Medora Wars (32 page)

Rambert read the message and then lowered the phone, looking intently at Mayberry. “So that you can completely wipe out the rest of our entire military when you detonate a nuclear bomb on Albion?” Rambert asked.

“What?” Mayberry was cinching his belt around his waist. “What’re you talking about?”

“You got a text, Chuck,” Rambert replied dryly.

“Who… what does it say?” Mayberry stood with one hand holding up his loose pants.

“It simply says, ‘
Are you sure this is correct: eight-seven-T-C-pound sign-pound sign-zero-o-zero-six-one-Q-nine-nine-eight.
’ ” Rambert looked up from the phone and saw that Mayberry already had a gun pointed at him.

“Larry,” Mayberry said with one arm holding the gun and the other cinching his belt tight. “Look at me.”

“You…” Rambert backed away, dropping the phone. “You really are…”

Mayberry’s face had transformed with hardened lines around his mouth and eyes. He clenched his jaw tight and breathed deep through his nostrils. The attitude of sarcasm and doubt that he attempted to fill the room with only moments before had vanished, leaving behind only a man with a stone face, peering from behind a gun. Focusing his stare into Rambert’s eyes made Mayberry himself appear as a wild animal behind jungle brush, waiting patiently for his prey to stop and nibble on a leaf. It was for only a fleeting moment, but Rambert thought he felt an imperceptible wave of exhaustion and fury flowing from behind Mayberry, with blackened disgust.

Mayberry moved his lips. “You,” he said with venom in his voice. “You didn’t tell me the correct code, did you?”

“No…” Rambert’s mouth was drained of moisture, only permitting a dry cough to follow. The gears of his mind moved, recalling information, and finally matching into the correct context. His face flickered with understanding. “It’s been you—”

“You gave me a fake code, didn’t you Larry?” Mayberry stepped forward with the gun concentrated on Rambert’s chest.

“This whole time, it’s you,” Rambert whispered. “I didn’t really believe it…”

“You thought you would pipe down some false information to me and see if it came back the other end. I’m guessing I’m the only person who got that particular fake code?”

“You really tried to get them to detonate the bombs? Is that what this text is? That they just now punched it in, and it didn’t work?”

“Mr. President…”

“What are you?”

“I was trying to get rid of our crutch.” Mayberry nodded his head.

“Our crutch?”

“It was the final step. Nothing could turn back if we still had the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. We have to be stripped of this.”

Rambert’s eyes wandered off to the ceiling. “You’re insane.”

“An insane person would never have been able to accomplish what I did.”

“Accomplish…”

“Eradicating the world’s most destructive dictatorships? Netanyahu is dropping nuclear weapons on Tehran within the hour. Despite being allies, China is invading North Korea because of their attempt of expanding their territory into the South. All of Europe…” Mayberry began to smile and breathe heavy. “England, Germany… France. They’re all finally putting reigns on Russia as Putin tries to squeak into Berlin after the outbreak there.”

“Oh my god.”

“Everyone sees the virus as a scourge but… it’s not, it’s just not. The virus is our incentive. It’s made the worthy countries of the world finally step out from under the shadows of tyranny. Just a few, pinpoint outbreaks across the globe and all the scum comes out to try to grab some power. Our hands are forced to react. It’s finally happening. All I have to do next is drop a few of my ‘brothers’ in China and all the wheels will be set in motion to destroy the world’s dictatorships.”

“I don’t even know what to call you.”

“I don’t matter, here. It’s only what we do now. Our country is different now, yes. We will no longer be encumbered by the undue expectations that the world has of our once great country. With our military wiped out, and our nuclear arms gone, they won’t be able to hold us against the double standard of protecting the world from crimes against humanity, but insisting that we isolate ourselves. We’re finally free to become the country that we are supposed to be. Can you even begin to see what I’ve done?”

“If you want us to become so free, why did you destroy our Navy in Venezuela?”

“So we wouldn’t be tempted to save the world again from its problems. We must be disarmed. In that one moment, not only did I rid us of our burden, but also I wiped out the Chinese Navy and infected the dictator country of Venezuela. I really wish you could appreciate the orchestration that made all of this possible. It was really quite elegant,” Mayberry said pleasantly.

“It was you who…”

“What?”

“Two years ago, it was you, wasn’t it?”

“Try to be more specific, I did a lot of things two years ago.”

Rambert gasped. “You tipped off the Chinese about the outbreak. That’s how they invaded us so quickly. You knew it was going to happen because you… made it happen?”

“I’ve been working at this for a number of years, yes. It turns out that being the CIA director, not the President, is the world's’ most powerful position. Information is power, and I have more information than anyone could imagine.”

“You’re trying to talk to me like a sane person. You are so far gone…” Rambert started gasping for air. “What about your… God and this… your religion?”

“Larry, the brotherhood was only the vehicle. The Sirr… only the idea of a person. These were invented concepts to create loyal soldiers.”

“You just used them.”

“Not exactly. Call it whatever you like, but I’m sure it’s real enough to all those followers out there right now. It doesn’t matter if the Sirr or his religion is real or not. I may not be what they think I am, but I was at least going to die with them. I was on my way down to Albion before you brought me up here. I may have different beliefs as the brotherhood that I started but together our actions achieve the exact same thing.”

“What about your agent? Why would you even keep him alive?”

“He didn’t know it, but he was just my mole for Atash Yekta. I had to make sure the same info I was feeding down the line made it right back to me. If Atash was going to turn on me, I had a way to find out.”

“And you just… fabricated suspicion about Stark because—”

“He’s really the only one who could stop the virus but he has surprisingly failed quite nicely.” Mayberry smiled.

“The recording of the Sirr originating from Maryland?”

“Faked.”

Rambert slumped against the counter and dropped to the floor. “You’ve destroyed the world.”

“I’ve saved the world. It’s men like me that change history.”

Rambert looked up at the towering man, whose gun had never wavered from him. He stared in disbelief for a moment, but then chuckled through his slackened jaw. “Don’t you see what you’ve done?” Rambert asked.

“Yes, I’ve been seeing it for the last twenty years or so, when I knew I would have to change the way we do things and the way we think.”

“No, no you idiot.”

“You would call the man who single handedly changed human civilization an idiot?”

“Oh, you’ve changed it. Yes, you’ve created a new world order, but not into any miserable utopia that you’ve conjured in your brain. Did you forget about the tens of millions of reanimated dead people that are swarming around your perfect, little pinpoint outbreaks? We won’t be able wipe them out if you don’t get your henchmen out of our nuclear barracks so we can drop one in El Paso.”

“Whoever said I wanted to wipe them out? The infected will forever be our incentive.”

“You don’t know what the infected even are any more. They change, they mutate… they’re figuring us out.”

“I welcome whatever the horde will become.”

“Our masters,” Rambert added.

“We won’t kill each other anymore if we’re always trying to defend against the virus. We’re finally united, and evil men are being swept from the Earth.”

“Then why are you still here?”

Mayberry smiled gently. “Mr. President, I would love to finish this conversation with you, I really would. I’ve never once been able to be so candid about my life’s work with any one person. But now that we’ve disposed of our pretense, I’ve really got to get to this exact business in Albion. You’ve really detained me, and I’m afraid my men aren’t going to know what to do.”

“Please, Chuck, at least stop the horde from rolling in on us. I know you’re going to kill me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. But you’ve got to stop the horde right now. Tell them to take one of the bombs to El Paso. We can rebuild from here if we can stop that horde.”

“I can’t stop this now.” Mayberry walked toward Rambert and pointed his gun toward the dusty tile. He rummaged briefly in his front coat pocket and pulled out a small, plastic bag with a single white pill. “I wouldn’t wish upon you a violent death, Mr. President. You are a valiant man, but you’re from a different era now. We’re moving forward without you.” He handed the bag to Rambert.

Gently, Rambert took the bag, wondering about the lonely man who had called him. He remembered how quiet his voice was, and that he spoke deliberately and with intelligence. He had chosen his words carefully, unsure if they were accurate, but hoping that they were. Rambert looked up at Mayberry who towered above him, holding the gun away from him.

“Go ahead, Larry. Don’t make me shoot you,” Mayberry said.

“It turns out, Sirr,” Rambert said smiling, looking up over Mayberry’s shoulder, “that our new Secretary of Defense isn’t as useless as we thought. You thought that I wouldn’t be transmitting this conversation?”

Mayberry turned toward the door as a shot rang out in the lab. He dropped his gun and fell to the tile grabbing his thigh, which now gushed with blood. “No…” he said, reaching for his gun.

“If you pick up that gun, I’ll shoot you in the head,” Novak said, walking into the lab.

Chapter Twenty Nine: Albion, Nebraska

Atash stared at the cell phone taped to his forearm. He had sat quietly for the last several minutes as the sounds of intermittent gunfire echoed beyond the walls of the maintenance garage. It wasn’t just that he was waiting for a response that wasn’t coming, but for the first time in several years, he was stalling because he didn’t know what to do next. A flicker of despair built inside of him as he typed the same code into the keyboard of the warhead, over and over again. The mental strain of wondering if they would be destroyed by total annihilation any second or if Atash was going to type in the wrong code again was beginning to break down the remaining of brothers that sat with him. The others had run out to the adjacent warehouse to return fire as their location had now been discovered. The remaining hostages lined up on the ground, lying on their bellies, with Elise curled last in line.

“I think they can see where we are!” Malik yelled over to Atash in the small garage, as he shot his gun out through a side door into the vast warehouse that began to flood with soldiers. “We shouldn’t have fired our weapons so quickly, they’re moving down here!” Malik backed away from the door, closed it, and commanded two men to stack boxes of twisted metal fragments in front of the door. “We need to block the sliding garage door, too!” he yelled as bullets ricocheted off the shaking garage door from the outside. “Atash!” he yelled as the rest of the men pushed pallets and machinery parts toward the doors. “Atash! The code doesn’t work!”

“Keep them back!” Atash yelled as he began shooting the hostages that were lined up on the ground, with Elise slowly wriggling away from the group. “Brothers, keep them from storming us!” He tore the cell phone from his arm and punched in numbers as another burst of bullets rained on the metal slats of the garage door. Atash brought the phone to his ear, waited for a moment, and then spoke in a rushed panic as the line picked up. “Sir, sir, the code is not correct! You must give me the correct code right this second, we are about to be killed, and lose the weapon!”

“Who is this?” the muffled voice replied.

“Brother Atash! The code you gave me did not work, sir!” Atash’s voice shrieked with a pitch that none of his brothers had heard before.

“Your master is now in custody,” the man on the other line said.

Atash looked over at Malik, who was helping the rest of the men barricade the doors. “What?” Atash said, putting his palm down on the keypad of the bomb. “Sir, no more tests. You must give me the correct code or the Americans will take over this weapon in less than five minutes.”

“His name is Charles Mayberry, have you heard of him?” the man taunted. “He is no God, only your puppeteer. There is no reward for you if you detonate that bomb. He made it all up.”

Atash cleared his throat. “Who is this?” he said calmly.

“The man who caught the Sirr.” The line went dead.

“Carter!” Atash yelled out as he threw the phone to the ground. “Where are you?” He looked around and saw that Elise was crawling away from the group of hostages. He briskly walked over to her and lifted her up from her handcuffs. She cried in pain as the thin metal dug into her wrists. Dropping her back to the ground, he saw that Malik had backed away from the side door from where he was looking out. “Malik, where is Carter?”

Malik swiveled his head around the room. “I… I don’t know. I thought he was right there with you.”

“What is it looking like out there?” Atash asked as his eyes looked wildly past Malik to the door. “I haven’t heard a shot in a while…” he said with hope as several more brothers ran out to join the firefight.

“They know we’re here. I think three of our men are down out there, and the Americans are creeping up closer to our position. Everyone else is now out there trying to hold them off.” Malik looked over at the shattered casing of the phone that Atash had thrown on the ground. “Who were you just talking to?”

Atash inhaled quickly and held his breath for a moment. “I’m not sure, Malik.” There was, for a moment, a glimpse of uncertainty that Malik saw at the small wrinkles that formed under Atash’s eyes. Cracks of doubt clustered around his face. “Well, what did they say?” Malik asked.

The wrinkles around his eyes flattened out as the calmness returned to his countenance. “It was the Sirr.”

“What?” Malik said.

“He said… that we must move from here.”

“Move?” Malik said calmly as he looked down at the remaining hostages on the floor and wondered about how many hundreds of American soldiers were flooding around them in different parts of the building.

“Yes, we must take the weapon, and move from this location.”

Malik paused, trying more than ever to read Atash’s face. “Are you sure that was the Sirr?”

“Malik, you question me now? Now, in this moment of trial?” Atash lifted his automatic rifle into Malik’s belly. “Doubt me, one more time.” Atash flared his nostrils as he looked into Malik’s eyes.

As Atash’s gaze pierced into Malik’s, dulled images of his ex-wife cleaning their old kitchen came to his mind. He remembered rubbing her pregnant belly and tapping on it with his fingers. His son’s small face flooded his thoughts. The feelings of remorse and self-loathing that he expected did not overwhelm him as they usually did. He had always thought that he would have a sense of triumph over his own ego but he only felt emptiness. He would’ve been content dying with that emptiness if it weren’t for the cracks that he saw around Atash’s face.
As brilliant of an actor as he is
, Malik thought,
this man does not know what his next move will be. He is, at this moment, more lost than I have ever been.
“Brother… we die together.” Malik smiled and put his hand on Atash’s shoulder. He noticed Elise once again trying to wriggle her way free from the unguarded group of hostages. “Our witness is trying to escape.”

“Ah, we can’t lose her yet.” Atash turned and saw Elise now inching away like a worm. He sprayed a brief shot of bullets above her head, which popped on the concrete wall above her. She froze in place and meekly rolled back to the group of hostages. Looking up at Atash, she could finally see the hurried panic that she was waiting for.

“I’m going to kill you,” she said loudly to him, with a confidence that, only for a moment, Atash couldn’t help but believe.

“Quiet, now. We’re almost through this, my dear.” Atash breathed deep and pushed out the hatred he had for the woman. He compartmentalized his growing fears into a deep mental recess and could think methodically once again. He was about to speak when, in a brief flash, stunning natural light filled the room from the opposite end of the garage. Another metal plated door was on the other end of the garage that opened to the outside. They could now hear the very close thumping blades of a helicopter. “Get down!” Atash yelled, bringing Malik down with him. “Find cover!” he yelled out but realized he was only yelling at Malik as all of his other brothers were off in the warehouse taking his bullets for him.

As Atash and Malik fell to the ground, Elise stood and squinted, walking toward the now open end of the dank garage as warm air wafted in on them. “Don’t shoot!” she yelled out expecting a swarm of soldiers to flood the room, but only saw the silhouette of a single man in Army fatigues.

“Atash!” the man said.

“Carter!” Atash yelled, rising to his feet. “I was afraid that you had abandoned us. Have you heard from the Sirr?”

Carter weaved in between pallets as he walked in from the sunlight. “No, no, but we’ve got to get out of here right now. We only have about three minutes before they realize this garage opens to the outside. You haven’t heard from him?”

“Yes, yes I have. We need to move the warhead out of here.”

“I know. I’ve got a chopper outside all ready to go with it but what do we do? Your detonation code didn’t work.”

“My brothers, nothing as beautiful as what the brotherhood has done is ever accomplished so easily. We have another way of detonating this weapon, and we must move it to the aircraft.”

“Well, let’s get out of here!” Carter said as he kicked at the hostages.

“No, no leave them, only gather that defiant woman there.” Malik pointed to Elise who had now fallen to the ground.

She looked up at Malik with fever and sadness in her sunken eyes.

Malik spoke, “I don’t doubt that you would murder us in your sleep, Elise. Isn’t the confidence that you feel, that singular intent of purpose, a beautiful feeling?”

She stared at him grimly and got to her feet. “Let’s go,” she said, stammering ahead of them out into the light, with Carter holding her elbow from behind.

“You get that end,” Atash said to Malik, pointing to the end of the wooden crate that held the warhead. “I’ll push, and you guide it.” He unlocked the brakes on the wheels beneath the warhead that held it in place and pushed it like a shopping cart. “We are very close to the end now, Malik. I must admit, that I actually have doubted you up until this very moment. I was never certain where you allegiance lied.”

“It doesn’t lie in this earthly realm,” Malik said as he guided the warhead through a maze of rusted machinery parts and plastic crates full of frayed wiring. The weapon glided over the greasy concrete of the garage and rattled as the wheels rolled over loose screws and twisted metal fragments. The garage had gone silent except for the muffled yells of their remaining men firing off rounds in the distance.

“It was meant to just be me, you, and our witness, Malik,” Atash said as he guided the long crate. “I can see now, that this is how it is supposed to be. I’ve come to believe that it is only you and me that will be praised after this life.”

“And the Sirr?”

“The Sirr will have his place, somewhere, but it will not be with us,” he said with finality. “You and I, Malik, we are the brotherhood now,” Atash said with his head bowed, pushing the heavy bomb.

As Carter pulled Elise into the sunlight, her eyes tensed in pain for a brief moment as they adjusted to the brightness. It had been over a week since she had seen the sky. The air was clean and dry, with a stirring wind coming from the cargo helicopter that Carter had managed to land next to the building. Its blades hummed in perfect symmetry as Carter cast her onto the pavement beneath them. She looked up into the blue sky behind the whirring blades and breathed deep as she let the box cutter drop from her armpit to the gravel underneath her. She waited with an even breath.

“I have the back ramp of the chopper open. You can just wheel it right up!” Carter yelled at Atash and Malik as they brought the bomb out from the garage with steady footsteps.

Malik watched Atash’s eyes as he looked out at the Nebraska wilderness that sprawled from them like the edges of a vast sea of purple and brown brush. Malik felt a pang of love for his mentor that he had never had before, but mixed within his love was the dreaded feeling of pity that he had ignored the entire time he knew him. It was a theoretical pity that Malik had secretly held for Atash, based on the scenario that everything Atash believed might be wrong. Malik felt that pity rise within him and turn cold with sadness as they approached the chopper.

Atash looked up and caught Malik in his stare. “You’re finally feeling that triumph, aren’t you Malik?”

For once, Atash could not guess his thoughts, which made Malik only smile faintly at him. “Yes, my brother. This is our hour.”

Carter knelt next to Elise, with his rifle drawn at the garage from where they escaped, waiting. He waited for a stream of soldiers to flow from the opening, throwing bullets, and anger at them.

At his boots, Elise continued looking up at the sky, drawing her attention to all noises around her. She saw Malik and Atash’s boots stomp on the loose gravel as they wheeled the warhead past her and to the back of the chopper. Beneath the thumping blades she faintly heard the hollow bounce as the wheels of the crate were pushed up the metal ramp and into the aircraft.

“Brother Carter, please bring our witness to her feet,” Atash said as he came from the back end of the chopper, brandishing his rifle. “We need to leave immediately.”

“Get up!” Carter yelled, kicking Elise in the shoulder. She simply continued to lie on the gravel, staring upward into the sky. “If you don’t get up in one second, I’m going to shoot!” Carter yelled, kicking her again.

Elise continued, frozen in a comatose gaze.

As Carter leaned over to grab her by the arm, Atash walked swiftly up to him, put the muzzle of his rifle to the man’s temple and fired. Carter would have protested but his head exploded in a blur of sprayed blood and skull fragments, leaving a dark chasm of frayed hair behind. He fell forward over Elise and rested motionless on top of her.

Quietly, and without much noise, Elise pushed the man off of her and looked up at Atash as he loomed over.

“Get in the helicopter,” he said without his pleasant tone. Elise saw his hollow eyes flicker with a spark of desperation. A brooding cloud of exhaustion hung above his head as he realized the end of his uncertain journey. She propped herself up on one elbow and was about to speak, when Malik interjected.

“Why did you kill him?” Malik asked gently, looking over his shoulder at the garage.

“He couldn’t be trusted any more. No one but you and I can be trusted.”