Resurrection Express (44 page)

“I’ve heard that from a lot of people lately.”

“It ain’t how many times you hear it in a day, son . . . it’s who says it at the
end
of the day. Think about it.”

He gets even closer now. His next words burning right in my face.

“Think about it
really hard
.”

Shit.

Are these people really on the level?

Is this some other elaborate mind trip?

And does it even matter?

“I saw the bunker,” I tell him. “Part of it, anyway. Jenison recorded a message for me. The guy smashed the iPad when it was over . . . but she was standing in the sleep chamber, whatever you call it. I saw it in the video. It was all women in the tubes. And my wife was there with them.”

“You saw the cryo-freeze?”

“It wasn’t like that. Something more advanced. Fluid breathing systems.”

“Why was your wife there?”

“Hartman must have sold her to them. Or maybe she just got too close.”

“God knows how many they have down there. All ready to repopulate the earth after they blow it to hell.”

A wave of unreality crashes over me. “It’s completely insane. Even with all the bombs we have, it couldn’t possibly wipe out everyone on the planet.”

The colonel grins big, without humor. “We have enough W70 MOD3 warheads on this side of the line to level the planet
several hundred times over
. In a best-case scenario, we’re talking about eighty-five percent of the world’s population dead by exposure to high-level radiation emission within forty-eight hours of the first bomb burst.”

“We’re not just aiming our missiles at Russia or the Middle East anymore,” Heather chimes in. “There’s a big ugly world out there.”

“They’re maniacs,” I whisper. “This whole wiping-the-slate thing they have in mind . . . starting over with the chosen few or whatever . . . it would
never work
.”

“Well, they sure as hell think it can,” Morales says. “The idea is that with eighty-five percent dead on arrival, the remaining fifteen percent will starve in the wreckage and destroy themselves within five years. By then, the radiation would be long gone, and you’d have acceptable damage losses in the big cities. Full-out nukes would make that theoretically impossible.”

I picture it:

Half-wasted buildings and abandoned superhighways, littered with bodies.

Fields filled with human wreckage, vaporized and rotted.

A sea of bones and concrete.

And then they put their machine to work, claiming what’s left. Their network of shelters, all full of soldiers and scientists and young bodies on ice, ready to have babies.

All opened wide, like the gates of Eden.

“They lit the fuse last night,” Heather says. “We’re not sure how. They were keeping you alive in the hospital because they thought they might need you, but they ordered your death as soon as they activated the system.”

“They must’ve recovered the missing disc from the fire. After I blew it up.”

Or maybe Franklin survived with the package.

After all, I never really saw him die with my own eyes—he might have had time to jump while I was rubbing it in his face on the phone.

Maybe I didn’t kill him at all.

“Exactly
how it happened
doesn’t matter now,” the colonel says. “The tactical grid that guides our W79 missiles has been completely rerouted. New coordinates. Our own soil is target zero. Then everyone else. Their people acted fast when the orders came down. It’s been a bloodbath.”

“A
real
bloodbath,” Heather says, pointing at the monitors. “We’ve had to shoot it out with a few of them.”

“Panic in the year zero,” I whisper.

“More like a very well-planned military coup,” the colonel says. “The president hasn’t even had time to organize a press conference, but they’re going live soon with an official denial. That won’t matter, either. Fifty-three of our silos in the northwestern United States are computer controlled. Our submarines act on encrypted code numbers. They’ve already received their orders and gone into communications blackout. Which means they won’t back off unless they get the official recall sequence.”

My next words come nearly paralyzed now:

“They’ll see our missiles coming, won’t they? The bad guys, I mean. They’ll panic and cut loose on us with everything they’ve got.”

Horror, is what this is.

Sheer final horror.

“The new W79s are stealth bombs,” the colonel says. “They might see us, they might not. But there’s no doubt that the cow patties are about to hit the fan, one way or another. Resurrection has covered all the bases. Their computer is still running the game. We have to stop these psychos and we only have three hours left to do it. It’s brushing off every attack our hackers throw at it. The people who designed the application knew exactly what they were doing, and its gonna kill us all. You have to
help me
.”

Yes.

That’s why they brought me here.

The question Heather almost got to ask me, before they started shooting.

The colonel almost has a trace of fear in his voice now:

“
You
were the hacker who went deep into the system guarding that vault. You were the only one who made it out alive. Lieutenant Stone says you brought back the coordinates to the main bunker.”

“Yes. I memorized them.”

“She was able to tell us that the target is somewhere in northeast Wyoming. Says she saw it on a GPS. That’s why we’ve set up shop on this base. But we don’t have the exact location. And we don’t have time to finish combing the state. It’s almost all over.”

“Fancy, that.”

“No jokes, son. My men have to go in and talk directly to their machine, and the recall numbers will only work for another three hours. It’s a last-ditch fail-safe window they put in, just in case. When the window closes, the damage is permanent.”

Christ.

They have it all there, at ground zero.

They built an invisible fortress, and created some sort of supercomputer to wipe out the whole world, right in the center of it. They had every smart guy they could find building it for them. Hartman had the keys to it—along with a road map guarded by the most treacherous digital security system ever built. It was his golden ticket. And I’ve been carrying the ticket in my head ever since.

You didn’t put the map there because you were crazy, David.

You put it there for insurance.

It would have made you untouchable.

You could have been the man who sold the world.

•  •  •

“S
o your plot is to attack the fortress with everything you’ve got? How do you plan on keeping that quiet?”

The colonel cracks a dismissing grin when I say that.

“We don’t. We’re not exactly worried about
quiet
right now . . . but if we do somehow manage to make it out of this alive, let’s just say we’ve got people standing by to deal with any media leaks.”

“Very serious people,” Morales says.

“Even with a press blackout, an attack this big would be on YouTube within hours,” I say.

“Don’t make me laugh,” the colonel says. “You think some yokel with a phone camera out in the middle of nowhere is gonna compromise national security?”

“It’s happened before,” I say.

“And we dealt with it then, too,” Morales says.

Yeah, I bet you did. Just like those cops who kick in the doors of suspected protestors. The secret police who keep a lid on everything. Just like the public, who always buy it anyway.

Doesn’t matter now.

What matters now is my wife.

She’s down there with them.

Jenison grabbed her and put her there.

That’s where she is.

“Send me in with your boys,” I tell them. “I can break their computer in half.”

“We have our own people for that,” Heather says. “Just give us the numbers. There’s no time.”

“No. It has to be me.”

The colonel gets huge eyes, looking right at me. But he keeps his voice steady, scary. “Have you
lost your mind,
son? We’re talking about the end of the goddamn world. You helped them make it happen.”

“And you slaughtered your way to me so I could bail you out, so you have just as much blood on your hands as I do. I go in with you . . . or no deal.”

“This isn’t a
deal
. This is goddamn
war
. Give us the location or I’ll have my men hold you down and make you give it to us.”

Morales passes a concerned look to Heather.

She almost blinks.

“That kind of persuasion doesn’t work on me,” I say, looking right at her. “You’d know that if you really did your homework. It’ll take a long time to break me, and you don’t have that time. None of us do.”

“I’m not kidding. I’ll do what I have to.”

“So will I.”

“You
ain’t
going in with my boys. As far as any of us know, you could still be one of Jenison’s.”

I look at Heather. “Do you believe that? After everything we went through—
do you really believe that
?”

I almost see a trace of that frightened liar from the dollhouse appear in her steel expression. But it’s gone quickly.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” she says.

“She’s damn right about that,” the colonel huffs out. “Now . . . I’m gonna tell you one more thing about my daughters. They’re very precious to me. My family is precious to me. That’s why I’m a soldier. I’m here to protect them. And right now you’re standing in the way of that. Are you starting to get the picture?”

“Yeah, maybe I am. But can I ask you something?”

“No. This is not a conversation. This is
you
telling
me
what I want to know.”

I ignore him. Straighten my spine and lean forward, the cords in my neck snapping back, the muscles in my legs tightening, the sickness in my guts and my heart a dull ache that drives me forward.

I look right in his eyes.

“I just want to know one thing, Colonel . . . do you or your daughters know what it’s like to eat garbage on the street?”

“I’m not listening to—”

“Shut up. You have to listen. You have no choice—and you know it. You wouldn’t have brought me all the way out here and put me in this room if you did have a choice. I might have died on this slab and we’d all be screwed
. So listen to me
.”

His face freezes.

Gotcha.

We size each other up. I see him like I see a prize opponent in a fistfight. Circle him, using my mind. He knew it would be this way. He
has
done his homework on me.

I see it right on his face.

I let loose with everything I have left.

It all comes down to this.

“You see, Colonel . . . I’m a guy who ate garbage when he was a kid. And people like me go along with the program because we think it’s all in the name of something bigger, something better. That’s all bullshit, isn’t it? Just some lie told to us by a politician. By people like you. Soldiers who get away with wading through bodies. When it comes down to it, all this is
really
about . . . is dead game.”

The colonel makes a confused face.

He’s listening to me because he has no choice.

“That’s what Jenison said we all are. That’s why we’re doing this, all of us. That’s why they want to blow up the world, that’s why you want to save it. We’re the dogs who are ripped apart and don’t even know we’re dead. My
wife
is down in that bunker with those psychopaths. And I’m the only one who knows where it is. So I’m going down there with you . . .”

I flex my legs and . . .

. . . I stand up.

For the first time in forever.

For the first time in my life.

“. . . or you can sit right there and watch yourself die.”

My words hit him in his face like the hardest punch I’ve ever thrown.

Then he grabs me by the throat.

•  •  •

I
face it standing up, but my legs are the first thing to go, vanishing into a bottomless nothing. His boys are all over me at once. I fight them, but my legs are weak, my arms like licorice. The half-healed wound in my side stings like razors between my ribs.
They rip away what’s left of the blue hospital gown and pin me down on the gurney. The fight goes out of me fast.

I don’t flinch at all.

I don’t beg.

I don’t scream.

•  •  •

H
eather—or Lieutenant Stone, or whatever her name is—she doesn’t look happy about any of this. She takes a few steps forward as Morales manhandles me from the back, cutting off the circulation to my upper arms, freezing me there.

I am naked and crucified.

The colonel looms over me, flicking open a nasty serrated jackknife. “A man with nothing to lose is a dangerous man, ain’t he?”

“You’re real brave,” I hack at him.

“You think you could kick my ass in a straight fight? That, I’d love to see.”

“I bet you would.”

He moves the blade down my chest, not quite touching the skin.

“You’re no better than Jenison,” I tell him. “You
get off on it,
don’t you?”

“This is war. We do what we have to do.”

“You said that already.”

“I don’t think you were listening very well.”

The blade, almost to my waist now.

His face, stone hard.

“You can save your speeches and your indignation for someone who hasn’t been on the front lines. I’ve seen my commanders blow away whole
countries
. Shitholes you’ve never even heard of. I didn’t like it, but those were my orders.”

He shifts his weight forward, gets right in my face.

The blade held right over my manhood.

“See, that’s where you’re
wrong
about people like me,” he says. “We’re different than politicians. We do believe in something. Discipline. Honor and duty. The survival of the human race.”

“Doesn’t make you any better than a maniac.”

“You may be right . . . but I act on orders because without a chain of command, it all falls to shit, son. We’re down there in the jungle with anarchy. Down there with Resurrection Express. And right now my orders are to go in there and kick
their
asses. By any means necessary.”