James Patterson - Zoo

The initial wave of bombings has been ordered on the largest nests near densely populated areas. Miami, Chicago, and St. Louis are first on deck. If there’s any good news at all, it’s that the animal aggregations seem to be situated mostly in parklands: the Everglades, near Miami; Lincoln Park, in Chicago; Forest Park, in St. Louis. They have been working with ground forces for the last two days, pulling evacs out of their target zones to limit collateral damage.

So, then. McMarshall pauses a moment to reflect. The United States has just begun a bombing campaign on itself. This is some Catch-22 –type shit.

It’s not just the United States, he knows. Russia, several European countries, and China are now working in sync, conducting their own campaigns against the animal swarms devastating their countries.

They have to do something. Though people are being kept in the dark, the attacks have become rampant. In affected areas, which is pretty much everywhere now, the hospitals are full. People are holing up in their homes as though there were a plague afoot. Shipping, the airlines, the stock markets have all closed. The entire industrialized world is grinding to a halt. And it isn’t going to be starting up anytime soon, if everyone on earth is in fear of being torn apart by dogs 24-7.

McMarshall hears a polite knock on the glass.

“The B2 out of MacDill is about to deliver its payload, sir,” the spry young officer says with a gung ho grin that’s actually quite irritating under the circumstances. McMarshall’s shoes clang on the metal balcony overseeing the operations room.

The entire forward screen is filled with the image by the time the general arrives at the stair rail. Though it’s a black-and-white thermal image, the clarity is startling. Why, look—there’s Florida. McMarshall can make out palm fronds, a dock, an old car.

“We are changing our heading for our final approach,” the B2 weapons officer says over the staticky military channel.

“And we are away,” the weapons officer announces.

And the screen goes white. The boom of the daisy cutter through the pilot’s open mike a moment later is a jagged roar that starts and then just keeps going on and on. The screen stays white as the Florida swampland burns.

“Get some!” McMarshall’s aide shouts. He whistles through his pinkies and starts to clap. Some of the other personnel join in tentatively.

McMarshall pivots on his heel and heads back to his desk. There’s an emergency bottle of Advil in the bottom drawer.

WHILE LEAHY WAS arranging transportation for me back to New York, I spent the rest of the morning in a cramped, crowded, and distinctly unpresidential staff room in the back of the White House’s East Wing.

The whole place was in a full-tilt frenzy with the military actions underway. All around me, and even bivouacked out in the hallway, clustered by the electrical outlets, air force officers and politicos were working their smart phones and laptops. Above their frantic murmur was a constant low thrumming—the rotor chop of helicopters landing and taking off in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden. It was like my head was stuck in a beehive.

A professionally nondescript Secret Service agent on break began snoring softly on a couch beside me as I watched CNN natter and flash on a TV bolted to an upper corner of the room. There were a lot of stories about the animal attacks, but nothing about the military response that had just been ordered. I wondered if that was because it hadn’t happened yet or because there was some kind of government news blackout.

That might be possible now, I thought, glancing at the throng of soldiers and government officials around me.

I tried to call Chloe several times to tell her what was going on, but the phone would only ring twice and go to voice mail, a sign I decidedly did not like. Text messages didn’t seem to be working, either. My guess was that it was probably circuit overload due to high call volume. That was my hope, anyway.

Leahy came back for me in the early afternoon and ushered me through the crowd out into the hallway.

“Unfortunately, no Gulfstream jet this time, Oz, but I did manage to get you on a military C-130 cargo plane heading out of Reagan National to New York in about two hours.”

“How’s the military response going? Any word?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Leahy said. He led me down some stairs into a utility corridor. “They’re still keeping me in the dark.”

We passed stacks of K rations and a chef in crisp whites cussing a blue streak into a cell phone on the way to the door. At the bottom of some steps was a small parking lot crowded with Town Cars and military vehicles. At the edge of the lot, standing beside the black Suburban that had brought me in, Sergeant Alvarez waved at me cheerily, as if the world weren’t ending.

“I’ll keep plugging away on this end,” Leahy said, shaking my hand and giving it a warm paternal squeeze that was meant to be reassuring and wasn’t. “In the meantime, when you get back to New York, prepare a presentation to explain the science of this to the president and her staff when they’re ready to listen. That would be extremely helpful. I’m going to try to arrange a teleconference for this evening or tomorrow morning at the latest.”

A teleconference? Splendid idea. Now, why didn’t I think of it? Oh, wait: I had. I wondered how many thousands of tax dollars had been wasted on my useless trip down here. Then I made the decision not to care. Getting home to my family was my priority now.

“Will do, Mr. Leahy,” I said, making my escape.

SERGEANT ALVAREZ WAS sitting in the driver’s seat, locking and loading an M16, as I opened the passenger-side door and climbed into the SUV. The VIP treatment was over. He was wearing Kevlar body armor now, and a grenade vest.

He didn’t have to explain to me that things were even worse now on the streets of D.C. I thought about Chloe and Eli back in New York, and wished I was already airborne.

We were two blocks south of the White House, about to make the left onto Constitution Avenue, when we heard music.

Ani DiFranco yodeled from the cranked speakers of a car parked at the corner of President’s Park. Around it stood thirty or forty young people, many in hoodies bearing their college insignias, drinking beer. Some of them had painted their faces to look like animals. I smelled pot. They had handmade signs that read

MEAT IS MURDER! AIN’T PAYBACK A BITCH!!!?

HI HO! HI HO! IT’S BACK TO NATURE WE GO!

Everything has gone nuts, I thought, shaking my head. Animals, the president, college kids.

When we rolled past the National Mall again, I thought of all the noble historical assemblies the area had been host to. I thought of Martin Luther King Jr. delivering the “I Have a Dream” speech there, the presidential inaugurations. Now there were dead dogs floating in the reflecting pool.

We took the Arlington Bridge back over the Potomac for the airport this time. About a half mile inbound, we came toward an overpass; standing on it were what looked like more deluded young protesters. The college kids we’d seen back by the White House had been mostly harmless, but these guys looked more sinister in their ski masks and black bandannas. They were waving black flags.

Then there was a flash of darting movement in front of the SUV, and the windshield caved in.

Glass dust stung my eyes as the joint-compound bucket somebody had dropped from the overpass whipped just past my head into the backseat.

The SUV accelerated and veered to the left. I turned and saw that Alvarez’s face was covered with blood. He was slumped over the steering wheel, motionless.