The End Has Come (23 page)

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?

They came up fast, black smoke belching from their exhaust pipes. Babydolls had a sledgehammer that he brandished over his head. Antlers twisted his throttle and came racing ahead of the pack. He came up even with Whitman, though a full lane away. Whitman supposed he didn’t want to get shot.

Antlers gestured with one hand, telling Whitman to pull over.

Not much chance of that. Whitman shouted for Grace to get the shotgun. Then he veered toward Antlers, thinking maybe he would get lucky and knock the biker off the road. No dice — Antlers just swerved away, a big shit-eating grin all over his face.

That was when Babydolls attacked. Whitman had been too focused on the leader to see the other bike coming up on the passenger side. Babydolls smacked the side of the van with his hammer and the whole frame rang like a bell. Grace screamed, but she had the shotgun off the dashboard, cradled in her hands.

Whitman craned around trying to see what was going to happen next. Babydolls had his head down, below the level of their windows, but Whitman could just see the curve of his back. “Shoot him,” he told Grace, pointing through her window. “Don’t let him get any closer.”

She raised the gun, but Whitman grabbed the barrel. “Roll down your window first,” he told her.

Meanwhile, Antlers took a long knife off his belt. He veered in toward the van, the tip of his weapon pointed not at Whitman’s broken window but at the left front tire. Whitman wanted to swear. If he slashed the tire, at this speed, the van would spin out and probably roll over half a dozen times before it came to a stop.

He waited until Antlers got close, until he could almost have reached out his window and grabbed the bastard’s arm. Antlers lifted his knife and started to bring it down.

Two things happened at once. Grace fired her shotgun, screaming into the noise. Whitman twisted his wheel hard over to the left.

The van briefly went up on two wheels. There was a screeching sound as the deer antlers bit into the van’s paint job. Whitman expected the pirate leader to go flying, to fall off his bike, but apparently he was too skilled for that — instead he recovered, leaning deep into a turn and spinning around until he was riding the other way. When the van’s four wheels touched the pavement again, Whitman glanced over to his right and saw Babydolls receding, slowing down and falling back. There was blood on his face, but he was smiling, blinking one eye to keep it clear.

“I got him,” Grace said, whooping. “I got him!”

Except he was still alive, and still in control of his bike. Whitman expected the two of them to catch up and make another run any second now.

Except — they didn’t. They fell back and rejoined their pack. Kept pace with the van but didn’t try to catch up to it, just stayed a set distance behind. Out of range of firearms.

Antlers still had that shit-eating grin.

“Seatbelts,” Whitman said. “Get your seatbelts on!” Then he poured on the speed, potholes be damned.

• • • •

They took Philips and Whitman to a waiting room, a pleasant little chamber just off the Senate floor. There was a fridge full of cold water in plastic bottles and a basket full of cookies in individual foil wrappers. After the MREs he’d been eating for the last few years, Whitman just stared at the little snacks, amazed such things still existed. He had the urge to fill his pockets with them. Then he looked back and saw his personal guard standing there, unsmiling. Waiting to shoot him if he went symptomatic. Always watching.

Philips, on the other hand, wouldn’t look at him. The Director curled up in a padded chair, almost in a fetal position. He covered his scarred face with one hand as if he expected Whitman to hit him.

Well, that would probably feel pretty good, honestly. Whitman wasn’t a violent man by nature, but the years since the Crisis had required him to gain some skill in that regard. He could probably break the Director’s jaw before the soldier pulled them apart.

He chuckled to himself.

“I’m sorry,” Philips said. “I’m so sorry.”

“What, for selling me out back there?” Whitman asked. He considered what to say next. What he came up with surprised him a little. “Don’t worry about it.”

Philips uncurled a little. “I’m —”

“They’ll probably be happy with one sacrifice,” Whitman said. He tore open a cookie and took a bite. Oatmeal raisin. Never his favorite, but it was free. “Crucify me. Hold me up as an example. What do you think, a quick firing squad, or will they drag me through New York in chains, first?” He laughed. “Maybe it’ll make some people feel better. That’s what we swore to do, right? As medical professionals? Relieve suffering.”

Philips shook his head. “I have to say — you’re being awfully good about this.”

“I’m exhausted.”

Philips licked his lips. “I’m so sorry . . .”

“I feel sorry for you.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Because if they do just take me, and leave you alive — you’re the one who has to keep fighting. You know the funny thing about the end of the world?”

“I  . . . no,” Philips said.

“There is no such thing. The world doesn’t end. There’s always more work to be done, more digging out the rubble. More fucked-up shit to live through. Well,” he said, taking a deep breath, “I’m done. Let me have my ending. Let me have some peace, for a change.”

The senators kept them waiting for a good half hour. Plenty of time to decide questions of life and death, these days.

• • • •

“What the hell are they doing back there?” Whitman asked. In his rearview, the bikers had fallen well back, barely increasing their speed at all as the van outpaced them.

He needed to concentrate on the road. One bad patch of asphalt, and this chase could end very, very badly. “Grace,” he said, “keep an eye on them. I need to watch —”

“Mr. Whitman?” Bob asked from the backseat.

“Not now, Bob,” he said, a little louder, a little harsher than he’d meant to. The road ahead looked well-maintained, but he knew from long experience that —

“Mr. Whitman,” Bob said again.

Had he seen it coming? It didn’t matter.

Up ahead, a long curving ramp cut away from the highway. Whitman didn’t bother looking at it, being far too busy looking for road obstructions he might have to negotiate. So he didn’t see the truck coming up the ramp at high speed.

It was a semi rig, a big rusting hulk of a vehicle eleven feet high with six bald tires that smoked as they bit into the asphalt. Mounted across its grille was a snowplow blade dented and bent from repeated collisions.

It slammed into the front of the van at thirty miles an hour. If it had hit them a split second later it would have sliced right through the passenger compartment, killing all of them instantly. Instead it just pancaked the van’s engine, blew out both front tires, and turned the windshield into a storm of flying glass daggers.

Whitman flew forward, the shoulder strap of his seat belt cutting deep into his armpit, crushing his chest so he couldn’t breathe. He felt like he’d been picked up and dropped from a height, like he was dangling from his belt as a planet of metal and glass and plastic came rushing toward him. His head bounced off the steering wheel, and a high-pitched scream roared through his head. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel his own body.

For a long time he could hear nothing, see nothing. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think  . . . little by little the world came back to him.

The first thing he heard was Bob screaming behind him.

It shook him up. Woke him, a little. He looked around, trying to figure out where he was. Why he hurt so much.

Straight ahead, through the place where the windshield used to be, he saw the tall curving shape of the snowplow, now thoroughly embedded in what remained of the van. Beyond that he could see the cab of the semi rig. Its windshield was gone, too, though it hadn’t shattered as cleanly as his. The driver of the rig hung half in, half out of that frosted plane of glass. Blood poured out of him. He was very clearly dead.

Whitman turned, looking for Grace, but he couldn’t see her. The impact had torn off the passenger side door, and he saw the road surface beyond, littered with glass and twists of broken metal. He couldn’t see her or any part of her.

Bob was still screaming.

He wrestled with his seat belt. Somehow got it loose. He pushed open his door and wriggled out of the wreckage, dropped to his feet on the road. He pulled open the side door and saw Bob unhurt but very upset, staring at him with wide eyes.

Bob stopped screaming. Which allowed Whitman to hear something else.

Motorcycle engines, coming closer.

• • • •

“Mr. Whitman, they’d like to see you now,” the page said. She was still smiling.

Whitman knew better than to think that was a good sign. He tried to stand up but found that his knees had frozen. They wouldn’t do it down here, he thought. They wouldn’t want to disturb the senators with the noise of a gunshot. No. They would take him up to the surface, first.

“It’s best not to keep them waiting,” the page said, her smile dimming just a bit.

• • • •

It hurt to breathe. Whitman was pretty sure he’d broken a rib or two. He found just lifting his head was agony. He turned and saw Antlers racing toward him, head bent down low over his handlebars. Was he expecting Whitman to start shooting?

Too bad. Whitman hadn’t thought to search the wrecked van for the revolver or the shotgun. He stood there unarmed, waiting to be killed.

It wasn’t going to be quick. Antlers tore by him at speed. Something very hard struck him across the back of his legs, and Whitman fell down onto the road. He tried to grab the side of the van, tried to pull himself back up to his feet, but before he could manage it, Antlers swung back around and hit him again, this time in the side. He flopped forward into the van, almost on top of Bob.

He didn’t know if the kid was screaming or not, now. He couldn’t hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears.

Where was Grace? Did they already have her? Did they pull her unconscious and bleeding out of the wreckage? Whitman cursed himself for worrying about her when his own life was about to end. Surely there were better uses of his mental capacity in this, the last few seconds he had left.