Amy didn’t really know where Dan was taking them. She hoped he knew. But after all she had suffered and seen, she wondered if there was such a thing as a safe place anymore.
Her stomach growled. There was food in abandoned establishments and stores throughout the city; the trouble lay in stopping to get it. They had learned that fact quickly and the hard way. The diseased were good at hiding and they seemed to be everywhere.
Amy fished around in her jacket pockets and retrieved half of a candy bar she’d looted the one time they had stopped earlier that day. The boy watched her hungrily but said nothing. She broke off a large chunk and offered it to him. He snatched it from her and sat back, chewing it and smacking his lips. Katherine watched but showed no signs of caring. She must be hungry too, Amy thought, but she doesn’t show it like we do.
“We’ll be there soon,” Dan muttered, more to himself than to his passengers. “We’ll get help. You’ll see. Everything will be fine.”
Amy hoped he was right. She knew that Dan was on the verge of a breakdown and wasn’t at all lucid, but nonetheless she hoped.
8
President Clark stood on the White House lawn. He could hear the howls of the poor souls outside the massive walls encircling the yard. General Wiggins’s soldiers lined the barrier, shooting any of the things that were smart enough to devise a way over.
Early last night, people had begun to flock to the walls, seeking entrance and refuge. They were all long dead or changed by now, no longer human at all by his definition. They were monsters, soulless automatons who wanted nothing more than to rip his throat open with their bare hands. He could no longer force himself to feel pity for these creatures, but he did mourn for the people they once were. They had been his people after all, his nation, and they had trusted him. This is where he had led them.
He had refused Wiggins’s pleas to leave the night before, hoping that his permanent post would give people hope and help calm the rioting and looting. At least in D.C. He’d been wrong—he saw that now. The city was dead, his presence pointless.
He wondered if he had waited too long to take Wiggins’s advice. The White House walls were surrounded by the creatures, six or seven rows deep, pushing and clawing to get inside. Hundreds had been crushed in the stampede, too many to count. It was as if all of Washington was out there.
Some of Wiggins’s men were working around the clock to convert the vehicles inside the interior parking area into an armored motorcade, a convoy capable of piercing the ranks outside the wall.
Def-con installation IV was where Wiggins intended to head. Originally built to provide shelter from a nuclear holocaust, it was the closest functioning base, set deep in the mountains of North Carolina. Perhaps there they could find the answers to this mess and end the nightmare. With luck, they could build a new start for the world.
Clark jumped as a firm hand grasped his shoulder from behind.
“Everything is ready, sir,” said General Wiggins. “We’re just waiting for you.”
Clark nodded absently. “What the hell are we going to do, General?”
“Survive, Mr. President. My job is to get you out of here to Def-Con IV, and I’m going to do it.”
Wiggins led Clark to where the convoy had assembled just inside the southern gate. Five cars and two trucks comprised the fleet, civilian but covered in makeshift armor. Three of the cars no longer had roofs. They had been cut off to accommodate large .50 caliber emplacements, the kind normally mounted on the rear of army jeeps equipped for field duty. Bulky wedges of steel, shaped like battering rams, were welded onto the grilles of both trucks. The whole convoy looked like something out of that Mel Gibson flick about desert dwellers fighting for gas after the collapse of society. Clark didn’t know whether to break into tears or roll on the grass laughing.
“You ready, sir?” Wiggins asked, escorting the president to the second truck in the line. “It could get a bit hairy out there.”
“I am as ready as I will ever be, General.”
“Then let’s get the show on the road,” Wiggins said, laughing. He opened the door for the president, then walked off toward the lead truck.
As Clark watched him go, he couldn’t help but think of the people they were leaving behind: Dr. Buchanan, most of the civilian staff. The convoy could only hold so many people, and Wiggins had allotted most of the space to military and security personnel. Clark gritted his teeth; Wiggins had no right to jeopardize so many lives just to protect him, but to the general and his soldiers, it was their duty. The United States lived on as long as the president was alive, and in a way Clark was forced to admit they were right.
Besides, he almost thought Dr. Buchanan preferred being left behind. The scientist had claimed the energy field trapped in Earth’s atmosphere was changing. Apparently, the aspects of the energy that had crippled mankind’s technology would soon pass—”Two to four days, tops,” Buchanan had said—but that was the only ray of hope; the energy field showed no other signs of decay. Buchanan surmised that the energy was permanent, or close enough not to matter.
And worse, his most recent data showed that only eight percent of the world population was immune to the biological effects of the field. When Clark asked why most of the White House staff was as of yet unaffected, Buchanan answered that some humans possessed a greater tolerance than others and that the bulk of the White House personnel had been sheltered inside during the wave. He guessed they would be normal until they were outside long enough to absorb the same amount of radiation as those who’d been openly exposed to the light. That was why he seldom came out of the underground bunker; that was why he wanted to stay behind. The good doctor didn’t want to find out whether or not he was immune. He just wanted to stay sane for as long as he possibly could.
A contingent of Wiggins’s men still guarded the fences, and Clark watched from inside the second truck of the convoy as they opened fire into the creatures outside the southern gate. The things dropped in waves, but others moved up to take their place. The guards were sure to run out of ammo before the city ran out of creatures, but Wiggins would’ve known this and would have planned for it. Surely enough, within seconds Clark heard the thumping sound of grenade launchers being fired from the lawn. Explosions sounded outside the gate, and the lead truck shot forward, crashing its way into the mob. It plowed through the creatures, crunching some under its wheels and bouncing others off its armored plating.
Then the whole convoy was moving outside the gates. The M-60s mounted in the open cars blazed, and small-arms fire crackled over the howling creatures. Clark’s truck bounced as the driver turned out of the yard too quickly, hitting the curb as he swung around to follow the other vehicles.
Inside the cab of the lead truck, Wiggins smiled. Everything was going as planned. The convoy cleared the horde, and the open road lay before them.
“Sir, what’s that?” his driver asked.
Wiggins squinted. A lone creature had walked out of a building and was crouching in the road ahead as if waiting for them.
The damn thing had a rocket launcher held firmly against its shoulder.
“Oh shit!” Wiggins screamed, reaching over to claw at the wheel, the driver too stunned to react in time.
Light flashed from the launcher’s barrel and the rocket streaked into the cab where Wiggins sat.