Caesar didn’t wait to see more. The thing was coming fast, leaving death behind it.
The forest shuddered under the force of another explosion as he caught up to the troop. His gaze flickered frantically about, trying to remember if they had been in this place before. He couldn’t allow himself to become disoriented.
A glance back showed flames visible through the trees now.
Then he saw what he was looking for, the flicker of light on water, and he remembered where he was. Bounding ahead, he turned the troop. They were starting to panic as the explosions grew louder, but at the sound of his voice most of the others seemed to steady. They scrambled downhill and into the river below. It wasn’t as deep as he had hoped, not nearly deep enough to save them if they were hit straight on. But it was better than nothing.
Stay in the water, he told Maurice, and then once more he sprinted to the back. Where Cornelia was.
By the time Caesar reached Cornelia again, he could feel the heat from the nearest flames. Squirrels, deer, and animals he didn’t recognize were running past, fleeing for their lives.
He waved on the stragglers, ashamed of the deep part of him that wanted to leave them, to grab Cornelia and make her flee. But they were all his troop, and all his responsibility, and he knew he wouldn’t—couldn’t—abandon any of them.
The rearmost stragglers reached the water’s edge. He grabbed Herman’s arm and started dragging him deeper into the stream. The gorilla wasn’t asleep, but he was having trouble using his arms and legs, a feeling Caesar remembered all too well from having been tranquilized, himself.
Suddenly everything was yellow, and for a single, suspended moment there was an impossible stillness as if he, Herman, Cornelia—all of them—were embedded in amber, like the bug Will had once shown him.
And then the wind came, like the sun breathing on them, searing them and slapping them down in the same instant. He smelled his own fur as it singed.
He shoved Herman underwater, though there was only just barely enough to cover him. The others were all staring at the billowing orange maelstrom above them, so he continued, pushing them down, one by one. Cornelia saw what he was doing, and she began helping him.
Then the fire began raining down on them, and there was no time. Caesar pushed Cornelia into the water, covering her with his body.
Dreyfus stared at the blinking phone, wondering why Patel hadn’t answered it. Then he remembered that Patel was dead, that what remained of the city government was holed up here, in the National Guard Armory. That the city was tearing itself to pieces outside.
He picked up the phone.
“Dreyfus,” he said.
“It took them long enough to find you,” the voice at the other end said.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Phillips.”
“Right,” Dreyfus said, wearily. “What do you want?”
“It’s done,” Phillips said.
“I thought I told you to go away.”
“I’m going,” Phillips said. “I just thought you would like to know.”
“Come in,” Dreyfus said, after a pause. “We can use you on something else.”
“Dreyfus,” Phillips said. “We were here to do a job. It’s done. There’s no way I’m dragging my people into that plague-infested hell-hole.”
“It’s an order,” Dreyfus said.
“I don’t work for you,” Phillips replied. Then the line went dead. Dreyfus stared at it for a moment, then turned it off.
He looked at his monitor, at the reports flooding in. He had predicted panic. He hadn’t predicted this.
He reached for the phone and tried his home number. It was busy, just as it had been the last seven times he had tried it. So was Maddy’s cell.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Mr., ah—”
“Pinheiro, sir.”
“Yes, what is it?”
“You said you wanted to talk to the prisoner.”
Dreyfus nodded wearily. “Let’s go.”
The prisoner was young, clean-shaven. He had good teeth. Aside from the Greek letters tattooed on his forehead and the dirty urban camouflage he was wearing, he looked no different from any suburban kid. He sat in a small white room, staring, unperturbed, through the glass.
“What’s your name, son?” Dreyfus asked.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” the boy said. “The first and the last. The beginning and the end.”
“Ah,” Dreyfus said. “You’re Jesus, then. How comforting.”
The boy just smiled.
“You were involved in firebombing the quarantines,” Dreyfus went on. “Men, women, children, burned alive. What possible justification could you have for that?”
The boy looked at him as if he was speaking gibberish.
“They were dead already,” he said. “You know that. Dead, and damned, as well. Don’t you get it, man? The disease, this virus—it’s not a curse. It’s a gift. It is cleansing the world of the impure. It is burning away the chaff. The miscreants, the misbegotten, the mi scegenate, the weak, all will be swept away. All who struggle against the purification will die and become as dust.”
“So you’re just helping out,” Dreyfus said.
“Look around you, man.” He swept one hand in a wide arc. “Look at these people. Two weeks ago, they thought they were civilized. They went to church, went to their book clubs, bought all the shit they were supposed to buy from the places they were supposed to buy it from. They thought they were good people, great people. Now look at ’em. Look what they’re capable of, how wasted they are on the inside. There was nothing in there, man.”
“So why not burn a few,” Dreyfus said.
“It’s our duty.”
“Right,” Dreyfus said, thumbing through a file folder. “Here’s somebody—Louisa Vega. She joined the army and became a field medic. Later she worked for aid organizations all over the world. In Africa, she nursed in a village that was essentially wiped out by Ebola. And she was in the Alameda Point quarantine when you assholes shot it all to hell and torched it. She wasn’t weak, and she wasn’t chaff, and she wasn’t ‘empty’ on the inside, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.”
He stared directly at the prisoner.
“She was someone who dedicated her life to helping the sick. And she wasn’t the only person like that who you killed. Real people, who see their duty not as hiding behind masks and chucking firebombs, but working to hold something together, build something.”
The boy laughed.
“You think you’re going to hold this together?” he said.
“I know I’m going to try,” he said.
“Well, good for you,” the boy said. “When this is all over, and the select inherit our kingdom, I’ll think of you.”
“Oh, son—didn’t anyone tell you? You won’t be inheriting anything. Nobody comes in here without a screening. Why do you think you’re behind glass?”
For the first time, the boy looked uncertain.
“See, turns out you’re part of the chaff,” Dreyfus said.
“No,” the boy said. Then louder. “No!”
“Put him in quarantine,” Dreyfus said. As he left, the boy starting shrieking in earnest.
Back in his office, Dreyfus dialed home again, hoping against hope he would get through this time.
To his relief, the phone rang, and to his greater relief, Maddy answered.
“Maddy,” he said. “Thank God. Listen, I’ve sent a car for you and the kids. They should be there in half an hour.”
He was answered by a long pause.
“Edward has it,” she said, her voice trembling.
“Has it?” he said. “Has what?”