“You know where I’m taking you?”
The boy just blinked.
“It’s a camp. Not exactly like a summer camp, though. There’s no archery or making lanyards or anything, but —”
“I don’t know what a summer camp is,” Bob said.
Oh. Of course he didn’t. Bob was maybe ten years old. The Crisis began ten years ago. There hadn’t been summer camps in a long time.
“A camp. I’ll be safe there,” Bob said, because his mom had told him so, no doubt.
“That’s right. You’ll be safe from zombies and . . . and bikers. They’ll feed you and make sure you don’t get sick.”
Which was about all Whitman could promise.
“You like baseball?” he asked, to change the subject.
Bob blinked. Maybe they didn’t have baseball in Atlanta anymore, either.
After a couple hours, Whitman woke Grace up so she could take a watch. When he opened his eyes again, it was dawn and pink light smeared across the roof of the van.
“Anything to report?” he asked Grace.
“I thought maybe I heard engines, once,” she told him. “Except I’m not sure. Maybe it was just animals or something, growling in the trees.”
Whitman put the van in gear and moved out.
“It’s the business of this committee to hear a lot of reports,” one of the senators said. Whitman didn’t even look to see which one. He was watching his lawyer, the one they’d assigned to his case. He realized he’d never even caught the man’s name.
The lawyer’s eyes were glazed over, and his mouth was open in a rictus of horror. Whitman could only wonder what he saw, what moment of the Crisis he was reliving.
“What we hear disturbs us,” another senator said. “Director Philips presented the most optimistic data we’ve heard in a while. He didn’t mention the outbreaks of cholera and hantavirus in the cities of the Southwest. He didn’t say anything about the nutritional deficiencies we see — pellagra, beriberi, even childhood blindness.”
“You can hardly blame us for that,” Philips said.
The senator wasn’t done, however. “We were very alarmed to hear about conditions inside the so-called hospital camps. The camps are beyond overcrowded. Positives are herded inside and all but forgotten. They are given some food and clothing, yes —”
“Now, now,” the white-haired senator broke in. “We’re talking about people who might be zombies, here. The resources we have should always go first to healthy people. People who can live productive lives.”
“Nevertheless. Medical care is non-existent in the camps. The guards refuse to even touch the inmates. Riots and violent altercations kill more of them than zombie outbreaks ever could.”
Whitman turned and looked at the podium. The senator who had been talking had flecks of spittle on his lips, and his eyes burned with outrage.
“Mr. Whitman, you speak of blame. We’re more interested in justice. You don’t think the people of America — the people we represent — deserve better than this? You don’t think they have a right to know who was responsible for the Crisis?”
He might have answered, if he wasn’t interrupted by a sudden strangling noise.
Whitman swiveled around to see the lawyer jerk spasmodically upright in his chair. At first he thought the man was having a seizure. A clear, lucid light came into his eyes, though, and he stood up, his chair squeaking across the floor.
“Senator,” he said. “Senator, I — I object to this line of . . . of questioning,” he announced. “You can’t suggest that my clients were personally . . . personally . . .”
Everyone waited. Time stretched out, but the lawyer didn’t come up with any more words.
Eventually, he sat back down.
“Director Philips was responsible for all CDC operations when the first zombies were discovered. It was his set of recommendations,” the senator went on, “presented to the President in the first days of the Crisis, that led to the formation of the hospital camps, those prisons for the sick. That led to hundreds of thousands of healthy people dying because he did not prepare us for just how quickly the prion infection would spread.”
The white-haired senator cleared his throat and leaned forward. “On the other hand, it was Mr. Whitman who recommended the partition of the cities. Who suggested that we wall off our urban areas, stranding millions of Americans out in the wilderness.”
“Saving millions more,” Whitman said, but it came out as barely a whisper.
“The position of this committee is that the two of you are responsible for the incredible suffering and hardship that ensued from your recommendations. We would like to bring official charges today that will give the American people some peace of mind, some relief. Some closure.”
The five of them, the senators, stared down at them from the podium. They looked so damned indignant. So sanctimonious. Whitman wanted to shout imprecations in their faces.
It was Philips who broke the silence, however.
“If I may,” he said, weakly. Then he stood up and said it again, nearly shouting. “If I may!”
“Go ahead, Director,” the too-young senator said.
“I have just one point to make in defense,” he told them.
Whitman wondered why he bothered.
“Just one point,” Philips said again. He took a deep breath. Then he looked down at the table in front of him and said, “It was Mr. Whitman who came up with the plus sign. He was the one who created the idea of positives.”
Whitman was too shocked to even laugh.
The sun beat down on a road surface almost as pristine as the one he remembered from his youth — a stretch of concrete and asphalt wide and clear like a manmade river, pointed right in the direction he wanted to go. Say what you like about the world before the Crisis, they’d built well; they’d built to last. He didn’t see a single abandoned car or significant pothole for miles.
It couldn’t last.
It wasn’t anything he saw that warned him, it was something he felt. A kind of rumbling in his stomach, a little like hunger, a little like nausea. Soon, he could hear it, but he told himself it was the engine of the van making that noise.
Right up until he couldn’t deny it. Until he saw the motorcycles in his mirrors.
“They’re — they’re coming for us again,” Grace said, in a whisper. She swiveled around in her seat, her arms everywhere, one elbow hitting him in the side of his head as she turned to look through the rear window.
He glanced back and saw Bob looking back at him. Just watching him. I’m supposed to keep you safe, he thought. Your mom told you I would.
The bikes roared as they surged down the road straight toward the van. Now that he had a chance to actually look at them, he saw they were ragged junk. Pieces of dozens of different bikes strapped together, mismatched components hammered and beaten until they joined up. Only the leader’s had a headlight, and it was broken. Many of them didn’t even have mudguards.
Crazy. You had to be crazy to ride a bike like that. Which might explain how they dressed — like the leader, with antlers sewn on his sleeves like armor. One of the others had a pair of baby dolls hanging around his neck, their long blond hair tied together behind him. What was that even supposed to mean?