by Mike Kraus
Frank headed back to the hall to continue searching for a way up to the next floor. Signs were posted on the wall every few feet that contained ominous warnings to visitors about what would happen if they were caught with a camera, recording device or even glancing in the general direction of something they weren’t explicitly authorized to view. After circling the main floor twice in search of some stairs Frank finally found them behind a closed door down the main hall near the back of the building.
Frank stepped out onto the second floor and looked at the numbers on the wall next to each door. The numbers on the first floor had all started with one while the numbers on the second floor all started with two. “Guess I’ll go up another flight, huh?” Frank muttered to himself as he turned back to the stairs before stopping and looking into an open office next to the stairwell. While all of the others had been empty he noticed a gleam of metal inside office one two zero. Frank scooped the source of the glint off of the desk in the office and held it up in front of his flashlight, giving a slight grin as he realized what he had found.
“Hello there. I wonder why someone left you behind.” He slipped the set of keys into his pocket and looked through the drawers in the office, but found nothing else of interest besides a few framed photos and some discarded coffee cups. The sight of the personal items made him wonder if the offices on the first floor hadn’t actually ever been used and he decided to take a slight detour to check the rest of the rooms on the second floor.
Five minutes later, after hurrying from room to room, Frank had decided that the offices on the first floor were, in fact, never used. The filing cabinets in the offices on the second floor were all twice as wide as the ones below and the locks were much larger. They too, though, were left open and were all empty, but there were bits of plastic tabs and a few metal supports inside the cabinets that gave the impression that they had actually been used before. Some of the locks, too, were missing keys while others had their keys inserted.
It looks like they cleaned out every single piece of information this place ever held. Frank mused to himself as he walked around. I bet they were ordered to evacuate and this was part of the process. Makes sense, too. Destroy any sensitive data and it doesn’t matter if a couple of random people break in and look around. I bet the headquarters still has power and is locked up tight, though.
Despite the less sterile and more lived-in look of the rooms on the second floor Frank failed to find anything of value in any of the offices he checked besides the car keys he had noticed earlier. A quick glance at his watch to check the time made his stomach churn as he remembered Linda lying downstairs and he ran back towards the stairs in an effort to make up for lost time.
On the third floor it took Frank less than thirty seconds to find room three eighty-seven. It, like all the others, was open and Frank could see before he even walked in that it was more like the rooms on the first floor than the second. There were no personal photos anywhere in the room, the trash can only had a few torn pieces of paper wrapper from some sort of food and the filing cabinets and drawers were completely empty.
Not wanting to fail Linda, though, Frank did his due diligence and methodically searched through the office, combing each drawer, nook and cranny for any signs of information. After a few minutes of searching he plopped down in the chair behind the desk and shook his head, wondering just what he had gotten himself into.
“I could be in Texas right now.” Frank scrunched his nose up as he responded to himself in a mocking tone.
“You could! But nooo. You had to go after the crazy lady to try and help her save the world.”
Frank sighed and turned slowly in the chair as he wondered what to do next. Going for help would, at best, result in he and Linda being taken into custody but it would also mean that she would get medical treatment. When she recovered, though, he was certain she would kill him for ruining her quest to stop the man she believed was behind everything.
He leaned back as the chair turned and idly looked around the office when his gaze fell on the computer monitor. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the corner of the monitor and he sat up suddenly, pointing his flashlight at it. “What on earth?” Frank reached out and plucked a small yellow sticky note from the corner of the monitor, holding it close to read the tiny handwriting that covered the entirety of the scrap of paper.
L – We were right. I hope I’m right about you coming here. If you are reading this, come to 2854. I know you know the street.
The note was unsigned but knowing what he knew it was easy for Frank to figure out who wrote it. “She knew Linda would come here.” Frank sat back in the chair, still holding the sticky note as he thought about everything Linda had told him.
While he would have never said it to her face he had started to consider her as something of a crackpot. It was true that the terrorist attacks were quite real but her stories about pursuing a mysterious seemingly all-powerful person across the globe were a strain to believe. When she added in the theory that the person she had spent years pursuing was behind the attacks Frank had found it frighteningly difficult to believe that what she said was true.
He had still gone along with her, though, going as far as abandoning his own journey home to help her. Doubt had clouded his mind but it was there no more. The small scrap of paper with four sentences on it somehow made more of an impact on him than all of what she had told him herself. All trace of doubt was gone and his thoughts reeled as he struggled to figure out what to do next.
“Crap!” Frank scrambled up out of the chair as he remembered that Linda was still downstairs. He ran down the hall and stairwell and burst back out into the hallway on the main floor. He skidded to a stop in the lobby where he knelt down next to Linda’s still form and put his hand to her forehead.
She still felt hot to the touch but was breathing relatively normally though there was a certain amount of extra effort in her inhalations that he hadn’t noticed before. He took the socks off of her forehead and stomach and shuddered as he felt how hot they were before pouring more water over them and placing them back on her body.
“Hey.” Frank whispered to Linda as he took her hand. “Hey, you still with me?”
Linda’s eyes fluttered open and she moved her lips quietly for a few seconds as she tried to speak. “Yeah.” Her voice was hoarse and she closed her eyes again after speaking.
“Hey! Don’t go to sleep on me! Listen, your friend, Sarah Cala-whatever—I found her office. It was empty, just like the rest of them. They must have cleaned out all the files before the employees left. But she left something up there for you.”
Linda opened her eyes again and Frank held the note in front of her face, shining his flashlight at it. “Apparently she thought you’d be coming here to find her. What was the name of the street she lived on again?”
“In Wildwood hills. North of the river.” Linda took the note with a shaking grasp, flicking her eyes across it as she tried to read the words through her blurred vision. She dropped the paper and Frank took it, then she grabbed him by the arm with a surprisingly strong grip. “Get us there.”
Frank shook his head. “No way. We are going to find you a doctor right now.”
“Frank.” Linda’s grip grew stronger and Frank found himself unable to shake free. “Get. Us. There. Now.”
“You’ve got a fever! You could die!”
“She will help. Just get there. Twenty minutes if you find a car. Just hurry.” Linda’s grip faded and she slumped back onto the floor, closing her eyes as she drew in fast wheezing breaths. She had expended all of her energy in the span of a few seconds. Frank watched her closely, placing the wet sock back on her forehead where it had slipped off when she was pulling on his arm.
Standing up, he walked over to the front door of the lobby and looked out at the parking lot and the grass and trees beyond. It was a beautiful day outside, but the sight meant nothing to him. His stomach churned as he tried to decide on the best course of action. Whate
ver choice he made would be one that he could not come back from.
If he took Linda to those who were in charge of the survivor city then she would most likely survive, but she and he would both end up trapped in the city for an indefinite amount of time. If, on the other hand, he took her to try and find her contact from the CIA then Linda could perish regardless of whether they found this “Sarah” person or not.
In all of Frank’s thinking, the one thought that was no longer present was the question of whether Linda was right about Omar or not. The simple note from Sarah proved that Linda was telling the truth. It also proved that the threat, as radical and crazy and impossible as it seemed, was real. And somehow he had gotten himself tangled up with the only person who had put enough pieces together to possibly disarm the threat.
In a choice between saving Linda’s life but rendering it impossible to stop Omar or giving her a chance to stop Omar but risking her life on someone who might not even be there, Frank was at an impasse. Every second that ticked by while he wrestled with his decision was another second that Linda slowly slipped toward the abyss.
Chapter 16
The parking lot of the CIA’s annex building was far larger than Frank had initially thought. When the building was constructed a few years prior it was originally intended to only be filled to one fifth capacity. The extra capacity would be filled over the course of ten to fifteen more years and the parking lot would be expanded as necessary to accommodate the additional workers. When the building—plus an additional hastily constructed wing—was nearly filled with new employees after just two years the parking lot that had been in front of the building was expanded to wrap around both sides as well.
While Frank had been frustrated by large parking lots before the annex parking lot took that frustration to a whole new level. He ran past the parked cars, mashing the lock button on the key fob as he tried to locate the vehicle associated with the keys he had picked up from inside the building. When he started going through the lot it hadn’t occurred to him to start on one side and work his way around in a systematic fashion. Instead he spent twenty minutes running back and forth until he finally heard a light beep off to one side near the fence out in front of the building.
Frank ran to the vehicle that made the noise and reached for the door handle. As he opened it, though, he fumbled with the key fob and started to drop it. He grabbed for it and in the process mashed all of its buttons—including the alarm—with his fingers. The deafening alarm startled him and he dropped the keys again as he tried to push the alarm button again to make the sound stop.
Seconds passed by in panicked agony as Frank tried again to push the alarm button before realizing that he needed to manually unlock the car to turn off the alarm. He inserted the key and turned it, then opened the car door only to find that the alarm was still going off. Sliding into the driver’s seat he jammed the key into the ignition and turned, then let out a sigh of relief as he was rewarded by blissful silence.
Laying partway on his side in the car Frank took a second to sit up and adjust himself before looking around at the interior. It was a small sedan not unlike one they had driven a few days earlier. The back had a few pieces of trash and odds and ends in it and one of the two cup holders had a thin travel cup sitting in it that was filled with a suspiciously fuzzy liquid. Other than that, though, the vehicle looked like it was in good shape and it was big enough to hold Frank, Linda and their two backpacks.
Frank shook his head as he put the car into reverse, lamenting the fact that their Humvee was still out on the edge of town with their rifles, extra ammo, food and other gear in it that they wouldn’t be able to access. He briefly considered the possibility of somehow driving out of the cordon in the sedan, around to their Humvee and then taking it to find Linda’s CIA contact, but abandoned the idea almost immediately due to how long it would take and the risks that would be involved.
As Frank wound through the parking lot towards the front of the annex a flash of movement in the rearview mirror caught his attention. He glanced at the mirror and his eyes grew wide as he saw the shape of three green camo vehicles racing down the road toward the annex. Frank twisted in his seat to get a better view and confirm that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. Unfortunately, though, it was no trick. Two Humvees and one white police car were traveling together toward the annex at a high rate of speed. The road in was narrow and twisty but the two Humvees didn’t hesitate to go off-road to minimize the amount of time it would take to arrive.
“Shit!” Frank turned back around and slammed down on the accelerator, sending the sedan lurching forward. He turned the wheel and skidded to a stop in front of the annex, his foot throbbing from pressure as the antilock braking system kicked into overdrive. Frank jumped out of the car and ran into the building, not bothering to look behind him as he dashed into the lobby and over to Linda.
“Linda!” Frank shouted at her as he knelt down next to her. “Come on, we have to go! There’s a patrol on the way and we have to go now!” Linda didn’t respond and Frank leaned in, putting his ear to her face. He could hear and feel her breath on his ear but she didn’t open her eyes or show signs of movement no matter how much he pushed, pulled, pinched and shouted at her.
After wasting several seconds trying to wake her up, Frank slid his arms under her legs and back, scooping her into his arms. He turned and ran back out of the building as fast as he could, all while trying to not let her or her clothes fall to the ground. He opened the back door of the sedan awkwardly and slid her inside before slamming the door closed. A quick glance out across the parking lot made his heart leap into his throat as he saw that the vehicles were nearly at the gate and guardhouse out front. The gate was tall and well-armored against vehicular attacks but Frank knew how well the Humvees were built and was certain that they would be able to win if the drivers wanted to smash on through.
Frank turned and ran back into the building faster than before to grab the scattered pieces of clothing on the floor and his and Linda’s backpacks. He raced back to the car and threw open the driver’s side door before tossing the backpacks and clothes across into the passenger’s seat. He paid no attention to the sharp crack of glass as a piece of metal on the outside of one of the backpacks left a chip in the side window.
After getting in and closing his door Frank put the car into gear and quickly took off, heading around the side of the annex towards the back of the building. The parking lot came to an end on the side but there were wide walking paths behind the annex. The sedan jumped the curb with ease though the handling grew looser as Frank drove across the grass and gravel, turning sharply to avoid the well-manicured hedges and trees. He weaved his way through the park-like area until the opposite side of the parking lot became visible, then he turned away from it and headed towards the fence that ringed the perimeter of the annex grounds.
While Frank wasn’t sure whether or not he could ram through the fence in the sedan he saw no other option at his disposal. Off to his left at the end of the parking lot sat the two Humvees and the patrol car with two soldiers standing in front of them at the gate with a pair of bolt cutters in hand. One of them glanced up at the sedan as Frank was watching and pointed as he said something to his fellow soldier.
Not waiting to see what they were about to do, Frank glanced back at Linda and shook his head. “Sorry about this.” He double-checked to make sure his seatbelt was fastened and then accelerated toward the fence. He was heading toward the section set at the top of a small rise in the ground and aiming for the area in between the fence posts themselves. He hoped that if he hit the rise at the right speed the car would impact the middle or upper portion of the fence which would then tear it off of the posts and allow him to drive over the chain link.
Formulated in blind panic and executed with numerous flaws, Frank’s plan somehow worked exactly as he had intended. The car’s wheels momentarily soared above the ground by approximately three inches as he hit the rise at a spe
ed of nearly sixty miles per hour. The nose of the car, angled upward, hit the middle of the fence above the mid-way point causing the most stress on the middle and top wire connectors that held the fence to the posts.
The fence, while effective at keeping casual intruders out and tearing up perfectly good jackets, was no match for the two-ton chunk of metal and plastic. A horrendous screech came up through the bottom of the car as the undercarriage scraped on the fence, making Frank wince as he imagined all of the bits and pieces beneath the car that could be damaged or torn off.
Much to his amazement the fence did not get caught on the car and the airbags didn’t go off either despite the speed at which it was traveling when it hit the fence and then landed back on the ground. The wheels posed the biggest problem as they twisted to the right, sending the car into a spin that Frank was not expecting to have to deal with. While his first instinct was to hit the brakes and turn to the left, he instead did his best to keep the car steady while turning into the spin. The sedan weaved to the left and right as Frank fought with it on the soft grass until he finally got it under control.
Behind him past the deep ruts in the soft grass, the mangled fence and the parking lot in front of the annex building stood the two soldiers. They along with their companions still in their vehicles watched in disbelief as the sedan sped away, heading toward the bridge a short distance up the river. They scrambled to call the other patrols in the area to get them to divert to the bridge to stop the unknown intruders but by the time the call went out the sedan was already on the road and heading over the water.
Chapter 17
With the morning light comes a break in the rain over Pittsburgh, an easing of the rising waters and a chance for the military to enter the city and try to bring out any survivors. Transport vehicles equipped for dealing with high water levels roll out into the city, forming long convoy lines as they deploy along predetermined routes.