again.) In the coming weeks, as the mission of JTF Scorch expanded to include centers of population throughout the nation’s middle section and the Intermountain West, members of the task force would recall this statistic with something like nostalgia—the good old days. By the first of August, so many aviators were either sitting in the stockade as prisoners of conscience or had vanished with their aircraft into the skies above the dying continent that it became increasingly difficult to mount a coherent aerial offensive, casting the very mission of JTF Scorch into doubt. These difficulties were compounded by secessionist movements in California and Texas, both of which proceeded to declare themselves sovereign and appropriate all federal military resources within their borders, effectively daring Washington to stop them by force—a remarkably shrewd gambit, both militarily and politically, as by this time the situation was in pure free fall. Much bluster ensued on both sides, culminating in the Battle of Wichita Falls and the Battle of Fresno, in which vast numbers of American military, both on the ground and in the air, threw in the towel, laid down their arms, and asked for sanctuary. Thus, by mid-October of the year that came to be known by subsequent generations as the year zero, the nation known as the United States could be said to exist no more.
But in the early morning hours of June 9, beneath a moonless Iowa sky, JTF Scorch was still on-line, enjoying the full, or nearly full, cooperation of its assets. In confirmation of the task force’s projections, great masses of Infected Persons had collected in four distinct hot spots across the state: Mason City, Des Moines, Marshalltown, and the FEMA refugee-processing facility in Fort Powell. By 0200, the first three had been dispensed with; Fort Powell was the final prize. A combination of A-10 Warthogs and F-18 fighter-bombers began the assault; concurrently a C-130 transport was inbound from MacDill. Within its bay lay an explosive device called a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB. Containing 18,700 pounds of H6 high explosive, the MOAB was the largest non-nuclear bomb in the United States military arsenal, capable of producing an impact crater five hundred feet in diameter and a blast wave sufficient to level an area the size of nine city blocks; its fires would burn for days.
When Nelson bent to undo Grey’s straps—straps no longer attached to anything—Grey lurched forward, seizing him by the biceps and burying his teeth in the man’s neck. A deep bite: he felt Nelson’s windpipe being crushed beneath his jaws. As the two tumbled backward over the bed, Grey shook him like a wolf with a rabbit in its teeth; a jet of hot blood filled Grey’s mouth. They were on the floor now, Nelson face-up, Grey above him. An agonal twitch of Nelson’s hands and feet, and that was all. Grey burrowed his jaws deeper, into the soft meat.
He drank.
Had it been this easy for Zero, Grey wondered, this pleasurable? A rich vitality poured through him, a glorious immensity of pure sensation. With a final, soul-satisfying inhalation of blood, Grey pulled his face away. He allowed himself a couple of seconds to regard the corpse on the floor. The flesh of Nelson’s face looked as if it had been shrink-wrapped to its underlying structure; his eyes, like the eyes of the woman in the parking lot of the Red Roof, bulged reptilianly from their bony orbits, staring into the heart of eternity. Grey searched his mind for some emotion that corresponded to his actions—guilt, perhaps, or pity, or even disgust. He was a murderer, a man who had killed. He had stolen the life of another. But he felt none of these things. He’d done what he had to do.
The door to his chamber stood open. Lila, he thought, I am coming to save you—all that has happened has ordained it.
He stepped through.
What emerged from the door was a man. The figure was backlit, sunk in shadow. As he advanced, beams from the emergency lights slanted across his face. His gown was bathed in blood.
Lawrence?
“Don’t.” The man with the gun was dragging Lila backward, jabbing its barrel deep into her ribs. His steps were uncertain, fluttering. His whole body was shaking like a leaf. It seemed that any second he might fall. “Keep your distance.”
Grey reached his bloody hands plaintively forward. “Lila, it’s me.”
Horror, revulsion, a protective mental numbness at the violent swiftness of events—all combined in Lila’s mind to grip