Exit Zero

by Neil A. Cohen

  “Who sir?”

  “My son Ivan. He must have caused this. It had to be him, who else? He must have done this to get back at me. He must have broken into the lab somehow, and set this loose.”

  James thought of how improbable it would be for Ivan, or anyone, to sneak in and out of the lab undetected. As far as James knew, Ivan was not even in the loop as to the exact type of research that was underway. But right now was not the time to start poking holes in the old man’s story.

  “Sir, I have never asked you many questions but… your son. You have always been there for the kids in the neighborhood. Me and my friends, then my younger brother’s friends. Now you’re mentoring this new crop of kids. Why? At first, we got worried. You know, older guy taking interest in other peoples kids. Well, you know...”

  The senior Gold looked up at James with an angry and disgusted look.

  “I soon realized it was not like that,” James continued. “You have guided so many kids into their futures, ensuring they stay out of trouble, or even when they do, ensuring they continue on the path forward, like you did for Jerry and Dan. But why not Ivan?”

  “James, I would tell you to go read the book Collapse of Complex Societies by Dr. Tainter, but both you and I know that is not going to happen.” Max could be a condescending asshole when he wanted to be. “So let me nutshell it for you. All societies collapse sooner or later; usually destroying themselves from within. That is why I started this firm. When the fighting stops and the collapse is complete, we will be there to pick up the pieces, clean up their mess, and rebuild. At least until the next societal collapse. Hence the name Post Conflict Restoration Corp.”

  Jimmy realized then that in all the years of working for PCRC, he had never really given the name a second thought.

  “Now, of course, we have branched into many other fields, but ultimately, we clean up the mess after conflicts. And there are always conflicts. Man against man, man against nature, man against science. Long ago, I started thinking about these conflicts that we— we being humanity— always seem to create. And each time there is a new conflict, there are certain ingenious people who possess the right skills, have the right backgrounds, and are in the right place at the right time, who arise to solve these problems.

  “Wayne Gretzky was a great hockey player not because he followed the puck, but because he went to where the puck was going to be. That is what I did. I identified those people whom I observed had the potential to become those problem solvers, those who instinctively would know where the puck was going to be. But they couldn’t get there on their own. They needed to be shepherded along the path, so that they would eventually reach their full potential.”

  James sat down in the vinyl chair across from Max. “Why not tell us this grand plan of yours? Why were you always in the shadows? Most of these kids never knew you were even intervening in their lives, helping them.”

  Max gently shook his head. “That would never work. The whole point is these people I identified were not followers. Once they realized they were being led down a path, they would have resisted it and chosen a different path of their own.”

  James spoke, immediately wishing he had not. “Is that what happened with Ivan?”

  Max leaned back and folded his arms to put a boundary between the two men. “I prefer not to discuss what happened with Ivan. But for the rest of them, they had to believe they had chosen the path they were taking on their own, and thus, I remained in the background, like a secret Sherpa.”

  “What do we do now, sir?”

  “Well, James, you wanted to branch into domestic operations. Here is your chance. Let no crisis go to waste. When this thing burns itself out, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will have to put New Jersey back together again. I, of course, being the king. You, being my men. Your brothers being the horses. At least the back ends of the horses.”

  The old man smiled, trying to break the tension with his joke.

  “This contagion, release… whatever it is. How do we stop it? How do we get my brothers out of there?”

  Max put his glasses back on and reopened his book, signaling the conversation was about to end. He removed the bookmark he had used to save his place, a slip of notebook paper on which he had been doodling fantasy football style brackets. At the top he had written “President Patrick Callahan”. Next he had written “Secretary of Defense James Sullivan” followed by “Secretary of State Maxwell Gold”. And on it went, outlining an imaginary hierarchy of power that would be loyal and beholden to him.

  “Dan will find his way to the sub, and will take Pat with him. Once Patrick is safely back in Washington, D.C., he will arrange for us to have the contracts to clean up the mess. He will arrange a lot of things.”

  “And Jerry?”

  “Daniel is the most important; he must succeed in ensuring Patrick’s safety. Jerry has his own orders,” Max said, resuming his reading. “Let us both hope Daniel and Jerry follow the directions they have been given, and do not choose their own path.”

  Chapter 35

  High Roller Suite

  In the high roller suite near the top floor of Atlantic Plaza Casino, Gary Ragu’s cell phone began buzzing on the night stand.

  Gary, Little V, Vitamin Mike, and Jack the Pipe had been enjoying a night of cards when the outbreak occurred.

  Gary Ragu picked up the cell and answered. “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” said the deep, gravelly voice over the phone. Big V needed no further introduction.

  “Christ, boss, we been trying to reach you,” Gary responded, relieved to hear that the command structure was still in place.

  “Yeah, communications have been difficult.”

  “Where are you, boss?”

  “I’m at the house. Wit’ the girls.”

  “They okay?”

  V ignored the question. “You guys still in the room?”

  “Yeah, we tried to get out of here, but the elevators ain’t working and the stairwell is forty fucking floors of psychos.”

  Gary Ragu looked over at the poker table in the middle of the suite. Jack the Pipe was lying across the table, writhing in pain, a savage bite wound on his left side bleeding onto the green felt. An ice bucket was next to his head in case he started puking up the black bile again.

  “Who you got with you?” V asked, formulating a plan.

  Gary looked at each suite mate as he named them. “Little V, Vitamin Mike, and Pipe. Pipe is in bad shape though. Some fucking cooz took a bite out of him in the stairwell when we tried to beat it.”

  “Vito is there? Rita said he was still in prison.”

  “Budget cuts, they let a bunch of inmates out.”

  V rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “This country is going to hell.”

  Little V was not Big V's son, but Vito Patone, a low level enforcer and high level hothead. Vitamin Mike had gotten his name through dealing exercise supplements, A.K.A. steroids, in southern New Jersey, and was a good earner for the Family. Jack the Pipe got his name not because he hit people with pipes; well, he probably did, but that was not why he got the name. He got the name Pipe because he would not stop talking about his dick.

  “You got any weapons in the room?”

  Gary felt the .38 in his belt loop. “No more than what we had on our person. We didn’t come here heavy, this was just a night of cards.”

  Little V was spread out on the couch and figured out they were talking protection. “I got a coupl’a baseball bats in the trunk of my car, but a lot of fucking good that does us. We can’t even get down the stairs to the garage.”

  “Yeah,” Gary agreed, “it is going to be tough enough for us to get out of here. How we going to make it with Pipe? He can’t walk.”

  V had the plan all figured out and began his instructions. “Okay, I’m gonna get you out of there. But first things first, Ragu, here is what you need to do with Pipe.”

  Five minutes later, and thirty-eight stories below, Ja
ck the Pipe’s body exploded into three pieces when it slammed onto the hood of a valet parked Escalade in front of the hotel.

  Gary closed the sliding balcony door and followed Little V and Mike back inside the suite, the three dusting off their hands as if they had tossed an old rug into a garbage dump. “Okay, now what?” he said into the phone.

  “You guys can’t go down,” V said, “but you got a chance if you go up. You should only be about two floors from the roof.”

  “Yeah, but V, what the hell good does that do us?”

  “Listen, I’ve been texting with BMW. If you can get to the roof, he is up there right now.”

  “Holy shit, I didn’t even think of that!” Gary exclaimed with a glimpse of hope.

  BMW was the nickname of Black Malcolm White. Actually, Malcolm White was his given name. Black was given to him by the neighborhood kids as he was one of the few African-Americans growing up in the predominantly white Italian Irish Jersey suburb. Malcolm had the size and strength to pound the shit out of any one who called him Black Malcolm White, but instead had decided to own the name, and shortened it to BMW. It stuck.

  BMW was now a helicopter pilot for the casinos and flew in high rollers to gamble. He was told to go to the landing pad and wait on some high-rollers, who he was supposed to fly out to safety when the place went nuts, but it had been a couple of hours and they were still no-shows. He was going to take the copter himself and fly to safety, but soon got word on the radio from other casino pilots of US Army Apache gunships patrolling the beach area, shooting down anyone who tried to fly out of state, so he had hunkered down on the roof. He was safe for the time being and had an easy escape if things got tight.

  “You guys get up there and take that copter as far as you can to Cape May,” V instructed. “Head to the Sullivan house. Downstairs by the pool table, I got two hundred grand in the wall safe. Make it there, it’s yours to split between however many of you are left. I need you to do one last thing for me.”

  “You got it, boss, what do you need?”

  V lowered his voice to ensure no one but Gary Ragu could overhear the rest of the conversation. “Remember how I told you to never write anything down? Well, you’re going to need to write this down.”

  Chapter 36

  Lost in the Flood

  It was late afternoon when Dan, Pat, Eric, and Marifi finally turned off the parkway at Exit 0 and Furio rolled down the main thoroughfare leading to Cape May. They viewed what were the obvious signs of chaos and collapse which had occurred earlier in the morning.

  Marifi saw a sign that read “Asian Store, specializing in foods from Korea, Japan and the Philippines”. She missed the Philippines. Life there was harsh but predictable. She missed Ivan; her life with him was sweet but unpredictable. She missed their home together, which was now nothing more than a burned out blast crater in the ground. It was only the second home she had ever known. She grew up in a small province in the Southern Philippines. Her mother, only a child herself when she gave birth, had soon abandoned her unwanted daughter with her grandfather. He himself was abandoned as a child and sold off by an uncle to the Manila Islamic Liberation Front, an offshoot of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist organization. As soon as this child had come into his life though, he’d fled the terrorist group and headed north to disappear in the jungles to protect her. He then spent the next two decades mentoring her on the skills he had acquired in a life focused on death.

  She was 21 when she was approached by an employee of PCRC, an executive who reported directly to Maxwell Gold. They had learned of her skills through village gossip and made her an offer she could not refuse. The man explained he needed someone to protect Mr. Gold’s estranged son, but that the son could never be aware that he was being watched over. She was to approach him as a fan of his radio show, to entice him, and to marry him. This was not at all difficult, as six weeks after meeting the younger Gold, they were married.

  In exchange for her service, her grandfather would be well taken care of for the remainder of his days, and his whereabouts would not be disclosed to the terrorist cell he had abandoned for her.

  Marifi was told her role was to watch over Ivan, to protect him, from both enemies of Maxwell, as well as to protect him from himself. She was often reminded that while she was married to Ivan, she was beholden to the elder Gold. It was made clear that while she was to keep Ivan alive, if instructed by Maxwell, she was to kill him if necessary. As the years passed, she questioned her ability to follow that final order if it ever came, knowing full well that if she refused, it would mean a terrible fate for her grandfather.

  Marifi thought back to those last moments in the bunker. Ivan had informed the rapper Camden that he had only paid for two people, which covered him and his mother. If Camden’s two posse members wanted to remain in the bunker, he would have to pay for their room, and that would be another $250,000. Even in the wake of the apocalypse, Ivan was still trying to promote the business. He had always thought that someday he would be the Donald Trump of top of the line survival bunkers around the country.

  Camden had refused to pay and Bucky, the wannabe Rambo security guard who worked for Ivan in exchange for a spot in the bunker, informed the two mountainous bodyguards that they would have to leave and take their chances outside.

  They had not taken kindly to this news, and guns were drawn. They announced they would take the room reserved for the Johnson family, an elderly Christian couple who were huddled in their room clutching bibles. Old man Johnson stood up and said that they could share the room with him and his wife, as long as the two men accepted Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. That request was responded to by two bullets in the old man’s chest.

  “Holy shit!” Bucky had cried, and drew his gun, blasting at the rapper’s crew.

  A ricochet bullet had hit Ivan in the scalp, snapping his head back against the wall and knocking him out cold. As Bucky, who was possibly the worst panic shooter there was, attempted to take down the two bodyguards, they in return exchanged fire with equally bad aim. Bullets cracked walls, punctured air vents and shattered a glass control panel.

  Marifi ran over to the safe room and punched in the key code. The door opened and she dragged the barely conscious Ivan into the room. She emerged with a small can of mace, and from a good distance and with incredible accuracy, sprayed a stream that caught the face, mouth, and eyes of the two posse members. They shrieked in pain but continued firing. Mrs. Johnson ran at the man who’d shot her husband and plunged a knife into his chest before she too was brought down by gunfire.

  Marifi had slipped back into the safe room and locked the door with her and Ivan protected inside. A small monitor streamed video of the continued mayhem in the shelter. D’Andre and Mustafa, the two posse members, ran outside coughing and screaming, the mace burning their mouths and eyes. But something was different. Both had had been sprayed in the face with mace before. D’Andre had been maced so many times that he used to joke that mace was the only way he would cry during sex. This spray seemed to be literally invading their body. They felt like they were vomiting blood. A lot of blood. It was also coming out of their noses and from their eyes. Mustafa’s stomach burned so badly he felt around his belly searching for a gunshot wound he thought he must have received, but his gut was unaffected, from the outside anyway. After several minutes of writhing on the ground, they ran back down the stairs into the bunker. They were going to get that bastard who shot them, who refused to give them shelter. They were hungry. So fucking hungry. Like they had not eaten in a week. And since they had fed off of Camden’s success for the past ten years, why not now feed off his body? The two men ripped the rapper to shreds.

  Marifi’s thoughts were brought back into the present by the sound of music playing loudly. The others in the car heard the music as well. It was coming from off in the distance. It was from Springsteen’s Greetings from Asbury Park album. It was the song “Lost in the Flood”, and was talking about “blood where the body fell”.


  “Is that music playing?” Pat asked, hoping he was not the only one hearing it.

  “It is,” Eric replied. “But I have no idea who that is singing.”

  “It’s Bruce Springsteen, you idiot. That’s a song called ‘Lost in the Flood’,” Pat responded in annoyance.

  “I don’t know who Bruce is. Is he a friend of yours?” Eric replied, purposely busting the balls of the wounded old rocker in the front seat.

  They drove further, past homes and businesses smoldering from fire that had burned itself out, a few bodies scattered here and there. Some looked to have come to their end as a result of Skell attacks, some were Skells that had been put down by gunfire, but further up the road, there were some bodies that looked to have suffered vigilante executions. Several bodies hung from trees in nooses.

  “Suicides?” Eric asked.

  “I don’t think anyone taking their own life would make such a public display of it,” Marifi replied, her first words in over an hour.

  When they rounded the bend, the first thing they saw was one of the parachuted loudspeaker systems. The side had been forcibly pried open, and inside, they saw someone had connected a stereo to the speaker system and was blasting Springsteen tunes. Then they saw a makeshift road barricade put together from abandoned cars, couches, and trash cans. They slowed when three National Guardsmen emerged, M16s pointed at their vehicle.

  One of the soldiers yelled out, “Stop your vehicle and turn off the engine!”

  They complied with the order. The soldiers did not appear infected, and no infected were to be seen in the surrounding area, and they hoped that perhaps the virus had been contained, at least in this area.

  “Exit the vehicle, arms up, hands behind your heads, and without weapons,” the soldier barked. “This is a security check point.”

  The four of them hesitated for a second, but they were so close to reaching their goal that they did not see a need for a final confrontation. Dan turned off the truck and the four of them stepped out, lined up side by side in front of the truck, arms behind their heads. Two of the guardsmen stayed in front while a third took a slow walk around, inspecting the truck.