The Killing Floor

“Good luck with that saving the world thing,” Fielding tells him.

Looking at Sanchez’s phony smile, Travis is a little sorry to see Fielding go. They may hate each other, but at least everything between them is out in the open.

Before he can say a word, the jeep lurches back onto the street.

“Come with me, please,” Sanchez says, motioning toward the massive door, which the soldiers are pulling open, their machine guns slung over their shoulders.

They enter a long white corridor, dim but regularly cleaned; the floor glistens from a recent waxing. The air is fresher here, with no random pockets of hot or cold air, no sudden blasts from a filthy ventilation duct. Portraits of past presidents, liberated from the White House, adorn the otherwise blank walls, like placeholders for ghosts.

“What’s behind these doors?” he asks, his voice loud in his ears. He pictures large control centers like the bridge of a starship or the set of the old TV show 24, with lots of people hunched over various stations.

“That’s not your concern, sir,” Sanchez says.

Travis glances at a sign reading, EAS STUDIO. The Emergency Alert System. The President can talk to the entire country from here by radio or TV. He can also override or turn off any local broadcasting he does not like.

President Walker’s emergency powers give him the power of a dictator.

“Everything is so clean here,” Travis says. “Even the air. Do you get to live here?”

“I am not authorized to discuss anything with you, sir,” Sanchez tells him.

More corridors, more doors, until Travis becomes convinced they are walking in circles. A door slams and a group of people in suits scuttle from one room to another. Black-armored soldiers scrutinize his ID at checkpoints and wave him through.

She finally stops at a door; the nameplate reads FRANKLIN ROOM.

“This is Lieutenant Sanchez,” she says into her headset. “Package Papa Three is delivered.” With a final smile, she adds, “This is your stop, Dr. Price.”

Travis taps on the door and opens it, peering inside at what appears to be some sort of waiting area filled with men in suits clutching briefcases.

“I was told to come here,” he says.

The men take in his stubbled face and wrinkled suit with contempt. Two large men stand in front of a second set of doors on the other side of the room, giving him a quick once-over. Travis surmises these are Secret Service agents, the last of the old Praetorians.

These doors open and an older, balding man peers at him over the rims of his glasses. Travis recognizes him as Terry Goodall, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. His boss.

“Ah, Travis,” Goodall says. “Come on in. We’re ready for you.”

Travis walks across the waiting room, trying to ignore the baleful stares of the other men. “What’s all this about, Terry?”

Goodall reaches and grips his arm. “You are about to meet the President of the United States, who at this moment is under a lot of pressure and has more power than Caligula,” he hisses close to Travis’s ear. “We all understand you do not have prepared remarks. Just play off the slides provided and answer the questions as best you can. It’s all in your field of expertise. Okay?”

“I guess it will have to be,” Travis mutters.

Goodall eyes him. “Don’t screw this up, Travis.”

“Of course not, sir.”

“You look like shit. The least you could have done was gotten yourself cleaned up.”

Travis shakes his head. “No time.”

Goodall grunts and ushers him into a bright room. At first all Travis can do is stand at the threshold, half blinded by the sudden change in light, blinking tears.

“Dr. Price, is it?”

Travis blinks again and sees twenty stern-faced people seated around a conference table, observing him with open distaste. Some wear military dress uniforms with chests crusted with medals, what men like Fielding would call a fruit salad.

The man sitting at the center is President Walker. He is older, grayer, more tired than Travis remembers. But still formidable.

“Yes,” Travis says with a weak voice, then clears his throat. “Yes, Mr. President.”

“You realize everything you see and hear in this room is classified.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Based on your area of expertise, you already enjoy a number of special clearances. Today, you’re going to be privy to information classified as Top Secret. Understood?”

“Absolutely, Mr. President.”

“Good. You’ve kept us waiting long enough. You may begin.”

Travis approaches the screen at the front of the room, his stomach doing flips. This is it, he realizes. He is meeting the President of the United States. The world is ending, and his nation needs him. Nobody listened to his theory, but now he gets this one chance to make his case. The President will be grudgingly persuaded before committing to decisive action.

Dr. Travis Price saves the world.

On the screen, he sees a map of downtown Miami overlaid with a bull’s eye pattern rendered in shades of red.

What does this have to do with the monsters?

“I don’t understand,” Travis says, staring at it.

The President grunts with irritation, folding his large hands.

Goodall places his elbows on the table and says, “Dr. Price, your area of expertise is the weaponization of nuclear fission, is this correct?”

“Nuclear nonproliferation,” Travis mutters.

The Director reads highlights from his resume, focusing on his support of exercises by the Office of Nuclear Counterterrorism and the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, as well as development for the Radiological Assistance and Consequence Management at the Los Alamos Lab.

“You are one of the nation’s leading experts on the effects of nuclear device combustion on populations in urban centers,” Goodall says.

“That is accurate.”

“Good. Then explain the graphic on the screen, if you please.”

The realization makes him gasp. Even with the world coming to a violent end, the terrorists could not give up their grudge against the Great Satan.

They finally did it. They blew up an American city.

“Who did it?” he says, his face reddening. “What kind of madman would do this?”

Even in collapse, America could, and would, retaliate. He heard America still maintains twenty-four-hour flights of strategic bombers able to drop nuclear warheads virtually anywhere in the world.

Goodall smiles. “This is purely a hypothetical, Dr. Price.”

“Hypothetical, sir?”

“Options,” the President grunts. “All options are on the table.”

“I see,” Travis says, feeling sick.

Terrorists did not bomb Miami. The President wants to bomb Miami. Miami, and perhaps other cities as well.

Pure madness. Things must be worse on the surface than he thought. The cities are filled with Infected and have become breeding grounds for the monsters.

Drop the bomb, and they all go away.

But so do the cities themselves, and millions of survivors still living in them.

During the Cold War, a U.S. Minuteman missile crewman once asked the chain of command how he could verify whether a launch order was coming from a sane President. The generals removed him from his post.

If I voice any dissent, I wonder what they’ll do to me?