by JJ Zep
“Quit prattling and just tell me.”
“Good man.”
Joe took several deep breaths again. “Remember when I told you before about the four runaway biologists?
“Uh, huh.”
“I lied.”
He paused then, either for effect or because of the pain.
“Not about them running. That part is true. But the truth is, I was one of the hitters called in.”
Another pause, again punctuated by his harsh breathing.
“The guy I was given was called Kassim, your typical industrial grade boy genius, you know Harvard, MIT, pocket protectors. Anyway, I track him down to a motel in Niagara Falls. He’s just a kid, Chris, 27 years old. I could have been his father. Jesus, I’m thirsty?”
“I’d get you some water but I’m handcuffed to the bed.”
“You too, huh? He said rattling his own cuffs. “I’ll be okay, just give me a second.
Outside, I heard the first signs of the camp coming to life, the rattle of pots from the mess tent, a squad being drilled past, someone calling out good morning.
“So I’m in this kid’s motel room, and he’s like shitting himself, crying and begging me not to kill him, and you know what, I take pity on him. I never reneged on a contract before in my life, but hey, there’s a first time for everything.”
“You let him go?”
“More than that. I got him into Canada. From there to a contact of mine in Africa.”
“What about the virus or whatever it is, they smuggled out of the lab?”
“He said he didn’t have it.”
“You believed him?”
“Had no reason not to. The guy was literally shitting his pants. I don’t think he had the balls to lie to me.”
“What about the other three?”
“Fuck knows, but what’s certain is that at least one of them pulled the trigger.”
“Pulled the trigger?”
“That’s the way this Kassim put it. He called it The Trigger.”
He started coughing again. “Joe you okay?” I asked, “You don’t have to do this?”
“I’m not dead yet, sonny boy. Takes more than an ass-wippin’ to put Pa Thursday’s boy in the ground. Where was I?”
“The trigger?”
“Right, the trigger. You ever heard of BZ?”
“No.”
“BZ was a drug the military developed during Vietnam, supposed to make GI’s more aggressive. Brewed up a shit-storm and had to be dropped. Except some headbangers around the fringes still believed that the idea had legs if only they had more control of the outputs.
“So they put together a team of scientists, kind of a Justice League America for geeks. And they start brewing up some new improved BZ. Somewhere along the line, one of the biologists on the team sees some promising results and the whole project makes a detour from developing a hallucinogenic to developing a virus.”
“Jesus!”
“You said it. But now things start to go awry. They ship one of these geeks to Afghanistan to see the effects of their handiwork on some captured Taliban fighters and when this kid sees what this stuff does in practice, he gets cold feet. Back stateside, he does a runner.”
“Enter Marvin and Coburn.”
“Exactly. But here’s where the heads running the program really fucked up. They thought they’d scare the rest of the team back into line, but it had the opposite effect. Four more jump the fence, and this time they’re packing.”
“And one of them pulls the trigger here in New York.”
“Maybe elsewhere too.”
“You serious?”
“Deadly.”
A pretty nurse walked in with two armed guards. “Gentlemen,” she said. “Time for your meds.”
“I’ll take a sponge bath,” Joe said and started coughing again.
“Nurse,” I said, “I need to see my daughter.”
“In time, I’m sure,” she replied.
“Is she okay?”
She looked at me as though I’d just made an indecent proposal, then she said simply, “Yes.”
She turned towards Joe, lifted the mosquito net and then helped him into a sitting position. As she did so he reached up and touched her hair.
“Mr. Thursday!” The nurse said, crossly.
“Just being friendly,” Joe mumbled.
“Well, you can be friendly by taking your meds,” she said, still obviously irritated.
“For you honey, I’d take a hit on Rev. Jones’ Kool Aid,” Joe said and swallowed his medicine. Within a few seconds he was already snoring.
“Nothing for you,” the nurse said primly to me. “You have a meeting with Dr. Brady.”
I was taken to shower, given a pair of combat pants, boots and a white t-shirt to wear and fed a breakfast of powdered eggs, canned beef and baked beans. Then I was marched over to the North Meadow Recreation Center where the military had set up its HQ.
Dr. Brady turned out to be an attractive woman in her early forties. She wore an unbuttoned white lab coat over her military uniform. I was marched into her makeshift office and told to sit. One of my guards left the room while the other stationed himself inside.
“You’ve been treated well?” Dr. Brady asked.
“I need to see my daughter.”
“Of course. I understand your concern and you have my word that Ruby is well.”
She looked past me to the soldier stationed at the door. “Corporal, would you remove the handcuffs from Mr. Collins,” she said.
“Ma’am?
“I said…” she started irritably.
The marine snapped to attention,” Yes, Colonel.” he barked.
After the handcuffs were removed, I massaged my wrists while Brady told the marine to leave us. She lit up a smoke, then as an afterthought stretched the cigarette case in my direction. I shook my head, no.
Brady took a pull on her cigarette, then placed it an already overflowing ashtray. She flipped open a file on her desk and said, “Your blood work looks pretty normal.” She sounded almost surprised.
She looked at me for a moment as though figuring how to phrase her next sentence. “Ruby’s blood though, is quite extraordinary.”
When I didn’t answer she said, “You don’t seem surprised.” My lack of response triggered that momentary irritation, and then she was all business again. “The child’s mother, where is she?”
“Dead.”
“You were married?”
“Yes”
“I’m sorry.”
No you’re not, I wanted to say but kept my peace.
“The pregnancy was normal?
“Yes”
“And the birth? Your wife didn’t die in childbirth did she?”
I thought about that for a moment, then said simply, “No.”
“Chris, I know how difficult this must be.”
“Do you? How many of your family you lost in this…thing.” I said.
She looked at first hurt, then angry, “My family in Houston, I don’t know if…”
“So Joe was right.”
“What’s that?”
“Joe was right. It’s not just New York City.”
“I can’t discuss that, that’s classified.”
“Then if it’s all the same to you,” I said, starting to rise.
“Sit down!” She commanded, the colonel part of her outranking the doctor.
When she’d regained her composure she said, “I’m sorry, that was… unprofessional of me.”
“I’d like to see Ruby now.”
“I’m sorry but that’s not possible at this time.”
I glared at her and she flinched first. “Look Chris, I’m not sure if you appreciate the gravity of our situation here. We’ve got a rampant virus. You’ve seen for yourself what it can do, but you don’t know the half of it. This thing mutates so fast, it’s impossible for us to get a handle on how to fight it.”
“I don’t understand what this has to with Ruby
.”
She was quiet for a while, probably trying to decide if she could trust me with the next piece of information. Eventually she decided that she could. “Ruby is the only case we’ve come across where to virus is stable. She has it alright, but it’s stopped mutating.”
And there it was, what I’d always known, what I’d always denied, what I’d always prayed wasn’t true. My daughter was infected. I felt as though God had placed his foot on my throat and was pushing down on it with the entire weight of the world. I hung my head and felt tears well in my eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Chris,” Brady said.
“What do you want from me?” I said, without looking up.
“What?”
“What do you want from me?” I repeated, looking at her, venom in my voice. “You’ve got my daughter, and surely you didn’t call me down here to ask my permission to turn her into your personal pin cushion. So what the fuck do you want from me?”
I stood up and knocked the chair backwards. It flew across the room and crashed into the door. Brady was on her feet. The two marine guards entered the room, rifles at the ready.
“Get out!” Brady screamed.
Then to me she said, in a well-rehearsed medical professional voice, “Now, Chris, you need to calm down.”
“Like fuck I do,” I said. “You left us to die out there. You set up camp down here by the lake, and put up your barricades and left the rest of us to die. How do you do that? How could you do that?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“It’s…”
“…classified. Yeah, the get out of jail free card. Fuck the lot of you.” I turned to go.
“There is one other thing,” Brady said. “The reason we called you down here, actually. We were hoping to find your wife, but since she’s dead would you be able to tell us where we can locate her body.”
“Go fuck, yourself,” I said and walked out of the room.
Afterwards, I walked the camp with my two marine guards in close attendance. The base had been set up in the north meadow, by the baseball and soccer fields. North of the Recreation Centre a small tent town had sprung up. The entire perimeter, along the 79th Street Traverse, along East and West Drives and just short of 86th Street was surrounded by barbed wire. There were guard towers, and machine gun nests and foxholes.
Among the armored vehicles I saw there were a couple of tanks like the one Chavez had commandeered. I wondered if he was still alive, rolling around Manhattan like some voodoo warlord commanding his army of the dead.
On one of the fields a kid’s game of soccer was in progress and I recognized one of the watching moms.
“Valerie,” I called to her and she looking at me as though I was a ghost, and then her eyes filled with tears and she threw her arms around me. She rained kisses on my face and sobbed and held me. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said between sobs.
When she’d calmed down she said, “I’m embarrassed to say I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Chris, and don’t be. There wasn’t exactly time for pleasantries back there.”
Valerie told me a bit about their few days in the camp. “We’ve been put through just about every medical test known to man,” she said. “But the good news is that we’ll be getting us out of here tomorrow. I don’t know where they’re taking us,” she said, “but anything is better than here.”
“Defense! Defense!” the woman next to her was shouting as she watched the game.
“You have no idea where they’re taking you?” I asked, lowering my voice.
Valerie looked suspiciously at my two guards who were keeping a discreet distance. “You hear all kinds of rumors,” she said under her breath.
“Goal!” the woman next to her shouted. “Way to go, honey!”
“So what’s the latest…rumor?” I persisted.
“Well, Cheryl here,” she said, indicating the soccer mom who was now back to giving advice on defense, “Cheryl says she heard something about Virginia or Washington DC. Then again I wouldn’t put much faith in…”
“Defense!”
“…anything she says.”
We stood for a while in silence and then I said goodbye to Valerie and wished her and her boys well. It was heading towards a beautiful fall evening, with the blue of the sky deepening and the clouds taking on the appearance of spun gold. I remembered a picnic Rosie and I had had on the paddock and how she’d convinced me to attend Shakespeare in the Park and had then been angry when I said it was boring.
There was to be a barbeque that evening, a send off of sorts for those that were being airlifted out the next day. I was happy for Valerie and the boys, but I declined to attend.
Instead I lay, handcuffed to my cot and took stock of the last six days of my life. Joe Thursday was gone, and I hoped that he had just been moved to another tent. Somehow I doubted it, and I realized how much I’d miss him. I’d known Joe all of three days and he was the closest thing I had to a friend in this world.
Outside I could hear music and laughter as though everything was right with the world. The distant sounds of gunfire served as a warning to anyone foolish enough to believe that it was.
Most of all I thought of Ruby and I hoped and prayed that my little girl would be okay. I didn’t know if I would ever see her again. I didn’t know where they planned to take her or what they planned to do with her.
Lying there in the dark with a million thoughts inside my head I made a promise to myself and to Ruby. That I would find her, whatever it took and whatever the cost, I’d find her.
Chapter Seven: Bloody Sunday
Sometime during the night a firefight broke out. I was wakened by the sound of rifle fire and the shouts of the marines. Then there were whistling noises and explosions, which I knew from the few war movies I’d seen to be mortars. There was heavy machine gun fire and I heard one on the tanks starting up, its jet engine roar reminding me again of Bronson Chavez.
As quickly as it started, the fight was over and I drifted off to sleep again. I dreamed of being at Joe Thursday’s apartment, of the first time we’d gone there. We were in the corridor, him in the lead, me behind holding Ruby. Joe removed the single key from his pocket and showed it to me. He started working the lock and the female Zombie detached herself from the wall and attacked. As had happened in reality, Joe shot her through the eye.
We entered the apartment and Joe beckoned me to follow him. We went into the room were I’d slept before. Except it wasn’t that room, it was the tent I was in now.
Joe showed me the key again, really hamming it up like a magician performing a trick. He lifted the pillow from his bed, then placed the key on the sheet, did one last magician’s sweep of the hand and replaced the pillow.
Outside I could hear the high-pitched whine of a tank turret being rotated and I looked in that direction half expecting to see Chavez, leather-coated with the bullhorn in his hand, except I saw nothing but blackness and when I turned again Joe was gone.
Still the whine of the tank turret persisted, even growing in intensity. Somewhere another joined it, then another. Now I could hear the voices of the tank crews scrambling and heard another familiar sound, whup-whup-whup.
I woke standing next to the bed in the darkness, having somehow gotten up in my sleep. As wakefulness started to take hold I realized that what I was hearing was not the sound of tanks, but the sound of helicopters preparing for take-off. The airlift had begun.
The flaps of my tent fluttered as the first of the choppers started to lift. Through the gap in I could see the mini dust storm it was kicking up, backlit by the first fragments of a red dawn.
Was Ruby onboard? I was sure that she was. She was after all their most precious cargo and they’d want to get her out of the danger zone as soon as possible.
I heard the fading sounds of the first chopper as it headed east and then, I was sure, made a southerly turn. The second chopper followed further from me, s
o not as loud. And then the third rose, its rotors slapping the air like a giant swatting flies.
Suddenly, there was a huge explosion, and a flash bright enough to light up the tent. I ducked instinctively and felt the cuffs cut into my wrist.
Someone screamed and there was the thump of something heavy crashing to earth, followed by the pitter-patter of smaller debris. For a second there was a deathly silence and then, the sound of machine-gun fire.
“Jesus Christ!” someone shouted, “Look how many of them there are!”
A woman screamed and then came the popcorn sound of small arms fire, a rapid military tattoo that seemed never-ending.
I had been sleeping fully clothed and now slipped my feet into the combat boots under the bed. I examined the bedstead where the cuff was fixed and it was solid. Tracing it down to where it joined the bed frame, I saw that they’d been welded together. The only way I was getting out of this was with the key.
Outside the battle continued with gunfire, shouts and explosions. I could hear people running and vehicles racing past. Someone was giving the order to fall back.
The flap of the tent suddenly flew open, and the pretty nurse, the one who have given us our meds, half-ran, half-stumbled into the tent, her white uniform spattered with blood. Her eyes were wide with fear and she was crying and frantically looking left to right.
“Nurse!” I shouted, “Have you got the key? Have you got the key to these cuffs?”
She ignored me entirely and continued looking frantically around, presumably for a place to hide. Finding none, she crept into the corner of the tent, curled herself into a ball and started sucking her thumb. I noticed that most of her ear had been ripped away, leaving a bloodied stump.
“Have you got the key?” I shouted again, and then suddenly the dream came back to me. Joe deliberately showing me how he’d placed the key under the pillow. Could it be? I whipped the pillow aside but there was nothing but the white sheet.
“Thanks a lot, Joe,” I muttered under my breath.
I tried the bedstead again, yanking hard at the cuffs but knowing that it wasn’t going to give the way the fence had in the alley. Outside I heard the roar of a tank and the thunder as its cannon fired. Something big came crashing down and there were screams and shouts of “get clear, get clear”.