Underhill stood rooted in place. “Carson said there’s something he wants you to see on 72. C’mon, let’s ride together.”
Pausing in the path of the elevator doors, Victoria shook the bag containing the hard drives, making them clunk and rattle as they settled to the bottom. “Where do you want these?”
“Anywhere is good,” answered Underhill, a knowing smile curling his lip.
Fuck. She’d been hoping to get away from Underhill long enough to try the pass card in the nearby stairwell. Even a ride to Church Street on the window washer’s platform sounded better to her than revisiting the bio lab. She tossed the bag unceremoniously on the carpet. “That going to work for you?”
“Perfect. And don’t worry, you’re almost done,” Underhill said, wagging his sausage-like fingers at her. “Unless I don’t like what I see downstairs.”
***
Carson and two of his men were inside the pit when Victoria and Underhill stepped from the elevator on 72. Carson was holding Milky Eyes at bay with what looked like a dog catcher’s tool. Gripping the long aluminum pole two-handed, he maneuvered the uncoordinated man into a cubicle while, to Victoria’s horror, another man slid a long, thin knife directly into its temple.
“This is how it should have been done,” barked Carson, staring at the new arrivals. “I just replayed the holding cell video feed showing the transfer. The eggheads tried bagging the specimens without using the leash. That’s how they got bit. Apparently, if you want a job done right … you gotta do it yourself.”
Stomach reeling, Victoria averted her eyes, noticing at once that the six boxes containing the Romero agent had been moved and were sitting on the floor beside the outer security ring door.
Seeing the biohazard symbol, Underhill gave them a wide berth and called out to Carson. “What are these doing outside of the cube?”
Carson made no reply as he transited the pit dragging the limp body. Along the way its head banged against chair and table legs, the leaking wound leaving behind a trail of brackish liquid. When Carson paused to open the door, both Victoria and Underhill got an eyeful of the trio of bodies lying on the floor just inside the pit. There was a dark-haired boy of about ten who Victoria guessed had been the one inhabiting the body bag. The blue-eyed female chemist, sans hood and facemask, lay beside the boy. On her right was the male chemist, also stripped of his hood and black-rimmed glasses.
Victoria’s mouth formed a silent “O” when she saw the neat, dime-sized bullet holes in each of their foreheads.
Pretending not to notice what amounted to a triple homicide practically lying at her feet, she said matter-of-factly, “Let’s wipe the server and all go get a drink, shall we?”
Carson removed the leash and positioned Milky Eyes by the others. He shook his head and fixed his gaze on Victoria. “Were you aware of these things already?”
Eyes wide and earning an Oscar, Victoria indicated she had gone straight to 73 and had been there for the duration.
“What’s on your knees, then? he asked. “Looks like smeared blood to me.”
Underhill was tracking the conversation, head moving from Victoria to Carson and back again.
Shaking her head no, Victoria steered the questioning to the corpses. “What are those?”
“Those are Merkur’s failed attempts at creating a super soldier serum to be used for a DoD black project.”
Victoria backed away from the leaking corpse and stood close to Underhill. Lesser of the evils at this point, she figured.
“The man your guy just knifed to death is a fixture of the neighborhood, Carson. And what about the kid?”
“Neither one of them will be missed by anyone. The kid’s a runaway. And the panhandler here, he was already a zombie. Only it was booze driving him, not Romero. Stupid name for a drug meant to extend battlefield longevity.”
“I concur,” said Underhill. “I take it, save for Indiana, the damage here has been contained?”
Victoria felt a chill run through her upon hearing Carson say “save for Indiana.” What the eff did that mean? Did they set Operation Peasant Overlord in motion?
“Afraid not,” said Carson. “After the ambulatory specimen transfer went wrong, four of your lab workers fled the building.”
Victoria swallowed hard. A sheen of sweat was forming on her forehead and upper lip.
Underhill said, “So we’re enacting Protocol Red?”
“There’s no other way to maintain plausible deniability,” replied Carson. “My men have already dogged down the main sprinkler valves on 40. The accelerant is spread there and on 73. I had them place timed explosives on both floors. Our tracks will be covered here when we leave. Both the hard copies”—he nodded to the shelves full of notebooks—“and the server next to the bio lab will burn before the fire crews leave their houses.”
Underhill arched a brow. “And the missing employees?”
“Good news and bad,” stated Carson as his men looked on, apparently awaiting orders. “One has already met the Seventh Avenue Express head on falling off the Franklin Street/Varick platform. Real messy, I hear. I have a team surveilling another at a Midtown bar. They’re just waiting for him to leave or visit the john.”
Victoria’s head moved subtly as she followed the conversation.
“What’s the bad?” asked Underhill, craning to get a better look at the ashen corpses.
Carson grimaced. “We lost the other two,” he conceded. “However, we have their residences under surveillance.”
In a wavering voice, Victoria asked, “What about me?” She gripped her chin with one hand and snugged her bag tight with the other. “Can I go home now?”
“Afraid not,” Carson said. “Merkur wants you to come back upstairs with us.” He thumbed the elevator’s Down call button and, once the doors parted, helped his men move the tackle-box-looking things inside. Then Carson held the door while his men lugged the bodies of the kid and the bearded vagrant into the elevator. Once all of the incriminating evidence was loaded, Carson nodded to his men, then struck off down the hall. “Follow me,” he called over a shoulder, “we’re taking the stairs.”
Victoria caught herself staring at her co-workers’ corpses. Letting her gaze linger on the tear in the male chemist’s suit, she spotted a bite wound partially concealed by the flimsy-looking yellow material. The apple-sized, raised oval was purple-rimmed and crusted with dried blood. Throwing a visible shiver, she tore her eyes from the dead and fell in between Carson and Underhill, where she remained until the former led them up six flights and through a door sporting the warning: ROOFTOP ACCESS - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The high-decibel humming from the head-high stacks of HVAC equipment crowding the door caught Victoria by surprise as she crossed the threshold. After a brief moment of hesitation, Carson was gripping her shoulder and steering her one-handed through the warren of roof-mounted mechanicals.
Turning the corner near the east edge of the building, the group was met by the steady blast of rotor wash coming from a helicopter waiting nearby.
Merkur had changed into jeans and hidden his sparse head of graying hair under a black ball cap. In place of the navy blazer, silk tie, and Oxford button-down was a khaki jacket and hunter-green Polo. To round out the L.L. Bean look, he had traded the black Bruno Magli shoes for a pair of sensible brown wingtips. He was standing near the helicopter’s right-side cabin door and motioning Underhill forward.
Chapter 33
Ducking low in the seat, Riker wheeled the Suburban forward at a walking speed until he neared a small throng of people milling about the mouth of the tunnel he guessed he and Tara were taken through the night before. A quick glance over his right shoulder told him the soldiers were still negotiating the body bag maze. So he stopped a yard short of the group and pulsed down his window.
Voice wavering, Tara said, “What the eff are you doing, Lee?”
Ignoring the query, Riker called out to a man who seemed as if he still had it together.
Balding, maybe in his fifties, and of average height, the man approached the Suburban on the driver’s side.
“Need a ride?” asked Riker as a rolling gust of wind—likely augmented by the Chinook’s rotor wash—lifted the man’s threadbare tee-shirt, exposing the substantial beer gut hanging over his beltless waistband.
“No, no, no,” chanted Tara, her head still below the crest of the dash.
Face a mixture of confusion and relief, the man stopped an arm’s length from Riker.
“Hell yes,” he said. “I’ll go wherever you’re going as long as it’s far away from here.”
Riker jangled the set of keys out the window. “I’m not offering you a ride. I’m offering you and the others rides of your own. These unlock the coach’s offices. Inside you’ll find the keys, identification, and cell phones they took from us.”
Moving slowly, the man took the keys from Riker’s outstretched arm. “There’s things in there. Weird things I can’t wrap my head around.” He shook his head rapidly back and forth. “I can’t go back in there.”
A younger woman standing nearby with the kid Riker had lifted the iPod from stepped forward. “Effin coward.” She snatched the keys from the man’s open palm. “I put a mop handle through the door pulls. Whatever those things were, they’re locked inside with the soldiers.” Without another word, she turned and hustled toward the sports facility entrance, kid in tow.
A tick later a man and woman standing with the group of people blocking the Suburban peeled away to follow the woman with the keys. That was all it took to turn the exodus around. Just a lone woman with a young kid showing bravery in the face of the unknown. In a handful of seconds the driveway was clear and Riker was turning onto the street fronting Shenandoah High.
Hinging up, Tara said, “You just encouraged them to go back into what sounded to me like hell on earth.” She looked over her shoulder and saw a half-dozen escapees split from the group and take down the trio of slow-moving zombies, pinning them to the ground with hands and knees. She missed what happened next as Riker drove the Suburban over the curb and cut the wheels hard left. Half a block later, Riker turned right. He proceeded slowly to the far end of the block where he pulled hard to the curb in front of a row of homes whose curtains were all shut tight. It was real quiet here. No sirens. No gunshots drifting from the bowels of the high school athletics building. Only thing to suggest this partly cloudy morning was shaping up to be anything but a normal Sunday in Middle America was the faint drumming of the helicopters a few blocks away.
Tara put her bare feet on the dash and drew in a deep breath. “You’re okay with what you did back there? Seems to me that move was just so we could get out of the parking lot.”
“That was done solely out of empathy for their plight, Tara.” He reached into the center console. Rooted around in there for a second.
“Sending them into the belly of the beast?”
He slammed the console, then regarded Tara with a serious look. “Going back in and getting their belongings means they have a better chance of getting to safety than just standing there waiting for the soldiers to come and let out whoever or whatever that woman trapped inside the equipment room when she barred the doors.”
“So why are we here”—she wiggled her toes on the dash—“and where am I going to get some new shoes?”
“Shoes can wait.” He gestured toward the dash. “Try the radio.”
Tara powered it on and cycled through the dial, finding mostly stations playing music. Once or twice she came upon a snippet of news, weather, and sports, but nothing about MU or the quarantine.
A gust rattled the branches of the trees lining the street. Red and orange leaves broke free and fluttered to the ground. Finally, Riker rolled the volume down and proffered an answer to Tara’s first question. “I stopped us here to give those folks enough time to get in and out and find a set of wheels.” He cocked his head toward his open window. “No gunshots so far. That’s a good thing.”
She shot him a questioning look.
“Would a cat have a harder time catching one mouse or multiple mouses?”
“Mice,” she said. “And I see your point. Give the helicopters a bunch of targets to chase.”
Riker said, “That is, if they’re in the chasing mood.”
She thumped the center console lid with her palm. “What were you looking for in here?”
“A map.”
Tara leaned over and pressed a virtual button on the touch screen in the dash. The image cycled from the Audio screen to one labeled Navigation. Showing on the display was a mostly tan map marred by a tangle of solid red lines. It was obvious from the scale that the image of the general vicinity was zoomed way out.
“Not good,” said Tara. “Anything solid red means traffic is at a standstill. Or pretty damn close to a standstill.”
“Can you zoom in?”
A pickup with a hemi engine and loud pipes roared by on the street behind them. It was followed close behind by a compact import and a shiny red minivan.
Turning her attention back to the multifunction display, Tara pressed repeatedly on the digitally rendered button labeled with a black minus symbol.
Nothing happened.
She tried cycling back and forth. Pressed the minus button again.
Nothing.
Just the web of red representing nowhere Riker wanted to be near or stuck travelling along in a stolen vehicle.
“Check the glovebox for an old-fashioned paper map.”
She popped the glove box open. All it contained was an owner’s manual, Department of Motor Vehicle documents, and an ice scraper complete with a red fur-trimmed mitt.
“How cold does it get here at night?”
Tara closed the glovebox.
She looked at the headliner, obviously crunching some kind of numbers in her head. After a bit, she said, “This time of year, mid-forties. That’s a give or take pulled-it-outta-my-butt figure. I’m not a Farmer’s Almanac, Lee.”
“Why don’t you do what everyone else your age does?”
“Elaborate, Lee.”
“Google it.”
Tara dragged the pair of devices from her pants pockets. Thumbed the iPhone to life.
After a minute or two of swiping and then cycling the device through a hard reboot, she said, “No service.”
“Same here,” said Riker, flipping his phone closed. “We better get to brainstorming.”
Chapter 34
Victoria was taken aback by how small the black and gold helicopter appeared up close. Then it struck her that at most the thing could accommodate six. Counting heads, including the pilots and herself, she came to the conclusion she’d have a place to park her butt. However, based on the iron grip Carson still had on her shoulder, she had an awful feeling she was going to be left on the roof with two choices: either burn to death, or escape the flames by jumping as so many had fifteen short years ago.
The Shark is bolting for the Hamptons, she thought to herself as Carson stopped her advance just outside the reach of the spinning rotors. In the next beat she was being led to her left. Twenty yards from the helicopter and within spitting distance of the waist-high parapet ringing 4WTC’s sizable roof, Carson turned her around to face him.
“Mr. Merkur tells me you’ve been drinking a lot lately.”
“Me? No way,” she lied.
“He says you’re no longer a team player.”
Knowing where this was going, she said nothing. Instead, she took one step back and covertly loosened the clasp on her bag.
“You’ve seen too much,” Carson stated, his lips parting into a Cheshire-Cat-like grin. Instantly, the inches-long facial scar was stretched, taking the form of a lightning bolt and going stark white against his tanned skin.
“I won’t say a thing.” She took one half-step back, turning sideways in the process.
“Bullshit,” said Carson. “Underhill saw you printing some of Mr. Merkur’s emails. Don’t you k
now who I am? What I do for Zen?”
She had already snaked one hand into the courier’s bag and was coming out with the smooth glass vial when Carson began to advance on her.
“Yes I do,” she said through clenched teeth as she brought her right hand up so he could see the glass vial. “You’re the asshole murderer who’s going to give me back the pass card and turn a blind eye while I go back to the stairwell and mosey on home.”
Carson chuckled. “You think what’s in that vial gives you leverage? What do you plan on doing with that? You going to break it on the ground like a beer bottle and try to stick me with it?”
“You take another step and I will infect me and you and your masters.”
He took a step forward.
She took another backward.
“I’ll do it,” she said, making a show of throwing the vial to the ground between their feet.
Carson took one more long stride, cutting the distance between them and forcing her back so that her calves were pressed against the low wall. Then, performing one of those Jason Bourne disarm-the-bad-guy-type maneuvers, his hand shot out, the strong fingers wrapping vice-tight around her wrist.
Suddenly the tendons in Victoria’s wrist felt as if they were on fire, and she was losing her balance. The two sensations working together caused her to relax her grip on the vial. What had seemed like the perfect plan evaporated before her eyes when Carson’s free hand came away holding the vial full of Romero virus. Then, to add insult to injury, the wide expanse of nothing at her back brought on a paralyzing bout of vertigo that trumped all of the lingering hangover symptoms.
“You know what?” Carson said, throwing the vial to the ground by her feet where it shattered into tiny shards. Horrified at the ramification of the virus doing to her what it had already done to the bio lab workers, she shrank away, putting herself in a near seated position on the building’s edge. Smiling, Carson finished the thought, “You chose the wrong Romero strain. You’d have to introduce this into my blood stream directly. Or you could become infected and bite me. Those are the only ways this nasty little bug at our feet can hurt either one of us.”
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise Page 16