“‘Harry!’ I yelled at him. ‘Don’t!’”
“‘I have to. You don’t know what will happen to me otherwise.’
“The gunshot was loud on the phone, louder than I expected. I heard the phone drop, and then the sound of the door smashing in and a howling noise. It sounded like his office was being torn apart. Then the phone went dead.” The expression of bitter grief on her face gave me the shudders. She wasn’t just telling us this; she was reliving it.
“I didn’t know what he’d been screaming about, and I had no idea what that noise had been. But I’ve learned, over the years, to trust my gut. Better, I knew to trust him. I packed my bag, turned in the hotel key, and got the hell out of there. I didn’t know how much time I had, so I ditched the trailer with my motorcycle in the parking lot and left in the truck. I was on the road twenty minutes after his phone call. I called Bryan and my stepson answered. I told him I was on my way back north and he needed to keep one eye on the news. I turned on NPR, and less than an hour later the first reports came in. I set my speedometer for ninety miles an hour and drove without stopping for eight hours, taking back roads. I got here in less than twelve hours. By then the infection had spread to Baltimore and D.C. The island had a meeting in the schoolhouse, and I told them what I knew. We started planning the wall that night. Two of our people are general contractors, so we took all of our trucks to their sites and loaded up as much construction material as we could fit, load after load for eighteen hours straight. After that, it was only about a month and a half before the plague reached Burlington. We’ve been walled up here ever since.”
“Fuck me, that’s hideous,” Doc said hoarsely.
She leaned forward and speared each of us with her intense gaze. Pierre had lit candles after the sun fell and it was in their flickering light that she stared us down. “Doctor Morano condemned our entire world to satisfy her ego. I don’t think she released the zombies because I started asking questions. Harry had told me a few days before I confronted him that the funding was going to get cut in the bioweapons program. The staff were subject to the same furlough as every other DA civilian. Morano released her test subjects because she didn’t want to lose her job.” She leaned back, bitter. “Six and a half billion people are either dead or in some grotesque half-dead limbo because one woman wanted to play God at her own whim and get paid to do it.”
“It can’t be that simple.” Red protested. “There’s no way she could do something that horrible just to keep her job.”
“Hitler became Hitler because he couldn’t get into art school.” Brit said grimly. “Sometimes it is that simple, Injun.”
“And the Army is still paying her.” I breathed. “She’s been crisscrossing the country, testing ‘cure’ after ‘cure.’ It must all be an act.”
“Remember the VX nerve agent that killed Mya?” Brit reminded me. “She probably did it as much in the hopes of killing us as to see if it worked on the Zs.”
“She’s a sadist.” Doc said. “She gets off on inflicting pain. It must be a wet dream, to wake up every day and know she made this world.”
“I’m going to kill her.” I said simply, my wife’s face hovering again in my mind. “I’m going to wrap my hands around her throat and choke her to death slowly.”
“Get in line,” Brit said, grimly.
Hart stood up and leaned over in the Sergeant Major’s face. “Goddamn YOU to hell. You could have called it in, could have stopped it at the start. You ran. You fucking coward.” She slapped the Sergeant Major hard across the face, knocking her out of her chair, then ran from the room, tears streaming down her face. Red got up and followed her out.
“I suppose I deserved that. Not that it would have made any difference. You know how fast it spreads.” She rubbed her face where the imprint of Hart’s big hand was turning red. “Still, she’s right.”
Ahmed broke the uncomfortable silence that followed. “So, now what?”
Chapter 25
Outside the room there was a large crash, followed by a gunshot. Then the door burst in, and we were staring down the barrel of an old Thompson submachine gun. The .45 caliber barrel looked like a train tunnel, and it was pointed directly at me. Behind it stood Pierre, glaring at all of the team. Behind him, on the floor, I could see Hart buried under a pile of bodies, and Red was slumped on the floor, blood running from his forehead, smoking .22 still clutched in his hand. One of the islanders sat next to him on the floor, holding his arm where, I learned later, Red’s shot had cut a groove out of the muscle.
The Sergeant Majors’ voice rang out like a pistol shot. “STOP!” Ahmed immediately lifted his gun into the air; it had had appeared in the instant Pierre had kicked the door in. Pierre looked over at McIntyre. “Madame, are you alright? We saw the woman strike you, on the camera, and got here as fast as we could. I had to hit the Indian with my gun stock.”
“I’m fine, Pierre. A misunderstanding among old soldiers, that is all.” He stepped back, lowering his gun but still eyeing us warily. Brit rushed into the hall, where Pierre’s men were getting up from the prone figure of Hart. She kneeled in front of Red and lifted his eyelid, checking his pupils, then gave me a thumbs-up sign. Despite the blood running from her own split lip, Hart knelt next to her and started pressing a bandage to his forehead.
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I had been holding. Pierre’s finger had been on the trigger, and my stomach was a knot. Damn, that was close. He would have swept the whole room with .45 caliber slugs. Ahmed may have gotten him, but not before he had me and maybe someone else. I was getting too old for this crap. I waved my hand in a stand down sign to the team.
“You have very loyal people, Sergeant Major McIntyre.”
She looked at Ahmed, putting his pistol back in its holster, then at Ziv, who was placing a steak knife back down on the table. He had had it held back over his shoulder, about to throw it at Pierre. “So do you, Sergeant First Class Agostine.”
“Well, I’m glad that didn’t end badly. Though I think Red is going to have a bit of a headache in the morning. “
“I will have Doctor Brundage keep an eye on him. After all, we all know how important Specialist Redshirt is, don’t we?” She raised her eyebrows at me.
I looked at Doc. He looked back, understanding my thoughts exactly. She knew about Redshirts’ immunity to the infection, and Doc understood the look I had given him. If the next minute didn’t go well, Doc would give the word for the team to kill everyone in the room, and anyone in the way as we got the hell out of Dodge. I tensed up, and my voice turned cold.
“I don’t know what you‘re talking about, Sergeant Major.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Nick. We ran blood tests on everyone. Brundage told me before dinner. I congratulate you on keeping him safe from the authorities for so long.”
I knew what this meant to her. If they took Red and turned him over to Doctor Morano, the island’s safety was assured. Weapons, ammo, food. Whatever they wanted. I studied her lined face for a moment, noticing the creases around her eyes, and I took a chance.
“Thanks. I trust you will keep our secret.” She looked back at me, and her face broke into the smile that I had seen worn into her eyes. No one who smiled and laughed often enough that it wore into the lines in their face could be evil. Hard, yes, but not evil.
“Of course. I would see Morano in hell before I turned over anyone to her experiments. I would suggest that after she is dead, you allow us to send our sample of his blood into the government. We can say it was from one of our islanders who died from an accident. Drowned, unfortunately, his body never recovered.”