A hundred yards downstream from the vanished command post, Peter, Apgar, and Jock found themselves boxed in. Behind them, the catwalk’s failure continued, span by span; ahead, the virals were coming toward them. No flight of stairs lay within reach.
“Oh, hell,” said Apgar. “I always hated doing this.”
They unfurled the ropes over the side. Jock was no fan of heights, either; the incident on the mission roof had scarred him for life. Yet it was also true that in the last twenty-four hours a change had occurred. He had always believed himself to be a flimsy man, a chip in the current of life. But since the birth of his son, and the burst of love this had produced, he had discovered within himself a solidity of character he had never thought possible, an expanding sense of life’s importance and his place within its web. He wanted to be a man of whom it could be said that he had put others before himself and died in their defense. Thus the newly inducted and personally transformed Private Jock Alvado shoved his terror aside, stepped over the rail, and turned his back on the maw of space below him; Peter and Apgar did the same.
They jumped.
A hundred feet with only the friction of their hands and feet to slow them: they landed hard on the packed dirt. Peter and Apgar came up quickly, but Jock did not. He had sprained, perhaps broken, his ankle. Peter pulled him upright and threw the man’s arm over his shoulder.
“Christ, you’re heavy.”
They ran.
The basement was a death trap.
As Sara ran for the door, a scream volleyed behind her, sharp, like metal being cut, then the room erupted in cries. She was carrying a little girl; she had scooped her up without thinking. She would have carried more if she could; she would have carried them all.
Jenny reached the door first. People were surging behind her. Suddenly the woman couldn’t move; the weight of panicked bodies had immobilized her, pressing her against the metal. She was yelling for people to back away but could scarcely be heard. The shrieks of the children were like the highest notes of a scale, impossibly shrill.
The door burst open; a hundred people attempted to cram through at once. Blind instinct had taken hold—to flee, to survive whatever the cost. People were falling, children being trampled underfoot. Virals ricocheted around the room, flinging themselves from wall to wall, victim to victim. Their enjoyment was obscene. One was carrying a child in its mouth and shaking it like a dog with a rag. As Sara wedged through the door, a faceless woman wrenched the little girl from her arms and shoved ahead, knocking her to the floor at the base of the stairs. People were thundering past. A familiar face emerged from the chaos: Grace, holding her baby. She was huddled against the wall of the stairwell. Upstairs, guns were popping. Sara gripped the woman by the sleeve to make her look at her.
Stay with me, hold my hand.
Jenny and Hannah were waving to her from the top of the stairs. Sara half-pulled, half-dragged Grace to the lobby. Beyond the doors, a fierce battle raged. Children were screaming, mothers were huddled with their children, no one knew where to go. A few were running blindly out the door, into the heart of it. The virals were behind them and coming up the stairs.
A huge crash: the front of the building detonated inward. Bricks, shards of glass, splintered plywood went flying. Suddenly an army five-ton was standing in the lobby. Hollis was at the wheel.
“Everybody, get in!”
Amy covered Alicia’s body with her own. Her army was dying; she felt them leaving her, souls draining into the ether.
You did not fail me,
she thought.
It was I who erred. Go peacefully—at last you are free.
Fanning’s virals broke through. Amy buried her face against Alicia’s neck, holding her close. It would happen quickly, faster than light. She thought of Peter, then of nothing at all.
It felt as if they were inside a flock of birds; as if the air around them had turned into a million flapping wings.
From the roof of the orphanage, Caleb watched the city die.
He had heard the catwalk collapse, a terrific crash. The scene before him possessed an odd quality of disconnection. It was as if he were observing events that did not wholly pertain to him, unfolding at a great remove. Though when the shooting started, he knew, he would feel differently. Twenty-five men: how long could they last?
The gunshots faded, the flash of fired rounds, the pitiable, anguished screams. The city was sliding into silence, a place of ghosts. A moment of stunning quiet; then a new sound accumulated. Caleb pressed his eyes to the binoculars. An army five-ton, draped in canvas, was roaring toward them from the square, flanked by a pair of Humvees. The men on the turrets were firing wildly, others shooting through the windows of the cab. Simultaneously Caleb became aware of a second, more compact movement to his right. He swung his lenses around. Impenetrable darkness; then two figures appeared. A third man was being carried.
Apgar.
His father.
They would intersect with the truck near the front of the building. Caleb’s feet barely touched the ladder as he descended. One of the Humvees veered away from the other vehicles; virals were clinging to it. It crashed onto its side and began to roll, like an animal trying to shake off a swarm of hornets. The five-ton was moving too quickly; it was going to crash into the building. At the last second, the driver cut the wheel to the left and screeched to a stop.
Hollis leapt from the cab, Sara from the bed. Everyone was grabbing children and hauling them through the door. Caleb vaulted over the sandbags and raced toward his father and the general.
“Take him,” his father said.
Caleb threaded an arm around the injured man’s back. The situation took shape in Caleb’s mind: the orphanage would be their final stand. In the dining room, Sister Peg waited by the open hatch. The woman was holding a rifle. The sight was so odd that Caleb’s mind simply rejected it. “Hurry!” Sister Peg yelled. His father and Apgar were ordering men to take positions at the windows. Hands reached up through the opening in the floor to help the children, who funneled into the hatch with a slowness painfully out of sync with everything else that was occurring. People were pushing and shoving, women screaming, babies crying. Caleb smelled gasoline. An empty fuel can lay on its side on the floor, a second by the pantry door. Their presence made no sense—it was in the same category of unaccountable details as Sister Peg’s rifle. Men were hurling dining chairs through the windows. Others were upending tables to act as barricades. All the things of the world were colliding. Caleb took a position at the closest window, pointed his rifle into the darkness, and began to fire.
For Peter Jaxon, last president of the Texas Republic, the final seconds of the night were nothing he had anticipated. Once the catwalk had begun its collapse, and the nature of the situation had become clear to him, he wholly intended to die. This was the only honorable outcome he could foresee. Amy was gone, his friends were gone, the city was gone, and he had only himself to blame. Surviving Kerrville’s destruction would be an unthinkable disgrace.
The last of the civilians had descended through the hatch, but would the door hold? Judging from the events of the last ten minutes, Peter could only conclude that, like everything else, it was bound to fail. Fanning, however he’d done it, knew everything.
Still, one had to try. Symbolism counted for something, as Apgar had said. The virals were amassing outside; they would storm the building as a horde. Still firing from the window, Peter ordered the men to fall back to the shelter; they had nothing left to defend except themselves. Many were out of ammo, anyway. A final shot from Peter’s rifle and the charger locked back. He cast the gun aside and drew his pistol.
“Mr. President, time to go.”
Apgar was standing behind him.
“I thought you were calling me Peter now.”
“I mean it. You need to get down that hole right now.”
Peter squeezed off a round. Maybe he connected, maybe not. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Peter would never be sure what Apgar had hit him with. The butt of his pistol? The leg of a broken chair? A thud at the back of his skull and his legs melted, followed by the rest of him.
“Caleb,” he heard Apgar say, “help me get your father out of here.”
His body lacked all volition; his thoughts were like slick ice, impossible to hold. He was being dragged, then lifted, then lowered once again. He felt, oddly, like a child, and this feeling morphed into a memory—an impossible memory, in which he was a little boy again, not merely a boy but an infant, being passed from hand to hand. He saw faces above him. They floated enormously, their features bloated and vague. He was being laid upon a wooden platform. A single face came into focus: his son’s. But Caleb wasn’t a boy anymore, he was a man, and the situation had reversed. Caleb was the father and he the son, or so it seemed. It was a pleasant inversion, inevitable in its way, and Peter felt happy that he had lived long enough to see this.
“It’s all right, Dad,” Caleb said, “you’re safe now.”
And then the light went out.
Apgar slammed the hatch and listened as the bolts sealed from inside.
“You could have gone,” said Sister Peg.
“So could you.” He rose and looked at her. Everything felt suddenly calm. “The gas was a good idea.”
“I thought so, too.”
“Ready?”
Sounds above: the virals were tearing through the roof. Apgar lifted a rifle from the floor, checked the magazine, and shoved it back into the well. Sister Peg withdrew the box of matches from the pocket of her tunic. She struck one, tossed it. A river of blue flame snaked along the floor, then separated, running in several directions.
“Shall we?” Apgar said.
They walked briskly down the hall. Thick smoke was boiling up. At the door they halted.
“You know,” said Sister Peg, “I think I’ll stay after all.”
His eyes searched her face.
“I think it’s best this way,” she explained. “To be … with them.”
Of course that’s what she would want. To affirm his understanding, Apgar cupped her chin, leaned his face forward, and kissed her lightly on the lips.
“Well,” she managed. Tears rose to her throat. She had never been kissed by a grown man before. “I didn’t expect that.”
“I hope you didn’t mind.”
“You always were a lovely boy.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
She took his hands and held them. “God bless and keep you, Gunnar.”
“And you as well, Sister.”
Then he was gone.
She faded back into the hall. In the dining room, flames were leaping up the walls; the smoke was dense and swirling. Sister Peg began to cough. She lay down on the hatch. Her time in the physical world was ending. She had no fear of what would come, the hand of love into which her spirit would pass. Fire took the building in its grip. The flames shot up, consuming all. As the smoke snaked inside her, Sister Peg’s mind filled up with faces. Faces by the hundreds, the thousands. Her children. She would be with them again.
All around the building, the virals were watching. They stood in abeyance, the glow of the flames glazing their denuded faces. They had been vanquished; fire was a barrier they could not cross. Still they waited, ever hopeful. The hours passed. The building burned and burned and burned some more. The embers were still glowing when dawn came, a blade of light sweeping over the silent city.
X
The Exodus
To war and arms I fly.
—RICHARD LOVELACE,
TO
LUCASTA, GOING
TO
THE
WARS
73
“Greer.”
He was dead to the world. In a different one, a voice was calling his name.
“Lucius, wake up.”
He jerked to consciousness. He was sitting in the cab of the tanker. Patch was standing on the runner board by the open door. Through the windshield, a foggy dawn.
“What time is it?” His mouth was dry.
“Oh-six-thirty.”
“You should have woken me up.”
“What do you think I just did?”
Greer stepped down. The water was still, birds swooping low over its glassy surface. “Anything happen while I was asleep?”
Patch shrugged in his wiry way. “Nothing major. Just before sunrise, we saw a small pod working its way down the shore.”
“Where?”
“Base of the channel bridge.”
Greer frowned. “And this didn’t strike you as important?”
“They never came all that close. It didn’t seem worth the trouble to wake you.”
Greer got in his truck and drove down the isthmus. Lore was standing on the dock, hands perched on her hips, studying the hull. The repair was nearing completion.
“How long till we fill?” he asked.
“Three, maybe four hours.” She raised her voice. “Rand! Watch that chain!”
“Where is he?” Greer asked.
“Quonset hut, I think.”
He found Michael sitting at the shortwave.
“Kerrville, come back, please. This is Isthmus station.” A momentary pause and he repeated the call.
“Anything?” Greer asked.
Michael shook his head. His expression was blank, his mind far away in worry.
“I have some other news. A viral pod was sighted near the bridge a while ago.”
Michael turned sharply. “Did they approach?”
“Patch says no.”
Michael sat back. He rubbed his face with a heavy hand. “So they know we’re here.”
“It would seem so.”
The bolts were still too hot to touch. Peter was standing on the platform just below the hatch. His mind had cleared, but his headache felt like an ice pick buried in the back of his skull.
“It’s got to be light out,” Sara said. “What should we do?”
Caleb and Hollis were there as well. Peter scanned their faces; both wore the same expression: of weariness and defeat, the power of decision beyond them. None had slept a wink.