The End Has Come

AGENT NEUTRALIZED David Wellington

Safety glass cracked, and the driver’s side window caved in. The biker brought his wrench back for another blow, and shards poured in through the suddenly open window, dust and wind blinding Whitman for a second as he fought to control the van and keep it on the road. In the back seat, Bob screamed, while up front in the passenger seat Grace fumbled with the shotgun clipped to the van’s dashboard.

The biker’s face was tattooed like a Japanese demon. He shoved his wrench back into a pannier on the side of his motorcycle and reached for a machete.

It was all Whitman could do to keep the van on the road. Ten years since the end of the world, potholes and broken asphalt made driving hazardous at any time. With a lunatic trying to kill him and six more of them in the rearview, Whitman was driving way too fast. One bad bump in the road and they would spin out, or fishtail to a stop at the worst possible time.

“Glove compartment,” Whitman said, though he wasn’t sure if Grace would hear him over the boy screaming in the back. “Glove compartment!”

He tried to push the biker off the road — the van might be a lumbering hulk at these speeds, but it weighed a lot more than Demonface’s patched-together bike. He veered hard, right into the bastard, but it was no use. The biker had to grab both handlebars for a second but he was a lot more maneuverable than the van. He swerved away, avoiding the collision with ease.

“Glove compartment!”

Grace finally seemed to process what he was saying. She popped open the glove compartment and a heavy revolver fell out. She caught it before it bounced away, then stared at it like she’d never seen a gun before.

Maybe she hadn’t — Whitman knew nothing about her, nothing that the plus sign tattooed on the back of her hand couldn’t tell him. He’d picked her — and Bob — up at Atlanta the day before. He was supposed to drive them to a medical camp in Florida. There hadn’t been much conversation since then.

Through his window he saw Demonface grab the machete again. The bike had no trouble matching speeds with the van, no matter how hard Whitman leaned on the gas.

“What do I do?” Grace demanded.

Whitman didn’t get a chance to answer. The machete came chopping down, the blade slicing deep into the rubber lining of the empty space where Whitman’s window used to be. He shoved himself back in his seat and the tip of the machete just missed cutting off the end of his nose.

Cubes of broken glass danced and fell from his shirt. Up ahead was the on-ramp to Route 75. Maybe it would be safer up there — he knew the government had pushed most of the abandoned cars off the main roads. Maybe —

The machete had cut deep into the window frame. Demonface had to wrench it free, a tricky thing to do while also controlling his motorcycle. The blade came loose, but the bike skidded across the road, falling back a full car length.

Whitman took the on-ramp at high speed, leaning into the curve as the van reared up on two wheels, then fell back on its suspension with a sickening crunch. Up ahead the road stretched out straight and clear forever, six lanes wide and completely empty. Even the road surface was in better shape, with barely a pothole to be seen.

Behind them the bikes came roaring up the ramp, seven of them riding in formation. Whitman saw their leader riding up front, a guy in a leather jacket with deer antlers sewn up and down the arms. Demonface was right next to him.

Even as he watched, Demonface poured on the speed and surged ahead, clutching his machete across his handlebars. He was coming in for another attack.

In the back, Bob kept screaming. The kid hadn’t said a word all night, literally not one word. Now he wouldn’t shut up.

Demonface came up alongside the van again. Whitman could see him grow huge in his wing mirror. He was grinning, his own white teeth visible inside the demon’s row of fangs.

“Give me —” Whitman started to say, but he didn’t get a chance to finish.

Demonface was riding right next to him, at his window, machete in hand. Then Grace leaned across Whitman’s body, obscuring his view.

She pointed the revolver right at the bastard’s face and pulled the trigger.

The noise and the flash of light rendered Whitman senseless. He tried to hold the wheel straight, but his head was full of smoke. Grace dropped the revolver in his lap, and he felt the hot barrel graze his knee.

He fought to recover, to see again at least — his hearing would be gone for a while, he knew. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes and finally got a bleary view of the road ahead. He straightened out the van before it could plunge into the concrete median strip.

Then he looked back and saw the bikers falling away, slowing down and letting the van rush forward and away from them.

Demonface’s bike was still sliding over the road, its wheels racing as it clattered to a stop. The biker himself lay motionless on the blacktop, one arm twisted over his head.

A month ago — ten years after the Crisis began, shortly after the world ended. Time didn’t mean what it used to.

There was music in the trees. Softly playing, patriotic songs. The trees were fake. The music was there to cut the silence.

A mile underground, seven hundred miles away. States between then and now, trackless lengths of wasteland and wilderness. Distances were so much longer than they had been.

Whitman dozed on a comfortable wooden bench, waiting his turn. Overhead, something that felt like the sun burned down on his face. Except, of course, it wasn’t the sun. It was a bank of floodlights high in the bunker roof.

They had moved Washington underground. The vaults below the capital had been built long before, built to withstand a nuclear apocalypse. More than safe enough for this particular Crisis. They’d brought down everything they needed, food and water and a nuclear generator. Staffers and pages and clerks. The business of government had to continue — somebody had to be in charge.

“They’re ready for you, Mr. Whitman,” a page said, a young woman in a blazer and a modest tweed skirt. She smiled at him when he opened his eyes.

He stood up — a little too fast. He heard movement behind him, rubber-soled boots squeaking on simulated flagstones. The jangling sound of an assault rifle being unlimbered from its strap.

He turned and looked behind him. The soldier there never smiled. He did his best to stay out of Whitman’s line of sight, but he was always there. Everywhere Whitman went in the Washington bunkers — to the bathroom, when he slept — the guard was there, because Whitman had a tattoo of a plus sign on the back of his hand.

There was no test for the prion disease that turned people into zombies. No symptoms to warn you when it was coming. It could incubate in your head for twenty years and then just one day, out of the blue, you would snap. Your eyes would fill with blood. You would forget your name; you would attack any living thing you saw.

Or — you could be perfectly fine. You could be completely clean, live out your whole natural life and never succumb. You just never knew. Once you had the tattoo on your left hand, it didn’t matter.

The guard followed Whitman as he walked down toward the Capitol dome. Not as nice as the old one, the above-ground one, he thought. This dome was made of concrete and wasn’t even painted. It was designed to survive even if the entire bunker came crashing down around it, a million tons of rock.

Inside, it looked much like the old Senate floor. Rows of desks turned inward toward a big podium. The desks were empty today, but five senators sat at the podium. Whitman recognized three of them. The other two were very, very young.

One of them, a man with white hair and gold-rimmed glasses perched on top of his head, had his own honor guard. A soldier stood behind him with an assault rifle, waiting. The senator had a plus sign on his hand just like Whitman’s. Apparently no matter how powerful you might be, the tattoo still made people nervous. A great democratizer, that tattoo.

A table stood in front of the podium, covered in loose papers and manila folders and two microphones on flexible stalks like the eyes of a crab. Two men were already sitting there. One of them — the lawyer assigned to Whitman’s defense — stared at the floor, his mouth a set line. Whitman had seen plenty of people like that. People who survived the Crisis but couldn’t handle what came next. People who couldn’t forget what they’d seen.

The other man turned as Whitman approached. Whitman couldn’t help but be surprised. It was Director Philips, Whitman’s old boss at the CDC. He’d heard the man had killed himself.

Pink scar tissue covered one side of Philips’ head. His ear was missing. Aha, Whitman thought. He had enough medical training to recognize a self-inflicted gunshot wound. So Philips had tried to kill himself — tried and failed.

Whitman could sympathize. He’d tried lots of things in his life, and failed. Now he was going to get to tell a select committee how badly he’d fucked up.

He was ready. He actually wanted this.

It meant closure.

Whitman stood on the gritty shoulder of the road, keeping one eye on the trees twenty yards away. There could be zombies out there. But he had to check the van, make sure it wasn’t going to conk out at the worst possible moment.

The painted government seal on the driver’s side door was scratched to hell, and his window was a complete loss. The tires seemed alright, though, and when he bent low to look at the undercarriage, he found only a few dents and scrapes.

They’d been lucky. As fast as he’d been driving over those rough roads, they could’ve cracked an axle.

When he straightened up, he nearly jumped out of his shoes. A figure with long stringy hair was walking toward him. It was only Grace, though.

“I told you to stay in the car,” he said.

She shrugged, then nodded at Bob sitting in the back seat. The kid was still screaming, though he’d grown hoarse and it wasn’t quite as deafening.

“I’m not like him,” Grace said.

Whitman took a deep breath. He had a pretty good idea what was coming. When he’d picked these two up, back in Atlanta, he’d been aware they were both positives. Positives weren’t allowed to live inside a proper city.

Being positive didn’t mean you were actually infected. At least that’s what every one of them told themselves.

“My friend Heather and I found a zombie in this underground mall. We weren’t supposed to be there, but . . . look, it bit Heather. I get that. They took her away and I don’t know what happened to her.”

Whitman could probably guess. Heather wouldn’t have been a positive, then. She’d been a confirmed infected. Only one thing happened to people like that.

“I ran away. I know that was . . . cowardly,” Grace said. She sounded like she’d prepared this speech well in advance. “I know it was wrong. But I never even got close to the zombie. It didn’t touch me.”

Whitman nodded. He supposed he had to hear her out.

“The police wouldn’t even listen, they just tattooed me and locked me up. They don’t know all the details. I know they were just trying to be careful. But I’m not at risk.” She gave him a hopeful smile. “I’m really not. Please. You can just take me back. Tell them I’m clean.” A little shake of her hair, which probably worked great on boys her age. “Please,” she said.

“I don’t make the rules.”

“I shouldn’t be out here!” she said. “It’s dangerous — those bikers would’ve killed us, they would’ve . . . what they would’ve done to me —”

“You’ll be safe at the medical camp,” he told her. He pulled open the driver’s side door and jumped back inside. “You coming?”

She stood there for a while, her face a mask of disbelief. She must have really thought she could talk her way out of this. Finally, she turned and looked back the way they’d come.

“Those bikers —”

“They were after our water, our food, our gasoline,” Whitman told her. “They must’ve been following us for a while.”

“They’re not going to give up, are they?” she asked. “They’ll kill us.”

Whitman shrugged. “They didn’t have any guns, or they would’ve used them. I guess after ten years there aren’t any bullets left out here. That gives us a chance. Plus, we’ve got a head start now. The sooner you get in the van,” he told her, “the sooner we get to Florida.”

She got in the van.

“Once we walled in the cities,” Director Philips droned on, “zombie incidents fell by a considerable degree. New infection rates are down nearly ninety-nine per cent . . .”

Even the senators looked bored as the Director droned on with his endless report on the progression of the Crisis. Whitman barely listened to any of it. He knew the numbers. As the CDC’s ranking field agent, he’d been responsible for collecting most of them. The last few years had been a blur as he traveled around the country interviewing what passed for medical personnel, overseeing the administration of the hospital camps, working with the army to get a sense of how many zombies were still out there, hiding in the wilderness.

It had been depressing work, if vital.

“Outside the cities, looting has become endemic,” Philips went on. “The vast majority of people surviving outside of protected communities make their living by foraging. Of perhaps greater concern is the appearance of so-called road pirates. Gangs, organized to a lesser or greater degree, who prey on the looters and even government convoys . . .”

Whitman had seen the pirates, though only from the window of a helicopter. Packs of scavengers. He’d pitied them, looking down from that height. They were only doing what they had to if they wanted to survive, he supposed. He’d assumed the army would put a quick end to such nonsense, but it seemed they had more important things to do.

“Food stocks continue to be a problem, though the agricultural worker program has made considerable advances in that regard. The key seems to have been adequate policing of the countryside around the farm complexes . . .”

Plantations, in other words. Out west, whole communities had been conscripted to work the fields. Battalions of soldiers watched over them, keeping them safe from zombies — and making sure they couldn’t run away.

“I believe that completes my report. I want to thank the committee for allowing us this chance to speak about —”

“Horseshit,” Whitman said.

The senators stirred in their chairs. Philips fell silent. Even the braindead lawyer sitting next to him twitched his head around as if looking for the cause of the disturbance.

Whitman was surprised at himself. He hadn’t meant to interject. Maybe his tolerance for obfuscation was just at its end.

“Mr. Whitman, we will have order in this chamber,” the white-haired senator insisted.

“Fine,” Whitman said. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “I just thought we could all save a little time if we skipped the pleasantries. We all know you didn’t bring Philips and me here to talk statistics. We could just as easily have submitted those in writing.”

“Then why,” the white-haired senator asked, smiling like a shark, “do you believe we asked for this face-to-face meeting?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Whitman asked. “You want someone to blame for the end of the world.”

When night fell, he had no choice but to pull over.

“We’ll take turns sleeping,” he said.

Grace protested — she wanted to keep driving through the night — but Whitman knew better. “Nothing out here shows lights at night,” he said. “The merest flicker, and the zombies would be all over us.”

“So we drive without headlights,” she suggested.

He laughed. “Sure. Then we blow out a tire on something we can’t see. Or run into a tree trunk that fell across the road. One accident like that, and we’re walking to Florida.”

Eventually, she agreed to go to sleep. Whitman took the first watch.

Not that there was anything to watch. Outside the van, the moonless night was just a flat plane of black, as if someone had spray-painted over their windows. He forced himself to stay awake, punching himself hard in the thigh at one point just to clear his head.

At some point, he realized he was being watched.

He turned around and saw Bob’s eyes, just two smudges of pale gray in the unrelieved blackness.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

The boy blinked at him.

“I’m sorry you got scared back there when those bikers came at us,” he told the kid. He didn’t know what else to say. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

“My mom said you would keep me safe.”

It was the first thing Bob had said to Whitman, other than to give his name.

“She said to obey you.”

“Who, me specifically?” Whitman asked.

“She said they would send a man. Then she just cried.”

Jesus, Whitman thought. He imagined the scene. The mother, probably on the far side of a pane of glass, looking at her child — her potentially infected child. How could she give him up?

But of course they wouldn’t have given her a choice. They would’ve taken the boy away the second they realized he was a positive. And who knew? Maybe she had looked at the tattoo on little Bob’s hand and maybe — maybe she hadn’t put up much of a fight.

Everyone knew the risk. Everyone knew the rules.

Whitman tried to keep Bob talking. It would help pass the time, help keep him awake. He asked the boy how he’d become positive, but Bob didn’t seem to understand. So instead he tried to talk about the future.

“You know where I’m taking you?”

The boy just blinked.

“It’s a camp. Not exactly like a summer camp, though. There’s no archery or making lanyards or anything, but —”

“I don’t know what a summer camp is,” Bob said.

Oh. Of course he didn’t. Bob was maybe ten years old. The Crisis began ten years ago. There hadn’t been summer camps in a long time.

“A camp. I’ll be safe there,” Bob said, because his mom had told him so, no doubt.

“That’s right. You’ll be safe from zombies and . . . and bikers. They’ll feed you and make sure you don’t get sick.”

Which was about all Whitman could promise.

“You like baseball?” he asked, to change the subject.

Bob blinked. Maybe they didn’t have baseball in Atlanta anymore, either.

After a couple hours, Whitman woke Grace up so she could take a watch. When he opened his eyes again, it was dawn and pink light smeared across the roof of the van.

“Anything to report?” he asked Grace.

“I thought maybe I heard engines, once,” she told him. “Except I’m not sure. Maybe it was just animals or something, growling in the trees.”

Whitman put the van in gear and moved out.

“It’s the business of this committee to hear a lot of reports,” one of the senators said. Whitman didn’t even look to see which one. He was watching his lawyer, the one they’d assigned to his case. He realized he’d never even caught the man’s name.

The lawyer’s eyes were glazed over, and his mouth was open in a rictus of horror. Whitman could only wonder what he saw, what moment of the Crisis he was reliving.

“What we hear disturbs us,” another senator said. “Director Philips presented the most optimistic data we’ve heard in a while. He didn’t mention the outbreaks of cholera and hantavirus in the cities of the Southwest. He didn’t say anything about the nutritional deficiencies we see — pellagra, beriberi, even childhood blindness.”

“You can hardly blame us for that,” Philips said.

The senator wasn’t done, however. “We were very alarmed to hear about conditions inside the so-called hospital camps. The camps are beyond overcrowded. Positives are herded inside and all but forgotten. They are given some food and clothing, yes —”

“Now, now,” the white-haired senator broke in. “We’re talking about people who might be zombies, here. The resources we have should always go first to healthy people. People who can live productive lives.”

“Nevertheless. Medical care is non-existent in the camps. The guards refuse to even touch the inmates. Riots and violent altercations kill more of them than zombie outbreaks ever could.”

Whitman turned and looked at the podium. The senator who had been talking had flecks of spittle on his lips, and his eyes burned with outrage.

“Mr. Whitman, you speak of blame. We’re more interested in justice. You don’t think the people of America — the people we represent — deserve better than this? You don’t think they have a right to know who was responsible for the Crisis?”

He might have answered, if he wasn’t interrupted by a sudden strangling noise.

Whitman swiveled around to see the lawyer jerk spasmodically upright in his chair. At first he thought the man was having a seizure. A clear, lucid light came into his eyes, though, and he stood up, his chair squeaking across the floor.

“Senator,” he said. “Senator, I — I object to this line of . . . of questioning,” he announced. “You can’t suggest that my clients were personally . . . personally . . .”

Everyone waited. Time stretched out, but the lawyer didn’t come up with any more words.

Eventually, he sat back down.

“Director Philips was responsible for all CDC operations when the first zombies were discovered. It was his set of recommendations,” the senator went on, “presented to the President in the first days of the Crisis, that led to the formation of the hospital camps, those prisons for the sick. That led to hundreds of thousands of healthy people dying because he did not prepare us for just how quickly the prion infection would spread.”

The white-haired senator cleared his throat and leaned forward. “On the other hand, it was Mr. Whitman who recommended the partition of the cities. Who suggested that we wall off our urban areas, stranding millions of Americans out in the wilderness.”

“Saving millions more,” Whitman said, but it came out as barely a whisper.

“The position of this committee is that the two of you are responsible for the incredible suffering and hardship that ensued from your recommendations. We would like to bring official charges today that will give the American people some peace of mind, some relief. Some closure.”

The five of them, the senators, stared down at them from the podium. They looked so damned indignant. So sanctimonious. Whitman wanted to shout imprecations in their faces.

It was Philips who broke the silence, however.

“If I may,” he said, weakly. Then he stood up and said it again, nearly shouting. “If I may!”

“Go ahead, Director,” the too-young senator said.

“I have just one point to make in defense,” he told them.

Whitman wondered why he bothered.

“Just one point,” Philips said again. He took a deep breath. Then he looked down at the table in front of him and said, “It was Mr. Whitman who came up with the plus sign. He was the one who created the idea of positives.”

Whitman was too shocked to even laugh.

The sun beat down on a road surface almost as pristine as the one he remembered from his youth — a stretch of concrete and asphalt wide and clear like a manmade river, pointed right in the direction he wanted to go. Say what you like about the world before the Crisis, they’d built well; they’d built to last. He didn’t see a single abandoned car or significant pothole for miles.

It couldn’t last.

It wasn’t anything he saw that warned him, it was something he felt. A kind of rumbling in his stomach, a little like hunger, a little like nausea. Soon, he could hear it, but he told himself it was the engine of the van making that noise.

Right up until he couldn’t deny it. Until he saw the motorcycles in his mirrors.

“They’re — they’re coming for us again,” Grace said, in a whisper. She swiveled around in her seat, her arms everywhere, one elbow hitting him in the side of his head as she turned to look through the rear window.

He glanced back and saw Bob looking back at him. Just watching him. I’m supposed to keep you safe, he thought. Your mom told you I would.

The bikes roared as they surged down the road straight toward the van. Now that he had a chance to actually look at them, he saw they were ragged junk. Pieces of dozens of different bikes strapped together, mismatched components hammered and beaten until they joined up. Only the leader’s had a headlight, and it was broken. Many of them didn’t even have mudguards.

Crazy. You had to be crazy to ride a bike like that. Which might explain how they dressed — like the leader, with antlers sewn on his sleeves like armor. One of the others had a pair of baby dolls hanging around his neck, their long blond hair tied together behind him. What was that even supposed to mean?

They came up fast, black smoke belching from their exhaust pipes. Babydolls had a sledgehammer that he brandished over his head. Antlers twisted his throttle and came racing ahead of the pack. He came up even with Whitman, though a full lane away. Whitman supposed he didn’t want to get shot.

Antlers gestured with one hand, telling Whitman to pull over.

Not much chance of that. Whitman shouted for Grace to get the shotgun. Then he veered toward Antlers, thinking maybe he would get lucky and knock the biker off the road. No dice — Antlers just swerved away, a big shit-eating grin all over his face.

That was when Babydolls attacked. Whitman had been too focused on the leader to see the other bike coming up on the passenger side. Babydolls smacked the side of the van with his hammer and the whole frame rang like a bell. Grace screamed, but she had the shotgun off the dashboard, cradled in her hands.

Whitman craned around trying to see what was going to happen next. Babydolls had his head down, below the level of their windows, but Whitman could just see the curve of his back. “Shoot him,” he told Grace, pointing through her window. “Don’t let him get any closer.”

She raised the gun, but Whitman grabbed the barrel. “Roll down your window first,” he told her.

Meanwhile, Antlers took a long knife off his belt. He veered in toward the van, the tip of his weapon pointed not at Whitman’s broken window but at the left front tire. Whitman wanted to swear. If he slashed the tire, at this speed, the van would spin out and probably roll over half a dozen times before it came to a stop.

He waited until Antlers got close, until he could almost have reached out his window and grabbed the bastard’s arm. Antlers lifted his knife and started to bring it down.

Two things happened at once. Grace fired her shotgun, screaming into the noise. Whitman twisted his wheel hard over to the left.

The van briefly went up on two wheels. There was a screeching sound as the deer antlers bit into the van’s paint job. Whitman expected the pirate leader to go flying, to fall off his bike, but apparently he was too skilled for that — instead he recovered, leaning deep into a turn and spinning around until he was riding the other way. When the van’s four wheels touched the pavement again, Whitman glanced over to his right and saw Babydolls receding, slowing down and falling back. There was blood on his face, but he was smiling, blinking one eye to keep it clear.

“I got him,” Grace said, whooping. “I got him!”

Except he was still alive, and still in control of his bike. Whitman expected the two of them to catch up and make another run any second now.

Except — they didn’t. They fell back and rejoined their pack. Kept pace with the van but didn’t try to catch up to it, just stayed a set distance behind. Out of range of firearms.

Antlers still had that shit-eating grin.

“Seatbelts,” Whitman said. “Get your seatbelts on!” Then he poured on the speed, potholes be damned.

They took Philips and Whitman to a waiting room, a pleasant little chamber just off the Senate floor. There was a fridge full of cold water in plastic bottles and a basket full of cookies in individual foil wrappers. After the MREs he’d been eating for the last few years, Whitman just stared at the little snacks, amazed such things still existed. He had the urge to fill his pockets with them. Then he looked back and saw his personal guard standing there, unsmiling. Waiting to shoot him if he went symptomatic. Always watching.

Philips, on the other hand, wouldn’t look at him. The Director curled up in a padded chair, almost in a fetal position. He covered his scarred face with one hand as if he expected Whitman to hit him.

Well, that would probably feel pretty good, honestly. Whitman wasn’t a violent man by nature, but the years since the Crisis had required him to gain some skill in that regard. He could probably break the Director’s jaw before the soldier pulled them apart.

He chuckled to himself.

“I’m sorry,” Philips said. “I’m so sorry.”

“What, for selling me out back there?” Whitman asked. He considered what to say next. What he came up with surprised him a little. “Don’t worry about it.”

Philips uncurled a little. “I’m —”

“They’ll probably be happy with one sacrifice,” Whitman said. He tore open a cookie and took a bite. Oatmeal raisin. Never his favorite, but it was free. “Crucify me. Hold me up as an example. What do you think, a quick firing squad, or will they drag me through New York in chains, first?” He laughed. “Maybe it’ll make some people feel better. That’s what we swore to do, right? As medical professionals? Relieve suffering.”

Philips shook his head. “I have to say — you’re being awfully good about this.”

“I’m exhausted.”

Philips licked his lips. “I’m so sorry . . .”

“I feel sorry for you.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Because if they do just take me, and leave you alive — you’re the one who has to keep fighting. You know the funny thing about the end of the world?”

“I . . . no,” Philips said.

“There is no such thing. The world doesn’t end. There’s always more work to be done, more digging out the rubble. More fucked-up shit to live through. Well,” he said, taking a deep breath, “I’m done. Let me have my ending. Let me have some peace, for a change.”

The senators kept them waiting for a good half hour. Plenty of time to decide questions of life and death, these days.

“What the hell are they doing back there?” Whitman asked. In his rearview, the bikers had fallen well back, barely increasing their speed at all as the van outpaced them.

He needed to concentrate on the road. One bad patch of asphalt, and this chase could end very, very badly. “Grace,” he said, “keep an eye on them. I need to watch —”

“Mr. Whitman?” Bob asked from the backseat.

“Not now, Bob,” he said, a little louder, a little harsher than he’d meant to. The road ahead looked well-maintained, but he knew from long experience that —

“Mr. Whitman,” Bob said again.

Had he seen it coming? It didn’t matter.

Up ahead, a long curving ramp cut away from the highway. Whitman didn’t bother looking at it, being far too busy looking for road obstructions he might have to negotiate. So he didn’t see the truck coming up the ramp at high speed.

It was a semi rig, a big rusting hulk of a vehicle eleven feet high with six bald tires that smoked as they bit into the asphalt. Mounted across its grille was a snowplow blade dented and bent from repeated collisions.

It slammed into the front of the van at thirty miles an hour. If it had hit them a split second later it would have sliced right through the passenger compartment, killing all of them instantly. Instead it just pancaked the van’s engine, blew out both front tires, and turned the windshield into a storm of flying glass daggers.

Whitman flew forward, the shoulder strap of his seat belt cutting deep into his armpit, crushing his chest so he couldn’t breathe. He felt like he’d been picked up and dropped from a height, like he was dangling from his belt as a planet of metal and glass and plastic came rushing toward him. His head bounced off the steering wheel, and a high-pitched scream roared through his head. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel his own body.

For a long time he could hear nothing, see nothing. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think . . . little by little the world came back to him.

The first thing he heard was Bob screaming behind him.

It shook him up. Woke him, a little. He looked around, trying to figure out where he was. Why he hurt so much.

Straight ahead, through the place where the windshield used to be, he saw the tall curving shape of the snowplow, now thoroughly embedded in what remained of the van. Beyond that he could see the cab of the semi rig. Its windshield was gone, too, though it hadn’t shattered as cleanly as his. The driver of the rig hung half in, half out of that frosted plane of glass. Blood poured out of him. He was very clearly dead.

Whitman turned, looking for Grace, but he couldn’t see her. The impact had torn off the passenger side door, and he saw the road surface beyond, littered with glass and twists of broken metal. He couldn’t see her or any part of her.

Bob was still screaming.

He wrestled with his seat belt. Somehow got it loose. He pushed open his door and wriggled out of the wreckage, dropped to his feet on the road. He pulled open the side door and saw Bob unhurt but very upset, staring at him with wide eyes.

Bob stopped screaming. Which allowed Whitman to hear something else.

Motorcycle engines, coming closer.

“Mr. Whitman, they’d like to see you now,” the page said. She was still smiling.

Whitman knew better than to think that was a good sign. He tried to stand up but found that his knees had frozen. They wouldn’t do it down here, he thought. They wouldn’t want to disturb the senators with the noise of a gunshot. No. They would take him up to the surface, first.

“It’s best not to keep them waiting,” the page said, her smile dimming just a bit.

It hurt to breathe. Whitman was pretty sure he’d broken a rib or two. He found just lifting his head was agony. He turned and saw Antlers racing toward him, head bent down low over his handlebars. Was he expecting Whitman to start shooting?

Too bad. Whitman hadn’t thought to search the wrecked van for the revolver or the shotgun. He stood there unarmed, waiting to be killed.

It wasn’t going to be quick. Antlers tore by him at speed. Something very hard struck him across the back of his legs, and Whitman fell down onto the road. He tried to grab the side of the van, tried to pull himself back up to his feet, but before he could manage it, Antlers swung back around and hit him again, this time in the side. He flopped forward into the van, almost on top of Bob.

He didn’t know if the kid was screaming or not, now. He couldn’t hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears.

Where was Grace? Did they already have her? Did they pull her unconscious and bleeding out of the wreckage? Whitman cursed himself for worrying about her when his own life was about to end. Surely there were better uses of his mental capacity in this, the last few seconds he had left.

Once he’d caught his breath, he could hear again. He wished he couldn’t. He heard a motorcycle engine putter out, then heavy footfalls come rushing toward him.

He turned just in time to see Antlers right behind him, raising a hammer over his head. Whitman rushed forward and grabbed the bastard’s arms, nearly impaling himself on a spiky bit of antler. The biker pushed back against him, but now that they were face to face Whitman realized how thin the man was, wasted away by malnutrition and hard living out here in the wilderness. He had a wiry strength, but Whitman bore down on him just by pure mass. He knocked the biker to the ground and kicked him hard — which probably hurt Whitman more than it did Antlers. He felt something tear in his abdomen, and he nearly collapsed on top of the biker.

He heard a shotgun blast behind him and whirled around. Through the van’s broken windows, he could see Grace on the other side of the vehicle. She had the shotgun up, and she blasted away again, and then he heard screaming. A grown man screaming his life away.

“That’s right! That’s right!” Grace screamed. Bikers jumped on their motorcycles and roared away, none of them willing to take her on.

“Grace,” Whitman said, trying to shout. It didn’t quite work. “Grace — reload.”

“What?” she asked.

“I said —”

Except he didn’t get to repeat himself. Antlers had gotten back on his feet. He wrapped an arm around Whitman’s neck and pulled him backwards, pressing hard until black spots danced in Whitman’s vision.

He couldn’t breathe — couldn’t move — couldn’t fight back. His body begged for air, but he had none to supply. He felt his consciousness dwindling away, vanishing.

Then a roar of noise and a shockwave went past his face, burning his cheek, and Antlers let go. Whitman bent over, gasping, wanting very much to sit down. To just die. But he had to know.

He turned first to look at Antlers. There wasn’t much left of the biker’s head.

He turned next to look into the van.

Bob still had his seatbelt on. Nobody had told him to take it off. The boy was curled forward with his whole body braced around the revolver, which looked enormous in his tiny hands.

He was brought to a pleasant office with wood-paneled walls and a massive desk. Behind it sat the white-haired senator. And, of course, his guard, who looked as grave and deadly as Whitman’s own.

“We’ve made our decision,” the senator said. He waved for Whitman to sit down. “I’m going to do you a favor here and just speak honestly, if that’s alright.”

“Absolutely,” Whitman said. As long as he didn’t have to stand up when he heard the death sentence, he thought he would be okay.

“It didn’t come down to justice, or anything like that. It came down to the fact that your job — overseeing the quarantine, setting up the hospital camps — is essentially complete. Director Philips still has plenty more to do. If he can isolate the prion and find a vaccine, well. That would be handy, wouldn’t it?”

Whitman knew enough about the disease to understand that would probably never happen. Still. He wasn’t here for debate. Just sentencing.

“You were right, we need a scapegoat. And you’re it. I’m sorry.”

Whitman nodded. He looked down at his hands in his lap. His left hand with its tattoo. Had that made a difference? Maybe.

“I understand,” he said, meekly. His bravado had deserted him. “So what’s next? A quick firing squad? Or do I go on an apology tour first?”

The senator grunted. “You think we’re going to kill you?”

“Isn’t that why I’m here?” Whitman asked.

“No. Oh, I’m sure some of my colleagues would like that. But no. Your name will go down in history as the man who bungled the Crisis. Part of the official record. But honestly, we don’t have enough people left to throw any of them away.”

Whitman looked up in surprise. “So — what’s going to happen to me?”

“A very serious demotion, to start with. Your salary is going to take quite a hit. But we’ve got a new job for you. There are still new positives being discovered all the time. We can’t very well keep them in the cities where they might spread the infection. They need to be taken to the hospital camps, God help them. Somebody has to be in charge of that. Transportation and the like.”

“I don’t understand,” Whitman said.

“We’re giving you another chance,” the senator told him. “A chance to make amends.”

The bikers didn’t come back for their dead. Maybe they were scared off permanently.

The van was totaled. Surprisingly, the semi rig ran just fine. It took some work extricating the snow plow blade from the van, but in the end they had a vehicle again. Even if it stank inside like home-made liquor and road pirate blood.

Between them, Whitman and Grace figured out how to drive the thing. Within a couple of hours, they were cruising down the highway at a steady twenty miles an hour, Bob curled up in a little bunk behind the cab.

Grace had fallen asleep too by the time Whitman pulled off the highway, just over the Florida line. He drove another couple of miles to a place he’d only ever seen on satellite maps.

It wasn’t a city. It wasn’t big enough to be a village. He thought it might’ve been a country club, before. It had a high fence and a parking lot full of patched-together cars. Snipers up on the gate waved them through.

Inside the lot, he saw people dressed in outlandish clothes working on the cars. Women in furs and floppy hats wrestled with carburetors. Men with blue hair or dressed in suits with torn shoulders changed oil filters.

The truck’s brakes squealed as he pulled to a stop. The noise woke Grace and she sat up slowly, looking around with bleary eyes. “This isn’t a hospital camp,” she pointed out.

“No,” Whitman told her. “It’s a place we can trade some of our water for gasoline, though.”

“Who are these people? Road pirates?”

He shook his head. “Looters. They work their way through old suburban subdivisions, finding what food and supplies they can get out of old houses. It’s a living, I guess, if you can’t score a place in a walled city.”

Grace’s brow furrowed. “What’re we doing here? We have some gas left.”

Whitman turned to look at her. He tried to smile. It had been a long time since he’d done that. “We’re here to give you a choice. You and Bob both.”

He parked the rig and let the engine rumble itself to sleep. “I’ll take you to the hospital camp if that’s what you want. It’s safe there, more or less. Not very comfortable, though — and it’s a twenty-year sentence. You have to stay there until you can prove you’re not infected.”

She didn’t appear as though she liked the idea.

“Otherwise — you can start over here. Get to know the looters. Figure out how they survive. You can have this rig and everything in it. That ought to get you started. The only thing I ask is that you and Bob stick together. He can handle a gun, but he’s too young to even understand what’s happening to him.”

Grace stared at him. “Why?”

“Because I think you might have a better chance here.”

“No — I mean, why are you doing this? Giving me a choice. Your job is to take us to the camp.”

Whitman shrugged. “I’ve seen you two can look after yourselves. I know what it’s like in those camps — and what it’s like here. Don’t think I’m giving you any good options. Life here is going to be tough, and you might not make it. But you won’t be a prisoner. You’ll be free to move about as you please.” He lifted his hands, dropped them again. “I guess that’s something, right?”

Grace ran her fingers through her hair. Clearly she had a lot to think about. “What about you? What happens to you if I say yes?”

“I’ll call for a government helicopter to pick me up. I still have a job.” There would always be more positives who needed rides. There was no end to that demand. Always more work. The world never did end, it seemed.

He took the keys out of the ignition. Held them out to her.

“What do you say?” he asked.