She raised herself to her knees, gasping for breath and feeling dizzy, and gained her feet. The floor looked very far away. Then she started walking toward the office, her mouth filling with saliva again.
Jean opened the door, squinting to see better, and gasped.
Gary stood at the barbecue shrouded in cooking smoke, his mouth open in surprise. The room was dim and smoky, but she could see, plain as day, a plate of steaming brown steaks lying on a silver serving tray, the one he used to serve champagne to guests for small showings to important buyers. Two champagne flutes stood filled with water.
He had scavenged a feast for her. This food would bring her back to life.
For a moment, she thought she’d seen something else, something evil and impossible, a trick of the gloomy daylight filtering through the smoke. She thought she’d seen a chopped up carcass hanging from hooks used to mount large and heavy artworks. It’d looked like the body of a naked obese man hung upside down with his head, feet and hands cut off, gutted and bled out, the blood and organs dumped into a large plastic garbage can beneath the body.
Then she blinked, and it was gone.
“You weren’t supposed to see this,” Gary shouted, his voice edged with panic.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, leaning against the doorframe. She couldn’t take her eyes off the steaks. “It’s so beautiful.”
That night, Gary crawled to where she lay, hiked up her Chanel skirt and entered her. Jean put her arms around him, smacking her lips and thinking about her next meal. He had little energy; it was over fast. Afterwards, while they slept huddled on the floor, the carcass invaded her dreams. The pale carcass of a man, chopped and gutted, mounted on the wall like slaughtered cattle. Like an obscene piece of art, provocative and visceral.
Prendergast would have loved it.
Dr. Price
Travis paces his small cell and pushes at the walls in claustrophobic despair, convinced they are closing in a fraction of a millimeter at a time. He wonders if the cell is properly ventilated until he finds himself on all fours, sucking on air and dust trickling in from under the door. Picturing the room imploding and entombing him in solid rock is actually the least upsetting thing on his mind right now. He believes any minute, someone is going to come and make him disappear down the garbage shaft. In his mind’s eye it is Fielding who comes, grinning and wielding a big shiny knife. Sorry, Doc, orders are orders.
Travis has a bucket for his waste and a mattress mounted on the wall, but otherwise the room is blank. He has no idea how long he has been stuck here; assuming they are feeding him three meals per day, then he has been in this cell for four days. It is something of a miracle he survived this long.
Not long ago, he witnessed an actual coup d’état. Soldiers handcuffed the President of the United States and dragged him shouting from the room. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs calmly eyed the Cabinet and asked if anyone knew where the Vice President was. It was the VP’s lucky day; he was going to be President. Then someone noticed Travis cowering in the corner.
The funny thing is Travis happens to agree with General McGregor. Detonating nuclear weapons in American cities is a desperate measure that would accomplish little. In fact, it’d be like stabbing yourself in the brain with a knitting needle to get rid of a bad headache. In Travis’s opinion, Donald McGregor is even a hero of sorts; he stopped a madman. But whether Travis agrees or not with the men who staged the coup does not matter. What happened did not happen, and that means anyone who knows the truth is a bizarre anomaly that must be corrected, most likely with a bullet in the head.
Sadly, Travis even agrees with the rationale behind his own murder. Outside Special Facility, Wildfire is rapidly paring the Federal government down to the military. Only the military has the command structure and resources to continue functioning on a large scale. The American people do not want the military to run the country, however. They will only follow the President, based on illusions of tradition, leadership, unity. Even most of the military would not obey McGregor’s junta if it openly declared itself in charge. So the President has a “heart attack” and is lionized as a martyr, the Vice President is sworn in, the bombing plan is axed, and everyone tells the same story for the good of the nation.
Through simple bad timing, Travis was given a peek behind the curtain and saw the man working the controls. What he knows could shatter the illusion of civilian control of the military, and with it, unity and loyalty to the government. And for that, he must be eliminated.
The irony of his situation almost makes him laugh. Despite his claustrophobic terrors, deep down he believed he was in the safest place in the country. Then again, he also thought the White House was safe, until it wasn’t.
Boots clomp in the corridor, growing in volume. Instead of a tray of food being thrust through the slot, the lock rattles. Someone is coming in.
Travis realizes how little he will be missed after he is gone. He has no wife or children, no other family, no real friends, not even a hobby. A quiet academic at the University of Chicago, he wrote a paper about Iran’s potential nuclear ambitions that found favor with hawks in the Walker Administration. After Walker won his second term, his people tapped Travis to join the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Travis had always hoped his study of nonproliferation would earn him some type of notoriety, but he never expected it would lead to a chain of events culminating in his execution by a junta now controlling what’s left of the government.
All the knowledge he gained, leading to nothing. What has he done? Faced with the prospect of his death, he feels like he never lived. Is his life worth so much more than the woman the Secret Serviceman threw out of the helicopter?
His one regret, watching her be left behind to die, will go to the grave with him. It was the one time in his life he ever felt real empathy for another human being.
The door groans open, letting in a draft of air. Travis blinks at the figure dressed in black.
“Time to pay the bill, Doc.”
Just as he feared, it is Fielding.
♦
Travis submits to handcuffs, his face burning with shame. Fielding grins; the son of a bitch is enjoying this. Travis braces for a lecture about karma, but it never comes. Instead, Fielding orders him to walk down the corridor. As he walks, Travis fantasizes about turning and knocking his captor unconscious, and then escaping to the surface, or making a brilliant case for keeping him alive, after which Fielding puts his own life on the line to help him escape the General’s justice.
Any resistance would be a futile gesture with a man like Fielding, however, who would likely respond by beating him senseless and frogmarching him to his execution. Head bowed, Travis keeps moving, fuming at his lack of options.
“Stop here, Doc.”
Fielding slides his gloved hand under Travis’s armpit and pulls him toward a metal door, which he opens with a mocking gesture of welcome.
Under the glare of fluorescent lights, three broad-shouldered military officers in camouflage fatigues sit behind a desk, their backs ramrod straight. Their gray-flecked crew cuts, stern white faces and astronaut builds make them all look the same.
Fielding lifts Travis’s shoulder again, forcing him to walk on his toes to a simple steel chair facing the desk. Travis notices the black stains on the concrete floor under the chair and stifles a yelp of panic. Fielding shoves him into it and remains standing somewhere behind him.