The Beginning of the End (Book 2): Toward the Brink II (13 page)

“A couple, maybe three, hours, Elliot,” Allan said when the silence became too much.

“Huh?”

“To get to Prince George … the outskirts, I mean. I’m not sure where your aunt is, but that’s how long it should take.”

“As long as we don’t run into trouble … or mangy dogs.” He spat out the last two words through gritted teeth.

Damn stupid bastard! How could Roger have been so careless?!

There were a few towns along the highway between their current position and Prince George, and they weren’t about to stop for anything. “Straight through, Elliot, straight through,” Elliot said aloud. “That’s what Chuck said, and that’s what Chuck is gonna’ get!”

After Etheridge made good his escape from the White House, he made his way to a rendezvous point at a nearby high school football field. The plan had been arranged by Richard Holmes as a fall-back measure. He was driven by his longtime chauffeur, and before he left his limousine for the safety of a Marine Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion, he told his driver to “leave the country, get out while you can.” Etheridge didn’t elaborate on how he was to do this with all airports, harbors, and train stations closed, but he left him a briefcase with $50,000 to find a way.

The chauffeur, little more than a well-paid thug in a suit, shed a tear as Etheridge wished him good luck then rushed to the chopper. No one had ever treated him with the respect Mr. E did. The driver stood by the car and waved. He was overwhelmed.

“Put some distance between us … and fast!” Etheridge commanded the moment he entered the chopper.

The pilot didn’t waste time with questions and did as ordered. Moments later, he understood why.

The driver’s emotional state was not so bad that it overtook his desire to check on the fifty grand in the back seat. The limousine Etheridge had arrived in exploded in a ball of flames.

“He was a good man,” Etheridge said to Holmes as he settled in. “I wouldn’t have liked to see him go slowly, or as one of those creatures. It was the right call, Holmes. Thank you for that.”

Holmes smiled and told him it was better this way.

As the chopper climbed, the streets around them came into view. A large throng of people gathered in the streets that led to the field, but no one was interested in a football game. Police and guardsmen along with armed civilians fought the crowd and then each other as some of their own turned. The catastrophic event turned worse—if that was at all possible—with the arrival of armed looters intent on taking what they could from the stores. It was every bit a war zone with several sides involved in the battle without allies or reinforcements. Overturned cars, trucks, and police and National Guard vehicles were a testament to the panic that filled the streets of Washington. The capitol now joined the list of major and minor cities in facing a foamer breakout.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Etheridge detected a somber tone from his associate.

“Well, sir, the evacuation hasn’t quite gone as planned.” Holmes was a master in the art of the understatement.

“Mr. Transky, the pilot would like to speak with you in the cockpit.” One of the Secret Service agents came aft to inform Tom.

“Is there a problem?” he asked. With the foamer disease spreading, the thought never left his mind that a friend, family member, or perhaps the pilot of the plane could succumb to it at any moment.

“He just asked me to come for you, sir.”

“All right.” Tom nodded. “I’ll be right there.”

He waited until the agent moved out of earshot. “Why would he ask for me and not you, sir?”

“Well, you did organize this, Tom … and you are the chief of staff, so he’s going through proper channels.”

“Yes, perhaps you’re right, sir. I didn’t look at it that way.”

“You’re immediately assuming the worst, Tom. In this situation you’re not entirely to blame, but just now you taught me to look at the positives. It’s time you took a dose of your own medicine. Now go up there and see what the pilot wants.”

The president returned his gaze out the window. Columns of black smoke rose from the view below, a portent of what was to come.

“Many of the bases were restricted and barricaded, sir,” Holmes told his mentor.

“Barricaded? Who would …” He stopped when he recalled the president’s attitude in the Situation Room. The only person in years to have stood against him, Etheridge deduced, was the president, and only he had the power to order them blocked.

“Bottom line, Holmes, how many?”

“Sir?”

“How many of our people made it to a safe zone?”

Holmes shifted in his seat and looked Etheridge in the eye. “Less than twenty percent, Mr. Etheridge.”

Holmes detailed the reasons. The blockades of the underground bases were a major consideration, but it was the outbreak itself that he believed prevented the successful evacuation of key Chamber personnel. It had happened too fast and caught so many unaware and unprepared. The panic—not just among the citizens, but also among military and police personnel—proved deadlier than the disease or the foamers.

When communications stopped and they didn’t know what happened or why, even when their own people became ill, everyone went into survival mode. The stocks of weapons and ammunition were looted first. The looters resorted to killing any and all who were unfortunate enough to cross their path.

Law and order no longer existed. It was replaced by the law of the gun. The courage of those with the guns came from copious amounts of beer. With more than half of the military and police unit’s gone rogue, survival for the average citizen was hopeless, unless you had something the looters considered of value. Weapons, vehicles, a shitload of canned goods … or an attractive teenage daughter. Most likely they’d kill you for it anyway.

The roads became impassable. People fought pitched battles. They screamed, they cried, and they died.

After a pause, Holmes put his notebook with all the gory details back inside his coat.

“I spoke with several key members during this period, sir. Many informed me that their own had suffered attacks from foamers who were once family members, sir. So, you see, the warning given years ago when we planned this wasn’t heeded,” Holmes concluded. “It’s the case overseas too, sir. I’ve spoken with Yuri.”

“I think that’s it,” Elliot said to Allan.

He’d turned off the main highway several miles before Prince George. The damage, however, could be seen from a long way back. Plumes of dark grey and black smoke rose above the township in British Columbia. Surrounded by trees, with fires rushing up from the south, it was just a matter of time. Darkness hadn’t quite arrived, but at road level with all the tall pines around, it was as good a facsimile as you’d get.

Elliot noticed the white horizontal boards of the fence that stretched for about a hundred yards along the road. The fence pulled back in the middle, where a dirt road led up to the house. His aunt Kath’s house.

He pumped the brakes three times then stopped outside the entrance. There was no gate on the fence. Not a good sign. The adrenaline surged and his heart skipped a beat when he looked up the driveway lined by tall blue spruce trees on each side.

There was a tap on his window, and he saw the Tall Man and Mulhaven next to him.

He opened the door and told them, “Pretty sure this is it.”

“We’ll need to proceed with care. Lights on. They don’t know we are coming,” Mulhaven said.

“Let me walk ahead in the headlights so they can see who it is.”

“Good idea, Elliot. It hasn’t been that long since your father saw you last. Just lose the camo jacket. It’s quite dark between all those trees. With that jacket and the scruff on your face they might mistake you for a foamer. Make sure you call out when you get up there, okay?”

Elliot nodded to Mulhaven then stripped off the camouflage jacket he’d worn since their escape from Twin Falls. The only thing that smelled stronger, or worse, than his jacket was the foamers.

“Let’s keep the van and the motor home out on the road to be on the safe side. I’ll hang out the window here. You drive, Riley,” the Tall Man added.

“And, Allan,” he said, “if you don’t hear three blasts of the horn from us, you get in the van and get the fuck out of here, okay?”

“Yeah, Chuck, but …”

The Tall Man took a step toward Allan. “Allan, you take off, do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir, I do.” Allan didn’t hesitate this time. The Tall Man wasn’t to be trifled with under any circumstance, but especially when it was life or death. For Elliot, Mulhaven, and Allan, they were thankful the Tall Man was with them, and not against them.

The first lady waited patiently, as always. She’d been perfect for the president in all his public life, from his first attempt in local politics, to the state legislature, and on to the top appointment in the country. She never said the wrong thing in public nor embarrassed him or the party. Most importantly, she never tried to circumvent policy with unqualified statements on the sugarcoated ass-kiss fests of American TV talk shows. If she made an appearance, she spoke about her role as the wife of the president and as a mother, but she wasn’t the one who was elected. If they wanted to know more about a specific policy, she would state loud and clear, “Perhaps you should have invited my husband onto the show, not me.” She always received strong applause for this comment, and it didn’t harm the president’s popularity, either.

She watched Tom go forward, then went aft of the aircraft to speak with her husband. “Honey, what is it? Are we at war, is that it?”

He took her hand in both of his and felt the soft warmth of her touch. She’d been his number one supporter and adviser all these years and deserved to know.

“No, not war, at least not in the way you mean.”

“It’s the foamer plague, then, isn’t it?”

She had found out about the foamers like everyone else: from television. Regular programs had been suspended, and it was on every channel, every network. “The station I watched showed the anchor commenting on the situation, but then he started to cough. He excused himself, but it got worse. It was terrible, I thought I would be sick too. He grabbed his stomach then bent over … It was horrible, they left the camera on him too long. A moment before they went to the break, he vomited all over the desk and his eyes … they turned red. It’s about them, right?”

He nodded, raised her hand to his mouth, and kissed her fingers. “Yes, it’s out of our control. I sent for you and the kids, as Tom did with his family. It’s our only chance.”

She looked into his eyes and saw the sadness, then saw the smoke through the window over his shoulder as it billowed skyward.

“What about all the others? My family, your family, our friends. What …?”

“There is nothing that can be done to save them all. Nothing I can do that would help.”

She now clasped his hands with both of hers as tears flowed down her cheeks. “But, you’re the president.”

“Not anymore.”

Tom rapped on the door to the cockpit twice before it was opened by the copilot.

“Mr. Transky, come in, sir.”

“You wanted to see me?” Tom said to the pilot after a short nod to the copilot.

The pilot turned as best he could to face Tom, who was shown a seat. Tom assumed the seat was the navigator’s. He wasn’t present on this flight.

“Yes, I did. If you take a look ahead and to the left you can see the devastation caused by the countermeasures you spoke of.”

“My God … would you look at that.” Tom leaned forward to get a better view of the trail of thick black smoke, clearly visible against the dark background of the sky. Almost the length of the horizon over the Idaho-Montana-Canada border area, it was further validation the apocalypse was upon them.

“Yes, millions, Mr. Transky, millions of square miles all up in smoke.” He checked his dials and instruments then turned back to Tom. “But that’s not why I called you here, sir.”

“It’s not?” Tom saw that the pilot and copilot were both locked onto him, concern etched on their faces. He looked at the controls of the plane. It was a little scary to be this high in the air with all these people aboard and see the plane busy steering itself.

“No, sir. We’ve repeatedly called Vancouver International without a response. But a few moments ago, we got a call from one of the fighter jocks out there.” The pilot pointed in the direction of the fires. “He recognized I was an American. Anyway, long story short, Vancouver International, and, it appears, the city itself, is a war zone.”

Tom rubbed his hands together, a habit he exhibited when excited or nervous. In this case, it was the latter.

“We can’t land there, sir, that’s what I’m telling you.”

“Then where can we land?”

“We got some information from the fighter pilot,” the pilot continued. “All the large cities within reach are in the same situation. The only place at hand that we have any chance of reaching is Prince George.”

Tom noticed the two pilots’ reluctance. “What? What is it?”

“Sir, it’s the runway. We don’t know if it’s clear or not,” the copilot informed him.

Tom understood their reservation. He felt it too, but he had to know.

“And if not?”

“A highway and a prayer.”

Etheridge pressed his lips together, hard. It wasn’t the news that America was a battlefield, with the haves and the have-nots in an open war and undead heathens stalking the streets at night preying on anything that moved, that bothered him. That was all part of the weeding-out process of population reduction. What had him depressed was the fact that less than twenty percent of Chamber personnel had followed a directive from above. This meant member’s key to the survival of the Chamber would not be present.

“And what does this mean for us?” Etheridge asked Holmes as his eyes searched the inside of the chopper. Four dark-suited men with slicked-back dark hair and aviator style sunglasses sat motionless next to a six-man team in camouflage uniforms carrying M4 carbines.