Chapter One Hundred Twelve
Grace / The Bell Chamber / Saturday, July 4; 12:05 P.M.
ONE MOMENT GRACE was speaking to Joe via commlink and then next the air around her was whining with bullets. A reporter was blasted backward as a bullet punched through his chest and he knocked Grace back and down. As she fell she saw three men separate themselves from the crowd. Each of them had guns and she recognized the weapons as the high-density plastic handguns that terrorists used to sneak through airport metal detectors. Probably firing ceramic rounds. No metal at all, she thought as she pushed the dead reporter off her and drew her weapon.
The foremost of the three gunmen saw her and raised his weapon but Grace gave him a double tap-chest and head-and flung him back against the wall. She swung her gun to the second killer just as two figures came suddenly in from the killers’ blind side. Gus Dietrich took the left-hand gunman out with three quick shots: two to the middle of his back and one to the back of his head. Next to him, Bunny appeared, no weapon in his hand, but he didn’t need one for the other killer: he chopped down on the man’s wrist with a balled fist, knocking the gun to the floor, then grabbed him by throat and crotch and slammed him into a corner of the Liberty Bell display case. He stepped back to let the broken body drop.
Then a fourth man stepped out of the crowd of tourists and pointed a polymer pistol at the back of Bunny’s head. Grace didn’t bother to call a warning; she put two rounds in the man and he spun away trailing blood. Bunny threw her a grim nod and scooped up the man’s plastic pistol.
Then the rest of the Secret Service agents were there.
“There are still hostiles in the crowd,” Grace yelled. “Search everyone.”
The agents moved very fast, and they plowed into the crowd, gruffly shoving congressmen and tourists alike. They found one final hostile, a trembling young man dressed like a Japanese tourist. He managed to get his pistol into his mouth before the agents could tackle him. The blast took off the top of his head.
Rudy pushed his way through the crowd toward Grace.
“Are you all right-?” she began, but he interrupted.
“Grace some of these people are getting sick. It’s happening already faster than before. We have to do something. We have to separate them before this becomes another St. Michael’s.”
As he spoke one of the reporters staggered forward and dropped to his knees and vomited. He looked up at them with a fevered face and eyes that were already becoming glassy. The man reached out a desperate claw of a hand toward them. “Help me ”
Chapter One Hundred Thirteen
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:07 P.M.
I WIPED MY knife and slid it back into its pocket clip then retrieved my gun and cleaned it quickly on Colby’s tie. I had no idea how many agents had gone with the First Lady. Was there a chance she was safe somewhere? Would we get that much of a break?
I tapped my ear mike but there was nothing, not even static. It must have been damaged when I’d hit the wall. I was alone.
I was also furious with myself for not having brought a stronger force here to Philly; or maybe for not pressuring Church into canceling the event. We’d both looked at this as a likely scenario and we’d still allowed it go forward. I realized as I thought these things that this was one of the aftershocks of 9/11. For a while after that everything that could draw a crowd was canceled, but then our culture moved on and there were no more attacks. We became complacent. Maybe we even thought that, against all evidence, we really had Al Qaeda on the run and that we’d taken the fight so effectively to them that we could settle back into normal life here in the States.
Today we were paying the price for complacence. Did the blame belong to me? Church? Or was this a cultural failing? If I lived through the day I’d have to take a closer look at those questions; but social philosophy doesn’t help you in the heat of a firefight, so I pressed on.
There was still no sign of backup coming for me, but I couldn’t wait. I crept forward, going room by darkened room. I tried light switches in the hallway and in several rooms but got nothing. Someone must have thrown the circuit breakers. The only light was the dim red glow of emergency lamps. I had to check every locked room, every closet to see if I could locate the First Lady, or Agent O’Brien, and throughout I could feel a hot spot between my eyes as if Ollie Brown was laying his laser sight on me and waiting for the right moment to punch my ticket.
Five rooms in I heard wet sounds coming from the far side of a row of desks. I knew what those sounds would be and I really didn’t want to look; but I had no choice. Taking a fresh grip on my.45 I rounded the desks on the balls of my feet.
There were three of them on their knees, heads bent forward, like lions around a zebra carcass. Only the carcass was that of a Secret Service agent and the lions were office workers-two women and a man wearing business casual and sporting Liberty Bell Center IDs around their necks. Their hands and mouths were black with blood.
Bile rose in my throat and I gagged. Just a tiny sound, just enough so that their heads snapped up like the wary predators they were. The closest of them, a woman, hissed at me.
I shot her in the head. The impact flung her back and she toppled over the dead agent in a perverse imitation of intimacy.
The other two rose up and lunged but I was ready.
Two shots, two kills.
I stared at the bodies, and then at the dead agent. His throat had been savaged. Would he reanimate, or was this beyond the pathogen’s wound-repair mechanism? I pointed my gun at his head and just as my finger was tightening around the trigger I heard three separate sounds at the same moment.
From far behind me I heard Top Sims calling my name. At my feet I heard the first feeble twitch as some new and monstrous force fired the engines that would raise this fallen hero up as an undead killer. And up ahead I heard the First Lady scream.
Chapter One Hundred Fourteen
Gault and Amirah / The Bunker
GAULT WHIRLED AND pointed his pistol into the shadows. Five figures crowded the narrow corridor, their bare feet scuffing the floor. In the pale glow of the LED panels their faces were a ghostly white, but their eyes and mouths were as black as sin.
He recognized one of the monsters: Khalid, the soldier who had been the first of El Mujahid’s men to take Gault’s money for personal services. Gault had liked him. The man had always been tough and crafty, but now he merely looked dead. His skin hung slack on his skull and his mouth sagged open to utter a moan of mindless need.
“I’m sorry,” Gault whispered. His first shot took Khalid in the shoulder and spun him around so that his outstretched hands slapped the second zombie across the face. If Gault had watched the scene in a movie it would have been comical, a dark slapstick; but this was no zombie comedy, no BBC pantomime. This was death. This was horror.
The creatures behind Khalid pushed him forward so that he kept moving toward Gault even though he was facing the wrong direction, like flotsam on a current that flowed from the bowels of hell. Gault gagged and fired again. Khalid’s face disintegrated and he collapsed. Two others stumbled over him, falling down to crack bones on the hard concrete. Gault shot them each in the head; but the final two were already climbing over them, their mouths working as the scent of blood filled the air.
He fired and fired and fired. Behind him, through the narrow observation slit in the wall, he heard Amirah’s mad laughter.
Chapter One Hundred Fifteen
