by Justin Bell
“You think we’ll find anyone who’s immune?”
“If it’s an ethnic bioweapon, yes. If it’s scattershot…”
“Then we’re all sitting ducks,” Broderick finished the sentence.
“Hey, guys!” a voice shouted. Broderick turned and saw Hank Quiver waving a gloved hand toward him. “I think we’ve got a method of dispersion over here.”
Broderick walked across the tile floor, stepping over and around a few corpses that lay between him and Quiver. The other man held up a set of metal pinchers and clutched between the tongs was what looked like a shaving cream canister, torn open on one side. Metal had buckled and peeled away from the inside out, leaving a reverse flower of torn tin, with traces of dried shaving cream caked to the ragged flaps.
“Any sign of a detonator?”
“Not yet,” Quiver replied. “But we just found it.”
“Bag it and tag it,” Broderick replied. “Good find.”
He walked back over toward Provlov, hands on hips and shaking his head.
“Problem, boss?”
“I don’t get it. The pieces don’t fit.”
“Well, unfortunately I can’t tell you a whole lot more at the moment. We’ve about reached the limits of what the local database can handle. I’ll need to get samples back to Detrick to do a more aggressive run of tests.”
Broderick nodded. It made sense.
“All right, Team Ten,” he said, his voice raising. “We’re working on borrowed time here. Finish bagging what you’ve got, we’re cleaning up and moving out in ten minutes. Felding, get on the horn and get Butch back here with the Blackhawk pronto.”
He stood there watching Team Ten move around the store and finish up, working out the next steps in his mind. They needed to get back to Fort Detrick, that he knew, he just hoped there was a Fort Detrick to go back to. If this thing was as state of the art as Provlov said, there was no telling what could be coming next.
Chapter Five
Jackson’s eyes fluttered, the light in his apartment a gray, dim sheet, his vision shifting in and out of focus. Looking around, confused, he tried to get a gauge of his surroundings, unsure of where he was. He recalled the phone call with Lisa, him slumping to the carpet in the hallway, and he realized that’s where he still was. He couldn’t tell how much time had passed, and he was sure his sleep had been fitful and not that restful, but he also wasn’t sure he could stay in the apartment all night. Something urged him to get up, get out and start his journey sooner rather than later. A certain clarity of thought was starting to crystallize in his head, a clarity the stark opposite of what he’d said to his fiancée shortly before; a clarity that no, this event, whatever it was, was not over, and things could just possibly get a whole lot worse before they got better. Sirens still wailed outside, not from any particular direction, but seemingly from everywhere, and while the low light of generator-supplied illumination kept his apartment somewhat visible, it was clear that the power was out nearly everywhere else.
Would that make his building a beacon to those in the dark who might be looking for shelter? Would the light in his window be a signal that someone was there… someone with power? Water? Food? Shelter?
His heart clamped tight, like fingers were clenching around it, and he pushed himself upright, making his way to a light switch on the wall. He slammed it down, then headed for the lamp in the living room where he thumbed the off switch and killed that one, too. For a moment he stood in his apartment in darkness, his eyes roaming throughout. A place he had lived for three months, but a place that hardly felt like home. There was no comfort here, no sense of protection or provision, it was just four walls and a roof that he inhabited so he could keep going to his upwardly mobile job that barely paid enough to sustain his meager lifestyle.
This is what he’d been so excited about? This was the urban, city life he’d been striving so hard for? This is what he’d allowed to tear his relationship apart?
How foolish he’d been, and how foolish it was that it took a catastrophe to make him see it. He’d been stuck in the commercial cycle, paid more simply so he could pay more just for the sake of saying he lived in the city and worked for big business.
Sure, there were opportunities for advancement within the company that inhabited the skyrise in downtown Boston. Maybe if he put his nose to the grindstone and worked sixty hours a week for five years, he’d even be a middle manager at some point. A middle manager living alone in a small apartment, too thrifty to go out to eat or join his co-workers at the bar, so never able to meet anyone, sitting alone, pining for the fiancée he discarded so he could live this new, exciting life.
Idiot.
No, there was no way he could sleep through the night here, he had to pack and he had to move. Connecticut was calling. Lisa was calling, and with everything going on, the only thing he wanted was to be with her in familiar surroundings. Suddenly, the remaining lease on this apartment felt meaningless, and a small kernel of thought buried inside of him thought that there was even a distinct possibility that at this time tomorrow, whoever owned this building would have far larger problems than paying for its upkeep.
It was time to move.
The soft, blue glow of the clock on the stove flickered slightly, fading to almost dark before illuminating again. Jackson decided it was definitely time to go.
Walking down the hall, he twisted into his bedroom, stepping to the squat, four-drawer dresser, pulling open the drawers and scooping out clothes. His heart was ramming, and he was moving swiftly, probably more quickly than necessary, but this small apartment felt even smaller, like the walls were closing in, and he piled the clothes on his bed, walking back out into the hall, heading toward the backpack.
Four heavy, rapid slams echoed on the other side of his front door. He froze, not moving, his feet locked into position.
There was a moment of silence, then another swift group of bangs, fists on wood.
“We saw your lights on!” a voice boomed from the hall outside. “We need help! My wife is sick! I know you’re in there!”
Jackson swallowed, trying to keep himself calm.
“Do you have any medicine? Any food or water? Anything at all?”
Had they been outside? Or were they neighbors? They said they saw his lights on…
Another massive slam rocked the door, sounding like the thick sole of a boot.
“Open the door!”
“I don’t have any medicine!” Jackson screamed back. “I have no extra food! I’m on my way out of here!”
Another foot blasted into the wall, jerking the wooden door on the hinges. Jackson saw the flimsy, metal hinge start to separate slightly under the impact.
“Leave me alone!” shouted Jackson. “There’s nothing for you here! I just want to get out of here.” His eyes shifted toward the backpack resting against the wall in the front hallway. It was two feet from the front door, and he coiled his legs, getting ready to charge forward, desperate for anything that he might be able to use to protect himself.
One more room-shaking slam hit the door, and this time the hinges did buckle, wood splintered where they were screwed, and the door leaped off its frame and careened inwards, spraying broken hunks of fiberboard into the hall, scattering it across the floor.
Three men stood in the opened door, large men, eyes narrowed into angry slits. Two of them had thick, overgrown beards, the third just stubble, and each one that Jackson looked at appeared larger than the other. Jackson was tall but thin, muscular but not especially strong, and as he estimated his chances against three large muscle-bound thugs, it seemed to him his chances would not be good.
He took a step backwards as the three men shoved their way inside.
“Thanks for your hospitality,” the lead man growled. “Your apartment belongs to us now.”
***
Jackson took a few more steps back until his rear end struck the arm of his ratty couch, halting his motion. The three men were shoulder to shou
lder in the entryway hall, filling up every inch of empty space, a wall of flesh, bone, and muscle.
“If you want the apartment, that’s fine,” Jackson whispered. “Just let me take my stuff and go. It’s yours.”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” the man in front snarled. “You said no to us. Came across as pretty anti-social.”
A second man peeled away, walking around the first. “We’re going to need to take our pound of flesh.”
“Come on, guys,” Jackson hissed, sounding a little more desperate than he intended. “You don’t need to do this. We’re in a bad situation, all of us, but we don’t need to lower ourselves to this.” He slid to the right and back-pedaled a few more steps, this time his calves struck a knee-high coffee table, a cheap assembly of thin wood and fake glass.
“Oh is that what we’re doing?” the man asked. “Lowering ourselves? So you’re better than us now?”
Jackson rolled his eyes. He tried to even out his breathing, calm his nerves, use those meditation techniques that he’d been learning. None of it was working.
“I’m not better than anyone,” he replied. “I just want to go. Live my life.”
“Guess you should have let us in when we first asked then, huh?”
They pushed forward, and he had officially run out of room to back pedal, the edge of the table pressing tight against his calves. They were close enough that he could smell the sour stench of their breathing, the strong edge of alcohol mixed with an angry heat. The lead man clenched his fists tightly together and Jackson tensed, preparing for the attack.
“All right, boys, let’s knock it off!”
The three men whirled around and Jackson followed the direction of their gaze. Another large man appeared, filling nearly the entire open frame of the door. He wore a faded blue button-up shirt with a windbreaker pulled over his shoulders, unzipped down the front.
“Clark?” Jackson asked. It looked like him, anyway. Clark Bradley worked security in the building, mostly there for show, making regular rounds through the hallways in exchange for a rent-free room and livable salary.
“How’s it going, Jack?” he asked, nodding curtly.
“Get out of here, old man,” snarled one of the three thugs. “Forget you ever saw any of this. No reason for you to get caught up in it, too.”
“This is my building. My jurisdiction. I’m caught up in it whether you like it or not.”
“I said get out of here!”
“Don’t make us whip your rear end, too, gray hair!”
“Everyone take it easy!” Clark shouted, taking another step into the apartment. The three men finished turning toward Clark and moved in his direction, giving him a small window to work with. He lurched right and bolted, running past them.
“Hey!” shouted the man in front, reaching for Jackson, who slipped just past his grip.
“Get outta here, Jack!” shouted Clark. Jackson swept up his backpack on his way down the hall, squeezing past Clark and making his way out of the door as Clark took a step backwards toward the exit.
“Oh, no, that’s not gonna fly!” one of the men shouted. He charged forward shouting and Clark was stumbling backwards himself, trying to turn into the hallway.
“If that’s how you wanna play this!” screamed another man and Clark saw him reach into his jacket, pulling something from a sleek, brown holster, a flash of movement, his eyes widening.
Clark was faster. His hand went to his own holster, nestled at his right hip, covered by the dark jacket he wore. In his own flash of motion, the Glock 19 was up, clamped in his fingers, his other hand swinging over to support it. Just as the man in front of him brought his own pistol level, Clark fired twice, two shots plowing into the man’s upper chest, the surprise from the impact picking him up off his feet and sending him backwards. His boots swung out from under him and he pitched in reverse, slamming down onto the cheap coffee table, the glass and wood splintering under his hefty bulk.
“Holy—!” Jackson screamed, halting his exit down the hall, turning toward Clark.
“Keep runnin’, kid!” Clark shouted, ducking away and bolting toward him, running as fast as his thick legs could carry his two-hundred-and-sixty-pound bulk. A pair of echoing gunshots burst from the apartment, plaster spider-webbing on the opposite wall as Jackson and Clark ran full tilt for the emergency stairs.
“Go down first!” Jackson shouted. “I’ll be right behind you!”
“Like hell!”
“Go!” Jackson urged, his hand groping inside his backpack, then pulling out, the FABARM FP6 pump action shotgun coming out.
Clark’s eyes widened. “Never figured you for a shooter, kid—”
Jackson ignored him and turned, jacking the pump back with a swift thrust of his arm. Their two pursuers spilled out into the hallway, both of them with small pistols in their hand and just as they turned toward them, Jackson punched the trigger, the shotgun exploding in the tight confines of the narrow hallway. Smoke and sparks burst from the barrel, buckshot screaming, tearing rivets and ditches in both walls. The two men shouted and stumbled backwards, caught in the wide spray of the short-range weapon, though likely not fatally. Jackson didn’t bother waiting for them to recover, he simply threw himself through the door to the emergency stairs, his legs pumping, jumping three at a time, catching up to Clark’s plodding pace in less than two seconds.
“You kill ‘em?” Clark asked as they ran.
“Dunno,” Jackson replied. “Don’t think so.”
“All right, let’s boogie!”
“Where are we going?”
“Anywhere but here is what I figured. I saw three bodies on the fourth floor back there and figured it was time to make myself scarce.”
They both pounded through the door at the lobby, running across the smooth floor and out the front door into the city. Jackson saw the slumped bodies still on the lawn outside the building and wondered how many more they might be seeing along the way. It wasn’t a thought he liked having, the idea of judging the seriousness of an event by how many corpses he’d seen.
But it was reality.
They were still running, crossing the two-lane street, empty of vehicles and pedestrians, one of the few times Jackson could remember that being the case. Swallowed by the darkened alley across the street, they plunged into the black void between buildings, jerking from passage to passage until they were certain they’d left the men chasing them far behind.
***
She couldn’t remember the last time she sat out on her front porch at this hour of night, just sitting there enjoying the cool, winter air while appreciating the mere existence of life around her. She’d grown accustomed to life not being what she wanted, a fragile, temporary thing that was neither guaranteed nor permanent. Her mother’s sickness had taught her that.
Lisa closed her eyes and leaned back on the love seat, listening to the soft, twisting squeak of the chains, drawing in long, deep breaths. Deep breaths that tasted fresh and clean, the outside air and not the stale, medicinal sterility of the air inside, the creams and anti-cancer medications, the bandages and the instruments. Her parent’s house smelled like a hospital, like old age and death, and it felt like a coffin months before her mother was due for one.
Swinging softly, Lisa tried to push back the resentment, tried to ignore the feelings of obligation, the knowledge and understanding that she and her father were solely responsible for her mother’s comfort in her final weeks. Hospice nurses had been coming daily and had been a blessing, but eventually they left, and eventually it fell to her and her father to change dressings, change bedpans, refresh medications and make sure her mother was pain-free and comfortable.
Ovarian cancer had been found two months ago, a short time after she’d moved to Boston with Jackson and had buried the final stake in her relationship. A relationship she had always thought would end in marriage, but now she couldn’t be sure. Every week they were apart felt like a year, and she felt far and distant from
his current life, even though he called her every day, emailed, texted constantly, there was already this separation… his new reality, a single man in the big city, and their old reality, together. Two separate lives.
Now she was here, in her small town—what used to be their small town—the air fresh and clean, the night quiet and peaceful while the city he lived in burned to the ground. Inhaling deeply, her eyes opened, and she could almost smell the stale smoke from Boston. She swore she could taste the ash on her tongue but knew it was just her brain playing tricks on her. She was hundreds of miles away from Boston, and those things weren’t happening here.
Except they were, weren’t they? They were happening everywhere. The thought came to her with a distinct certainty, that even as she stood here, out in the rural farm that her parents owned without another soul in sight, somewhere out there, somewhere closer than she thought, people were likely dying.
She turned her head to the west, knowing that Hartford was several miles in that direction, Connecticut’s own modern city, though a fraction of what Boston was. Again she smelled that strange smoky smell, a smell that actually had substance and color. She could envision the thick clouds of gray in her head, taste it crawling down her throat like a choking cotton candy. She’d been sitting out in the dark too long and her mind was playing tricks.
“Lisa?” it was her father’s voice and she turned.
“Yeah, Dad?” she asked. “Mom okay?”
“Mom’s fine,” her father replied. “She’s sleeping.”
“Good.”
“Did I hear you talking to Jack earlier?”
Lisa nodded as if only barely paying attention.