances.
That realization brought with it the memory of the last time he’d seen Marcia. It was yesterday afternoon while Trout was coming back to Stebbins after interviewing Dr. Volker. By then the outbreak had cut all the way across the town. His last image of Marcia was her pale, torn, snarling face as it vanished below the level of his car’s hood while the Explorer ground her into the mud. That had been the start of it for him, the point at which the wild story he’d gotten from Dr. Volker became the irrefutable reality of Billy Trout’s life.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, uncertain whether he was saying it to the girl, for all she’d lost, or to her aunt for what he’d done to her. Or to everyone, for what they were enduring and what lay ahead.
More deeply saddened than ever, Trout turned and drifted back into the hallway. He caught sight of Dez and called out to her. She turned and began walking toward him. They met at the hall’s midpoint, by a 4H trophy case filled with photos of kids with their awards for best piglet, biggest sow, largest pumpkin. Brightest future.
“Is … is Gerry okay?” she asked tentatively.
“He was in bad shape to begin with, Dez. I don’t think this did him any extra harm.”
“You’re a bad fucking liar, Billy.”
“With the very best intentions.”
Dez considered him for a moment. “Guess you do. And I guess I don’t burn up a lot of calories giving you credit for it.”
They looked at the trophies and listened to the hammering. Echoing down from the second floor they heard Uriah Piper and the teacher, Clark, yelling at each other.
“Billy?”
“Yeah?”
“What happens if we can’t get in touch with Goat?”
“We will.”
“No, what if we can’t. What if something’s happened to him? I mean … if the stuff on those flash drives is that important…”
“I don’t think it matters,” said Trout.
“Why not?”
“When I interviewed Dr. Volker yesterday, he seemed to be pretty sure that Lucifer 113 was unstoppable. If there was a cure, or even notes about a possible treatment on those drives, I’m pretty sure he’d have told me.”
“Then why’d he give them to you at all?”
“So someone would have a record.”
She turned. “A record of what?”
Trout didn’t want to answer the question.
“Of what, Billy?”
He could see the ghost of his own reflection in the glass of the trophy case. “A record of how it all ended.”
“How what all ended?” she demanded, and then she got it. She grabbed his arm and squeezed it hard enough to hurt. “Jesus Christ, are you saying that Volker thought this was going to spread? I mean, really spread? Like a pandemic and shit?”
“That’s what he was afraid of. He thought Homer Gibbon would go right into the ground, buried in a numbered grave behind the prison. Volker planned it that way. The parasites that drive the plague would consume him and then die off for lack of food. It would have ended right there. But when Homer’s aunt claimed his body that changed the dynamic. What should have been some kind of sick punishment for a serial killer became something that kicked open the door to an outbreak.”
Dez’s eyes were as wide as saucers.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
ROUTE 653
BORDENTOWN STARBUCKS
They had no names.
Not anymore.
There were names on cards and licenses in wallets and purses, but those things no longer related to the things that moved and milled inside the coffee shop. Even the faces no longer matched the pictures on the cards. On the driver’s licenses and university IDs, none of the faces was missing flesh, none of the smiles showed broken teeth. None of the clothes were torn and splashed with blood. These figures weren’t those people anymore.
The feeding was done, the hungers shifting from the flesh at hand to the potential of fresher meat elsewhere. The parasitic urges that drove them lost interest when it could no longer detect the signs of life. Breath and rushing blood and a beating heart. Genetic manipulation had ensured this, built it into the organic imperatives that drove these things. Just as the brain chemistry and nerve conduction was repatterned to kill and infect, to feast quickly but not completely, to spread the disease.
That was the only goal.
That was everything.
Though the body ached for food. The minimalized brain moaned in desperation for it, even though there was meat right there. But there was not enough intelligence left even for frustration at the collision of immediate need and driving force.
They bumped into each other without rancor or argument. It happened. They lost balance, recovered, moved on, either toward another collision or toward the door. Eventually it was all toward the door. Toward the movement outside. Lights in the rain. The stink of gasoline fumes, and beneath that was the smell of living meat.
One by one they collided with the heavy glass door, rebounded, hit it again until it open, stepping into the teeth of the storm with their own teeth bared. Unaware of the stinging rain or the hands of wind that tried to push them back. They moved toward the parked cars, sniffed the air, found only trace scents—old scents—but nothing alive. They staggered on through the small parking lot, spreading out, some heading toward the line of red taillights, others toward the line of white oncoming lights.
The first of them that stepped onto the highway was a man with a green apron and a matching billed cap. He had no fingers. They’d all been bitten off. Some by Homer Gibbon, though this man had no idea who that was. He had no thought at all, about Homer or anyone, anything, except the hunger. He stepped off the grassy verge and walked directly into the hazy dark gap between two bright headlights of a UPS tractor trailer going seventy miles an hour.
The impact smashed him into the air and hurled him thirty feet away. It exploded him. Parts of him were flung all the way over the truck. One arm struck the window of a blue Subaru hard enough to crack the glass. The rest of him was pulped beneath the semi’s wheels as the UPS truck tried to brake.
&nb
sp; There was a moment when the truck seemed to defy gravity, to rise like a balloon as mass and momentum and the storm-slick road conjured bad magic in the night. The semi slewed sideways and the trailer hunched up and over it, snapping cables and tearing metal. The two cars behind it, the CNN van, and the Walmart truck behind it punched one-two-three into the twisting truck and into each other. The storm was too violent for that kind of road speed. Everyone knew it, and everyone drove that fast regardless. The storm and the plague killed them for it.
The air above the eastbound lane was filled with a scream of metal and the popping of safety glass, the hiss of tires that were finding no genuine purchase on the wet roads, and the whump-crunch of vehicle hitting vehicle.
Thirty yards away the same vehicular gavotte was imitated on the westbound lane as three of the infected walked into the traffic. Cars and trucks slammed each other into accordion shapes. Other vehicles tried to swerve but there was nowhere to go in that kind of traffic.
On another night when there was no storm and no major crisis, the roads would have been far less crowded. There would have been no rubberneckers, no press, no emergency vehicles, no troop transports, and no cars filled with family and friends trying to get to their missing loved ones in Stebbins.
Cars spun and danced, lifting from the asphalt as big trucks hit them. Airbags popped like firecrackers. Seat belts restrained and they broke and they cut into flesh. The last of the bloody figures from Starbucks moved onto the highway and were crushed by the colliding cars.
Then the symphony of impacts faded out, replaced by the blare of horns and the rising chorus of screams.
For a short time—a precious short time—the infected were unable to attack, each of them defeated by the metal things they had tried to attack to get at the soft food within. The victims of Homer Gibbon’s attacks were crippled and mangled, every last one of them.
It would be nearly six minutes before the first ambulances arrived, filled with EMTs who would see hurt people in the wreckage. Badly hurt and yet somehow still alive. Still moving. The EMTs would work shoulder to shoulder with ordinary civilians, survivors of the wrecks or people who’d been able to stop their cars and rushed forward to help. The EMTs and the civilians would work like heroes to pull the mangled people from the wrecks. To triage them, to stabilize them. To save them. Driven by professional responsibility, they would do everything they could to preserve the lives of the suffering wounded.