Assuming they survived. Clark kind of doubted they would. As long as they got close enough to the switch, as long as they managed to turn this thing off, that would be enough.
He imagined it'the Epicenter'as some kind of science fiction death ray contraption. A big telescoping raygun with fins and flanges and control panels sticking out of a hatch carved into the mountain. He imagined it had two buttons that controlled it, conveniently labeledON andOFF. He imagined pushing the latter and then going back to Denver, to the Brown Palace, and finally having that juicy, rare steak that fate had stolen away from him. He imagined taking a room upstairs, a room with tasteful wallpaper and gauzy curtains on the windows and a big, soft bed with a white coverlet. He imagined going to sleep for a very long time and then waking up to find that humanity had rebuilt after the dead stopped rising, that while he slept everything had been cleared away, tidied up, made whole again. He imagined that the population of the United States would have replenished itself and that there was no one left who even remembered the Epidemic, that there were no wounds anymore, no physical scars, no emotional traumas. No nightmares.
Except, he knew, that he would still remember. He would remember the face, and the name, of everyone who had died. He would remember them for the rest of his life.
Perhaps it was better if he didn't come back.
'It is still a lovely world, is it not?' Vikram asked, jolting Clark out of his reverie. He hadn't even noticed the helicopter lifting away from the prison. He hadn't realized that they'd already swung way out across the mountains, that they were running fast, about a hundred feet up, following a ridgeline that probably marked the Continental Divide. Maybe an hour had passed and he'd been lost in his own thoughts. So close to the end and he'd wasted all that time.
He looked down, though, and saw trees clothing the rugged sides of the mountains, aspens and firs and loblolly pines. He saw water snaking between the peaks, the stars wavering in the depths of creeks and rivers. Oh, Vikram was so very, very right.
Then he looked over at the girl. She sat very still in her crewseat, buckled in and motionless. Her chest didn't move with breath, her eyes didn't blink. You could tell she was dead, if you paid attention. If you actually looked. She had the waxy skin of a corpse. She had the eyes that didn't really focus anymore, not on anything in particular.
She turned her eyes to look back at him. 'You think you're going to find a way to end the Epidemic. You know that's probably bullshit though, right?'
Clark nodded. He couldn't stop looking at the girl. 'Yes. I also know that it's my job to find out. Because maybe, just maybe I can stop it. At the very least I can perform the final duty of any soldier who watches his country die.'
'What's that?'
'I can take our communal revenge on whoever did it.' Enough. Clark wanted to change the subject. 'So who told you about the mountain?' Clark demanded of her. 'Who said you were the only one who could go there?'
She shrugged and looked out the window. 'A man named Jason Singletary. He had a gift, a' kind of a power. He was psychic, if you have to hear me say it.'
'Psychic,' Clark said. The word came out of his mouth and hovered in the air like a grim little cloud. It sounded a lot like other words he knew now. Like 'undead', or 'magic.' It sounded like one of the things that had gone wrong with the world.
The pilot broke the silence that followed. 'We're approaching the site,' he said. 'Should be visible in a few minutes.'
Before he'd even finished his sentence fragment the hatch to the cargo compartment started rattling.
“What was that?” Vikram asked, sounding only a little panicked.
The pilot and the copilot exchanged long, meaningful looks. “Maybe you should check it out,” the pilot said. The door kept rattling.