PLAGUE ZONE is a serial novel by David Wellington. It was originally published online, starting with chapter one on April 23rd, 2007, also known as International Pixel-Stained Techno-Peasant Day (and the author's birthday, for that matter). For five months chapters were posted every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

The book is now complete, and can be read in its entirety at this site. To get started, please go to Chapter One, and meet Tim Kempfer, the toughest librarian in post-apocalypse Seattle.

We hope you will enjoy the story. David Wellington is the author of MONSTER ISLAND, MONSTER NATION, and MONSTER PLANET (available from Thunder's Mouth Press) as well as THIRTEEN BULLETS and the upcoming NINETY-NINE COFFINS and VAMPIRE ZERO (Three Rivers Press).

PLEASE NOTE: This book contains graphic descriptions of extreme violence and strong language, and may not be suitable for all readers.

I will be back with another serial in 2008. In the meantime, have a great Halloween!

The bastard was across the street, no more than twenty yards away. He was wearing that stupid plaid shirt. All of his hair had fallen out and black drool had coated his chest and groin. He looked painfully thin, as if he hadn’t eaten enough, and his eyes were dead empty pools.

“There,” Tim said. This at least made sense. Droolers didn’t wander. They were opportunists—Helena had told him as much. They stayed close to the scene of the crime. It made sense on another level, too. Wherever Tim had journeyed, wherever his feet had taken him, this little intersection was all that remained of his world. Everybody that counted was right here. Karen, Jake, Nero.

“What, him? That’s the guy?” Sasha asked. She didn’t fit into the nice little tableau, not really. It had been her role to get him this far, but now she was extraneous. “You want me to grab him?” she asked.

“No. He’s mine. I came this far—”

He stopped in mid-sentence and looked straight up.

He was not surprised to hear the rotors of a helicopter again.

“Not now,” he said.

Not now! This was it, his primal scene. He was supposed to be left alone in it long enough to do what was necessary. But of course he had screwed up too badly for that. He had made a mess of things. Nero was so close, though, he could still finish the jerk off and—

And then what? Jake needed medical help. He knew it. Jake would die if he didn’t get him to a hospital. How long could a child live on just cookies?

A light came on in the sky. It was bright enough to blind Tim for a second. It descended in a dusty cone from right overhead and it lit up the intersection perfectly, freezing everything in place with its illumination. It sent long sinister shadows streaming away from him. He felt like an actor on a stage in a nasty, brutal play with a bad ending.

Across the street Nero slipped into the shadows, lumbering away. Had he been scared off? Doubtful. Yet maybe he knew, on some level, how close he had come.

Sasha moved first, stepping backward, away from the center of the light, toward the motorcycle. A bullet whined through the air and sent dust puffing up from the ground near her feet. She jumped back, her hands going wide.

“Stay right where you are,” an amplified voice insisted. “We have ground units closing on your location. Do not attempt to flee.”

The light stayed centered right on Tim. If he tried to move while inside that cone of light he would be shot down and his journey would be over and complete.

If he didn’t move, he would be picked up by the boy soldiers and put in jail, probably for a very long time. He looked not at the helicopter above but at Sasha.

She frowned a question at him. While Tim stood perfectly still, his arms raised, she slowly reached down to her belt. Tim tensed his legs while she carefully drew one of her revolvers, then the other. They were hidden inside the voluminous folds of her fur coat, for the moment.

She was willing to distract the helicopter pilot for him. She understood her part, finally, in this grim scenario. Almost certainly she would be killed, torn apart by machine guns, if she lifted her weapons. Yet it would give Tim one tiny fraction of a second to run. To chase after Nero, to take him down. To end what he had started.

“I’ll do it,” she said, looking him right in the eyes.

She would do it for him. Who knew why? It didn’t matter. She would do it.

And with that tragic offering, that act of offered sacrifice, she broke the spell.

He owed her. He owed her his life, and he could not take hers.

Nothing had ever been as simple as he thought. Everything had always mattered, even the things he’d shouldered free from, the irrelevancies and the obstacles. He had hurt so many people on his road, or let them be hurt.

“No,” he said. “No.”

He had a duty to her. And much more important, he had a duty to Jake. If Jake was still alive—then Nero didn’t matter. What he’d done to Karen was unforgivable, yes. But if Jake was alive then Tim’s purpose wasn’t revenge any more. It was to protect his son. To save his son.

Phil Nero was gone, swallowed up by the night. Tim doubted he would ever see the man again.

He threw his weapon in the gutter, and gestured for Sasha to do the same. They would go to the stockade. They probably deserved to go to the stockade, after what they’d done.

Maybe they would let Jake visit him, though. And eventually he would be released. Then they could go home.

“Hey,” he shouted, and started waving his arms in the air. “Hey! Come get us! Come rescue us! We’re clean! We’re clean!”

Slowly, picking its way carefully down through the air, the helicopter came in for a landing.

“No. There’s no time,” Tim said. He watched the mass of droolers swarm over each other, climbing over each others’ backs, pulling and tugging at one another. They were jockeying for position, trying to get at something he still couldn’t see. It was big, whatever it was. Maybe as big as a car.

“So we mother-fucking make time. I ain’t going into that, not even with all the bullets in the world.”

Tim squinted into the darkness. There was something—something red underneath the mound of bodies. Not the red of blood but the color of metallic paint. The kind of paint used on cars. “I wonder—” he breathed.

“What? You wonder what, man?”

Ice cubes clinked together in Tim’s stomach. He started to look up and around, peering through the low light looking for street signs. He was afraid he knew what he would find. “Oh, shit,” he said, because he’d been right.

He knew this intersection. Of course, the last time he’d seen it had been in broad daylight. He’d also seen it from above, looking down through the lens of a camera onboard a helicopter. He’d seen it on CNN, and then again on digital video disc in a hangar at SeaTac.

This was the intersection. It was no more than five minutes from his house. It was the place where Karen and Jake died.

He was almost completely certain that the droolers packed into the street in front of him were climbing over and around his own car, the one Karen had used to try to escape the chaos. The one that had failed her at exactly the wrong time.

This was it, then. He’d come back to the place he’d started from. He had finished the journey. He scanned the crowd of droolers for Phil Nero’s face, but didn’t see him. He winced and looked again for Karen but she wasn’t there either.

As had happened before he felt life compressing, narrowing down to a single sharp point. Everything else fell away. He felt as if he were racing down a tunnel at incredible speed looking at the single point of light at its end. He felt like iron blinders had come down around the edges of his vision and he could see nothing but the rising and falling throng of bodies.

He climbed off the bike.

“What the fuck, Kempfer? Where are you going?”

“I have to see,” he said. He didn’t bother to explain further. “You can wait here for me if you like. You can leave if you want to. I don’t know if I’m coming back.”

“You’ll get yourself killed, you idiot! Don’t you take another step.”

Tim shook his head and pulled the gun out of his pack. It felt flat and cold in his hand, like a tool. Like something you would use to achieve a very specific end.

“At least let me help,” Sasha said, grabbing his arm.

It felt like the icy surface of a frozen lake cracking open. Suddenly he recovered himself, looked around and saw things the way they were again. “Yeah…” he said. “Yeah. Listen. I have an idea here but you have to really trust me. Do you?”

“Of course not.” Sasha stared at him. She was breathing hard, he saw, and he wondered if she was scared too. Of course she was, he decided. The fear wasn’t his alone. “What’s the idea?”

He smiled coldly, then lead her back up the street, away from the pile of bodies. He took her as far back as the drooler handcuffed to the street sign. “I almost got killed a while back. A drooler almost bit me. I shot him, just in time, and got his blood and spit all over me.” He stepped closer to the drooler, who was silently lunging for him. He leaned back as its loose hand swung out at him. As the drooler spun around, recovering from the wild swing, he stepped in and blew its brains out, splattering himself with its fluids. Just like before.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Sasha told him.

“Don’t—that might change your smell and ruin the effect.” The yeasty stink of the drooler’s infection filled his nostrils and his throat, making him want to gag too. He grabbed the dead drooler’s face and hauled it upward again, smearing black spit over the palm of his hand. “Come here,” he said.

Eventually she did. He wiped the drool across her shoulders of her fur coat before she could jump back.

“It dries out after a while and then it’s useless,” he warned her. “We need to move fast.” He lead her back to the throng, pressing in closer this time until a couple of them looked up and sniffed the air, their vacant eyes rolling in his direction. Behind him Sasha moved in, though not as fast, her nickel-plated revolvers out and in her hands. Tim drew his own gun and stepped closer. The droolers looked up one by one—and then looked away, their attention turning once more to the car they hid with their bodies. Tim tried to push his way in through their arms and heads and legs. Individually they were quite weak and he was able to haul them away from the car, but en masse they resisted him like a brick wall.

“Get the fuck back,” he howled, suddenly desperate. He kicked and scratched and dragged at the bodies, but even as he got them to move, even as he shoved them away they just scrabbled and fought to get right back to the car.

A heavy grunt sounded from the mass and Tim jerked backwards, uncertain what was going on. He saw Sasha yanking droolers off the car, one by one. Helping him. “Don’t waste time looking at me,” she shouted, grabbing another one and throwing it down in the street.

Tim nodded and went back to prying the bodies off the car. He could make out its shape clearly now and he saw he’d been right. It was a red Nissan Sentra. When the license plate was uncovered it had the right number.

A drooler grabbed his arm. Not in an aggressive way—it just wanted to get back to clawing at the windows. He started pushing it away and then he recognized the sweater it was wearing.

It was Karen.

Sasha reached for Karen’s arms to pull her away. “Stop,” Tim said, staggering backwards.

Karen was infected, like all the rest. She was horribly wounded where Phil Nero had bit her but she didn’t look like she was in any pain. She didn’t look at him. She wouldn’t look at him, even when he called her name again and again.

“You know her,” Sasha said. It wasn’t a question. “You do what you got to do.”

Tim nodded. It was what he owed her. This isn’t Karen anymore, he told himself. It didn’t help. “I’m so sorry, honey,” he whispered. Then he brought up his gun and shot her right through the head.

His arm thrummed. His body shook. This was too much—he was going to vomit. He was going to die on the spot of sheer heartbreak.

And then nothing happened. He didn’t die and he didn’t throw up. Had he come so far, he wondered? Had he become somebody who could do that and not even flinch?

He’d done her a favor. Maybe he just understood that, deep down. He’d done right by her. Maybe it was just shock. He’d done the only thing he could do for her anymore. Maybe he was just so exhausted, so ready to stop, that even this atrocity was just one more step on his road.

There was another one ahead of him. He had to see. Jake.

He pushed and struggled and shot his way through the crowd. Finally he managed to get the droolers off one of the windows. Finally he managed to look inside, into the back seat.

Jake had managed to unbuckle himself from the car seat. Tim had thought that would be impossible but desperation must have given the boy great strength. Once he was free, though, there had been no place for him to go. He’d been too smart to open the door, of course.

The flesh of Jake’s lips was dry and broken, pulled back from grey gums. His eyes were closed as if he’d fallen asleep.

His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths.

“It can’t be,” Tim said out loud. He stepped back away from the car and the droolers shoved around him, desperate to get back into position. They wanted the food trapped inside. They wanted to eat his son. His still living son.

“It can’t be,” he said again.

The floor of the car was littered with empty Poland Spring bottles and boxes of cookies, empty wax paper sleeves torn open so that Jake could lick out all the crumbs. Bags and bags full of canned food sat in rows next to Jake.

“She must have been stocking up—Karen—when she heard the news, she must have gone right to the grocery store. She must have bought months worth of food for us, in case we couldn’t get out. Oh, my God, Jake—Jake had plenty to eat and drink. He was always such a smart kid, he figured it out, figured out what he needed to do—”

“He’s alive?” Sasha asked, incredulous.

“Barely. He’s sick, it looks like. Oh God. I’m going to throw up. For real this time.”

He dropped to his knees. Everything was suddenly so complicated. His narrow focus, his need, his revenge, made less sense. And more.

He vomited copiously. Then he looked up.

Phil Nero looked back.

Tim reached into his pack for his gun but Sasha shook her head. “Leave her alone,” she said, and gunned the bike forward. The drooler couldn’t keep up and soon she was lost in the darkness behind them.

“It’s never very smart to leave one of those things at your back,” Tim told her. “If we end up going back this way she’ll be waiting for us, and we might not see her until it’s too late next time.”

“Yeah, maybe so,” Sasha said.

“So let’s go back and take her down,” Tim tried.

“Nah.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because she didn’t hurt anybody!” Sasha yelled over the noise of the engine. “I can’t ice some bitch just because she’s sick. I’m not built that way.”

I am, Tim realized. He’d never had a real moral quandary about killing droolers. The closest he’d come had been when he executed the drooler in the bus, way back on Interstate Five. That had felt a little weird. But not overly wrong.

Horne had noticed that cold-bloodedness in him. It was part of what had impressed the dead Colonel. Even Horne had blanched at the thought of just killing droolers indiscriminately—what did that make Tim? A sociopath?

If so, he decided, then so be it. It would make it easier when he caught up with Nero.

He expected to see more droolers as they got closer to Seward Park and he was not disappointed. The residential zone was the epicenter of the Flu outbreak and it was the first part of Seattle to be abandoned and surrendered to the droolers. With each block they covered he seemed to see more of them. Glancing down an abandoned alley, he would see a pair of them climbing on a dumpster, or ambling through the shadows between street lamps. If they were more than a couple hundred yards away they didn’t pay any attention to the motorcycle, as loud as its exhaust might be. When they were closer they would turn to follow the vehicle, their faces tracking it like spectators at a tennis match, but rarely did they take even a step after them as they passed.

They got a bad scare when they came around a corner and a drooler jumped out right in front of the bike, one pale arm snatching at the air between them. Sasha cursed as the bike stalled and Tim almost fell off the back. The drooler’s mouth was wide and full of yellowed teeth, his face thin and drawn and streaked with black. “Go, go, go,” Tim said, pounding Sasha on the back. She screamed something back at him he couldn’t understand—the fear was too big in him, it had claimed his stomach and his brain and robbed him of any courage. He was too scared to even think of reaching for his weapon.

The drooler took a step toward them, or tried to. He lost his balance and fell down on his bony posterior, as if he’d been yanked backwards. When Tim had calmed down a little he saw what had happened. The drooler was handcuffed to a stop sign.

“Who did that?” Sasha asked, walking the bike.

“A cop, I guess,” Tim said. “Back when this all started.” Had the drooler bitten the cop in the process? Tim wondered if they would see the cop next. “We must be getting close to my house.”

“Almost done, huh? That’s good,” Sasha said. She would have said more but instead she looked up at the night sky—then grabbed Tim by the collar and pulled him away from the drooler and out of the street. Pressing her back up against a house wall she flung an arm across his chest to keep him back as well.

She must have had incredible hearing. Tim had no idea what she was doing until he heard the chopping noise of a helicopter rotor quartering the night. He never saw the aircraft as it passed right over their heads, its noise drowning out his thoughts.

“So much for our head start,” she whispered to him.

Tim nodded. He’d been afraid of this. The Army wasn’t about to just give up on capturing him, not after what the looters had done to Horne. The soldiers must have set up search teams right away. They must have discovered the crashed plane—and hopefully found Tony still alive inside—and immediately scrambled their air units.

“You think they’ll come in here on foot?” Sasha asked.

“No,” he said. He knew they would play it safe. They couldn’t afford to lose any more men or boys just to capture two fugitives. “They’ll stick to the air. Unless, well—”

“Unless what?”

“Unless they decide to send in tanks. I’m sure they’ve got a few at Fort Lewis. But it’ll take a while to get them up here.”

“Then let’s hurry,” Sasha suggested, “and get this done with.”

She got them moving again, taking her chances with moving faster this time. At least she did for a few minutes—until she suddenly hit the brakes and turned the bike sideways, stopping short in the middle of an intersection. She had good enough reason. Dozens of droolers stood halfway down the block ahead, just upwind. They were clustered around something, their bodies so tightly packed Tim couldn’t see what it might be.

The feeder road was lined on either side by high fences, so there was only one way they could go. It lead deeper into the city, farther away from Vashon Island. That was fine by Tim but he wasn’t sure how Sasha would feel.

Even on the motorcycle they had a hard time dodging around the abandoned cars. Sasha took her time, wheeling them around and around until Tim felt carsick. She never stopped moving—the soldiers had helicopters, and could follow from the air. It was crucially important to get some distance from the airport before those choppers scrambled. Time kept moving, too. Darkness fell before they found their way out of the maze of roads around SeaTac. The roads cleared up a little as they shot out into a grid of residential streets but Sasha actually had to slow down. Every third streetlight flickered into life but failed to shed enough lights for them to read the street signs as they rolled past. They had to stop frequently to make sure they didn’t get lost.

Sasha seemed to know where they were going. Tim kept wondering when she would turn west and head back for the Sound and for the Island—if she did, he would have to convince her somehow to head northeast instead, toward Seward Park. She passed up every good chance she had to turn off, though, and eventually he realized she was taking him home.

He had no idea why she would do that. It could only put her in danger.

“You know what I’m here for, don’t you?”

“Revenge, yeah. Buzzard told me the whole story about the guy who ate your family.”

Tim bit his lip. “I get why Tony owed me—” he said, but she cut him off.

“Why he thought he owed your sorry white ass,” she said, laughing. “We both know what happened, don’t we? I know, anyway, what kind of pills you gave him. Goddamned thorazine. Like that was going to help.”

“You knew what it was?”

She shrugged. It was hard to hear her over the roar of the engine but her voice was clear and she knew how to project. “My Dad went a little crazy before he died. Started hearing stuff in the night time, voices calling him and all. He would toss and turn all night and sometimes he would get up and walk around the house, looking for where the voices were hiding. The doctors gave him all kinds of drugs to try to calm him down, to help him sleep, and thorazine was one of the ones that actually worked for a while.”

“So you knew what I was doing. You know that I was trying to trick Tony, but you didn’t stop me.”

“I saw that pill bottle and thought, shit, if it calmed the drooler down maybe we could all sleep a little better. Then when it seemed to work I was just happy for Tony and his Mom. They were so damned excited. I knew what would happen after that, of course. The drooler would build up a tolerance and eventually it would stop working. So I fed him that line about if one pill was good, then two would be better.”

Tim was shocked. “You must have known—”

“Guy, the best thing you can do for a drooler is put him out of his misery. Who wants to live like that? I was doing everybody a favor—especially Tony’s Mom.”

It wasn’t what Tim would have done, given any other options. He could follow her logic, though, and even admit she could be right.

“Okay, but that just begs my next question. Why are you helping me now?”

She shrugged again. “I know you ain’t done yet, and that if I try to turn around you’ll just jump off the bike. Let’s just say I got no desire to head back to Vashon all alone.” She stopped the bike and looked around. “We turn right here, yeah?”

Tim looked at the street sign she pointed out. “Yeah,” he said. “You know this place pretty well. Are you from here?”

“I lived in Ballard before this. But I know the whole town, mostly. I used to be a taxi driver.”

“Seriously?”

She looked at him over her shoulder. “Uh-huh. I’ve been all over the Emerald City. It was the only way I could make ends meet. Then the world went and ended and here I am, driving the white folk around still. Alright, hold on.”

Tim grabbed the sides of the bike seat as she wheeled them around and headed north. “This might not be it, you know,” he told her.

“What do you mean?”

“The end of the world. This might not be it. I know things look bad, but it sounds like the government actually has a plan to fix things. Horne was going to poison all the droolers so people could move back into their homes.”

“He the one got his brains scrambled back there?”

“Yeah,” Tim admitted. “But that doesn’t mean the plan won’t go ahead. That’s one thing the Army’s pretty good about—if the guy in charge gets killed, they already have somebody else ready to pick up right where he left off. In a month Seattle might not be a Plague Zone anymore.”

“Tony’ll hate that. Hey, though—that’s good for you, isn’t it? You can just let them kill your guy. Problem solved.”

Tim laughed bitterly. “Nope.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Why not just tell me to head back to Vashon where we can hole up for a month in fine style, then come back when they’re done—you can even identify the body afterwards, if you need that.”

“It’s not the same. I owe my wife and my son a debt. Letting somebody else get revenge for me won’t fix what’s broken. If I don’t do it I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Fair enough,” she said, and goosed the throttle.

There was no time to turn the plane, no time to do anything. Tim threw his arms across his face as every thought was torn bleeding out of his head.

The plane continued on its course, the only thing it could do. The laws of physics determined what happened next. The nose of the plane hit the fence and crumpled, ruining hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of electronics. The fence bowed out, then snapped open like a cut cable, lashing out at the trees that lay just beyond. Then the front landing gear hit the concrete wall and snapped off.

The plane flew forward like a javelin, smashing through the branches of the trees. The windshield cracked with the impact and then popped out of its frame, flying backward to crash against Tim’s arms and bash his forehead. The left wing sheared off all in one piece and the plane spun to one side, still sliding forward through the trees and across a stretch of overgrown grass. It spun as it careened across the grass and started to roll over. The remains of the right wing, battered and torn, dug deep brown furrows in the earth and slowed down the plane’s headlong rush but couldn’t stop it.

Then the grass ran out and the plane jumped over a curb and came screeching down on a feeder road full of abandoned cars. The fuselage smacked an SUV with its nose, then hit a Cooper Mini like a golf club hitting a ball. The Mini absorbed much of the plane’s remaining momentum and went spinning and bouncing end over end.

The plane stopped there, though it continued rocking back and forth for a while. Parts of it collapsed in on themselves while others just fell off.

Tim had lost consciousness for much of the crash. When his eyes opened again they were full of blood. He couldn’t breathe—something was pressed against his face. With arms that felt like they’d been shredded he pushed away a piece of the windshield and then he sank back in his chair and just tried not to die.

He heard a groaning noise behind him.

“Sasha? Tony?” he asked. “Are you alive?”

“Oh, shit,” Sasha said.

Tim clawed at his seat and shoulder belts and tried to get up. The control console was tilted down across his legs and he panicked, thinking he was trapped. With some furious wriggling, though, he was able to get free. “Sasha? What’s wrong?” he demanded.

“Tony threw up all over the place. Bill Gates is going to be pissed.”

Tim laughed hysterically and then forced his way back to the cabin. The mess was unbelievable and the plane was totaled. All three flatscreens had snapped off their mountings and lay shattered in the back. The carpet was torn up where the bottom of the fuselage had torn open in several places and one of the massage chairs had been crushed where the side of the plane had caved in. There were tiny bags of peanuts everywhere, some of them having burst open and thrown nuts all over the cabin.

Sasha looked fine. Tony looked like death warmed over.

“Thank God we lived through that,” Tim said. “It was the best plan I could think of.”

“You did fine, Kempfer. Help me with this idiot.”

Tim knelt down by Tony’s side and unfastened his seat belt. The looter was minimally conscious, barely able to open his eyes and groan. His arm, previously broken, now hung limp from his shoulder. Blood slicked the arm from his elbow down to his wrist and Tim thought he saw shivers of bone poking out through the skin.

“He needs medical attention, and soon,” Tim said.

“Yeah. Well, the soldiers will take care of that.” She checked her pistols and shoved them back in their holsters. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Tim stared up at her. “We can’t just leave him.”

“Sure we can. If we stay here the soldiers will catch up with us and they will shoot us. Do you feel me? They will shoot us. Hopefully they won’t shoot him, just arrest him. That’s the only way he’s going to get medical help now.”

Tim bit his lip. He knew she was right. “Okay. Let’s get out of here.”

“Glad to see we’re on the same page.” Sasha hurried forward to the hatch but found it crumpled shut. She lead Tim forward to the cockpit and they crawled out through the empty viewport, then slid down the blunted nose of the plane and onto the asphalt. Tim looked back at the fence—or where the fence had been—but there was no sign of any military presence there. The soldiers had been on foot, and he figured it would take them a minute or two to catch up.

He turned around and saw that Sasha had started walking away. He rushed to her side and saw where she was headed. “Our only real option now,” she said, “is to requisition one of these vehicles and hightail it, right? Now, a car couldn’t get through this mess.” She pointed at the endless traffic jam. “This might do.”

She had found a motorcycle, a sleek narrow thing with one headlight standing alone, propped up on its kickstand. The keys were still in the ignition. She started up the machine and watched the fuel gauge needle kick up. “Come on,” she said, and then, “Yes!” when it showed half a tank of gas remained.

“I’m driving,” she said.

That was fine with Tim.

He didn’t think they would come rushing inside, not with three armed, desperate people onboard. The boy soldiers were trigger-happy but he didn’t think they were stupid enough to poke their heads in a place where they were likely to get shot. He knew for a fact that Tony would just start shooting if they did.

That didn’t solve any problems, though. The soldiers could just sit out there and wait and eventually Tim and the looters would have to come out. The soldiers could call up reinforcements, and maybe heavy weapons. They apparently had orders not to damage the plane, but they could bring in tear gas or flashbang grenades or—or they could just pump liquid saxitoxin into the plane until the three of them were dead.

Eventually the soldiers would figure out a way to retake the plane. There was food onboard and plenty of water but long before they starved the soldiers would figure out something. Or they would just get bored enough to disobey their orders—especially now that Horne was gone and could no longer enforce those orders—and just blow up the jet. It was a losing proposition, no matter how Tim looked at it.

“So are you going to say thank you?” Tony demanded.

Tim glared back at him with wild eyes. Thank you? Horne had captured Tim, and yes, the looters had removed him from that situation. He couldn’t think of a single way in which his life was better than it had been an hour before, though. He couldn’t see any upside to what Tony and his crew had done.

Then again, Tony was probably thinking the same thing. He’d risked a lot—including his own life—to repay his imagined debt. As far as he knew he had saved Tim from a fate worse than death.

“Thank you,” he said, trying to sound sincere. “You have any ideas about what we do now?”

Tony raised the half-empty bottle of bourbon and waggled it in his hand.

Sasha clucked her tongue and climbed out of her chair. “I’m going to ask you one easy question, Kempfer, alright? Can you handle that, or are you too freaked out?”

Tim studied himself. His pulse was racing, he was breathing too hard. Fear—not the fear the droolers engendered, just normal, garden variety terror—had a hard grip on him. He forced himself to calm down. To swallow all the spit in his mouth. “Okay,” he said. “Alright.”

Sasha nodded. Speaking softly and slowly she asked, “You’re a bright guy. You seem to know a lot of things.”

Tim shrugged.

“Okay. Do you know how to fly a jet plane?”

He nearly laughed. He nearly fell down and cackled maniacally and lost it right then and there. Instead he closed his eyes and counted to ten. “No,” he said.

“Not even a little bit?”

He shook his head.

Sasha sat back down. “Then I’m out. I guess this is it.”

Tim sat down in one of the very comfortable chairs and put his face in his hands. He imagined the Learjet screaming down the runway, then lifting into the air on sleek wings and banking away high over Seattle. In his vision he had no destination in mind but he knew the plane was headed far, far away, away from everything that had gone so horribly wrong.

He dropped his hands. He looked into empty space.

That wasn’t good enough. Even if he could have flown the plane he knew he wouldn’t have done it. He wasn’t finished with Seattle. He wasn’t finished with revenge. Things had gotten—complicated. But the basic drive, his need, his duty to Karen and Jake was still there. He could still reach for it and it could still give him strength.

He stood up. Then he went forward and opened a thin door that separated the cabin from the cockpit. There were two seats in there and an enormous number of dials, switches, toggles, gauges, computer screens and unidentifiable controls. He saw two things, though, that he recognized. He saw a main power switch—it was clearly labeled—and he saw a control yoke.

“Strap yourselves in,” he told the looters. Tony looked at him in pure confusion but Sasha started reaching around the seat for her safety webbing.

Tim dropped into the pilot’s seat and switched on the power. The plane whined beneath him and lights came on all over the control console. He didn’t know what any of them meant but that didn’t matter. Through the windshield he could see the soldiers jumping away from the plane as if it had become electrified.

“Kempfer?” Sasha called from back in the cabin. “You doing something cool up there? Something I ought to see?”

“Just hold on,” he shouted. “And get Tony secured if he can’t do it himself. This is going to suck in a minute.”

He pushed forward on the control yoke. Nothing happened except a light started flashing on the board. He looked over and saw that it said SAFETY BRAKE ON. He pushed it and it went dark. Then he touched the yoke again.

The plane moved forward. Slowly, smoothly. The soldiers in front broke and ran. Tim gave the yoke another push and the plane sped up, taxiing up the runway, headed due north. An alarm went off and Tim panicked for a second—then found a light that said FASTEN SEATBELTS DURING ALL MANEUVERS. He cursed as he realized he hadn’t secured himself. With trembling hands he pulled a belt across his lap and another across his shoulder.

The plane kept speeding up. It accelerated much faster than he’d expected. The runway blurred under his wheels as more alarms went off and more lights lit up. Dead ahead he saw a fence coming toward him like a brick wall.

No bullets were forthcoming. He could see the boy soldiers moving, probably taking up positions from which to fill the plane full of lead, but for the moment they weren’t actively trying to kill him.

He decided to take a risk. He stood up. Then, with one smooth motion, he twisted the handle on the Learjet’s main hatch and then pulled down. The door slid easily open on counterweights and revealed a short flight of stairs leading up into the cabin.

Tony went first up the stairs, holding onto his bad arm. Sasha followed and then Tim, who pulled the hatch shut behind him. He ran from side to side of the plane, watching as the soldiers moved to circle them. Still no one fired a weapon.

“Holy fuck yes,” Tony said. He’d found a bottle of bourbon which he decorked with his good hand and then sucked at hungrily. “You cannot imagine the amount of pain I’m in right now. You would need a thesaurus to describe it properly.”

“Stop crying, baby,” Sasha said, slumping down in a leather-covered swivel seat. There were six of them arranged around a mahogany coffee table in the middle of the cabin.

Tim took a second to look around. He had to whistle he was so impressed. The walls were lined with green velvet and the floor swallowed his feet in luxurious shag carpet. The bottle of bourbon had come from a fully stocked, if miniature bar and there was a four burner stove in the galley at the back of the plane.

Mounted on the ceiling were three huge flatscreen panels that could be pulled out on flexible arms and arranged any way one pleased. Behind a panel in the purser’s closet were a DVD player and a top of the line computer server.

“What is this, Bill Gates’ personal plane?” Sasha asked.

“Maybe,” Tim said.

Sasha found a pair of soft slippers in a compartment under her chair. She pulled off her boots and put on the slippers and closed her eyes in pure contentment.

Tony just drank and brooded.

Tim shook his head. They were still in immediate and certain danger. The soldier would attack the plane at any moment. Then again, maybe they wouldn’t. “I think they have orders not to shoot this thing,” he said. “Horne must have been saving it for something special. Maybe he own personal getaway vehicle.” In the end, though, Tim knew he wouldn’t have used it. Whatever his sins or excesses the Colonel had been committed to Seattle’s reoccupation. He had planned on seeing it through to the last detail.

Then the looters went and shot him.

Maybe, Tim thought, Horne had kept the plane the way some recovering alcoholics keep a bottle of liquor around. On bad days Horne could tell himself he always had an escape route. On good days the plane would remind him just how firm his resolve was, that even in the face of obvious salvation he would accept his damnation with equanimity.

Or maybe Bill Gates was coming back for it, who knew?

“Don’t know, don’t fucking care. They try to come through that door and I will personally ventilate them,” Tony said.

Sasha had discovered that her chair would massage her back if she pressed the right button. She pressed it repeatedly.

“Jesus,” Tim said. “What are you two made of?” He rethought the question. “Why the hell did you do this? Why come for me? You don’t owe me anything.”

“Hell yes I do,” Tony said. “You saved my brother.”

“I… did?” Tim asked. It wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. He had cheated Tony with the thorazine he’d given him, selling him sedatives as if they were a vaccine for the Flu. If anything he’d expected Tony to come howling for his head, guns blazing as he tried to get revenge for Tim’s fraudulent deal. Sasha’s eyes went very wide, though, and Tim knew better than to say too much. “Those pills I gave you worked okay?”

Tony grimaced and drank more. Already his words were growing thick and running together. “Sure did. I gave him one myself and like twenty minutes later he started to calm down. It was amazing, dude. After an hour he wouldn’t attack me, even when I poked his chest. He was on his way to being okay.”

“Then you had to go and fuck up,” Sasha said.

“Yeah. I had to go and fuck everything up.” Tony gritted his teeth and looked away. “I thought, you know, one pill makes him calm, maybe two will make him even better. Maybe five will cure him. That makes sense, right?”

“Sure,” Tim said. He wondered how old Tony was. He looked like he was in his early twenties but maybe he was younger. Had he never heard of an overdose? Again he decided it was better not to say some things.

“He got real quiet, and real peaceful. He looked like he used to, like he was my braw again. It was so awesome. Then he fell asleep. I don’t think he’d had an hour of sleep since he got bitten. I can not tell you how grateful I felt to you at that moment, man. My Mom cried. Like a lot. We took him upstairs and put him in bed and said goodnight, and let him sleep.” Tony shook his head. “In the morning. In the morning—”

“He went peaceful, that’s what you remember,” Sasha finished. “That’s all you need to remember. Your bro died in his sleep, which is more than we can ask for now.”

Tim sat up with a jerk. He peered out the round windows of the plane and saw the soldiers closing their ring. They still weren’t firing—but in a few seconds they would be right on top of the Learjet, surrounding it on every side. What happened then was anybody’s guess but Tim expected it to be painful.

Tim’s vision went out of focus for a second, then cleared up. He could barely breathe with the seat belt so tight across his chest. He reached down and tried to unbuckle it but missed the release button, so he had to try again.

The back door of the van flapped open and he felt cool air hit the back of his head. He craned around as best he could to look but all he saw were hands grabbing at something moving too fast to follow. Through his side window he saw Buzzard running across the tarmac, his hands up in the air, screaming something Tim couldn’t hear.

It had been less than five minutes since Tim and Horne had discussed the big plan to reinhabit the city.

A soldier of maybe fifteen years rushed forward toward Buzzard, rifle up and ready to fire. Buzzard dropped to his knees. Tim could see tears rolling down the reporter’s face.

“That’s a really good plan,” Tim said, reaching for the seat belt release again. Missing, again.

The boy soldier smacked Buzzard across the face with the butt of his rifle. Buzzard slumped to the surface of the runway, either dazed into motionless or knowing better than to make any sudden moves. Other soldiers pressed in closer.

“How many people are in that van?” the fifteen year old shouted. “Tell me!”

“None,” Buzzard said, and the soldier raised his rifle again. “No!”

“Tell me the goddamned truth!”

Buzzard lifted his chin off the ground. “I meant they’re all dead. They’re dead!”

“Good little fucker,” Tony sighed. “You think they’ll fall for it?”

Tim’s thumb found the button at his side. His seat belt released with a clunk and he froze in panic—what if the soldiers heard that sound?

Maybe they did hear it, but If they did they didn’t show it. Maybe they assumed it was just the van settling, some part of its battered engine falling into pieces. They ran toward where Buzzard lay, forming a throng around him. Apparently they bought his story.

“That just bought us one second,” Sasha said. “One good second. You ready, Tone? Kempfer?”

Tim crawled over the back of his seat. Sasha grabbed a pistol from Pat’s belt and tossed it to him. He nearly dropped it—which he thought would have made a loud enough sound even the boy soldiers wouldn’t have mistaken it.

“What makes you think I want this?” he asked.

Sasha shrugged. “You got two choices, way I see it. You can turn French and do like your buddy, sure. You can surrender and they can lock you up for the rest of your natural born life. ‘Course, they already think you’re dead so you come crawling out of here they might just shoot on sight. On the other hand, you can come with us, and make some noise, and run for it. You’ll probably get shot, and probably killed, but you got a chance to get away and get your revenge after all. That is something you still want, ain’t it?”

Tim wasn’t necessarily ready to answer that question. Nothing else had driven him through the droolers, through the smoke, through Horne’s perfidy. The revelation that Jake had survived the original attack—only to die soon after—had shaken him to the core. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted.

It was hardly a time for moral ambiguity, though.

“Fine,” he said, “but where are we going?” He stared out at the expanse of runway they could see through the back doors of the van, which looked as arid and empty as the Mojave desert. There was nothing out there but exposure and vulnerability. There were plenty of hangars out where they could hole up and make a desperate stand, but they were far enough away to look like mountains on the horizon. “Do we have a plan?” he asked.

“We just improvise. Trust our guts,” Tony suggested.

“Cancel that. Look,” Sasha said. She gestured with one nickel-plated revolver at the Learjet standing alone on the runway. “That’s no more than a hundred yards away. What’s your best time at the hundred yard dash, Kempfer?”

“Slower than a speeding bullet. But yeah, it’s the closest thing, and at least it’ll give us some cover. We go together, right? On three?”

“Ex-fucking-cuse me,” Tony said, “but I’m in charge here.”

“Sure,” Tim said. “Alright. What do you think about going on three?”

“One two three,” Tony said, then jumped out the back of the van.

They got their second of surprise. The soldiers weren’t even looking as they dashed toward the small aircraft, their heads down, their guns up. No one shot at them for almost ten seconds, and then only half-heartedly.

Tony ran backwards and started squeezing off rounds from a Mac Ten almost immediately. Sasha pointed her revolver backwards and fired randomly, not intending to hit anyone. Tim didn’t shoot at all—he just ran as fast as he humanly could.

Bullets chewed up the tarmac in front of him but none got close enough to make him flinch and nothing could make him stop. Breath surged in and out of his mouth as he came around the nose of the Learjet and fell down into a crouch behind its forward landing gear. A moment later Sasha and Tony followed. They all got down as low as they could and Tim put his fingers in his ears to muffle the sound of the machine gun volleys he expected at any moment.

When no one shot at him he was only confused.

“What the fuck did you do, Tony? What did you fucking do?”

“It was self-defense, you saw—”

“Those were just boys—two of them, two boys!”

“Self-defense!”

“And the old guy? He looked important, Tony. Like somebody you don’t fuck with!”

“I was defending myself and—”

“And now Pat is dead!”

“We came here for one reason, which we have now achieved. Yeah?”

“For this idiot? For this idiot we came here and killed those people?”

“And who the fuck is that one?”

“My name’s Buzzard, we’ve actually met.”

“Shut up!”

“It was self-defense, everybody saw that,” Tony wailed, louder than anyone else.

“Guys,” Tim tried to break in, “I’m really grateful that you came for me, but I wonder if we didn’t just create some new problems where—”

“You shut up!”

Mikey craned his head around the back of the driver seat. “Where am I going, Tony? Back the way we came?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, even as Sasha screamed no. Everyone looked at her.

“We got through because they didn’t expect anybody coming from that direction. Now they will all expect us to go back that way. You get us turned around, Mikey, and head north, that’s best, alright?”

“Fucking ignore her. Back through the fence,” Tony announced.

“She’s right,” Tim tried.

“Shut up!” someone screamed, right in his ear.

Tim wouldn’t let it go. “She’s right—the Colonel sent soldiers back the way you came, it was pretty much the last thing he did. If you go back you’re going to find serious resistance.”

Tony glared at him, then at Sasha. “Okay,” he said, finally. “Fucking okay! Go north.”

A hole opened up in the right side of the van, a circular hole about an inch across. It made a sound like a tin can being pried open and sunlight jumped in through the new opening. A moment later another hole appeared, and then a third.

For once Tim had no idea what was happening. Then he realized they were being shot at. “Change of plans—head left,” Tony shouted. “Get away from whoever’s shooting us up!”

The van veered to the side and nearly rolled over. Pat’s body was thrown off of Tim’s lap and it slapped up against Sasha, who was plastered to the side of the van. As Mikey brought them back down onto four wheels Pat rolled away to hit the floor and Sasha slapped at her jacket maniacally, as if it were full of roaches.

Tony laughed. “He’s dead, bitch, he ain’t gonna bite you!”

“Fuck you, asshole—and don’t call me bitch. His face was all wet and he got that poison shit on me, that’s all,” Sasha told him, shaking one of her revolvers in his face. Tony grabbed the barrel and tried to pull it away from her.

“Guys, relax,” Mikey shouted from the front seat. “We’ve got bigger problems.”

Tim climbed up the back of the passenger seat and jumped into it, then fastened his seat belt. He felt a lot safer than he had in the back, even though through the windshield he could see what Mikey meant. There were soldiers in khaki uniforms all over the runway—some of them just kids, some full grown warfighters. All of them were armed. Tim started to point toward the nearest group, a squad of four teenagers who were down in firing crouches, when the van jumped around him. A bullet had hit the radiator grille and white steam shot up out of the sides of the hood.

“Shit,” Mikey spat, and threw the van into another swerve. From the back came noises of protest and hurt. “This was supposed to be easy! This was supposed to be a lightning raid,” he panted. “No muss, no fuss.”

“The best laid scheme of mice and men,” Tim said. “Look, over there—”

A flurry of shots hit the van all at once, rocking it back and forth on its wheels. One of the tires exploded with a noise far louder than the gunfire, and suddenly the van was leaning over, curving hard to the left, barely on two wheels. Tim was thrown one way then the other in his seat belt. Mikey wasn’t wearing one.

The van didn’t have airbags, either.

Mikey’s head hit the top of the steering wheel with a sickening crunch, then slammed against his side window hard enough to star the glass. When he slid back down in his seat he left a bloody imprint on the broken window.

“Mikey,” Tim said, his own head none too clear after the violent shaking he’d received, “wake up. You’re—you’re asleep at the wheel.”

“Jesus,” Tony said in the back. “Jeeeessssus. My arm.”

Tim tried to turn around in his seat but his seat belt had frozen in place, binding him tightly where he was. “Sasha? Tony? Are you okay? Buzzard?”

“Fuck no!” Tony said. “Mikey, I’m going to personally kick your ass for driving like that, you fuck.”

“I’m okay,” Sasha said. “I just bounced off Pat a couple of times. Buzzard’s fine, he bounced off me.”

“I think my arm’s broken,” Tony said. “It feels like somebody tried to tear it off. Mikey, did you hear me? Did you hear me you little fuck?”

“No, I don’t think he did,” Tim said. He reached over and grabbed the driver’s wrist. There was no pulse.

Outside the soldiers had formed a ring around the van, and were moving in, weapons at the ready.

“Any clues?” Buzzard asked, pulling a pen and notebook out of his pocket.

“An alarm went off, that’s all. A simple motion detector out on the western fence. We’d already established there were no infected over there. I strung that one up just on principle. I don’t have video or radar, so it could be anything. It could be a flight of geese taking off. Stay quiet and stay put, alright?”

It wasn’t a flight of geese. Tim was the first one to see the van come tearing toward them, crossing over runway lanes, jumping over median strips and knocking down rows of lights. It was a big black Ford van with round black portholes in back and a tinted windshield. A thin red racing stripe ran all the way across its side. The back doors were open and swinging and it had be doing seventy miles an hour.

As it got closer Tim saw that much of the paint had been scratched off the hood and one of the headlights was dangling like a popped eyeball. “They must have come right through the fence,” he said, smiling, thinking this was too absurd to be a real threat. “I’m surprised they didn’t blow out their tires.”

“You know something about this?” Horne asked.

Tim shook his head as the van braked hard, leaving long streaks of rubber across the runway surface. It slewed around to a rocking stop not thirty feet from where they stood and for a moment nothing happened. The five of them just stood there staring at the van, which pinged heatedly in the sunlight.

Then men and one woman boiled out of its doors and its back hatch, draped in furs and immaculate leather jackets, carrying heavy assault rifles with laser scopes and shotgun attachments. They moved quickly, though without much coordination, and circled Horne and his group in short order.

“Who are you and what do you want?” Horne demanded.

Buzzard put his hands up, even though he must have recognized them. Tim certainly did. There was Mikey, the quiet tough guy carrying an AK-47. Sasha, a nickel-plated revolver in either hand, stood next to Pat in his Harley Davidson leathers, who stood next to Tony, the leader of the looters, still wearing his Sonics jersey with the hologram on the shoulder.

Tony ran up and smashed Horne right in the jaw with the butt of his shotgun. The Colonel’s head rolled back but he didn’t go down, just reached up and rubbed at the already-discolored skin of his jaw.

“Shut up,” Tony added. Unnecessarily, Tim thought.

Tim thought the scene was almost funny. At least he did until Pat worked the action of his big M-16. Then one of the boy soldiers made his big move. Bringing up his spray gun he twisted a knob on the tank at his belt and a billowing spray of TZ hit Pat right in the face. The biker dropped to the pavement instantly, grasping and clawing at his face.

Mikey didn’t wait to see what would happen next—he just opened fire. Both boys were torn to scraps as his rifle fired on full automatic at point blank range. Tim screamed something—it wasn’t a word so much as a plea—but it was already too late.

Horne grabbed at the pistol on his belt but Tony just hit him again, this time in the stomach. The Colonel went down on the tarmac with a thud. Before Tim could stop him Tony lined up a shot and blew Horne’s brains all over the runway.

“What about you?” Sasha asked Buzzard, a pistol tapping him on either temple.

“I’m good,” Buzzard said.

“What the fuck? What are you doing?” Tim screamed.

“What does it look like?” Tony asked. “We’re saving your sorry ass. Come here and give me a hand.” He was down on his knees, wadding up Pat’s leather vest and putting it under his head like a pillow. The biker was slowly turning blue, his face calm but his arms twisted up across his chest as if he were holding on to something for dear life. “Kempfer, tell me what to do! How do I save him?”

“He’s been poisoned,” Tim said, sounding like an idiot to his own ears.

“So what’s the antidote? What do I fucking do?”

Tim shook his head. “I’m… I’m sorry, Tony. There’s a treatment, but we don’t have the drugs or the supplies. I can’t help him.”

Tony screamed, then buried his face in Pat’s chest. They all stood there watching him grieve until he was done. Then he jumped up and started walking toward the van. “Come on,” he shouted back over his shoulder. “They’ll be all over us in a second.”

Tim had no idea what else to do next. It had all happened so quickly, with no warning at all. He found himself running after Tony just so he didn’t have to stand there feeling lost and confused. Halfway there he turned to look at Buzzard. “You told them that Horne caught me?” he asked.

It was Sasha who answered. “He’s a reporter,” she said. “Telling other people’s secrets is what he does best. Now come on! I for one want to live through this.”

Tim stared out at row after row of the corn starch mannequins, then turned to face Buzzard. “You remember the—” he started, meaning to say “the skeletons.” But finishing that sentence in front of Horne seemed unwise. Whatever Horne might or might not know about the looters on Vashon Island, Tim didn’t want to be the one to give away some important tidbit of information. “You remember what Helena said about stereotyped behaviors. About the decision tree of a drooler.”

“Sure,” Buzzard said, looking dubious.

“They’ll attack anything that looks even vaguely human, as long as it doesn’t smell like it’s infected. That’s the entire process. I had a cardboard cut-out of a baseball player I used to distract them, back at the docks. These,” he said, gesturing at the endless parade of faceless statues, “are more than realistic enough.” He raised an eyebrow at Horne. “You’re going to drop them all over the city, right? One for every street corner?”

“Something like that,” the Colonel said.

“Yeah, I can see it.” He bent to study the nearest mannequin, careful not to let it drip on his shoe. The mannequin’s legs ended not in molded feet but in a wide, shallow base, a yard and a half across, as if it were melting in a puddle of its own substance. “They’re bottom heavy. You drop them out of the backs of your helicopters and if you do it right they’ll land standing up. You probably don’t need that, by the way. The droolers—”

“The infected,” Horne corrected.

Tim shrugged. “The infected—won’t care if they’re standing up or lying down. They’ll attack a prone figure, no problem.”

Horne laughed. “We like tidiness in the Army. If they’re standing up they’re also easier to see from a block away.”

“Good point.” Tim waved a hand for patience as Buzzard shot him an annoyed look. “So they get these things standing all over the place, looking like frightened people. The infected will attack them simply by reflex. They’ll tear bites out of them, and in the process they’ll get a mouthful of saxitoxin.”

“Which is?” the reporter demanded.

“It’s a poison. It’s the stuff in a red tide that kills you—it builds up in the flesh of some shellfish. Maybe even geoducks.”

“Jesus,” Buzzard said. “How do you know this shit?”

“I used to be a reference librarian. I know a very little about almost everything. Don’t ask me for the chemical composition of saxitoxin, or how it works. I do know it paralyzes you, and that it’s lethal even in very small doses.”

Horne butted in to add, “Give the devil his due. It’s an incredibly humane toxin. Its victims remain conscious and calm for a few minutes and then they just stop breathing. There’s very little pain.”

“Good to know,” Buzzard sputtered.

“It’s also an organic molecule that will break down almost as fast as the corn starch statues can melt. So when it’s all over you have no statues, no lingering poison in the gutter. Just a lot of dead bodies. You really think this will work? You’re going to kill the droolers like this?”

“Every last one of them,” Horne admitted. “That doesn’t faze you, does it, Kempfer?”

Tim shrugged. “I’d be a pretty bad hypocrite if I started protesting for the rights of the infected now, after all I’ve done. The only part that bothers me is the ‘every last one’ bit. No matter how thorough you are there’s no way to account for every single drooler. There could be hundreds of them trapped inside their own houses, and you can’t get them from the air. I don’t think you can get a one hundred per cent kill rate like this.”

Horne nodded agreeably. “Probably not. There will be some mopping up. Yet there’s an elegance to this solution I find personally appealing. I don’t suppose you have a very high opinion of me, Kempfer, but I’ve actually tried to be as humane as possible here. Not just to the infected. The option is to take my men into the streets and shoot everyone we see. You’ve seen my men. Very few of them are old enough to shave. I can’t ask them to commit mass murder, not at their tender age. By dropping the lures—that’s what I call them, lures—out of helicopters I save them from that sin.”

“And yourself? What about your conscience? I get the sense you aren’t as cavalier as I am about killing the droolers.”

“Oh, no,” Horne chuckled, but his laughter was dry and reedy. “Oh, no, indeed. I have my orders, which are to render Seattle habitable for reoccupation with all due haste. My superiors back east want a success and they want it now. I will fulfill those orders to the best of my ability, but I don’t imagine I’ll ever be able to sleep again afterwards. You may be one of those people living under the popular misconception that the Army’s job is to kill people. It’s not. We exist to protect people, namely American citizens. I abhor the notion of killing the infected—who knows whether or not in some future day a cure is found for the Flu? What if we could just confine them for a while, keep them under wraps until that time? But I don’t have any options, not now.” He put an arm on Tim’s shoulder. Tim didn’t shrug it off. “I said once, Kempfer, that I admired you as a man who wanted to live. Who would do what it took to survive. I meant it then and now, because I think in the end you have a stronger will than my own.”

The Colonel’s face darkened.

“It’s too damn bad that you couldn’t just play along,” he said.

Tim said nothing.

“So now you know what you’ve been fighting against. You’re headed for the stockade, now. When I’ve cleaned up Seattle we’ll have to see about getting you a fair trial. You shouldn’t have to spend more than about twenty years in jail, I don’t think.”

They were all startled by a loud beeping noise from Horne’s belt. The Colonel took out a handheld radio and lifted it to his mouth.

“Horne, go ahead,” he said.

“Sir—the western perimeter alarm just went off,” a boyish voice said. “I’m not sure what—”

The message cut out as quickly as it had arrived.

“He could still be alive,” Horne said.

“No,” Tim replied. It was something he knew, deep in his bones.

“I have a team investigating right now. We were able to figure out which intersection is shown in the video and they’re going to—”

“My son is dead,” Tim said.

“You can’t know for sure.”

“My son is fucking dead! I wish Nero had gotten him. That would have been quick. How many weeks has it been since that footage was shot? He’s been trapped in that car this whole time, unable to get out of his car seat. Without Karen to set him loose he could do nothing but sit there and be terrified and wonder when his Daddy was going to come save him. He must have been hungry, so hungry, but in the end he almost certainly died of thirst after just a few days. Maybe he had a sippy cup of juice with him, and maybe he didn’t, but either way there’s no chance he made it.”

Horne rocked back in his boots as if he’d been slapped. “That’s a hell of an attitude.”

“It’s the attitude that got me this far,” Tim explained. “It’s called realism. You can talk all you like about high-minded principles, Horne. You can tell me every life is sacred and that you had to go to all this trouble to save me. It’s bullshit, all of it. While my son was dying of thirst watching droolers stumble around just feet away, I was in Chicago trying to get laid. The funny thing is I love my wife. I always have. I wasn’t angry with her or feeling some kind of seven year itch. I just saw an opportunity to get some while I was out of town and I thought hey, why not? Karen would never know. Nobody would get hurt.”

Horne frowned. “You aren’t being punished for your sins, Kempfer.”

“Of course not. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Things just happen. There’s no reason for them, and there’s no big story they all fit into like puzzle pieces. Life fucks us, all of us, again and again and we do what we do to try to make sense of it but that’s a fool’s game. You can’t win. Senselessness is just too big to fight.”

Horne’s eyes had glazed over while Tim was speaking. His hands shook as he reached down to undo Tim’s handcuffs.

“Come with me,” he said, and nothing more.

The two of them walked out of the hangar side by side, the armed guards and a confused-looking Buzzard following a few steps behind. The rain had stopped and the sun was low and orange on the horizon, not quite hot enough to dry up the wet concrete runway. Thousands of tiny cracks riddled the tarmac, darker than the surrounding material.

They had a ways to go. Horne led Tim down a runway that seemed to go on forever, passing empty hangars on the left and right. It almost felt good to Tim to walk under an open sky without the fear that droolers would come running at him at any moment. It almost felt good—except he was pretty sure nothing would ever feel good again. Not like it used to.

Ahead of them the runway was cluttered with thousands of white shapes, each about the size and dimensions of a human being. As they got closer Tim saw they looked like marble statues though they also looked stained, which confused him.

Eventually they got close enough to see what they were. They were statues of a kind though they didn’t look like stone at all. They looked more like Styrofoam. They had no faces, just blank round heads, and their arms were raised in a gesture of horror. They were all of them identical in pose and aspect, differing only in that some had visible seams running up their legs and sides while others were smooth.

Each statue had a dripping dark stain on its shoulders and neck. Some kind of dark fluid had been sprayed on them and it had dripped down their chests and groins. It looked like the fluid had melted them a little wherever it fell.

They stood in silent rows, one after the other as far down the runway as Tim could see.

“Creepy,” Buzzard said behind them. Tim didn’t even glance back.

“Corn starch,” Horne said. When Tim didn’t respond to that either he explained. “They’re molded from corn starch so they’re fully biodegradable. One good rain would send them all down the gutter and into the Sound.”

A pair of uniformed boys wearing elaborate respirator masks were moving between the rows, each of them carrying a heavy spray rig. They took turns splashing the statues with more of the dark fluid. One of the boys turned around suddenly and sprayed his partner across the back. The victim jumped up and down, then whirled to fire back.

“Privates! Stand to attention at once,” Horne said, and the boys stopped horsing around and snapped into postures of obedience. Horne had clearly trained them well, even if he hadn’t gotten all the mischief out of them.

“What is that gunk?” Buzzard asked.

“The Army calls it TZ. Civilians know it as saxitoxin.”

Tim nodded, once. “I get it,” he said.

“Could you tell me?” Buzzard demanded.

Horne left him there, still under guard. A while later someone else came in. It was Buzzard, wearing his fishing hat and his vest. The reporter looked glum but as he came up to the chair he held out his hand. Tim refused to shake it.

“Listen, kid, I know you’re about as mad as ten badgers in a burlap sack, and I don’t blame you. It ain’t me you should be pissed with, though.”

“No?” Tim asked.

The reporter scratched his head under the ridiculous hat. “No. Maybe I didn’t do you any favors, but there’s bigger things at stake here. When I helped you before I didn’t know what Horne had planned. I thought he was gonna leave us all in Camp Romeo to rot. But it ain’t like that. He’s gonna take us all home. He couldn’t do that until you were in custody, though.”

Tim looked at his shoes, which were still splattered with black drool and brain matter. “You gave him my telephone number.”

“Yeah,” Buzzard admitted. “I told him about your friend Sandi, right? Just like you asked. Then he wanted to know how I knew about her. What the hell was I supposed to say? Magical fairies told me? I said I’d been in contact with you. He wanted your number and he was willing to make my life very uncomfortable until I gave it to him. Look on the bright side—Sandi gets to live because of it.”

“Did you know he could track me through my cell phone? I guess you must have known.”

“He didn’t lie to me.” Buzzard came around the side of the chair and leaned against the table. “Maybe he doesn’t tell the whole truth some times, but he’s never lied to me. I heard what he did with the fake kid, and that sucks, I agree.”

“I suppose he didn’t lie to me, either. He never said he actually had Jake. I just wanted that to be true so badly I saw what I wanted to see.”

Buzzard fiddled with the remote control for the DVD player. “You don’t want to see this, you know. It’s just going to hurt.”

“I know.”

“But you’re going to watch anyway. Cause you have to, don’t you? You have to know what’s on this disc.”

Tim nodded. He could barely manage to summon up any anger—mostly he felt tired. He turned the chair around to face the television and nodded for Buzzard to do his worst.

The footage on the screen was cleaner than what Tim had already seen. The definition was so high that he could make out the license plate of Karen’s car, and even the warning sticker on the side of her hammer. He watched her swinging wildly, watched Nero come at her without even flinching. He could see the emptiness in Nero’s eyes this time, which bothered him. He didn’t bother exploring why.

Nero bit Karen, tearing at her flesh. She went down in a bloody heap and the crystal clear footage let him see every drop of her life as it hit the street. It didn’t hurt to watch that as much as he’d expected. It was almost nice getting to see her again, if only through the remove of the television screen. He kept looking at the car, though, rather than at her. Even in the better resolution Jake was no more than a shadow in the back seat. Tim kept hoping that the shadow would give away some detail that would prove it wasn’t Jake at all—that it was in fact just a suitcase Karen had loaded in the back, or maybe somebody else’s son.

That hope was shattered when the camera veered away from Karen’s death and focused on the shadow. This was new—Tim hadn’t seen this part. The camera zoomed in a fraction and Tim saw Jake’s arms waving, saw his screaming, crying face.

That was when it really started to hurt.

Nero started lurching toward the car, Karen forgotten at his feet. His face was smeared with her blood and one of his eyes was squinted closed. He grabbed at the car with unfeeling hands, shook it as if he could rattle hard enough to make Jake come rolling out. When that didn’t work he moved down the side of the vehicle, slapping at its sides, smearing it with blood and black drool.

“This is the part that was too rough for tv,” Buzzard explained. Tim shushed him. There was no sound to go with the video but he didn’t want any distractions. This might be the last he ever saw of his son and he steeled himself to take in every last detail, every scrap of information. He needed to know, regardless of whether or not the knowledge would benefit him in any way.

The footage rolled on with an inexorability that sickened Tim. There was no flicker to the image, no ghosting of interlaced scan fields. The digital video was clearer and steadier than any film stock. It was like watching something through a window.

Jake went crazy in the back, rocking back and forth, his mouth wide, his eyes streaming. He was stuck in his car seat, belted in so tightly he couldn’t get loose. The car seat was designed so that its occupant couldn’t release the straps. That had seemed like an important safety feature when they bought it. Jake had always loved that seat because it had a pattern of airplanes and parachutists. He’d always loved planes.

Nero took another step. Tim could see it in his face as the drooler tried to work out how to get inside the car. He reached—lunged—and then Jake managed to reach over, to struggle just enough free of his straps to grasp the door handle and slam it shut, sealing himself inside the car.

Nero bashed at the windows a few times with his bare hands. He stared in through the glass as Jake flinched away, his tiny hands over his eyes. Then Nero just turned and walked away, presumably to look for some easier prey.

The screen cut to black, then, without even a credits sequence to soften the blow. Tim wanted more—he needed to know what happened next. There was nothing more to be seen.

Tim didn’t care. He’d never been so unconflicted in his life. He wanted one thing and it was onboard that helicopter. “Jake!” he screamed, his voice torn apart by the chopper’s roar. He didn’t care, he just kept running.

Suddenly he was there, even with the bobbing helicopter. Hands reached down and grabbed his, pulled him upward and onto the aircraft’s deck even as it lifted up away from the ground. What was their hurry? Were they worried droolers would come chasing after him, that they would flood on board the helicopter?

Someone pushed a helmet toward him but he shook his head and tried to get his feet under him. The boy had been pulled back further into the chopper’s belly, away from the doors. Tim shoved his way through arms and hands that tried to stop him, pushed inward with all his strength. The troop area wasn’t big enough to get lost in. He reached out and pulled the boy toward him, smelled the familiar boy smells, shampoo in the hair, smelled the skin, pulled the boy into a deep hug.

The boy laughed as if he’d been tickled. Tim just held him tighter and tighter.

“Mister Kempfer,” someone shouted behind him. “Mister Kempfer, let him go.”

“Fuck you,” Tim said, and pulled the boy tighter into his hug.

He already knew, of course. He knew.

He knew because the smell was just a little wrong.

Gradually, a little at a time he loosened his grip on the boy, let his arms loosen. He wanted to prolong the moment because he knew what came next was pure pain. He let the boy squirm out of his arms, finally, and look up at him. It wasn’t Jake. It was a boy the same age as Jake would be, if Jake were still alive.

It had all been a trap, and he had walked right into it.

“What’s your name?” he asked the little soldier.

“Dana,” he replied. “Are you Mister Kempfer?”

“Yes, I am. Where are your parents, Dana?”

“In Olympia. They sent me to be a soldier with all my friends.” He looked very proud of what he said next. “They’re safe.”

“I guess I am too, now,” Tim said, and sat back. A soldier who was maybe eighteen pushed him gently back into a crew seat, then handcuffed him to a rail that ran beside it. “You expect me to jump out?” Tim asked, nodding his head toward the still-open door. He could see the houses and stores of Seward Park sweep by below, at least a hundred feet down. “That would be suicide.”

The soldier shrugged. He put a helmet on Tim’s head and adjusted the straps. When he spoke next Tim heard it over speakers built into the helmet over his ears. “We were told you might try anything. Can I have your weapons, sir?”

Tim nodded. He felt like such an idiot—certainly he no longer deserved the Ruger or the baseball bat. He would never have used them against the soldiers, of course. Little Dana might have gotten hurt in the crossfire. Without further argument he pointed at his pack and let the soldier draw out the revolver, which he dropped in a red plastic box with a padlock on its handle. The bat he just threw out through the open door.

The helicopter made a tight circle in the air, then streaked south. The door was closed so Tim couldn’t even see where they were headed. No one beat him but they didn’t speak to him, either. The eighteen year old was the oldest person onboard, with the possible exception of the unseen pilot. Three other soldiers, ranging from twelve to fifteen, sat in seats like Tim’s, rifles shipped across their laps. Dana had a special child seat at the back with elaborate straps to keep him from wriggling.

“He doesn’t get a gun, I hope?” Tim said, trying to engage the eighteen year-old.

“He’s in training.” It was the only response that Tim got.

They flew for only a few minutes before Tim’s stomach grew light and he realized they were descending. The chopper set down easily and the soldiers lined up near the door, the oldest leading Dana by the hand. The door slid open and they all jumped out. Through the opening Tim could see a wide stretch of concrete with some tall buildings in the distance. Maybe five hundred yards away a Learjet stood alone, unattended.

It looked like SeaTac International Airport. Why he had been brought there Tim had no idea. He was left alone in the crew hold, still handcuffed to his seat. He waited for a very long time, alone with his thoughts, before Colonel Horne appeared in the open doorway and smiled into the dark interior. “Kempfer! How wonderful to see you again. You’ll be happy to hear we picked up Ms. Carron. She was a little dehydrated and very scared, but she’s fine now. She’s extremely grateful to you. As am I.”

Tim stared right at Horne. Stared through him.

“Hmm,” the Colonel said. “I imagine you probably hate my guts by now.”

Tim looked away from the man. It wasn’t that simple. His feelings for Horne went deeper than hate, and they were a lot darker.

“I won’t apologize for lying to you,” the Army man said. “I think it’s alright to lie to a man, if it keeps him from killing himself, don’t you?” Horne didn’t seem to expect much of a response. “I do have some things to show you, that much wasn’t a lie. If I uncuff you, do you promise not to strangle me?”

“Would you believe me if I said yes?” Tim said, glaring at Horne.

The Colonel just laughed.