Fall of Night (Dead of Night Series) (6 page)

The president shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but he did not disagree.

“But all of that is secondary, Mr. President. I can’t stress enough how strongly I believe that this matter
is not over
.”

“General Zetter is in Stebbins, Scott. You’re not.”

Neither are you, you officious moron,
thought Blair.

“Sir,” Blair began slowly, but the president cut him off.

“I’m not ordering another attack on Stebbins.”

“I understand that, sir, but to put it quite simply, Simeon Zetter is nearing the end of his career, and even though he was formidable in the field once upon a time, I think now he’s become more of a politician than a soldier. He is supporting you and your presidency. I don’t know that I entirely trust his assessment of the situation in Stebbins, because we have to accept the
possibility
that he is wrong about containment, we must—absolutely must—get Dr. Volker’s research notes.”

“I thought you said we’d find Volker.”

“We will, but we haven’t yet, and every minute we spend looking is time
not
spent preparing for contingencies.”

The president considered, nodded. “Did you have something in mind?”

“Yes. Trout has that research on Volker’s flash drives. Sir, I would like to—”

“Stop right there, Scott. I know what you want to do. You want the Guard to storm the school and take those drives away from Trout. I won’t do that. What I have done is order General Zetter to obtain the drives. This he will do. End of discussion.”

Blair wondered if he could throttle the president before the Secret Service could stop him.

“Now … is there something
else
you’d like to discuss, Scott?” asked the president.

“Yes, sir,” said Blair tiredly, “but it concerns General Zetter. If … I may speak candidly—?”

The president steepled his fingers. “Go ahead,” he said guardedly.

“I think we need an independent assessment of the state of things in Stebbins County. We need unbiased eyes on the defenses, the deployment of resources. We need someone who has experience in ultra-high profile biohazardous situations—which, by the way, no one under Zetter’s command has. We need a diagnostician, not a general practitioner.”

The president pursed his lips, considering the point. “Do you have someone in mind?”

“Yes,” said Blair, “there’s a man we both trust, and he’s already in the area.”

“Who?”

Blair gave him the name. “I think you’ll agree that he’s well-suited for this particular assignment. He’s also available and close. I could have him and a small team inside the Q-zone in twenty minutes.”

The president gave him a calculating smile. “He just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

“No, sir. I called him yesterday and told him I needed him in the on-deck circle. Just in case.”

“And he’s there to observe, assess, and report only, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, sir.”

“I would take it amiss, Scott, if I found out that your pet shooter was there to do an end-run around Simeon Zetter. It would pain me to learn that he and his team put so much as a foot inside the Stebbins Little School. You understand me when I say that? We’re clear?”

“As glass, Mr. President.”

They studied each other, both wearing small smiles, both watching the other with cold eyes.

“Very well, Scott,” said the president. “Send him in.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“Scott,” said the president with a gentler smile, “take a breath. This is over. We won. We saved the country, and you played your part. Be proud.”

“Yes, sir, I am,” lied Blair.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE OVAL OFFICE

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Sylvia Ruddy, the president’s chief of staff, came in as Blair left.

“Scott looks like he’s about to explode,” she observed. “Is he still trying to nuke Pennsylvania?”

“Fire bomb,” corrected the president, “but no. Not at the moment, anyway.” He told her about the flash drives.

“He wanted to send a team after Trout?”

“I nixed the idea.”

“Good.”

“However, I am letting him send a team in to do an independent evaluation of the integrity of the Q-zone.”

Ruddy made a face. “Simeon won’t like it.”

“Simeon works for me. He doesn’t have to like it. Besides, I actually do want to know. Scott’s right about one thing—we have to make sure we don’t spike the ball before we’re in the end zone. I want to believe this is over, but quite frankly, Sylvia, I’m scared out of my mind.”

“So is everyone,” she countered, “but don’t let Scott drive you crazy. He’s such an alarmist. He was an alarmist when he was the national security director and he’s an alarmist now. Maybe more so now. I told you that when you appointed him.”

“Maybe, but he’s been right more than he’s been wrong.”

“Sure. But when he’s wrong he’s all the way wrong. And he’s wrong on this. He’s overreacting to a situation that now requires careful handling and a great deal of subtlety.”

“I know.”

“And yet you gave him permission to release the hounds?”

“Hardly that. Scott will do what he’s told,” the president said firmly. “He may have his issues, but he’s still one of us.”

He handed her Blair’s amended speech. As she read it her face went white and then dark red. “This isn’t a speech,” she snapped, “this is you begging to be impeached and indicted.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“No,
Scott
doesn’t see it that way. He doesn’t have to worry about reelection.”

“There are more important things than winning another four years.”

“Are there?” she asked.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA

“Oh, God—there’s another one!”

Billy Trout wheeled around but had no time to get out of the way as half a dozen people came running straight at him. The lead man was one of the teachers and he simply shoved Trout, and as Trout tried to take a step to catch his balance his back flared and his right leg buckled. He collapsed to the floor and half the people running down the hall tripped over him and went sprawling.

It was like a bad comedy routine, except no one was laughing. Most of the people had weapons. Guns, makeshift clubs, and fire axes. Everyone was ragged and dirty, streaked with grime, wild with panic.

Trout scrambled painfully to his feet and grabbed the sleeve of the closest man—Bowers, the art teacher. “What’s happening?” he demanded.

Bowers was a frail, frightened man with eyes that jumped and twitched. “Down in the gym,” he gasped. “I think it’s Mr. Maines.”

Trout didn’t know who Mr. Maines was. A parent of one of the children? A teacher? A refugee trapped in the school?

“Is he infected?”

Bowers’s face, already pale, turned a sickly white. His eyes were jumpy with shock. “They said … they said he bit one of the kids.”

It felt exactly like being punched over the heart. Trout wanted to sag back against the wall, slide down, bury his face in his hands, and weep. He wanted this to end, to go away, to not be real.

“Show me,” he said.

Trout heard himself say the words, felt his body launch into motion, felt his pulse quicken, but he did not want to see this. Not more pain. Not another kid.

No way he wanted to see another infected kid. Another hurt kid.

Another lost kid.

But he heard himself growl as he snatched up a fire axe dropped by one of the men who had fallen.

“Hey!” said the man, grabbing for it, but Billy ignored him and kept the axe.

At first he followed Bowers.

Soon, though, he simply followed the screams.

Billy Trout ran down two flights of stairs. Each step shot an arrow of pain into his back. Earlier, when he and Desdemona Fox had fought their way across the parking lot to the school, Billy had picked up a heavy bag filled with guns and ammunition. He grabbed it the wrong way, though, and something had exploded in his lower back. The pain was awful but it was also useful. It made him grind his teeth on it, to bite down on it to say fuck it to agony and everything else. Fuck it to his rage at what was happening, to his terror, and to his grief.

His fists were locked around the handle of the fire axe as he ran, but already he could feel fear sweat loosen his grip. Rage, he was discovering, was not a constant. It wasn’t armor that he could wear until this was all over.

If it was ever going to be over.

The screams echoed upward from the basement, bouncing off the walls of the fire tower.

Another one.

That’s what Bowers had said. That’s what he was running to see.

Another one.

God.

Another of the dead. And another child with a bite.

The small knot of teachers and other survivors lagged behind him, their determination to reach the source of the screams diminishing with every step. Trout couldn’t fault them. Not one bit. After all, what in their lives had ever prepared them for something like this?

They reached the basement and burst from the stairwell into the gymnasium. A big, damp empty space that Trout remembered from humiliating dodgeball games when he was in the fifth grade. That had been his hell year, before the growth spurt that would give him the length of bone and quality of muscle he’d later use in high school baseball and track. The gym was linked to his memories of being a weird, shy, strange little boy who didn’t have many friends. Dez Fox had been his first real friend. When two older boys tried to pants Billy here in the gym, Dez had beat the shit out of them.

He’d been in love with her ever since.

“In there,” gasped Bowers, pointing.

Only a few lights were on, pale cones of yellow that did little to push back the immense darkness. The screams were constant. High and thin. They tore through an open office door at the far end.

Please, begged Trout. Not another kid. Please, please …

The axe was heavy and he knew he’d have to use it on Mr. Maines—whoever he was. There was no Plan B for dealing with those who were so far gone that they had crossed over into—

Into what?

Even now Trout had a hard time calling it what he knew it was.

These people were infected.

These people were also dead.

Technically, dead.

Essentially, dead.

And yet they moved around, some of them shambling, some running awkwardly, all of them chasing, hunting, grabbing, biting.

Eating.

The dead consuming the living.

Zombies.

It was madness and Billy Trout’s orderly mind rebelled at it. Death was death and the dead don’t do this. Can’t do this.

The screams told him otherwise.

Despite the pain in his body and the agony in his soul, Trout ran faster.

He was six steps from the gaping doorway when sudden light and noise exploded within.

The deafening blast of a gun. The eye-hurting flash of shot after shot.

Trout skidded to a sloppy halt, lost his footing in something wet, fell, slid all the way to the mouth of the open door.

There was one last blast, one last flash.

The screams stopped.

Trout lay there on the floor. He could hear Bowers somewhere behind him. Panting, mumbling something. Maybe a prayer. Maybe he’d simply gone fucking nuts. Billy wanted to.

Something moved inside the office.

A shifting of the shadows, the scuff of a shoe.

And then a figure staggered out. Lumbering, uncertain, sagging sideways against the frame, clothes torn and streaked with blood, eyes dark and dead.

Trout looked up into the face.

“Dez…?” he whispered.

Those dead eyes shifted toward him.

Tears broke and fell down her dirty cheeks. The slack expression of shock disintegrated into horror and shame and grief.

“Oh … Billy…”

She sank down to her knees, the gun still held in one hand, but that hand was slack at her side, as if forgotten or disowned.

Trout scrambled to his knees and gathered her in his arms as the first terrible sobs detonated within her. In the bad light Trout could see the leg of a man—Mr. Maines—and the sprawled form of a child, lying tangled together in a pool of black blood. The smell of gun smoke burned in the air.

He wanted to push her away, he wanted to turn away from what she’d just done, what she’d had to do. But he loved this woman.

And this—all of this—was their world now.

So he held her close as she wept.

As they both wept.

“It’s okay,” he lied. “It’s all going to be okay.”

Except they both knew that it wasn’t.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WHAT THE FINKE THINKS

WTLK LIVE TALK RADIO

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

“You’re listening to Gavin Finke and this is
What the Finke Thinks,
coming to you live from Pittsburgh. It’s the middle of the night but I don’t think anyone within the sound of my voice is sleeping. The eyes of the world are on the town of Stebbins down in Stebbins County, right on the Pennsylvania-Maryland line. And why? Well, my friends, that depends on whom you ask. We all know that Stebbins was ground zero for Superstorm Zelda—a real b-i-t-c-h of a storm that picked up a lot of water from the Three Rivers and dropped it on the Mason Dixon Line.

“Sure, that’s how it started, but then the cow patties hit the windmill, let me tell you. First there were unconfirmed reports of a double homicide in Stebbins. But within minutes there were all sorts of wild rumors about a riot at a funeral home. But buckle up, kids, ’cause it was a fast slide down the crapper from there. The governor released a statement saying that there was an outbreak of a new kind of virus in Stebbins. Then the Internet went—”

Gavin Finke took a long drag of his cigarette and winked at his engineer.

“I tell you, folks, I don’t know what to believe. Tell the Finke what you think is happening on this dark and stormy night.”

He gave the call-in number and before he’d even finished the board lit up like a Christmas tree.