TWO OF THE tanks and three of the RCVs made it back to Bolling. The other had been taken out by anti-tank rockets before they’d left the South Lawn. Steele knew she’d gotten lucky, and she also knew the odds were against it happening again.
The intelligent zombies had been concentrated around the White House, and had thinned out as the remaining vehicles rolled out of the area. The undead ranks were sparse afterwards and they made good time getting home through the encroaching darkness. Steele was relieved to see the base was still well patrolled and secure.
As the tanks parked and the rear hatch opened, she bid farewell to LaFortune and Danning; she’d come to like the young female soldier a great deal and had been prepared to offer her a position in the bunker, but Rocky was searching for someone and wanted to continue the fight on the ground. They wished each other good luck. “Guard her well,” Rocky added. Steele nodded.
Steele went through security clearance and found herself alone in the elevator heading down to the underground complex. For a moment, unaccompanied and unseen, she let herself slump; she was exhausted, drained by defeat, burdened by guilt she couldn’t imagine bearing for the rest of her life. She wanted to retreat, to hide, especially from herself.
Instead she stood straight again as the elevator stopped and the doors opened.
Ty stood just outside. “She knows,” he said.
“Oh, Christ. How?”
“She had one of the tank drivers on a private line.”
They walked together through another security check, punching in codes, and continued on towards the heart of the OC.
Steele asked, “Does she know I’m back?”
“No. The guy she was talking to got blown up with his tank. She doesn’t know what happened to you, but . . . I think you need to see her right away.”
Steele stopped. She wasn’t sure she could do this. Her feet wouldn’t move; her lungs barely worked. She forced herself to breathe again, and Ty waited, patient, as she collected herself. Finally she looked up and asked, “Where is she?”
“Still in the Command Center. It’s pretty loud in there right now.”
Steele nodded and pushed past Ty. She walked for another minute before arriving outside the Command room, and she spent those sixty seconds trying to go blank. She was even partially successful.
Ty had been right: she heard raised voices through the closed door.
She opened it and paused.
Delancy was just shouting, “—equal response that will—” But he broke off as he saw her.
The President turned, took one look at Steele, and said, with quiet forcefulness, “Everybody but Steele out now.”
Gillespie and Jones rose. Delancy didn’t. “Madame President, I—”
“Now, Bob. We’ll continue this later.”
This time he didn’t argue. He rose and left the room. As he walked past Steele, he muttered, “Good luck.”
The door closed behind him. Steele stood, rigid, staring straight ahead.
“You know that if the situation were any different I’d fire you right now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is Parker dead?”
Steele nodded. When she spoke, she could only manage a whisper. “Yes.”
“Did he compromise our position?”
“No.” She cleared her throat and said, “He shot himself first.”
The President looked away for a second, struggling with her own emotions. After a few seconds, she turned back to Steele. “Why? If you and Parker had come to me, the three of us together might have found a different way, a real solution. Or I might have ended up agreeing with you and letting you do what you did. But you didn’t respect me enough to give me that choice.”
“I . . .” Steele had no answer.
“Let me explain something: it’s not about me being the only one to make decisions, or to have the power. It’s about the fact that I need all of you who are left operating on top form, and you can’t do that if you’re thinking about your failures or drowning in guilt. If people are going to die as a result of a decision, then I need to be the one to carry that load.”
Steele felt the weight of the other woman’s eyes on her, and the judgement felt like a sentence. She waited, hoping the President would follow through and relieve her of this terrible duty.
Instead, the President asked, “Did you at least learn anything useful?”
Steele nodded. “Moreby’s got intelligent zombies, all right. And not just a few – we’re talking an army’s worth, all combat ready. Some of them seem to be equipped with special bulletproof helmets, so we should assume they have their own research and development teams and manufacturers. And Moreby’s got some kind of cabinet with him—”
“The Well of Seven.”
Steele broke off, looking at the President, curious. “Sorry . . .?”
“Were there seven of them? These people with Moreby?”
She tried to replay the Oval Office scene in her head, mentally counting. “I think so. Yes.”
“The 19th-century Moreby had a group of followers who he practised all his rituals with and called ‘The Well of Seven’. Apparently he’s reincarnated them somehow and plans to make them his puppet government.”
Remembering the former Governor and the others, Steele said, “Wait until you see who they are. It’s like a police line-up of people who probably wanted to kill you even before they turned.”
“The big difference is now they want to eat my brain.”
The President and Steele exchanged a smile, and Steele began to relax slightly. Maybe, she thought, there really is still a place for me here. Maybe the work will help me to forget . . . to stop thinking about Ames Parker.
She heard a scraping sound and saw the President sliding a tablet across the desk to her. “Another reason you should have consulted with me before you rode off into the sunset today: we’ve got a situation developing that we need to discuss.”
“Situation?”
The President gestured at the tablet. “Aaron decrypted some New World Pharmaceuticals communications that indicate they’ve found an HRV survivor.”
Steele had to force her mind back to business; it spun up slowly, like a cold engine on a winter day. The tablet showed an email about a young man named Kevin Moon, and gave coordinates for a location. “Did we get a team out to this location already?”
The President retrieved the tablet. “A little while ago. They found two dead guards. Moon was gone. One of the dead men was found with a bite mark on his arm, and both had been shot in the head. So, maybe Moon really wasn’t immune after all, came back, attacked his guards and took off. But if that’s the case . . . who shot the guards? And why wasn’t Moon found dead with them?”
“We think New World Pharmaceuticals has him now?”
“Landen Jones is missing. He left while we were all preoccupied with the attack. Security topside reports that he took a car and left the base, claimed it was ‘official business’. It doesn’t take much to put that together with the encrypted email and our missing survivor.”
Steele looked at the President, saw the puffy bags under her eyes, knew she was sleeping only a few hours every night, and yet she felt both admiration and envy at the fact that the woman still functioned better than everyone else. “Well,” Steele said, hoping she didn’t sound as unsure of herself as she felt, “even if that is what happened . . . is that necessarily a bad thing? I mean, New World still has the best research resources and the capability to mass-produce any cure or vaccine they come up with, right? Even if some other team found a cure first, we’d still have to farm out production to NWP, wouldn’t we?”
The President’s slight smile boosted Steele’s confidence. “That’s exactly right . . . which is why I think they’re up to something else. They certainly were with Moreby.”
“Right. So . . . what do we do? Try to get this Kevin Moon back? Do we even know where they might have taken him?”
“I’ve got something else in mind. Congress just passed a bill to funnel resources to NWP. I’m going to let that stand . . . but we’re going to make damn sure those resources never actually reach them. That’s where I’ll need your help.”
Steele rose. “Whatever I can do. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go wash some blood off.”
The President didn’t say anything until Steele was halfway out the door, then she added, “Oh, and Steele – I’m sorry, but you just can’t work the pantsuit like I can.”
Contact: Ty Ward, Chief of Staff
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of General Ames Parker, Joint Commander of the United States combined military forces. General Parker, 61, died during combat against the forces of James Moreby’s New Zombie Order.
General Parker was
