Travis paces his small cell and pushes at the walls in claustrophobic despair, convinced they are closing in a fraction of a millimeter at a time. He wonders if the cell is properly ventilated until he finds himself on all fours, sucking on air and dust trickling in from under the door. Picturing the room imploding and entombing him in solid rock is actually the least upsetting thing on his mind right now. He believes any minute, someone is going to come and make him disappear down the garbage shaft. In his mind’s eye it is Fielding who comes, grinning and wielding a big shiny knife.
Travis has a bucket for his waste and a mattress mounted on the wall, but otherwise the room is blank. He has no idea how long he has been stuck here; assuming they are feeding him three meals per day, then he has been in this cell for four days. It is something of a miracle he survived this long.
Not long ago, he witnessed an actual coup d’etat. Soldiers handcuffed the President of the United States and dragged him shouting from the room. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs calmly eyed the Cabinet and asked if anyone knew where the Vice President was. It was the VP’s lucky day; he was going to be President. Then someone noticed Travis cowering in the corner.
The funny thing is Travis happens to agree with General McGregor. Detonating nuclear weapons in American cities is a desperate measure that would accomplish little. In fact, it’d be like stabbing yourself in the brain with a knitting needle to get rid of a bad headache. In Travis’s opinion, Donald McGregor is even a hero of sorts; he stopped a madman. But whether Travis agrees or not with the men who staged the coup does not matter. What happened
Sadly, Travis even agrees with the rationale behind his own murder. Outside Special Facility, Wildfire is rapidly paring the Federal government down to the military. Only the military has the command structure and resources to continue functioning on a large scale. The American people do not want the military to run the country, however. They will only follow the President, based on illusions of tradition, leadership, unity. Even most of the military would not obey McGregor’s junta if it openly declared itself in charge. So the President has a “heart attack” and is lionized as a martyr, the Vice President is sworn in, the bombing plan is axed, and everyone tells the same story for the good of the nation.
Through simple bad timing, Travis was given a peek behind the curtain and saw the man working the controls. What he knows could shatter the illusion of civilian control of the military, and with it, unity and loyalty to the government. And for that, he must be eliminated.
The irony of his situation almost makes him laugh. Despite his claustrophobic terrors, deep down he believed he was in the safest place in the country. Then again, he also thought the White House was safe, until it wasn’t.
Boots clomp in the corridor, growing in volume. Instead of a tray of food being thrust through the slot, the lock rattles. Someone is coming in.
Travis realizes how little he will be missed after he is gone. He has no wife or children, no other family, no real friends, not even a hobby. A quiet academic at the University of Chicago, he wrote a paper about Iran’s potential nuclear ambitions that found favor with hawks in the Walker Administration. After Walker won his second term, his people tapped Travis to join the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Travis had always hoped his study of nonproliferation would earn him some type of notoriety, but he never expected it would lead to a chain of events culminating in his execution by a junta now controlling what’s left of the government.
All the knowledge he gained, leading to nothing. What has he done? Faced with the prospect of his death, he feels like he never lived. Is his life worth so much more than the woman the Secret Serviceman threw out of the helicopter?
His one regret, watching her be left behind to die, will go to the grave with him. It was the one time in his life he ever felt real empathy for another human being.
The door groans open, letting in a draft of air. Travis blinks at the figure dressed in black.
“Time to pay the bill, Doc.”
Just as he feared, it is Fielding.
¦
Travis submits to handcuffs, his face burning with shame. Fielding grins; the son of a bitch is enjoying this. Travis braces for a lecture about karma, but it never comes. Instead, Fielding orders him to walk down the corridor. As he walks, Travis fantasizes about turning and knocking his captor unconscious, and then escaping to the surface, or making a brilliant case for keeping him alive, after which Fielding puts his own life on the line to help him escape the General’s justice.
Any resistance would be a futile gesture with a man like Fielding, however, who would likely respond by beating him senseless and frogmarching him to his execution. Head bowed, Travis keeps moving, fuming at his lack of options.
“Stop here, Doc.”
Fielding slides his gloved hand under Travis’s armpit and pulls him toward a metal door, which he opens with a mocking gesture of welcome.
Under the glare of fluorescent lights, three broad-shouldered military officers in camouflage fatigues sit behind a desk, their backs ramrod straight. Their gray-flecked crew cuts, stern white faces and astronaut builds make them all look the same.
Fielding lifts Travis’s shoulder again, forcing him to walk on his toes to a simple steel chair facing the desk. Travis notices the black stains on the concrete floor under the chair and stifles a yelp of panic. Fielding shoves him into it and remains standing somewhere behind him.
The officer in the center places his elbows on the desktop and rubs his leathery hands together before clapping once to call the meeting to order.
“Dr. Price, I am Colonel Slater. This is Major McMahon, and this is Major Buckner. We have asked you to come here today because the General thinks you’re a person of interest. So they tell me you’re a scientist. I’m curious. Tell me, Dr. Price: What do you think of our current situation?”
Travis blinks. “You mean—?”
“I mean in the country.”
Travis studies the man’s face briefly, searching for clues about what he wants to hear for an answer, but gives up. The soldier’s rigid expression tells him nothing.
“I think we have less than a year before the winter finishes us or them.”
Slater regards each of the men next to him in turn before returning his hard gaze to Travis. “See? I told you he was smart. Please elaborate, Dr. Price.”
“We’re putting everything into winning Washington, but it’s a morale boost at best, not something we need to fight a war,” Travis mutters, trying to muster the energy to speak. “We should retrench in regions that produce things we need, such as the grain belt. We should draft people to fight instead of herding them into refugee camps. We should put those who cannot fight to work rebuilding industries we shipped overseas years ago. We need to be able to make everything ourselves now, weapons and ammunition in particular, and we need to do it fast. All fiat currency is worth nothing. Goods are becoming scarce. The government is going to have to start paying in room and board and some type of new money based on a gold standard, and it might have to employ almost everyone in the country for a few years. But even if we did all of this, and did it now, we cannot sustain even what little we have saved. When the winter comes, we will suffer another mass die off. Our one hope is it will be harsher for the Infected so we have a fighting chance in the spring. We’re so occupied with getting things normal again we fail to realize that no matter what happens, Infection has already permanently changed the world.”
He stops talking, hoping at least something he said was pleasing to this man who holds his life in his fist. The officers chew on his speech.
“So you think our current strategy pretty much sucks,” Slater says.
“I did not use that word,” Travis says. “And I may not have all of the facts.”
The officer laughs. “It’s even worse than you know. There were actually people in the government who did not want the military to be recalled. They were worried about our bases overseas. It’s easier to leave, they said, than to ever return.”
Travis realizes he is expected to say something. “I don’t think the military strategy ultimately matters.”
Slater’s leans forward. “Why do you say that?”
“Ultimately, bullets cannot win this fight, only science can.”
