CHAPTER 4

Washington D.C.

Agent McCarthy had been sitting on the fourth floor of the USDA building overlooking Independence Avenue in Washington D.C. for several days. His back and legs ached from sitting on a desk next to the window, his water supply was on critical, and he had eaten the last of his rations for lunch. Luckily, a teammate would relieve him at midnight of his duties, so he could return to the office to debrief Wolf, the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Over the many years of his career in the Secret Service, McCarthy had conducted hundreds of these types of surveillance missions in dozens of foreign countries, but this one was by far the oddest. He pulled out a green cloth covered notebook that fit perfectly into his pant cargo pocket. He flipped it open to a dog-eared page and penciled four tick marks next to the time on the next available line, as a small pack of late stage infected wobbled by.

The largest creature in the pack had once worn a thousand-dollar designer suit. All that remained of that suit now was a single shoe, knee length tattered slacks and a grimy tie that dug deep into its neck. Most of the beasts in this area were lean with ripped muscle mass that made McCarthy’s weight room routine slightly envious, but this thing looked like a microwaved marshmallow.

On its neck, shoulders and back were volleyball sized tumors that threatened to pop with each labored step. McCarthy zoomed in his binoculars to get a better look and could see the puss filled growths wobble like water balloons overfilled with gelatin. Even the creature’s legs and arms seemed bloated to the point the entire creature could spontaneously burst into a cloud of spores at any second.

 McCarthy pulled the binoculars away, shuttered a bit and swallowed heavily trying not to gag. The slow shuffling pack continued west down the weed infested Independence Avenue until they migrated around the bend and out of sight, past the U.S. Forestry Department building that temporarily housed another hidden Secret Service agent on the same surveillance mission.

On the opposite page, McCarthy reviewed some of his observation log notes worthy of an asterisk. The first day after he occupied the USDA building, he was forced to relocate to a different section of the massive building because a pack of wild dogs had trailed his scent to the fire escape ladder that he used to climb up to the roof. The damn things scratched and pawed at the ladder for a good fifteen minutes before finally being distracted by a rabbit.

He scanned down the Obs Log and realized that he had made several references to animal sightings, the most mentionable was a chimpanzee that had climbed the streetlight pole yesterday. As funny as the harry animal was swinging and playing from the light, the occurrence made him wonder about all the other zoo animals. After surviving presidential assassination attempts, vehicle roll overs, close calls during weapons training, and even an apocalyptic pandemic, it would be his luck to get eaten by an African lion in downtown D.C.

Between all the silly animal references were notes on human activity, which was the primary intent of this mission. Across the street was the Secretary of Education’s hide out, and McCarthy as well as the other nearby agents, had been logging all of their activity.

Locating the building had been fairly easy after the hilarious attempted assault on the White House. A few agents flanked DeVod’s withdraw as she snaked her retreating party through the city. Agents that kept a city block between themselves and DeVod had nearly lost her in some cases, and nearly compromised themselves when she changed directions several times in failed efforts to cleverly cover her tracks. It was a nice effort, but no match against expertly trained Secret Service agents.

Luckily there had been a respectable size infected horde on her trail after the White House incident and DeVod didn’t have time to be all that stealthy. She led them directly to her new hideout. Amateur hour, he thought to himself. McCarthy honestly wondered how a group so untrained, so malnourished by the look of them, and lead by the least leadership worthy person had survived this long after the EMP attack.

He almost felt sorry for this group, and he wondered why Wolf had bothered with them. The rag-tag group loyal to the Secretary of Education wasn’t a real threat, they were annoying at best. Time and resources had been wasted on this mission that should be spent planning their own White House liberation.

But there he sat, day after day, night after night, logging when scavenging groups would depart and return. What time security patrols routinely walked the half mile perimeter of the building. He logged when DeVod’s own surveillance teams advertised themselves on the roof. He logged what types of weapons they used, what kind of backpacks they carried, and even the type of clothing they wore, just in case fashion was a force multiplier in the apocalypse.

In McCarthy’s notebook, from his viewpoint, he drew a detailed sketch of the nine hundred fifty-foot-long brown brick building with large sandstone block accents. He drew lines, erased, redrew, erased, he killed a lot of time trying to perfect his field sketch masterpiece which was only a half grade better than a preschooler. He gave up sketching the four hundred eighty’ish double hung windows, but he did accurately depict the seven sets of doors and other lower-level windows that could be viable breach points.

McCarthy could guess what Wolf was going to do with the reports, but he hoped that an annihilation attack wasn’t being planned.

Because he had sworn his duty and had served under several Presidents of different parties and theologies, politics was outside his scope. McCarthy had devoted most of his life to protecting these politicians, if he agreed with their viewpoints or not, he recognized the lawful democratic process that gave the elected officials their position. Participation in a plot to attack a cabinet member seemed to go against his entire patriotic oath.

McCarthy respected Wolf’s leadership in the chain of command, but he has grown tired of watching his friends get killed by fellow Americans for a battle of Presidential power. The world was in flames, America was in chaos, and his home neighborhood was in ruins, McCarthy didn’t even know if a there was a need for a President in this wasteland anymore.

Wolf undeniably had the resources to implement forward progress. Hundreds of trained Secret Service and FBI agents. Stockpiles of arms and equipment. Armored vehicles. Locations of FEMA warehouses. But what troubled McCarthy, why had Wolf not offered these resources to the Secretary of Transportation who was camped out in the White House? Technically, Mrs. Chan was higher on the order of Presidential succession. Maybe Wolf thought that he would be the better leader to survive and flourish through these dark days, but the bloody fight for power was beginning to weigh on McCarthy’s conscious.

McCarthy breathed heavily and slumped his shoulders. That’s what happens when someone sat in solitude for too long, the mind starts wandering to crazy places. He picked up his bino’s again and started scanning windows of the adjacent building. After an hour later, finding nothing worth writing in his notebook, movement caught his attention down the street.

Here she comes again, right on time, McCarthy thought to himself. He slid his pencil out of his pocket, and wrote

*1600 Hrs. DeVod Begins Daily Jog Around Target Building.