Myrmidon

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Angel,” Chapel said, “Angel—”

“I’m here, Chapel. Tell me what to do.”

Chapel’s brain was overloaded for a second by the enormity of what was about to happen. He had no idea what to tell her—no way to fix things from a distance.

“Try—try to get Hollingshead to recall these troops.” It was too late for that, of course. By the time the order went down the chain of command, Belcher would already have triggered his bombs. And even if somehow the soldiers could withdraw on a moment’s notice, there was no way they could retreat faster than the poison cloud could spread.

He thought about the civilian population, then. He imagined them in the towns to the east, going about their business, having no idea what was coming for them. He saw them in their offices, or mowing their lawns, or picking up their kids from school. He saw them look up and wonder what the strange yellow cloud was doing blowing in from the west. He saw them start to choke, saw their skin blistering, saw them die.

“Get—get the right people to… to evacuate every town east of here in Colorado.” A good plan, maybe—if it was handled precisely right, which it wouldn’t be. On such short notice, an evacuation could only lead to chaos and futility. Most likely a last-minute evacuation would flood the roads with people who would end up just trapped in their cars when the gas cloud came, when they might have been safer holed up in their homes. “I just don’t know, Angel.”

“We’ll figure it out,” she said, though even she didn’t sound very hopeful. “But what about you, Chapel? What are you going to do?”

Chapel stared at the screens on the walls. More soldiers were flooding into the base with every second that passed. Had Belcher already set off the bombs?

No. No, one of the screens showed the igloos. No yellow cloud was billowing out of those open doors. Not yet.

There was no time to explain things to Angel. He put down the phone, even as he heard her call his name again and again, trying to get his attention.

He had Andre’s weapons, the hunting rifle, the pistol—a big, clumsy revolver—and the combat knife. He looked at the gas mask and knew it would just slow him down, hamper his breathing.

He grabbed up the weapons and kicked open the bunker’s door. He half expected to see a hundred soldiers out there, with orders to kill anyone who showed his face and who wasn’t wearing an army uniform. But instead, the door just opened on a stretch of paved road running deeper into the base.

He set off running.