The End Time Saga (Book 2): The Breaking Read online

  “Jesus, David, what were you doing? Working out at lunch?” Kinnick said. David was a lieutenant colonel on a tour of duty at the State Department. Kinnick wanted to laugh at the man with his red cheeks, sweat running down his forehead.

  “No, sir.” David breathed hard, trying to get enough oxygen.

  “Isn’t the physical fitness test next quarter?” Kinnick said.

  David raised a fatigued hand, cutting him off. “Thank God you’re here. There’s a group of people trying to get inside the building. We have been ordered to remove you and the other Under Secretaries, now.”

  As his second reached for his sleeve, Kinnick dodged him, his smile turning sour. “This is no time for a joke. We have a lot on our plate right now.” Anger elevated in his chest.

  “The DSS agents are in the hall,” David said quietly. He glanced back at the door.

  “Seriously, we don’t have time for this. We can’t work while they try to push some bullshit fire drill on us.”

  People stood in their cubicles. His staff’s eyes were drawn to him. The staff that had come in. A flu had stricken his office, either that or they were getting their leave in before the end of the summer. They watched the interaction and whispered to one another.

  “Our careers are on the line,” Kinnick whispered to David.

  “This is not a joke, Michael,” David breathed, his eyes shifting to the gathering crowd. Under his breath, he murmured, “The Secretary is already gone. The threat is real.”

  Two tense-looking men in suits entered the office. DSS agents.

  Providing protective details was one of the Diplomatic Security Service Agents official functions. The two agents did not look comfortable with their current assignment.

  “I don’t expect them to know what’s at stake, but you do.” Kinnick pointed a finger at David. “But I’ll humor them.”

  Trying to appear unworried, Kinnick walked briskly through his office. His staff scattered out of his way. They gathered their purses and briefcases in their hands. Jackie approached him. Worry set in her deep brown eyes hidden behind glasses. She held files close to her chest as if they would protect her from whatever was going on downstairs.

  “What’s going on? Should we try to leave?” she said. She glanced at the door, her nerves showing. Kinnick regarded the door quickly and shook his head.

  “No, no. Stay here until this blows over. My evacuation is only a precaution.”

  She looked him in the eyes and bit her lip. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

  “I will see you tomorrow,” he said in a fatherly tone. He gave her shoulder a squeeze. That would be the last time he saw her.

  David practically carried him out of the office.

  “Hold on, damn it,” he chided, removing his arm from David’s grasp.

  “Michael, please,” David hissed.

  Kinnick bared his teeth at him. “The staff is watching. Show some self-control.”

  David grimaced, peering over Kinnick’s shoulder. Then he smiled at the people watching.

  Kinnick threw his sport coat on. “It’s not like the world is ending.” He walked with resolve into the hallway confident that this would all be over soon.

  The DSS agents faces could have fooled him. The two men scanned either end of the hall. Their guns weren’t drawn, but Kinnick knew when men were on edge. These agents teetered on the precipice.

  “Under Secretary Kinnick. We have to hurry.” The special agent C-clamped Kinnick’s arm to get him running, and Kinnick picked up his feet as they sped up. The two agents placed him between them and jogged down the hallway, coats flapping behind them. Kinnick had no choice but to follow suit and run.

  The agent on the left spoke as they ran. “We are taking you to the 3rd Street exit. C Street is closed off.” Their dress shoes clicked off the floors and echoed down the hallway. They skipped steps as they hastened down flights of stairs.

  The lead agent planted a shoe into the exit bar of the lobby door, and they burst into the huge entrance of the Department of State. Beautiful spiraled green, white, and gray marble covered the floors and crawled up the sides of a permanent check-in station. Turnstiles were placed evenly to either side of the station where employees would scan their work badges to gain access to the building. Along a walkway above the lobby, flags of every nation stood at attention. Journalists would report in front of them when broadcasting from inside the building. On their left, glass windows opened up to a large courtyard where employees would often eat lunch. A huge steel statue of the globe centered it.

  Gunfire exploded, resonating between the marble walls and Kinnick flinched. The DSS agents drew their firearms that had been holstered beneath their coats. Each agent put a rough hand on Kinnick’s back, shoving him down to make him a smaller target.

  Kinnick knelt down. The agents unleashed shockwaves of gunfire. The sound washed over Kinnick and reverberated in the pristine environment like an earthquake.

  Violence was the polar opposite of the building’s purpose. This was a bastion of peace. A common ground for Americans and non-Americans to come together to make progress in creating a stable world, not a place of brutality. Kinnick looked about in a daze.

  A uniformed security officer fell on his back and concentrated his fire on the closest assailant. The man wore the blue power-suit and tie of a government employee. His mouth hung open and blood ran down from his lips, dripping onto his mellow gold tie and white dress shirt. Tap. Tap. Tap. The assailant’s torso flinched as bullets entered his flesh and exited his back. He absorbed the bullets like a sponge absorbs water. Glass of the front doors spiderwebbed behind him.

  The officer let his gun rip until the assailant lunged onto him, his arms flailing. They wrestled and rolled back in forth in a mortal struggle. The officer screamed in pain as the man’s mouth clamped down upon his forearm. Red liquid spurted from the wound onto the officer, the man, and the floor.

  His partners stood by, paralyzed.

  “Shoot them,” screamed one of the agents.

  Pointing his handgun with one hand, he fired into the bloody scrum. Another assailant dropped to his knees, biting the officer’s ankle.

  “We have to leave,” David yelled into Kinnick’s ear.

  The DSS agent pulled him up by his arm. “Sir, NOW,” the agent screamed at him.

  Kinnick’s body felt numb, like he was in a dream state. The screams, gunshots, blood, all blurred in a frantic frenzy to escape.

  A heavy hand pushed him into a stairwell, and they hustled down the steps as fast as their feet would go. When they reached the bottom, one of the agents called into his cufflink microphone.

  Kinnick found himself huffing. “What the hell is going on?” he breathed.

  The DSS agent’s eyes glanced back from Kinnick to the door. “Sir, be quiet,” he croaked.

  “Side door 12,” the other agent said into his cufflink mic.

  David’s eyes were wide in fright; he stared frantically from one agent to the other. The door above them slammed shut, and heels clapped down the steps.

  “Help me,” a woman squeaked. She stumbled down the last steps in her heels. The rear agent grabbed her and pushed her away from Kinnick, putting a gun in her face.

  “Oh my God, please,” she pleaded. Driven by fear, her hands covered her face.

  “Don’t move.” The agent held her in the corner, arm extended.

  She sobbed into his arm. Tears fell like rain from her cheeks. “I. I. I. Please help me.” Her head twisted around, emotions overtaking her.

  “Agent. Release her,” Kinnick commanded. He placed a hand on the agent’s shoulder.

  She nodded furiously. “Derek was acting crazy, uncontrollable. He bit me, and he chased me down the hall.” On cue, a pounding boomed through the stairwell. The woman shrieked in fear. Fists beat the door in a fury.

  “Sir?”

  Someone bit her? What the hell is going on here? All Kinnick could think of was his staff upstairs; he’d
left them in danger. Their active shooter training isn’t going to help them out of this.

  “She can’t come with us,” the agent said.

  She looked pale, her blue dress making her look like a child’s doll. The agent released her. She squeezed her forearm where she presumably had been bitten, bright red blood oozed out around her fingertips. She sat down on the stair and sobbed.

  “My arm hurts so bad,” she whimpered. She hugged herself.

  If Kinnick had thought the agents would let him, he would race back up the stairs now to his floor and gather his staff. Instead he bent down, taking her hand.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Emma.” Her voice was quiet.

  “Everything is going to be okay, Emma. You are coming with us.”

  Tears fell off her face. “Thank you,” she sniffled.

  “She comes with us,” he told the lead agent.

  “No, it’s against regulations,” the agent said.

  “She comes with us, or I’m not going with you,” Kinnick responded.

  The agents exchanged looks.

  “Car’s here. Get ready to run. Don’t stop for anything,” the lead agent said.

  Emma breathed raggedly behind them and uttered a violent, wet cough.

  The agent kicked the door open, and the sun blinded them. The rear agent’s hand dug into Kinnick’s shoulder, propelling him in the direction of a black Suburban.

  As his eyes adjusted to the outside, a handful of people turned for them. Kinnick’s detail ran for the vehicle. It was a race for the door. Everything happened in a jostling blur. A man dragged his leg behind him, flesh and bone sticking through his dress slacks. A woman in a business suit reached for the lead agent. Fresh dark blood soaked through her white shirt. The crowd wobbled on their feet as they made for Kinnick.

  The lead agent capped rounds into the people clustering around the SUV. Their bodies shook, but they weren’t fazed by the hot lead.

  He must be hitting them. We’re too close to miss.

  “They won’t go down,” screamed the lead agent. The people ignored the bullets as if they were mere pellets.

  Kinnick made eye contact with a woman as she shuffled in his direction. She never blinked. All color had fled from her eyes, leaving a milk-whitish hue where her irises should have been.

  Kinnick was shoved past the lead agent, his gun still blazing, into the backseat of the black Suburban. Kinnick crawled on his hands and knees, and Emma scrambled behind him. David threw himself next to her. The rear agent squeezed into the backseat. The door slammed closed.

  The lead agent ran for the front passenger side door only to get caught by the group of people. They pinned him to the side of the car, their sheer weight holding him in place. He screamed as a woman with a tight professional bun dug her teeth into his neck. The woman tore out part of his neck and a fountain of blood spewed onto the window. It poured down the window and collected in the sill. The agent slapped the window.

  “Go, go, go,” Kinnick screamed at the driver.

  The driver threw the SUV into reverse. Kinnick death-gripped the headrest of the seat in front of him. They left the gathering crowd of people.

  A wet thud thumped, and bodies flew off the back bumper of the car. People collapsed onto the concrete. Kinnick gaped out the window. A man had left a path of blood and flesh in his wake. The concrete stripped the skin from his bones.

  The mangled man sat straight up and reached out broken fingers bent in all directions. Most of the left side of his face was road rash. Red blood poured down his neck onto his clothes. His nose hung by a fleshy strap like an unclipped chin guard on a football helmet; his eyes had burst free on impact and now dangled like two bloody golf balls.

  The driver gunned the SUV, leaving the mangled people and flew down C Street going seventy miles per hour. The SUV launched over a hill, everyone in the vehicle leaving their seats for a moment until it set back down with a violent bounce. The driver braked a tad and the back wheels swerved.

  Kinnick leaned into the front seat. “What the hell is going on? This isn’t a terrorist attack. Those people all work around here,” he yelled.

  Sweat dripped down the driver’s jaw line. He steered wildly around a car abandoned in the middle of the road. “Sir, I have no idea. Please, put your seatbelt on and sit back.”

  Kinnick sat back. He looked over at David and Emma. Her head slumped down, chin on her chest. Kinnick went into hero mode.

  “Emma, are you okay? Emma?” He gently placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her.

  David put an arm around her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. He looked over her head at Kinnick, shrugging slightly. He didn’t know what was going on with her either.

  Emma’s head bobbed upright like a puppet’s.

  “Let me see your arm, alright?” Kinnick said.

  Emma turned to Kinnick as if hearing him for the first time. Her eyes were a blank cloudy mess, like a snowstorm of the pupil. She lunged for Kinnick. Her hands grasped for his suit.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he shouted. He thrust his forearms into her neck. David wrapped his arms around her body, holding her down. The agent fumbled with his gun behind David.

  “I can’t get a shot,” the agent shouted. Emma swung her head like a tormented dog, teeth mashing together, flailing her arms in a struggle to get free.

  Everyone yelled at once, and eventually Emma was pushed face first into the passenger seat of the Suburban. She clawed the dash with her fingernails and pulled herself upright, her legs kicking at David. The rear agent braced himself on the driver’s seat and fired rounds into her head. The driver veered, unable to control the car as the bullets exited her head and sprayed brain matter onto the windshield, webbing the glass. She slumped over the center console, legs spread straight out into the backseat.

  “Holy shit,” the driver shouted.

  Kinnick brought himself under control. The woman had been attacked. Bitten, and then she turned into a crazed maniac.

  “Holy shit,” the driver screamed again.

  The driver busted over a curb. Red signs with white lettering warned them: Wrong Way. They sped down the wrong way of the Key Bridge. On the other side, a long snake of traffic stood still with thousands of people fleeing the District.

  “Is everyone okay?” Kinnick shouted. His voice sounding muffled by the ringing in his ears. The agent nodded, dumbfounded.

  “You okay?” Kinnick said, looking at David.

  “Yeah, I’m good.” David held up his hands, sticky blood drenching them. He wiped his brow, smearing blood across his forehead. That’s when Kinnick saw the wound on his David’s hand. A chunk had been taken out of the meat of his palm.

  “Your hand,” Kinnick said.

  David stared at it. “Did she bite me?” he whispered.

  “Wrap it in this.” Kinnick ripped a piece off the woman’s dress and shoved the rest of her into the front seat.

  “I can’t believe that bitch bit me,” David said.

  A long iconic building rose up on their left.

  “Take us to the Pentagon. David, hold on. We’re going to get you help,” Kinnick said. He hit speed dial on his phone. “Get me General Travis.”

  STEELE

  Mountains of West Virginia

  Steele leapt with all his might. He shifted his shoulders and grazed the barrel of the shotgun with his free hand, offsetting it away from his face. The shotgun exploded an inch from the side of his head. The concussions from the blast rocked the room. He took the barrel of the shotgun and shoved it hard into the man’s shoulder. At the same time, he brought his knife up to the man’s neck. They toppled to the floor. The stock of the gun pushed into Steele’s gut and the knife flew from his hand.

  Steele swung his leg over the man’s waist and scrambled into the mounted fighting position. The man bucked his hips and Steele locked his legs around the man’s body. Steele rained fists down on the man’s face. He didn’t land every pun
ch he threw, but he didn’t need to. Only enough punches to keep the man on the defensive. The man’s eyes went large as Steele buried a knuckle into the his right eye.

  “P—please. Stop,” the man sputtered. His hands covered his face, attempting to deflect the strikes. “Stop!”

  Steele dove from atop the man and grabbed his knife. He held it to the man’s neck. The man held his hands above his face, his face beet red from the fight. Steele’s chest heaved. He pressed the knife into the man’s skin and let the blade sink in, his mind running on auto-pilot.

  The front door creaked. The wood announced newcomers with groans. Deep guttural moans penetrated the house from the outside. Their voices seemed to groan, “We are here. Let us in.”

  Steele jumped off the man and snatched up the mossy-oak-camouflaged shotgun. The man scrambled backward against the wall.

  “Shut the fuck up for a minute.” Steele racked the shotgun, pumping it up and down. He flipped the gun upside down, fingering the loading flap into the magazine tube. His finger met no resistance meaning the shotgun held only one shell.

  “Do you have any more shotgun shells?” Steele asked. Infected fists met the wood of the door. More hands joined the first. The man wiped his nose of leaking blood.

  “Why should I tell you, asshole?” he said. He spit some blood onto the floor. The man was long-limbed with the body of a runner.

  “Because I’m the one with the gun.” Steele rested the hunting shotgun on his knee and pointed it at the man from the hip.

  “Screw you. You might as well just shoot me because when they break in it’ll be over.” Anger boiled over, indifference in the man’s eyes.

  He’s right. Tight spaces are their friend. This man is my only friend.

  “Sorry.”

  The man humphed and averted his eyes to the front door.

  “I didn’t know anyone still lived here and I was scared,” Steele said. He secured his knife and stood up, crossing the bedroom.

  “Tell me about it,” the man said. His eyes grew fearful with distrust as Steele got closer. Steele offered a hand to him.