Vertical Run

by Joseph Garber

  … flipped the machine pistol onto the floor. “Heads up, guys,” Dave whispered. “Likewise hands.”

  One turned, bringing up his Jati-Matic. Dave swung his pistol. The man’s mouth sprayed shattered teeth and bloody saliva. Dave was speaking before the body hit the floor. “Don’t move and you won’t die. I don’t want …”

  The man — a boy really — who had been carrying the MAC went pale. His eyes rolled in terror. Words and saliva bubbled out of his mouth. “He’s got something. AIDS, some disease, Jesus, keep away from me!” He stumbled toward the door.

  Dave aimed his pistol on the boy’s thighs. He didn’t want to kill him. He didn’t want to kill anyone. If he stitched the boy’s legs, he would bring him down …

  “After about twenty-four hours is when the second stage begins. The second stage lasts about seventy-two hours — three days. That’s the stage your bug is in now, Mr. Elliot. It has changed, evolved, mutated from its earlier, harmless, and quite passive stage into something else. The caterpillar has evolved into the pupa, and the pupa has an attitude.”

  … screaming. The screams would alert the rest of Ransome’s men. Dave couldn’t afford that. He lifted the muzzle, fired, and looked away, sickened. The third man’s gun clattered to the floor. His hands were in the air. He flattened his back against one of Bernie’s prized Pissarros, a dark painting of a cottage at the end of a distant lane. “Just don’t touch me, man,” he begged. “I’ll do whatever you want, but just don’t fuckin’ touch me!”

  Dave nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the vial of pills he’d taken from Nick Lee’s medicine cabinet. “Okay, son, I want to see you swallow five of these. There’s a carafe of water behind you. Pick it up, pour a glass, and then wash them down.”

  There was a worried look on the boy’s face. Dave tried to muster a friendly smile. He couldn’t quite manage it. “Just sleeping pills.”

  The boy …

  “Once mutated, the bug becomes mobile. It begins to migrate out of the bloodstream and into other organs. Now it’s infectious. After the twenty-four hour mark, the carrier — that’s you, Mr. Elliot — can pass it on to other people. But only via his bodily fluids — semen, saliva, urine, or blood. It’s been about thirty-six hours or so since our Mr. Elliot caught this bug, and so that is his current and highly contagious condition. You men will recollect that at 3:30 this afternoon, just before the twenty-fourth hour of his infection, I issued new orders regarding the handling of his remains. You now appreciate the rationale for those orders.”

  … shook his head and said, “I’m not eating anything you’ve touched.”

  Dave answered, “Read the label. It’s not my prescription. I haven’t touched those pills. Besides, if you don’t take them …” He gestured with the pistol. The boy understood, opened the vial, and gulped down a half dozen powerful soporifics. “Now what?” he asked.

  “Now you turn around and face the wall.”

  “Don’t hit me too hard, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best.” Dave …

  “Mr. Elliot, I want you to pay attention to this. Listen closely. The bug can be spread — will be spread — to anyone who drinks out of the same glass as the carrier, anyone who kisses the carrier, anyone he gives a little love bite to, anyone he fucks, anyone who gives him a blow job.”

  … clipped him behind the ear with his pistol. The boy yelped and staggered, but did not fall. Dave hit him again, harder.

  He looked back at the door leading to Bernie’s office, picturing how the bodies should lie. One of the three would be a real corpse. He hated that. He would have done almost anything to avoid it.

  He slipped his hands beneath the arms of the dead man. There was too much blood. If Ransome or one of his people looked into the conference room, looked at the floor and the wall, they’d know what had happened.

  Too late to worry about it now.

  He dragged the corpse the length of the conference room, dropping it face up near the door. He lay one of the Jati-Matics across its chest. Then he went back for the second man.

  In less than a minute, he had arranged the bodies so that they looked …

  “Of course the carrier won’t know that he’s contagious, that he’s spreading disease right and left. He thinks he’s still healthy because the bug isn’t producing any harmful effects. At least not yet. That doesn’t start to happen until well into the fourth day. By that time the bug has mutated again. What was a pupa is now a butterfly. It is ready to go airborne.”

  … like they had died charging out of the conference room. If the alarm over Bernie’s door sounded, they would have been the first into his office.

  For final effect, he stepped to the center of the office and pumped a dozen silenced rounds into the walls and floor. Now the room looked like the scene of a firefight.

  His time was running out. Ransome (God, he loves the sound of his own voice!) wouldn’t run off at the mouth forever. Dave had to set up the rest of his illusion quickly. Two doors opened into the conference room — one from Bernie’s office and one …

  “Technically speaking, in stage three, the bug becomes what the medics call ‘pneumatic.’ That means that the carrier spreads the infection simply by breathing. Every time he exhales he spits out six million spores — I repeat, gentlemen — six million. He breathes in, he breathes out. If he does that fifty times, he will have released enough bugs to infect every man, woman, and child in the United States. He does that a thousand times and he’s unleashed enough bugs for everyone, every living soul, on God’s green earth.”

  … from the hall connecting Bernie’s side of the building with the reception area. There were only three offices on that corridor — one belonged to Mark Whiting, Senterex’s chief financial officer, the second to Sylvester Lucas, the company’s vice chairman, and the third to Howie Fine, the chief counsel. Ransome would have stationed men in all those offices. They, like the three people in the conference room, would reach Bernie’s suite ahead of the others if the alarm was tripped.

  Dave crouched, flung the door open, and rolled into the hallway. He drew a circle with his pistol, searching for a target.

  No one was there. Just as it should be.

  The interesting question was Ransome’s location. Dave wasn’t sure whether he would station himself close to Bernie’s suite — say, for example, in Whiting’s or Lucas’s office — or farther away. Either alternative would be militarily correct: close to lead the attack; far to redirect forces as battlefield conditions required. Which would Ransome choose?

  Which would you choose?

  A toss of the coin. Farther, I think.

  He slipped up to Whiting’s door and placed his ear against it. He could hear nothing except for the whisper of Ransome’s frosty voice over the radio. He lifted his pistol …

  “However, I overstate the case. You see, the bug in question is a delicate little fellow. Once he’s been expelled from the carrier’s body, he doesn’t live very long. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen at the high side. Unless he finds a new carrier before then, he dies.”

  … braced his legs, and shouldered the door open. A single black man, an older one, was sitting behind Whiting’s desk. His weapon, another Jati-Matic, was propped butt up on Whiting’s credenza. The man looked at Dave, opened his eyes wide, and raised his hands. The expression on his face said that he was far too experienced to offer any resistance.

  Dave nudged the door shut with his foot.

  The man said, “Mister, I just want to say that I’m sorry. I accidentally seen what the man done there in Mr. Levy’s office, but I didn’t have nothing to do with it, and it just made me sick.” His eyes were sad and a little watery He wore a moustache that had begun to go grey. He was getting old, and becoming weary.

  Dave asked, “You a vet?”

  “Yes, sir. Drafted in ’66. I was CO, a conscientious objector, assigned to the 546 Med. But we took 93 percent casualties in Tet. Wasn’t a CO after that. I re-upped infantry. RA a
ll the way. Retired just two years ago. Should have stayed retired, I guess.”

  Dave nodded. “I guess.”

  “So, sir, I’d be obliged if you’d consider me a noncombatant.”

  “No can do.” Dave fumbled the pill vial out of his pocket.

  The man’s sad look showed that he understood, and that he was resigned to whatever fate Dave planned for him.

  “Take the cap off this bottle, pour out five or six pills, and dry swallow them.”

  The black man lifted the bottle from where Dave had placed it. With infinite sadness, he said, “The man’s gone insane. Cuttin’ heads. Calling in a heavy. Can you believe that? Oh, mister, I was half-ways to running when I heard that. You hadn’t come through that door, I probably would have run. ’Nother thing, sir, there’s another thing. You know the code name he gives me? ‘Crow.’ That’s what he gives me. And me the only black man on this job. Can you believe that?”

  There were six yellow tablets in the palm of his hand. He studied them, sighed, and choked them down. “These sleeping pills, aren’t they? How long they going to take?”

  “Too long. I’m going to have to speed it up.”

  “You want me to turn around?” Resigned and passive.

  “Please.”

  “Okay, but you just remember that I’m sorry. Mister, I’m sorry and I wished I was out of here a long time ago.” Dave brought his pistol butt down on the back of the man’s skull. “Me too,” he muttered.

  Next stop, Sly Lucas’s office. Would Ransome be …

  “However, our initial carrier, Mr. Elliot, still won’t know what’s going on. He still won’t feel ill. All he’ll feel is a little odd, and oddly a little more alive. Colors will seem brighter to him, sounds more musical, tastes and smells sharper. He will start dreaming Day-Glo dreams. Depending on his metabolism, he might even see a vision or two.”

  … in there, yammering on the radio? Dave hoped he wasn’t. He wanted Ransome to keep talking, wanted him to tell his men the truth. Because, once they knew the truth, they would start to sweat. One or two might run. All of them would make mistakes.

  He kicked through Lucas’s door.

  Two men, neither of them Ransome.

  One was standing guard at the door, the other gazing out the window. The guard was fast. He was firing before the door was fully open.

  He shot too high, overcompensating for his 40 round magazine. The bullets ripped into plaster above Dave’s head. The guard fought the Jati-Matic’s muzzle down. Dave fell to his knees. He released a short burst into the man’s chest. The silenced automatic’s soft thump, thump, thump seemed too gentle a sound for the results it produced. Fired from close range, the slugs lifted the man off his feet and sent him spinning backward over a chair. A backwash of blood spattered into Dave’s eyes. Plaster dust powdered into his nose. He lurched back into the corridor, flattening his back against the wall, out of sight.

  The man by the window sent two bursts into the hallway. Dave rubbed his shirtsleeve across his eyes. Another burst of fire exploded into the wall. The sound of the slugs ripping through plaster was louder than the muffled thump of the Jati-Matic.

  Dave slapped a fresh clip into the butt of his pistol. He had to act before the man used his radio. He tugged off his shoe, readied himself, and tossed it through the doorway. A hail of bullets caught it in mid-air. Dave rolled through the door.

  His opponent had positioned himself in a corner. He had the Jati-Matic braced against his shoulder. It was aimed left of the door, and above floor level. He started to bring his sights down to where Dave lay.

  Dave’s shot clipped his leg. The man grunted. His gun wavered. “You son of a bitch,” he said.

  Dave drew a bead on the center of his chest. “Don’t do it.”

  The man swung his weapon toward Dave …

  “You may ask how we know these things. Well, gentlemen, the answer is yes. Yes, Mr. Elliot is not the first person to have been infected with this bug. Of course, the other cases were all under rather more controlled conditions. That’s how we know, gentlemen, and that’s how we know that there is no cure.”

  … who took him with a single shot.

  He hissed through his teeth. He hadn’t wanted this. He only wanted Ransome. There was no need for it, not for the deaths, not for anything else. Ransome’s words were proving that.

  And Dave felt so cold.

  But he couldn’t stop. Not now. There was one more office, a third office, where Ransome’s goons would be waiting …

  “Or rather, there is one single cure. If you kill the carrier, the infected man, before the bug reaches its final stage, then you can stop the spread of the disease. And that, gentlemen, is the only way to stop it. Do you understand me, Mr. Elliot?”

  … Howie Fine’s office. Howie was Senterex’s chief counsel. There was a Thomas Eakins oil hung over his credenza. It portrayed a famous trial, the judge on his bench, a distraught witness in the box, a starched-collar attorney thundering at a jury. Dave had never liked the painting. He’d never liked anything dealing with courtrooms.

  He kicked the door open. The room was empty. No, it wasn’t. It was …

  How …? What …?

  The strength went out of his legs. He slumped, no longer able to keep upright, to his knees, but so weak that he might fall utterly helpless, prone to the floor. The room was completely empty; no one there but for Marigold Fields, call-me-Marge, Cohen. Nylon rope — it looked like parachute cord — had been used to tie her to Howie Fine’s large leather chair. She was alive, awake, gagged, looking at him, her eyes so wide, as wide as his must be. Which was very wide indeed.

  She was trying to say something to him. He couldn’t make it out. Her mouth was taped shut. Her words were unintelligible mumbles.

  Dave swallowed. Hard. Twice. This was not possible … she, the others … their heads … Ransome’s theater of brutality … She was dead. He’d seen it with his own eyes.

  He breathed through his gaping mouth, taking great gulps of air. Marge’s muffled voice seemed to be begging him to untie her.

  Why? What had Ransome … wait a minute. Of course. It was obvious. Ransome …

  “Do you understand that this is the only way to stop the disease, Mr. Elliot? And it is critical to stop the disease. Why? Why is because the real symptoms won’t begin for a few days after the bug mutates into its third stage. Are you listening to this, Mr. Elliot? A few days of inhaling, a few days of exhaling. A few days of spitting out six million deaths with every breath you take. Then you’ll begin to feel it, Mr. Elliot. First a fever. Then the sweats. Chills, nausea, deep painful aches. In seventy-two hours you’ll die.”

  … was a pro. He’d have a fallback plan. And a fallback to his fallback. That’s why he hadn’t killed Marge. She was useless to him dead. Alive, however, she’d be another weapon, one last weapon, he could use against his prey. He had to keep her alive, ready to bring out if, against all odds, Dave survived the death traps prepared for him. Then and only then — if he knew Dave was escaping — would Ransome have put one of his radios to Marge’s mouth, and hoped that her screams stopped Dave from fleeing.

  It probably would have worked.

  The same as the sight of her severed head should have worked.

  That head … a nice piece of craftsmanship. Almost something he could admire. He had to admit, it was masterfully done, just like you’d expect from a virtuoso like Ransome. Was it clay or wax or a rubber cast or a dead woman with enough of a resemblance and enough makeup to make her look like Marge? Dave didn’t know. He didn’t care. All he cared about was that Marge was still alive.

  He intended to see that she stayed that way.

  Dave stumbled to his feet. “Sorry, Marge. I’ve got to go.”

  She shook her head furiously. Louder sounds, shrieks if she could open her mouth, bubbled beneath her gag.

  “You’re safer here than you would be if I cut you loose. There’s going to be trouble out in the halls pretty soon now. I
don’t want you in the middle of it.”

  There was red murder in her eyes. She’d rip his throat out if she was free.

  He wheeled her into Howie’s closet, out of sight. “But I’ll be back. I promise you. I promise I’ll come back for you. Marge, don’t look at me like that. Goddamnit, I’m running out of time and I don’t have a choice.”

  He left her, knowing that she’d not forgive him, and returning to the hallways to do …

  “Seventy-two hours. That’s all you will have. And then you die. For most of those hours you will wish you were already dead. Twenty or thirty days after that, everyone’s dead. Everyone who’s been close enough to inhale your breath. And everyone who has come in contact with the people you’ve infected, and everyone who has come in contact with them. In other words, everyone in the world, Mr. Elliot, absolutely everyone in the world.”

  … what he had to do. Dragging the two corpses into position took only a moment. Once the bodies were in place, the hallway outside Bernie’s office looked a scene of carnage. Copper-smelling blood pooled on the carpet, acrid cordite smoke hung in the air, dead men sprawled, as dead men always seem to do, in uncomfortable postures, wearing painfully surprised expressions on their faces. Those not dead, but only unconscious, looked less authentic.

  Dave was in his stocking feet. One of his shoes had been shredded by gunfire. He’d discarded the other. The black man’s shoes were large, comfortable-looking brogans; they seemed to be his size; Dave looked at them greedily.

  Better not. Someone might notice.

  Right.

  ’Bout time to get the party started, isn’t it?

  Right again.

  Dave lifted one of the Jati-Matics, checked its clip, and tightened its strap. He slung it …

  “Forget about ordinary murderers, and forget about armies and war, and forget about Hitler and Stalin and every mad dog despot who was ever born. However many notches those people had on their guns is nothing to the number our Mr. Elliot is going to rack up on the scoreboard. He’s in a league of his own. There’s no word for what he is, they haven’t coined one.”