Dead Man Running Read online

  "That's fine. It'll give me a few minutes to make myself as visible as possible."

  Thirty-three minutes later Jan swept into Elias' suite on the conference center's upper floor. Elias remained seated as she entered. He noticed, as she sat opposite him, a definite 'baby bump'. Either that or married life has been very bad for her waistline. He decided to get right to it.

  "You're pregnant?" he asked.

  She nodded, looked down at how motherhood was destroying her figure. "That's why I had to speak to you. How secure is this room?"

  Elias removed a piece of electronics from his suit jacket. "The room is clean of all surveillance," he said.

  "Since when do you carry that thing?" Jan asked.

  "Since I started to have concerns about certain parties monitoring my conversations," he replied. He smiled and put the device back into his pocket. "Is that all you wanted, to tell me that you're pregnant?"

  "Aren't you curious about how a dead man can get a woman pregnant?"

  Elias shrugged. He didn't know where this conversation was going or how much he could say. It was a good sign that she appeared to be acting on her own, outside of Wiley's control, but that didn't mean that she would condone his activities to murder her beloved.

  "I stopped wondering about anything when Hamid raised Ben off that bed," he said. "What do you want from me, Jan?"

  "I need your help. I had my doctor examine the fetus. Everything appears to be okay. He appears human."

  "You know the sex?"

  "Yes, I'm going to have Ben's son."

  "You plan to go through with the pregnancy?"

  "I'm not going to kill my baby," she said.

  We'll have to do it for you then, Elias thought.

  "Ben has frozen me out, Elias. I'm just a baby machine for him. I'm a captive in my own house."

  "I can talk to Ben," he offered. He still played it neutral. It was not above Ben Wiley to use his wife to smoke him out as a traitor.

  Jan stood, tears suddenly appearing in her eyes. "I don't want you to talk to Ben. I want Ben dead!"

  "He is dead."

  "You know what I fucking mean," she said as she loomed over him.

  "Sit down Jan," he ordered. He decided to go all in. Ben Wiley's wife would be a goldmine of intelligence and a tremendous asset in the effort to destroy Wiley.

  "How do we stop them? I don't want to be a zombie. I don't want my son to be a zombie. I think we've created a monster."

  "No shit," replied Elias. He still doesn't know how much to trust her. He had to hear her say the words out loud. "Are you willing to help kill Wiley?"

  After a thoughtful moment, she nodded. "Yes, I don't want to be part of a world led by zombies."

  "Why come to me?"

  "I sensed maybe you would have second thoughts about this whole thing."

  "After it became apparent that Wiley didn't just want political power but wanted to destroy humanity?"

  "Yes, after that," Jan replied.

  "I have," he said and he told her – without naming names – that he was working to destroy her husband and end this plot of genocide.

  "What can I do to help?" Jan asked. Her tears were gone. Gone also was the tight knot in her chest – she felt for the first time that she and her child would survive this.

  "I'll let you know. For now, keep your eyes open. Get yourself a couple disposable phones and messenger me a note with the numbers. I'll call you and we can discuss this further."

  Jan let out a deep breath. "I'm glad that you and I are on the same side Elias." She stood.

  Elias got to his feet. He took her small hands in his. They were warm – definitely human. "We'll end this nightmare," he replied.

  He ushered her out of the suite after checking that the hallway was clear. He heard the elevator sound and she was on her way back down to the convention.

  He would wait a day or two then reach out to Manchester. They now had a huge asset to use against Ben Wiley.

  The helicopter landed on the helipad at Fort Detrick in Maryland. Mira Hidar exited the aircraft and was greeted by an Army Major. The two shook hands as they cleared the slowing blades of the copter. His name was Pritchett and he was human. He told Mira that he would escort her to where her grandfather was being kept.

  She didn't ask Wiley why he had Hamid moved to Fort Detrick, home of USAMRIID – the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases. Was he somehow able to have Hamid classified as a medical security risk?

  She didn't know – she was just glad that he had finally agreed to let her see her grandfather.

  Wiley had been shown a prototype of the atomic zombie bomb and was pleased with their progress. Her reward was this visit. Her co-workers, well, their reward was too gruesome to imagine.

  Major Pritchett, who seemed very nice for a soldier, explained to her that her grandfather was getting the best of care in a secure section of the base hospital. Fours nurses provided constant care and oversight, his every need met.

  "Do you know why my grandfather is being held here?" Mira asked.

  The major rolled his large shoulders and shook his head. "Above my pay grade, ma'am."

  "You're not curious as to why a US citizen – an elderly man – is held in America's most secure military base outside of Fort Knox?"

  "Same answer," he said and all of a sudden the nice major was not so nice.

  They walked in silence until they reached the closed off section of the hospital – they had dedicated an entire floor to Mira's grandfather.

  They reached a room, which Mira presumed to be Hamid's.

  "I've been ordered to give you thirty minutes with your grandfather. If you attempt to remove your grandfather from this facility I have been ordered to shoot to kill. Do you understand that?"

  She nodded.

  "I'm sorry, Ms. Hidar, I need your verbal acknowledgement of what I just said."

  She met his clear blue eyes. "I understand that I have thirty minutes to visit him and that you will kill me if I attempt to take him away from here."

  Pritchett nodded and used a massive arm to open the door for Mira.

  Mira walked in. The first thing she noticed was how small Hamid seemed in the hospital bed. He was hooked up to a variety of monitors and tubes, minimally one to feed him and one to evacuate his waste.

  The others? These were likely for the medications that would assure he, and Wiley, a very long life.

  She stepped to the bed, found his hand and squeezed it. She had promised herself that she would not cry but the white sheets soon were sprinkled with her salty tears.

  She let go of his hand, found a chair and pulled it over. She sat and took her grandfather's hand again.

  Mira's vision blurred and she could no longer see her grandfather lying next to her. She was in her grandfather's office behind the magic shop in Brooklyn. She was looking at the emerald green carpet on the office floor. She could not adjust her eyes to see anything else in the room, not his desk, chairs or his extensive collection of books.

  In her shock at seeing this vision, she let go of her grandfather's hand. The vision went away and she was staring at her grandfather's face once again.

  She steeled herself and again took Hamid's hand. The old man faded from view and once again she was seated in Hamid's office looking at nothing but his plush carpet.

  She knew instantly that her mentor was sending her a message. What did it mean? What was the significance of the carpet?

  Mira tried the experiment several times over the next twenty-seven minutes with the same result – she always saw the carpet and nothing else.

  A smiling Major Pritchett opened the door exactly thirty minutes after admitting Mira. Without a word, Mira gently kissed Hamid on the lips – a family custom. She left with the major and they made their way to the helipad.

  She allowed the helicopter to return her to Philadelphia. After a brief stop at her apartment, she caught a cab to 30th Street Station and took the first Am
trak train heading north.

  It was nearly midnight before she stood on Hamid's emerald green carpet. The room was empty. The family had shuttered the magic shop, sent everything to storage for the next generation when it re-opened the shop, if there was a next generation.

  Seated in the middle of the floor, the room lit only by dim alleyway lights and a sliver of moonlight, she attempted to communicate with Hamid but failed. Her grandfather was lost to her – except for his ability to implant the vision of the carpet in her mind.

  She got on her hands and knees and crawled over every inch of the carpet. She paused frequently, testing for echoes of supernatural power. After three hours she was exhausted and empty handed. She had felt nothing.

  Perhaps what Hamid wanted her to find was more concrete.

  She stepped over to the corner of the room nearest the door, reached down and pulled on the carpet. The carpet came from beneath the baseboard and she managed to pull the corner to the center of the room.

  She examined the underside of the carpet and the floor underneath that. She found nothing. She tested the floor with her boot heels, looking for hollow or false floorboards. There were none. She replaced the carpet and attacked the other corners.

  She reached the fourth corner and pulled back the carpet. She found nothing again. As she was replacing the carpet she noticed that, on the edge, was written '0232'. She examined the entire edge of the carpet she had displaced and found no other writing. She tucked the carpet back under the baseboard.

  In turn, she pulled back the other corners until she had '906', '566' and '347' to add to the other numerals. Awakening her iPad, retrieved earlier from her apartment, she entered everything into Google and hit enter. The search returned nothing.

  She tried changing the sequence of digits. Finally she tried '5663479060232'.

  The search returned one result: an eBook on Amazon called The Devil's Mystery. The digits were the book's ISBN number. Mira clicked on the link and was taken to the book's page on Amazon. The author was someone named Joseph Perry III. The description said that the story was about a young wizard who had to solve a mystery created by the Devil or else the world would be destroyed.

  Mira clicked on the book to purchase it. The book downloaded into her Kindle app and she began to read.

  The sun was coming up when she came to a relevant passage – the reason why Hamid had directed her attention so:

  Young Perry did not trust Brahms Woolsey. He conspired to create a spy among Woolsey's minions. He would use that spy to inform Woolsey's rival regarding Woolsey's plans and activities. The spy would be loyal to Perry while seemingly loyal to Woolsey. To create this spy took fantastic magic, and Perry was up to the task. As he had turned the spy into the undead, thus Perry turned the undead into the living, with his loyalty imbedded and assured.

  Young Perry used the following magic to affect the change.

  Mira read the spell and the accompanying potion. It was so simple, but brilliant at the same time. With it, she would be able to save thousands who had been turned by Wiley.

  But who was Hamid's spy? Why hadn't Hamid told her? Who was 'Wiley's enemy' that was kept informed by the spy? Was the spy still tethered to Hamid given her grandfather's condition?

  Mira shut down her iPad and got to her feet. She was tired but energized at the same time. It was all very simple now – substitute Hamid's formula in the zombie bombs, and later, the atomic bombs. Finally she would have the long sought 'reverse zombie bomb'.

  She had reviewed her stolen files with the nanobot technology. She theorized that she could simply substitute the blue liquid – the zombie producing elixir – with the reversal potion. Until now she did not have the reversal potion.

  How would she test it? How would she deploy it, if successful?

  Her mind was racing as she closed and locked the shop's front door.

  She ran for the subway, determined to get back to Philly to begin work on saving mankind.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  On a pleasant June Sunday, the Robert C. Weaver Building – HUD's headquarters – was nearly empty. On the top floor, in a conference room positioned in the center of the floor, a very important meeting was being held.

  Secretary Wiley met with his core team of advisors: Mookie Sills, Rebecca Singler and two undead Elias had not met before, Archibald Kosart and Sylvia Arnell.

  After Wiley's opening remarks indicating that the 'Wiley Way' was progressing well, the group got down to business. Security head Mookie led off with his update.

  "We continue our infiltration of the government's security organizations, at the local, state and federal levels. Our immersion in these apparatus has led us to acquire knowledge regarding the government's surveillance of us."

  "Any change in status?" Wiley asked.

  "None. We know that they have moles in our organization. We know that the information has been fed back to the FBI and the CIA. There are still significant firewalls between the organizations, despite the lessons learned from 911. The multitude of other federal intelligence agencies – including those under the DOD umbrella and the NSA – do not have us on their radar. Not yet. At the local level, there have been reports from the NYPD but our friends in the department and city government have squashed those."

  "The usual method?" asked Kosart.

  Mookie nodded. "Anyone who has touched those reports has been either killed or converted."

  "What about the president? What does he know?"

  Mookie leaned across the table and made eye contact with his boss. "He's been briefed by the FBI Director. The sense from the Director was that Obama did not take the report seriously."

  "The CIA?"

  "That's an unknown, sir."

  "We need to know what they are doing."

  "I'm working on that. The CIA Director is extremely well protected and he prefers CIA lodgings to his own."

  "Make it happen, Mookie. I need to know what he knows."

  "It will get done, sir, very soon. We've turned his assistant director and we'll have him bomb the Director as soon as feasible."

  Wiley nodded and smiled. "Tell me about our friend named Joe."

  "We have converted his entire Secret Service detail, including all back-ups. We are a go on Biden whenever you say."

  "Excellent old friend. Unless there is an objection from around this table, I say we go." He looked at Elias, then the others.

  "Go," said Becky Sings. "That will then prompt Obama to name you to the ticket."

  "Move forward with it Mookie," Wiley said.

  "How sure are you that the president will name you to replace Biden?" Elias asked. It was the first time, other than greetings, he had spoken at the meeting.

  "I have people inside the White House, Elias. They've been in the room as the possibility of dropping Biden has been discussed. They've seen my poll numbers – eighty percent approval even including Republicans – and they are salivating. With me on the ticket the Republican nominee – likely Mitt Romney – doesn't stand a chance. They've mapped out how to use me in the campaign. They've even written a script for the president's talk with Joe. Loyalty is the only thing preventing Obama from pulling the trigger and putting the human gaff machine out to pasture."

  "His conversion and subsequent decision to retire clears the path for Ben and eases Obama's conscience," added Kosart, Wiley's political director.

  Wiley turned his attention back to Mookie. "When will you convert Biden?"

  "He's with the wife and grandkids today. He's coming back to the VP residence tomorrow afternoon, alone. I'll do it then."

  "I want you to be there and personally oversee it."

  "Yes, sir."

  "No mistakes. And I want a phone call when it's over." He paused and looked through his aide. "And record it. I want to see."

  "Of course."

  Wiley smiled and turned his attention to Arnell. "Sylvia, tell me about our farms."

  "Mr. Secretary, we have over two hundred sites now
. We have migrated approximately thirty thousand human beings to those sites, of which we have already rendered nearly ten thousand as food stuff back to our followers."

  "How are we doing logistically?"

  "We have our own fully secure railroad and trucking resources, as well as having compromised the agencies that oversee those industries."

  "So, no surprise inspection to uncover six dozen frozen heads in the back of a refrigerated box car?"

  "No, sir. We also have coordinated with Mr. Sills' security forces to shadow each shipment. Local law enforcement or any other disruption will be handled quickly and quietly."

  Mookie nodded. "There's always room for one more head in that box car," he said.

  Wiley laughed and the others joined in.

  He turned to Singler, who sat on his immediate right. "We need to feed our people. Can you ramp up the transition of more humans to Sylvia's locations?"

  "Not without creating undue attention. I thought we wanted to maintain a low profile until we're ready for the ultimate conversion?"

  Wiley nodded. "Correct, but our people are hungry. You need to be more aggressive. Use Wiley's Warriors to convert the curious – police, reporters, or relatives."

  Singler nodded. "I'll make it happen, Ben."

  "That brings us to our discussion of the ultimate conversion, code named Golden Shower. Elias, I see that the highway appropriations bill signed by the president included ISS funding and language approving access to the ISS by nongovernmental spacecraft. Good job."

  "The appropriate arms were twisted, Ben."

  "Excellent." He looked around the room, made eye contact with each participant.

  "I will now reveal my plans for Golden Shower: Thus far we have been converting humans at the rate of several thousand per day. With six and a half billion souls on this planet, at that pace our work will be done in about six thousand years. Golden Shower dramatically quickens the pace. I have researchers working at the University of Pennsylvania on a high yield zombie bomb, one that is capable of converting millions at a time. Using nanotechnology combined with the prodigious magical powers of Mira Hidar, they are very close to an operational weapon. I witnessed their beta testing myself and came away very impressed with their progress."