by Nancy Smith
“Now that’s a thing.” Sneaky said. “Hotel security has turned on the monitor that shows hotel events and what not. I hacked into their camera feed. I have a good view of the atrium and the meeting room door.”
Kolli nodded, impressed. “I don’t see your camera,” Kolli said.
“Well that’s the point now, isn’t it?”
Kolli looked again.
“Top edge of the highboy,” Sneaky said. There was a tall armoire in the wide hall leading to the meeting room. It had mostly straight lines except for a bit of trim around the top. “The camera’s hidden behind the lip.”
“Do they have a monitor in the meeting room itself?” Kolli asked.
“Nah. No electronics in the room.”
Sneaky got up and fetched Kolli a dining chair so that they both could watch the monitors.
On-screen, hotel staff set up coffee service and a breakfast buffet.
“That looks good,” Isa said from her place on the sofa. “I’m going to order some coffee for us. Do you want food too?”
“I don’t think I could eat a thing,” said Rory as he joined them. After a couple minutes, he disappeared into the bathroom.
“Not a morning person,” Isa said.
“And just how do you know that?” Kolli asked.
Rich old white men in suits arrived at the breakfast buffet. They shook hands, chatted, and laughed.
“Buggers,” said Sneaky. “I won’t even have to do an image search on half of these dudes. They’re one percenters.”
“Meaning?” Kolli asked.
“They’re in the highest percent of the richy-rich. The wealthy that try to run everything. I can’t believe it. I think this is some kind of a secret cabal meeting.”
“Don’t get carried away,” Rory warned. “At least not yet.”
Sneaky wrote a list of names for the people he recognized and then handed a tablet to Isa. She looked them up and wrote things about each on their page of newsprint. Senator from so-and-so, world’s largest manufacturer of such-and-such, oil baron, entrepreneur....
Pierce walked into the lobby about five minutes after the meeting was due to start. He and Rory had decided that any earlier would look suspicious for him. Pierce grabbed a plate of food as the others filed into the meeting room. Pierce joined them.
Once Pierce passed by the guards at the door with their wands, Sneaky remotely turned on Pierce’s button camera. Now Pierce’s was their only view into the room. The camera had a mic. Sound wasn’t good, but it would have to do.
Pierce set his coffee and food down at the place next to his father and then wandered over to a whiteboard on which the agenda had been handwritten.
“Huh,” said Pierce. He walked back and sat down. “I don’t get it,” he said to his father. “I know most of these people. It’s like a who’s who of climate-change deniers. So why is the agenda mostly related to global warming?”
A gnarly old man was calling the meeting to order, pounding on the table.
“You’ll see.” Bertrum Wagner said it like Pierce should be expecting a treat. Maybe there was ice cream at the end.
The agenda was most of a full day. The morning was filled with speakers, mostly scientists, who presented on their area of expertise. The afternoon had one speaker planned on an unknown topic and then a closed meeting. By the time they got to the third speaker of the day, this one discussing the many attributes of the hive mind, Pierce was so bored he thought he might scream.
“Quit fidgeting,” his father rebuked.
“Is there a good part later?” Pierce asked.
His father just smiled.
By lunch Pierce wanted to tear out his hair. He took a little walk that happened to include the third floor. When he slipped into Rory’s suite, he saw the hive mind at work—a community of people working toward a common goal. Filled newsprint papered the walls and everyone was contributing to the conversation. At once.
“What’s it all mean?” he asked Kolli.
“We don’t know for certain yet, but they are doing something or planning to do something together—probably something related to addressing climate change, something that will benefit them as a community. That’s our best guess.”
“We think they all contributed big bucks to an organization they call the Darwins,” Sneaky said. “It’s funds to pay for something.”
Kolli looked perplexed. He opened yet another laptop and began keying.
“So what do we know for certain?” Rory asked. “Twenty uber-wealthy men have a secret society that has a huge bank account and closed-door meetings once a year.”
“And they likely murdered seventy-four scientists who were mostly working on a universal vaccine,” Isa added.
“I don’t think we should overlook the fact that they call the group the Darwins, as in Charles Darwin of survival of the fittest.”
“They don’t look terribly fit to me.” Pierce picked up a roast-beef sandwich from a tray on the coffee table. He ate greedily.
“I would think they interpret that as the wealthiest,” Kolli said.
“They’re businessmen. Used to getting their own way, buying anything they want. They take big risks to earn big rewards.”
“So what do they want?” Rory asked.
“I don’t know, but I bet they think they can buy it,” Pierce said.
“I bet we’ll know by the end of the day,” Isa said.
Rory shoved a piece of paper toward Pierce. “Here’s a list of questions. If you can work them into the conversation, that would be helpful.”
“Best be getting back,” Pierce said. He grabbed a second sandwich from the tray as he left.
But, Pierce didn’t get to ask his questions. The Darwins didn’t really know him and so they invited him to leave before the afternoon meeting. Pierce set down the piece of gooey cake with its sugary icing that he had just selected off a tray and that he really wanted and left the room, licking his fingers as he went.
27
In a few minutes, Pierce was back at the suite.
“You are brilliant,” Sneaky said.
They still had sound and picture in the room. Pierce had stuck his button camera into the icing of the cake before he left.
“I don’t know how long it will last,” Piece said. “Hotel staff service the meeting rooms pretty regularly.”
“They locked the door after you left.”
The group watched the screens. They checked out the final speaker as he entered the room.
“Hey,” said Kolli, “I know him. He’s a front-runner on work on the universal vaccine. His name is Dr. Martinez, Jesus I think. Maria worked with him on occasion. I remember he called a few times with some really thoughtful questions. Smart man.”
Isa didn’t remember him. All she saw was a middle-aged Latino man. He looked haggard and downtrodden, like he hadn’t had any sleep for a month. His hands were shaky and he had a soft glow on his forehead, even though the hotel was ice cold. He had something in his hand.
“What’s that red thing?”
Kolli turned pale as a ghost. “Can you get a little closer?” he asked.
“I’ll try.” Sneaky zoomed in to get a better look at it.
Kolli couldn’t take his eyes off the red canister.
“Dad, what’s wrong?” Isa asked, but he did not reply. She turned her focus away when Jesus began speaking in the meeting room.
“Your field test went very well in Mexico,” Jesus said. “The people injected with the vaccine in tubes with orange tops never got the flu and people injected with vaccine from the green stoppers died a horrible death from the flu and quite quickly I might add. The virus in those green doses spread fast and deadly. That’s what you wanted, right?”
Jesus didn’t wait for a response. He went on in a flat tone. “You had me disperse the virus into a remote environment to see how it would behave and if the vaccine would work. Well it certainly did.”
Isa tapped in the words Mexico and virus into her t
ablet and turned it for everyone to see. At the same time, she and Rory both said, “Creel.”
“Creel?”
“A little mountain village in Mexico that had a devastating outbreak of flu. Thousands died.”
Isa’s eyes were riveted on Jesus as he held up the red canister.
“In Mexico I used sugar cubes to deliver the vaccine. It’s an easy method in a poor, remote area. But, I found this idea online for a new disbursal system.” He walked to the chair of the meeting and released a puff into his face. “Simple as that.”
“No!” Kolli cried out.
Isa recognized her father’s own canister design. “Oh no,” she echoed.
Jesus continued walking around the interior of the U-shaped table arrangement. He released a puff of air in each man’s face.
“Smells nice, doesn’t it?” Jesus said. “I’ve added some scent. I’ve been going around the hotel for the last week giving this universal vaccine to the hotel staff. Did you know that most of the hotel staff are from Mexico?”
The group in the suite looked at each other, not sure what to do. The group in the meeting room looked much the same.
“Here’s what I’ve pieced together,” Jesus said. “In your pea brains, you’ve decided to kill off a major portion of the population. Why, I can’t imagine.”
“We need to lock down that room,” Kolli shouted. When no one immediately responded, he added, “Now!”
Rory called hotel security, but no one answered. He tried the desk and they put him on hold. He was getting nowhere.
“No luck?” Isa asked.
“No one answering. I’m not sure how I’m going to get them to act even when I get someone on the line.”
Isa gave herself a minute to appraise the situation. Finally, she jumped to her feet and ran out the door.
In a couple seconds, she appeared on the camera in the second floor atrium. She stood at the periphery until she locked eyes with Peabody. She tilted her head slightly and he followed her toward the stairwell.
“I know you care about your people,” Isa said. “I know you want to protect them.”
Peabody nodded.
“They’re in danger. So are you. Please let me help you.”
“What danger?” Peabody looked around him and saw nothing suspicious.
“Please come with me,” Isa said. She ran up the stairs to the third floor not waiting for his reply.
Peabody hesitated, shrugged and then followed her up the stairs.
In the suite, Isa said, “Tell him what you know.”
Peabody gave the computer monitors and the newsprint on the walls a dissatisfied look.
Kolli started. “We need to isolate the people in the second-floor meeting room. They have been contaminated with a deadly virus.”
Jesus’s voice ran in the background. Peabody turned toward the screen and listened.
“Why? Explain this to me. Why would you release a virus knowing it would kill thousands, maybe millions, of people?” Jesus asked.
“There won’t be enough resources for everyone,” a milquetoast one percenter said. “Surely you see that.”
“Reducing world-wide population may also help the earth reset. Smaller carbon footprint, less global warming,” the meeting chair added.
“You people don’t believe in global warming,” Jesus protested.
“We’d have to be complete nincompoops not to believe in global warming. Look around you,” Bertrum said.
Milquetoast kept explaining. He spoke as if to a child or maybe that was just his level of understanding. “Humans use more resources than are available. That’s overpopulation. Our birth rates have exceeded the death rate. That’s reduced mortality. There isn’t enough food and water for everyone.”
“Did you know that the Spanish flu killed more people in about a year than did the whole of the fighting in World War I?” Bertrum said.
“That’s your model? The Spanish flu?”
Jesus studied the agenda on the white board as he listened.
“Hive mentality or just hives.” Jesus turned from the agenda and looked around the room. “Did you know that almost all honey bees are smart, industrious females? The male bees are there for sex. That’s all. They either explode afterward or, if they get old and can’t perform, are forced out of the hive. There is not a chance that you guys are planning to work together like a hive. You’re planning to lock yourselves away while the rest of us die off, is that it?”
The old white men shrugged.
“Not you,” Bertrum said, as if that made it all better. “We need you.”
“And how many people don’t you need? How many do you project will survive? One million? Ten million in a world of eight billion?”
“Look at recent events. Blizzards, floods, fires, hurricanes and tsunamis, for God’s sake,” Bertrum said. “We have to do something to protect our investments.”
Jesus rolled his eyes. “Your investments?” He looked at Bertrum. “Did you know that if the Spanish flu happened today, it would cost trillions of dollars?”
“Not if it’s fast enough. Not if it’s deadly enough.” Bertrum glared in return. “And then what happened when the world was free of the virus? They were called the Roaring Twenties.”
“Andrew Mellon’s trickle down theory only worked because the world was devastated by war and crippled with debt. Not because the population was reduced by flu.”
Bertrum shrugged his shoulders.
“Didn’t you hear what the presenters said this morning,” Milquetoast said. “We’re over the tipping point, the point of no return.”
“And some people deserve to live and some people deserve to die?” Jesus asked.
The men in the room all nodded their heads.
“I agree,” Jesus said. He held up the red canister. “I want you to know that this isn’t the vaccine.”
“What is it? The flu? Good God man,” the meeting chair said. “Don’t you know we’ve already vaccinated ourselves?”
“Ah, but this isn’t the flu for which the vaccine I gave to you works. This is something brand new— infectious and contagious, my own special concoction.”
28
Peabody had heard enough. He ran down to the atrium yelling into a shoulder microphone as he went. “Shut down the elevators. No one enters or leaves the second floor. Set up barricades. Use anything you can find. We have a viral outbreak in the meeting room!”
“Tell your men to cover their noses and mouths with something,” Kolli said. “Stuff something at the bottom of the meeting room door.”
Peabody relayed the message and they could see two men on his security team duct taping around the edges of the doors into the conference room.
Kolli picked up the phone and called the CDC. He was able to get through to a scientist he knew through Maria. The scientist understood what he was saying and gave him the serious attention the situation deserved. Kolli stayed on the line with him as he got a response team rolling, starting with calling the local police.
Isa could see the panic brewing in the meeting room. The men pounded the door, yelling out to the guards. Four guards physically held the door shut. The older, out-of-shape men were no match for the young, fit guards, but soon adrenaline would make them much stronger. This couldn’t go on for long.
Sneaky could feel his own panic growing. He grabbed a paper bag from the sandwich delivery and held it over his face as he hyperventilated feeling a panic attack coming on. He knew the signs, but he had to hold it together long enough to get out of the hotel. He started packing up his equipment.
“Nobody in or out,” Peabody shouted as he reached the atrium.
Unfortunately, the fire door opened into the stairwell. He and another guard pushed the armoire and tipped it over so that the stairwell was blocked.
The camera on the wardrobe in the atrium went black.
“Block that service entrance too,” Peabody said.
Rory appeared at the stairwell entrance and a
ttempted to climb over the highboy.
“Back it up, Bub,” Peabody yelled. “Nobody in or out. That goes for you too.” Peabody handed over his keys to a black SUV. “I got some door security bars.”
“Like you put under the handle and it keeps the door closed?”
“Yeah. And some tranq guns and ammo. Get it all. Get anything you see that might help.”
“On it,” Rory said and headed out to the parking lot.
Isa saw on camera when the meeting room door was breached. She ran down the stairway and took up a position at the door on the far side of the highboy. One of Peabody’s guards turned a chair into kindling and handed Isa the leg. She stood swinging the chair leg at anyone who attempted to go over the furniture.
Peabody’s guards were in hand-to-hand combat with the Darwins. And the Darwins weren’t entirely losing. The harder the guards fought to keep them in, the harder the Darwins fought to get out.
Rory returned and loaded a tranquilizer gun. He handed one to Isa and loaded another. He made sure they were ready to shoot and then the pair of them stood at the stairwell entrance and fired into the group. They shot at anybody they could reach.
Peabody and one of his men rushed to them and took over shooting the guns with more effective results. Peabody picked off the Darwins one by one with darts. Rory loaded a third gun and begun a cycle of reloading, pushing the gun to Peabody, and reloading again.
Soon the CDC arrived in their protective suits and, with the help of police, took control of the situation. Peabody let them. He turned his attention to the care of his men.
Isa sunk to the ground in exhaustion and stared at the chaos around her, but Rory looked perplexed.
“What is it?” Isa asked.
“What happened to Martinez?”
Isa did a quick scan of the room. “We have to find him. No one gets out.”
But he hadn’t tried to escape. Isa and Rory found Jesus sitting at his place inside the meeting room, hands folded together in front of him, staring blankly at the chaos he had brought. There was no victory or retreat for him.
“I didn’t expect it to get so noisy,” he said.