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  If you only knew, he thought.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “There’s no shortage of drugs to keep me flying high. I suppose I should have told them about my hip before they gave me X-57. Oh well, too late now.”

  It was meant as a joke, but it got Jax thinking: How had the government prioritized who got vaccinated? Only a small proportion of the military personnel based in Colorado Springs had gotten theirs, and yet all of Echo Company did. What about people with medical conditions? Diabetics, for example: If they survived Eko, they’d still face a horrible future once the insulin supply ran out, which wouldn’t be long after the power system went dark for good and refrigeration failed.

  He gave his head an internal shake. Madness lay down that road. Not unlike the subject they were here to discuss.

  Beckett laced her fingers on the table in front of her and looked at them all earnestly. “So,” she said. “Dead bodies. Lots of them.”

  The others exchanged glances, as if looking for permission to laugh, so Jax smiled. They had a lot of grim subjects to talk about, and getting bogged down in misery would be easy to do. As ghoulish as it sounded, they had to maintain a sense of humor about things or they risked losing their sanity.

  “Do you have any numbers?” he asked.

  “Some.” Beckett looked around at the others. “Are you all ready to hear this? It’s not good.”

  They nodded, though Jax wondered if anyone could possibly be ready to hear the details of the end of the world.

  “All right, let’s get on with it.” She riffled through a stack of papers. “The medical experts we’ve met with—there are a half-dozen civilian doctors and a nurse practitioner in addition to nine doctors and fourteen nurses from the forces—believe the first wave of Eko is over. For all intents and purposes, everyone who was going to die of the virus has died.”

  Jax breathed his way through a wave of despair that suddenly rose in his chest. If this middle-aged bureaucrat could get through it, he could.

  “The metro population of Colorado Springs prior to Eko was in the neighborhood of 800,000,” Beckett continued. “Of those, about 45,000 were military personnel. Our current numbers—these are estimates, obviously; we don’t have the manpower for a physical count yet—are around 15,000 civilians and 1,800 military.”

  Jax felt a chill as he recalled his talk with Archer just a week earlier: The numbers were the same as the ones he’d had to absorb. He’d never discussed them with anyone else, so they were coming as a shock to the rest of the room. Maggie and Carly had gone white, while Ruben was running a hand down his face. Across the table, Fujita busied himself with scribbling on papers.

  “A very small proportion of those infected—far less than one percent—have proved capable of surviving,” said Beckett. “The virus kicks the living shit out of them, and they’re weak as kittens afterwards—plus they end up with two different-colored eyes out of the deal—but they live. We estimate about fifty or so people fall in that category.”

  Ruben raised a hand. “I may not be great at math, but I can count. You’re saying we’ve got three-quarters of a million bodies out there in that city?”

  “And the surrounding area.” Beckett nodded. “Approximately. We know that a small percentage of people left the city, going God knows where, but they would be statistically insignificant.”

  Jax took another deep breath. Maggie and Carly seemed to be making their way through the revelation, though neither looked ready to speak just yet.

  “And it’s our job to dispose of them,” he said. “I know it sounds like the equivalent of digging to China with a spoon, but it’s the reality we’re faced with.”

  “Just playing devil’s advocate,” said Ruben. “But—”

  Jax grinned. “Devil’s advocate? You?”

  Ruben gave him a withering look. “What if we just left them where they are? Just abandon the city and bring the survivors to the bases?”

  Beckett shook her head. “Brass wants the city cleared. If we’re going to hope for some kind of long-term recovery from this, we need access to the housing, the power plants, the infrastructure.”

  “And we don’t have the luxury of waiting,” said Jax. “At the very least, we have to get started on digging immediately; the ground will be frozen in probably ten weeks. And the longer we wait to start, the messier the job will be.”

  He was glad he didn’t have to spell it out for them.

  Beckett continued, “We’ll be able to clear the bases fairly quickly because the bodies are essentially warehoused. The situation—let’s just say things got ugly in the end. Just rows of people lying on coats on the floors. The survivors who stayed with those people have a special place in heaven, as far as I’m concerned.

  “Again, at the risk of being blunt, we can use bulldozers for those bodies. After that, we’ll move on to the hospitals, though they had been regularly disposing of victims via incineration until—well, until things got really bad and there weren’t enough people left to do it.”

  She paused to let everyone process that. Jax could see her own throat working, meaning she wasn’t as immune to the effects of her job as she liked others to think. For his part, Fujita hadn’t looked up from his papers since he sat down.

  “Those two stages will likely take us up to when the snow flies, depending on how many recruits we get, which we’ll be discussing. Come winter, we can start the secondary job of clearing the neighborhoods. That will require a house-by-house search, which will likely take several months.”

  Ruben held up a hand again, only this time it was trembling a bit. “Pardon me, but I just have to say this out loud because it keeps going through my brain: Fuck. Me.” He shook his head, eyes wide. “I mean seriously, just fuck me running, man. This is just fucking—I don’t know. Do you feel me on this?”

  “I feel you, Lieutenant,” said Fujita, startling the rest of the people in the room. “Every fucking time I look at these papers, all I can see is the word ‘fuck’ running over and over in my head.” He turned to Beckett. “I’m sorry, Captain, it’s just the truth.”

  “This guy gets it,” Ruben said. “He knows.”

  “We all know, Lieutenant,” said Beckett. “It just gets easier after a while. I’ve personally spent a good hour a day for the last four days just curled up in a ball on my bed, sobbing. I’m not ashamed of it. How else am I supposed to deal with this?”

  “Thank God,” Carly sighed shakily. “I thought I was the only one.”

  Maggie held up her hand. “I had a breakdown in my cruiser on the way to this meeting.”

  They all looked at each other sheepishly for a moment before breaking into hysterical giggles. Tears squirted from every eye as their chests hitched. Jax joined them; it felt good to finally talk about how ridiculous it all was, how alien. How outside the realm of human experience.

  The laughter and tears died out after a minute or so, which Jax thought was actually not bad. If Beckett was right, it would get easier as they moved forward.

  “Okay,” Beckett said with a sigh. “Now that we’ve had our catharsis break, we can talk about logistics. Namely: How the hell are we going to get the manpower we need to do the job?”

  Jax nodded. “That’s where we come in. Our team’s orders are to connect with the public and act as a conduit for orders from the president and his advisors.”

  “Well,” said Maggie, “you’re going to have to liaise your ass off if you want to get the people of Colorado Springs to help you with anything right now. I think our little field trip downtown the other day was a pretty telling example of what to expect.”

  “Not necessarily.” Jax had known she would bring that up. “That was, what, twenty people? And as you yourself pointed out, they were drunk and letting off steam. They all left without anyone getting hurt.”

  She nodded. “They also weren’t faced with a literal mountain of dead bodies. Some of whom they’ll no doubt recognize.”

  “So what do you suggest?”
Jax shrugged. “I’m open to anything at this point.”

  Carly raised a tentative hand, and Jax pointed to her.

  “I took a marketing course in college,” she said. “Have you ever heard of WIFM and KISS?”

  Ruben frowned. “Whiff ‘em and kiss?”

  “It’s short for What’s In It For Me, and Keep It Simple, Stupid. It’s applying psychology principals to marketing campaigns.”

  “How does that apply here?” asked Jax.

  “I see where she’s going.” Beckett nodded. “We need to come up with a simple reason for them to get involved. Convince them that it’s in their best interests.”

  “Why don’t you just order them to do it?” Maggie asked with a hint of what Jax thought was defiance. “From what Capt. Booth has told me, the new republic is run by the army, and people better get on board with that. Not getting shot would be in their best interests.”

  Jax shook his head. “We will not win this battle at the end of a sword, or down the barrel of a rifle.”

  “What?”

  “Those were President Fletcher’s last words from his final broadcast, before Air Force One was shot down. His last request of the American people was to cooperate with each other.”

  Maggie gave him a crooked grin. “If I recall correctly, he also told us in that speech that America was under martial law. We’ve seen plenty of evidence of that.”

  “The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” said Jax. “We can ask first and order later, if asking doesn’t work.”

  She nodded, eyebrows raised. “It did work with the crowd at the mall fire,” she admitted. “To a degree, anyway.”

  “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s see if we can’t get a sales pitch put together to recruit some apprentice gravediggers. And if that doesn’t work, we tell them to start digging their own.”

  The line didn’t elicit the laughter he was hoping for. In hindsight, he was glad about that.

  Chapter 21

  Rob Taylor had already learned a lot from Nick Roth by the time he joined the crowd gathered outside a pair of army tents in Wasson Park. It was around noon and the soldiers were cooking up hot dogs on a half-dozen Coleman grills. The smell of roasting pseudo-meat was maddening, and Rob thought it, combined with the postcard-perfect weather, was almost enough to make him forget that society had recently collapsed.

  Roth’s instructions were clear: just observe, don’t engage. But after days of eating nothing but cold Pop Tarts and Chef Boy-R-Dee, Rob just couldn’t resist the free lunch.

  He approached one of the folding tables and picked two dogs on a paper plate. As he doused them with ketchup from a Costco-sized dispenser, he asked the Asian-looking soldier behind the table where the buns had come from.

  “Everything I’ve seen in the stores is totally moldy,” he said. He knew he was engaging, but he was also curious.

  “There’s a supply of frozen stores at Cheyenne Mountain,” the guy said. “The brass decided this was a special occasion, so they brought ’em out for you folks.”

  Rob raised a dog in thanks and made his way to where the crowd stood, eating and talking with people in fatigues. He took a seat on an old bus bench on the sidewalk a few yards away so he could listen without being noticed. Up the street, he saw the little coffee shack he used to sometimes go to, where the baristas wore lingerie and sexy costumes when they served you. He supposed they were all dead now. Shame.

  “So you can see what I’m talking about,” said a sandy-haired dude in a green beret. Rob had grown up in Colorado Springs and knew that meant Special Forces. “The sooner we get the task underway, the sooner we can get folks into their homes.”

  The crowd—Robe estimated about fifty people—nodded and ate their hot dogs. “How do you decide who gets what?” one person asked through a mouthful of food.

  “Lottery system,” said the soldier. “First picked get first pick.”

  “Even those big acreages out on Fontenero?”

  “We’ll probably have to keep it confined to certain neighborhoods, but possibly.”

  Rob listened a while longer. The guy was talking about recruiting people for work crews to clear out all the dead bodies that were lying around now. In return, they’d get first pick of the houses in certain parts of the city after things were cleaned up. The army was already looking into how to get the solar power plant at the U.S. Air Force Academy north of the city running at full capacity to feed power to those homes.

  That actually sounded pretty good to Rob, despite what Roth had been saying.

  “What about those who can’t help?” an older woman asked. “My back isn’t in any shape for that kind of work. And, to be honest, I think I’d throw up.”

  “We need people in all sorts of capacities,” said the soldier. “Not just physical. We’ll find work for anyone who signs up. And there’ll be more to come; once we’ve taken a dent out of the removal, we’ll start recruiting a hunting team to stock up on meat for the winter. Come spring, we’ll need to get the water treatment plant working again. No one will be bored in Colorado Springs.”

  That made Rob think of Roth’s talk of slavery. What if people didn’t want to collect corpses? Call it the “removal” if you want, but that’s what is was: picking up dead people. What if he just wanted to find himself a house and live in it? There was plenty of food and water for everybody that was left, if the army didn’t march in and confiscate it all.

  And the people didn’t cause all this to happen. For all they knew, it was the government’s fault.

  An odd movement in his peripheral vision caught Rob’s attention. It was the weird woman he’d met near his motel—the one who kept talking about oranges—staggering over to where the crowd was standing. As she pushed her way through the people to get to the soldier, Rob noted that she hadn’t changed her clothes since the first time he’d seen her. She looked awful.

  “Ma’am,” the soldier said. “Are you all right?”

  The woman started asking him if they had oranges in the tent—Christ, she was a broken record. And she looked like shit. The guy put an arm around her shoulder and called out to someone named Carly. A moment later, a blond woman in fatigues emerged from the second tent.

  “I’m sorry, folks, we have to take care of this lady,” the soldier said.

  “Do I have to sign up today?” a man asked.

  “All you have to do is enjoy your hot dogs and think about it. We’re going to be hitting different neighborhoods every day at noon for the next week. There’s a schedule of locations on the table there. Come meet us any time, and get another hot dog for your trouble.”

  He and the blonde took Orange Lady into the tent, leaving the people to talk amongst themselves: Should get extra lottery entries if you sign up first… I don’t know if my Lori’s body is still at Fort Carson, if I saw it there I might lose my mind… Least it’s something to do, I’m bored outta my skull… Beer at my place, if you want to stop by… Might as well sign up while I’m here…

  Rob picked up one of the schedules from the table. The Asian guy smiled at him, but Rob ignored him. He suddenly remembered somebody saying that this whole thing was China’s fault.

  Noon every day. Roth would be interested in this intel for sure. Rob was happy to have actually accomplished something on his reconnaissance mission. He felt like a spy, and as he wandered away from the park toward his new hangout, he wondered what else he’d be called upon to do.

  ***

  “Good thing there was some Xanax in that first-aid kit,” Carly said as she joined Jax outside the tent. Inside, the woman had collapsed on the ground, her head propped up by a stack of coats.

  “What’s her story?” Jax asked. “Is she sick?”

  “I don’t think so. She hasn’t eaten, obviously, but I think she’s had some kind of dissociative break.”

  “English, Carly,” said Jax. “We didn’t all take college psychology.”

  “I’m far from an expert on it,” she said. �
�But it’s generally described as pulling away from reality to deal with an overwhelmingly stressful situation. The person doesn’t allow themselves to connect with something that they can’t deal with.”

  “I guess that makes sense. Did you get anything out of her?”

  “Her name is Anna, and she’s looking for orange slices to take to her son’s soccer practice.”

  Jax winced. “Jesus. And yet, when I think about it, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of it.”

  Rachel’s beautiful face filled his mind’s eye, unbidden, and he felt a stab in his guts. He wondered if maybe a little dissociation might not be a good thing. He noticed tears welling in Carly’s eyes, too.

  “I still don’t know what happened to my parents,” she whispered. “I mean, I have to assume they’re dead. Right? But what if they aren’t?” She pointed to the dispersing crowd. “All of these people survived, and they weren’t vaccinated.”

  Jax shook his head. “I wish I had advice, but I don’t.”

  She brightened at that; he could practically see a light bulb appear above her head. “Maybe we should be doing something about that?”

  “How so?”

  “There has to be someone with psychology training under the mountain.” The wheels were spinning in her mind. “We should be helping people get through this. At the very least, we could all be crying together instead of separately.”

  He nodded. “Maybe see if there’s any clergy we can bring out on these little jaunts, from the mountain or a civilian, doesn’t matter which.”

  “I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Carly said with a frown. “God and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms right now, if you get what I mean.”

  Jax chuckled in spite of himself. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be His receptionist these days.”

  The two of them scanned the area. The crowd was mostly gone and Fujita was packing up the condiments. Every last hot dog had been eaten.

  “Is it possible we actually did some good here today?” Carly asked.

  “I’d like to think so,” said Jax. “And who knows? Maybe we can do some more for people like Anna in there. At least we’re trying.”