Here We Stand (Book 2): Divided (Surviving The Evacuation) (17 page)

“Addison? Seriously?”

“The plan is as deranged as the man was. I don’t know who was behind the outbreak, except I think it was a pre-emptive retaliation in response to the cabal’s earlier plans. They created a vaccine that would be effective against most of the world’s most deadly diseases. They intended to blackmail the planet and destroy those parts of it that wouldn’t bend the knee. As I say, deranged.”

“How do you know this?”

“I tried to stop it,” Tom said. “I failed. They captured me, and I was held in a cell with the president. They killed him.”

“And the conspirators?”

“Addison killed most of them. I shot him in the shadow of that mushroom cloud.”

“Then it’s over?” Russell asked.

“All that’s left is what we can create from the ashes.”

“Why did—” Russell began, but stopped and shook his head. “I don’t care. You can’t promise no more bombs will fall?”

“No.”

“They say the devil is in the details, but if a missile might already be winging its way to this very spot, the details don’t matter. You said you’re heading to the Atlantic coast?”

“I think so. What about you?”

“South and west. Might have to change our plans, but we’ll stick with them for now.”

“Sarge!” Private Jenson called. She was pointing down the road.

“Zombie?” Russell called back.

“Yes, Sarge.”

“Then shoot it. It’s time we left. You could come with us.”

Tom considered it, but there was his last obligation to Max. “No. There’s a place I want to go. That I want to see.”

“I understand. Good luck to you.”

“And to you,” Tom said.

The private fired. It took her three shots to kill the staggering creature. The soldiers piled back into the trucks and drove away.

Tom had considered asking them to come with him to Claire’s house. He was glad he hadn’t. Telling the sergeant the truth, or at least that brief summary, had been wise. If they met others, the story would spread. Perhaps it would prevent any remnant of the cabal from seizing power. A moment’s reflection told him that wasn’t the case. Somewhere, someone would be in a bunker, sworn in when all those above them in the line of succession were assumed dead. Perhaps there were dozens of presidents now, each in their own isolated refuge, all thinking themselves the sole ruler of these devastated states. It hardly mattered. The bombs had wrecked civilization. The zombies would prevent it being rebuilt.

He climbed back in the truck and drove north. He thought about the email he’d sent three weeks before, the warning sent to military commanders and journalists the world over. Perhaps some had read it and heeded its message. Maybe one of them had deliberately changed the targeting on a missile, and that was why it had struck the middle of nowhere, just north of the border. Or maybe not.

“But you’re still alive.”

Chapter 18 - Family First

Washington County, Vermont

Claire Maxwell’s father had been a pilot in the USAF. He’d won the house in a poker game, the legality of which had created a lawsuit that had dragged on until shortly before his death. Claire had said she thought her father had only clung onto life to confirm he really had won. That spoke volumes about the relationship she’d had with the man, so it had always surprised Tom that she’d not sold the property. He suspected it was something to do with her husband’s move into politics. The rambling house offered a home that a governor’s mansion never could. She was the brains in that particular couple, and excelled at personal politics, but she’d never enjoyed it. Her PhD was in archaeology, and her heart was forever in the classical world. Before Tom had asked Max to run for the presidency, she’d said that she didn’t mind him trying politics while the children were young, but as soon as they were old enough to join her excavating ruins, he’d have to resign. After he’d announced his bid for the presidency, she’d smiled and waved, and accompanied him on the campaign. She’d given interviews, and posed for photographs, but he’d always thought she wouldn’t have minded if Max had lost. His victory had meant any trip to Italy or Greece could only ever be a state occasion and a media circus. A journey to Afghanistan or the Middle East would be impossible.

The previous owner of the forty-acre property had called it “the compound.” Tom had been there a few times before the campaign, and a few more during its early days. Back then, Max had been manufacturing credentials as a candidate local to the northeast, rather than as some way-way-out-of-stater.

He got lost twice before he spotted the double-thick chain-link fence topped with razor wire. He slowed, following the road around the property, stopping briefly when he saw the first guard tower. It was empty. He drove on to the main gate.
It was closed, but the sentry box next to it was empty. Tom stopped the truck and got out. He didn’t shout or sound the horn. If there had been anyone nearby they would surely have heard the engine. There was nothing but silence.
He grabbed the shotgun, knowing that the worst of his fears were fact. He didn’t want to confirm them, but knew he had no choice.

His boots clicked on the freshly repaired road as he crossed to the sentry post by the gate. Inside, a man in a suit and tie was sprawled in a chair. His eyes were open, his shirt stained from a neat trio of bullet holes. He’d been there long enough for something to gnaw on his fingers. Not a zombie, but something smaller. Precisely what, Tom couldn’t guess.

Shotgun raised, he stalked toward the house. He saw the second body fifty feet from the gate, lying on a path to the side of the road. It was another Secret Service agent, though she was dressed in more practical, rugged outdoor gear. He recognized the face as someone on Jane’s detail. The agent had been shot in the chest, again three times. Tom stared at the corpse, telling himself he was piecing together the details, collecting evidence. In truth, he was only putting off the inevitable.

He didn’t recognize the third body. Unlike the first two, this one was dressed in military uniform. He rolled the corpse over. It was a man in his late twenties. He’d been shot once in the stomach, and then again in the head. Tom’s brain leaped to a conclusion, but he didn’t want to give voice to it, not yet.

Tom walked up to the house. There were two bodies just inside the hall. One was a man dressed as a soldier. He’d been shot once in the face. The other was the head of Claire’s detail. He stalked through the house, going from room to room, up to the attic, then down to the basement, seeing everything, but not allowing himself to feel a thing. After half an hour, he’d found twelve more bodies. Three wore uniforms, the rest were Secret Service agents.

There was a surveillance post in the basement. From the position of the two agents, dead in their chairs, both facing the now-blank screens, they’d been killed before they’d seen anything to make them raise the alarm. It suggested they’d died first, and that the cabal had someone working on the inside. Perhaps more than one person. With Addison’s involvement, that was more than likely. Missing, however, were Claire, the two children, Jane and Rick, and six members of the protection detail. He went to the back door and looked outside. Behind the house were two old barns. On the path leading to them were two more agents. He pushed open the door and walked toward the buildings. There was an inevitability to what he would find, but it wasn’t inside either of the barns.

Between the barns was a narrow path. Two more agents lay dead along it. The fifth was at the edge of the trees just beyond the buildings. He followed the trail of disturbed leaf litter, occasionally spotted with blood, until he found the sixth agent.

He stopped. There was no obvious trail leading into the woods, but he knew that Claire and the children hadn’t escaped. The chain-link and razor wire built to protect the compound also turned it into a prison. The agents had done their duty, and died to save their protectees, but there were no vehicles in the driveway, nor on the road leading to the property. However the cabal’s soldiers had gotten here, some had driven away. They wouldn’t have left until the job was done. Claire’s body, and those of the children, would be in the woods somewhere nearby. He didn’t want to find them.

He went back to the house and sat in the kitchen – one of the few rooms without a corpse. He’d promised Max he would come and look for Claire. He’d come here and done that small thing, and it didn’t seem enough. On the counter was a photograph of the family, taken before the campaign stylists had gotten their hands on them. They looked happily ordinary, smiling, at ease. The Max in the picture was a far cry from the ragged man he’d seen in the corridor outside their cell. He tried to remember when he’d last seen Claire and the children. He guessed it was a few days before the inauguration, though he couldn’t now remember. Rick had been excited about living in the White House. Jane had been permanently grumpy since realizing, sometime before Christmas, that a move to Washington meant she’d be leaving her friends behind. Claire had been worried, Tom remembered that. Not for herself, but for her family, and how the next four, or perhaps eight, years were going to change them. He put the picture down.

There was another possibility, of course; that the cabal had captured Claire and taken her and the children away. He forced himself to his feet and went looking for the generator. With power restored to the property, he went back to the basement and searched through the security footage.

He saw a Jeep and truck, both painted in desert camouflage, drive up to the gate. It opened. They drove through. The agent in the sentry post must already have been dead. The two vehicles stopped just beyond the guardhouse. Men in uniform jumped out.

By that stage, someone working for Addison must already have killed the agents in the basement. Quite what alerted the rest of the security detail that these weren’t the real military didn’t matter. He skipped forward to the end, four hours after the murderers arrived, and saw four soldiers walking slowly back to their vehicles. Claire and the children weren’t with them.

Tom cycled through the other cameras, trying not to look at the faces of the Secret Service personnel as they died, until he found one positioned on the rear wall of the house. He saw Claire and the two children being hustled toward the barn. He saw an agent turn around and then collapse. Claire disappeared. Tom changed the view until he found a camera on one of the barns. He saw Claire and the children, together with an injured agent, run into the woods. A moment later, three of the uniformed men ran into the forest after them. It was thirty minutes before they returned. Their weapons were held casually as if they were certain there was no threat facing them. He’d seen enough, yet he still hadn’t seen it all.

He forced himself back outside and into the woodland. He walked in a straight line from the barns until he reached the fence, doubling back, trudging through mud, searching for the bodies. Hours passed. A light rain began to fall, and he still hadn’t found them. The rain grew heavier. He ignored it. Lightning cracked and thunder roared.

“They’re dead,” he said. He knew it. Their bodies lay somewhere in the grounds. He tried to tell himself that if he hadn’t found them, they might still be alive, but he knew it wasn’t the case. If they were alive, then the cabal would have destroyed all evidence they’d been there. The bodies of their dead would have been taken, the camera footage destroyed. That it hadn’t suggested a supreme confidence that could only have come from success. He’d promised Max he’d come and look for them. He had and wished he hadn’t. He trudged back to the house.

Listlessly, he searched the kitchen for food. There was lots. More than he could possibly eat, and most of it canned or packaged. He had no appetite. He forced himself to wash, standing in a hot shower, methodically scrubbing at his skin. Max’s wardrobe provided him with clothes.

He went back to the kitchen. The idea of cooking was beyond him, but he was ravenous. He opened a pack of cereal that was more chocolate than grain and ate it dry, watching the rain fall outside.

Chapter 19 - The Prisoner’s Dilemma

March 14
th
, Vermont & Maine

By dawn, the storm had passed on, leaving the skies almost clear and Tom no reason to stay. Before he left, he walked to edge of the woods, but didn’t venture in. Perhaps Claire and the children had escaped. Not destroying the evidence could have been an oversight on the part of the cabal’s killers. He decided to believe the fantasy and take comfort in it.

There was enough food in the compound to feed forty people for a month, and enough fuel to get a convoy to Mexico. He loaded up a Secret Service SUV with enough to get him to Maine, and a thousand rounds of ammunition for a carbine he’d taken from a locker in the surveillance room. After a moment’s consideration of the number of people once living on the American continents, and so the number of zombies he might now face, he added a thousand more. What he didn’t find was a Geiger counter, or much by the way of medical supplies.

“So look for a hospital, and find both,” he murmured as he finished loading the SUV, though beyond aspirin and bandages there was little medical equipment he knew how to use. He left the rest of the ammunition, and everything else in the house, for anyone who might come after him. He hoped that it would keep them alive, but he didn’t leave a note. He no longer saw the point. He drove east.

America stretched out before him. Ruined. Broken. Lifeless. Empty fields, abandoned homes, crashed vehicles; the scenery changed, yet stayed the same. He told himself that there
were
other survivors. The soldiers were proof of that, yet it wasn’t enough. He needed there to be some other, more immediate sign of life.

With his attention only occasionally on the road, he didn’t see the pig until it was almost too late. He stamped on the brakes as it dashed from the undergrowth. The SUV came to a rest ten feet from its snout. The animal’s beady eyes stared at him, and he stared back, baffled. It was a pig, not a boar. From its size, and the bright red tag on one ear, it wasn’t a wild one.

“Where’d you come from?”

It had to be a smallholding or maybe an organic farm, and it had to be nearby. The pig gave a disdainful snort before walking sedately across the road and disappearing into the undergrowth.

A fence must have broken. Or perhaps a dying farmer had released the animals so they could forage and so have a chance at life. It was as likely a story as any other, and the notion pleased him. He decided to believe it was the truth. He reached for the door handle, intending to step outside and see if he could spot the farm. He stopped. There was a reason that animal was running. An obvious threat that it was trying to escape. He put his foot on the gas and continued.

He’d seen few cars – far fewer than during the days before his capture. There were no contrails in the sky, and no voices on the radio. The only humanoid figures he saw were distinctly dead. He’d always considered himself a loner. He’d been happy living alone, dining alone, working alone. Now that there was nowhere to hide from that lie, he saw it for what it was: an excuse for having no one to live, eat, or work with. That was why he’d created Sholto. For that matter, it was why he’d created Tom Clemens. It was why he’d delayed taking revenge for his parents’ death when he’d had the chance. He’d been holding onto the idea that he could have a normal life, even when he knew it was impossible. He’d spurned companionship because nothing based on the lie he lived could ever last. But now, above all, he wanted to see a living person, and know he wasn’t alone. As such, even if it wasn’t for the need to find a Geiger counter, when he saw the sign for the town of Fairview, he decided to stop.

Half a mile from the town, he came to a checkpoint. Five-foot-high corrugated metal sheets stretched across the road, supported at either end by cement-filled oil-drums. It was deserted, at least by the living. Three zombies had been squatting in the road, almost touching the metal barricade. The sound of the engine had woken them from their torpor.

He stopped the vehicle fifty yards away, climbed out and reached for the carbine. He raised it to his shoulder, but hesitated. There was something desolate about the checkpoint and the town beyond. He checked behind and to either side. It did appear that there were only these three zombies in front of him. All wore bright colored fleeces, now covered in a fine coating of mud and dirt. There was nothing unusual in their clothing, yet something felt wrong. He reached for the axe he’d brought from the farm.

One of the zombies had a limp. Tom wondered if the person it had been had sustained an injury, or whether it was something that had occurred since its undeath. It was an idle thought, something to distract his mind from the snapping teeth and clawing hands. He raised the axe, resting it on his shoulder, and walked away from the truck. When he felt he had room enough to swing, he stopped, waiting.

There was a trace of tape around the wrists of the closest zombie. Had that been to keep gloves on, or because the person had been tied up? Had he been tied down after being infected? The zombie was now ten feet away. Tom swung low, a great scything sweep of the axe. The head smashed into the zombie’s leg, ripping away a chunk of decaying muscle. The zombie fell, hitting the concrete jaw-first in a spray of teeth and gore. Tom took a step back, shifting his grip, and then took a step forward. He back-swung the axe into the legs of the second zombie. It fell, toppling onto the first. The third was still twenty feet away. Tom swung up, down, up, and down again, swiftly crushing the skulls of the two fallen zombies, before side-stepping them and walking toward the last. An overhead swing, and he crushed its skull.

“Easier than shooting them,” he murmured. And almost as quick, but the axe was now covered in brown-black gore, and he had nothing with which to clean it. He dropped it on the road, climbed back in the truck, and drove on to the checkpoint.

The metal sheeting was easily pulled back. There was no one beyond, though the presence of disposable paper cups suggested that there had been.

“Recently, too,” he murmured. “I’m no detective, but there’s coffee still in that cup.” It had been watered down by rain, but the cup was only a quarter full. He stared at it for far longer than was necessary.

“That’s right,” he said. “You’re no detective, and you’re not going to leach out any more meaning than that.”

He drove the truck through the barricade and stopped again to drag the metal sheets back into place. It wasn’t for his own protection, but someone had decided the road needed to be blockaded. Was that to keep the zombies out, or perhaps to keep something in?

The road was quickly bracketed by houses. Some doors and windows were open. Clothing and other possessions littered the driveways, suggesting the inhabitants had fled in haste. He saw no one by the time he reached the square at the center of town. Ringed with benches, it was dominated by the statue of a man in a frockcoat and three-cornered hat. On the far side of the square was a grey-stone and white-paint municipal building signposted as being shared by the police, fire service, and mayor. He pulled the truck to a halt by the public entrance and got out.

He resisted the urge to shout and yell. If there’d been people in the town, they would have heard the engine. So where had they gone?

A bloated crow flapped down from a streetlight and landed on the roof of the SUV. It twisted its head so that one beady eye, then the other, could give him an almost curious examination.

“What have you been eating?” Tom asked, and then wished he hadn’t. There were no bodies, at least that he could see. Nor were there bullet holes or other signs that the town had been overrun. He told himself that if the buildings were full of the undead, they would head toward the engine. Even so, he wanted to get out of the town as quickly as possible.

He looked again at the crow. There was another possibility, another method by which all the townsfolk could have died. The presence of the bird was slim comfort against the dread that he’d walked into a hot zone.

“Find the Geiger counter, and get out,” he murmured, repeating it to himself as he headed to the firehouse. The shutters were down, and the door near it was locked, but easily broken. Two gleaming fire trucks were inside. Next to the nearest were buckets and rags from where someone had been cleaning it before their abrupt departure.

He found the Geiger counter in a locker on the furthest truck. It looked unused, almost forgotten. The display was digital, suggesting the municipality’s concern was for accidental spills rather than thermonuclear war. It worked, and that gave him comfort as he deciphered the reading. It was a little above normal. He waved it over himself, then went back outside, and tried the SUV. The reading didn’t change. He aimed the device at the crow. The bird flapped its wings and managed a ponderous few feet of flight before landing heavily on the road. The display stayed the same.

As he relaxed, he realized how tense he’d been. That only left the mystery of where the townsfolk had gone. The desire to leave was still there, but it no longer had the urgency of earlier.

The doors to the police station were unlocked. There was no one at the desk, or inside the small office behind. From the chairs, he doubted the town had more than twenty officers. From the shuttered stores on Main Street, he guessed a population in the low thousands. They hadn’t died from radiation, or all been infected. What did that leave? What if there was something else, some chemical weapon that had been used? And why not? Why would any nation, on having made the decision to unleash the zombie virus, and then a nuclear war, not use everything else in their arsenal?

He grabbed at papers on the desk, rifling through them, scattering them on the ground as he searched for some answer, some vague reassurance. There was nothing. He kicked a bin. It skittered across the floor. After it had come to rest, he heard a sound. Something faint. He raised the carbine, turning, looking around the room, but it was empty. The sound was still there, a beating noise that came from behind a door. And was that a voice?

He crossed to the door. Even without the cautionary signs, he would have known it led to the cells. On the nearest desk were a bundle of keys. He checked the door with the Geiger counter before he unlocked it. Carbine held awkwardly in one hand, he swung the five-inch-thick door open. The smell hit him first. Then the heat. Then the voice.

“Mitch, please, let me out. You’ve got to let me out!” It was desperate, male, young, and beyond terrified.

He propped the door open and retrieved the keys before taking two steps down the corridor. The first three doors were closed and led to sealed rooms. Just beyond, and on opposite sides of the corridor, were two larger, old-fashioned cells with floor-to-ceiling bars. Arms stretched out through one.

“Please, Mitch!”

“Step back from the bars,” Tom called.

“I’m not near them. Who are you?”

“Step back.”

“I’m not by the bars!”

Tom took another step, and a third. He glanced through the small window of the sealed room, but only long enough to confirm it was empty before he returned his attention to those arms. They were causing the knocking. As he got closer, he saw where the skin had been worn away. On the floor, underneath, was a drying brown-red pool.

“Please. Whoever you are, you have to help me!”

“Stand back!” Tom called, not talking to the young man, but to the other figure. He didn’t expect a reply, and as he took another step, and saw her face, knew that she couldn’t.

The zombie turned its sightless eyes toward him. The arms moved more frantically. No sound came from its mouth. Its jaw hung loosely from a wrecked face it had beaten raw against the bars. He glanced at the other cell. A young man in sweat-stained clothing cowered in the corner.

“Stay back,” Tom said as kindly as he could manage. He fired a single shot into the head of the zombie. The creature collapsed.

“Thank you. Thank you,” the man said. “Please. Please let me out.”

“Sure,” Tom said. He took a closer look at the man as he made a production out of finding the correct key. He was unshaven, unwashed, and around twenty-five, with a once-broken nose, and a star-shaped tattoo on the inside of his wrist. His accent wasn’t strong, but nor was it out of place. In his cell were two pallets, one of water, the other of canned food. It was the same in the cell across the corridor. From the abrasions on the bars, and the broken can opener, the man had tried to cut his way out with the kitchen implement.

“What happened to the town?” Tom asked. “Where’s everyone else?”

“They took shelter,” the man said. “Because of the bombs. To avoid the radiation.”

“Where?”

“The old mine.”

“A mine?” Addison’s guards had said something about a mine, but surely this was too far north. There were plenty of mines in America. “Why didn’t you go with them?”

“Because I’m not from around here,” he said. “That’s all. She was the same. They left us here to die from radiation.”

Tom tried a key he knew wouldn’t fit. “There’s no radiation here.” He tapped the Geiger counter.

“Then the bombs didn’t fall? They were lying?” the man asked.

“No, they fell. At least two of them,” Tom said. He tried another key that was the wrong shape and size. He wasn’t sure if he should let the man out. It wasn’t the mention of a mine that was making him hesitate. It was the presence of the water and food in the cell. Whoever had locked the man up hadn’t wanted him to starve, yet didn’t want him to come with them to safety. Equally, they hadn’t simply let him go. The only alternative to freeing the man was to find the mine, and the people therein. Assuming they were alive. Assuming they weren’t all undead.