Someone in their group bumped against a table and sent a glass shattering against the hardwood floor.
“Quiet,” Alex said tightly.
“Sorry,” the guilty party muttered.
Footsteps clattered in the distance. Alex heard grunts, and yells.
The rooftop maniacs were in the building.
He pushed open a set of oak wood double doors to enter the kitchen. The doors swung open silently on well-oiled hinges.
The pleasant fragrance of a lemon-scented disinfectant wafted over him. The kitchen was a cavernous, darkened space, full of stainless steel appliances and gleaming food prep surfaces. Dim light issued from a bank of yellow fluorescents positioned above a large stovetop. A slice of weak bluish light also leaked from a massive open refrigerator standing in the corner of the kitchen.
A shadowed shape was wedged between the open stainless steel doors of the fridge. Alex heard the sounds of food being eagerly consumed: smacking, licking, tearing. It sounded as if a grizzly bear had wandered in from the woods and found a fridge full of select cuts of beef.
He glanced at the two ladies behind him, index finger raised in a hush gesture.
Kneeling, he edged behind a food prep counter and duck-walked across the tile floor, inching closer to the unknown intruder. Emily and the doctor followed, moving as he did. Thankfully, their shoes didn’t squeak against the floor.
The late-night eater’s back was to them as they drew into a position that provided a better view. It looked like a heavy-set woman. She wore only a bra and panties.
She held a tray of what looked like raw ground beef. She had her mouth literally buried chin-deep in the meat as she devoured it.
“It’s the woman who was playing the piano,” Emily said, whispering close to his ear. “She was harmless earlier.”
Alex glanced at Emily. He had his doubts about how harmless she might be then, if she had left her perch at the piano and come in there to wolf down raw meat.
He pointed at the dark passageway beside the refrigerator. He whispered: “There’s a service door down that way, it opens at the back of the building. It’s our way out.”
Behind them, distantly, Alex heard shattering glass, and bellows of rage. He would have wagered his right arm that the crazies pressing at the front door had finally broken inside, too.
How soon until they came to the kitchen searching for Alex and the others?
Alex looked at the woman standing at the fridge. In spite of the distant sounds of commotion, she was still intent on her food.
They needed her to keep eating. A noisy confrontation could alert the others to their location.
He gave the women behind him another hush warning, and indicated with a wave that they should follow him.
Silently, they lurked past the woman, keeping a row of counters between them. At the end of the aisle, Alex turned left. The refrigerator was barely five feet away from them.
About fifteen feet away, the passageway terminated at the service door, an “Exit” sign glowing red in the darkness.
The woman abruptly dropped something to the floor. Whatever it was, it splatted, and she uttered a grunt of dismay. She bent over to retrieve it, still standing inside the fridge doors. She muttered something so unintelligible that to Alex it sounded like pure gibberish.
“. . . mushputta . . . barnoop . . . mutta . . .”
I don’t ever want to wind up like any of them, he thought with as much conviction as he’d ever felt about anything. He would have preferred to stick a pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger.
As the woman fumbled to pick up the dropped food, he crept forward.
Someone behind him brushed against something on the counter. A metallic object clanged to the floor. The noise was thunderously loud in the kitchen.
Alex swore silently.
That’s it, he thought. We’re done.
The woman mumbled a confused, “Eh?”
Frantic, Alex reached up along the counter. His trembling fingers closed around what felt like a silver ladle. Without hesitation, he tossed it in an arc toward the other side of the kitchen. Over there, it hit something and rattled against the tile.
“Mushputta . . .” the woman mumbled. She left the refrigerator and shuffled away toward the sound.
Heart whamming, Alex hurried along the passageway to the service door. He mashed his shoulder against the long metallic bar at the center, to open it. The door swung out quietly into the rain-spotted night.
None of the maniacs had wandered to the back of the clubhouse.
But the rescue helicopter was gone.
Chapter 26
In Falcon’s office, Deacon and Jim had discovered what they needed to know, and had passed along their findings to Bailey. There was nothing else for them to accomplish there as far as Deacon was concerned.
They shut down the surveillance server. The displays went dark.
Deacon allowed himself to enjoy a sense of achievement. They were finally making progress in this unofficial investigation. They had found out some bad things—the perp spreading the infestation through the entire community rated as about the worst thing that could have happened—but at least they knew, and it was a small victory.
“What’s next, chief?” Jim asked, rising from the chair. “Want to bag Falcon’s asshole brother?”
“If he’s actually responsible for this crime, he needs to be held accountable,” Deacon said. “We’re still the law here. We’ll do our jobs.”
“Falcon’s son said he’s got a place out in the forest,” Jim said. “Any idea where?”
Deacon crossed the room to a large colorful map of South Haven that had been affixed to the wall. He found the greenspace region in the East and tapped it with his finger.
“No, but we’ll search. I don’t care how long it takes.”
“There were no surveillance cameras in that area, I looked for them before I logged off,” Jim said. “If there are, they aren’t linked to this network.”
“That’s about what I’d expect from a sibling rivalry,” Deacon said. “Mr. Falcon’s younger brother isn’t gonna abide his big bro spying on him.” Turning away from the map, Deacon slipped his cell phone out of his pocket. “Gonna check on my pops, and then we can move out.”
His phone displayed the message: No service available.
“Jim, does your phone work?” Deacon asked.
Jim quickly pulled out his iPhone and tapped the display. “It’s telling me, no service. Think we’re in a dead zone?”
“Here in Falcon’s castle? No way.” He unclipped his two-way radio. “Dr. Bailey, are you there? Do you copy?”
She didn’t respond. There could be various reasons for her lack of a reply, but coupled with the disruption in cellular service, Deacon was imagining the worst.
“Chief, take a look out here, will you?” Jim had parted the venetian blinds at a window.
Deacon stared outside. Falcon had built his estate on an elevated plot of land, to provide a panoramic view of his community, and there was no better view to be enjoyed of South Haven than the one from his office window.
The neighborhood beyond the estate was completely dark, as if covered by a vast black sheet.
“It’s the quarantine,” Deacon said. “They’ve jammed all cellular transmissions and they’ve cut electrical power, too. Falcon’s estate must be running on an alternate power source, but as rich as he is, even he doesn’t have his own mobile communications tower.”
“Why the hell would they cut everything off?” Jim asked. He looked as shocked as if he’d been kicked in the groin.
“Why do you think?” Deacon said.
***
Glen couldn’t avoid it any longer.
He had to get out of South Haven.
He rode his bicycle across neighborhood streets, his camo-colored backpack strapped across his shoulders. If not for the soft luminescent glow of the camcorder he gripped in his right hand, he would have had no idea where he wa
s going.
South Haven had gone dark, in every sense of the term.
For a while, having a front row seat at the crisis that had been unfolding in the community had been thrilling. Glen was a full-time financial analyst but a part-time documentary filmmaker (sort of), and had been live-streaming everything he had seen going on around his townhouse. His social media feeds had exploded with traffic as he broadcast one scene of bloody mayhem after another. People he had known for years, folks who seemed normal and well-adjusted, were either killing each other for no apparent reason, or engaging in bizarre obsessive behavior, which was nearly as frightening: Ms. Stanfield, naked as a jaybird, was using a hula-hoop in the middle of the street, jiggling as if she were participating in a dance contest in hell.
Glen had been spooked, but couldn’t stop filming.
This is how the apocalypse begins, he’d thought. Someone needs to document this, for the good of humanity. Why not me?
When the CDC had broadcast their quarantine warning over the community’s Code Red system, Glen had kept taking video, undeterred. He hadn’t truly considered leaving until later in the evening.
When all of the power went out, and with it, the landlines and the cellular signals, too.
He knew what those things meant. Showtime was over.
The military had pulled the plug on everything and was abandoning them, was going to let people kill one another with impunity. With everyone cut off from society, the feds could keep the imminent bloodbath concealed from the outside world.
Glen owned a battery-powered camcorder, like any self-respecting filmmaker would have possessed. He swept it across the neighborhood as he rolled down the road on his bike.
“I’m documenting my departure,” he said into the device’s microphone. “The situation here has become too unstable for me to risk staying. I know, that sounds funny because we probably reached that crisis point several hours ago, but in the name of performing my duty as a citizen I wanted to stick it out. With the cutting of all electricity, telephones, and cellular capabilities, I fear that the government has given up on us. I received confirmation from a neighbor that they’re guarding the perimeter but I think I know a path out. I’ve got to try.”
As Glen pedaled, he was mindful to avoid any deranged-looking residents who might attack, unprovoked. It had become easy to identify the crazies: look for anyone wandering around naked outside.
He saw a few of them, and had to either make a turn to steer away, or lower his head and increase his speed so he buzzed past without attracting notice. In that respect, the darkness that had fallen over South Haven was a benefit.
His route took him to a dead end, the termination of Magnolia Way. Beyond the road stood a grove of magnolia trees, and beyond that, a section of the stone wall that guarded the boundaries of the community.
“Here we are,” he said into the camcorder. “Radio silence beyond this point.”
He kept the camcorder running as he climbed off his bicycle. The bike was fashioned from carbon-fiber, and weighed less than twenty pounds. He figured he ought to be able to toss it over the wall, scale the barrier, drop onto the other side, climb back onto his ride, and pedal away.
But first, he needed to be sure the coast was clear.
The grove was dark, and quiet. A warm breeze sifted through the trees, carrying the sweet scent of summer blossoms.
He reached the wall and didn’t hear or see any armed sentries, which was exactly what he had expected. South Haven was huge. It would have been implausible for soldiers to patrol every square foot of the perimeter.
He leaned his bike against a nearby tree trunk. The wall was about seven feet high, but Glen stood six-two, and he had long arms. After clipping the camcorder to his waist, he hooked both hands onto the top of the wall, and then pulled himself up, using the soles of his sneakers to get additional traction. As his head cleared the barrier, he looked around.
He didn’t see anything past the fence, only a sparse collection of shrubs, but a loud buzzing noise came from the darkness beyond his range of vision.
“Alert, citizen,” a computerized man’s voice said. “Please return to your home. You are under Level Five quarantine.”
Glen saw it then: a flashing set of red and blue lights floating in the blackness like malevolent eyes. The buzzing grew louder as the aerial craft approached.
Drone, he thought. Holy shit.
From the spinning lights, Glen could estimate the overall size of the thing: it was as big as a large falcon. Its whirring rotors generated so much displaced air that the nearby shrubs trembled as if caught in a strong breeze.
He realized the military wouldn’t have needed to deploy soldiers to watch every inch of the wall if they had these robots flying around with infrared sensors, zeroing in on any suspicious movement they detected. He thought he saw mean-looking double barrels attached to the belly of the aerial device, too, but in the dark, it was hard to be certain.
“You are under Level Five quarantine, citizen. Return to your home immediately.”
To hell with this, Glen thought. There was no time to go back for his bike. He levered himself over the wall.
The combat drone emitted a nerve-splitting siren, lights blinking more rapidly.
“This is your last warning, citizen. You must comply at once or risk severe injury.”
Sweating, his eardrums throbbing, Glen dropped onto the dirt. He took off running, his camcorder bouncing against his waist, all pretenses at filming this experience forgotten.
The drone screeched, sounding remarkably like an enraged animal.
Glen lowered his head and pumped his legs as hard as he could.
He didn’t get far.
Chapter 27
Deacon had a job to do. But before he could continue with any of it, he had to get to his father.
In Falcon’s office, they booted up the surveillance server again. All of the cameras displayed the same status message: Offline.
It made sense, of course. The cameras were linked to the same power grid that supplied electricity to South Haven, and the grid had to be down.
Deacon tried to use the landline-based telephone to call his father’s cell phone. He didn’t get a dial tone. The line was completely dead.
Cursing, he slammed the handset back onto the cradle. Pops might have been okay, holed up in the apartment with his guns as he promised he would be, but with the recent turn of events, Deacon could no longer trust that he would be safe there on his own.
“No luck with the landline?” Jim asked.
“It’s a full communications blackout,” Deacon said. Unconsciously, he put his hand against his chest, rubbed as if trying to calm his heart. “It’s necessary for what they’re planning to do here.”
“Which is what?” Jim asked.
“Let the epidemic run its course. Keep us all penned up until we kill each other off eventually or starve to death.”
“You really believe that?” Jim sneered. “Christ, I thought I was the cynic in this partnership of ours.”
“Think about it. Thanks to our stellar detective work, they’ll logically assume that all of us are potentially infected.” Deacon flipped off the lights in the office, and Jim followed him out of the room. “There’s no treatment for someone who’s gotten sick, and anyone infected gets more violent, more feral, by the hour. Imagine a community of three thousand or so bloodthirsty lunatics with almost superhuman strength. They’re going to contain the perimeter, I promise you that. No one will get out of here. Those of us stuck inside, who aren’t infected? We’re on our own.”
“So total containment,” Jim said. “Innocents be damned. In their minds, it’s the less risky strategy.”
“They had to cut the communications to keep people from posting more videos to Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, whatever the hell else folks have been doing. Black us out, and then start spinning damage control stories to the media. By the time it’s all over, they’ll say it was a carbon monoxide leak a
nd that anything that claims otherwise is fake news.”
“I want to know what happened to the big douche bag,” Jim said. “Kind of funny how he goes AWOL before all this crap came down.”
“I’ve wondered about that, too. He’s got to be out there somewhere.”
Out in the main corridor of the house, they saw Angie Falcon. She strode toward them, heels clicking on marble, the fabric of her flowing red robe swirling like flames around her. Anger twisted her cosmetically-enhanced nose and lips.
She thrust her iPhone toward Deacon. “What the hell is going on with my phone?”
“Lady, no one’s phone is working.” He gently pushed her hand aside. “Go read a paperback or something.”
“But . . . but I need to use my phone!” Tears shimmered in her big blue eyes. “I was almost at level ninety-seven!”
Deacon didn’t have any children, but at that moment, Angie Falcon brought to mind a child throwing a tantrum because she had been denied access to a toy. In a house almost as large as a shopping mall, full of every creature comfort imaginable, didn’t she have some other way to entertain herself?
“We’ve got work to do, little miss,” Jim said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, the whole community’s gone to hell, and now the military is here to clean up the mess.”
“Who?” She blinked as if Jim had spoken in a foreign tongue. “The military?”
“There’s a federal quarantine in effect,” Deacon said. “If you just stay put in your gated mansion, you’ll probably be fine.”
“So that’s why Daddy rushed out of here,” Angie muttered. She ran her fingers through her long hair, frowned. “Crap. I need a drink. A gin and tonic would hit the spot. Care to join me, boys?”
Deacon glanced at Jim. Was this woman really so out of touch with reality that she thought they would take her up on her offer?
“Sorry, but we can’t drink while we’re on the job,” Deacon said.
“Oh, whatever. Don’t be a tight ass. I won’t tell Daddy.”
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