For a week he had run the mall as best he could. The surviving soldiers worked hard to secure the mall and keep the zombie population down.

Other survivors showed up on occasion and sometimes successfully made it to safety. More often than not, they were torn apart trying to scale the high walls into the mall parking lot. The National Guard helicopters arrived the second day and managed to airlift supplies and ammunition until the National Guard base was overrun.

He had felt as though he was on the edge of losing his mind. Working hard and keeping focused on what needed to be done kept him from thinking about his family. But at times, he would find himself alone weeping until he felt he would die of the pain.

A week later, the Senator showed up with the retired Major General. The Major General carried orders from the President giving him the power to run the FEMA rescue stations in the area. Kevin had stepped aside, not knowing what else to do. He was at a loss how to run a rescue station or how to keep things running. Or so he had thought at the time. Now he wished he had never relinquished authority. The Major General obviously had his eye on a political career and wanted to be in good standing with the Senator. Kevin just wanted the people to be safe.

When he told the fort leaders of the Senator's plans, he saw his own horror reflected in their faces. He told them honestly about her disregard for the survivors and her regard of them as "a.s.sets." He was brutally honest about her ambitions. It felt good to speak of her so harshly.

It was hard not to cry, remembering what he had seen, but he knew they had all seen their share of horrors. When he finished telling his story, his voice low, his eyes full of tears. He could see that that the people in the room believed him by the tears in their eyes.

"I just want to do what is right," Kevin finished. "I want to give those people a good home. I failed them once. I don't want to fail them again."

"And you won't," Travis promised him. "Let's bring your people home."

3. A Terrible Thing Katie stood holding her father's letter in her hand, listening to Kevin tell his horrible story, her fingers slowly tracing the edges of the paper. Her tears were dry now, but she felt them close at hand.

It was too wonderful and too miraculous to fully accept that her father was still alive and yet, she held a piece of paper with his easily recognizable scrawl covering it.

Looking up, she could see the weariness in Kevin's face. The months in the mall had probably aged him a bit. She didn't think he was actually as old as he appeared. His shoulders were stooped slightly as if with the great burden of protecting those people in the mall weighed them down.

The other soldiers had a weary look about them as well.

"I appreciate this more than you know. We are getting low on ammunition and the gates won't hold forever against the zombies," Kevin said.

"The crowd gets a little bigger everyday," Valerie added.

"For awhile we would thin them, but ammunition became an issue when the National Guard armory fell to the dead," Kevin continued. "So we've been holding the line up until now."

"Did you consider trying to get the people out before now?" Nerit asked.

"Honestly, yes. I talked to the Major General and Senator Brightman. The Senator told me to make sure the zombies didn't get in and that was the end of that. Every time we went out for rescue with the helicopters, we'd try to find a new location, but nothing was really workable."

"Zombies are thick the closer you get to the cities," Greta agreed. "We stopped trying to even go within seventy miles of any of the major cities."

"The bigger towns are just as bad. Most of our rescues have been from small towns," Kevin said with a weary sigh. "We knew supplies would become an issue soon, so we sent out scavenging raids. We lost people when we went east, so we started coming out this way, west. That is when we realized someone had been there before us. We found this one group in a grocery store making a meth lab in the back. They were seriously messed up. We interrogated their leader. He is the one who told us about the fort. He said his group had tried to join yours, but had been refused.

That you had attacked them instead of helping them."

"The bandits," Curtis hissed.

"We could tell his story was fishy, but the minute the Senator heard about the fort, things became very intense. She's been trying to get her free pa.s.s to the compound where the President and the remaining government are ensconced. Her goal was to make the mall seem like an a.s.set to the President so that we would receive more a.s.sistance. But it was clear to me that the powers that be considered us a lost cause. But the fort changed that. With the farmland and ranches around here and the lower population of undead, this area is now seen as a viable supply outpost.

The Senator is determined to take over and implement some FEMA plan." Kevin shook his head. "When you realize that your superiors see the surviving human population as a.s.sets, that is when you know that the country has truly fallen. She even came up with some crazy invasion plan that had us invading the fort to seize control."

"So what do you suggest we do?" Katie asked. "Don't you think the Senator will try to block you coming here."

"She probably has about twenty military people on her side. They're scared. They want out. Some of them are from East Texas. I think they are hoping to find their families. Desperate times bring out the fear in the best of people. She'll try to stop us, but we have more military on our side."

Travis sighed. "Will her side respond with violence?"

Valerie and Kevin exchanged glances.

Thomas laughed. "If they're stupid they will. C'mon. This place is heaven compared to the stinking s.h.i.thole we're in."

"It doesn't mean they will be able to switch allegiances that easily," Nerit said softly. "People have a tough time admitting when they are wrong."

"The reality is that the mall is full of desperate, terrified people, supplies are running low, and the zombies outside are growing in number. n.o.body is in their right mind," Kevin said. "I feel on the edge of insanity every day."

"Which means there could be a forceful response to your request to relocate the mall population," Nerit decided. "They could panic seeing their own ticket out being removed."

"Tensions are high, ma'am," Kevin said softly. "I won't lie. The people are restless. Scared. The Senator is a determined woman. Ruthless. She has no regard for the people. They are statistics in her plans. That's all."

"If there is any sort of gunfire, innocent people may be hurt," Katarina sighed.

"And chaos could follow. It could get dangerous real fast," Eric agreed.

Katie took a deep breath. Her father was alive and trapped. She wanted him here, with her. She wanted to see him meet Travis and love him as he had once loved Lydia. She wanted to see her father hold her child in his arms. She wanted Jenni and Bill home. She wanted Jenni at her side when she gave birth. She wanted her family to be whole again.

"I'll go and speak with her," Katie said at last.

"What?" Travis looked at her startled.

"I was a prosecutor and leader of the debate team in college. I can be very persuasive. I will speak to the Senator and Major General and make them see that the fort is open to everyone as long as they are willing to work hard to keep this place safe and a decent place to live."

"Katie," Travis whispered.

"I can do it. I can make her and her supporters at least see the possibility.

So that there won't be bloodshed or death. I may personally despise the woman, trust me, I know her, but if this is all that remains of the American dream and Texas independence, then we should at least give her the option to see the truth. Besides, if the President is really, truly alive in East Texas, then maybe we can find a way to open communication and figure out what the h.e.l.l happened and what the future holds."

Everyone was staring at her, taking in her words.

"The Senator did ask me to return with the fort leader for negotiations for the turnover," Kevin said finally.

Katie felt her jaw set and knew her eyes were determined. "I can talk to her. I have argued her into corners before. I had the displeasure of meeting her at more than one dinner party. She had a real issue with me being married to a woman and I argued her into a corner on that subject,"

Katie said in a low, terse voice. "I can face her again."

This comment elicited raised eyebrows and looks of curiosity, but Katie didn't care.

Travis kissed her temple softly Travis's lips were warm against her skin and she looked up into his eyes. He smiled sadly down at her. "Okay, then I go, too." He immediately turned and pointed at Nerit. "And you are not stopping me this time!"

Nerit inclined her head. "I agree with you. This time."

Katie smiled at him and kissed him lightly. His body was tense and she knew he wanted to argue with her, but she loved that he respected her enough not to.

"So if the Senator says yes and there is a horde of zombies outside of the mall, how do we get the people out?" Curtis was looking very uncomfortable with everything going on and his foot was rapidly tapping the floor.

"Airlift. We got three other helicopters other than my bird," Greta answered.

"We've been using an abandoned commercial airstrip for refueling. We cleared out the zombies and have been refueling there regularly," Kevin explained. "It will take a lot of trips, but it would be the safest. We do have explosives on all the gates out of the mall, but if we do that, there is a good chance of the last part of the convoy being overrun."

"We can coordinate and figure out how to make the airlift work then,"

Nerit a.s.sured Kevin. "As long as the helicopters don't pull in any zombie mobs, we can run regular pickups out to the helicopters to pick up the people."

"Sounds like a plan," Travis said in a low voice. " A workable, needs to be fine-tuned plan."

The tension in the room had dissipated and now there was a sense of tentative camaraderie. It would be rough bringing everyone here, Katie knew that, but they could do it. And perhaps they could use the Senator's contacts within the East Texas compound to their advantage.

Travis rubbed Katie's back gently as she leaned into him. She loved him so much, but it was time for her to do what she did best. Beyond that, she felt a great need to go to the mall. She wanted to see what had happened there and see her father. She wanted to bring him home as well as Jenni.

The thought of both of them trapped there made her feel sick to her stomach.

"We should get to planning then," Nerit decided.

Kevin nodded. "Absolutely."

Calhoun burst into the room, wide-eyed, jabbering, and wielding his camera. With a scream that made Katie jump, Calhoun raced toward Kevin, his hands stretched out.

Valerie swung her rifle out from under her chair, rose easily to her feet, and nailed the old man with a sharp crack to the forehead. Calhoun fell back, blood running down his face, the camera falling to the floor. Thomas aimed his revolver at Calhoun's head and everyone heard the safety snap off.

Everyone began shouting as chaos erupted.

Nerit calmly stepped in front of Thomas, blocking Calhoun. "Stand down."

"It's a f.u.c.king zombie," Thomas shouted at her.

"...d.a.m.n clones..." Calhoun muttered.

"He's just a crazy old man!" Katarina had her gun pointed at Thomas.

"Stand down!"

"He looks like a f.u.c.king zombie," Valerie protested.

"Do zombies talk?" Katie stepped forward and she felt Travis holding her arm, making sure she didn't rush forward.

"...Government set them free...Amazonian conspiracy...gawd.a.m.n aliens..."

Calhoun was saying in a low voice as he lay on the floor.

Kevin gently pushed the weapons down that his people had trained on the old man. "He smells dead."

"But he's not," Nerit a.s.sured them. "He's just crazy."

Thomas and Valerie slowly relaxed, looking confused.

"Curtis, get Charlotte," Travis ordered. "I think he's hurt pretty bad."

Katie leaned down and moved the broken camera out of the way. Gently, cautiously, she touched the old man's matted hair. "Calhoun?"

His eyes, dazed and filled with blood, glanced toward her. "...they are hiding secrets...aliens...you know...and clones...and my head hurts real bad."

"Sorry," Valerie said uneasily.

"I think it's broken..." Calhoun whispered and his eyes rolled up.

"Stop the bleeding," Nerit ordered as she pulled a small pillow from a chair and handed it to Katie.

"He looked like a zombie," Thomas said softly.

"s.h.i.t," Kevin muttered.

Calhoun lay silent, blood seeping into the carpet around him.

Chapter 17 1. Entering the Parlor This is h.e.l.l, Jenni thought as she walked through the mall after a few hours of scrubbing toilets and sinks with five other ladies. The mall stank of human sweat and fear. Despite all the cleaning they did, personal hygiene was not a luxury the common people enjoyed. According to one of the ladies she had been working with, only a few showers existed in the mall and most of them were upstairs where the Senator and her entourage lived. The two showers on the main level were rigidly scheduled and each person was allowed a two minute shower every four days.

She felt nasty and raw, but according to the schedule, she wasn't to have a shower for another two days.

The mall was a weird design. Its bottom floor was v-shaped with a long corridor connecting the two sides of the v halfway to form an "A." The crossing corridor was the food court and public area, complete with a twostory waterfall that fell into a pool of water. Jenni had already been told the waterfall was off limits. It was seen as a reserve water source.

Considering how little water they were given, she wondered why it wasn't being used yet.

As she entered the food court, she saw people sitting down silently eating their rations. It looked like beans with bits of hot dog was the meal. A few kids were running around in the playscape near the waterfall, but otherwise, the scene was depressing. Soon after the news of the fort had spread, other news had countered it. Word was out that the Senator was seizing control of the fort. Hope had slowly sizzled out of everyone.

An enormous skylight let in the outside light and illuminated the area.

She noticed a crisscross of catwalks that sprawled over the entire court.

What looked like a fire escape-like metal stairway snaked up the back wall and over the empty fast food stalls.

She fell in behind other people waiting for food and let her hair down from its ponytail. After a few minutes in line, she was handed her bowl of beans and wieners and headed over to sit with Bill. He was eating slowly, watching the children with a sad look on his face.

"They're just waiting to die," he said as she sat down.

"Aren't we all?" she answered a tad flippantly.

"No, not really. At the fort we were actually living. You and Juan together.

Katie pregnant. Folks do things like movie nights and special dance nights. We actually live." Bill spooned more food into his mouth and chewed.

"True," Jenni admitted. She shook her head a little to clear her thoughts.

Without Juan and Katie, it had grown easier for her to hide inside herself and disa.s.sociate from her surroundings. Much to her distaste, she was reverting to the old, quiet Jenni who waited for her husband to unleash on her. Except now, she was waiting for something very wrong to go down.

The Senator scared her s.h.i.tless. Every time the attractive, yet imposing woman appeared looking down at the main floor, Jenni felt her skin crawl.