"I can't find him! I can't find Tim!"
A roar of engines; at the back of the line, one of the buses drew clear, then another and another. In a burst of fury, Kittridge rammed his way toward April, grabbed her by the waist and plunged toward the door. But the girl would have none of it; she was fighting him, trying to break his grip.
"I can't leave without him! Let me go!"
Ahead he saw Pastor Don at the base of the steps. Kittridge shoved April forward. "Don, help me! Get her on the bus!"
"I can't leave, I can't leave!"
"I'll find him, April! Don, take her!"
A final thrust through the melee, Don reaching forward, finding April's hand, pulling her toward the door; then she was gone. The bus was only half full, but there was no time to wait. Kittridge's last glimpse of April was her face pressed to the window, calling his name.
"Danny, get them out of here!"
The doors closed. The bus pulled away.
In her basement chamber of the NBC facility, Lila Kyle, who had spent the last four days in a state of narcotic suspension-a semiconscious twilight in which she experienced the room around her as if it were but one of several movie screens she was viewing simultaneously-was asleep, and dreaming: a simple, happy dream in which she was in a car at night, being driven to the hospital to have her baby. Whoever was driving the car, Lila couldn't see; the fringes of her vision were draped in blackness. Brad, she said, are you there? And then the blackness lifted, like the curtain over a stage, and Lila saw that it was Brad. A shimmering golden joy, weightless as June sunlight, thrummed through her entire being. We'll be there soon, my darling, Brad said. We'll be there any second. This isn't all going to hell in a handbasket. You just hold on. The baby is coming. The baby is practically here.
And those were the words Lila was saying to herself-the baby is coming, the baby is coming-when the room was buffeted by a violent explosion-glass shattering, things falling, the floor beneath her lurching like a tiny boat at sea-and she began to scream.
Chapter 21
The viral pod that swarmed the eastern Iowa refugee-processing center in the early morning hours of June 9 was part of a larger mass gathering out of Nebraska. Estimates made later by the joint task force, code-named JTF Scorch differed on its size; some believed it was fifty thousand, others many more. In the days that followed, it would convene with a second, larger pod, coming north out of Missouri, and a third, larger still, moving south from Minnesota. Always their numbers increased. By the time they reached Chicago, they were half a million strong, penetrating the defensive perimeter on July 17 and overwhelming the city within twenty-four hours.
The first virals to breach the wires of the refugee-processing center arrived at 4:58 CTD. By this time, extensive aerial operations in the central and eastern portions of the state had been under way for eight hours, and, in fact, all but one of the bridges over the Mississippi-Dubuque-had already been destroyed; the timing of the quarantine had been deliberately misreported by the task force. It was generally believed by the leaders of the task force-a conclusion supported by the combined wisdom of the American military and intelligence communities-that a concentrated human presence within the quarantine zone acted as a lure to the infected, causing them to coalesce in certain areas and thus make aerial bombardment more effective. The closest analogue, in the words of one task force member, was using a salt lick to hunt deer. Leaving behind a population of refugees was simply the price that needed to be paid in a war that lacked all precedent. And in any event, those people were surely dead anyway.
Major Frances Porcheki of the Iowa National Guard-in her civilian life, a district manager for a manufacturer of women's sporting apparel-was unaware of the mission of JTF Scorch, but she was no fool, either. Though a highly trained military officer, Major Porcheki was also a devout Catholic who took comfort in, and guidance from, her faith. Her decision not to abandon the refugees under her protection, as she had been ordered to do, followed directly from this deeper conviction, as did her choice to devote the final energies of her life, and those of the soldiers still under her command-165 men and women, who, nearly to a one, took up positions at the western wire-to provide cover for the escaping buses. By this time, the civilians who had been left behind were racing after the vehicles, screaming for them to stop, but there was nothing to be done. Well, that's it, Porcheki thought. I would have saved more if I could. A pale green light had gathered to the west, a wall of quivering radiance, like a glowing hedgerow. Jets were streaking overhead, unleashing the fury of their payloads into the heart of the pod: gleaming tracers, spouts of flame. The air was split with thunder. Through a gauntlet of destruction the pod emerged, still coming. Porcheki leapt from her Humvee before it had stopped moving, yelling, "Hold your fire, everyone! Wait till they're at the wire!," then dropped to a firing position-having no more orders to give, she would face the enemy on the same terms as her men-and began to pray.
* * *
Time itself acquired a disordered feel. Amid the chaos, lives were overlapping in unforeseen ways. In the basement of the NBC facility, a bitter struggle was ensuing. At the very moment that the Blackbird helicopter was alighting on the rooftop, Horace Guilder, who had been hiding from Nelson in the office when the assault commenced, his decision not to telephone his counterparts at the CDC having lifted one burden from his mind only to create another (he had no idea what to do next), had descended the stairs to the basement with considerable difficulty to find Masterson and Nelson frantically cramming blood samples into a cooler packed with dry ice, yelling words to the effect of "Where the hell have you been?" and "We have to get out of here!" and "The place is coming down around our ears!" But these sentiments, reasonable as they were, touched Guilder only vaguely. The thing that mattered now was Lawrence Grey. And all at once, as if he'd been slapped in the face, Guilder knew what he had to do.
There was only one way. Why hadn't he seen it all along?
His whole body was poised on the verge of paralyzing spasms; he could barely draw a breath through the narrowing tube of his throat. And yet he mustered the will-the will of the dying-to reach out and seize Masterson's sidearm and yank it free of its holster.
Then, amazing himself, Guilder shot him.
Kittridge was being trampled.
As the buses pulled away, Kittridge was knocked to the ground. As he attempted to rise, somebody's foot caught him in the side of his face, its owner tumbling over him with a grunt. More pummeling feet and bodies; it was all he could do to assume a posture of defense, pressing himself to the ground with his hands over his head.
"Tim! Where are you?"
Then he saw him. The crowd had left the boy behind. He was sitting in the dirt not ten yards away. Kittridge hobbled to his side, skidding in the dust.
"Are you okay? Can you run?"
The boy was holding the side of his head. His eyes were vague, unfocused. He was crying in gulps, snot running from his nose.
Kittridge pulled him to his feet. "Come on."
He had no plan; the only plan was to escape. The buses were gone, ghosts of dust and diesel smoke. Kittridge hoisted Tim at the waist and swung him around to his back and told him to hold on. Three steps and the pain arrived, his knee shuddering. He stumbled, caught himself, somehow stayed upright. One thing was certain: with his leg, and with the boy's added weight, he wouldn't make it far on foot.
Then he remembered the armory. He'd seen an open-backed Humvee parked inside. Its hood had been standing open; one of the soldiers had been working on it. Would it still be there? Would it function?
As the soldiers at the western wire opened fire, Kittridge gritted his teeth and ran.
By the time he reached the armory, his leg was on the verge of collapse. How he'd made it those two hundred yards, he had no idea. But luck was with him. The vehicle was parked where he'd seen it, among the now-empty shelves. The hood was down-a good sign-but would the vehicle run? He lowered Tim to the passenger seat, got behind the wheel, and pressed the starter.
Nothing. He took a breath to steady himself. Think, Kittridge, think. Hanging beneath the dash was a nest of disconnected wires. Somebody had been working on the ignition. He pulled the wires free, picked two, and touched the ends together. No response. He had no idea what he was doing-why had he thought this would work? He arbitrarily selected two more wires, red and green.
A spark leapt; the engine roared to life. He jammed the Humvee into gear, aimed for the doors, and shoved the accelerator to the floor.
They barreled toward the gate. But a new problem lay before them: how to make it through. Several thousand people were trying to do the same thing, a roiling human mass attempting to wedge itself through the narrow exit. Without taking his foot off the gas, Kittridge leaned on the horn, realizing too late what a bad idea this was-that the mob had nothing to lose.
It turned. It saw. It charged.
Kittridge braked and swung the wheel, but too late: the hordes swallowed the Humvee like a breaking wave. His door flew open, hands pulling at him, trying to break his grip on the wheel. He heard Tim scream as he fought to keep control. People were lunging at the vehicle from all directions, boxing him in. A face collided with the windshield, then was gone. Hands were reaching over his face from behind, clawing at him, more pulling at his arms. "Get off me!" he yelled, trying to bat them away, but it was no use. There were simply too many, and as more bodies rolled over the windshield and under the vehicle's tires and the Humvee began to tip, he reached for Tim, bracing for the crash; and that was the end of that.
* * *
Meanwhile, at a distance of three miles, the line of buses-carrying a total of 2,043 civilian refugees, 36 FEMA and Red Cross workers, and 27 military personnel-was roaring eastward. Many of the people on board were sobbing; others were locked in prayer. Those with children were clutching them fiercely. A few, despite the earnest pleas of their fellows to shut the hell up, were still screaming. While a handful were already undergoing the wrenching self-reproach of having left so many behind, the vast majority possessed no such misgivings. They were the lucky ones, the ones who'd gotten away.
At the wheel of the Redbird, Danny Chayes was experiencing, for the first time in his life, an emotion that could only be described as a magnificent wholeness of self. It was as if he had lived all of his twenty-six years within an artificially narrow bandwidth of his potential personhood, only to have the scales fall abruptly from his eyes. Like the bus whose course he guided, Danny had been shot forward, propelled into a new state of being in which a range of contrary feelings, in all their distinctive contours, existed simultaneously in his mind. He was afraid, genuinely and soulfully afraid, and yet this fear was a source of not paralysis but power, a rich well of courage that seemed to rise and overflow within him. You're the captain of that ship, Mr. Purvis said, and that's what Danny was. Over his left shoulder, Pastor Don and Vera were talking away, speaking in urgent tones about this and that and the other; behind them, on the benches, the others were huddled together in pairs. The Robinsons with their baby, who was making a kind of mewing sound; Wood and Delores, who were holding hands as they prayed; Jamal and Mrs. Bellamy, the two of them actually hugging; April, sitting woefully alone, her face too stunned for tears. Their deliverance had become the sole purpose of Danny's life, the fixed point in his personal cosmos around which everything else revolved, yet in the excitement of the moment and Danny's discovery of the amazing fact of his aliveness, their presence was a pure abstraction. At the wheel of his Redbird 450, Danny Chayes was in union with himself and with the universe, and when he saw, as no doubt the drivers of the other buses did as well, the second mass of virals rising from the predawn darkness to the south, and then the third, coming from the north, and discerned in his mind's eye with swift three-dimensional calculation that these two bodies would subsequently unite to form a single encircling mass that would swarm over the buses like hornets loosed from a nest, he knew what he had to do. Swinging the wheel to the left, he broke free from the convoy and jammed the accelerator to the floor, soaring past the other buses in the line. Seventy, seventy-five, eighty miles an hour: with every ounce of his being, he willed the bus to go faster. What are you doing? Pastor Don yelled. For the love of God, Danny, what are you doing? But Danny knew just what he was doing. His goal was not evasion, for there could be none; his goal was to be the first. To hit the pod at such barreling velocity that he would sail right through it, carving a corridor of destruction. The space behind him had erupted in a chorus of screams; beyond his windshield the pods were merging, a swelling legion of light. His knuckles were white on the wheel.
"Get down, everyone!" he yelled. "Get down!"
"What the f**k!"
Nelson was backing away, holding his hands protectively before his face. Guilder realized the man pretty much expected him to shoot him, too. Which was nothing he was particularly averse to, though in the near term he had other requirements.
"Get the woman," he said, gesturing with the pistol.
"There's no time! Christ, you didn't have to kill him!"
There were more concussions from above. The air was swirling with dust. "I'll be the judge. Move."
Later, Guilder would have cause to wonder how he'd known to get the woman first, one of the more fateful decisions of his life. He might have chosen to leave her, bringing about an altogether different outcome. Intuition, perhaps? Sentimentality for the bond he'd discerned between her and Grey-a bond that had eluded him all his life? Pushing Nelson forward at the end of his pistol, he crossed the lab to the door of Lila's chamber.
"Open it."
Lila Kyle, aroused by the explosions, had given herself over to incoherent and terrified screaming; she had no idea where she was or what was happening. She was strapped to a bed. The bed was in a room. The room and everything in it were moving. It was as if she'd awakened from one dream to find herself lost in another, each equally unreal, and she experienced only a partial awareness of Nelson and Guilder as they entered the room. The two men were arguing. She heard the word "helicopter." She heard the word "escape." The smaller of the two was plunging a needle into her arm. Lila could offer no resistance, yet the instant the needle pierced her skin a jolt of energy hit her heart, as if she'd been connected to a giant battery. Adrenalin, she thought. I have been sedated, and now they are injecting me with adrenalin, to wake me up. The smaller man was hauling her to her feet. Beneath her gown, a cold na**dness prickled her skin. Could she stand? Could she walk? Just get her out of here, the second man said.