The Dying of the Light (Book 1): End (47 page)

“So the whole team?”

“We believe so, sir. Until it cools down, we can’t get any men on the ground.”

“See that you do, commander. No one gets left behind.”

“Roger that, sir.” Anderson stood to leave. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

Maxwell sighed. “Yeah. Get Alpha squad in here. I want to tell them myself.”

Anderson nodded. “Yes, sir.” Saluting, the commander turned and walked out of the general’s office as Maxwell turned to the window, staring out at the beautiful Colorado sunset.

The irony of so much beauty and so much horror co-existing in the same world did not escape him.
I’m beginning to wonder if any of us will live through this. But if not us, who?

The colors and shapes of the sunset continued to shift, ignorant of the heartache and pain of those watching, as it always had.

Chapter Twenty-three

Fort Carson, Colorado

No furniture, no sink, no drain. Four solid concrete walls framed the rectangular room, one of them inset with a heavy steel door. A row of thick one-way observation windows covered one wall, and flimsy fluorescent light fixtures dangled high overhead. It was an empty cell.

Well,
mostly
empty.

If I wasn’t completely distracted by the contents of the cell, I would have been interested in the construction of the floor. It looked like carbon-fiber, and it wasn’t so much a floor as it was a grid.  A pattern of small circular holes formed the entire walking surface and went three rows up onto the wall. Even though I knew what the holes were for, it still looked odd to me.

But I
was
completely distracted by the contents of the cell: its sole inhabitant, which stood staring at the door, with thick chains around its wrists bolted to a ring set in the wall.

My radio crackled. “We’re ready.”

“Okay,” I said, my voice breaking. “Give me a second.”

I reached a hand out to the small figure, but he didn’t see me. He didn’t see much of anything. My hand spread across the glass as if I could pull him back with sheer willpower.

It’s my duty to save him,
I thought.
But first things first.
Could I live with myself if I went through with it?

“Do it,” I said, dropping my hand from the window.

The steel door in the side of the chamber slid open, revealing a man in a hood — and what appeared to be a very nice suit — who was thrust inside the room. The smaller figure snarled and charged, only to be brought up short by the shackles on his wrists. The door clanged shut, and the man freed himself of the hood.

I de-polarized the observation windows so that Gardner could see me. He took no notice of me at first.  He was busy cringing back from the still-snarling form of Eric, who should have become my son, as the chains made a sharp snapping and jingling sound in the air.  Gardner huddled into a corner by the door.

Finally catching his breath and looking around, once he saw that the chains were secure, Gardner spotted me through the window, and flinched as I gazed at him with no emotion. He started speaking, and I punched another button on the wall-mounted control panel beside the window to turn on the communication system.

“…can come to some sort of accommodation, surely. There’s no need for any dramatics. You’ve made your point, Mr. Blake.”

When I didn’t respond, I could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down on that scrawny neck, and the sweat that appeared on his forehead as he tried to ignore the screaming, clawing zombie that raged not three feet from where he crouched.

“Really, this is unnecessary.”

I cocked my head at him, as though inspecting a heretofore unknown species of insect.

“Do you recognize the room?” I asked. “You should.  You had it specially built, didn’t you?”

Gardner looked around at the room, seeing the grid of round holes in the floor as if for the first time, and he swallowed hard again.

“You wouldn’t…”

My hand hovered over the console again, and I saw the look in Gardner’s eyes as he realized that there was no escape for him this time. He stood up straight and tall then, obviously intending to meet his fate with some dignity.
Good for him.
Still, there were two unanswered questions, and I had to know.

“Why me? Why go to so much trouble over me?” I asked.

“Because you’re infected, Mr. Blake,” he said impatiently, as if I were an idiot for not already knowing.

For a split second, I reeled.
Impossible! Me, infected?
As fast as the shock came, though, I realized what he was doing: playing me, yet again.

“That’s impossible, and you know it.”

“Is it? Think back, all the way back to Fall Creek. You were injured, weren’t you? A splinter of wood, I believe. In your report, you mention a little girl…”

I thought back to that little girl in the yard that night.
Could
she have infected me? No, it just wasn’t possible.

“You’re just trying to save your own skin now, Gardner. You’d say anything.”

“Hardly. It’s obvious that I won’t change your mind about this. What reason would I have to lie at this stage?” He folded his arms and leaned back against the wall, the picture of confidence.

“This is nonsense.  If what you’re saying was true, I‘d have become a walker a long time ago.”

Gardner moved forward toward the window, suddenly animated, but still careful to keep out of reach of Eric. “Exactly, Mr. Blake! Now you understand. What makes you immune to this? How do you walk around with these prions inside you — and we’ve verified that in your blood samples, by the way — without turning into a walker?”

He shook his head. “If only I’d been able to get you on the examination table, we might have discovered the truth. I know more than any other scientist on the planet about this disease, Mr. Blake; I could have found the answer  That’ll never happen now, though.” He turned away and moved back to his corner, but I knew he was watching for my reaction out of the corner of his eye.

I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.  It was such an obvious ploy. He just wanted to find a reason for me not to push the button at my fingertips.  And I could not imagine any reason in the world powerful enough to stop me, though I gave him points for creativity. 

Since I wasn’t going to get a real answer, I changed the subject. “What about everything else, then? Why all that?”

“Why what?” he answered.

“All of it! The secret experiments, the selling the samples to North Korea, all of it. You had to know what would happen. You had to know what you would help create, and what you would destroy.”

He laughed.  Then he shook his head.  “You’re hardly worthy of the trouble of explaining it,” he said dismissively. 

I casually tapped my fingers near the buttons on the console until he noticed and took a deep breath.  “Fine,” he said.  “You see all the puzzle pieces together,
finally
, and you still can’t see the picture it makes? You want to know
why
I did it?”

“I do.”

“Why, Mr. Blake, for the only reason in the world that means anything at all.” His smile was chilling, this time. As if I gazed on pure evil. “Power.”

“How does killing off the whole human race give you…” I stopped, forgetting for a moment the button that would end his life and my misery. In an instant, it all became clear. “Oh, I see.”

“Ah, yes. There it is, the light of understanding, be it ever so dim.” He clapped his hands softly and slowly, a ‘golf’ clap if ever there was one.

“Only a hundred thousand of us left. And you’ve got a spot in the bunkers,” I said. “And not just
any
old bunker — the
presidential
bunker. With SecDef and the rest of them. With only ten thousand people to deal with, consolidating your power would be easy. You’d probably claim credit for Project Phoenix as a whole, or something similar. And once you were done with that bunker, there would only be nine others to bring under your control.

“A hundred thousand people, all owing their survival to Henry Gardner.” I shook my head. “Henry Gardner, ruler of the New United States.”

He turned and spat, sneering. “As if I would cheapen this great nation with all that rabble. I would have selected my followers carefully, and only they would have seen the light of the surface again. 

“This country — this
world
— has allowed itself to be dumbed-down by generation after generation of idiots and whores. The world I was creating was to be an intellectual paradise, free of the fallacies of all the morons that had gone before, with pure untainted stock…”

“Shut up, Henry.” He spluttered to a halt as I took the opportunity to laugh, sickened as I was. “You really are a spy-movie villain, you know.”

“How so?”

“I’ve caught you monologuing.”

I pressed one button, and the special explosive bolts in Eric’s chains blew, letting him loose in the room. Gardner shrieked as the child came flying at him, far faster than any other walker I’d seen out there in the world.

No wonder he wanted to experiment on Eric. Someone like him could see so much potential in that sort of speed.

To Gardner’s credit, he fought the kid off for a few seconds, kicking and trying to run away. But there was nowhere to go, and he knew it. It took only one misstep, his immaculate and expensive loafers tripping him up, and Eric was on him in a heartbeat.  That was when my buddy Henry
really
started screaming.

I was wrong,
I thought.
The question wasn’t whether I could live with myself if I did this.

Almost of its own volition, my hand lifted to the large red button on the wall marked “Flash Activation.”

The question was, how could I live with myself if I didn’t?

The question is, how could I live with myself if I didn’t?

 I punched the button, staring into Gardner’s now-sightless eyes as Eric feasted on him, not looking away as the 3,000° F flames roared by the window, consuming everything — and everyone — inside. After a full five minutes, the flames shut off, and the room was visible once more in the light shining through the observation windows. Everything temporary — the chains, the lighting fixtures, and especially Eric and Gardner — were gone, as if they never existed. Only blackened and cracked concrete remained.

I knew that I would be haunted for years by my actions here today, regardless of their outcome, and by Gardner’s. It felt like I had heard the cries of all of his victims. I’d dispensed an horrific justice for them, to be sure, but it was the least that he’d deserved. And what about all his
future
victims? Those whose only defender had chosen to stop his crimes before they’d even begun.

Yes, I will be haunted,
I thought.
But if that’s the price I have to pay for me to know that his evil is gone, then so be it. I can bear that pain, for Eric. And for all the others, past and future.

The door to my right opened, and I could feel Kim standing there, though I didn’t turn.

“It’s done,” I said, almost whispering.

“Are you back?”

I had to take a deep breath before I could answer, but it was time to put my demons to rest, once and for all.

“Yes.” I turned to her and smiled, finally at peace with Rebecca and Eric’s death, and knowing that I would fight — and if necessary die — to protect those who remained.

Kim nodded. It was a hard thing I’d asked her to do, but she had only hesitated for a moment. She’d seen the right of it, and knew the cost as well as I did.

We’ll pay it together, I hope. With her by my side, I feel like I can withstand anything. That will just have to be enough.

Suddenly our radios squawked.

“Blake, Barnes, report to the general’s office on the double.” Commander Anderson’s voice.

Kim half-turned toward the door, cocking one eyebrow at me. I took a deep breath and let it out, then walked out with her.

I had left the past behind me, and it felt good. Time to focus on the future, now.

Although, I would be crazy not to have my blood tested for prions, when I had an opportunity.

“Sir, I have something I think you need to see.”

The young soldier stood at ease in front of General Maxwell’s desk, while Commander Anderson leaned against the wall nearby.

“Oh? And what would that be, sergeant?” Maxwell asked.

“Sir, I… I was ordered to keep an eye on the labs, since Mr. Gardner’s detention, sir. I was walking through the security area and saw something on the monitor…”

The kid turned a bit pale, but continued. “I just think you should see this, sir,” he said, laying a flash drive on the general’s desk.

Maxwell glanced at Anderson, who nodded slightly.

“Very well, sergeant. You’re dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir,” the soldier said, saluting and exiting the office as Maxwell fitted the drive into his computer and brought up the only file on the device.