Empire's End

Eleven / Best-Laid Plans

Ian Gregory sat in on his first Senate morning meeting, positioned behind and to the left of Gillies as the Senate President spoke to his fellow statesmen.

“I spoke with Britain by radio last night. They’re still being difficult, but I think they’re beginning to come around, at least as far as the airfield is concerned. I assured them that it would be finished by November.”

“Isn’t that cutting it a little close?” asked Senator Georgia Manning.

“If you need more manpower, Georgia, then get it. You’ve got a whole damn city at your disposal.”

“Enough people already know about the airfield,” she retorted.

“Then lie,” came the exasperated reply. “Go outside of that construction company for volunteers — I don’t trust those people anymore. Tell the volunteers that they’re working on the site for a new hospital. They don’t have to know anything!”

Gregory had tuned out the conversation and was studying each Senator’s face. He tried to separate the loyal ones from the opportunists. It was always visible in the face. As a man of God — and Hand of God’s leader — he had honed his ability to sniff out sin.

Maybe that was why Gillies made him just a little uncomfortable.

But everyone had their flaws, their secrets; and, though he fought it, his mind drifted again to Barry.

The final days of the Wall’s construction… the burn pits, trenches twenty feet deep and piled with crippled, decapitated and paralyzed rotters. The foul stench of death, so thick and pervasive that all the soldiers standing guard had to wear gas masks. And the moaning. The moaning and gurgling as the undead flailed about in a slurry of leaking fluids and decaying meat. The burn team hadn’t come by in days and trucks were bringing in all of the ferals that had been picked off along the Wall’s perimeter. They said it would be more efficient this way. It was madness. Weird, otherworldly groans filled the sky day and night.

Finally the burn team arrived. The dead in the pits were liquefying beneath the summer sun, and a fog of putrefaction had settled over the place; seeping into clothing and skin, staining every man and woman on-site.

When the burn team pointed their flamethrowers into the pits, the things erupted like volcanoes. Instead of ash and lava it was gore and thrashing, living limbs that rained down on everyone. Suddenly all was chaos, and the insanity that had been building for a week finally screamed to life. Everyone was in a panic, including Sergeant Ian Gregory. He was frantically searching through the smoke and slaughter for Kendra Barry. He pulled off his mask and screamed her name, then the stench of roasting flesh filled his nose and eyes and throat and he fell to his knees vomiting.

Somewhere in there, in the madness, she had fallen. Perhaps shoved, perhaps tripped, or maybe she’d just run blindly into the flaming pit and been caught in the blackened claws of the undead.

They did manage to recover her body a few days later during the cleanup; official cause of death was smoke inhalation. But Gregory, identifying her body, had seen the marks around her throat where they had choked the life from her.

“Has Finn Meyer been extorting credits from you?”

Voorhees leaned on the counter and looked Becks hard in the eye. She gave him a what’re-you-gonna-do shrug and said, “It keeps people from stealing. He polices the market more often than the cops.”

“But he is stealing from you, don’t you see that?” Voorhees sighed.

“It could be worse,” was her reply.

“How, exactly?”

“I have a business here, Officer, and a home. I have a normal life. I was the only one from my hometown to reach the Great Cities. We were being followed by rotters. We had to try to swim across this lake — then suddenly there were rotters all over the shore, on all sides, surrounding u. Fourteen went in. By the time an Army convoy happened by, I was the only one still treading water.”

“I’m sorry,” Voorhees said. “I’m sorry that happened to you. But how does that make this all right?”

“It makes this tolerable,” she said. “I spent two days in that water. I watched as people sank, one by one, around me. I ran out of tears. I couldn’t scream anymore. I could only fight to stay afloat. And their eyes — the rotters, every pair of eyes was on me. Those soldiers could have just passed me by but they fought those bastards for hours just to get to me. They brought me here. I’m grateful.”

“Don’t be grateful to Meyer,” Voorhees told her. “His days are numbered.”

“What are you trying to do?” she asked softly, sadness in her eyes, pleading eyes. “Life is okay now. Please.”

Someone nudged Voorhees’ back. Remembering that he was blocking the checkout, he stepped back. A hard-faced woman in a long coat offered her hand. “Pat Morgan.”

“P.O. Voorhees.” He gave her a firm shake. “Are you another officer?”

“No, air,” she said, with the slightest twinkle in her eye. “I work for Mister Meyer. He’d like to buy you lunch.”