Dead Man Running (58 page)

"I'll reach out to the station, find out what is possible."

"No, Elias.  What is wrong with you?  My second in command will tell them what I want and they will make it happen."

"Yes, sir.  One week after
China
your bombs will blanket the Earth."

"Excellent, now let's go watch Romney cry like the little bitch he is."  He laughed and the trio marched out of the bedroom.

While Wiley and his boys had their conversation Becky fumed.  Any glance at Mrs. Wiley provoked a hate filled stare back at her.  Becky stood, and despite Wiley's order, excused herself and left the suite.

She took the elevator down one floor to her room. 
She used the pass card to open the door and she walked into the bedroom.  She reached under her bed and retrieved
a
leather satchel. 

Inside was a square box made of glass. 

Inside
that
sat a silver globe.

Becky undressed then carefully hung her blouse and skirt in the closet and laid her underwear on the bed.  She sat on the floor and placed the glass box in front of herself.  She pressed a button and the box opened.  She
eased
the globe out of the box and within seconds she could hear the
device
open.

She lay back and welcomed the dozens of darts that penetrated her body.  They hurt but she knew that, after this, she would feel no more pain.  As the poison slowly killed her she
smiled as she
imagined
the new life she would have with Ben Wiley.

Later that evening Wiley was alone in his suite.  All the speeches had been given, all the media satisfied, at least for now.  Mrs. Wiley had been ushered back to her home, her smiling presence no longer required.

Ben Wiley was low on energy and he needed his particular type of fuel – sex and human flesh.  He waited in the suite while his trusted man Mookie Sills recruited a bounty of each.  He rose to answer a knock on the door.

In the doorway stood Becky Sings.  He noticed the change immediately.

"You've been converted.  Who did that?  I didn't authorize it."

She stepped past him, closed the door.  "I did it to myself."  She wrapped her arms around his neck.  "I wanted to totally be on the team, Ben.  I wanted to be
all the woman you need."  She leaped up and he cradled her bottom in his strong hands.  They kissed and he walked them into the bedroom.

Afterward the pair lay in Wiley's bed.  They each looked at the ceiling.

"I made a mistake didn't I?  It's not the same."

Wiley shifted his eyes to her.  He looked sad, nearly depressed if
a
dead man could conjure such emotions.

He nodded.  "You shouldn't have done it.  It was so good before.  Now…you're just like the rest.  My Becky Sings is gone."

She slid off the bed.  "I'm sorry, Ben.  I'll get my clothes and leave.  Of course I'll continue to do my job."

"I have another job for you."

"I won't be working directly for you anymore?"

"I have something more important.  We'll talk tomorrow."

Becky nodded and left the bedroom, her clothes in her arms.

Dressed,
s
he opened the front door of the suite only to be met by Mookie and a half dozen eager men and women.

She staggered down the hallway.

She could hear the muted screams as she stepped onto the elevator. 
Ben wasn't wasting any time.

She hit the button for her floor and wondered
about the job Ben had for her.  She tried and failed to be positive.  It felt like, for her new zombie self, what it had felt like as a human: a brush-off.  She had screwed up and he was getting rid of her.  She needed to regain his confidence, his affections. 

Back in her suite s
he sat on her bed – as a zombie she was no longer sleepy – and considered how to repair things.

Hours went by but she had no answer.  She was now on the outside looking in and would remain that way forever. 
Just like the rest.

THIRTY-FOUR

WEST PHILADELPHIA
– NOVEMBER 2012

In her
Philadelphia
apartment
Mira
ripped open the cream colored envelope with the White House return address.

T
wo months
after
Fiji
, was this Elias' reaching out to her?  Was the
China
trip
's schedule
finalized
?
  It made sense – the election was two weeks ago and Wiley certainly had time to finalize his
foreign
plans.

She quickly read the note and her hopes deflated.  It was merely a form letter thanking her for her support of the president and Mr. Wiley.
  The boilerplate mentioned all the good works that Obama would do in his second term.

She read it a second time, then a third.  She looked for hidden meaning
, intentional mistakes, anything that would be a secret message to her from Elias.  There was nothing.

Had he been found out and turned again?
  It was possible.  She and
Manchester
, via her
Hidar
relatives, had discussed th
at
possibility after two months of not hearing from him.  Their conclusion – if he had been converted they were totally fucked.  Game over.  Wiley wins.  In less than a year the zombies will rule the Earth.

She took the letter in her hand, ready to ball it up and toss it in the trash.  Her eyes caught on the signatures
at
the bottom – above 'President Barack Obama' was the informal signature 'Barack' in cursive.  Above 'Vice President-elect Benjamin Wiley', instead of 'Benjamin' or 'Ben' signed in cursive above his typed name and title there was 'Benny'.

Since when did Wiley go by the name 'Benny'?

Mira
examined the page again – front and back.  Finally she had an idea – given this low tech means of communication perhaps he had hidden the message with disappearing ink.

She pulled out her
tablet
and fired it up.  She typed 'disappearing ink reveal' into Google and
after a half minute learned how to show the hidden message.

She used the heat method first by holding the page near a florescent light bulb.  Nothing.

She next sat the page on her kitchen table.  She found some white wine in her fridge and poured some into a small glass.

She dabbed
a cotton ball
into the wine and painted the back of the page.  Halfway down the page words began to reveal themselves.

My darling I love you.  I miss you so much.  Must move faster. 
Timeline
accelerated
. 
Space station ready for
bomb
deployment early December.  BO transformation after
China
. 
Atomic bomb deployment by Christmas. 
China
set for 745AM departure on 1127.
  Wiley will use VC25A aka Air Force One.  Obama's idea.  Alpha Bravo Tango crew out, AF1 crew in.  Must convert crew and security and ground crew
, including ALL bomb sweepers
. 
Andrews AFB. 
Planes u
nder guard 24X7! Found plane schematics
online
.  Place
initial
bomb
to blow
emergency door
mid ship
near galley
.
 
Have them place parachute
below seat
three rows away from bombed emergency door. 
Must bomb all three VC25A's just in case.  As discussed set
as
trigger
a call to
Manchester
's
cell number.  I will call with sat phone onboard to trigger first bomb.
Will blow 2 hours after
Hawaii
departure. 
Second more powerful bomb to blow
one hundred and
eighty
seconds later.

That's it.  I LOVE YOU!! I will see you after this is all over.  Otherwise, I will see you in Heaven or Hell.
  Good luck and God bless us all.

She read it twice, then again.  Once committed to memory she tore the note into small pieces and flushed it down the toilet.  She grabbed her pocketbook and her coat and
flew
out of her apartment.  She took the steps several at a time and banged the
building's
front door open with both fists.

She swept up the street so fast – headed for the El station that would take her to the Amtrak trains pointed to
New York
– she did not notice the figure in the shadows across from her apartment building.

The creature masquerading as Mookie Sills gave it five minutes but he knew she was long gone.  He had convinced Wiley that the girl needed watching and he was right.  There were too many trips to
New York
when she should have been elsewhere doing her job.  Obviously she was using her relatives to communicate with someone but
whom
?  She wasn't talking to Elias – he was
locked down tight
under Wiley's security bubble. 
Was it Manchester
Lee
, who
Mookie
's security apparatus had observed
with his punk ass zombie self?

Wiley should have dismembered the motherfucker long ago but he kept saying the man was 'small potatoes' or 'yesterday's news' every time Mookie suggested getting rid of him.

No, Wiley was so close to the presidency he could taste it.  It was seriously affecting his judgment.  Why, every time the man was in the same room with the First Lady he got a boner.  His obsession with her was troubling.  Instead of some high class poo-tang he should be worried about the Chinese, Russians and our very own president.  Take care of business first,
then
wrap your
lip
s around the First Lady's exceedingly muscular arms.

Mookie had no such fantasy – as a man and as a zombie he appreciated a woman with meat on her bones and that Michelle was too light in the
britches
for his taste.

He stepped out of the shadows and crossed the street.  He casually climbed to the apartment door and entered the building with a key he had secured when the bitch had first rented the place.  Inside he quickly
climbed the stairs and used his key to her apartment door. 

He lifted his nose to the air and took a deep breath.  There was no smoke – a good sign for his purposes.  She must have received a message to provoke her to tear out of the apartment like she did.  Seeing that all her electronic communications were being monitored, the message must have been on paper.  He searched for the message, on the theory that she would not have risked being caught with it on her person.

Since she didn't burn the message it could be only one of three places – hidden, in the trash or flushed down the toilet.

Mookie checked each of the trash cans then made a cursory sweep of the apartment, careful not to disturb her possessions.  He found nothing.

On one of his earliest visits he had placed screens hidden in all her drains and her toilet.  He checked the toilet drain pipe first. 

On his hands and knees he took the toilet drain pipe in his powerful left hand.  With a crisp twist of the pipe, the pipe segment separated from the drain pipe.  He peered inside and smiled as the saw the wet paper lying against the screen.

He carefully shook the pieces out onto
Mira
's kitchen counter.  He returned to the bathroom and re
connected
the pipe segment. 

He flushed the toilet to make sure that
the pipe was watertight.  No water leaked and he stood. 

He made a circuit of the apartment to verify that nothing had been disturbed.  Back in the kitchen he found a paper towel and went back to the bathroom to clean up the water dribbled onto the bathroom tile when he had taken apart the pipe. 

He returned to the kitchen with the moist towel and placed the paper pieces on the towel.  He folded the towel into a tight neat square and tucked it into his pants pocket.  Finally he took one more paper towel to clean up the wet kitchen counter.  Once done, he stuffed this towel in his coat pocket.

He looked around the apartment one more time and
,
finding nothing out of place, left.

Later, looking down at the no longer secret message he pulled his cell from its waist holder.